United Web Album

Check out the Web album on the right of some United photos. No captions, but just a flavor of some of the people at the convention last week. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns is certainly represented.

Training is worth the cost

That's the message of C.J. Reynolds, director of education services for Silliker Inc., Maplewood, Ill at last Saturday's food safety short course. Reynolds examines the importance of food safety training and introduces a speaker from another company who has developed an interactive training method. Here is the audio for Reynolds from the United Fresh Produce Association's Food Safety 101 short course May 5.

She notes that often training is a considered a cost "not worth the investment," as companies always have other plant priorities.
The pressure of production schedules - combined with the lack of training expertise - are the biggest barriers to training, but she pointed out that training sessions don't necessarily have to be long to be effective.

"Frequency is very important; you should have training as often as possible, but not to the length you may think it needs to be done," she said. She points out that a 30-minute introduction to food safety principles followed with a 5-minute preproduction session every week is likely more effective than an hour long session every six months.

Although I edited out some of the session where the audience was using remote control clickers to answer interactive food safety questions, the principle of interactive training is also explored.

Food Safety 101 - Epidemic Intelligece

A week ago this past Saturday May 5 - United Fresh Produce Association sponsored a short course titled "Food Safety 101." Here is another element to that tightly packed four-hour long seminar. Ryan Novak, epidemic intelligence service officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, explained what role CDC plays in traceback of foodborne illness. Novak stresses that CDC is not a regulatory body and seeks cooperation with the industry as it tries to reconstruct how pathogens are passed on. Interestingly, CDC was formed in the 1940s to control malaria in the U.S. Having quickly dispatched with malaria, the CDC has found plenty of other bugs to conquer. In his presentation, Novak describes in detail Hepatitis A green onion investigation, examining production practices in Mexico and at one point noting green onions are an "emerging" potential problem food.

By the way, I see that nearly 50 of you have downloaded Jan DeLyser's speech from the Women in Produce reception from the United show. Also, another score or so of you downloaded David Durkin's presentation from Food Safety 101 on FDA inspections and the industry. I think the audio links are revealing and hope you agree.

Hearings and an AgJobs presser

There is a House Ag Committee hearing going on right now on crop insurance,and tomorrow the Agriculture Committee is expected to look at the issue of food/produce safety again. Tomorrow afternoon in DC is an AgJobs press conference at 2 p.m; speakers include Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Larry Craig and industry speakers Maureen Torrey, Phil Glaize, Tom Nassif, Mike Gempler and Ella Vasquez.

With the staccato pace of hearings and press conferences, it goes without saying this is a big week for the farm bill and immigration reform.

Barf blog

From the same group that brought you "Don't Eat Poop" T-shirts comes news of "BarfBlog."
The International Food Safety Network launched the Web site earlier this month. From a report on Lexblog....

Spearheaded by Dr. Doug Powell, scientific director of IFSN and associate professor at Kansas State University, the BarfBlog utilizes new media technologies to spread awareness of issues that could have far-reaching impacts on our daily lives. Their bloggers have done research on everything from the food safety practices of television chefs to communication in crisis, resulting in a powerful balance: they know what they’re talking about, and they know how to effectively spread their word.
“We’re all about getting food safety information to a whole bunch of different people,” said Ben Chapman, a graduate student working with IFSN and a blogger for the BarfBlog.
Those people, he says, range from the farmers growing food products to the chefs who prepare them in restaurants. “Safe Food, From Farm to Fork” is a key tenet of IFSN’s mission. Their blog, according to Chapman, is developed with this mantra in mind.
In the past, the IFSN’s main avenue of creating awareness was through an electronic listserv that reached 12,000 people in 70 countries around the world. The four listserv newsletters produced by the group include content specific to various elements of food safety and agriculture.
But a listserv isn’t as efficient as a blog. After an unsuccessful attempt in a primitive era of blogging, the IFSN decided to give it another chance - and, this time, to take a new approach.
About two years ago, the KSU-based group launched their first blog, aimed at collecting personal stories from community members related to food safety issues. It instead developed into more of a web forum, and the IFSN’s initial enthusiasm for blogging soon wore off.
Not surprisingly, their interest in the project was recently sparked again as staff members, monitoring the role blogs play in providing news information for the masses, noticed the increasing shift towards utilization of the technology.

TK: Here is the link to Barfblog. I like the site. It has several authors and appears to be "fresh." Despite the title, this blog is easy to stomach.

Virtual shopper

This FMI show coverage from The New Haven Register looks at new products at the FMI show. Not a lot of buzz, but the report looks at the idea of a virtual shopping experience called Second Life:

For those who prefer their food slightly pixelated, food industry analyst Phil Lempert has teamed with Kraft Foods and the National Grocers Association to launch a virtual supermarket in the online fantasy world known as Second Life.Though visitors to Phil’s Supermarket can’t actually buy groceries, they can guide their avatars (online parlance for a user’s digital personification) through the store to explore products, watch cooking demos and see the latest food and health news.The idea is to help people navigate the real world of food by letting them "pre-shop," accessing nutritional data and other information on various products, previewing a showcase of just-launched items or scoring coupons."The average consumer only spends 22 minutes food shopping," said Lempert, who launched the site Monday. "That’s not a whole lot of time to see new products. But what I hear from consumers is that they want to hear about what’s new and exciting."Lempert expects to have 100,000 products on the site by the end of summer. Visitors can "taste" many of the products, then offer reviews. How meaningful those reviews are, of course, depend on whether users have tried the product in the analog world.


TK: There has got to be some other hook besides the love of learning about new products. Perhaps economic incentives, coupons and free merchandise could be motivators, but it is hard to believe that moms would spend a lot of time on this site "pre-shopping." Here is the link.

Fly in

I'll be heading to DC tomorrow to cover the immigration fly-in. This will be a key week to push for action, and I'll be eager to get a sense what the reaction from Congress will be.

Rosa DeLauro continues her steady drumbeat on food safety oversight reform. Her latest news release casts a critical eye on USDA's regulation of meat.

Our Collapsing Food Safety System

Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) issued the following statement on the possible outbreak of Escherichia coli 0157:H7 (E. Coli) that has been found in 117,500 pounds of beef trim products used to make ground beef at a plant owned by PM Beef Holdings in Minnesota. The trim was shipped to distributors and retail outlets in Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin and health officials have said it appears that tainted ground beef sickened seven people. DeLauro is the chairman of the House Appropriations Agriculture Subcommittee and co-chair of the Congressional Food Safety Caucus.

“While recent focus has been on imported products, this recall reminds us that the holes in our food safety system exist not only at the Food and Drug Administration, but at the Food Safety Inspection Service within the US Department of Agriculture. This recall of 117,500 pounds of beef comes on the heels of nearly 260,000 pounds of beef less than a month ago – more than double what was recalled for all of 2006 – and that doesn’t account for any other recalls this year.

“Our food safety system lacks the mechanisms and processes to minimize food borne illness – both the USDA and the FDA are unable to safeguard the public health. This recall reinforces the importance of improving and restoring confidence in our food supply."