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Biosecurity measures preventing exposure of pigs to rodents, wildlife, and contaminated feed or waste products reduce the risk of zoonotic Trichinellainfection in pork. To understand the benefits of such measures in the United States, we conducted the first comprehensive survey of pigs produced under the Pork Quality Assurance Plus production standard, surveying 3,208,643 pork samples from twelve processing locations tested over a period of 54 months. We detected no Trichinellasp. positives in any of these pork samples, providing a 95% confidence in a Trichinellasp. prevalence of <1 in 1,000,000 for the processors represented by the study. These results are consistent with international guidelines for having a negligible risk to public health. Results obtained here should generalize to all PQA+ sources, as Trichinellasp. exposure risk is based on production guidelines that extend to the larger PQA+ population.

Foodborne pathogens continue to pose a public health risk and can cause serious illness and significant outbreaks of disease in consumers. Toxoplasmosis is a zoonotic disease that occurs worldwide and is caused by the protozoan parasite, Toxoplasma gondii. The consumption of raw or undercooked infected meat, including pork, that contains infectious stages of T. gondiihas been regarded as a major route of T. gondiitransmission to humans. Given the occasional presence of T. gondiiin pork meat, the frequent use of pork for products not intended to be cooked, such as dry-cured ham, presents a potential risk for its transmission to consumers. In this study, we investigated the viability of T. gondiiin dry-cured whole hams processed using methods that were previously required for treatment of hams to inactivate Trichinella spiralisin the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (9 CFR 318.10) and are now described in guidance documents from the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service. Infected pork hams were salted and cured for 33 days at 3°C and 85% ± 5% relative humidity (RH) and then were dried for up to 12 months at 12°C and 67.5% ± 2.5% RH. Inactivation of T. gondiiwas assessed in mouse bioassays and, serologically, by the modified agglutination test (MAT). Results showed that T. gondiibradyzoites were inactivated during the salting and curing step (33 days); no viable T. gondiiwas detected in the mouse bioassay and no evidence of serological conversion was detected by MAT in any of the mice inoculated with any of the samples tested during the drying step over the 12 months of the experiment. These results demonstrated that the approved protocols for production of dry-cured hams validated herein can inactivate T. gondiiand lower the risk to consumers of this product.