SEATTLE — The mood was upbeat as the Center for Produce Safety’s seventh annual Research Symposium opened. “Welcome to our coming-out party,” said an enthusiastic Steve Patricio, the center’s board chairman, as he welcomed more than 300 attendees to the two days of research reports about food safety in the fresh produce industry. Patricio, president and chief executive officer of Westside Produce, described the event as a celebration of “coming out into our adulthood.”
- Using non-pathogenic bacteria, or so-called surrogates, to perform experiments to determine how effective a preventive control is;
- Irrigation-water management;
- Science-based preventive controls that can ensure a company’s food-safety programs minimize risks; and
- Animal intrusion and on-farm pathogen detection.
In the mix of these sessions were presentations that covered a wide range of specific research projects, among them:
- Rapid bacterial testing for on-farm sampling;
- An evaluation of multiple disinfection methods to mitigate the risk of produce contamination by irrigation water;
- Validation of chlorine levels in sanitization systems to avoid cross-contamination;
- Tools needed to develop science-based preventive controls for packing and processing operations; and
- A look at whether wildlife is a problem in the contamination of leafy green crops with foodborne pathogens.
On another note, Trevor Suslow, food safety guru at University of California-Davis, said even though they’re learning a lot about preventing foodborne pathogens from getting on produce, when he goes to talk with groups of small- and mid-size growers and packers, he’s always shocked to discover how little many of them know about food safety. Getting the information to them is important, he said, because when consumers hear there’s a problem associated with spinach, cantaloupe or apples, for example, they stop buying that particular type of produce, at least until they get assurances that the suspect produce has been removed from the stores. Time and time again, the produce industry has seen what a devastating blow this can deal to all growers and packers producing or processing that particular item. In the case of the Listeria monocytogenes outbreak associated with caramel apples, for example, the problem was traced to apples coming from a small orchard/packing shed in California. Yet the Pacific Northwest apple industry saw foreign buyers veer away from their apples. Mark Powers, executive vice president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, Yakima, WA, said that lost sales to Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries came in at a hefty $15 million. Volunteer strength Dozens of volunteer leaders invest countless hours serving on the Center for Produce Safety’s Board of Directors and Technical Committee. In addition, an army of reviewers vet every research proposal the center receives. The center has only two paid employees. To learn more about the center’s research priorities, the research projects it has funded, the symposium’s poster sessions, and investigators funded by the center, visit its website. (To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)