Science
Poultry industry pushes back after report shows salmonella is widespread in grocery store chicken
A new report based on government inspection documents shows salmonella is widespread in U.S. grocery store chicken and turkey products. But because of how the pathogen is classified, the federal government has no authority to do much about it.
Farm Forward, an organization that advocates for farmworker rights and humane farm practices, released a report this week that examined five years of monthly U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections at major U.S. poultry plants. It found that at many plants, including those that process and sell poultry under brand names such as Foster Farms, Costco and Perdue, levels of salmonella routinely exceeded maximum standards set by the federal government.
“The USDA is knowingly allowing millions of packages of chicken contaminated with salmonella to be sold in stores from major brands,” said Andrew deCoriolis, the organization’s executive director.
Some 1.3 million Americans are sickened each year by eating salmonella-contaminated food, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people have only mild symptoms, but others suffer diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. Roughly 19,000 people are hospitalized annually, and an estimated 420 die from the infected food.
Chicken and turkey account for nearly a quarter of all salmonella infections, according to a 2021 government report on food illness.
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service inspects poultry plants monthly. The new report shows that five U.S. poultry plants exceeded maximum allowable salmonella contamination every month from 2020 to 2024. These included a Carthage, Mo., turkey plant owned by Butterball, a Dayton, Va., turkey plant owned by Cargill Meat Solutions, and a chicken plant located in Cunning, Ga., that is owned by Koch Foods. A Costco chicken producer, Lincoln Premium Poultry, exceeded the standard in 54 of 59 inspections.
“Lincoln Premium Poultry treats the safety of its products as an utmost concern,” Jessica Kolterman, the company’s director of administration, said in an email. “When the United State Department of Agriculture reports are updated and published, they will show that we have enhanced our standing. … We will continue to improve our processes.”
A spokesperson for Butterball said the company “takes food safety very seriously and follows all USDA and FSIS regulations and inspection protocols.” The spokesperson said facilities are subject to rigorous, continuous oversight, and they are “constantly reviewing and improving our food safety programs to ensure we meet or exceed government standards.”
Cargill, Perdue and Koch Foods did not reply to requests for comment. Foster Farms directed questions to the National Chicken Council, the industry’s trade group.
“Consumers should not be concerned,” said Tom Super, a spokesman for the chicken council. He said the report was “unscientific” and described Farm Forward as an “activist organization whose stated goal is to end commercial chicken farming.”
Both Super and Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, said poultry is safe when cooked to 160 degrees, and knives, cutting boards and other items that may have come into contact with raw meat are disinfected and cleaned.
“All chicken is safe to eat when properly handled and cooked,” said Mattos, noting that annually “Californians eat more chicken than any other state … 110 pounds per person!”
The report also suggests that the federal government’s standards for acceptable levels of salmonella are unduly high, and potentially put American poultry consumers at risk.
For ground chicken, the USDA allows 25% of samples at a plant to be contaminated. For ground turkey, 13.5%. Chicken parts should not exceed 15.4% of samples contaminated, while the number is 9.8% for whole chickens.
“I don’t know, but seems common sense to me that if you allow for a lot of salmonella, a lot of people are going to get sick,” said Bill Marler, an attorney with Marler Clark, a national food safety law firm.
When inspectors visit a plant, they do not assess the meat’s bacterial load, nor do they determine the strain of bacteria found on the product. They just test for the presence of the bacterium — it’s either there or it’s not.
According to Marler and Maurice Pitesky, a poultry science expert at UC Davis, there are hundreds of strains — or serotypes — of Salmonella. Most are considered harmless, but roughly 30 are known to be potentially lethal to people.
As a result, the USDA inspections don’t give a clear picture about what’s there, Pitesky said.
“When I hear something has salmonella, I’m like, ‘OK, first question: I want to know its serotype. What kind of serotype is it?’ Because that that’s really the relevant piece of information,” he said.
When inspectors find a plant has exceeded the salmonella standard, there is very little they can do except note it. The agency has no authority to enforce the standards.
Marler said in the 1990s, after four children died and hundreds of people got sick eating ground beef contaminated with E. coli sold at Jack in the Box restaurants, the agency decided to classify the bacterium as an adulterant. That designation meant the USDA could stop the sale of contaminated products, or shut down a plant that failed inspections.
He said the beef industry initially pushed back, fearing it would lose money — which it did, at first.
