A Q&A with José Emilio Esteban, Under Secretary for Food Safety in the Office of Food Safety at USDA

Dr. José Emilio Esteban, the under secretary for food safety in the Office of Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), spoke with Quality Assurance and Food Safety Magazine at the 128th Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) Annual Conference. Here, he discusses the USDA’s focus on Salmonella, its efforts to combat H5N1, what gives him hope for the future of food safety and more.

Quality Assurance & Food Safety magazine: What are some of the big things you’re focusing on right now when it comes to food safety?

Dr. José Emilio Esteban: With the microbiological environment, Salmonella is definitely one of those. It is causing about 1.2 million illnesses a year, and about 20-27% is related to poultry. The poultry industry has done a lot to minimize contamination of the carcasses. Now we need to be more refined. We need to figure out which serotypes at what amounts are the ones that are causing illness. And that’s what this framework that we’re proposing is going to address. In other words, we had a sledgehammer to get to this point, and now we have a finer hammer. We addressed the specific needs. It’s just using the right tool for the right time. It worked great; now we need to change the tools to get to the next stage.

QA: The USDA and FDA both have their own rules when it comes to dealing with H5N1. What are the efforts at USDA right now regarding this, and what should the processors who work under USDA or are regulated by USDA know about what’s going on?

Esteban: To be very clear, we do think this is an animal health issue. It’s causing the lactating dairy cows to get sick. The No. 1 thing they can do to contain that is biosecurity. Trucks coming in, feed coming in, food delivery, all those things are fine, but they need to have biosecurity to go with it, so it can be prevented. If you already have it, you test your cows, find it positive, then segregate those and treat them for it. 

People have said, “What about the beef? What about the meat?” We did several studies to document that. We studied 30 retail samples from ground beef and found zero positive. We did a cooking study. We had hamburgers that were 300 grams, which is four times the one at McDonald’s. We put a lot of virus in it, and it still killed the vast majority of it. If you cook it right, it’s fine. 

So you address it at the farm with better biosecurity, you treat or eliminate the sick cows, you make sure that the milk is pasteurized and the meat is cooked. And the meat itself, even raw, we have not found but one cow that was contaminated, and that cow was condemned before it got into the food supply. We have a very, very safe food safety system. I’m very confident that we have the right tools in place. That said, I’m always going to want to have more data. 

QA: I know USDA provides assistance to ranchers and farmers. What’s USDA’s role in the processor side of things when it comes to natural disasters or extreme weather?

Esteban: One thing I think I learned when I moved from my career position to my political position is the breadth of USDA. I’ve been working for years at the FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service). I got to see the real USDA. I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that something in USDA doesn’t touch rural services, or AMS school lunch program, or the WIC program, or in this case, with emergency response insurance programs. We have systems in place to protect the producer and the processor. I think USDA is really the people’s department. We touch Americans every single day.

QA: What gives you hope for the future of food safety? What gives you hope that we’re going to continue to get better?

Esteban: I think the system today is so transparent. What happens in Africa, we know about today here. We are really in a society where everything is transparent. We take advantage of that. We take advantage of telework; we take advantage of technology and artificial intelligence. We have the tools, we have the people, and we have the society that actually, if we are a good federal workforce, we will listen to them. 

One thing that frustrates me right now is that we keep thinking in a box, and we need a lot more of that out-of-the-box thinking, especially with society like it is today. It moves all the time, and it moves really fast. But because we are working together with the CDC, FDA and EPA, it is much more transparent.

QA: What is one thing that you think food processors and food manufacturers could be doing better right now?

Esteban: I would love to have the ability to hear from them, because a lot of the time when we get down to addressing the vendors when a problem happens, it is after the fact. I would like to make sure they know they can trust us, because we are there to help them. If you have an open, positive exchange of information, both parties are better. The final product is better. It’s not us versus them, it’s us.