Tag Archives: Salad

Fresh Express makes marketing missteps

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That’s the headline on Greg Johnson’s column in The Packer today, criticizing the way Fresh Express’ announced its super-duper new produce wash.

I’m all for marketing food safety, but only if it can be thoroughly backed up.

Johnson complains this kind of promotion violates the generally agreed upon, though nonbinding, industry standard after the 2006 E. coli spinach outbreak that the produce industry is in food safety together. ?

Once companies say they’re safer than others, consumers can infer that some produce is less safe or worse, unsafe, and they stop buying.

Tom Stenzel, president and CEO of the United Fresh Produce Association, said, “Food safety should never be a competitive advantage. If a new product improves food safety, we should share it with the whole industry.”

Ed Loyd, director of corporate communications for Chiquita, said the company isn’t marketing its method as safer than others because it’s offering FreshRinse technology to competitors.

Several competitors say Fresh Express’ claims about its new wash are exaggerated or flat-out false, and they have not been verified by any third party.

Bagged salad: press release before publishing a bad idea

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In Sept. 2000, I called Procter & Gamble to substantiate claims their consumer-oriented FIT Fruit and Vegetable Wash removed 99.9 per cent more residue and dirt than water alone.

The PR-thingies hooked me up with some scientists at P&G in Cincinnati, who verbally told me that sample cucumbers, tomatoes and the like were grown on the same farm in California, sprayed with chemicals that would be used in conventional production, and then harvested immediately and washed with FIT or water. The FIT removed 99.9 per cent more, or so the company claimed.

One problem. Many of the chemicals used had harvest?after dates, such as the one tomato chemical that must be applied at least 20 days before harvest. Residue data on produce in North American stores reveals extremely low levels, in the parts per million or billion. So that 99.9 per cent reduction was buying consumers an extra couple of zeros in the residue quantity, all well below health limits.

I also asked why the results hadn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the P&G types said it was an important advance that had to be made available to consumers as soon as possible, without the delays and messiness of peer-review.

Maybe Chiquita Brands, the owners of Fresh Express and also based in Cincinnati, are using the same PR flunkies as P&G because the public relations around the new produce rinse – FreshRinse – is strikingly familiar and equally lame as FIT in 2000.

For the most part, pathogens and chemicals in fresh produce need to be controlled on the farm, and in transportation and distribution.

The new rinse, for use in the packing shed and which the company says removes microorganisms from leafy greens more effectively than conventional chlorine sanitizers, was unveiled yesterday at a news conference at the Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit to gushing reviews.

Fernando Aguirre, Chiquita’s chairman and chief executive officer, said,

"Based on our extensive research, we are proud to introduce the biggest invention since the creation of prepackaged salads. … Compare FreshRinse technology to current wash standards. Chlorine is the abacus and FreshRinse is the iPad. An abacus is what people use with the beads, a great thing at the time, just like chlorine rinse was. We believe FreshRinse sets a new standard in food safety.”

Also jumping aboard the metaphor train, Mike Burness, vice president of global quality and food safety said,

“As a matter of magnitude, that’s the equivalent of chlorine walking a mile and FreshRinse making two round trips to the moon. If chlorine walked one mile, FreshRinse would have walked a marathon. We have seen a significant reduction of potential foodborne organisms that cause disease.”

Scientific advisors who gave more qualified endorsements included project advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, Dr. David Acheson, managing director of food and import safety for Leavitt Partners and the former the Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner for food protection and chief medical officer, and Dr. Robert Buchanan, director and professor, University of Maryland Center for Food Safety & Security Systems.

Did any of you esteemed science types say to Fresh Express, we should publish these results in a peer-reviewed journal first, because that’s the way this credibility thing works?

I told Ilan Brat of the Wall Street Journal yesterday that I couldn’t judge whether the new wash worked better or not without publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Fresh Express had three recalls of its bagged salads this year, and was the source of a Salmonella typhirmirium outbreak that sickened eight people in May, but decided it wasn’t worth telling anyone about it.

