Salmonella Risk Assessment - FSIS

Description

A. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is the public health agency in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) responsible for ensuring the safety of meat, poultry, and egg products. The Office of Public Health Science (OPHS)—one of many program areas supporting FSIS’ mission—brings public health leadership to FSIS to assure the establishment and support of scientifically sound food safety programs. The OPHS Risk Assessment and Analytics Staff (RAAS) conducts scientific risk assessments and develops new analytic methods for assessing risks of biological and chemical hazards in meat, poultry and egg products that inform risk management decisions and risk communication activities. RAAS’ scientific and technical analyses guide, support and enhance FSIS public health goals as they relate to regulatory initiatives, internal policymaking, data collection, research priorities, and the FSIS food safety goals. FSIS recently announced it will develop a stronger and more comprehensive food safety framework for the control of Salmonella in poultry. Several initiatives are underway to incorporate the latest science, data and laboratory technology into FSIS’s decision-making to identify ways to control Salmonella in poultry and reduce foodborne illness. FSIS is developing two separate risk assessment models, in chicken and in turkey. These production-to-consumption risk models will estimate reductions in foodborne illness attributed to chicken and to turkey resulting from control of Salmonella. Specifically, the models will predict the impact of: • controlling Salmonella prevalence, levels (enumeration), and subtypes of public health concern pre-harvest and post-harvest, • implementing preharvest controls, post-harvest controls, and combined pre- and post-harvest controls, and • establishing criteria limiting Salmonella prevalence, levels and/or subtypes, or requiring a specified reduction in a relevant indicator organism. Inputs will include prevalence, levels, and subtypes of Salmonella at various points in the production-to-consumption chain, along with pre-harvest and post-harvest production practices. FSIS will be able to use FSIS-generated data for some of the model inputs. Other inputs may be informed by published scientific studies, or expert elicitations. Outputs will include prevalence and levels of Salmonella, and Salmonella subtypes, at other points in the chain and the corresponding predicted public health impact, i.e., reduction in foodborne illnesses, of Salmonella control strategies. In this way, the risk assessment models enable FSIS to assess risk management options. The purpose of this announcement is to advertise opportunities to parties who are interested in partnering with OPHS to provide research services to address the key objectives and focus areas in FSIS’ goal to build a stronger framework for the control of Salmonella in poultry. Please see document section for complete information on submission, review and cooperative agreement administration.

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