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Salmonella is widespread at grocery stores across America, report says
By Nico Madrigal-Yankowski,Food ReporterOct 31, 2025The poultry you are buying at supermarkets across America, and routinely has levels of salmonella that exceed federal safety limits, according to a new report.
Farm Forward, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to end factory farming, released a report this week that exposed how the country’s major poultry plants produce chicken, turkey and other poultry products are frequently contaminated with high levels of salmonella without retribution, as first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Salmonella is a leading cause of food borne illnesses in the U.S., accounting for 1.28 million illnesses, 12,500 hospitalizations and 238 deaths each year, according to the Farm Forward report. Symptoms of salmonella contamination may include diarrhea, nausea and stomach cramps.
Using monthly U.S. Agriculture Department inspection reports from the past five years, Farm Forward determined that multiple poultry conglomerates including Perdue, Foster Farms and Lincoln Premium Poultry, which supplies Costco, regularly sold chicken and ground turkey that exceeded salmonella limits set by the government.
“The USDA is knowingly allowing millions of packages of chicken contaminated with salmonella to be sold in stores from major brands,” Andrew deCoriolis, Farm Forward’s executive director, told the LA Times. SFGATE reached out to deCoriolis but did not hear back in time for publication.
The USDA’s monthly reports from the Food Safety and Inspection Service, or FSIS, showed that several poultry plants — including Butterball and Koch Foods — exceeded the maximum allowable amounts of salmonella every month from 2020 to 2024. The report also showed that for all of 2023 and 2024, plants for Perdue and Lincoln Premium Poultry received the highest Category 3 rating. Perdue Farms owns Petaluma Poultry in Sonoma County.
FSIS inspects poultry plants based on size and volume of production. The largest ones are tested up to five times per month, while smaller plants are tested “less frequently,” the report says. Low-volume plants are not subject to testing, according to Farm Forward’s report.
FSIS has a three-category rating system after conducting inspections. Category 3 is the worst rating and is “reserved for establishments that exceed the maximum allowable percentage and, thus, fail the standard,” Farm Forward said. Category 2 means that a plant has met the mandated standard and a Category 1 rating means that the plant has been “at or below half the allowed contamination level of the mandated standard,” the report said.
Farm Forward’s findings also suggest that the federal government’s standards for acceptable levels are too high to begin with. For ground chicken, the USDA allows for 25% of samples to be contaminated. For chicken parts, it’s 15.4% and for ground turkey it’s 13.5%. When it comes to whole chickens, the number is 9.8%.
In 2022, the USDA announced major reforms to the poultry industry that included banning plants from selling raw meat with high amounts of salmonella. Those reforms were withdrawn in March 2025 under the current presidential administration, according to NBC.
Poultry trade groups condemned the report from Farm Forward.
Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation, told the LA Times that “all chicken is safe to eat when properly handled and cooked.”