Metaphor-man Burness, told the Journal the company chose to market the product before submitting supporting research for publication in peer-reviewed journals because "anything that advances food safety, we believe we need to leverage that for our consumers."

Sounds familiar.

He added that the company plans to submit its research to the Journal of Food Protection by the end of the year.

Dude, I’ve got a bunch of graduate students who say they have papers they are going to prepare for the Journal of Food Protection. I have about a dozen in my head too. Except that doesn’t count for shit.

If the company had instead spent the time it used coming up with terrible risk communication metaphors preparing the results for publication, they would at least have a paper submitted. Until then, I’m thinking cold fusion.

"All this data is nice—why isn’t it published in a peer-reviewed journal?" Powell said.

Still, he added, "if it does what it says it can do, that would be important, because it would be an additional tool to lower the risk" that eating salad greens could cause outbreaks of disease.

Fresh Express, you’re an industry leader and this year’s winner of the International Association for Food Protection’s Black Pearl award for food safety leadership. But I don’t get this. I’m all for marketing food safety, but with a strong caveat: be able to back it up.

A table of leafy green foodborne illness outbreaks is available at:

http://bites.ksu.edu/Outbreaks%20related%20to%20leafy%20greens%201993-2010
 

Hamburgers: fresh is not the same as safe

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‘Our restaurant’s burgers are safe to eat undercooked: The meat is fresh and ground in-house.’

This is wrong, dangerous, and nothing more than food porn, the wishful thinking that bacteria will avoid certain products if prepared with enough manual labor and love.

Bacteria don’t care about love.

Shamona Harnett of the Winnipeg Free Press reported the all-too-common chat with her server as she tried to order a burger – she went with well-done. And she urged cooks to use a food thermometer to ensure the burger has reached 160 F, which is also an effective way to ensure the cook doesn’t overcook the burger. Thermometers make people better cooks.

Harnett then goes on to say that “experts say consumers should wash lettuce — even if it’s labelled pre-washed.”

No they don’t. An expert panel concluded,

"Leafy green salad in sealed bags labeled ‘washed’ or ‘ready-to-eat’ that are produced in a facility inspected by a regulatory authority and operated under cGMPs, does not need additional washing at the time of use unless specifically directed on the label. The panel also advised that additional washing of ready-to-eat green salads is not likely to enhance safety. The risk of cross contamination from food handlers and food contact surfaces used during washing may outweigh any safety benefit that further washing may confer."

Food safety is not simple.
 

Don’t eat poop — salad edition

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The Codex Alimentarius Commission decided at its meeting in Geneva that animal manure should not be used to fertilize lettuce and other fresh vegetables sold "ready to eat" to avoid dangerous diseases.

Contaminated water must also be kept away from bagged produce that is not heat-treated, the Codex experts said, fixing new benchmarks that could change production and harvesting norms across the world.

We’ve been saying that for 12 years and advocating such practices with fresh fruit and vegetable growers.

Jorgen Schlundt, director of food safety and zoonoses at the World Health Organization, said,

"It makes sense in a number of different production systems but when you are producing fresh salads that will be treated without heat treatment there is a problem.”
 

Salmonella found in salad, no one sick – yet

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Fresh Express, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chiquita Brands International, is voluntarily recalling a specific selection of Fresh Express Romaine-based ready-to-eat salads with the expired Use-by Dates of May 13th through May 16th and an "S" in the Product Code because they have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella. The recall extends only to products with these Use-by Dates and Product Codes and sold in the following states: Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Nebraska, Montana, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota

The recall notification is being issued out of an abundance of caution based on an isolated instance in which a single package of Fresh Express Hearts of Romaine Salad with a use by date of May 15 was confirmed positive for Salmonella in a random sample test conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

When was the test conducted, because there have been rumors of a positive circulating on the Intertubes? When was the positive confirmed? What strain of Salmonella is involved? Why go public now instead of earlier? How incompetent does the Fresh Express PR person have to be to ignore these questions in the press release?

