Tauxe believes that there are a number of factors helping the decline. “Among
them is a change in the way that food safety in meat slaughter, animal slaughter
and processing is managed,” he explained. In 1997 the Department of Agriculture
began implementing a new pathogen-reduction strategy for regulating meat and
poultry slaughter and processing plants, and these declines in Yersinia, Listeria,
Campylobacter and Salmonella are happening at the same time, Tauxe said.
However, Tauxe cautioned that not all infections are decreasing. “We
have not observed a sustained decline in E. coli O157. And some strains of Salmonella
are actually increasing, while others are going down.”