FSMA Fridays: Listeria - The Conversation Continues (Part Four Of Four)

View the entire webcast or read part one, part two, and part three of the series

In part three of FSMA Fridays: Listeria - The Conversation Continues, SafetyChain Software’s VP of Marketing, Jill Bender was joined by The Acheson Group’s (TAG) VP of Scientific Affairs Dr. Peyman Fatemi and TAG’s Senior Director of Food Safety Randy Porter to discuss the food industry’s questions on the FDA’s guidance on listeria. Here, in the fourth, and final, portion of the series, the trio begins addressing questions from the webcast’s live audience.

Jill: I am going to open this up to some of the questions that have come in throughout our discussion.  I think this is an interesting one: Is Listeria the number one food borne health risk?

Peyman: I'll start with this. Listeria, in terms of health impact, has been associated with a large, probably the largest number of foodborne illnesses and deaths associated it with it. However, salmonella has higher incident of recalls and contamination than Listeria. But, the infectious dose and illnesses and deaths associated with Listeria tends to be higher.

In terms of the number one health risk, I would say no, but as one that it impacts greater number of the elderly, children, pregnant women, those with an immune compromised system are impacted. We've had a number of cases in recent years that involve those. So they tend to be that way. There is a more susceptible population there that's impacted, but Listeria, specifically on refrigerated foods, have been associated with a large number of illnesses and outbreaks. This is why the FDA, and to some degree the USDA, have kind of focused their attention, using next generation sequencing, the whole genome sequencing methods, to track and identify the root and incidences and recalls. That tends to have expanded into salmonella and E. coli, but it all depends on the product you make. If Listeria is a known risk within that, then for you, that is the number one health hazard to manage.