What makes meat, eggs and milk safe — and what makes them dangerous.

Colonizes the intestinal tract of birds and can be present inside intact eggs, not only on the shell. Illness usually follows undercooking or cross-contamination from raw product to ready-to-eat food.

Where control fails

Undercooked poultry and eggs; shared boards, knives and hands between raw and ready-to-eat items.

What controls it

Cooking poultry to 165 °F (74 °C), holding eggs at or below 40 °F (4 °C), separating raw product, and flock-level monitoring at the farm.

Unusual among foodborne pathogens because it grows at refrigeration temperature. It establishes itself in wet processing environments — drains, floors, the inside of equipment — and recontaminates product after the cooking step.

Where control fails

Deli meats, soft cheeses and unpasteurized dairy; post-lethality contamination in plants with persistent harborage sites.

What controls it

Environmental monitoring, hygienic zoning, sanitation of drains and equipment interiors, and pasteurization. Pregnant women, older adults and immunocompromised consumers should avoid the highest-risk products entirely.

Carried by healthy cattle and transferred to meat during slaughter and dressing. The infectious dose is very low, and a small number of surviving cells is enough to cause severe illness, including hemolytic uremic syndrome in children.

Where control fails

Undercooked ground beef, where surface contamination is mixed throughout; raw milk and unpasteurized juice; produce irrigated with contaminated water.

What controls it

Cooking ground beef to 160 °F (71 °C), carcass interventions at slaughter, and pasteurization.

One of the most common causes of bacterial diarrheal illness worldwide, overwhelmingly associated with raw and undercooked poultry. Fragile outside the host, but it survives easily on wet surfaces during handling.

Where control fails

Washing raw chicken, which spreads the organism across the kitchen in droplets; undercooking; contaminated drinking water.

What controls it

Never rinsing raw poultry, cooking to 165 °F (74 °C), and strict separation of raw poultry from everything else.

Primarily an animal health and occupational exposure issue rather than a classical foodborne one, but it disrupts egg and poultry supply and has moved into dairy cattle. Properly cooked poultry and eggs and pasteurized milk are not a recognized transmission route.

Where control fails

Farm biosecurity: shared equipment, uncontrolled visitor and vehicle traffic, contact with wild waterfowl, and unpasteurized milk from affected herds.

What controls it

Enforced farm access control, cleaning and disinfection of vehicles and equipment, wild bird exclusion, worker protective equipment, and early reporting of mortality spikes.

Not an organism, but the condition that lets every other one multiply. Time and temperature abuse during receiving, storage, transport and display is the most common finding in real inspections.

Where control fails

Deliveries accepted without verifying temperature, overloaded display cases, slow cooling of cooked product, and refrigeration with no monitoring record.

What controls it

Verification at receiving, continuous monitoring with documented logs, cooling procedures with defined time limits, and corrective action rules staff actually follow.