Tag Archives: Aquaculture

N.Y. Times food safety editorial misses the point

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The New York Times wrote in an editorial Saturday that the Food and Drug Administration is right to focus on imported foods and it is encouraging that the agency has already hired staff for new offices in China and India that will try to ensure the safety of food products before they are exported.

Yes, imported foods can be problematic. But so can homegrown foods. The silence surrounding California lettuce as a possible source of E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks in Michigan and Ontario is beyond disturbing. And the more fingers are pointed to imports, the fewer questions are asked about domestic supplies.

The Times did get this part of their editorial right:

“The goal is to root out tainted food — whether produced abroad or in this country — at the earliest stages of the production and distribution process while being ready to respond quickly if pathogens start reaching consumers.”

They just couldn’t follow through with a meaningful statement and say, providing safe food actually depends on a culture of food safety from farm-to-fork, wherever that food comes from.
 

F.D.A. details its food safety campaign

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Andrew Martin of the N.Y. Times has just reported on-line and in tomorrow’s print editions that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will release a report Monday that summarizes what officials call a “hugely ambitious” campaign to reshape its food inspection arm to root out safety hazards through things like sophisticated software and certifiers from the private sector.

“The goal is to radically redesign the process,” said Dr. David Acheson (right, exactly as shown), the agency’s associate commissioner for foods. For imported food, for instance, that means trying to detect tainted products during the production process rather than waiting until they enter the country.

“We cannot simply rely on picking the ball up at the point of entry,” Dr. Acheson said.

The changes were first outlined in the agency’s Food Protection Plan, which was released in November 2007. In June, the agency was criticized by the Government Accountability Office for failing to provide details on the costs or specific strategies for carrying out the plan. Some lawmakers have repeatedly called the agency’s food protection efforts inadequate.

Governments can only do so much, and auditors or other third-party certifiers have been sorta miserable – a lot of foodborne illness outbreaks are linked back to farms, processors and retailers that went through some form of certification. What’s needed are the proper mixture of carrots and sticks to foster a food safety culture at all points of the farm-to-fork food safety system. My friend, Frank, wrote a new book about food safety culture. But more about that tomorrow, or in a few days, depending on when this baby decides to arrive.
 

Cajuns fete carnival with pig slaughter

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Far from the Carnival balls, parades and raucous crowds of New Orleans, Cajuns in St. Martinville held their last ”bon temps” before Lent in a far different fashion: with a grand boucherie, or slaughtering of a pig.

Associated Press reports that hundreds of people watched at least part of the ritual Saturday, though most have seen it before. The pig’s skin was being shaved for cracklins, a Cajun snack, while the carcass was being prepared for transport to a butcher shop.

Every year, Catholic Cajuns in this community about 140 miles west of New Orleans hold ”La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns” the weekend before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.

Stephen Hardy, 38, who leads the group organizing the event, said,

"This is a celebration that was started out of necessity. Before refrigeration, they had to share the slaughter. One family could not consume a whole hog before it would go bad. They would have family and friends over to help, and everyone would leave with something."

With meat readily available at any grocery store today, the boucherie is simply a celebration of an old tradition, bringing family and friends together once a year for one last hoorah before the Catholic season of fasting begins.

Federal health code regulations prevent attendees from eating what is slaughtered during the celebration, Hardy said. So the butcher, after showing what is done traditionally, will take the carcass and byproducts to his shop to finish preparing the meat.

Language and cultural barriers in food safety communication

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Misti Crane of the Columbus Dispatch wrote yesterday that as part of an overhaul of food safety regulation in the city of Columbus (coincidentally, the site for the International Association for Food Protection annual meeting this year), a record number of restaurants have been brought before the city’s Board of Health.  Crane reports that beginning in 2005 the board took action (including probation, suspended operations or revoking licenses) against restaurants 82 times; in the previous 7 years there had been only 10 cases.  The more interesting part of the story to me is how the health department has addressed the sometimes-difficult barrier of interacting with different cultures as a regulator.

Crane writes about a city inspector relating an anecdote about cultural and language issues in a new restaurant:

After seeing some food-safety problems at Fiesta Time, a new Mexican restaurant in Clintonville, a city inspector realized he was facing a language barrier, came back to the office and talked to co-worker Vince Fasone.
Fasone, known as "Vicente" to Spanish-speaking restaurant owners and workers, paid a visit to Fiesta Time. In Spanish, which he speaks fluently after four years living in Mexico City, he explained the violations.
Then he scheduled an early-morning visit last week for staff training.
Fiesta Time co-owner Wendy Hernandez said she and her partner, Jose Bravo, don’t want to break rules and certainly don’t want to find themselves before the Board of Health.
Sometimes, the instructions a manager gives employees sink in better once they’re delivered by an outsider, especially one who speaks their language, Bravo said.

