In March 2007, Spartan Stores became the largest food store chain ($2.6 billion in sales) in the U.S. to adopt NSF Shop Fresh certification in its stores and warehouse facilities. Its a program that combines regular microbial sampling with on-site inspections and unannounced audits to reduce food-related risks.
A part of the NSF program is FastCheck which provides an immediate response to customers complaining of food-realted illness and includes testing of suspect products.
Food safety is a big topic amongst the grocery chains, wholesalers and foodservice professionals. As well it should be.
Food safety is more than words. For the agricultural community it's a set of procedures that may have been ignored in the past, but it's getting harder and harder to ignore, and the future will only be more so. Produce buyers are driving the change. You have to farm right to sell what you grow.
Being in agriculture, food safety runs both sweet and sour; the priority is juxtaposed on how it can possibly be achieved. There are no easy cheap answers. And if you like inexpensive fresh fruits and vegetables, you don't want the expensive answers either.
Procedures are backed by documented proof that you did the procedures. It's the Sarbanes-Oxley of farming.
In a recent article in 'Fresh Cut' magazine, Dick Lehnert summed it up by saying
On the mundane level, it means no more letting your dog run about during harvest operations. Walk to the porta-potty - no more ducking behind a handy tree. Control things like problem wildlife. Know what to do if an employee on the packing line cuts his finger or sneezes on the product.
And you need to write it all down: write a manual spelling out the standard operating procedures on your farm or in your packing house, train your employees, document that they are following the manual, then hire "certifiers" to come onto your farm once a year to verify all of the above.
Unlike Sarbanes-Oxley, there's currently no legislation. It started in 2007 with the government putting together Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and Good Handling Practices (GHPs) and then demanding that food products it, the government buys for its nutrition programs be produced in conformity with these practices.
Leading produce buyers like Wal-Mart, Publix or say a Gerber Products started demanding the same from their suppliers. It's gathering momentum.
The company I work for is known for its premium tropical produce and was amongst the first wave of companies to be food safety certified. When we sell to customers that don't impose such requirements on their suppliers, it makes it hard to compete with other produce importers (most tropicals are grown outside the US). Produce is still very much a commodity market. The cost of achieving food safety certification is not cheap.
Yet the cost of not making food safety procedures standards is outbreaks of food borne illnesses that we've seen in organic spinach, tomatoes/peppers and peanut butter.
It's the old adage, nothing worth doing is easy to do.
Papaya Daiquiri
½ oz Caribbean Red Papaya pureed
2 ½ oz light rum
½ oz lime juice
¼ oz syrup
3 Fresh basil leaves (torn)
Method:
Shake ingredients vigorously over ice and fine strain into a chilled cocktail glass
Garnish with a fresh basil leaf
What can a super market do to make sure their produce is not tainted? What an awful subject, a topic that would never have occurred to me 5 years ago.
Concern for me started with the E. coli outbreak in spinach in 2006. A double whammy that involved tainted organic spinach. Organic anything is suppose to be good, right? Horribly, 6 people died a little wiser.
What are grocery stores doing about it?
Here’s the scoop on a regional chain called Wegmans (NY, NJ, PA, MD, VA). During my previous life in NJ, I shopped Wegmans. It’s shopping as an experience. It’s being able to buy meals instead of just ingredients, or the best ingredients for a great meal.
These are some excerpts from an interview with Bill Pool, manager of agricultural product and research for Wegmans in Fresh Cut 4/09 magazine.
Wegmans has in place a good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and has had it in place since 2005. Suppliers of raw product are expected to take the training program especially if they supply the 5 vulnerable commodities: leafy greens, tomatoes, netted melons, herbs and green onions.
Webmans uses USDA GAPs as a benchmark for its growers. The USDA covers water quality, personal health and hygiene, field sanitation, proper toilets, hand washing, manure control and more.
Other grocery stores have GAPs in place, such as Publix a southeastern chain of grocery stores.
I think it’s important to note that Wegmans does not make a distinction between conventional and organic produce. Often times organic enterprises are assumed as having resolved all food safety issues before they can be labeled ‘organic’.
