Listeria 101
This is the species responsible for human listeriosis.
What is Listeria monocytogenes?
This type of meat is one of the classic Listeria-associated RTE foods.
What is deli meat/luncheon meat?
This is the system used to identify, evaluate, and control food safety hazards.
What is Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points?
This federal agency regulates meat and poultry products and verifies compliance with the Listeria Rule.
What is USDA-FSIS?
The ultimate reason Army food protection matters is not just food quality—it is this.
What is readiness/force protection?
Unlike many foodborne pathogens, Listeria can grow at this common food-storage temperature.
What is refrigeration temperature?
These refrigerated foods are particularly concerning because they are ready-to-eat and may have long refrigerated shelf lives.
What are RTE meats and poultry products?
For cooked RTE turkey, this process is designed to achieve the required pathogen reduction.
What is the validated lethality/cooking step?
FSIS uses this system to verify that an establishment's food safety hazards are being controlled.
What is HACCP verification?
This Army organization/function provides veterinary public health and food protection support to military operations and installations.
What is Army Veterinary Services/Public Health?
These three populations are at particularly high risk for severe invasive listeriosis.
Who are pregnant people/newborns, adults ≥65, and immunocompromised individuals?
This food-processing event creates a particularly important opportunity for Listeria contamination.
What is contamination after the lethality step?
After a fully cooked RTE product leaves the cooking step, this is the biggest Listeria concern because there is no additional kill step before the food reaches the consumer.
What is post-lethality contamination?
FSIS can collect these types of samples as part of Listeria verification activities.
What are product and environmental samples?
Name three things you should evaluate when inspecting a commissary for Listeria risk.
Listeria is particularly problematic in these foods because consumers generally eat them without another pathogen-killing step.
What are ready-to-eat foods?
A dirty cart travels from the raw preparation area into the RTE slicing area. What is the primary food-protection concern?
What is cross-contamination from the raw area into the post-lethality environment?
Name four controls that should work together to control Listeria in an RTE operation.
An environmental sample repeatedly comes back positive. The establishment says, “It's not on the food, so we're good.”
What is: Absolutely not?
A suspected Listeria-contaminated RTE food has already been served to hundreds of Soldiers. Your next step ________.
What is stop and hold potentially affected foods?
Listeria doesn't need to be introduced every day to cause trouble. It can establish itself in these difficult-to-clean areas of a food facility.
What are harborage sites?
Name the five-step pathway that explains how an environmental Listeria problem becomes a foodborne illness problem.
Source → Persistence/Survival → Transfer → RTE Product → Consumer
Your environmental monitoring program repeatedly finds Listeria spp. in the same equipment niche.
What is a persistent harborage?
FSIS uses this intensified verification approach when additional scrutiny is warranted following certain Listeria findings or concerns.
What is Intensified Verification Testing (IVT)?
A commissary deli has a positive Listeria environmental sample. The commander asks: “Is this an isolated laboratory problem or a food-protection problem?”
What is a food-protection problem?