Thank you very much.
I'll address your question related to listeria policy. It's a very good question.
As I was mentioning before, listeria is a very unique organism. With respect to the policy we have in place, there are some things that would encompass the reduction of all bacteria--for example, the use of good manufacturing practices, especially the sanitation. Increased emphasis on sanitation would definitely reduce all bacteria, not specifically listeria. As well, the use of the hazard analysis critical control point approach would also be generalized for all bacteria in a plant.
One thing you need to realize in terms of this organism is that because it is so very widespread we can use environmental testing to track different species of listeria in a plant. If we had something like salmonella, where it's not as widespread, we'd have to use totally different techniques.
Another thing that's very specific is the type of foods. As we mentioned, it's those foods that have a long shelf life, that are refrigerated and can support the growth, that are an issue. That would be very specific for listeria. Spices, for example, would not even be an issue for listeria, so that's not included in the policy. But it would be an issue for an organism like salmonella, which we know has caused problems in spices.
What this really relates to is the infectious dose for humans. For listeria, we know you need quite a high number of cells in order to cause infection; whereas for an organism like salmonella or E. coli 0157, sometimes as little as one cell that's present in the food can cause disease.
Some of the other specific things we have in the policy are criteria for looking at the absence and presence of listeria. This would be very specific for listeria because it relates to the infectious dose I mentioned. To give you one example, for standards for salmonella in a ready-to-eat product like meat, we would never have different tolerance levels like we have for listeria, where we allow 100 cells per gram of food in certain foods. We would never do that with salmonella or E. coli 0157 because in contrast to listeria we know that very low levels of those organisms can actually cause disease.
The other specific things we mentioned--for example, the addition of inhibitors like sodium diacetate--would be very specific for the inhibition of listeria and they would not necessarily inhibit a lot of the other pathogens we talked about. To get even more specific on the distinction between viruses and parasites, they cannot even grow in a food--they just don't grow.
There are very specific things in the policy specific to listeria, but some of the general concepts in it could actually reduce the total counts you would find in a food.