Ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products produced in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-inspected processing plants must achieve appropriate lethality of the most resistant vegetative bacterial pathogens reasonably likely to occur. Typically, processes are designed to kill 6.5 to 7.0 log CFU/g Salmonella as a food safety objective according to federal regulations. This food safety objective also happens to kill other vegetative bacterial pathogens that can occur in raw meat and meat ingredients, such as Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Listeria monocytogenes. Some processes like dry sausage fermentation and drying are targeted specifically to kill E. coli O157:H7