Perdue’s Petaluma poultry plant struggles to eliminate bacteria that can make people sick

Petaluma proclaimed itself “egg capital of the world” in the 1920s, and that nostalgic ideal is preserved on the packages of local chicken labels like Rosie, Rocky and Sonoma Red, which remind customers that these products are free range, devoid of antibiotics and, in some cases, organic.

But the Petaluma plant that processes those products, the largest poultry processor in Sonoma County, has been getting bad grades on site inspections in recent months by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s public health regulatory agency, the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

No outbreaks have been tied to that site, but federal government data from the Food Safety and Inspection Service shows Perdue Farms’ plant in Petaluma, the only one in Sonoma County large enough to require federal monitoring, has intermittently struggled to eliminate two different foodborne pathogens since 2020.

Critics say it’s part of a larger problem, with the Agriculture Department failing to do enough to isolate risks and alert consumers.

“The goal of the program of sharing of test results was to make the public aware of how well, or not, a plant was performing at reducing pathogen contamination in its products,” said James Rogers, director of food safety research and testing at Consumer Reports and a former Food Safety and Inspection Service official. “But most consumers don’t even know it exists.”

A risk to humans

Lately, Perdue Petaluma’s bane has been campylobacter, a bacterium not as well-known as salmonella, but one that can also pose a risk to humans.

Roughly 17% of all on-site government campylobacter tests at poultry plants across the country came back positive between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022, according to federal data.

That was true of both whole carcasses and chicken parts, which are tested separately and have different standards.

During the same time frame — minus as-yet-unreleased data for April, May and June — 63% of the whole carcasses tested at Perdue Petaluma, and 61% of the chicken parts tested, were positive for campylobacter. That’s close to four times the national rate.

Perdue Farms declined to answer a list of questions provided by The Press Democrat, but a representative sent a long statement underscoring the company’s commitment to safety and its support of federal regulations.

“We aggressively seek to understand and reduce any occurrence of bacteria in our food production,” wrote Diana Souder, Perdue’s director of corporate communications and brand PR. “It is something we take very seriously, and something our safety process has been able to improve and reduce over time.”

Stakes are real

Campylobacter, often referred to as “campy” in the food safety field, causes an estimated 1.5 million illnesses nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms include diarrhea (often bloody), fever and stomach cramps, and occasionally complications like irritable bowel syndrome or temporary paralysis.

In people with severely weakened immune systems, campylobacter can spread to the bloodstream and result in a life-threatening infection.

“From a food safety standpoint, campy is just as bad as salmonella in that it is a very common foodborne illness,” said Maurice Pitesky, a professor at UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine. “For whatever reason, it doesn’t get as much attention, but the hospitalization rates are similar. And it’s also considered somewhat ubiquitous in poultry.”

Unlike salmonella, sustained campylobacter prevalence doesn’t result in government warnings or more rigorous testing protocols. The federal inspection service proposed similar performance categories for campy in 2015, but suspended the plan when it changed its lab detection methods.

“The agency is currently evaluating appropriate steps related to Campylobacter,” an agency spokesperson said in an email.

Salmonella issues, too

Before campy began showing up at Perdue Petaluma, the plant had also failed to meet performance standards established by the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s salmonella monitoring program.

The site was placed in Category 3, the worst of the agency’s salmonella performance levels, earlier this summer.

The designation means the plant exceeded the accepted limit during a rolling 52-week period. Perdue was alerted June 25, and given 30 days to take corrective action. It was out of Category 3 by July 9, thanks to a cleaner count on the rolling timeline. Mandatory follow-up sampling began Aug. 2.

Perdue Petaluma’s last documented positive salmonella sample was in November.

Salmonella causes about 1.35 million infections, 26,500 hospitalizations, and 420 deaths in the U.S. every year, according to CDC estimates.

The pattern at Perdue Petaluma definitely stood out among other poultry processors.

Using information from an in-depth analysis of salmonella rates published by ProPublica in October 2021, the Petaluma facility had the fourth-highest rate among 60 California processors of chicken parts from the beginning of September 2020 to the end of August 2021. Perdue Petaluma’s rate of 16.7% was nearly four times the state average.

The site did only moderately better with whole carcasses. Its positive rate there was 4.2%, about 2.5 times the state average.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service analyzes particular salmonella strains, and since early April 2020, each of the nine positive samples identified at Perdue Petaluma have been Salmonella infantis. There are more than 2,000 types of salmonella. The Guardian, in a story published in July, said infantis is “among the most virulent, frequently causing illness in humans and spreading rapidly on farms.”

