Taxpayer-funded Contamination: How the USDA Supplies Poultry with Salmonella to the Nation’s Most Vulnerable

Children sitting down to lunch at school, seniors waiting for their food delivery to arrive each month, families lined up at the community food bank—some of the most vulnerable Americans rely on federal food assistance to meet their basic needs. Already burdened with the weight of hunger and food insecurity, in reasonable circumstances they could at least trust that the federally-supplied food products they receive are free from contaminants that will make them sick.

But the truth is, some of these products may be contaminated.

Salmonella, a leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States, sickens over a million people each year. Raw poultry is one of its most common sources—and not just in grocery stores. USDA knowingly purchases raw poultry from slaughter and processing plants with high levels of salmonella contamination for federally funded nutrition programs that serve some of the nation’s most vulnerable communities: children, seniors, and Americans with low income.

Farm Forward’s recent deep dive into the federal government’s regulations and enforcement of salmonella standards, levels of contamination in the poultry industry, and federal commodity procurement for nutrition assistance programs resulted in three key findings:

• USDA purchases meat from companies it knows to be highly contaminated and distributes it to its nutrition assistance programs that serve America’s school children, seniors, and individuals facing hunger.
• Food assistance programs very likely receive contaminated poultry, and no one is tracking the scale of the problem.
• USDA does not protect the public from salmonella in raw poultry.

This represents a triple failure by the federal government. First, USDA, the agency tasked with protecting the public from foodborne illness, has set food safety standards that allow for high rates of salmonella contamination in raw poultry and put consumers at risk. Second, USDA has allowed many of the nation’s largest poultry producers, including familiar names like Butterball, Perdue, and Foster Farms, to repeatedly fail these already low standards with zero consequences. Finally, the government continues to acquire meat from these same failing companies for school lunches and other federal nutrition programs.

USDA sets a zero-tolerance policy for salmonella contamination in certain meat products that it buys and distributes to people for nutrition assistance (boneless and ground beef, cooked diced chicken, and eggs). However, USDA sets no such requirement for raw poultry the agency purchases for schools, seniors, and food-insecure individuals, despite poultry causing 1 in 4 cases of salmonellosis (salmonella poisoning) each year.1 The shortcomings in USDA’s salmonella policies and practices regarding salmonella in raw poultry expose potentially dangerous gaps in food systems policy in the United States. Children and families deserve better.