He said the USDA started doing retail testing, “and for a while, it felt like there was a recall a week — you know … 50, 100, a thousand pounds here, a million pounds there, even 10 million pounds.” Eventually, however, companies started testing their products “and coming up with interventions to get rid of it. And you know what? The number of E. coli cases linked to hamburger plummeted.”
He said now he sees a case only once in a while.
“I kind of look at that and think, well, if you get salmonella out of chicken, you’ll probably reduce those cases too,” he said.
Pitesky said that salmonella is notoriously difficult to get rid of. It can be introduced to flocks from wild animals, such as birds, rats, mice and other wildlife. It’s also found in the intestines of chickens, on their skin, feathers and feet, and it spreads among them when they poop, urinate and walk around in shared bedding, etc.
However, Marler thinks it can be controlled.
“Yeah, it’s difficult,” he said. “But you can do a lot of things. And this might piss people off, but you could eradicate flocks with salmonella. They do it in the EU all the freaking time.”
The European Union considers salmonella an adulterant, and require producers to reduce and control it via biosecurity, testing, vaccinations, recalls and occasionally depopulation.
“The fact is, if you make salmonella contamination expensive, if recalls exist and people feel embarrassed that they’re producing food that is making people sick or killing them, they’ll want to change their behavior,” he said.
A strange scene unfolded at the Adams/Vermont farmers market near USC last week.
The pomegranates, squash and apples were in season, pink guavas were so ripe you could smell their heady scent from a distance, and nutrient-packed yams were ready for the holidays.
But with federal funding in limbo for the 1.5 million people in Los Angeles County who depend on food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or SNAP — the church parking lot hosting the market was largely devoid of customers.
Even though the market accepts payments through CalFresh, the state’s SNAP program, hardly anyone was lined up when gates opened. Vendors mostly idled alone at their produce stands.
A line of cars stretches more than a mile as people wait to receive a box of free food provided by the L.A. Food Bank in the City of Industry on Wednesday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
As thousands across Southern California lined up at food banks to collect free food, and the fight over delivering the federal allotments sowing uncertainty, fewer people receiving aid seemed to be spending money at outdoor markets like this one.
“So far we’re doing 50% of what we’d normally do — or less,” said Michael Bach, who works with Hunger Action, a food-relief nonprofit that partners with farmers markets across the greater L.A. area, offering “Market Match” deals to customers paying with CalFresh debit cards.
The deal allows shoppers to buy up to $30 worth of fruit produce for only $15. Skimming a ledger on her table, Bach’s colleague Estrellita Echor noted that only a handful of shoppers had taken advantage of the offer.
All week at farmers markets where workers were stationed, the absence was just as glaring, she said. “I was at Pomona on Saturday — we only had six transactions the whole day,” she said. “Zero at La Mirada.”
CalFresh customers looking to double their money on purchases were largely missing at the downtown L.A. market the next day, Echor said.
A volunteer loads up a box of free food for a family at a drive-through food distribution site in the City of Industry.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“This program usually pulls in lots of people, but they are either holding on to what little they have left or they just don’t have anything on their cards,” she said.
The disruption in aid comes as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to deliver only partial SNAP payments to states during the ongoing federal government shutdown, skirting court order to restart funds for November. On Friday night, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily blocked the order pending a ruling on the matter by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
But by then, CalFresh had already started loading 100% of November’s allotments onto users’ debit cards. Even with that reprieve for food-aid recipients in California, lack of access to food is a persistent problem in L.A., said Kayla de la Haye, director of the Institute for Food System Equity at USC.
A study published by her team last year found that 25% of residents in L.A. County — or about 832,000 people — experienced food insecurity, and that among low-income residents, the rate was even higher, 41%. The researchers also found that 29% of county residents experienced nutrition insecurity, meaning they lacked options for getting healthy, nutritious food.
Those figures marked a slight improvement compared to data from 2023, when the end of pandemic-era boosts to state, county and nonprofit aid programs — combined with rising inflation — caused hunger rates to spike just as they did at the start of the pandemic in 2020, de la Haye said.
“That was a big wake-up call — we had 1 in 3 folks in 2020 be food insecure,” de la Haye said. “We had huge lines at food pantries.”
But while the USC study shows the immediate delivery of food assistance through government programs and nonprofits quickly can cut food insecurity rates in an emergency, the researchers discovered many vulnerable Angelenos are not participating in food assistance programs.
Despite the county making strides to enroll more eligible families over the last decade, de la Haye said, only 29% of food insecure households in L.A. County were enrolled in CalFresh, and just 9% in WIC, the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children.
