The US Department of Agriculture has announced new procedures that would enable the agency to quickly detect and remove unsafe ground beef from grocery outlets and suppliers.
In addition to detecting and removing the contaminated ground beef, the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) will be able to track the root cause of the incident in order to prevent such cases in future.
As per the new traceback procedures, FSIS will conduct immediate investigations of processors whose ground beef tests positive for E. coli O157:H7 during initial testing and at suppliers that provided source materials.
Earlier, FSIS conducted investigations at the grinding facility only after a presumptive test showed positive result, which took two days.
Tracing E. Coli outbreaks back to their source could take 30 days; however, with the new prcedures, the agency plans to cut this time down.
USDA's deputy under secretary for food safety Brian Ronholm said, "A critical component of preventing foodborne illness is quickly identifying sources of contamination and removing unsafe products from store shelves."
USDA announced the new procedures after a month it urged all manufacturers of raw ground beef products to a keep more detailed records, which would enable retailers to trace the sources of their supplies.
