Consumer Reports is supporting a proposal announced April 25 by the USDA to declare salmonella an adulterant in breaded stuffed raw chicken products at low levels so that the agency can more effectively respond to foodborne illness outbreaks. CR praised the proposed rule as an important first step to address widespread salmonella contamination and is encouraging the agency to adopt additional measures to protect the public from the dangerous bacteria in other chicken products. 

“Far too many people get sick every year from poultry contaminated with salmonella bacteria that could be avoided with stricter industry prevention practices,” said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports.  “The USDA’s proposal on salmonella in breaded and raw chicken products is a very encouraging formal step in the process, and it demonstrates they are serious about pursuing measures aimed at reducing Salmonella illness rates. We look forward to working with USDA to quickly move this forward.” 

Breaded raw stuffed chicken products include some chicken cordon bleu and chicken Kiev products found in the freezer section of the grocery store.  These products may appear cooked to consumers but they contain raw chicken and are only heat-treated by manufacturers to set the batter or breading.

Under the proposal announced today, breaded and stuffed raw chicken products would be considered adulterated if they tested positive for Salmonella at 1 colony forming unit (CFU) per gram prior to stuffing and breading.  The adulterated designation would require companies to recall any product that tests positive above this low level of contamination, instead of waiting for outbreaks when people get sick.  

Salmonella is widespread in chicken in part because of the often crowded and filthy conditions in which they are raised. A recent CR investigation, for example, found almost one-third of ground chicken samples tested contained salmonella.  Nearly 1.35 million Americans get sick from salmonella every year, about one-fifth of those cases come from chicken or turkey.

While the USDA requires producers to test poultry for salmonella, a processing facility is allowed to have the bacteria in up to 9.8 percent of all whole birds it tests, 15.4 percent of all parts, and 25 percent of ground chicken. Producers that exceed these amounts are given what amounts to a warning, but not prevented from selling the meat.

Consumer Reports has called on the USDA to set more aggressive goals to sharply reduce the percentage of chicken samples allowed to test positive for salmonella and to focus on reducing the salmonella strains that pose the biggest threat to human health. CR also believes the USDA needs more authority to inspect poultry plants and should close facilities immediately when high salmonella rates are found.

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Consumer Reports today (Sept. 29) urged baby food manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration to take quick and decisive action to address the “disturbing” findings in a new report issued by the U.S. House Oversight Committee.

Oversight’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy released a new staff report that shows “high levels of toxic heavy metals in baby food and the industry’s failure to end harmful practices that pose serious health risks to babies and toddlers.” The report also has recommendations for FDA and industry to eliminate toxic content in baby foods. The subcommittee issued an initial report in February 2021.

Brian Ronholm, Director of Food Policy for Consumer Reports, said, “What’s especially disturbing about the report’s findings is the industry’s dismissive approach toward ensuring the safety of baby food.

“Between incomplete recalls, weakening their own standards, and the refusal to test finished products, these baby food manufacturers do not appear to be putting safety first. This report clearly demonstrates the need for the FDA to act quickly in publishing maximum limits for toxic heavy metals in baby food and requiring the industry to perform finished-product testing. The findings demonstrate that today’s rules and industry promises are woefully inadequate when it comes to safety.”

In 2018, Consumer Reports’ food safety team analyzed 50 nationally distributed packaged foods made for babies and toddlers, checking for cadmium, lead, mercury, and inorganic arsenic, the type most harmful to health.  CR’s tests found that about two-thirds (68 percent) had worrisome levels of at least one heavy metal.

Fifteen of the foods would pose potential health risks to a child regularly eating just one serving or less per day. Snacks and products containing rice and/or sweet potatoes were particularly likely to have high levels of heavy metals.

For years, CR has advocated for regulations, legislation, and industry reforms to reduce toxins in baby food. CR has endorsed the Baby Food Safety Act introduced in Congress, which would set strict limits on heavy metals in baby foods.

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Note on the author: James Rogers, Ph.D., is director of food safety testing and research at Consumer Reports. He submitted this opinion piece, originally titled “Let’s Keep It Honest: The Full Story on Drug Residue in Meat & Poultry Testing,” in response to FSIS Administrator Carmen Rottenberg’s Aug. 29 alert on this topic.

In recent days, a Consumer Reports investigation indicating that potentially dangerous and banned substances have made their way into our meat supply has been called into question by industry organizations and the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). We took a hard look into the presence of drugs, including chloramphenicol, an antibiotic linked to potentially deadly anemia; phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory deemed too risky for human use; and ketamine, a hallucinogenic party drug and experimental antidepressant. 

What we found is deeply worrisome and is why CR believes greater consideration is warranted on behalf of all consumers.

As a scientist and former FSIS official, I intimately understand how the agency collects, tests, and measures contaminants in food. When we looked at testing data from the FSIS, both an initial and then revised set, serious concerns came to light about the process, the standards applied, and the findings themselves.

At the heart of the matter is that there should never be any of these banned substances in the food supply. In the case of this testing, the FSIS created what can only be called an arbitrary and self-determined threshold, far above the legal threshold for the drugs chloramphenicol, ketamine, nitroimidazoles, and phenylbutazone, which is zero and what the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act mandates.

The FSIS has attempted to redirect the conversation about CR’s investigation to make it about the completeness of the data, offering up the explanation that the initial data was preliminary and released in error, and should be dismissed. The meat industry has, not surprisingly, supported that position.

Here’s the truth: the initial data set recorded thousands of data points showing detectable amounts of drugs in meat samples. The revised set issued by FSIS, using their arbitrary threshold, showed many of the results changed to “Residue Not Detected.” However, when the results that did remain were compared to the initial set, near-identical results appeared, including down to the final decimal place. The only scientific conclusion we can draw is that the entire initial data set is both real and meaningful; in many cases, trace amounts were no longer included simply because they did not meet the FSIS’s arbitrary threshold.

Upon consideration by CR scientists, and after several exchanges we had with the FSIS regarding the methods used to create both data sets, the FSIS was unable to provide a scientifically convincing rationale for why the data should be dismissed. In fact, the process used by the FSIS to set their threshold has been cloaked in secrecy, neither shared publicly, nor peer reviewed.

The criteria applied by the FSIS to the results in question do not meet established scientific methods, including peer review. They are also less rigorous than the criteria used by other government agencies, including the FDA and the EPA. 

That’s why CR’s only mission is to work with and for the consumer, to keep us all safe and healthy. We are calling for more discussion within the regulatory and scientific community on how to better our food system and stand by the principle of zero tolerance for potential consumer harm from banned drugs in meat. The FSIS and the entire food industry should operate by that principle, too.

Because no consumer has a way to determine what’s inside the meals we eat — the ability to analyze food on our own — we all must be able to rely on the promises of producers, the safeguards of government standards, and the scientific tests of independent experts to ensure our safety. 

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