HACCP Plan Reassessment for Not-Ready-To-Eat Comminuted Poultry Products and Related Agency Verification Procedures

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is publishing this notice to inform establishments producing not-ready-to-eat (NRTE) ground or otherwise comminuted chicken and turkey products that they must reassess their Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plans for these products to take into account several recent Salmonella outbreaks associated with consumption of comminuted NRTE turkey products. No sooner than 90 days following publication of this notice, Agency inspection program personnel (IPP) will begin verifying that establishments that manufacture comminuted NRTE turkey or chicken product, as a final or intermediary product for further processing as NRTE product, have reassessed their HACCP plans for these products. This notice also describes how FSIS will determine whether the association of NRTE meat or poultry product with an outbreak would make subsequently-produced like product adulterated. In addition, FSIS is expanding its Salmonella Verification Sampling Program for Raw Meat and Poultry product to include all forms of non- breaded, non-battered comminuted NRTE poultry product that are not destined under company control programs for further processing into RTE products in official establishments. Finally, this notice announces that FSIS will apply its Category 1 performance measure based on current performance standards for ground chicken and turkey product to comminuted poultry to mark the level of process control that all establishments producing such products should maintain. No sooner than 90 days after publication of this notice, the Agency will begin sampling to determine the prevalence of Salmonella in comminuted poultry and will use the results from this sampling to develop performance standards for these products. For reasons discussed later, FSIS has not tested NRTE comminuted poultry products, other than ground chicken and ground turkey, for Salmonella. In addition, FSIS is likely to develop Campylobacter standards for thes