The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) recently announced plans to plans to significantly expand its routine verification testing for Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STECs), which includes the six non-O157 strains O26, O45, O103, O111, O121 and O145. Inspectors will now begin sampling bench trim, ground beef and raw ground beef components (which includes head meat, cheek meat, weasand (esophagus) meat, product derived from advanced meat recovery (AMR) systems, partially defatted chopped beef and partially defatted beef fatty tissue, LFTB (Lean Finely Textured Beef), and heart meat). FSIS aims to collect and analyze at least 48 samples per year from each establishment producing greater than 50,000 pounds per day of ground beef or beef manufacturing trimmings.
According to the Federal Register notice, the projected annual cost for testing beef trimmings for non-O157 STEC is $42.2 million, of which industry is expected to incur $42.1 million. The projected industry cost of expanding non-O157 STEC testing to all other raw beef products is another $5.9 million. Certainly, the industry is amenable to making costly food safety improvements, but what is the cost-benefit analysis? To determine that, an analysis of the recall data may help.