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Dear Interested
Parties:
The American Meat Institute Foundation
(AMIF) is a non-profit organization dedicated
to research, education and information that
benefits the meat and poultry
industry. Originally created
in 1944, AMIF funds a broad range of food
safety, worker safety, nutrition and consumer
information
projects.
AMIF invites
pre-proposals on applied and fundamental
research that will improve the control of
microbial pathogens in meat and poultry
products. AMIF is soliciting
pre-proposals on controlling Listeria
monocytogenes on ready-to-eat (RTE) meat
and poultry products, Escherichia coli
O157:H7 in fresh beef products and
Salmonella in meat and poultry
products. Additionally, AMIF
is soliciting pre-proposals on research needs
identified by AMI's member
companies. Further
explanation and instruction on pre-proposal
submission for this section is provided under
the Targeted Research heading.
The subjects listed on the following
pages have been formulated by AMIF's Research
Advisory Committees, and are considered to be
the issues of highest priority.
The pre-proposal
(excluding the curriculum vitae) should not
exceed two (2) pages in length.
Pre-proposals should include the
following
components:
- Principal Investigator(s)
Contact Information (including organization, address, city, state, zip,
phone, fax,
e-mail);
- Project
Title;
- Objectives of Research
Proposal;
- Description of
Research
Project;
- Benefit of Research
to Industry;
- Approximate
Cost of Research;
- Approximate Timetable of Research;
and
- Brief Curriculum Vitae
(including publications relevant to the
proposed research).
The pre-proposal and
curriculum vitae should be submitted via
e-mail. AMIF is requesting
that only the pre-proposal and curriculum vitae
be submitted for review.
Please refer to the grant questions and
answers document on the AMIF web site (http://www.amif.org/)
for more detail on pre-proposal
submission.
Please submit the
pre-proposals via e-mail by 5 p.m. EDT on
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
to:
Susan Backus
Director of
Research
American Meat Institute
Foundation
1150 Connecticut Ave.,
NW, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20036
e-mail:
sbackus@meatami.com
For technical
assistance, please contact Randy Huffman at
202-587-4233. For questions
concerning pre-proposal submission, please
contact Susan Backus at
202-587-4220.
Controlling Listeria monocytogenes on Ready-to-Eat Meat and Poultry
Products
I.
Innovative Pathogen Intervention
Technologies
- Identify and validate
bactericidal and/or bacteriostatic ingredients
or treatments. Proposals should address
existing FSIS and FDA regulations (e.g.
FSIS Supplementary Guidance - http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FRPubs/97-013F/Lm_Suplementary_Guidance.pdf,
FDA approval status). Additionally, proposals
should define the meaning of bacteriostatic and
bacteriocidal in the context of existing
regulations. Proposals
should include an evaluation
of the impact on sensory attributes, cost and
application
method.
- Identify factors involved in regulation
of genes that influence the organism's ability
to thrive in RTE processing environments, on
food contact surfaces and/or on
products. Identify potential
synergistic effects of existing hurdles related
to gene expression.
Proposals should include an evaluation
of differences among serotypes and impact of
meat species type.
II.
Operational Control and Monitoring of
the Processing Environment
- Identify methods of preventing
microbiological recontamination of sliced,
diced, chopped and/or shredded
meats.
- Validate the expected impact of
operational controls such as clean room
technologies, facility and equipment cleaning
procedures.
- Develop and validate measures of
effectiveness of existing controls.
Proposals should address issues specific
to small and very small
plants.
- Evaluate real-time or near real-time
Listeria sampling and testing
technologies.
- Develop improved and validated
quantitative methods for L.
monocytogenes detection in foods and
environmental samples.
Controlling Escherichia
coli O157:H7 in Fresh Beef
Products
I.
Pre-Harvest Research (Pre-harvest is
defined as the time period prior to cattle
being placed on the trailer for transport to
the slaughter facility.)
- Develop greater understanding of the
ecology/epidemiology of E. coli O157:H7
as well as non-O157 Shiga-toxin producing E.
coli (STEC).
- Determine the mechanism for intestinal
colonization of E. coli O157:H7 and STEC
and corresponding opportunities for
control.
II.
Post-Harvest
Research
- Validate the critical components of the
Beef Industry Food Safety Council's "Best
Practices: Pathogen Control during
Tenderizing/Enhancing of Whole Muscle Cuts" (http://www.bifsco.org/uDocs/03_29_06%20Non-Intact%20Best%20Practices.pdf,
http://www.bifsco.org/meetNon-IntactProductProcessingWorkshop.aspx)
by determining the cumulative effect of
standard intervention practices including
integrated lethality of cooking
processes.
