By Frank Giles
Recent salmonella outbreaks and recalls in the Southeast are a good reminder for all specialty crop growers to evaluate their food-safety protocols and practices. That’s the message from Michelle Danyluk, a professor of food biology and safety with the University of Florida Institute of Food Agricultural Sciences.
“It has been a busy year on the food Danyluk safety front with recalls and outbreaks,” Danyluk says. “And a couple of trends are emerging from what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been identifying with these outbreaks.
“One of those is the water that is being used during production processes, especially surface water. The second is a heavy emphasis on sanitation and cleaning thoroughness and how you are verifying it both in the harvesting and packing process — and really any equipment or surface that is going to touch that fruit or vegetable.”
Pre-Harvest Water
The FDA defines pre-harvest water as any water used during growing activities, such as irrigation and crop protection sprays, which is intended to, or is likely to, contact covered produce or food contact surfaces. Danyluk recommends growers take some time to reevaluate those water sources and how they are applied to crops in the growing process.
“It is pretty well established that if you look for salmonella hard enough in surface waters in the Southeast, you are going to find it,” Danyluk says. “And sometimes you don’t have to look that hard.
“In these recent outbreaks, FDA identified surface water as the potential source of the hazard, but it didn’t identify the route to contamination. Right now, FDA is hyper-focused on surface water in the Southeast, so if growers are using it in any way, they really need to be looking at those uses and applications and be looking at options like treating the water or other mitigations.”
Some of this is being dictated by the rollout of the FDA’s pre-harvest water rule last year. That rule has shifted the regulatory paradigm from more of a testing-based approach to more of a risk-based assessment approach that considers routes of contamination getting onto the crop.
“Growers really need to spend some time thinking about how they are using their water and potential routes to contamination,” Danyluk says. “I am not as worried about drip irrigation under plastic or even drip if it is well managed. But, if you are using something like overhead irrigation, that is worth taking a harder look at.”
Sanitation
Danyluk also recommends growers take another look at their cleaning procedures from top to bottom. This is another area FDA has been emphasizing. “How are you cleaning?” Danyluk asks.
“How often are you doing it? When are you doing it? How are you verifying that it is getting done? You may have the best written protocols in your food safety plan, but if they are not executed properly, that’s a problem. It is more than checking off a box in your food-safety documentation.
“Staying on top of this, verifying it and being sure every employee is trained and understands how important sanitation is to food safety is critical. Someone assigned a cleaning task might be doing it, but not as thoroughly as needed.”
BEWARE OF WEAK SPOTS
Danyluk also reminds growers that when FDA investigates a potential foodborne illness outbreak, it is a much different experience than a regular inspection. It is a situation where the grower will have inspectors on the farm potentially for days. And if a farm gets implicated in an outbreak (rightly or wrongly), it is almost guaranteed that lawsuits against the farm will get filed by people who claim to have gotten sick. There is nothing about the process that is pleasant.
Danyluk recommends that growers seek and correct weak spots in food safety programs. When food safety becomes a routine operating procedure, that is a good thing because it is becoming part of the farm’s culture. But it also can be a weakness because routines can get sloppy. She says monitoring and keeping those routines tight can save a lot of trouble in the long run.
Digital Edition
To read the rest of the story and hear more about food safety, click here.