Tag Archives: culture

Food safety xenophobia Italy edition

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“Italians love their homegrown products, and this automatically puts them on the safe side of many (food safety) risks.”

That wasn’t some locovore, it was one of Italy’s leading experts on foodborne illness, Antonia Ricci, quoted in an interview with Ilfattoalimentare.it about the Colorado-based listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak that has killed 29 and sickened 139.

"Beyond the data from a single country, foodborne diseases are on the rise around the world for one simple reason: globalization and industrialization of food industry."

Ricci further says that although there are periodic reports, listeria is not much of a problem in Italy because of public health checks, and, "We [Italians] still do not consume many ready-to-eat foods, especially of plant origin, nor are there many places where food is sold on the street."

Maybe something was lost in translation. Or maybe this is more evidence of food safety perceptions being repeated enough they take on their reality, in the absence of meaningful data.

Thanks to our Italian colleague for forwarding the story and helping with the translation.

On the bandwagon; food safety culture compliments audits, testing at Texas produce firms

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Pamela Riemenschneider of The Packer writes that audits, testing and food safety programs are a part of daily life for any produce operation.

In the Rio Grande Valley, companies work to foster a culture of food safety among their employees.

“One of the challenges of a food safety program is to not treat it as if you’re studying for the test, but to accept it and embrace it as a way of doing business,” said Chris Eddy, general manager of Edinburg, Texas-based Frontera Produce Ltd.

“That’s our focus, and we’re seeing a lot of success there and getting a buy-in from our employees.”

That “it’s time for our annual audit, let’s do an extra sweep” attitude is long gone.

The company is spreading this culture out to all of the sheds it operates and represents, Eddy said.

Curtis DeBerry, president of Boerne, Texas-based Progreso Produce Ltd., said his company is rolling out in-house microbial testing in addition to its regular audits and Global Food Safety Initiative certification.

“We’ve gone completely out on our own,” he said.

“We’re doing the microbial testing in-house weekly. We’re going to step it up and be much more involved in the testing itself and the auditing in between, both in our facilities and out in the fields.”

DeBerry said his company’s enhanced focus was driven by the buyer community and Progreso’s decision to enhance the program.

At Bebo Distributing Inc. in Pharr, Texas, the packing lines are getting mechanical enhancements in the name of food safety.

The company recently installed a new packing line that includes a chlorine wash.

All this sounds great and shows how food safety requires numerous flexible and creative approaches. But why weren’t these firms and thousands of others actively enhancing the safety of fresh fruits and vegetables in the 1990s, when produce had clearly emerged as a significant source of foodborne illness?

The role of food safety auditors?

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Any time I write anything marginally critical of food safety auditors, my in-box is flooded with comments about how auditors aren’t inspectors, they’re just doing a job, I’m a propeller-head, and how unfair it all is.

If those audits are really worth something, market them at retail so consumers can choose.

Here are some other voices:

Tom Karst of The Packer writes that given the failure of third-party audits to pinpoint potential food safety problems in recent cases involving German sprouts, Georgia peanuts and Colorado cantaloupe, some primary handlers of produce might be considering sending in their own teams to inspect suppliers.

“I am hearing from a few of the larger produce organizations (first handlers) is that is what they are going back to,” said Dave Gombas, senior vice president for food safety and technology for the Washington, D.C.-based United Fresh Produce Association. “They are not trusting the third-party audits and they are going out and doing their own inspections as well to verify if the third-party (inspectors) are doing a good job.”

My group has been saying that since about 1998.

In light of recent outbreaks, some growers question the value of audits, said Chris Schlect, president of the of the Northwest Horticultural Council, Yakima, Wash.Gombas said the services auditors offer vary greatly — one of the biggest issues to resolve in the industry.

While the FDA is charged with developing a process to accredit third-party auditors in foreign countries under the new Food Safety Modernizaton Act, Gombas predicts FDA will find it hard to rely on third-party audits.

“Everyone is looking for FDA to come up with a solution, but I don’t know if they have any better answers than we do,” he said.

He noted the United Fresh effort to harmonize Good Agricultural Practices did not address third-party auditor certification.

“We knew that the harmonzied standard was a tough enough goal to achieve.”
The Global Food Safety Initiative which begin in 2000 and was designed to harmonize audit standards in Europe — still hasn’t solved that issue.

Ed Beckman, president of California Tomato Farmers and Scott Horsfall president and CEO of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, wrote to the Packer to say it has become very clear that a truly effective food safety program is about much more than the score you receive from your food safety inspector and that the true measure of success does not come from an audit score but is achieved when an entire commodity group or industry adopts a culture of food safety that is designed to identify risks, strives for continual improvement and always seeks to learn more.

