NATIONAL MEAT
ASSOCIATION h 1970
Broadway, Suite 825, Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 763-1533 Fax (510) 763-6186 h Email Address: [email protected] h http://www.nmaonline.org
Edited by Kiran Kernellu
April 28, 2003
GROUND BEEF BEST PRACTICES UPDATE
Last week, NMA convened a working group of ground beef manufacturers in Dallas, TX to update the 1998 NMA Guidelines for Production of Ground Beef and to develop a new Best Practices document which includes the recommendations out of the Processing Group from the E. coli Summit meeting held in San Antonio, TX in January. A small, dedicated group worked intensively for the day under the leadership of Dr. Kerri Harris of Texas A&M University, who had previously worked with NMA on the 1998 Guidelines. Those Guidelines, published after the Hudson Foods outbreak, were placed on the USDA website as guidance for the industry. They have been widely used as the benchmark guidance for ground beef production.
Much has happened in the intervening four years, including the Supreme Beef litigation, several large recalls, and many changes in regulatory requirements. Regulatory HACCP as it has been implemented has forced grinders to include CCPs that are not driven by science, since no true science-based CCPs are available in a grinding process. Technology is beginning to emerge that may change this situation. It will most surely be welcomed by grinders!
NMA expects to have a draft of the new Best Practices document ready for broader circulation and comment in May. We appreciate the commitment that the working group made to meet last week and begin the process.
NEW STATE GROUP ORGANIZED IN NEW
MEXICO
NMA’s Executive Director participated in a meeting last week in Albuquerque, NM when a majority of the state’s state-inspected meat and poultry plants agreed to form a state association, New Mexico Meat & Poultry Association. The group’s elected leaders are as follows: President: Rick De Los Santos, Pecos Valley Meat; Vice President: Lee Dixon, High Country Meats, Inc.; Treasurer: Donald Martinez, Zenitram Industries; Secretary: Wayne Pinchart, New Mexico Processing, Inc.; and Ramon Villalobos, Villalobos Bros. Enterprises. These officers are to complete the organization of the group and sign up dues-paying members. The first priority of the group is to link with other groups interested in advancing the issue of interstate shipment of state inspected meat and poultry. They identified a list of other group interests, including the dissemination of scientific, technical and regulatory information. NMA’s Rosemary Mucklow pledged support to help the group get established, and they retained the services of Michael Paquette with Success Partners as Executive Director to assist them.
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LM_XB463 BEEF REPORT
USDA, AMS,
Market News has started to release an enhanced LM_XB463 beef report. Weekly
cutout and primal values are given for Prime, Branded, Choice, Select,
Ungraded, and Comprehensive. Additionally, load count is given for each grade,
as well as the types of sales. Contact Kiran Kernellu at [email protected] or 510-763-1533
for an overview that explains the difference in cutout values between the
traditional LM_XB403 daily boxed beef cutout USDA has published for many years,
and the newly released LM_XB463 weekly comprehensive boxed beef cutout made
possible with the implementation of Mandatory Price Reporting (MPR).
Both cutouts
are derived from boxed beef sales of fed, non-dairy source steer and heifer
beef. The traditional daily boxed beef cutout started under voluntary reporting
and continuing under MPR, is limited to negotiated sales delivering within 21
days domestically, commonly referred to as the “spot” market. The daily cutout also is limited to product
from the USDA Choice and Select grades. A weekly average of the daily cutout is
published every Friday. The new weekly comprehensive cutout is based on all
boxed beef sales and combined into a single weighted average carcass cutout
value. Additionally, there are supplemental cutouts reflecting total sales of
Prime, Branded, Choice, Select and Ungraded product. The key point to remember
is the daily LM_XB403 Choice and Select cutouts are driven by the spot market
only, whereas the total Choice and Select cutouts from the weekly LM_XB463
comprehensive report includes the spot market as well as formula and contract
sales, along with export sales and negotiated business done out front. The beef sales criteria used in calculating
the USDA cutouts are further defined in the overview.
