Food safety guidelines for tomatoes

By some quirk known only to the computer gods, a news release I was looking for from the United Fresh Produce Association was assigned to my Outlook spam folder. I retrieved the document and publish an excerpt below. The most important sentence is the last:

"The California Tomato Farmers and Florida Tomato Exchange have indicated that they support the Commodity Specific Food Safety Guidelines for the Fresh Tomatoes Supply Chain, 2^nd Edition as the basis for mandatory national food safety standards for the fresh tomato industry."

From the release:

United Fresh Produce Association (United Fresh) and the North American Tomato Trade Work Group (NATTWG) have published the second edition of the Commodity Specific Food Safety Guidelines for the Fresh Tomatoes Supply Chain for use throughout the fresh tomato industry. This document provides the latest food safety guidelines related to water, workers and soil factors, and it includes components for all companies along the supply chain, including retailers and foodservice distributors.

United Fresh and NATTWG initiated the year-long effort to revise the first edition guidance document in order to incorporate new scientific learnings and to include the perspectives of a broader scope of contributors than was included in the first edition.

Over the past 12 months, more than 40 scientists and industry experts from academia, government and the fresh tomato industry have reviewed the latest food safety research findings and industry practices in order to revise the first edition of the guidance document, which was published in 2006 by NATTWG.

“Significant efforts were made to involve as many associations, agencies, companies and individuals with expertise in food safety practices for one or more steps in the fresh tomato supply chain as possible,” said Dr. David Gombas, senior vice president of food safety and technology at United Fresh. “We wanted everyone’s input on this so we could be as thorough as possible.”

“In the two years since the first document, we’ve learned more about potential risks and control measures at all points in the fresh tomato supply chain,” said Reggie Brown, chairman of NATTWG. “The second edition of the guidelines represents current understanding of conditions and controls that should be considered by every company in the tomato supply chain.” NATTWG is a consortium consisting of fresh field and greenhouse tomato organizations within the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The California Tomato Farmers and Florida Tomato Exchange have indicated that they support the Commodity Specific Food Safety Guidelines for the Fresh Tomatoes Supply Chain, 2^nd Edition as the basis for mandatory national food safety standards for the fresh tomato industry.