Jim Crawford wrote to the Denver Post to say that the private-sector food safety auditor who gave a near-perfect score to Jensen Farms’ listeria-contaminated cantaloupe-packing process is subject to no Food and Drug Administration oversight, or to any other regulatory accountability. The article notes that this is the case with the entire third-party food-safety auditing industry.

Food safety criminals: throw them in jail or ship them off to the colonies

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"Right now you can sicken and kill your customers, and [companies] have no consequences other than embarrassment in the marketplace."

That’s what I told My Health News Daily. Jail time may help – it’s that embarrassment thing – but, "The biggest thing that can be done is that anyone producing or selling food needs to adopt a culture of food safety that puts not making your customers sick as your first priority. If your customers are dead or dying, it’s not easy to make money.

"It’s not up to government to produce safe food. It’s up to producers to know how to produce safe food," Powell said.

Fifteen years ago this month, an outbreak of E. coli from unpasteurized apple juice sickened 60 to 70 people, killed a 16-month-old girl from Denver and caused 14 children to develop a serious kidney condition that can require lifelong dialysis treatments.

The federal case brought against juice maker Odwalla resulted in the first criminal conviction for foodborne illness, although no one in the company served time in jail. The company was fined $1.5 million for distributing contaminated juice — the largest fine ever issued in the United States for food poisoning.

James Dickson, a food safety expert and professor at Iowa State University said, "Food isn’t sterile. The only way you would ever get away from foodborne disease outbreaks is if you refused to allow the sale of any raw product in the marketplace.”

Wal-Mart Frank: Are you a food safety manager or a food safety leader?

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There goes WalMart Frank again, hammering home the need for food safety leaders and that culture thing.

Frank Yiannas, vice president – food safety, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. writes in the latest Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) newsletter that management and leadership are different. A manager’s job is to oversee and optimize organizational processes to deliver results. A leader’s job is to change the process to deliver even greater results.

Frank says one term (management or leadership) is not inferior or superior to the other. They’re just different: and the food safety world need both; — good food safety management and more food safety leadership — as they are both critical to protecting public health.

• Food safety management focuses on the administration of set procedures within an established risk management system; food safety leadership focuses on the creation of new, science-based, and more effective risk reduction strategies, models, and processes. This quote by Stephen Covey illustrates this point quote well. He said, “Management works in the system; leadership works on the system.”

• Food safety management relies on formal authority to accomplish its objectives; food safety leadership relies on the ability to influence others to achieve success. Traditionally, food safety managers coerce others to comply because they have authority over them or their operation. In other words, they get others to comply by holding people and organizations accountable. Food safety leaders, in contrast, get others to do the right thing not because they’re being held accountable, but because they’ve been able to influence them to want to do so. They help others become responsible for food safety – not just accountable for food safety. There is a big difference between the two.

• Food safety management involves working with others based on functional roles; food safety leadership involves working with others in a collaborative manner. Food safety managers work with others in traditional ways to accomplish their objectives. Often times, whether visible or not, they’re protecting their organization’s interests whether it be academia, regulatory, or industry. In contrast, food safety leaders seek genuine win-win solutions for all stakeholders. They recognize they can do more to advance food safety by working constructively with others than by working alone.

1 year after letter grades New York people still eat out; Hawaii to launch color system

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Restaurant inspection may only be a snapshot in time, and the grading or disclosure systems may have bureaucratic rules and seem unfair, but disclosure helps build a food safety culture, for the buying public and the back kitchen.

Lisa Fickenscher of Crain’s New York reports Waldy Malouf, the chef-owner of Beacon, has been asked by several concerned patrons about the “Grade Pending” sign posted in the restaurant’s entryway. One customer wanted a detailed explanation before she would book a party at the well-regarded midtown spot.

With the city reaching the one-year anniversary of the letter grading system, on July 28, New Yorkers have come to rely on the prominently displayed signs. And many say the grades influence their decision whether to dine at an establishment.

This week, Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley will mark the system’s first year by releasing results of the program. And if the agency’s previous findings are an indication, the majority of New York’s 24,000-plus restaurants will have earned an A.

The grades are “something the public wants,” said Anthony Dell’ Orto, owner of Manganaro’s Hero Boy. “You’d be antagonizing your own customers” to oppose the system, said Mr. Dell’Orto, whose Hell’s Kitchen eatery received an A.