VIRUS VS. VIRUS
Pitting one
virus against another may prove to be another key element in the quest for
enhanced food safety. In serendipitous fashion, scientists studying new
antibiotics discovered that the virus CEV1 “eats” E. coli O157:H7,
reported British newspaper, Independent. Meatingplace.com recently
reported that Washington state researchers said this harmless virus that kills E.
coli O157:H7 has been discovered in sheep.
Reportedly,
Andrew Brabban, a microbiologist at Evergreen State College in Washington, told
attendees this month at a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in
Edinburgh, Scotland, that in a small trial in sheep, CEV1 reduced numbers of E.
coli by 99% in two days! Scientists also found that CEV1 killed 16 out of
18 toxic strains of E. coli. According to the Meatingplace.com report,
if bacteria develop resistance, CEV1 can “out-evolve” them. Learn more about
the study at the Evergreen State website, Evergreen.edu.
NMA
SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS
The 2003 NMA scholarship
application is available at: http://www.nmascholars.org/index.htm.
You can also contact Kiran Kernellu at [email protected] or 510-763-1533
to request an application. In addition, applications are available at participating
university financial aid offices.
ELECTRONIC
NEWSLETTER
Lean Trimmings and
Herd on the Hill are offered electronically. If you’d like to receive
the newsletter via e-mail, please contact Kiran Kernellu at [email protected] or 510-763-1533.
Receive the latest news every Monday afternoon in your inbox instead of waiting
for it in the mail!
BIFSCO EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
An executive summary of the Beef Industry E.
coli Summit was published shortly after the January meeting, and can be
viewed at www.beef.org under
“Research.” The executive summary was
mailed out to NMA general members. NMA members contact Kiran Kernellu at 510-763-1533 or [email protected] to request a copy
by mail.
ANIMAL
HANDLING VIDEOS
NMA has available two videotapes on animal handling,
“Animal Stunning for Stunners,” and “Animal Handling in Meat Plants.” NMA
members may purchase these videos at a discounted price. Please contact Julie
Ramsey at [email protected]
or 510-763-1533 for more information.
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DISTINCTIONS
IN SALMONELLA DATA
USDA recently reported that the prevalence of Salmonella has declined for meat and poultry products over the past two years (see last week’s Lean Trimmings). However, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported last Thursday that its data does not indicate a sustained decline in major foodborne infections from Salmonella, as well as other major pathogens. Not surprisingly, some groups have used this discrepancy as a subterfuge to criticize the meat and poultry industries on food safety.
It is important to recognize that Salmonella is found in other commodities besides meat and poultry. In a report last Monday in Food Chemical News (FCN), Steve Cohen, spokesman for FSIS, pointed out that CDC’s numbers include infections from all foods and all serotypes of Salmonella. Further, Matthew Moore, a physician with CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, reportedly said that the most common serotype of Salmonella, S. typhimurium, which is commonly associated with beef products, has declined consistently in the last seven years. “That’s good news,” he said in the FCN report.
CDC pointed out certain limitations to its findings. Namely, some illnesses are acquired through nonfoodborne routes (e.g., contaminated water, person-to-person contact, and direct animal exposure) and reported rates do not represent foodborne sources exclusively. CDC’s FoodNet data provides the most comprehensive information available for these infections, but it admits that the findings shouldn’t necessarily be generalized to the entire U.S. population.
Of the 58,085 samples of meat and poultry FSIS took last year, 4.3% contained the pathogen Salmonella, a decrease from 5% of 45,941 samples of meat and poultry testing positive in 2001. In fact, Salmonella across all commodities except ground chicken dropped in this period. And, the overall incidence of Salmonella in ground chicken is significantly below the baselines for prevalence. “These data tell us that we are making steady and sustained progress in reducing the incidence of Salmonella in raw meat and poultry products,” said USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety Dr. Elsa Murano in a press release.
