Tag Archives: market

Hormel advertises food safety technology for deli

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Meatingplace reports the foodservice unit of Hormel Foods is launching an advertising campaign to publicize its use of high-pressure pasteurization on its deli meats.

The campaign contrasts the company’s pre-sliced HPP-treated deli meats to those sliced on premises, which can introduce listeria to the product via slicers that are not properly cleaned and sanitized.

The campaign is aimed at foodservice operators, and markets Hormel’s TrueTaste technology, stemming from the company’s use of HPP equipment installed in its plants.

The campaign is “designed to inform and educate foodservice operators of the potential food safety risks associated with deli meats,” the release says. “High-pressure pasteurization is the most effective way to eliminate dangerous foodborne pathogens such as listeria from sliced deli meats—without any compromise in flavor or texture. The technology also helps extend shelf life.”

The campaign includes print ads and a website that includes a video HPP demonstration and links to additional resources.

Now take it to the next level and advertise direclty to consumers; market food safety at retail so people can choose.
 

My milkshake is better than yours; will government make spinach and lettuce safer?

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The folks that produce fresh spinach and lettuce are channeling their inner Milkshake, dialing back to late 2003 when weblogs or blogs began to emerge in force, and launched their own blog – last week.

The awkwardly named Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement – LGMA for funksters – is starting a “new dialogue on leafy greens food safety” with at least two blog posts a month.

Lowered expectations is good, especially when LGMA is eight years late to the blogshpere and about 10 years late to the food-safety-in-produce thing. The worst is to start a web page or a blog and then not follow through. Listeria-stricken Maple Leaf Foods hasn’t posted anything new on its Journey-inspired Our Journey to Food Safety Leadership, since Nov. 2010. Maybe they are on other journeys, looking for that small town girl.

LGMA chairman Jamie Strachan wrote in the inaugural blog on April 14, 2011, that it’s been four years since this “first-of-its-kind program began. It hasn’t been easy, but the very fact that the LGMA exists today is proof that the challenges of implementing a comprehensive food safety system for an entire commodity can be overcome.”

LGMA didn’t invent it. Lots of groups have marketing orders. We did the whole food safety thing with the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Marketing Board – as it was called back then – in 2000.

Chairman Strachan also writes, “I’m often asked, ‘How do you know the LGMA is working?’

“The answer to that question is simple — the LGMA is working to establish a culture of food safety on leafy greens farms. Most farmers will tell you that leafy greens were safe before the LGMA came along, but what is changed today is the high level of attention food safety on the farm now receives. Everyone involved in operations, from the farmer to the harvesters, know and understand that food safety considerations are ALWAYS top of mind.”

That’s not verification. And people who write in all caps are YELLING to get attention, maybe because their writing sucks.

They’ve got the rhetoric; where’s the reality?

There have been many reinterpretations of history regarding fresh produce and microbial food safety. We have argued the tipping point was 1996, involving both the Odwalla E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in unpasteurized juice, coupled with the cyclospora outbreak which was initially and erroneously linked to California strawberries (it was Guatemalan raspberries). This led to the first attempts at comprehensive on-farm food safety programs for fresh produce because, these bugs ain’t going to be washed off; they have to be prevented, as much as possible, from getting on or in fresh produce on the farm.

For the growers of leafy greens, things apparently didn’t tip until the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in bagged spinach from California that sickened 200 and killed four, despite 29 previous outbreaks and years of warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

A table of leafy green foodborne illness outbreaks is available at:
http://bites.ksu.edu/Outbreaks%20related%20to%20leafy%20greens%201993-2010

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided proposed to take LGMA national.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is requesting comment on the creation of a voluntary National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement (NLGMA) that would assist all segments of the leafy green industry in meeting commercial food quality and safety requirements.”

Full justification for the proposed rule is available at http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5077207

When we were hanging out with greenhouse tomato growers, the joke we got familiar with was:

“What’s the worst thing you can say to a farmer?”

“Hi, I’m from the government, I’m here to help.”

If the government needs to be involved, things have really gone bad.

Should a federal food safety program be based on LGMA, a group that was dragged to the food safety party and is always behind?

 

Stop waiting for government. And stop channeling Kelis. Make test results public, market food safety at retail so consumers can choose, and if people get sick from your product, be the first to tell the public.
 

Local food means anything; safe food means no barfing

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Sorenne and I started some seeds a few weeks ago (right, exactly as shown), and promptly brought them in during a cold snap, but spring seems to have sprung.