Sounds like the Sponge Bob leafy greens cone of silence.

Food safety at the salad bar

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(Long before an outbreak of E. coli O145 was linked to romaine lettuce served at salad bars, Food Safety Reporting student Reggie Stimpson (right, exactly as shown) set out to document food safety practices at some Manhattan (Kansas) salad bars. Reggie describes himself as new to food safety reporting but a vigorous eater. Currently a Kansas State University student living in Wichita, Kansas, he hopes to one day graduate and pay off his student loans before death – dp)

MANHATTAN, KS — On my 16th birthday my mom got me a job at a large grocery chain, and I continued to work there for another 6 years. During lunch breaks I often found myself at the salad bar looking for something light to keep me going during the remainder of my shift. At the time I knew very little about food safety.

I assumed if it was there for the taking, it had to be safe.

Assumptions can be dangerous in the world of food safety. How can anyone truly know how safe the food at the salad bar is? The procedures of the salad bar staff are unknown to customers. Furthermore, the customers themselves can cause safety problems.

Researchers at the University of California watched salad bars to see sanitary practices and found that 60 per cent of the customers committed at least one infraction in serving themselves at the salad bar. These included: spilling food around containers; dipping their fingers into salad dressings for a sample lick; eating from their plates while waiting in the serving line; and ducking their heads underneath the sneeze guard (clear plastic roof) for better access to the food.

All these are just the infractions that take place at the salad bar, but what about the safety of the raw ingredients?

How fresh are the salad bar items, and how long can food be out safely on the bar? What are the protections against airborne contaminants, and contamination of the bars’ contents by the workers and customers? And, most importantly, what are the criteria the answers to these questions are based on?

These are some of the questions I set out to find answers to. Some of those answers may surprise, some may be exactly as assumed.

According to former Dillons Grocery salad bar worker Shauntae Richardson it all depends on what you consider fresh.

"What we usually did with the fruits and vegetables is chop them up and place them into dated bins before storing them in a refrigerator," Richardson said. “The dates on the bins would be sort of like a expiration date, with four or five days being the cut-off. So on the third day it wasn‘t as fresh as it was on the first, but it was still fresh.”

The dated bins are replaced daily after the bar closes, a ritual meant to insure further safety according to Richardson.

“We would put them in a fresh, clean container so the food wouldn’t just sit in the same spot for days,” she explained. “Which would leave me with a mile-high stack of dishes to do every night.”

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) perishable fresh fruits and vegetables can be best maintained by storing in a clean refrigerator at a temperature of 40° F or below. Temperature is also an important component to salad bar safety. According to the FDA’s food safety website (http://foodsafety.gov/) bacteria grow most rapidly in the range of temperatures between 40 ° and 140 °F, doubling in number in as little as 20 minutes. This range of temperatures is often called the "Danger Zone."

“I would monitor temperatures every two hours to make sure [items] weren’t warm,” said Richardson. “At Dillons we didn’t have a “Danger Zone” we had the “Safe Zone” which was the ideal temperatures for certain foods.”

Fresh produce does not mean new produce.

“Before I actually worked in produce I thought fresh meant it was picked, washed, and cut that day,” said former Super Target produce worker Brandon Cornwell.

Dates and refrigeration are not the only tests of freshness used at salad bars. According to Cornwell workers are asked to use their senses: “We would touch it, smell it, look at it, and taste it everyday before we put it out.”

According to Richardson different products required different tests.

“When we had watermelon on the bar and it was getting close to expiring you would know because it would start to get real mushy,” she explained. “Pineapples you have to eat because they would still be firm, but taste sour.”

Richardson believes that eventually workers began to make assumptions on the freshness of food based on past experiences.

“Normally the strawberries would be the first to go bad. Then it was the melons, like honeydews, cantalope, and watermelons. So if the strawberries were still good I wouldn’t even check the melons yet,” she said. “And I wasn’t the only one.”

Even the most basic of food safety procedures, like wearing gloves and washing hands, can be taken for granted.