Those in the industry are intimately aware that food safety is a continuous and collaborative effort. NMA is pleased by the overall progress made thus far, as quantified by the FSIS data, and will continue to work towards heightened food safety. NMA looks forward to more successes to come.
UPCOMING
NMA SEMINARS
May 28-29 - Beyond Basics
-- College Station, TX
June 12-13/13-14 (tentative) - Animal
Handling
-- Dallas, TX
July 17-18 - Advanced HACCP
-- Los Angeles, CA
August 21-23 - Basic HACCP in Spanish
-- Los Angeles, CA
September 18-20 - Basic
HACCP
-- San Francisco, CA
October 1-2 - Beyond Basics
-- College
Station, TX
Contact NMA at (510) 763-1533 for additional
information and registration materials.
NMA reports news items that are of special interest to
its readers, and provides information that they may want to be able to
access. Below are links to the Federal
Register, AMS, APHIS, and FSIS, respectively:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aces140.html
ROUNDTABLE SEMINAR TAPES
Audio tapes of the interactive roundtable seminars at NMA’s 57th
Annual Convention are now available! Don’t miss out on the thought-provoking
and challenging questions and answers from experts and attendees during these
twelve sessions: Preventing H7; What Works; Making RTE Products Safe;
Sampling & Testing Methods; The Workplace Q&A; Industry Consolidation;
Security: Business & Industry; Managing the Paper Trail; Standards for
HACCP Validation; Industry-Government Working Together; COOL or NOT COOL! &
Nutrition; Telling the Meat Industry Story; and Moving Forward with Branded
Meats. Contact NMA at [email protected]
or 510-763-1533 to request an order form.
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AMS INDUSTRY CONFERENCE
The Livestock and Seed Program of the
Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) annual conference for USDA’s commodity
purchase and distribution program for meat and fish items will take place at
the Hilton Kansas City Airport, 8801 N.W. 112th Street, Kansas City,
MO 64153.
Wednesday, April 30, 2003 Thursday,
May 1, 2003
8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. – 7:30
a.m. to 3:15 p.m. –
Technical Documentation Workshop General
Industry Session
3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. – Processors Forum
NMA
RECEPTION AT AMS CONFERENCE
NMA will hold a reception on Wednesday, April 30 from 5:30-7:00 p.m.
for all attendees of the AMS Industry Conference for Contractors &
Suppliers (see above). Thank you to DCS Sanitation for sponsoring this
reception!
END
USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) reported last
week that DNA sequencing analysis confirmed that the Texas Exotic Newcastle
disease (END) outbreak was caused by a separate introduction of the virus, not
by the movement of virus from affected areas in California, Nevada, or Arizona.
From this, APHIS surmised that efforts to contain the virus in the existing
quarantine areas in the three states have been effective and educational and
surveillance efforts are having a positive impact. The Agency further reported
that no new commercial layer flocks in California have been affected by END
since March 26, 2003. As of Wednesday, 28 premises in California awaited
depopulation, and the number of premises released from quarantine had risen to
124. Also, a total of 2,469 premises in all affected states have been
depopulated, totaling 3,521,545 birds.
GIPSA AND
COOL
The Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards
Administration (GIPSA) is committed to ensuring that packers, producers and
others know and understand the impact of the new COOL regulations as they
relate to the Packers and Stockyards Act. Visit GIPSA’s website at http://www.usda.gov/gipsa/ for more
information.
NATIONAL MEAT ASSOCIATION
NMA - East: 1400 - 16th St. N.W., Suite 400, Washington D.C. 20036 Ph. (202)
667-2108
NMA - West: 1970 Broadway, Suite 825, Oakland, CA 94612 Ph. (510) 763-1533 Fax (510) 763-6186
Edited by Kiran Kernellu
April 28, 2003
NAS REPORT: “SCIENTIFIC CRITERIA TO
ENSURE SAFE FOOD”
Claude Earl Fox, Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Review of the use of Scientific Criteria and Performance Standards, led a public briefing last week in Washington, D.C. on the release of the preliminary report, “Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food.”
