,Jordan has issued a draft national standard titled Hygiene Affairs and Food Safety – Microbiological Criteria for Foodstuffs, Part 2: Meat and its Products (DJS 2013‑2:2025)through the Jordan Standards and Metrology Organization (JSMO). The notification, circulated under Article 10.6 of the WTO/TBT Agreement, introduces updated microbiological limits for meat and meat products to strengthen food safety controls and align with international practices.
The draft standard sets criteria for a range of meat categories, including fresh, chilled, and processed meat, as well as mechanically deboned and fermented products. It outlines acceptable microbiological levels for pathogens critical to public health such as Salmonella spp., Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, and Staphylococcus aureus. For example, Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 must be absent in 25 g of meat samples, while aerobic plate counts should generally remain below 10⁶ cfu/g to ensure hygienic production.
The regulation’s main objective is to protect consumer health by minimizing microbiological hazards in meat and its derivatives, while ensuring alignment with comparable regional and international frameworks such as EU Regulation (EC) No. 2073/2005 and GSO Technical Regulation 1016:2015.
JSMO invites industry stakeholders, laboratories, and public health authorities to review the draft and provide comments before its formal adoption.This initiative reflects Jordan’s continued efforts to harmonize national food safety standards and improve the microbiological quality of meat products in domestic and export markets.
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