United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods Subcommittee on Determination of the Most Appropriate Technologies for the FSIS to Adopt in Performing Routine and Baseline Microbiological Analyses Subcommittee Report Uday Dessai, Chair

United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service 2 1.Most appropriate and promising technologies for improved microbiological analyses 2.Advantages and disadvantages; need for cell viability and culture confirmation 3.Sampling issues: size, site, rinse, excision; impact on sensitivity, specificity, detection 4.Currently, can SNPs technology be applied for detection and process control 5.New technology and consideration for attribution/risk profiles; models for human illnesses 6.Issues with implementation of new technologies for FSIS testing including research gaps Charge Questions

United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service 3 Rationale of Approach for Method Selection and Implementation Top down driven Public health objectives Food safety objectives Process for review and validation of appropriate methods Response to questions are contained in multiple sections

United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service 4 Response to Charge Background –Federal food testing programs –Current method approaches –Purposes of microbiological testing –Types of testing –Performance criteria Emerging technologies/methods Considerations in choosing methods Process for evaluating methods Barriers and research gaps Recommendations

United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service 5 This Week’s Activity Substantive new material not added Focused on removing redundancies and responding to questions posed by the broader Committee Further refinement of content and structure of document

United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service 6 Major Recommendations FSIS articulation of public health goals and establish testing objectives NACMCF should be charged to examine statistical considerations relating to microbiological sampling and testing Share methods and promote harmonization across agencies

United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service 7 FSIS should assess method development needs; provide structure and process for method evaluation and implementation; strengthen FSIS method development capabilities Increase efforts to integrate pre-analytical sample processing with advanced detection technologies Review requirement for viable microbial isolate Give priority to enumeration of pathogens by using real- time methods Consider charging NACMCF to review new genotyping and subtyping technologies (e.g. SNPs) Major Recommendations

United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service 8 Thank You!