The city has hailed the grades as a success by several measures. Officials point out that though just 27% of restaurants earned an A on the first inspection, in a second round for those with lower grades, a majority had improved enough to earn an A.

“We are more vigilant and diligent,” said Andrew Schnipper, co-owner of Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen, a cafeteria-style American food joint in Times Square that was recently awarded a top grade.

To gain his stripes, Mr. Schnipper ramped up efforts to keep his place immaculate and in compliance with the health code. That meant a checklist with items ranging from ensuring that refrigerators are equipped with thermometers to checking that bathrooms always have soap and paper towels.

Though forced to abide by the rules, most owners view the system as unfair. They argue that it is a cash cow for a revenue-starved city—in addition to a flawed snapshot of their businesses. Even operators who boast an A are skeptical about the grades’ effectiveness as an appropriate measure.

The Hawaii Tribune Herald reports big changes are coming to the way the state Department of Health inspects and evaluates food establishments. Soon, the public will know at a glance how a restaurant, school cafeteria or other food service establishment fared in its most recent inspection.

The grading system will be green, yellow and red cards – similar to the program used in Toronto — prominently posted in public view in the eating establishment.

The cards will be paired with an online restaurant inspection reporting system that will allow the public to see the inspection reports simply by selecting the name of a restaurant.

The Department of Health is formulating new rules and will hold public hearings on all the islands before they are adopted. The inspection system overhaul includes an update to the FDA’s 2009 food safety standards. Many governments are using the 2001 and 2005 food codes; Hawaii is using the 1991 code, Oshiro said.

If all goes as planned, the new system could be in place on Oahu by the beginning of next year, and on the Neighbor Islands by next spring.

The importance of restaurant inspections can’t be underestimated, said Douglas Powell, professor of food safety in the Kansas State University Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology and one of the authors of barfblog.com, a blog about food safety.

"Public disclosure of inspection information helps foster a culture of food safety by encouraging dialogue about food safety concerns among both consumers, various levels of government and the food service industry," he said.

Wal-Mart Frank encourages food companies to develop food safety culture

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Before we had lunch last month, Wal-Mart Frank told the 2011 American Meat Science Association Reciprocal Meat Conference in Manhattan (Kansas), “If you did food safety this year the way you did it last year, you’re going to lose,” and that food processors should go beyond traditional approaches to managing risk and work to develop a culture of food safety.

Yiannas, vice president of food safety for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., said that processors must go beyond the traditional strategies based on training, inspection and microbiological testing, which the industry has employed for years. While those strategies have improved over time, it’s important for companies to take new approaches.

“HACCP is a step in the right direction, but it’s not the final destination,” said Yiannas of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system that companies use in their food safety programs. He cited data showing that in cases of food-borne illness from 1993-1997, 37 percent were due to improper holding temperatures, 11 percent were due to inadequate cooking, and 19 percent were due to poor hygiene, noting that all of those cases were linked to human behavior.

“Scientists often think of behavior as the soft stuff (unlike microbiology), but the soft stuff is the hard stuff,” he said, adding that scientists tend to focus on the science when they should also be looking at the organizational structure of a company.

“Knowledge does not equal behavior change. Food safety culture is a choice,” Yiannas said. The companies who are good at it:

Create food safety expectations;
Educate and train their food employees;
Communicate food safety messages frequently;
Establish food safety goals and measurements; and
Have consequences, including rewards, for food safety behaviors.

“It’s a simple thing but recognizing people for doing the right thing is effective,” he said.

Checklist culture to reduce risk

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Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times follows up her ‘machines that go ping’ piece about hi-tech handwashing compliance techniques with a low-tech approach that seems ridiculously successful: checklists.

“In 2003, the Michigan Health and Hospital Association began an experiment to see if its members could bring down the rate of infection in central line catheters — one of the deadliest types of hospital-acquired infections.

“The intensive care units at nearly every hospital in Michigan participated — 103 I.C.U.’s. What they had to do was use a five-point checklist to prevent infection when inserting the catheters. The steps were: Wash hands. Cover the patient with sterile drapes. Clean the skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic. Do not insert catheters into the groin area. Remove catheters as soon as they are no longer needed.

“A paper in the New England Journal of Medicine by Peter Pronovost, the Johns Hopkins University doctor who designed the checklist, set out the results.

“’Within 3 months after implementation, the median rate of infection was 0, a rate sustained throughout the remaining 15 months of follow-up. All types of participating hospitals realized a similar improvement.’”

