It’s MMWR day again. The best day of the week.

Retail deli slicers have been identified as a Listeria harborage sites. Courtenay Simmons and colleagues published some work last year that showed food contact surfaces in delis (like slicers) are important spots for cleaning and sanitizing.

CDC’s EHS-Net and others published the results of a 2012 project that shows less than half of surveyed managers and employees reported that slicers were cleaned and sanitized every four hours, as recommended by FDA (and included in the 2013 Model Food Code). Chains faired significantly better than independents in their reported cleaning and sanitizing practices.

Half of managers (49.5%) said that slicers were fully cleaned at least every 4 hours (Table 1). The remaining managers said that slicers were fully cleaned less frequently. Workers reported that 63.0% (393 of 624) of slicers were fully cleaned at least every 4 hours. Deli-level aggregation of these worker-reported data indicated that in 45.8% of delis, all slicers were fully cleaned at least every 4 hours (Table 1). In the remaining delis, at least one slicer was fully cleaned less frequently. Managers and workers agreed on cleaning frequency in 79.0% of delis (215 of 279, r = 0.587, p<0.001).

Multiple regression findings indicate that chain delis reported more frequent slicer cleaning than did independent delis, and delis with more slicers, serving more customers, and selling more chubs daily reported more frequent slicer cleaning than did delis with fewer slicers, serving fewer customers, or selling fewer chubs daily. These characteristics are likely indicators of deli size, and these data are consistent with other findings suggesting that both chain and larger establishments’ food safety practices tend to be better than those of independent and smaller establishments.

People say and do different things; but self reporting is usually optimistic.