We do OK with the herbs and berries, greens, tomatoes, beans and peas. But I wouldn’t depend on the yields.

Food from my yard is local, but I still take care to control microbial food safety risks (see the 2009 video, below).

Associated Press reports the No. 2 official at the U.S. Agriculture Department recently got a real-life lesson in the loose definition of the trendiest word in groceries: "local."

Walking into her neighborhood grocery store in Washington, Kathleen Merrigan saw a beautiful display of plump strawberries and a sign that said they were local produce. But the package itself said they were grown in California, well over 2,000 miles away.

But what does local mean? Lacking common agreement, sellers capitalizing on the trend occasionally try to fudge the largely unregulated term. Some grocery stores may define local as within a large group of states, while consumers might think it means right in their hometown.

"It’s a sales gimmick," says Allen Swann, a Maryland farmer who became frustrated when he realized a nearby grocery chain was selling peaches and corn from New York and New Jersey as local produce. "They are using the word local because of the economic advantage of using the word local."

Vermont defines "local" as grown within the state or within 30 miles of where it is sold. Massachusetts has similar restrictions for the word "native." And numerous other states have made it easier for local farmers to advertise that their food was produced in-state.

Whole Foods Market says a food cannot be labeled as local unless it traveled to the store in seven or fewer hours by car or truck. Wal-Mart labels produce as local if it is from the same state where it is sold. Supervalu, which operates some Albertsons stores, Jewel-Osco and other supermarket chains, defines local as within regions that can encompass four or five states. Safeway defines local as coming from the same state or a one-day drive from field to store. Many retailers just leave it up to individual store managers.

Whatever local means, and whether it’s better or not, I’ll have fun puttering with my family and make sure it’s safe.
 

Food fraud: labels and local mean little

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Last week, a west Australian egg wholesaler was fined $50,000 in federal court for misleading the public by labeling cartons of eggs as "free range" when they knew a substantial proportion of the eggs were not free range.

Last month, two Arizona residents plead guilty to 13 felony offenses for their roles in purchasing and then re-selling farm-raised Asian catfish and Lake Victoria perch falsely labeled as grouper, sole or snapper; selling foreign farm-raised shrimp falsely labeled as U.S. wild caught shrimp and selling shrimp that falsely claimed to be larger and more expensive than they actually were; and for buying fish they knew had been illegally imported into the United States. Some of the fish tested positive for malachite green and Enrofloxin, both of which are considered health hazards and banned from U.S. food products.

Last fall, the Washington Post reported expensive sheep’s milk cheese in a Manhattan market was really made from cow’s milk, a jar of "Sturgeon caviar" was Mississippi paddlefish, and some honey is diluted with sugar beets or corn syrup, but still market as 100 percent pure at a premium price.

Last year, an NBCLA undercover investigation revealed that some farmers at southern California markets are making false claims and flat-out lies about the produce they’re selling.

NBCLA’s investigation began this summer, when we bought produce at farmers markets across the LA area, and then made surprise visits to farms where we were told the produce was being grown.

We found farms full of weeds, or dry dirt, instead of rows of the vegetables that were being sold at the markets. In fact, farmers markets are closely regulated by state law. Farmers who sell at these markets are supposed to sell produce they’ve grown themselves, and they can’t make false claims about their produce.

We did find plenty of vendors doing just that, like Underwood Farms, which sells produce at 14 markets, all grown on a family farm in Moorpark.

But our investigation also uncovered vendors who are selling stuff they didn’t grow, like Frutos Farms, which sells at seven different farmers markets in LA and Orange counties.

Frutos Farm’s state permit to sell produce at farmers markets says their farm is in Cypress.

NBCLA asked owner Jesse Frutos, "Everything you sell at farmers markets is grown in your Cypress field?"

Jesse responded, "Correct…everything."

But when NBCLA made a surprise visit to the Cypress field listed on its permit, Frutos couldn’t show us most of the produce he was selling, such as celery, garlic, and avocados.

So NBCLA asked, "Do you grow avocados here?"

"Avocados? No, not here on the lot. … That I’ll be honest. That stuff came from somewhere else," Frutos said.

Somewhere else? NBCLA’s undercover cameras followed Jesse’s trucks on farmers market days, and saw him going to the big wholesale produce warehouses in downtown LA.

We saw him loading up his truck, with boxes of produce from big commercial farms as far away as Mexico. He bought many of the types of items we saw him selling at the farmers markets.

After documenting this, NBCLA asked Jesse, "You are selling some things at farmers markets that you didn’t grow, that you got at wholesale produce markets?"

