Smithfield Foods, Mercy Chefs Aid Flooding Victims in Iowa
Smithfield Foods delivered 34,000 pounds of protein to Rock Valley, Iowa, to provide free, restaurant-quality hot meals to victims, first responders and volunteers impacted by severe flooding across Northwest Iowa.
As a local employer with more than 600 employees in nearby Sioux Center and Orange City, Iowa, Smithfield delivered the protein donation today to Mercy Chefs, a Portsmouth, Va.-based nonprofit that deploys to disaster zones across America. Donated food items included loins, ribs and pork chops, and will provide over 140,000 servings of protein.
“Recent catastrophic flooding has left many of our Northwest Iowa neighbors without basic necessities like electricity, drinking water and food,” said Jonathan Toms, senior community development manager for Smithfield Foods. “By partnering with Mercy Chefs, we’re able to provide support and hope for our neighbors in critical times of need as the community continues to recover from storm damage.”
Mercy Chefs’ mobile kitchen and smoker will be serving restaurant-quality meals in Rock Valley, Iowa, to anyone in the community in need. The team will also distribute meals to those unable to make it to the base of operations. To donate or find out how to volunteer locally, visit mercychefs.com/donate-iowa-flooding-response.
“As we respond to the heartbreaking disaster in Iowa, we are incredibly grateful to Smithfield Foods for standing with us,” said Chef Gary LeBlanc, founder and CEO of Mercy Chefs. “Their support enables us to provide thousands of high-quality, chef-prepared meals to those suffering through this crisis.”
Smithfield’s hunger relief program, Helping Hungry Homes, has provided hundreds of millions of servings of protein all 50 U.S. states, as well as in Poland, Romania and Mexico, since 2008. Smithfield donated nearly 28 million servings of protein to food banks, disaster relief efforts and community outreach programs across the U.S. in 2023 and has pledged to donate 200 million servings of protein by 2025.
For more information about Smithfield’s programs to support local communities, please visit smithfieldfoods.com/helping-communities.
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IDDBA, ACS Team Up to Offer Salumiere Certification Exam
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USDA Finalizes Policy on Declaring Salmonella in Raw Breaded Stuffed Chicken Products
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has made its final determination to declare Salmonella an adulterant in raw breaded stuffed chicken products when they exceed a specific threshold (1 colony forming unit per gram or higher) for Salmonella contamination.
This final determination is part of FSIS’ broader efforts to reduce Salmonella illnesses associated with the raw poultry supply in the United States. FSIS intends to address Salmonella contamination in other raw poultry products later this year.
“Under President Biden’s leadership, USDA is taking significant steps toward keeping American consumers safe from foodborne illness,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “This final determination marks the first time that Salmonella is being declared an adulterant in a class of raw poultry products. This policy change is important because it will allow us to stop the sale of these products when we find levels of Salmonella contamination that could make people sick.”
Under this determination, FSIS will consider to be adulterated any raw breaded stuffed chicken products that include a chicken component that tested positive for Salmonella at 1 CFU per gram or higher.
FSIS will carry out verification procedures, including sampling and testing of the raw incoming chicken component of these products prior to stuffing and breading, to ensure producing establishments control Salmonella in these products. If the chicken component in these products does not meet this standard, the product lot represented by the sampled component would not be permitted to be used to produce the final raw breaded stuffed chicken products. The determination, including FSIS’ sampling and verification testing, will be effective 12 months after its publication in the Federal Register.
In determining that Salmonella is an adulterant in raw breaded stuffed chicken products, FSIS considered the best available science and data using similar criteria as in its 1994, 1999, and 2011 E. coli policymaking. When FSIS declared seven Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli strains to be adulterants in select raw beef products, it relied on several factors, including the available information on serotypes linked to human illnesses, infectious dose, severity of illnesses and typical consumer preparation practices associated with a product. The breaded stuffed chicken products determination relied on the same factors.
FSIS and its public health partners have investigated 14 Salmonella outbreaks and approximately 200 illnesses associated with these products since 1998. The most recent outbreak was in 2021 and resulted in illnesses across 11 states. These products account for less than 0.15% of the total domestic chicken supply, but outbreaks linked to these products represented approximately 5% of all chicken-associated outbreaks in the U.S. during 1998-2020.
Raw breaded stuffed chicken products are pre-browned and may appear cooked, but the chicken is raw. The products are typically cooked by consumers from a frozen state, which increases the risk of the product not reaching the internal temperature needed to destroy Salmonella. Despite FSIS’ and industry’s efforts to improve labeling, these products continue to be associated with Salmonella illness outbreaks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that Salmonella bacteria cause over 1 million human infections in the United States each year. Food is the leading source of Salmonella infections and poultry products are one of the leading sources of foodborne Salmonella illnesses.
FSIS will continue to evaluate and, if necessary, refine its policies and standards related to the oversight of raw breaded stuffed chicken products as advances in science and technology related to pathogen levels, serotypes, laboratory methods and infectious dose become available.
This final determination builds on USDA’s continued efforts under the Biden-Harris Administration to protect American consumers, whether to ensure food safety or prevent false and misleading label claims. Earlier this year, USDA published a final rule allowing the voluntary “Product of USA” claim to be applied only to those FSIS-regulated products that are derived from animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States. USDA is currently re-evaluating the FSIS guideline for animal-raising claims to better ensure that they are adequately substantiated.
To view the final determination, visit the FSIS Federal Register Rules webpage.
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