USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) announced an extension of the comment period for a proposed rule, “Descriptive Designation for Needle- or Blade-Tenderized (Mechanically-Tenderized) Beef Products.” The Federal Register Notice is available here.
According to AgWeek,
the rule was proposed in June, after the “Safe Food Coalition sent a petition
to the Secretary of Agriculture” to request “regulatory action to require that
the labels of mechanically tenderized beef products disclose the fact that the
products have been mechanically tenderized.”
Concerns prompting the proposed rule include that this tenderizing
method “potentially pushes pathogens from the exterior of the product to the
interior.” As a result, “higher
interior meat temperatures and longer rest times after cooking are needed to
destroy specific illness-causing pathogens.”
Unlike pounded or cubed beef, where “the consumer can see that the cut
they are purchasing is not intact,” mechanically tenderized beef “could be
mistakenly perceived by consumers to be whole, intact muscle cuts.”
According to Meat
& Poultry, the proposed rule would require labels to
include the words “mechanically tenderized” and show “validated cooking
methods, minimum internal temperature and resting time.” The cost-benefit analysis led “FSIS officials
to categorize costs associated with the labeling changes as “fairly low.” FSIS estimates a one-time cost of $310 per
label, with the aggregate cost for the industry estimated at $1.05 million,
which would be annualized at $140,000 per year.