De la Haye said participants in her focus groups shared a mix of reasons why they didn’t enroll: Many didn’t know they qualified, while others said they felt too ashamed to apply for aid, were intimidated by the paperwork involved or feared disclosing their immigration status. Some said they didn’t apply because they earned slightly more than the cutoff amounts for eligibility.
Even many of those those receiving aid struggled: 39% of CalFresh recipients were found to lack an affordable source for food and 45% faced nutrition insecurity.
De la Haye said hunger and problems accessing healthy food have serious short- and long-term health effects — contributing to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity, as well greater levels of stress, anxiety and depression in adults and children. What’s more, she said, when people feel unsure about their finances, highly perishable items such as fresh, healthy food are often the first things sacrificed because they can be more expensive.
The USC study also revealed stark racial disparities: 31% of Black residents and 32% of Latinos experienced food insecurity, compared to 11% of white residents and 14% of Asians.
De la Haye said her team is analyzing data from this year they will publish in December. That analysis will look at investments L.A. County has made in food system over the last two years, including the allocation of $20 million of federal funding to 80 community organizations working on everything from urban farming to food pantries, and the recent creation of the county’s Office of Food Systems to address challenges to food availability and increase the consumption of healthy foods.
“These things that disrupt people’s ability to get food, including and especially cuts to this key program that is so essential to 1.5 million people in the county — we don’t weather those storms very well,” de la Haye said. “People are just living on the precipice.”
Soft batteries and water-walking robots are among the many creations made possible by studying animals and plants.
For centuries, engineers have turned to nature for inspiration. Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of gliding machines that would mimic birds. Today, the close study of animals and plants is leading to inventions such as soft batteries and water-walking robots.
Cassandra Donatelli, a biologist at the University of Washington, Tacoma and an author of a recent review of the burgeoning field of “bioinspiration,” credits the trend to sophisticated new tools as well as a new spirit of collaboration.
“It’s huge,” she said. “We have a biomechanics lab here where we have six or seven engineers and 10 biologists. We’re all physically in the same building, together doing work.”
Despite its promise, the future of bioinspiration is cloudy. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the research budget of the National Science Foundation by 55 percent, directing remaining funds to a few fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Bioinspiration, which has thrived on this funding, may lose out.
“That work will suffer with N.S.F.’s new priorities,” said Duncan Irschick, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts. “I sincerely worry about handing the mantle of bioinspired research to China.”
Here are some inventions, both new and historical, that have drawn inspiration from nature’s creativity.
In 1941, the Swiss inventor George de Mestral went on a hunting trip. Along the way, burdock burrs stuck to his pants and to the fur of his dog. Curious about their power to cling, de Mestral put the burrs under a microscope. He saw thousands of tiny hooks. The sight led him to imagine a new kind of fastener, one that wouldn’t rely on knots or glue.
A few years later, de Mestral discovered a substance that could make that idea real: nylon. The synthetic fiber could be permanently bent into a hook. De Mestral found that nylon hooks readily attached to fabric and could be peeled away. In 1955, he filed a patent for his invention, which he called Velcro, a combination of the French words “velour” (“velvet”) and “crochet” (“hooks”).
When engineers in Japan created a fleet of high-speed trains in the 1980s and 1990s, they also created some unexpected problems. A train traveling through a tunnel faster than 220 miles an hour compressed the air ahead of it. When the pressure wave reached the tunnel exit, it created a sonic boom.
An engineer named Eiji Nakatsu cast about for a way to make the trains quiet. “The question then occurred to me — is there some living thing that manages sudden changes in air resistance as a part of daily life?” Mr. Nakatsu recalled in a 2005 interview.
Mr. Nakatsu was not just an engineer, but also an avid birder. As he pondered the question, the kingfisher came to mind. When the bird dives at high speed to catch fish, its beak slips into the water without a splash.
So Mr. Nakatsu and his colleagues built train engines with rounded, tapered front ends. Their kingfisher-beak shape reduced the air pressure in tunnels by 30 percent, making the trains quieter and more efficient, even as they traveled more rapidly through tunnels.
In the 1990s, Frank Fish took a close look at the massive knobs that stud the leading edge of humpback whale fins. Dr. Fish, a biologist at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and his colleagues discovered that these tubercles significantly improve the whales’ performance by keeping water flowing smoothly over their fins, generating extra lift.
Dr. Fish and his colleagues patented their discovery, which has since been adopted by engineers to improve a long list of devices. Tubercles extend the life span of wind turbine blades, for example, and make industrial ceiling fans more efficient. They can even be found on surfboard fins and truck mirrors.
