American Meat Institute Comments on STEC Policy Delay
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Attribute the following comments to James
H. Hodges, AMI Executive Vice
President
Washington, D.C., February 8, 2012 --The
Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
decision to delay for 90 days implementing a
policy that regulates non-O157 Shiga
toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) in
certain beef products is a good first step.
As we have maintained since the initial
announcement by FSIS, this new policy is not
supported by science and likely will not
benefit public health. Indeed, USDA’s own
actions suggest that this policy should be
delayed even longer, as evidenced by the recent
announcement of a five year $25 million
dollar USDA grant to the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln to study STEC in beef and
provide some of the detailed research regarding
analyzing the risks of STEC in the beef supply
and developing validated test
methods.
Even with a 90 day delay, imposing this new
regulatory program in June puts the cart before
the horse and will needlessly cost tens of
millions of federal and industry dollars –
costs that likely will be borne by taxpayers
and consumers. In short, the policy is
not likely to yield a significant public health
benefit and given that research should precede
and dictate the policy, the process that FSIS
has followed in this matter is no way to
develop good public policy.
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