Fox noted that food safety criteria, such as performance standards in food processing plants, are in place to protect public health but they cannot be directly linked to specific public health outcomes. Thus, it is hard to identify the benefits and even harder to measure the effectiveness within the entire food safety regulatory system.
Confronting these issues, he said that the committee proposes that clear links be established between food safety criteria and public health objectives, and the first step would be linkage of illnesses to the source foods. To this end, regulatory agencies need a clearer vision of which points in the food chain to regulate, and then measure the regulations. To accomplish this, the agencies need to monitor pathogen levels, correlate with food safety data, optimize interventions to control the hazards associated with each food and confirm intervention achievability. Further, the committee suggested that risk assessment, the use of food safety objectives and statistical process control are helpful. It proposed guidelines for developing science-based food safety criteria using these tools. It also suggested that 12 federal agencies with food safety responsibilities, as well as multiple state and local authorities, work together to develop as seamless as possible surveillance data so that interventions that would best protect public health can be applied.
The committee also said, responding directly to the charge from USDA/FDA, that several food safety criteria need re-evaluation and some new performance standards are needed. They also emphasized the need for more research that will help regulators focus on stages of the food continuum where improvements can best be attained from the farm to home handling of food.
NMA’s COMMENTS ON NAS REPORT
NMA’s Government Relations Liaison Shawna Thomas attended the NAS briefing last week and provided a memorandum covering the discussion. Members may request a copy from Kiran Kernellu at [email protected] or 510-763-1533. Unfortunately, the media response has been to focus on one recommendation where the committee strayed from addressing the scientific issues and opined about questions of legal authority, with particular reference to Supreme Beef Processors v. USDA and Nebraska Beef v. USDA. The experts who presented to the Committee did not include lawyers who could provide the appropriate expertise in these non-scientific areas. Thus, the committee’s comments about the statutory authority of USDA are entirely inappropriate and beyond the scope of its assignment. It is regrettable that the traditionally high respect for scientific expertise and independence accorded to NAS has been tarnished by its comments on non-scientific issues.
The report particularly failed to respond to important questions put to the panel. Instead the report discusses and makes recommendations on a number of subjects that have drawn criticism from both industry and consumer groups. Of particular concern to NMA are references to the need for additional enforcement authority which is not only unnecessary, but which should not have been advanced in a report as unfocused as this one. Perhaps the major consequence of this report is that it has tainted the reputation of NAS for scientific expertise and independence.
Page
2
MEAT MYTHS
A new campaign obscures the distinction between meat and fat. Led by
Meatless Monday, a non-profit organization reportedly working in association
with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and supported by
twenty-eight other public health schools, including Ivy League Columbia
University’s Mailman School of Public Health, the campaign charges
“contradictory messages about health and nutrition have confused Americans
about what we should eat.” Yet,
contradiction is perpetuated on Meatless Monday’s own website when it advocates
giving up meat once a week and “beyond Monday” advises us to eat lean meats.
Meatless Monday states that we eat too much meat and
not enough of the fruits, vegetables and whole grains that help prevent heart
disease, stroke and cancer. This seems to imply that if we ate less meat, that
consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grains would rise, which isn’t
necessarily the case. Moreover, industry sources say
that on average Americans are eating less than the 5 to 7 ounces of
cooked lean meat recommended by USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid. In fact, 59% of Americans aren’t even meeting the minimum servings
of meat recommended in the Food Guide Pyramid.
While advocating giving up meat on Mondays, at the
same time the site upholds the consumption of lean meat the rest of the week,
stating that “smart lifestyle changes” and “keeping healthy” include eating
lean meats and low-fat dairy products. Lean meats and dairy products, coupled
with fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, constitute a healthy, balanced diet,
as outlined in USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid.