A gecko’s foot is covered by a half-million tiny hairs, each of which splits into hundreds of branches. When a gecko slaps its foot on a wall, many of the branches push tightly against the surface. Each branch creates a weak molecular attraction to the wall, and together they generate a powerful force, yet the gecko can easily pull its foot away in a millisecond.
Dr. Irschick and his colleagues created a fabric that mimics these forces, which they called Geckskin. A piece the size of an index card can hold 700 pounds to a glass surface and be moved without leaving a trace behind.
Pitcher plants are carnivorous, feeding on insects that crawl onto the rim of their pitcher-shaped leaves. The rim is exquisitely slippery, causing prey to lose their footing and fall into a pool of digestive enzymes.
Researchers discovered that when rain and dew collect on the plant, microscopic bumps and ridges pull the water into a film that sticks to the legs of insects. The bugs struggle for traction and end up swimming — and falling.
In 2011, Joanna Aizenberg, an engineer at Harvard, and her colleagues created materials with pitcher-plant patterns on their surface, and these turned out to be slippery as well. A company co-founded by Dr. Aizenberg sells coatings that keep sticky fluids from clogging pipes and paints that repel barnacles from ship hulls.
The mantis shrimp has a pair of odd limbs called dactyl clubs that look a bit like boxing gloves. It uses the clubs to deliver staggering punches with a force equal to that of a .22 caliber bullet — enough to crack open shells. Scientists have long wondered why those impacts don’t crack the dactyl club itself.
Through evolution, the mantis shrimp gained an exoskeleton of astonishing complexity. Its dactyl clubs are composed of layers of fibers; some form herringbone patterns, while others are made of corkscrew-like bundles. These layers deflect the energy from a punch, preventing it from spreading and causing damage.
In May, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported the creation of an artificial version of these shock-absorbing layers. When microscopic beads of silica were fired at the material at 1,000 miles an hour, it dented but did not crack. The researchers foresee using the material to make lightweight shields for spacecraft, to protect them from tiny meteoroids.
Ripple bugs are about the size of a grain of rice. They float on the surface of streams by spreading out their legs across the water — but they can also move with astonishing speed, roughly 120 body lengths each second. At a human scale, that would translate to 400 miles an hour.
The secret lies at the end of the middle pair of legs. When a ripple bug dips them into the water, surface tension causes stiff fronds at the ends to fan out in just 10 milliseconds, and the fans become oars. At the end of each stroke, when the insect lifts these oars from the water, the fans snap shut.
In August, Victor Ortega-Jiménez, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his team announced that, following these principles, it had built tiny robots that walk on water, make rapid turns and brake sharply. And because the water forces the fans open and closed, the Rhagabots — after Rhagovelia, the Latin name for ripple bugs — require little energy from their onboard batteries.
The paralyzing blasts of electricity that an electric eel delivers arise from a sleeve of tissue that wraps around the animal’s body. The tissue contains thousands of layers of cells, which are sandwiched in turn between layers of fluid. The cells pump charged atoms into the fluid, creating a biological battery.
Michael Mayer, a biophysicist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and his colleagues are working to mimic the electric organs in electric eels and other fish. A biologically inspired battery could offer big advantages over conventional ones. They could be safer sources of power for medical implants, for instance, because they would run on organic compounds rather than toxic chemicals.
The team has built contact-lens-shaped prototypes from soft, bendable gels. Dr. Mayer hopes one day to implant the batteries with the same proteins that electric eels use to move charged atoms around.
“Building all this so that it really does the same thing as in the fish is right now beyond our reach,” Dr. Mayer said. “I think this is far in the future, but the project has already gone much further I thought it would.”
Health officials are warning parents to avoid an infant formula linked to a nationwide botulism outbreak.
As of Nov. 10, 13 babies across 10 states — including one in Los Angeles County — have been sickened by the bacterial spore after consuming ByHeart Whole Nutrition Infant Formula.
The cases were first identified by the California Department of Public Health.
The state operates the Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program, the only manufacturer and provider of an FDA-approved anti-toxin for infant botulism. Officials were tipped off to the outbreak when they noticed an increase in requests for BabyBIG, the anti-toxin, this August, according to Robert Barsanti, a health department spokesman.
The state alerted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and sparked a nationwide investigation, which is ongoing.
Health officials are asking major retail stores such as Amazon, Target, Walmart and Whole Foods to remove the product from their shelves. They are also asking parents and caregivers to check their infant formula and throw away any cans manufactured by ByHeart Inc.