Working with food handlers of differing cultural and ethnic backgrounds can be a barrier in implementing food safety programs and practices.  Not being able to relate what to do, how to do it and most importantly why to do it, makes food safety training ineffective. Understanding different cultures and being able to put food safety in context for a variety of food handlers can differentiate good communication from bad communication.

Many health departments across North America have inspectors and program coordinators who are adept at adjusting their activities to different cultures, but some I have talked to have related that it is sometimes difficult to convince health boards and local politicians of this need.

New report on safety of U.S. imports urges recall authority for FDA

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The U.S. Interagency Working Group on Import Safety has issued its report to President Bush with the snappy title, Protecting American Consumers Every Step of the Way: A strategic framework for continual improvement in import safety.

The report outlines an approach that can build upon existing efforts to improve the safety of imported products, while facilitating trade.

Approximately $2 trillion of imported products entered the United States economy last year and experts project that this amount will triple by 2015. … While we acknowledge it is not possible to eliminate all risk with imported and domestic products, being smarter requires us to find new ways to protect American consumers and continually improve the safety of our imports. We recommend working with the importing community to develop approaches that consider risks over the life cycle of an imported product, and that focus actions and resources to minimize the likelihood of unsafe products reaching U.S. consumers. …

Supporting this model are six building blocks: 1) Advance a common vision, 2) Increase accountability, enforcement and deterrence,
3) Focus on risks over the life cycle of an imported product, 4) Build interoperable systems, 5) Foster a culture of collaboration, and 6) Promote technological innovation and new science.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Food and Drug Administration would be granted power to require manufacturers and importers of "high risk" products to take steps to prevent contamination and other problems. The FDA could require producers and importers of such goods to certify they comply with FDA standards. The FDA could bar imports if it is given no access or only limited access to production records. The agency would also be able to mandate recalls on tainted products, something it can’t do now.

At least the panel got this bit right:

"Americans benefit from one of the safest food supplies and among the highest standards of consumer protection in the world. Our task is to build on this solid foundation by identifying actions for both the public and private sectors that will help our import safety system continually improve and adapt to a rapidly growing and changing global economy."

Not the safest, which is difficult to substantiate, but one of the safest.

There’s no real surprises in the report, it all sounds good, but really, government is limited in what it can do. And I’m not sure what they mean by focusing on high-risk products. Anything can be high-risk depending on how it was produced — pot pies, peanut butter and pepperoni come to mind. And those were all foodborne illness outbreaks associated with domestic products. Food from around the corner or around the globe has the potential to be contaminated with dangerous microorganisms. Focusing on imports may detract from efforts at home. A strong food safety culture may translate to fewer sick people.

Will more inspectors make food safer?

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No.

An Associated Press story last night continues the fascination with all things political and the on-going, bureaucratic discussion about whether a single food inspection agency will improve food safety.

The story notes that in the two ConAgra contamination cases, it turns out that an FDA inspector hadn’t been to the company’s peanut butter plant in Georgia for two years before the recall, while a USDA inspector visits the Missouri pot pie plant daily.

If that’s the case, then maybe inspectors are the wrong focus here.

Bill Marler got it right yesterday when he wrote about the same AP story that,

Frankly, I am not sure a single agency, or the government for that matter (remember how well it did in Hurricane Katrina), will solve the problem of companies selling poisoned products to customers.  Perhaps when farmers, ranchers, shippers, middlemen of all sorts, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and restaurants all recall that customers could be their kid, they would put safety before profits.

I expressed a similar notion this morning in the Baltimore Sun.

"You can’t inspect your way to a safe food supply," said Douglas Powell, scientific director at Kansas State University’s International Food Safety Network. "You can’t have an inspector on every site 24/7 to inspect every piece of food that goes to market. You have to create a culture where everyone from the farm to the processing facility, people at restaurants, consumers at home are more in tune with the culture of food safety. People need to get really religious about this. Food safety is everyone’s responsibility."

How best to develop a food safety culture is where we’re focusing much of our research activity.

It’s certainly more than telling people,

"We have the safest food supply in the world,"

as Mindy Brashears, director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University, did in the same Baltimore Sun story.

Yum! A culture of food safety?

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David Novak, the 54-year-old chairman, chief executive officer and president of Louisville, KY-based Yum! Brands said in a Restaurants and Institutions Q&A that the take-away lesson in his new book, Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office, that

"the key to growing is to be an eager learner. One cutting-edge difference in the best leaders I’ve been around is that they truly are avid learners."

Novak also says that, "There’s no way you can achieve success without knowing your stuff."

Dude, you serve food in 5,000 KFCs, 5,000 Taco Bells and 7,000 Pizza Huts in the U.S.. You also stress the Yum culture. When you were asked, What can kill a culture? you responded,

"It’s people saying one thing and doing something different. That’s what’s death."

