Advocacy Group Sues USDA Over Salmonella Outbreaks

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a health advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding the salmonella outbreaks from Foster Farms chicken.

Each year in the United States, Salmonella causes approximately 1.2 million illnesses, including 23,000 hospitalizations and 450 deaths. The bacterial infection typically lasts between four and seven days, with most not needing treatment, but some cases can be dangerous and/or fatal. The Center for Science in the Public Interest believes that the USDA is not doing enough to prevent the salmonella outbreaks that have been occurring since March 2013.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is asking the USDA to respond to a 3-year-old petition asking the government agency to treat antibiotic resistant strains of salmonella, those of which are currently infecting the Foster Farms chicken (574 poisonings have been reported since March 2013). But the issue has gained more attention after 50 more people were infected since April.

If the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has their way, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service will possess greater power to issue recalls and more effectively prevent such poisonings and infections from occurring. This issue is certainly in the jurisdiction of the CSPI, as they're considered the "organized voice of the American public on nutrition, food safety, health, and other issues," for educating the public, according to their website. They also author the award-winning newsletter, "Nutrition Action Healthletter," which is the largest-circulation health newsletter in North America.

The USDA has yet to respond to the actions of CSPI, who seem to have initiated a full-court press on the government agency.

"USDA takes action only after people start becoming ill from these life-threatening antibiotic-resistant superbugs," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the CSPI, in this Los Angeles Times article. "It is time for USDA to declare these dangerous resistant strains as adulterants and then require industry to conduct aggressive testing to keep meat and poultry contaminated with these strains out of the food supply, as it does with products contaminated with dangerous strains of E. coli."

It will be interesting to see how the USDA responds, especially since they promised to develop more stringent testing and sampling for salmonella in chicken plants last December.