Tag Archives: Traceability

Safety watch kept on All Blacks’ World Cup dinners

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Susie is a mysterious waitress who allegedly served the New Zealand All Blacks a dinner of food poisoning 48 hours before the 1995 Rugby World Cup in Johannesburg, which felled 27 of the 35-member squad. Or so the story goes.

As the 2011 Rugby World Cup approaches, the Food Safety Authority has revealed that samples of food served to the team will be frozen to provide a record for food safety.

And to ensure a level dietary playing field, Rugby World Cup 2011 will document all meals provided to all teams at the tournaments.

But it’s not because of Susie.

"We are following best practice,” said hospitality and logistics manager Ian Crowe, “so it’s unrelated to those issues."

Tournament organisers had been working with the authority for the past four years to ensure the best possible food safety.

Teams and officials will be served 103,000 meals during this year’s tournament.

If FedEx can track letters, can growers track lettuce?

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Inside a Silicon Valley company’s windowless vault, massive servers silently monitor millions of heads of lettuce from the time they are plucked from the dirt to the moment the bagged salad is scanned at the grocery checkout counter.

That trail can be traced in seconds, thanks to tiny high-tech labels, software programs and hand-held hardware. Such tools make it easier for farmers to locate possible problems — a leaky fertilizer bin, an unexpected pathogen in the water, unwashed hands on a factory floor — and more quickly halt the spread of contaminated food.

The Los Angeles Times reports this Dole Food Co. project and similar efforts across the country represent a fundamental shift in the way that food is tracked from field to table. The change is slow but steady as a number of industry leaders and smaller players adopt these tools.

Much of the farming community has yet to follow suit, and federal food-safety legislation is stalled in Congress. But proponents of this digital transformation said it was inevitable given public outrage over the recent egg contamination scandal. They said technology could simplify the nation’s complex food-safety system, helping prevent or contain the harm caused by recalled food.

Trace-back systems are similar to how FedEx tracks its packages. On the farm, animals and crop sections are given a "smart" label with a unique identifying number. The label is attached to a bin, crate or container used for transport.

Workers then use a hand-held computer or smart phone to scan the labels and record key information, such as date, time, location, workplace temperature and which truck hauled the food. The information is usually uploaded to a database, where it is stored and can be accessed via the Web.

Each time the food moves or is handled by someone new, the data can be updated.
 

Food traceability program sucks: US government

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Federal auditors found that nearly half the food manufacturers they surveyed that are supposed to register with the Food and Drug Administration failed to give the agency accurate contact information, according to a report to be released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s office.

Companies that manufacture, process, pack or hold food that is eaten in the United States are required by federal law to provide their address and basic contact information to the FDA, so investigators can follow suspect foods through the supply chain.

After interviewing managers at a sample of 130 such companies, however, government investigators found that 48 percent didn’t give the agency accurate information. More than half were unaware companies had to register, and about a quarter provided no emergency contact information, because current rules don’t require it.

Routine sampling of cantaloupe reveals Salmonella, leads to recall

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On Friday, Raley’s Family of Fine Stores posted a message regarding a recall of fresh cantaloupes due to potential Salmonella contamination (triggered by routine sampling). There wasn’t any pick up of the recall story until this morning when the California Department of Public Health issued a warning (which I can’t actually find anywhere). CDPH is telling consumers not to eat Del Monte whole cantaloupe sold between Oct. 5 and 16 at Northern California and Nevada Raley’s, Bel Air, Nob Hill Foods and Food Sources stores. No illnesses have been linked to these products to date.

Risk in cantaloupes is largely due to growing conditions, contaminated wash water and the potential for cantaloupe flesh to support the growth of bacteria.  Prevention of surface contamination is an important factor for folks from farm-to-fork to address and control as research has shown a potential for bacteria to be pushed into the meat of the cantaloupe during slicing. Due to the roughness of the rind, it is very difficult to wash away much of the bacteria, suggesting that risk-reduction emphasis needs to be placed before the someone home uses them for a prosciutto-wrapped appetizer. 

California Department of Public Health warns consumers not to eat Del Monte cantaloupe — great — how would someone in their home know whether their cantaloupe was Del Monte? Are they labeled (I know some here in North Carolina are, some aren’t) and if they are, what does that label look like? That’s useful information.

