Amidst the annual holiday boom in turkey sales, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proposing a new rule to reduce salmonella in poultry. That's a laudable goal, but the actual regulation—as is often the case—is being shaped in a way that hurts small farmers and meat processors while helping large agricultural conglomerates.
This rule has been in the works for a while. In 2020, the USDA's Food Inspection Safety Service (FSIS) started making moves to reduce salmonella illnesses by 25 percent—part of the federal government's "2030 Healthy People" initiative. The government has been targeting salmonella in the country's poultry supply for even longer than that, and those efforts have brought down its prevalence in chicken and turkey. Yet that has not translated into a reduction in salmonella-based illnesses among Americans.
