The Center for Science in the Public Interest, the nonprofit food safety watchdog group, is asking the court to require USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service to respond to a three-year-old regulatory petition in which CSPI urged the agency to treat antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella as adulterants in order to prevent the sale and distribution of tainted meat – specifically, ground beef and poultry.

The four strains of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella named in CSPI’s 2011 petition— Heidelberg, Newport, Hadar, and Typhimurium—have been implicated in dozens of outbreaks linked to ground turkey burgers, ground beef, and other products.