At present, performance standards involving qualitative microbiological criteria (presence/absence) are used in the food industry for reducing the risk associated with Salmonella contamination in raw meat and poultry.  However, the incidence of Salmonella remains on the top of all foodborne illnesses and well above the national Healthy People target (FoodNet 2013). There is need to revisit the existing regulatory performance standards for meat and poultry and facilitate an open systematic discussion among the key stakeholders from academia, industry and regulatory agencies to contemplate alternate science driven risk-based approaches to mitigate the risk of Salmonella in meat and poultry. Making decisions about product acceptability based on quantitative contamination levels of Salmonella is a potential alternate model but developing an effective mitigation strategy based on such model will entail a depth of baseline data and knowledge of risk factors associated with Salmonella infectivity including but not limited to baseline data, serotypes, infectious dose, strain pathogenicity etc. In addition, the development of validated methods to support such an approach need to be established.

 Although Salmonella is often the subject of discussion at IAFP meetings, previous sessions have not yet addressed the challenges of existing Salmonella performance standards with a specific focus on the meat and poultry industry. The proposed roundtable will bring together key industry stakeholders, representatives from global regulatory agencies and engage the audience in an interactive discussion to deliberate the issues with existing performance standards and outline the ‘what-if scenario’ for the alternate performance standards based on Salmonella enumeration.