Meatless Monday’s goal to reduce consumption of
saturated fat by at least 15% by 2010 can be accomplished without giving up
meat every Monday. Iron deficiency is the most common
nutritional deficiency in the U.S., affecting 7.8 million adolescent
girls and women during childbearing years, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. Removing beef, which is the No. 3 source of iron in the
American diet, for even one day could be harmful. Beef
is also the No. 1 source of protein, vitamin B12 and zinc, the No. 2 source of
vitamin B6 and the No. 3 source of niacin in the American diet. Additionally,
Meatless Monday makes no mention of what protein source should be used to
substitute for meat, which is especially disconcerting in a nutritional message
purporting to represent some of the greatest educational institutions in the
nation. Paradoxically, Meatless Monday
claims to be based on up-to-date science about nutrition and health, but its
website is riddled with inconsistencies, generalizations, as well as misleading
and incomplete information.
NMA
WELCOMES NEW MEMBERS!
For membership information, contact Membership Consultant
Jane Anderson at [email protected]
or 510-763-1533.
General
Dairyland
Packing, Inc. DBA Pecos Valley Meat Co., Roswell, NM
Roman Corp.
(Prima Foods, Inc.), Santa Clara, CA
Overhill
Farms, Inc., Vernon, CA
Western
Meat, Inc., Denver, CO
Midway
Meats, Inc., Centralia, WA
Old World
German Sausage Co., Oakland, CA
Ranch Foods
Direct, Colorado Springs, CO
Harvest
Meat Co., Inc. (Sand Dollar Holdings, Inc.), National City, CA
San Miguel
Meat Packaging and Distributors, La Puente, CA
Ferndale
Meats, LLC, Ferndale, WA
Nebraska
Beef, Ltd., Omaha, NE
Associate
CMA Food
Group, LLC, Dallas, TX
Wolfson
Casing Corp., Mt. Vernon, NY
VC999
Packaging Systems, Kansas City, MO
Kaiser’s
Contract Cleaning Specialist, Inc., Cuba City, WI
Strategic
Diagnostics, Newark, DE
Guarantek
Analytical Laboratories, Denver, CO
The Stellar
Group, Jacksonville, FL
Agrimetrics
Associates, Inc., Midlothian, VA
Intentia
Americas, Inc., Schaumberg, IL
SureBeam
Corporation, Glendale Heights, IL
Chemco
Products Company, Paramount, CA
John T.
Hanes Company, Oklahoma, OK
S&R
Consulting, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Helmut
Blume, Monmouth, OR
ForPak,
Hastings, MN
Aerotech
Labs, Phoenix, AZ
Mionix
Corp., Rocklin, CA
Dick Nash,
Arlington, VA
Risco USA
Corp., Stoughton, MA
Supply
Systems, Dallas, TX
Ron Vallort
& Associates, Oak Brook, IL
Success
Partners, Inc., Mesa, AZ
Westar
Trade Company, Amarillo, TX
Herb
Abraham, Dale City, VA
Microbial
Control Products, Denison, TX
Mol Belting
Co., Grand Rapids, MI
Scan
America Corp., Kansas City, MO
Emerge
Interactive, Inc., Sebastian, FL
Medtrol,
Inc., Niles, IL
Dupont Food
Industry Solutions, College Station, TX
Limited
Participation
Bay Fresh Seafoods, Moss Landing, CA
Consolidated Pet Foods, Santa Monica, CA
Newport Fish Co., So. San Francisco, CA
Seaport Meat Co., San Diego, CA
Standards Fisheries, San Pedro, CA
Tri-Marine International, San Pedro, CA
Victor’s
Market Co., Hawthorne, CA
Allied
and International
J&T
European Gourmet Food Deli, Santa Monica, CA
Centennial
Foods, Inc., Calgary Alberta
National
Marketing Food Services, Inc., Hayward, CA