The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that plants making ready-to-eat meat products must add Listeria-killing ingredients to their products. The move follows a series of outbreak of the foodborne illness.
Under the new regulations, companies involved in making meat-based snacks will be placed under greater scrutiny. However, the USDA has indicated that processing facilities that add ingredients known to combat the threat of Listeria growth, or use additional sanitation procedures after the product is made, will be subject to less federal scrutiny.
The regulation also requires all companies inspected to share the results of internal Listeria inspections with the government and to adopt new programmes that will reduce chances of cross-contamination on the assembly line or inside machinery.
Packaging methods that keep the bacterium out of the product will also have to be adopted. The department has indicated that companies which adopt safer processing will be allowed to advertise it on their labels.
However, some consumer groups have expressed anxieties that the measures are not stringent enough. The Consumer Federation of America for example believes that without more rigorous testing, consumer safety cannot be fully guaranteed.
The bacterium, officially known as Listeria moncytogenes, is the most hardy of known foodborne pathogens, growing in drains and on kitchen surfaces. It is resistant to salt and acid that kills most food pathogens, and it can continue to grow under refrigeration.
Although the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the incidences of Listeria contamination have been declining in the last decade, an estimated 500 people in the United States die each year from the pathogen. It has a fatality rate of about 20 per cent.
The new measures will affect some 2,500 plants in the US that manufacture and process ready-to-eat meat products.