Especially when it comes to food safety. Taco Bell’s performance in the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak last fall involving lettuce — no, it wasn’t the green onions — raises questions about how well Taco Bell knew their food safety stuff, and restaurant inspection results like this Pizza Hut in Witchita, KS, wonder how much people are saying one thing and doing another.

Novak says,

"The biggest thing I think we did in making our company come alive was to train people on our How We Work Together Leadership Principles [customer focus, belief in people, recognition, coaching and support, accountability, excellence, positive energy and teamwork]. We developed a comprehensive training program that we rolled out around the world. We put process and discipline around culture."

How about food safety culture?

You Buy — You Kill — You Dress — You Take Home

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Amy has survival skills. She knows how to field-dress animals. And has pretty good bowstaff skills.

At Tom Prince’s farm 20 miles west of Indianapolis, a Muslim man kneels over a goat, says a brief prayer, then cuts the animal’s throat. It’s hard to imagine a greater cultural mishmash than the early morning gatherings that take place here every Friday and Saturday.

Tim Evans, who reports for The Indianapolis Star, writes in USA Today this morning that since 1999, Prince has operated a self-service slaughterhouse that specializes in providing goat meat to the Indianapolis area’s growing international community. His card reads "You Buy — You Kill — You Dress — You Take Home," and business is booming. Prince also sells lamb and sheep, but goats are the big seller.

Prince, 80, runs the facility from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Friday and Saturday, selling an average of about 50 goats per weekend. In the weeks before Muslim and other religious holidays, he says, sales often double.

The story provides an excellent overview of several facets of the intersection between food, language and culture, something we at iFSN are beginning to explore in a more structured manner (really, I’m getting’ some culture from Amy the French professor and outdoor survivalist).

Prince’s slow Southern drawl stands out from the languages spoken by customers who have found their way to Central Indiana from Morocco, Yemen, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Mexico and other places around the globe where goat is a dietary staple.

For some, butchering their own meat helps maintain a link to cultures they’ve left behind in Africa, Central America and the Middle East. Others, including the large number of Muslims who buy from Prince, prefer to kill and butcher the animals themselves to ensure food preparation standards of their faith are followed.

Prince said he doesn’t know a lot about Islam, but he is savvy enough as a businessman to make sure the slaughterhouse meets their needs — including situating the killing table so it faces east toward Mecca.

Goats, like all ruminants, are natural reservoirs for E. coli O157:H7. So be clean, be safe, unlike the employees of the Captains Galley’s restaurant in China Grove, N.C., who earlier this year slaughtered a goat after hours, leading to an O157 outbreak that sickened 21 and killed an 86-year-old. Safety and culture can go together.

Saving the world one sucker at a time

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    The Rhode Island Oyster Gardening for Restoration and Enhancement program at Roger Williams University is putting oysters in the state’s waterways to filter out pollution and rev up the ecosystem.

     Each little sucker takes in up to 50 gallons of water in a day, clearing out pollutants, plankton, and silt so that the water is nice and clean for the aquatic plants below.  These plants, along with tiny fish that like to live in the oyster beds, attract winter flounder and lobster can be harvested for us to eat. The area’s aquaculture producers are happy about that one.

    The oysters also clean up after crop fertilizers.  Nitrogen from agricultural runoff is sucked up and oxygen abounds for our newfound aquaculture. 

    Clean water, more food, and a pick-up system for ag chemicals. I, for one, am impressed. All hail the mighty oyster: saving the world one sucker at a time.

Russell, tell me a story

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Spent yesterday driving to Oklahoma City and back to speak at the Food Industry Trends conference put on by Oklahoma State University. At one point, our contractor, Russell, called to review some plans and I asked him to tell me a story to pass the time. He did.

Rod Walton reports in the Tulsa World this morning that I, Kansas State University professor Douglas Powell, told the meeting that,

"You’ve still got people out there who have no clue. It’s mind-numbing."

The context of that quote is I was talking about the butcher using the same vac-pac for raw and cooked product which led to the death of 5-year-old Mason Jones in Wales.

Armia Tawadrous, a regulatory executive for the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was quoted as telling the group that,

"We have succeeded a great deal. We still have a long way to go. … You cannot run an unclean operation and expect to get away with it."

The story says that Joseph Baca, compliance director for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was cited as providing an overview of the 2006 spinach E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, adding, "We did have a rapid response."

The story also says that Powell is  head of the International Food Safety Network, which combines scientific information and, sometimes, celebrity reports to inform its audience about foodborne illnesses. For instance, his Web site has linked stories about famous people — from Beyonce Knowles to My Chemical Romance — getting food poisoning. Those links drive up the number of hits to Powell’s food safety web sites.

Powell is passionate about reaching the MTV generation and thinks that way is better than government press releases and old-fashioned posters about washing hands, adding, "If you want to get a kid’s attention, you have to put it on Facebook. They’re likely the ones who are going to make your lunch."