Food Protection Trends - December 2008 - 926

TABLE 8. Employee training on food safety for meat and poultry processors, by HACCP size (percentage of plants) Employee Training Food safety training is provided for newly hired production employees Continuing food safety training is provided for production employees One or more production employees has completed formal HACCP training Very Small 95.3 89.5 85.9 Small 99.7+++ 96.8+++ 94.6+++ Large 98.8* 100.0** 98.8 All Plants 97.0 92.5 89.5 See Table 2 for description of notation used to indicate statistical significance. informal on-the-job training, or use of written materials. For newly hired production employees, plants are more likely to provide on-the-job food safety training (scheduled, 36%; unscheduled, 66%) and written materials (36%). To train production employees on an ongoing basis, 73% of plants provide informal, on-the-job food safety training. Some plants also use written materials (24%), scheduled on-the-job training (27%), and formal course work conducted by plant personnel (20%) as methods of continually training production employees. tools, and equipment were the most prevalent methods of preventing or eliminating microbial contamination. Increased adoption of technologies, including the use of antimicrobial chemicals such as sodium acetate and sodium diacetate, would help reduce pathogen loads (2). Similarly, increased use of practices such as independent food safety audits would have a positive effect and help produce safer meat and poultry products. In general, large and small plants are more likely than very small plants to use many types of food safety practices and technologies. To enhance adoption of food safety practices and technologies among small and very small plants, FSIS is targeting those plants with specific outreach activities (19). These activities include the establishment of a group at the Policy Development Division to respond to technical questions from small and very small plants, the creation of compliance guidelines to aid in understanding regulatory requirements, and the creation of a section of the FSIS Web site devoted to small and very small plants. In addition, FSIS is offering Web seminars to owners and operators of small and very small establishments to further aid in their understanding of regulations. FSIS also is identifying technologies that are feasible for smaller plants to implement in order to achieve food safety. As smaller plants generally have less scientific expertise, less automation, fewer resources, and a greater variety of products, these plants will likely benefit from these initiatives (9). Practices and technologies implemented by meat and poultry processing plants for controlling foodborne pathogens and other hazards subsequently may help reduce the risk of foodborne illness. The survey findings, coupled with other data, can be used to characterize meat and poultry processing plants’ food safety risk management practices and may help inform the process for risk-based inspection and sampling, whereby plants with higher relative risk are inspected more rigorously or sampled more frequently. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was funded by the US Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA, FSIS) (Contract no. 53-3A94-03-12). All views expressed here are those of the authors and not necessarily of USDA, FSIS. We thank Peter Siegel of RTI International for his assistance with developing the sample design and the survey weights, and Jeffrey Franklin and Nadia Paoli of RTI for managing the survey data collection. We also thank Ronald Meekhof of FSIS (Retired) for his guidance as the FSIS project manager. CONCLUSIONS We conducted a mail survey of meat and poultry processing plants to collect uniform information on practices and technologies used to control pathogens and promote food safety. The survey was nationally representative and had a high response rate (66%). Although the data are self-reported and the extent of selfreporting bias is unknown, the survey results provide a unique and comprehensive view of food safety practices used by meat and poultry processors. The majority of plants conduct voluntary microbiological testing of product and environmental sampling to ensure that their procedures are effective in reducing or eliminating pathogens. Plants test for a variety of pathogens, including Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria. Almost all plants provide food safety training for newly hired employees and offer training on a continuing basis for production employees. As expected, the survey findings suggest that most plants, particularly very small plants, use sanitation and other practices, rather than technologies, to achieve food safety. Sanitation of hands, REFERENCES 1. Anonymous. 2008. Best practices for raw ground products. Prepared for the National Meat Association, Southwest Meat Association, American Meat Institute, and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Facilitated by the Beef Industry Food Safety Council Executive Committee. Available at http:// www.bifsco.org/uDocs/bestpracticesforrawgroundproducts08collaborativeedit.pdf. Accessed July 31, 2008. 2. Bricher, J. 2005. Technology review: innovation in microbial interventions. Food Safety Magazine April/ May. 3. Cates, S. C., S. A. Karns, J. L. Taylor, C. L. Viator, and P. H. Siegel. 926 FOOD PROTECTION TRENDS | DECEMBER 2008

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Food Protection Trends - December 2008

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