I suspect since the scope of this recall has been limited to a specific shipment or lot of cantaloupes that the distributor has at least a rudimentary traceability system. Maybe the system is handwritten notes in a book of sales, maybe they possess a an electronic system incorporating barcodes and shipping documents. I’ve seen both. And both can work.

Throughout the summer, with help from my trusty assistant Michelle, we have been investigating some of the current traceability systems employed by fresh produce growers/packers/shippers in North Carolina.  While labeling of units (that’s what the industry calls something like an individual cantaloupe or tomato) is part of the traceability story, what we’ve found is that there are multiple ways the on-farm/packing folks are trying to differentiate, collect, record and transfer food safety information with their products.

But there are gaps, like the labeling one illustrated here. One of our conclusions is that while many producers might be awake and trying to navigate vague national and international suggestions, what happens to that information (maybe stored in a lot code) once it leaves the packhouse sometimes isn’t really known. The distribution folks may or may not record something like a lot code, and the producers may or may not tell their buyers why it’s important that they do. That’s a GAP gap.

Stickers source watermelons to California farm

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The San Francisco Chronicle reports that at a farm in Manteca, in San Joaquin County, workers smack labels onto watermelons freshly cut from the vine, each sticker bearing a unique string of letters and numbers that identifies where they were harvested.

Ryan Van Groningen of Van Groningen & Sons Farms, which sells watermelons under the Yosemite Fresh brand, said,

"With food safety as big as it is, we can give each watermelon its own code so a consumer can check on the Internet to see where it is grown.”

This new code, called the HarvestMark, is being developed by the Redwood City startup YottaMark Inc. at a time when Congress is considering food-safety legislation that could make some type of tracking system mandatory.

In advance of any legal mandate, a few growers have started putting HarvestMark codes on products like plastic-packaged grapes and strawberries, as well as watermelons.

The idea is to enable a consumer to type the 16-digit tracking code into a locator field at HarvestMark.com to learn where the product was grown. Depending on the grower’s records and what the farm chooses to reveal, the system could detail the date and part of the field where the product originated.

Great idea.

A decade ago, I advised the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers – whose cluster tomatoes still dominate supermarket shelves in Florida in the middle of summer – to do something similar, to market their food safety efforts directly to the concerned consumer.

For other produce producers, forget government babysitters and the non-niceties of offending other growers … growers who maybe aren’t so good at food safety.

Go further. Put a url on the sticker so concerned shoppers can check out a web site with video, not just about where a commodity was grown, but about food safety standards, and real-time test results for water quality and product sampling.

And then market it.
 

Snails, cilantro and Salmonella

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Look kids, the snails are back.

And with the rain in Kansas this year, they haven’t really left.

Amy took this picture of our cilantro yesterday afternoon in between thunderstorms. And snails can carry any number of diseases and pathogens.

That’s probably not what’s going on with the cilantro distributed by Sweet Superior Fruit LTD of McAllen, Texas, that was recalled on the weekend after U.S. Food and Drug Administration testing found Salmonella in cilantro sold from July 13 to 16 in 15-pound black plastic crates.

Initially announced Saturday night, company types weren’t answering the phone on Monday.

The Monitor reports that while the source of the cilantro has not been disclosed, the produce was most likely grown in Mexico. A sign above the company‘s facility advertises Mexican-grown products.

Just where the 104 15-pound crates of cilantro ended up remains unclear. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Monday that it could not provide a list of what restaurants or retailers might have bought the leafy green because most of the purchases at Sweet Superior Fruit LTD. were made with cash. It also did not say how much of the produce had been sold.
 

Traceability: I can’t draw but I can trace

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Traceability is one of those food safety buzzwords that’s been around for awhile but doesn’t seem to mean much. Last year during the Salmonella in tomatoes/jalapenos outbreak, health types expressed severe frustration that many food vendors had little idea where their tomatoes were coming from. Same with the current peanut mess – why are companies still figuring out, two months after the initial recalls, that they have the PCA crap in their products.

A  report expected to be made public today by Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, found that most food manufacturers and distributors cannot identify the suppliers or recipients of their products despite federal rules that require them to do so.

The investigators contacted 220 food facilities to ask about their supplier records. But only 118 of these businesses were included in the study because the rest were not required under rules adopted by the F.D.A. in 2005 to maintain supplier and recipient records. Of those 118 firms, 70 failed to provide investigators with required information about suppliers or customers, with 6 of the companies failing to provide any information at all.

