BACKGROUND

[Egg Belt] The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) assures that meat, poultry and egg products moving in interstate commerce for use as human food are safe, wholesome, unadulterated, and accurately labeled. This responsibility is mandated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act. FSIS oversees more than 7,800 Federal food inspectors and veterinarians who perform inspection in meat and poultry slaughtering and processing plants.

The Pathogen Reduction and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) Regulation of 1996 requires slaughter and processing plants to control physical, chemical and microbial contaminants in meat and poultry products. As firms begin to develop their respective HACCP programs, there will be increased attention given to priority and emerging human pathogens in or on live animals entering plants. Work has been conducted under controlled and field conditions that demonstrates there are actions that can be taken to reduce the potential for animal carriers to shed human pathogens. However, few have been adopted at the food animal production level because of the lack of evidence linking these pre-harvest activities with reducing carcass contamination in slaughter establishments.

PURPOSE

In order to foster improved animal production food safety practices which reduce violative residues and zoonotic pathogens in animals at slaughter, FSIS recognizes that training is necessary which teaches the farm sector management techniques which result in a safer animal or bird being presented for slaughter. There are already successful programs on-going which may benefit by additional resources.

FSIS has undertaken this project to determine which training methodologies and animal production food safety information strategies work best for educating food animal producers, particularly small producers, to maximize the effectiveness of present and future food safety initiatives.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this project is to perform an analysis of animal production food safety educational programs.

The Analysis shall include, but not be limited to, the following topics:

  • Promoting good production practices;
  • Developing additional educational delivery networks which include HACCP concepts;
  • Promoting the importance of the veterinary/client/patient relationships;
  • Encouraging adoption of quality assurance educational programs and residue avoidance protocols compatible with HACCP systems in slaughter establishments;
  • Teaching good animal production and culling practices;
  • Establishing certification and/or verification systems for food safety assurance.