Fresher Produce

Cilantro Field

This picture is from a cilantro growing operation in California. You can see they are careful about cross contamination from the workers. Standards have increased in recent years so you usually see gloves, hairnets and clean latrines in the US produce fields. 

I also traveled to Peru in February to look into the new avocado groves that have been planted for export. i want to post some comments and pictures and will have them titled soon. Avocados were just approved for import into the US so we are excited to learn more about their growing practices, the varieties available and how they address food safety in their harvesting and packing operations. From what I've seen in Peru, they are taking food safety very seriously. More on the trip next week.

Food Safety Magazine Interview

Meeting the Challenges of Produce Supply Chain Safety: An Interview with Edith Garrett

Dec 07/Jan 08

(This interview appeared in the Dec '07/Jan '08 issue).

For more than 20 years, Edith Garrett has been a fresh produce industry insider, leading efforts to meet the challenges of food safety and quality assurance at all links in the supply chain. Currently president of Edith Garrett & Associates, Inc. (www.edithgarrett.com), a consulting firm with expertise in the fresh fruit and vegetable industry focused on developing tools and processes to assist companies with food safety and quality issues, supplier certification, regulatory requirements, crisis management, strategic planning and research and development, Garrett previously served nine years as president of the International Fresh-cut Produce Association (IFPA). In her role at IFPA, she was the industry spokesperson; organized a world-class technical department; and directed educational programming, strategic development, operations management and market trends analysis for the association.

Prior to joining IFPA, Garrett gained extensive industry experience from eight years serving as the director of environment and quality assurance for South Bay Growers, Inc., a Florida lettuce and celery grower/shipper/processor, where she developed, from the ground up, the company’s quality assurance monitoring program for the fresh-cut produce processing facility, built and operated the microbiology and shelf life laboratory, and worked extensively with foodservice customers, including McDonald’s and Burger King. She also served on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Trade in Fruits and Vegetables from 2001-2003 and numerous other industry committees.

Recently, Food Safety Magazine tapped into Garrett’s produce category expertise to discuss state-of-the-industry issues and challenges in assuring food safety.

Food Safety Magazine: With a recent spate of produce-related recalls that affect the whole supply chain—from field and packinghouse, to processing, distribution and retail/foodservice—the category as a whole has come under scrutiny about how food safety is assured by produce industry growers and producers. In your opinion, why the confluence of these “wake-up” calls?

Edith Garrett: I think that there are many factors that have come together to put the safety of fresh and fresh-cut produce on the radar screen. The trend toward globalization of the food supply chain and the import of produce commodities into the U.S. at higher volumes have captured the public’s attention and consumers are actively seeking to understand more about where their foods come from, especially in light of the fact that a large percentage of imported products go uninspected in terms of food safety. The “buy local” trend has come out of this consumer perception that we are importing too much food with little food safety oversight. There is more attention by the media and more follow-though by news oulets when there is an outbreak associated with produce.

Another factor, in my opinion, is that the state departments of health are getting better at investigating outbreaks and so there is more data available about potential food contamination situations. State inspectors and and public health professionals are seeing some unexpected foods popping up with food safety issues more often and so they are adding those unconventional foods to their checklists when conducting investigations. Some states have honed their talents and techniques and become trend-setters, if you will, in identifying outbreaks that are associated with produce, such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida, Washington, California, and New York.

New research is also being conducted, which is generating more data and information with regard to produce and how pathogens are related to them. All of these factors, or new information sources, whether state or federal health agencies, the media or the general public, are leading to more focus on produce.

Food Safety Magazine: What are some of the initiatives in progress that may help the produce supply chain to be proactive with regard to food safety?

To finish reading the article, click here

Trevor Suslow Responds on Bagged Salads

I was pleased to see Trevor Suslow respond to the story on Consumer Reports' research on the bacteria found in bagged salads. As I stated earlier, the use of total coliforms or fecal coliforms does not apply to produce and he has written much more in support of that and even outlines other issues with the research that are very interesting. Here's the link to Trevor's article which was published on The Perishable Pundit's blog.

Consumer Reports on Bagged Salads

Today it was announced that Consumer Reports has published research on microbiological tests they ran on bagged salads. This is one of the classic projects that were run in the late 1990's so I was surprised to see it done again 10 years later.

The story appears in the March 2010 issue of Consumer Reports and is available free on line at www.consumerreports.org

The Consumer Reports work was partly funded by the Pew Health Group who also established the Produce Safety Project which "seeks the establishment by the Food and Drug Administration of mandatory and enforceable safety standards for domestic and imported fresh produce, from farm to fork."

We will probably see more of this kind of research until their goals are met. But this Consumer Reports research carries some misleading information. In short, they tested for Total Coliforms which are not recommended for produce because there are many soil organisms in the environment that test positive as coliforms but they are harmless and not connected to that family of organisms at all. In this research the results showed 39% of the samples contained Total Coliforms above 10,000 CFU (Colony Forming Units) but that doesn't mean anything except there were bacteria present.

In addition, the research included tests for E. coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella which were all negative and that's important. But they also tested for Enterococcus which I've never seen used as an indicator organism for produce. Enterococcus is an organism that can cause several types of illnesses in humans, but I've never heard of it used as an indicator for poor sanitation. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. And with 23% of the samples testing positive, the manufacturers need to look into this.

And what did the authors recommend after seeing these results?

• Since the bacteria were higher the later in the shelf life the samples were tested, they recommended consumers eat the salads with the earliest Use By Dates.
• They suggested the consumers wash the salads no matter what the bag says about triple washed or anything else.
• And they cautioned consumers not to cross contaminate the salads with raw meat and poultry.

There doesn't seem like was much thought was put into those recommendations. The industry has a lot of work to do to address these concerns.

Florida Freeze Decimates Crops

We are trying to get our arms around the the damage to the tomato and pepper crops from the worst freeze some say they've seen in Florida since 1989. These are two of our most important crops out of Florida in the winter. It does not look good. Many of the produce packers will be going "dark" until late March which means they will not be harvesting or packing products. That is tough for consumers, the growers and their employees. Volumes will be smaller, quality may suffer some and prices will certainly go up.

One Florida grower, D.C. McClure of West Coast Tomato, Inc., was quoted in The Packer (a industry newspaper) as saying, “Everything with fruit set was hurt hard,” he said. “The young plants have better survivability. We lost every tomato that was on a stake one foot or taller. Everything’s gone. It’s hard to find anything left.”

I will try to print an update here as time goes on. We just don't know at this point what the future holds but we are trying to measure the pulse of the market.

Background on Edith Garrett

Hello -

Welcome to the world of fresh produce. I have been working in food safety and quality assurance for fresh produce for 23 years. I started working for the largest lettuce grower east of the Mississippi River at the time, in quality assurance for their bagged salad plant in 1987. The company closed in 1994 and I moved to Washington, DC to become the president of the International Fresh-cut Produce Association (now part of the United Fresh Produce Association) representing the growing fresh-cut produce industry.

After four years managing my own consulting firm, Edith Garrett & Associates, Inc., I went to work for Danaco Solutions, LLC in 2008. We are a fresh produce procurement firm and I handle the food safety and quality assurance responsibilities for our clients and suppliers.

Some of the topics I will follow in this blog will be food safety related but others will be quality related. However, most of the topics will be of interest to a wide group of readers. Please leave your comments so we can learn from each other.