United Fresh Produce Association President and CEO Tom Stenzel was scheduled to tell the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Agriculture today that,

“… we have a very good story to tell in produce traceability.”

However, one vendor told investigators that it kept no records of tomato purchases.

Tomatoes have repeatedly been implicated in nationwide food contamination scares, including one last year. Fifteen facilities told investigators they mixed raw products from more than 10 farms.
 

No incentive for a culture of food safety?

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In an op-ed published on Marler Blog today titled, The market for peanuts: Why food in the U.S. may never be safe, Denis W. Stearns seemed to list three reasons why there is little economic incentive for producers to make food that is safer than that of any other producer.

Stearns argued that the culture pervading Peanut Corporation of America was a perfect example of those ideas at work.

1. To begin with, there is no such thing as a “free” market for food…

Consumers want safe food, but cannot tell if a food is hazard-free before purchase and therefore cannot discriminately buy only safe brands.

Stearns referred to a New York Times article that described “the array of poor work conditions and safety flaws” hidden behind the plant’s walls that was not perceived in its products until hundreds were sickened.

2. [R]egulations can impose a predictable cost that companies can meet, but need not exceed.

An incident/outbreak linked to one producer can turn consumers off the entire product-category, regardless of how far above and beyond regulations unassociated producers go to ensure safety.

In the same vein, George Akerlof was quoted as saying “there is an incentive for sellers to market poor quality merchandise since the returns for good quality accrue mainly to the entire group…rather than to the individual seller.”

3. Finally, there is the important issue of traceability—or, in the case of the United States, the stunning lack of it.

If it is not likely that an incident/outbreak will be traced back to the producer responsible, the possibility of making a profit from a contaminated food may be greater than the chance they’ll get caught.

Stearns cited e-mails by Peanut Corp. president Stewart Parnell in which he directed that contaminated produce be shipped: "I go thru this about once a week. I will hold my breath …. again."

Stearns closed with this:

[A]t this point, after outbreak after outbreak after outbreak, is it possible that finally, once and for all, the case for the effective regulation of the food industry has been incontestably made?

I can only hope so.

Because until the market for peanuts—and other food—is made to work for the benefit of the public health, the big profits will continue to go to the companies that cheat, cut corners, and do not care.
 

Websites on stickers so consumers know where their food is from: still a cool idea 10 years later

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Eat Me Daily looks like a decent enough food blog that found a chicken producer doing what I told the Ontario greenhouse vegetable growers they should be doing 10 years ago: if not marketing food safety directly, at least provide information for those who care, in the form of a url that the inquisitive type could follow up on at home.

So we were at the grocery store this weekend, and came across a Murray’s Chicken with a sticker on it with a Farm Verification code, offering to let us "find out where this chicken came from and learn more about the family that raised it." … It even hooks into the Google Maps API to show you exactly where the farm is on a map. … Our code, 0289, revealed that our chicken was raised at 1020 Alvira Rd in Allenwood, PA 17810 by David Bowers. Hats off to you Mr. Bowers, that was one tasty chicken.

I agree with Eat Me Daily. Awesome. And one day, I will be cool.

Know where food comes from

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Traceability was a popular topic when I started working for Doug last summer, with the Salmonella-linked-to-tomatoes-or-was-it-peppers outbreak. The current peanut butter-linked outbreak follows the same trends as the list of recalled products is on the rise. As a consumer, I wonder: do producers know their suppliers and where their food is coming from?

The FDA warned consumers to postpone consumption of anything containing peanut butter or peanut butter paste. This is where labeling becomes important. Not only should consumers read labels, they also need some assurance that labels are accurate.

A woman suffered a severe allergic reaction after eating a parfait in a Canadian Starbucks last week. She purchased the parfait after an employee assured the dessert was nut-free. The ingredients list also failed to mention nuts. I am pretty sure this woman will have a hard time trusting labels after this.

I was diagnosed with celiac disease a few weeks ago and I know how this feels. I have to avoid products containing gluten – a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and triticale.

Gluten can also be found as a food additive in the form of flavoring, or as stabilizing or thickening agent. In such cases, producers are not required to include the protein on the label because it is classified as GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) by the FDA. There is also no official definition as to what constitutes a gluten-free product, so celiacs like me are recommended to buy products from trusted sources.

That Canadian Starbucks is not a trusted source.

Whether it’s because of food allergies, intolerance to gluten, or salmonella, food processors need to be aware of where their products come from and what they contain.