Meat Safety

Inspection System's Ability to Detect Harmful Bacteria Remains Limited Gao ID: T-RCED-94-123 February 10, 1994

The federal meat inspection program is only marginally better at protecting the public from harmful bacteria than it was a year ago when several people died after eating hamburgers contaminated with E. coli bacteria. The Agriculture Department (USDA) continues to rely on visual inspections that cannot detect such pathogens--the greatest public health risk associated with meat and poultry. USDA's efforts to improve its inspection system have not addressed this inherent weaknesses, nor has USDA tried to require routine microbial testing by industry and government. To better protect the public from foodborne illnesses, USDA must adopt a modern, scientific, risk-based inspection system that would allow the agency to target inspections to higher-risk meat and poultry products and to develop methods to help inspectors detect microbial contamination.



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