Part II - WPPC - FDA meeting on Sept. 11 - Amy Green

As promised, more from the WPPC-FDA meeting of Sept. 11. We are near the beginning of the 90 minute plus program, where a panel of about five or six FDA officials speak before answering questions. These are the remarks of Amy Green.

From her bio:


Amy Green has been with FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition for eight years. She is policy analyst in the Office of Food Safety, and has been lead author for fresh-cut produce safety guidance.

Her remarks:

Welcome.. I see at least half of you have smiles on your faces, so I guess that's a good a sign. (laughter) Michelle told you that I would talk to you about the produce safety initiatives. I’ll start out with the produce safety initiatives.

There are two. The leafy greens safety began in September 2006 in the Salinas Valley in California. The tomato safety initiative began in June 2007 on the eastern shore of Virginia. Now these initiatives represent relatively new approaches for FDA. They are allowing us to visit a broader range of operations in non-outbreak situations.
At the same time, the initiatives are part of a risk-based strategy designed to reduce foodborne illness by focusing our food safety efforts on specific products, practices and growing regions.
The objectives of the initiatives are to assess current conditions and practices, the challenges that are (faced) by those conditions and practices and responses to those challenges, and also to enhance collaboration between the FDA, state/local governments and industry.
The information that we gained from the initiatives will be used to improve our understanding of current practices and provide data to inform policy decisions and future guidance that we write.

In 2006, the first year of the leafy greens initiative, assessments were conducted at farms, packing houses and fresh cut facilities in the Salinas Valley. In 2007, we narrowed the focus to environmental factors, particularly animals and water. San Benito County and Kern County were assessed, we spent a good deal of time before we went out to the field identifying the sites where we would visit. To identify specific locations were we would visit, we used Geographic Information Systems or GIS. We used GIS to map out where certain environmental factors appeared to converge the most often: with followed up (the use) of GIS with aerial photography to confirm what we had done with GIS and to further help our site selection so we could use our resources most efficiently.
The tomato safety initiative began on the eastern shore of Virginia in June 2007. The assessments done as part of the tomato initiative addressed growing, harvesting and packing practices. Thus far, two of the three parts of the tomato initiative have been completed and we just want to say that Florida growers have given us unprecedented cooperation throughout the initiative and we hope that will continue.

The success of these initiatives is due in large part to the collaborations with state partners, academia and industry.

Another produce activity that Michelle mentioned was FDA conduct of microbiological sampling survey that started in 1999. (The survey) is done on domestic and imported fresh produce commodities. In 2008 survey, we are sampling fresh whole cantaloupes, leaf lettuce, tomatoes, green onions, spinach, basil, cilantro and parsley. We are analyzing for salmonella, E. coli O157H7, shigella, Hepatitis A and cyclospora.
Throughout the years, we’ve made changes to these surveys; changes to commodities, pathogens and analytical methods. For example, in 2005 we added fresh spinach to the list of commodities and we added testing for Hepatitis A and cyclospora and changed the methods for detecting salmonella in potatoes and tomatoes because (the new method) improved accuracy of testing.

The surveys that we do are conducted for surveillance; we are basically trying to collect a body of data on incidence of contamination in select produce commodities.
In addition, if positive samples are found, regulatory follow up provides us the opportunity to observe practices and conditions that may be associated with contamination.

We start with same basic survey with domestic and imported product but some differences exist because it is unavoidable. One of the differences is that for domestic produce we can collect the sample close to the farm as possible, whereas for imported produce, we have to collect data at the port of entry. So that’s it for me. Jack will speak next.