Remarks prepared for Dr. Barbara J. Masters, Administrator, Food Safety and Inspection Service, at the United States Animal Health Association Committee on Food Safety Meeting November 6, 2005 in Hershey, PA

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here with the U.S. Animal Health Association's Committee on Food Safety. Today, I would like to focus on two main areas. First, I will outline some of the Agency's top priorities and point out specific activities I believe are of interest to you.

Second, I also want to talk about pre-harvest food safety and how it dovetails with our regulatory food safety activities within the plant environment.

For almost 100 years, American consumers have depended on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ensure the safety of their meat, poultry and egg products.

In fact, 2006 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which ushered in a new era of food safety on a national level. The agency will be commemorating our rich history during the upcoming year. This dynamic symbol and slogan you are seeing now integrates all aspects of our food safety and public health mission.

Fulfilling this public health mandate is a demanding responsibility and an exciting challenge.

Significant Food Safety Advancements

We believe that any effective food safety system must be rooted in science. An effective gauge of how our scientific policies and your practices are working is looking at how public health is impacted. Our efforts are clearly on the right track, as evidenced by the decline in foodborne illness over the last seven years.

Last spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported continued reductions in foodborne illnesses from 1996 through 2004 stemming from E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Campylobacter, and Yersinia.

This year's report indicates that reductions in foodborne illness reported in 2003 were not an isolated event and that sustained progress is being made toward reducing illness from very dangerous foodborne pathogens.

However, progress needs to continue in order to stay ahead of these pathogens as they evolve and present new challenges.

Pre-Harvest Food Safety

Clearly, to make this progress, we need to take a farm-to-table approach to food safety. When we issued our final rule on Pathogen Reduction and HACCP systems almost 10 years ago, we said that our public health mandate requires that hazards within each segment of the food production chain be addressed. What happens before the animal gets to the establishment certainly affects the establishment's ability to address hazards at processing. And it certainly affects FSIS' ability to verify what the establishment is doing to address those hazards.

While FSIS has no regulatory authority on the farm, there are ways we are making progress in pre-harvest food safety. First, for example, if you look at our HACCP regulations, we ask the industry to consider hazards before, during and after entry into the establishment. There are many instances where inspected establishments must take into consideration what happens on the farm.

For example, one thing that plants should do is validate their antimicrobial interventions to address the microbial load coming on live birds or animals. In general, the lower the load, the less intensive the on-line interventions need to be.

Second, we cooperate with animal producers, scientists, academia and with other government agencies to encourage measures that can be taken pre-harvest to decrease public health hazards in animals presented for slaughter.

And third, we have a great interest in encouraging research by the private and public sectors on pre-harvest food safety. Such data and information is important for us to "plug in" to our farm-to-table risk assessments, which in turn help us to develop science-based policies and shape our outreach programs to producers.

FSIS Priorities

As we encourage progress in pre-harvest food safety, most of our resources are devoted to our responsibilities in regulated establishments.

FSIS holds itself accountable for better protecting public health. Last year, we outlined a series of priorities to better understand, predict and prevent the contamination of meat and poultry products.

Even though our priorities are the same this year, and are likely to stay pretty much the same next year, the outcomes we expect in each of these areas are changing. We are constantly raising the bar so we can move forward as a public health regulatory agency.

FSIS' Priorities
The first priority is training, education and outreach.
We are intensively training a large segment of our field workforce because we need to be sure their skills and knowledge keep up with our food safety initiatives.

This priority area encompasses not only the training we provide to our employees but education and outreach we provide to all of our constituents. That is the aspect I want to focus on here.

Much of our outreach to producers is carried out by FSIS' Animal Egg Production and Food Safety Staff through cooperative agreements with States and universities. For example, in previous years FSIS has supported development of third party verified quality assurance programs for cull dairy cows.

I'm very excited about a project Kansas State University is working on for us this year. Kansas State is developing bilingual training modules for first-level feedlot workers. I believe this is just the type of project we need to support. The best part is that once this work has been completed, the results are available to anyone that is interested. Contact information for this year's cooperative agreements will be available on the FSIS Web site soon.

Our second priority is communications.
We need to improve communications within the agency and between the agency and its stakeholders. Consistent with our farm-to-table approach, for example, we have an extensive education program for food handlers that encompasses everything from bilingual pamphlets on using food thermometers to our Food Safety Mobile, which travels around the country providing information at fairs, schools—just about everywhere.

We also hold public meetings as a way to work with our stakeholders to find ways to reduce food safety hazards. Just recently, we held a public meeting on "Advances in Pre-Harvest Reduction of Salmonella in Poultry," in Athens, Georgia. The meeting focused on research and practical experiences aimed at reducing Salmonella at the poultry production level, before poultry reaches federally inspected plants. The transcript of this meeting is on our Web site.

Based on input from the meeting and other information available to us, we will develop compliance guideline materials for producers that address pre-harvest food safety and Salmonella. We intend to hold a second public meeting on this topic next year to make further progress. It will focus on in-plant activities.