The entire system of monitoring these bacteria at meat plants, while elaborate, leaves much to be desired from a public health standpoint, insiders say.

A federal food inspector is supposed to be on site at each processing facility for a portion of every work shift, each day the plant is open. But they take samples usually only twice a month.

The inspector randomly selects one bird or drumstick or wing that is ready to be shipped to a distributor, puts it in a bag containing broth, seals and sloshes it around, then sends 100 milliliters of the broth to a lab for testing. This happens at hundreds of chicken processing plants across the country, as well as turkey and beef plants.

Larger plants do their own testing, too, said Rogers, the Consumer Reports food safety expert.

“In fact, they take many more samples than (the government),” he explained. “But they don’t typically share that data. They could have an issue in the plant they know about and are trying to deal with, and (federal inspectors) will never know.”

Oversight falls short

So those windows of governmental oversight are crucial. But the Department of Agriculture should be using more sensitive tests, according to Pitesky, the UC Davis professor. He believes the ones currently in use don’t reveal enough about number and type of bacteria. Pitesky likened them to pregnancy tests — an either-or result, when in this case there should be gradients.

A bigger issue, perhaps, is how the information is used. Too many positive tests will put a processor in violation of Department of Agriculture standards. But that can mask problems falling just below the threshold, Pitesky said.

“Foster Farms was having issues in the early teens, when they had a Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak,” he said, referring to another strain of the bacterium. “But I don’t think at any time they had violated the performance standard.”

Souder said something similar about Perdue Farms’ record on salmonella from August 2020 to August 2021.

If the food safety service finds a poison or unapproved pesticide in a meat sample, it can direct the processor to destroy the product. That doesn’t happen for bacteria like salmonella and campy, because they are not officially designated as “adulterants.”

“Right now, if a meat processor gets a positive test, will they sell that chicken? Yes,” Rogers said.

One thing those positive tests at Perdue Petaluma don’t tell us is how the salmonella and campylobacter got there. The source may well lie outside the facility.

“Let’s say the plant processes chickens from 50 farms. And say you find salmonella and campy in processed samples getting ready go to retail stores,” Pitesky said. “There could be a problem in the plant itself, or issues on these farms, or issues in the breeding population of the chickens. Or issues even further back, to the grandparent flocks the genetic companies have.”

Egg farms with at least 3,000 hens must test for pathogens, Pitesky said. The same is not true for broiler farms.

Souder acknowledged that Perdue’s “multi-hurdle approach to food safety begins at the farm, with the main focus being what the farmer can do” to control bacteria. She said those tasks include biosecurity (for example, rodent and beetle control), litter condition (especially controlling moisture), testing for clean water and helping with “feed withdrawal” — basically emptying a chicken’s digestive tract to eliminate potential contaminants.

“Our approach to controlling Salmonella is nimble and responsive to both sampling data and subsequent results, meaning minimized risk for consumers,” Souder said.

But there is ample opportunity for contamination inside a modern poultry processing facility.

“When chickens are defeathered, they’re put in a hot water tank. Sometimes they don’t keep that tank clean enough,” Rogers said.

“Sometimes when intestines are removed, if they don’t do it carefully, they might nick an intestine and release fecal matter. They’re supposed to put antimicrobials in the chill tank. But if they put too many chickens through without cleaning it, gunk winds up overloading the antimicrobial chemicals, and it becomes salmonella soup.”

Parent company is massive

It takes money to maintain and monitor those precautions.

“They run on pretty thin margins in that industry, so I give them some empathy,” Rogers said.

Perdue Petaluma is considered a “small” processing plant in the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s three-tiered system, but the corporate umbrella is massive. Based in Maryland, Perdue Farms has annual revenue of about $8 billion, according to Forbes.

It’s the parent company of Perdue Foods, the fourth-largest raw chicken producer in the U.S., with brands like Niman Ranch and Coleman Natural. Another tendril, Perdue Agribusiness, is a major grain company.

Knowing Sonoma County’s largest poultry processor has struggled to maintain an environment free of pathogens may be disconcerting, and even an affront to the back-to-nature image Perdue Farms seeks to project. The good news is there’s a simple defense: thoroughly cook your raw chicken.

Neither salmonella nor campylobacter is able to withstand an internal cooking temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

“My own opinion is that the ultimate responsibility is on the government to do their jobs,” Pitesky said. “It’s on the company to do their jobs. And it’s also on the consumer. We have to do our jobs.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.