 The third leading cause of food-borne disease-related death in the United States after salmonella and the meat-borne brain parasite toxoplasma is listeria, a type of food-borne bacteria that has the rare ability to survive and thrive in a cold, acidic, salty environment, otherwise known as deli meats— hot dogs and refrigerated, ready-to-eat chicken and turkey products. The fatality rate of the infection is 20% to 30%, making it the most dangerous food-borne bacteria in the American meat supply. Unable to rid itself of the bug, the U.S. meat industry petitioned the FDA to allow them to use a novel pathogen control strategy, virulent bacteriophage for efficient biocontrol of listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods, or as the FDA touted in one of its publications, bacteria-eating virus approved as food additive. Not all viruses harm people. The FDA has approved a mixture of viruses as a food additive to protect people. The additive can be used in processing plants for spraying onto ready-to-eat meat and poultry products to protect consumers from the potentially life-threatening bacterium listeria. Not all bacteria harm people either, and so concern has been expressed that the viruses on our meat could also infect and kill the good bacteria in our gut, but they appear to be extremely species-specific, and so the main concern has been the possibility of the viruses spreading toxin genes between bacteria, especially considering the difficulties in preventing large numbers of viruses from being released into the environment. It could also allow the industry to become even more complacent about food safety. If they know they can just spray some viruses on at the end, kind of similar to the quick fix argument about irradiation. From the industry point of view, who cares if there's fecal contamination of the meat as long as that's sterilized feces, sterilized at the end with enough radiation? Recently, researchers discovered that you can feed the viruses to the chickens directly, put viruses right in the feed, and obtain the same effect. They conclude that the phage cocktail administered in feed can be easily and successfully used under commercial condition in a poultry unit. Another important aspect of the present study is that the phages that can pose the cocktail were isolated from poultry carcasses. They're used to reduce bacterial colonization and live birds would not introduce any new biological entity into the food chain, meaning consumers shouldn't complain about the use of viruses as a biological control agent since the viruses are on the meat to begin with.