We are also communicating in new and more efficient ways to reach as many people as possible. For example, this week FSIS is hosting a webcast entitled Food Defense: Make It Your Business. This webcast workshop is targeted to State Directors and Inspection Staff as well as small and very small establishment owners.

A third priority is risk analysis, including risk assessment, risk management and risk communication.
Risk analysis is an extremely important process, one that provides FSIS with a way to focus resources on hazards that pose the greatest risk to public health. They provide a solid foundation for policy changes and education campaigns. And as I mentioned earlier, they are often farm-to-table.

A good risk assessment needs good data, so we are about to begin conducting baseline studies that will help determine the nationwide levels of various pathogenic microorganisms in raw meat and poultry. The first baseline is for E. coli O157:H7 in beef trim and subprimals, and it will officially begin this month.

Another project that can provide us good information for risk assessments is Collaboration in Animal Health and Food Safety Epidemiology (CAHFSE). It involves three USDA agencies—ARS, APHIS and FSIS—in collaboration with industry.

This surveillance effort will help us to determine the relationship between pathogens in live animals, carcasses and in food. Swine is the first commodity being studied.

Our fourth priority is food defense.
We will continue our substantial efforts to improve our food defense capabilities. The agency has accomplished much in the area of food defense, making a strong system even stronger. Approximately 90,000 procedures have been carried out in the field.

We recently changed the name of this office from the Office of Food Security and Emergency Preparedness to the Office of Food Defense and Emergency Response because the term "Food Security" is often used to describe the abundance of food and can cause confusion.

Available on our Web site are four model food defense plans. These models are designed to assist federally- and state-inspected meat, poultry and egg products establishments, as well as import facilities, develop their own security measures to deter the threat of intentional contamination or similar attacks on the food supply.

The model food defense plans are being issued in the form of guidance documents and are voluntary. However, FSIS believes that every establishment should have a written plan that describes and documents controls to ensure that the premises are secure from potential threats.

The fifth priority is evolving inspection and enforcement.
As we approach the completion of the first decade under HACCP, FSIS will continue a risk-based approach to food safety and defense verification.

Our Listeria initiative is a good example of how we are taking a more risk-based approach in processing plants. Under this initiative, FSIS tailors its verification activities to the interventions plants choose to adopt and to the potential for Listeria growth in their products. In other words, FSIS conducts less sampling in those plants that have the best Listeria control programs and more sampling in plants that adopt less vigorous programs. Thus, plants have an incentive to do more to control Listeria.

In slaughter plants, we have been pilot testing new systems of inspection that would allow us to better use our resources to protect public health. In addition, we are interested in new projects such as the Comprehensive Zoonotic Disease Surveillance System (CZDSS) that can provide us with more information on animals coming into slaughter. The project is exploring linking various data sources kept in different parts of the Agency. With more information on incoming animals, we can potentially focus our attention on plants where we know animals may have more problems.

For the future, we will be looking at similar ways we can make our inspection and enforcement programs more risk-based both in slaughter and processing.

Humane Handling

Humane handling of animals is a good example of how we're moving forward in involving inspection and enforcement and an example of how we're looking more broadly at a systematic approach.

Humane handling is an issue of great importance to us, and the Agency is committed to working with industry, academia, and other stakeholders in a positive way to enhance the treatment of animals intended for slaughter, including poultry.

FSIS recently issued a Federal Register notice on the treatment of live poultry before slaughter to remind all poultry slaughter plants of their responsibilities in this area.

Although there is no specific humane handling and slaughter law for poultry as there is for meat, if birds are slaughtered in a manner that does not comply with good commercial practices, the product that results is adulterated under the PPIA.

We are encouraging poultry operators to use a systematic approach to ensuring that poultry is handled and slaughtered consistent with good commercial practices. By "systematic approach," we mean one in which plants focus on treating poultry in a way that minimizes excitement, discomfort, and accidental injury. We recommend that plants take the following three steps: (1) assess their current systems for any handling problems, (2) take steps to minimize these problems, and (3) periodically evaluate whether the system is working.

While this is not a regulatory approach, it is an example of an area where we've been able to take a systematic, farm-to-table approach. We issued a similar document for livestock.

Closing

So for the future, we have a vision. We expect industry to raise the bar on their HACCP plans so they are truly considering hazards before, during and after the plant. They will begin to consider on-farm quality assurance programs in ways they have not in the past. They will consider the load of pathogens coming into the establishment and adjust their validated interventions for that load of pathogens.

This, in turn, will change our jobs by allowing us greater flexibility to perform verification and to assess data and assign resources on a real-time basis based on priorities. We will have more data and other information available to us so we can make better decisions on a real-time basis.

It will take all of us to see this vision become reality. Protecting public health isn't accomplished through one action or one organization. We need to challenge ourselves, challenge each other, and above all hold ourselves accountable for improving food safety and further protecting public health.

It has been a pleasure to be here with you today. I thank you for your dedication and efforts. We look forward to working with the U.S. Animal Health Association and to your continued contributions in food safety and public health.

Now I would be happy to discuss any questions you might have.