DeLauro statement and Consumers Union pile on: What about test and hold?

You knew this was coming, of course:

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) issued the following statement about the recall of spinach because of Salmonella contamination. DeLauro serves as chairwoman of the Agriculture – Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Subcommittee.

“In what can only be described as disturbing irony, the one year anniversary of the spinach recall that claimed three people and sickened hundreds more, is observed with yet another recall of potentially contaminated spinach, this time with Salmonella.

“Earlier this year when the Food and Drug Administration submitted a plan to strengthen guidelines for fresh cut produce, the Department of Health and Human Services rejected it. This latest spinach recall is a reminder that the FDA should immediately move forward to create a system for the produce industry that focuses on preventing hazards by applying science based controls, from raw material to finished product.

“It is time for the FDA to renew their commitment to their mission of protecting the public health, and make a declarative statement that the goal is to prevent food-borne illness not just to react when outbreaks occur. Until then, unfortunately for the American people, an opportunity missed for the FDA, leaves the public holding the bag.”


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From Consumers Union:

“It’s been one year since the E. Coli spinach recall and we have yet another serious incident. Eight thousand cartons left the plant for distribution in the U.S. That’s 8,000 too many. There needs to be a hold and test policy that prevents food from ever leaving the plant. There’s also a glaring need for across-the-board improvements to the FDA to enable its staff to do more routine inspections with the full authority to recall contaminated vegetables. At this point, we’re relying on the leafy green industry to essentially police itself,” said Jean Halloran, a Consumers Union food safety expert.



TK: Does there need to be a hold and test policy in place? I asked that question in the Fresh Produce Industry Discussion Group and got this thoughtful response from Alex Coles, director of Supply Chain Food Safety:

Ah... the eternal question. There are several trains of thought on this: We all know you can't test safety into a product. We have heard about the difficulties of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. "Then we should use statistical sampling to find it" they say. Unfortunately, statistical sampling is most useful when the contamination is distributed equally throughout the lot you are testing. That is not to say it will not find it, but the chances of finding it are extremely low. I don't have my chart for probability of detection in front of me, but to get a 99% confidence level of finding contamination at 0.1%, one would need to test over 600 samples. It could be done...
Let's look at testing turn around time. Unless you have a lab onsite, capable of testing pathogens, you need to add a day right off the bat for transportation. Standard methods take several days to return results; usually 3 days for a negative response up to 5 or 6 days for confirmation. It could take a full week to get results. With such a short shelf life, are our customers willing to received product that is 5-6 days old? Probably not.
With that being said, there are companies that are testing raw materials and finished products and stopping things at their door. For years, testing companies have been working on improving rapid method testing however the faster you try to go, the less reliable your answers could be. How fast is too fast? We are after all, trying to enrich and recover living organisms including those that are simply "injured" by the process.
This is a very difficult situation for all of us - growers, processors and customers alike. We don't have a good answer and we test as often as possible using the best information out there. More focus should be put on intervention to reduce the chances the product is contaminated to start with. Testing of the system, not the product, is a better solution.

Closer to Tesco

What is this Wild Rocket Foods you speak of? That was my thought as I read this piece in The Press Enterprise online.
From the story:

Whether the mango was whole, diced, chopped into a salsa or pureed into an organic mango lemonade, chances are it will have hung on a tree just three days before landing on grocery store shelves of the proposed Fresh & Easy Markets from British grocer Tesco.
That's a promise from Wild Rocket Foods, which will open its Riverside distribution and processing facility before the end of the year. The company is also aiming to be a green leader in its industry, said James Truscott, vice president of sales and marketing.
Company officials introduced themselves to Riverside business leaders Wednesday morning, offering mango souvenirs lining a table inside the Mission Inn's Spanish Art Gallery room alongside displays of produce - Wild Rocket's staple product.
Based in the United Kingdom, the company has chosen Riverside to base it's first U.S. processing plant to be close to Tesco, its only customer so far. Tesco is building a massive campus at the Meridian business park on the former March Air Force Base as a distribution facility for its forthcoming stores in California, Arizona and Nevada.
Wild Rocket Foods is sister company to United Kingdom-based Natures Way Foods.

TK: Mango marketers must be happy to hear about this development, as it sounds Wild Rocket has taken the art of adding value to the mango to an uncommon level.Here is a link to their Website. The UK supplier seeks to hang on to their Tesco business, even as the UK chain moves into the Western U.S. How many more savvy British companies will set up shop over here?

Rebuilding confidence

More talk about rebuilding confidence, greater traceability and increasing demand for local and organic food is found in this link from Investors.com: From the story:

In the year since three people died and more than 200 were sickened by E. coli after eating contaminated raw spinach, and other reports have surfaced about tainted pet foods, fish and peanut butter, food companies are facing growing pressure to regain trust of consumers, whose confidence in the safety of what they eat is at an 18-year low.

Later....
In response to growing safety concerns, the Food Marketing Institute, a trade association whose board members include chief executives of 81 companies such as grocery giants Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), Kroger Co. (KR) and Safeway Inc. (SWY), formed a task force in October devoted to food safety.
"There's a great interest by both the supplier community and retailers to identify and trace foods," said Jill Hollingsworth, FMI's group vice president of food safety programs. "Retailers want to know more about where foods come from. The old system is just not enough anymore."

Later...

Banana producer Chiquita Brands Inc. (CQB) said this month that North American demand for its Fresh Express salad was still sluggish after an industry E. coli outbreak in spinach last September dampened consumers' confidence in bagged salads.

TK: Is it time for a greater PR/advertising piece from the industry to tell the story of what is being done to protect consumers? Death from a thousand cuts and the stubborn statistics that show a lack of confidence in food safety seem to call for a more aggressive marketing response, from both the industry and individual companies. The question is, does the timing of that response dovetail with on farm progress in food safety practices? The questions relating to improvements in FDA oversight have not been fully resolved, but much has been done at the farm level. Certainly, the leafy greens marketing agreement is one key part of the food safety story that should be told to consumers.