Jesse admitted, "Yes."

By the end of our investigation, we found vendors who make false claims selling at more than two dozen farmers markets.

Food fraud has been around a long time.

A recent paper in the British Food Journal reinforces the idea despite scientific sophistication, rules to control food fraud are only as good as the enforcement that backs them up.

In the egg case, Justice Tony North found the conduct involved a high level of dishonesty and was very difficult to detect because once the eggs were in the cartons it was impossible to determine if they were free range or not.

As today’s society grapples with how best to validate that food is indeed what it says it is — and safe — and as the huskers and buskers emerge with cure-alls, I turn to the words of Madeleine Ferrières a professor of social history at the University of Avignon, France, in Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, first published in French in 2002, but translated into English in 2006:

"All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates. … And we are often too blinded by this amnesia to view our present food situation clearly. This amnesia is very convenient. It allows us to reinvent the past and construct a complaisant, retrospective mythology."

View more videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com.

Oregon bill to exempt farmers’ markets ignores food safety

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There’s always weird stuff going on with state legislators. Anyone who watches Big Love on HBO would know that polygamist and newly elected state representative Bill is just making a mess of things in the TV version of Utah.

In Oregon, Rep. Matt Wingard, R-Wilsonville, introduced House Bill 2336 to balance promotion of farmers’ markets with protection for food safety.

?“I believe we have adequately addressed the issues and you have a bill before you that allows farmers’ markets to continue to grow and thrive. … The principal ingredients must be grown and processed by their producer, it must list ingredients and the name and address of the producer, the producer is limited to $20,000 in annual sales, and it must carry a label that it is homemade and is not prepared in an inspected food establishment.”?

Faith-based food safety is in no one’s interest.
 

Slime in the icemaker makes me gag

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Or it makes Larry Hicks of Pennsylvania’s York Dispatch gag.

Hicks says there are numerous restaurants in York County he wouldn’t patronize if he was starving to death because they’ve done poorly on their food inspections, and that in reading recent restaurant inspection reports, "slime inside the icemaker or ice bin is enough to make me gag. No excuse for that. Same for food prep personnel not frequently washing their hands. …

“Having food storage refrigerators that don’t maintain the proper temperatures or failing to keep food preparation areas clean does not cut it with me.

"One failing restaurant had bottles of liquor with dead insects inside the bottles. How can that happen? The same place stored raw chicken over ready-to-eat foods in the refrigerated walk-in. C’mon, we know better than that if we’re in the food business, don’t we?

"I understand it’s practically impossible for any and all restaurants not to occasionally have a mouse find its way into the kitchen. The occasional bug (even a cockroach) is to be expected, as well. But an infestation of those critters is not acceptable under any circumstances. If I know there’s been an infestation, I cross the place off my list. I just don’t go there.

"Because it indicates to me that there’s a lack of attention to detail in that particular restaurant. It’s not focused on what is important.

"I’m not only glad food safety regulations are enforced but that the results of the inspections are made a matter of public record. I read those stories every time.

"Otherwise, we’d have no clue what’s going on in the back of the restaurant.
Unless … restaurants start telling us when they score well on their food safety inspections.

"Maybe that could be the next trend in the food service industry."

Sounds like marketing food safety. Bring it on.
 

Fantastical food safety tales

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Examiner.com is some web site that has published fantastical food safety tales over the years.

A correspondent from Tampa Bay writes that, “by pledging to only use wholesome, organic foods … the chance of foodborne illness is lessened as you are buying from a trusted source. Buy organic when possible – Markets such as Whole Foods and your local farmers market are good sources for quality earth-grown produce."

Whole Foods sucks at food safety. Organic is a production standard that has nothing to do with food safety. Enjoy the Armstrong and Miller Farmer’s Market. 

Salmonella-tainted eggs linked to U.S. government’s failure to act; screw consumers

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Government is hopeless. Endless meetings, competing agendas, bruised egos – all in an effort to get a national salmonella-egg rule passed going back to the 1980s.

The Washington Post has a blow-by-blow account of the bureaucratic wankfest that is federal egg safety, which will keep politicos intrigued with their Saturday morning lattes and eggs Benedict, but offers nothing for the over-easy crowd.

The salmonella-in-eggs outbreak this summer sickened over 1,900 with plenty of blame to go around – negligent ownership, lax inspections, awful auditors and retailers who didn’t want to know. But after reading the Post account, does anyone really want the feds in charge?

