By Tom Polansek
CHICAGO (Reuters) -The U.S. Department of Agriculture is withdrawing a proposal aimed at reducing risks from Salmonella in poultry products, according to a notice published on Thursday that increased concerns about oversight of the food supply under President Donald Trump.
The withdrawal represents the administration’s latest missed opportunity to protect public health, food safety experts said.
The USDA last month eliminated two committees that advised it on food safety, while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently suspended a quality control program for testing of fluid milk and other dairy products.
The proposal, which the Biden administration announced last summer, would have set more rigorous standards for determining whether raw chicken is contaminated with Salmonella. It also sought to require poultry facilities to use certain procedures to monitor and document their processes for preventing contamination.
The proposal took three years to develop and included input from one of the two suspended food safety committees, the USDA said last year.
It represented a critical shift from reacting to outbreaks toward preventing them, said Darin Detwiler, an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University and food safety adviser.
“This proposal was a long-overdue step toward aligning poultry safety regulations with modern science and consumer expectations,” he said.
USDA said in a notice that it supports reducing Salmonella illnesses, but feedback to the proposal raised issues that warrant further consideration. The agency and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The National Chicken Council, an industry group that represents poultry companies, had urged USDA to rescind the proposal, saying it would not meaningfully benefit public health.
However, consumer advocacy group Consumer Reports said the withdrawal will weaken the agency’s ability to respond to outbreaks of foodborne illness.
The CDC estimates Salmonella causes about 1.35 million infections in the United States annually.
(Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago. Additional reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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