“I would see people wearing the same latex gloves all day,” Cornwell said. “We cut meat, like the chicken for the salad, and they had on the same gloves.”

Richardson agrees: “Yeah, I saw that. We had a sign that told you all the things you can touch that would force you to change gloves: meat, skin, hair, clothing… I probably changed gloves like 10 times a day. I was also given a lovely hair net to minimize the chance of hair getting into the food.”

When asked whether any of these procedures were backed up by research or proof neither former employee knew.

“I just did what I was told,” Cornwell explained.

For example, when used for food safety, hairnets serve two purposes. The first is to keep hair from contacting exposed food, clean and sanitized equipment, utensils and linens, or unwrapped single-service articles. The second is to keep worker’s hands out of their hair.

However many may be unaware there are different types of hairnets. O.R. caps provide maximum protection, making them ideal for use near exposed food products. Mesh hairnets release body heat, but are not for use in direct food contact areas. When asked, Richardson said she believed her hairnet was mesh, but wasn’t sure.

There was a time when I assumed if it was there for the taking, it had to be safe. I assumed that the salad bar was emptied daily, the contents thrown out, and every morning it was re-stocked with new items. I was wrong.

I would not eat at a restaurant if I knew the cook would not eat there. I would not ride in a plane that a pilot found unsafe. So it finally came time to ask the big question: would a former salad bar worker eat from the salad bar?

“One day out of the week we dumped everything on the bar in the trash and started again with all fresh products,” Richardson answered. “That was usually the only day I ate from the salad bar.”

More pre-washed salad silliness

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I hate when I come up with a smart answer long after the opportunity has passed.

A barfblog reader nudged me yesterday regarding the Consumer Reports oh-my-god-there’s-bacteria-in-salad story to say,

“We had a good laugh at the CR story. Note how they merely pointed out that there were bacteria on the ‘RTE’ products they tested. They didn’t bother to find out that—uh oh—they don’t really wash off if you put them under the tap. I tell people not to waste their time; I never wash unless there is gross dirt or debris, and that is only to avoid chipping a tooth.”

Dooh. I knew that. Washing really doesn’t do much when it involves fresh produce. And if Consumer Reports really wanted to validate their study – and their advice to rewash bagged salad, which is still being repeated ad nauseum – they would have washed bagged salad and then run the same tests for bacterial presence.

Somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of my brain there was some recollection of this because, as I told Darla Carter of the Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, the study was “almost useless to consumers.”

“I can find indicator organisms almost anywhere, so what? … Indicator organisms generally aren’t going to make you barf.”

Powell said washing bagged salad has no proven value and poses the risk of cross-contamination.

“They’re giving advice that’s contrary to what is generally accepted,” he said.
When it comes to ensuring the safety of problematic produce, such as leafy greens, tomatoes and cantaloupe, “the focus has to be on the farm and then all the way through the system,” Powell said. “Prevention is much better.”

And washing doesn’t do much. If only I’d said that at the time.
 

Shurley some mistake: should packaged salads be washed again or not? (Not)

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There’s some merit in ignoring garbage food safety news stories so they don’t take on too much credibility.

But then, garbage should also be crushed, quickly, factually, and mercilessly, so it doesn’t get repeated forever.

The Consumers Union theatrics about bacteria found in bagged leafy greens has found new legs in Canada – always a week behind — in stories with quotes like, “If you buy ready-made salad greens, wash them before eating.”

This is bull poop.

The March issue of Consumer Reports says that tests on 208 samples of salads sold in bags or plastic containers, conducted by Consumers Union revealed that 39 per cent of the salads analyzed revealed the presence of several types of bacteria, including total coliforms and Enterococcus, both found “in the human digestive tract.”

The Canadian wire story says: “Translation: poop.”

Not quite.