Lester Crawford, whose own bout with salmonella in 1986 turned the issue into a personal battle, pushed for egg regulation while running the food safety program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1987 to 1991, and he said he was stunned by the lack of progress when he joined the Food and Drug Administration as acting deputy commissioner in 2002.

"The system certainly was at its worst. … I went nuts. I was told it was ready to go and all we needed to do was say yes, so I said yes.”

He kept up the fight through 2005, when he left the agency.

The regulations that took effect this year require farmers to buy chickens that are certified free of salmonella, test those chickens while they are laying eggs and, if there is a positive test, stop selling whole eggs.

In the absence of federal regulation, some states began in the 1990s to enact their own rules, many focused on refrigeration. But the varying requirements created headaches for producers selling nationwide.

The health of chickens falls under the USDA, but the FDA oversees the safety of whole eggs. Once an egg is broken and made into an "egg product," responsibility for its safety switches back to the USDA.

The USDA also oversees transportation of whole eggs, but the FDA dictates how they should be stored once they reach restaurants or stores.

Because salmonella wasn’t making chickens sick, the USDA initially decided not to intervene. USDA inspectors are in packing facilities, but henhouses normally are the purview of the FDA. And the FDA rarely inspected henhouses.

The FDA has not routinely inspected egg farms because it has not established rules or standards, Deputy Commissioner Joshua M. Sharfstein said.

I get that the feds failed. But as a consumer, am I supposed to have faith that FDA has checked out Salmonella Jack DeCoster’s operations, now that his eggs are back on retail shelves?

What if I want to avoid DeCoster’s eggs, because he has a bad track record and will soon be slip-slidin’ away to the lowest common denominator?

Repeated outbreaks have shown there are good producers and bad producers, good retailers and bad retailers. As a consumer, I have no way of knowing.

Tell consumers about salmonella-testing programs meant to reduce risks; put a URL on egg cartons so those who are interested can use the Internet or even personal phones to see how the eggs were raised and testing data. The best producers and processors will go far beyond the lowest common denominator of government and should be rewarded in the marketplace.

Sorenne, eggs for breakfast?
 

Rhetoric rules: food safety law battle accomplishes nothing

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Tomorrow’s USA Today has competing food safety editorials and they both get it wrong.

The editorial board of USA Today says regulators lack enough authority to do what’s needed to protect the public, and they need recall authority.

No, regulators have lots of authority and continually mess up.

Tom Coburn, a medical doctor and a Republican senator from Oklahoma, says in this political nosestretcher that “America has the safest food supply in the world, and it has never been safer” and that “the so-called FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, which the Senate will vote on after Thanksgiving, only expands a disjointed, duplicative and ineffective food safety bureaucracy. “

Coburn says that “for the past 100 years, the free market, not the government, has been the primary driver of innovation and improved safety. Consumer choice is a far more effective accountability mechanism than government bureaucracies.”

Except consumers can’t choose safer food because no one will promote such food at retail. Coburn is having some wet dreams about Reagan trickle-down economics.

Market food safety at retail and consumers could actually choose. Otherwise, it just tastes like urine, trickling down …

Why doesn’t Hiliandale brag about its egg food safety accomplishments

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Hillandale Farms, one of the Iowa culprits in the over-1800-sick-with-salmonella-and-500-million-egg recall, was cleared to start selling eggs again last month, but why would anyone knowingly buy them?

They wouldn’t know because of the Ponzi scheme of renaming food commodities for marketing, and the lack of food safety marketing at retail.
Besides, everyone has gone back to sleep.

Maybe an intrepid journalist can ask Hillandale about their most recent salmonella test results since I’m sure the company is eager to rebuild public trust.

Other jurisdictions aren’t waiting.

State Veterinarian Don Hoenig told Maine lawmakers yesterday the state’s comprehensive program to prevent salmonella contamination at egg farms has paid off.

"The result of it is, we have not had a positive building in over a year. We’ve achieved a measure of success, we’re cautiously optimistic that we’re on the right track–I don’t know for sure that we are–but the vaccination seems to have been a key component of the control program."

Hoenig says after the salmonella outbreak in Iowa this summer, he found himself answering more and more questions from national reporters about Maine’s egg inspection program. He told members of the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee that’s when he realized just how good Maine’s program is.

Klaus Torborg, of Lohmann Animal Health, has warned UK producers not to become complacent about controlling salmonella.

The UK has the lowest levels of salmonella in laying hens of any major egg-producing country, but he says that sustaining this relies on vaccination, hygiene, pest control and the disinfection of vehicles, water and buildings.