SALAMI GUIDELINES ISSUED BY USDA

JOANNA RAMEY

WASHINGTON (FNS) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture has developed processing guidelines for the dried salami industry to help protect against a repeat of the E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria contamination that occurred in November and December and caused an outbreak of illness in two states.

The new program also involves testing dried cured salami for the presence of the potentially fatal bacteria. Currently, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service tests only for staphylococcal enterotoxin bacteria, and not this particularly virulent strain of E. coli.

Despite an extensive investigation, the USDA has been unable to determine how the dried salami became contaminated with E. coli. Health officials in Seattle and in Sacramento, Calif., last fall tied the outbreak of illness to the consumption of the same brand of packaged, dried precut salami, Columbus, produced by San Francisco Sausage Co., Hayward, Calif.

Until this outbreak, E. coli-related illnesses had been tied primarily to undercooked ground beef contaminated with the bacteria. Cooking to high internal temperatures kills the bacteria.

Industry and Agriculture officials had thought the curing process -- like cooking meat to a high degree of doneness -- would rid salami of E. coli. During their investigation of the incidents late last year, health officials had thought that E. coli might have gotten on the salami by a slicing machine that had been contaminated by another source at the packaging plant. This theory, which was never proven, was bolstered by the fact that the contaminated meat was isolated to a small amount of salami.

"We will probably never know the exact source of the contamination involved in the Washington and California cases," said Thomas J. Billy, associate administrator

of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Eleven people in Washington and three in California became ill after eating the salami. In Washington, the illnesses prompted a voluntary recall of the packaged, presliced salami from Quality Food Centers, Bellevue, Wash., where several of the consumers had purchased the product.

In addition, the USDA called for a voluntary recall of some 10,000 pounds of the salami distributed in California, Washington and Oregon.

As part of the new regulations, the USDA laid out Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point-based procedures for the industry to follow that include a mandatory heat treatment to ensure that E. coli doesn't creep into the meat during processing.

The American Meat Institute, Arlington, Va., which is working with its salami-maker members to implement the guidelines, said it is concerned that the portion of the guidelines involving the extent of heat treatment might be too extreme. "The USDA, in setting up the guidelines, is making all kinds of worst-case assumptions," said Jim Marsden, AMI vice president of scientific affairs.

Marsden said the industry over the next few months will implement the USDA standard and then determine at a later date its efficacy.