- Lairage has been identified as a risk
factor for E. coli O157:H7 contamination
of hides for cattle delivered to processing
plants. Proposals should
identify practical intervention technologies to
reduce levels of E. coli O157:H7 at
lairage.
- Identify and validate novel
intervention technologies for E. coli
O157:H7.
- Evaluate the effect of the plant
environment (e.g. air, machinery,
employees) in the role of transmission of E.
coli
O157:H7.
- Determine a novel method of reducing
transfer of E. coli O157:H7 from hide to
the carcass.
- Develop easy to adopt hide treatment
technology to reduce E. coli O157:H7
load on cattle presented for
harvest.
- Validate existing and commonly used
intervention technologies for E. coli
O157:H7.
- Evaluate the statistical validity of
existing and alternative sampling methods for
E. coli O157:H7 in beef trim and
finished products.
III.
Information to Enhance Current and
Future E. coli O157:H7 Risk
Assessments
- Address data needs identified in the
FSIS Draft Risk Assessment for E. coli
O157:H7.
- Conduct an analysis of the combination
of virulence factors required to cause human
illness.
- Develop data to support future risk
assessments of E. coli O157:H7 and STEC
and to estimate the human health risk
attributable to beef
products.
Controlling
Salmonella in Meat and Poultry
Products
I.
Innovative Pathogen Intervention
Technologies
- Investigate and validate novel
intervention technologies for Salmonella
in meat and poultry products.
- Determine the effectiveness of existing
or new intervention technologies on multiple
serovars of Salmonella including those
that are multi-drug
resistant.
- Identify the potential for
Salmonella harbors within the
post-harvest processing environment and
interventions to reduce or eliminate the
presence of Salmonella in the identified
harbors.
- Identify
likely sources of contamination, risk factors,
and how to systematically intervene at the
production facility, during transportation and
lairage and the levels of Salmonella
present on carcasses and meat
products.
II.
Information to Enhance Current and
Future Salmonella Public Health Risk
Assessments
- Develop quantitative sampling and
analytical methods for Salmonella on raw
meat and poultry products that will provide
meaningful data for enhancing public
health.
- Investigate the
epidemiology of multi-drug resistant
Salmonella within production and
quantify the human health risks associated with
these
organisms.
Targeted
Research
AMI member companies have identified
very specific targeted research needs that will
assist the industry in solving unique technical
challenges within meat and poultry
facilities. These targeted
projects have been specifically suggested by
AMI member companies and some detail concerning
project scope has been provided.
These projects will be considered for
funding along with projects submitted for other
research priority areas. In
some cases, these targeted projects may overlap
with the general research priority areas listed
above. If you choose to
submit a proposal to address one or more of
these projects, please reference this intent in
the pre-proposal.
Develop white paper on non-O157
shiga-toxin producing E. coli
(STEC).
The proposal should
include the
following:
- Assessment of
detection
methodologies;
- Evaluation of
prevalence in meat and non-meat sources;
- Human illness cases
attributed meat and non-meat sources;
and
- Effectiveness of
existing
interventions.
Evaluate the
effectiveness of existing interventions such as
thermal processing, SSOPs and GMPs, and
chemical interventions on virus inactivation in
meat and poultry products.
The project should
result in a white paper that could be used by
the meat and poultry industry as supporting
validation materials for HACCP
plans. The proposal should
consider the
following:
- Comprehensive
literature review to assess what is currently
known and any potential data
gaps.
- Viruses associated
with animal disease (e.g. Porcine
Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus
(PRRS), Porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2))
- Viruses associated
with human disease (e.g. Norovirus,
Hepatitis)
Improve and augment epidemiological
data on food attribution for listeriosis, both
sporadic and outbreak
cases.
The proposal should
recognize the following
assumptions:
- The Food and Drug
Administration/Food Safety and Inspection
Service Listeria Risk Assessment
indicate ready-to-eat deli items are
responsible for a majority of foodborne
listeriosis cases in the U.S.
- USDA's Food
Safety and Inspection Service data indicate the
prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes on
RTE meat and poultry products has been
declining from 2.54% contamination rate in 1998
to 0.61% in 2006, while the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention 2006 FoodNet data
indicate listeriosis cases only declined from 5
cases/million in 1996 to 2.7 cases/million in
2007. If a majority of the
listeriosis cases are indeed caused by
contaminated deli meats, a much more
considerable decline of human listeriosis cases
should have occurred over the last 10
years. Research is thus
needed to understand the reason behind this
apparent discrepancy between the risk
assessment data and the FSIS and CDC data on
food contamination with L. monocytogenes
and human listeriosis cases in order to
facilitate further targeted interventions to
reduce human listeriosis cases.
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