USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) received recommendations from the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) for improvements to the AMS ground beef purchase program food safety requirements.

Based on this review, there are five recommendations that AMS commits to implementing for purchases that will be made for the upcoming 2010-2011 school year.

1. AMS will now begin to formally take into account the food safety record of vendors' commercial sales. Prospective or current AMS vendors that demonstrate a long-term poor food safety record in the commercial market (based on criteria for Class I recalls and/or number of days with E. coli O157:H7 or Salmonella positive tests) will become ineligible to supply ground beef to the School Lunch Program. Only after these firms demonstrate to AMS that the conditions that resulted in their food safety lapses on the commercial market will not impact the safety of products they are providing into Federal food and nutrition assistance programs will these firms be allowed into or back into the approved listing of firms eligible to bid on AMS contracts.

2. AMS will tighten its microbiological testing protocols. AMS will align or exceed the FSIS E. coli O157:H7 n60 testing protocols for boneless beef with FSIS protocols that should be issued in the summer of 2010.

3. AMS will tighten its microbiological criteria for USDA purchased ground beef. AMS will tighten its microbiological upper specification limits and critical limits. Plants will need to maintain a process that consistently beats the upper specification limits and no product will be accepted from any vendor that exceeds the critical limits.

4. AMS will increase its microbiological sampling frequency. Microbiological sampling frequencies will increase to every 15 minutes of production.

5. AMS will institute additional rejection criteria for source trimmings used to manufacture USDA purchased ground beef. AMS will now reject individual loads of beef trimmings that exceed AMS’s new critical limits for indicator organisms.

Cumulatively, these five program changes, as well as continuous review, will have the effect of ensuring that the vendors USDA purchases ground beef from are not only outstanding firms, but that the product AMS is purchasing is as safe and high quality as any commercially available.