Trevor Suslow of UC Davis told the Perishable Pundit that “a normal head of lettuce is colonized, not contaminated with, a diversity of microbiota, including diverse types of bacteria. Only a small fraction of the total normal bacteria on lettuce can be grown or cultured in the lab. The total numbers of bacteria on a leaf far exceed the number of a single group like the Total Coliforms that were a prime target in the survey. A smaller subset of Total Coliform bacteria are the fecal coliforms. We eat lots and lots of microbes all the time. …

“I am certainly not a medical or public health expert and I am simplifying this quite a bit just to ensure that you are aware that a total coliform or fecal coliform doesn’t necessarily indicate fecal contamination in the plant world. Their numbers on a leaf or fruit do not relate well to risk of illness or true and serious pathogens being present. When one follows standard protocols, developed for dairy, meat, drinking water, and wastewater reclamation, for example, for enumerating total coliform populations from plants, one often gets high numbers of these plant colonizers. They are very tough to wash off…”

“Purchasing packaged salads or whole heads is a matter of personal choice. We do both in my family. I always wash loose leaf lettuces to remove any adhering soil. I never wash packaged salads. I do not support or believe that re-washing packaged salads should be a recommendation for the home consumer. A large and diverse panel of experts published a comprehensive article in 2007 detailing the scientific evidence for the lack of benefit and the greater risk of cross-contamination in the home.”

That report is available here. The conclusion is there is a greater chance of cross-contamination during the rewash of packaged greens. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also states, “… there is no need to wash fresh-cut leafy greens again if they are labeled as "washed," "triple washed," or "ready-to-eat" on the package. Although not recommended, if end users do re-wash RTE fresh-cut leafy greens, having appropriate sanitary washing and drying conditions in the foodservice, retail or in-home food preparation environment to reduce the potential for cross contamination of fresh-cut RTE produce with human pathogens. “

The U.K. Food Standards Authority made a similar statement about no need for rewashing after the Brits had a row about the issue documented in Salad Smackdown ’08.

The issue is complicated, but for Consumers Union to come out with a soundbite about washing greens is great PR and lousy public policy. For journalists not to check is becoming standard for an industry in decline. For the producers of bagged leafy greens, this is an opportunity to tout your food safety efforts and market them at retail so consumers can choose.

Special Agent Oso, the unique stuffed bear, washes hands and vegetables (Stephen Colbert is terrified)

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In my continuing quest to watch children’s TV and become addicted to every infectious kids song out there – because 1-year-old Sorenne has a cold and insists on being held — we watched an episode of Special Agent Oso, the unique stuffed bear.

3 special steps, that’s all you need

wash the vegetables

chop the vegetables

toss the salad

Jade has to help make a salad for cousin Rachel, who can’t eat cheese or bread because she has food allergies – no pizza for Rachel.

Special Agent Oso — the unique stuffed bear — and Jade wash their hands before preparing the salad, and wash the lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber, straight from the garden, but eventually use a vegetable brush because the veggies are so naturally dirty. Problem solved.

BTW, the songs on these kids’ shows are bizarrely infective, like a foodborne pathogen.

The Hot Dog song on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was written and performed by They Might Be Giants, and the Handy Manny theme song was written and performed by Los Lobos.
 

Wendy’s VP says E. coli salad safe – provides no evidence

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From the growing catalogue of worst things to say after an outbreak of foodborne illness, Dan Moore, the owner of the Wendy’s franchise on Prospect Street in New Brunswick said yesterday,

“The senior vice-president of Wendy’s was here (on Saturday) to inspect the restaurant."

Further, all required precautions have been taken, and customers can safely eat salads, as well as any other menu items.

The Wendy’s outlet was linked to an E. coli O157 outbreak that hit four people who ate Wendy’s salads.

What any consumer would want to know is, where did the lettuce or tomatoes come from, and what kind of on-farm food safety program is being used by the producer, including water testing, testing of soil amendments, and employee sanitation. Don’t want employees wiping their butts and picking fresh lettuce; same with the Wendy’s staff.

If it only takes a senior vp to make food safe, in the absence of any evidence, then lots more food should be safe because there are lots of senior vps.