USDA's Ronholm Says FSIS Will Begin Testing Ground Beef for Salmonella
In today's USDA Blog, Brian Ronholm, acting under secretary for food safety, announced that this summer, FSIS will begin a new testing of ground beef to improve safeguards against Salmonella. The text of the blog follows:
As grilling season heats up, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is enhancing our food safety testing program for ground beef. While FSIS has a range of safeguards to reduce E. coli in ground beef, this summer we will begin new testing to improve the safeguards against Salmonella as well. Salmonella is commonly found in ground beef and, in fact, caused an illness outbreak in January 2013 in six states.Salmonella is an especially difficult bacteria for food safety experts to address because it is so prevalent in almost all food sources.