FSIS will designate a poultry operation of raw chicken parts/not ready to eat comminuted poultry as category ____ if they have achieved 50 percent or less of the Salmonella or Campylobacter maximum allowable percent positive during all completed 52‐week moving windows over the last three months.

• A. Category 3
• B. Category 2
• C. Category 1
• D. Category 4

Answer: (C)

The key idea is performance-based categorization: FSIS uses a moving-window approach to classify poultry operations by how often Salmonella or Campylobacter is detected, using a maximum allowable percent positive as the benchmark.

In this scheme, Category 1 is assigned to operations that show very strong, sustained performance. Specifically, if an operation achieves 50 percent or less of the maximum allowable percent positive in every completed 52-week moving window within the last three months, it meets the best-performance criterion. The 52-week window ensures the assessment reflects long-term trends rather than a single test result, and requiring this to be true for all completed windows over the recent three months guarantees consistent performance.

Thus, the scenario describes exactly the condition for Category 1: consistently meeting or being well below half of the MAPP across all relevant 52-week windows. The other categories exist for less favorable performance, indicating varying levels of concern that require additional actions, but they don’t apply when the 50%-of-MAPP standard is met in all windows.