12 Charts Explore America's Salmonella Problem—and Steps to Solve It

Stronger rules for poultry would spur action on farms

Data Visualization December 10, 2021 Read time:

Projects: Safe Food

A million Americans a year are sickened by foodborne Salmonella, and current food safety policies and regulations don’t do enough to reduce these illnesses, particularly those from poultry products. Americans are falling ill from Salmonella-contaminated food at rates virtually unchanged from those in 2000, and chicken is still frequently linked to outbreaks.¹

Federal data from the past two decades underscores the lack of meaningful progress in reducing these infections. They also suggest ways that food regulators and producers can better protect consumers by targeting Salmonella contamination and serotypes, or varieties, in the poultry supply chain earlier and more precisely. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)—the U.S. Department of Agriculture agency overseeing meat and poultry safety—should update its policies and regulations to apply these lessons and lower the rates of foodborne disease.

In a promising move, USDA officials announced plans in Oct. 2021 to pilot and study innovative strategies that could help decrease poultry-related Salmonella illnesses. “Time has shown that our current policies are not moving us closer to our public health goal,” said Sandra Eskin, who as deputy under secretary for food safety is leading the initiative. “It’s time to rethink our approach.”

Goal Set, Not Met

Foodborne Salmonella causes an estimated 1 million illnesses and 19,000 hospitalizations each year.² In 2010, the federal government set a goal to cut the nation’s incidence rate by 24% over a decade to 11.4 cases per 100,000 people—which the nation’s food producers and regulators are not yet close to meeting.³

Note: Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network data includes infections detected by laboratory tests that involve culturing, or growing, bacteria and culture-independent diagnostic methods.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet)

© 2021 The Pew Charitable Trusts

Chicken Contamination Shrank by Some Measures

Many varieties of Salmonella persistently challenge chicken and turkey producers because the organisms can thrive in a bird’s digestive tract, so effective control of these pathogens requires multiple interventions. Under FSIS policies, a poultry processor’s efforts to curb contamination are judged by the percentage of product samples that contain any amount or serotype of Salmonella. Against this broad presence-or-absence yardstick, contamination rates have decreased over the past two decades for some types of chicken products. Contamination rates have also declined in chicken breast samples taken from selected retail stores as part of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System for Enteric Bacteria (NARMS).⁴

Note: The Food Safety and Inspection Service started sampling and testing chicken parts for *Salmonella* in 2015 as performance standards for this product category were implemented. The agency did not test any ground chicken products in 2014, so no data is available.

Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service, National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System

© 2021 The Pew Charitable Trusts

. . . But Salmonella Outbreaks Linked to Chicken Have Increased

Despite fewer product samples testing positive for the pathogen, the number of outbreaks associated with chicken products rose from 2000 to 2018.⁵ Federal estimates for 2019—the latest available—ranked chicken as the food commodity most linked to Salmonella infections, causing 1 in 6 cases. ⁶ These statistics indicate that FSIS’s current rules don’t adequately reflect and reduce the factors driving public health risks.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Outbreak Reporting System

© 2021 The Pew Charitable Trusts

“Time has shown that our current policies are not moving us closer to our public health goal. It’s time to rethink our approach.”
Sandra Eskin, Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety U.S. Department of Agriculture

Stronger Rules Needed to Curb Harmful Serotypes

Today’s FSIS regulations don’t effectively incentivize poultry producers to target the Salmonella serotypes of greatest public health importance because reducing the prevalence of any variety—even those that pose little or no risk to people—can count as success. Serotypes of long-standing concern, such as Enteritidis, have not significantly decreased as sources of human infections, and new threats have emerged unchecked. For example, current FSIS rules and producers’ food safety plans failed to contain the spread of Infantis, which contaminated dozens of chicken processing facilities and caused a 32-state outbreak of multidrug-resistant infections in 2019.⁷

Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service, National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System

© 2021 The Pew Charitable Trusts

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