“Atul Gawande wrote about the checklist in The New Yorker, and went on to write a book called “The Checklist Manifesto.” In his article, he talks about how the checklist makes each step explicit and helps harried doctors and nurses to remember all of them. …

“The checklist itself probably isn’t useful for routine hand-washing — there would be only one item on it. What is useful is borrowing the way the checklist replaces a culture of “no questions” with a culture of “patient safety comes first and it is part of my job to speak up.”

“One very valuable source for ways to improve hand-washing rates comes from the health care industry’s Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare Hand Hygiene Project. The project worked with eight hospitals to implement pilot programs designed to raise hand-washing rates in different ways. A solution that helped almost everywhere was to streamline workflow to make it easier and more automatic to wash hands: for example, to put sinks in the same place in every room, with a table to put down items the nurse might be carrying. Keep supplies in every room so nurses don’t have to go in and out to get them.

But the project also found, as many readers suggested, that hospital managers needed to elevate hand-washing as a priority, stress its importance, and hold all hospital workers accountable. Accountability requires knowing the hand-washing rates of different units and people, which is why the technological systems I wrote about on Tuesday can be important. But data only matters if it is used. Once hospitals can know their workers’ hand-washing rates, they need to use the information for coaching and to create incentives — both negative and positive.”
 

Will machines that go Ping increase handwashing compliance?

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Money is a good way to get an administrator’s attention.

Monty Python figured this out in 1983’s, The Meaning of Life.

In The Miracle of Birth bit, as a laboring woman is wheeled into the delivery room surrounded by the machines meant to assist birth, the hospital administrator, Mr. Pycroft, arrives.

“Wonderful what we can do nowadays.
[ping]

“Aah! I see you have the machine that goes ‘ping’.

“You see, we lease this back from the company we sold it to, and that way, it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
[applause]

“Thank you. Thank you. We try to do our best. Well, do carry on.”

Tina Rosenberg of the N.Y. Times reports on the health blog today that handwashing compliance in hospitals generally sucks, provides a thorough overview of why it sucks, and notes that hospitals are now paying more attention to the matter: money.

“In 2008, hospitals were told that Medicare would no longer reimburse them for the cost of treating preventable hospital-acquired conditions it calls “never events,” which includes many kinds of hospital-acquired infections. The new health care reform bill instructs states to do the same with Medicaid. Many insurance companies also now refuse to pay for never events. This tends to concentrate the minds of hospital executives. …

“In the last year or two, several new ways to promote hand-washing – all things that beep – have made their debut: HyGreen, BioVigil, Patient Care Technology System’s Amelior 360 and Proventix’s nGage are some of them, but there are others. Some are spinoffs of systems widely used to track hospital equipment (this is how hospitals can find a wheelchair when it is needed). All employ new technology that can detect alcohol — which in hospitals is a component not only of rubbing gel but also soap.

“They work like this: every health care worker wears an electronic badge. When she washes her hands or uses alcohol rub, a sensor at the sink or dispenser or her own badge smells the alcohol and registers that she has washed her hands.

“Another sensor near the patient detects when her badge enters a room or the perimeter around a patient that the hospital sets. If that badge shows that her hands were recently washed, it displays a green light or something else the patient can see. If she hasn’t washed, her hands, the badge says so and emits a signal to remind her to do so. The sensor also sends this information to a central data base. Information about the hand-washing practices of a particular unit, shift or individual is instantly available.”

There is some evidence the systems work, but they are also expensive.

And sorta useless without a culture change.

Rosenberg writes any technological fix should be accompanied by “creating a culture of accountability, redesigning hand hygiene systems to make hand-washing easy and automatic, and other strategies.”

We prefer shock and shame.
 

Australian supermarkets racing to the hormone-free gutter

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Another Australian supermarket chain has gotten into the BS business by claiming the lamb on its shelves is hormone-free.

This despite hormones never being used in lamb production in Australia.

Melbourne supermarket chain Maxi Foods has signs on the meat shelves of its Blackburn and Upper Ferntree Gully stores advertizing that "All our beef, lamb and pork are Australian grown with no added hormones."

The chain is following Coles, which began advertising HGP-free beef last year.
The advertising has angered the Sheepmeat Council, which said hormones have never been used in lamb production in Australia.

President Kate Joseph said growth hormones were never used because they were not needed.

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority confirmed no hormones were registered for use in lamb production in Australia.

Australia has just as much foodborne illness as everyone else. Retailers get drunk on the profit margins for specious claims like organic/natural/local/sustainable or hormone-free, which have nothing to do with people barfing.

Market microbiologically safe food – and back it up with meaningful data.