If a parent or caregiver thinks they may have a child with botulism who has ingested baby formula, take photos of the can and lot number, said Jemma Alarcon, medical director of the Los Angeles County health department’s Food and Water Safety unit.
“We’re recommending they either return it to where they got it, so they can get a reimbursement, or they can just throw it away,” she said. “It is very important that if you do see symptoms, like sleepiness, lethargy, constipation, or the baby is not acting like itself, just go to the emergency room, go to your primary care doctor and let them know that the baby was consuming this formula.”
In a press release, county health officials also mentioned symptoms such as difficulty feeding, sucking or swallowing; weak cry or diminished facial expression; poor head control; and muscle weakness or trouble breathing.
On Saturday, ByHeart voluntarily recalled two lots of the contaminated infant formula: Lot 206VABP/251261P2 (Use by 01 Dec 2026) and Lot 206VABP/251131P2 (Use by 01 Dec 2026).
There have been no deaths associated with the outbreak.
According to the FDA, the product accounts for less than 1% of all U.S. infant formula sales.
Nine of the 13 cases in the outbreak so far have been confirmed; four are pending. All are associated with the same formula and the same strain of bacteria.
The company said in a statement on its website that it has voluntarily recalled the lots, but noted that the powdered formula tested by the California Department of Public Health came from a can that had previously been opened.
“We know that Clostridium botulinum is a bacteria that exists naturally in the environment — in places like soil, dust, and even vegetables — meaning that an opened can can be contaminated in multiple ways,” the company said on its website.
It also noted that “global regulatory and scientific authorities do not recommend testing powder infant formula for Clostridium botulinum, and no U.S. or global infant formula company tests for Clostridium botulinum.”
Spores produced by the botulism bacteria are heat-resistant and exist widely in the environment. In the absence of oxygen they germinate, grow and then excrete toxins.
Although the disease is rare, it is associated with improperly processed food that allows the bacteria spores to survive and grow. If left untreated, the toxin can lead to respiratory failure and death..
The disease is acquired differently in infants than in adults. For an adult to get the disease, they must ingest the toxin. Infants, on the other hand, can get sick just from ingesting the bacterium because it will develop into the toxin in their gut, due to their immature immune systems.
Bill Marler, an attorney with Marler Clark, a food safety law firm, said infant botulism cases are exceedingly rare. He said he has a client in Arizona whose infant was hospitalized for two weeks and placed on a feeding tube for four weeks after ingesting allegedly contaminated ByHeart formula.
He said botulism spores are associated with deficiencies in cleanliness on food manufacturing lines. Once they are established in a food source, however, they are hard to get rid of.
“Botulism spores are pretty tough to kill, even with the hot water that you would add to infant formula,” he said. “Those spores are hardy little guys. It could have come in on, you know, somebody shoes or pallet, or, you know, anything like that.”
Louisiana Lottery Mega Millions, Pick 3 results for Nov. 11, 2025
Senior ‘trafficking’: The shadow industry Maryland won’t shut down
“Rosie the Riveter” statue unveiled at Michigan WWII Legacy Memorial
South Coast representatives introduce bill to tackle street takeovers in Massachusetts
Minnesota man accused of having 133 pounds of marijuana, 400 pre-rolled joints
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Far-left firebrand spends eye-popping amount of campaign cash on luxury hotels, ‘top-tier’ limo services
Asylum seekers will be relocated from Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus
Newsom claims Trump is ‘handing the future to China’ at Brazilian climate confab that WH skipped
How Every Senator Voted on Passing the Bill to End the Shutdown
Stefanik receives top Jewish award days after announcing New York governor bid at Manhattan gala
-
Austin, TX6 days agoHalf-naked woman was allegedly tortured and chained in Texas backyard for months by five ‘friends’ who didn’t ‘like her anymore’
-
Hawaii3 days agoMissing Kapolei man found in Waipio, attorney says
-
Southwest4 days agoTexas launches effort to install TPUSA in every high school and college
-
Seattle, WA1 week agoESPN scoop adds another intriguing name to Seahawks chatter before NFL trade deadline
-
New Jersey2 days agoPolice investigate car collision, shooting in Orange, New Jersey
-
World6 days agoIsrael’s focus on political drama rather than Palestinian rape victim
-
Seattle, WA3 days agoSoundgarden Enlist Jim Carrey and Seattle All-Stars for Rock Hall 2025 Ceremony
-
Southwest1 week agoArmy veteran-turned-MAGA rising star jumps into fiery GOP Senate primary as polls tighten