US meat safer than in the past

US foodborne illness issues in meat have been slashed due to residue surveillance and a preventive approach.

In 1978, the USDA was detecting residues in market hogs at levels such as 5.6% for antibiotics and 9.7% for sulfonamides.

By 2016, out of 800 random samples, market hogs had no violative residues and even during inspector-generated samples, only four (0.02%) violative resides were detected out of 18,754 samples.

With HACCP in place since 1996, the incidence of foodborne pathogen has been drastically reduced.

The detection of salmonella on swine carcasses monitored by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service was 8.6% in 1994, but has dropped to around 1% at larger plants over many years.

 

National Hog Farmer