By Steven Guterman, Sarah McMullin, Steve Phelan

The combination of improved digital tracking along the food supply chain, as well as fast, accurate DNA testing will provide modern, state-of-the-art tools essential to guarantee accurate labeling for the ever-increasing quantities of foods and ingredients shipped globally.

The sheer scale of the international food supply chain creates opportunities for unscrupulous parties to substitute cheaper products with false labels. We know fraud is obviously a part of the problem. Some suppliers and distributors engage in economically motivated substitution. That is certain.

It’s equally true, however, that some seafood misidentification is inadvertent. In fact, some species identification challenges are inevitable, particularly at the end of the chain after processing. We believe most providers want to act in an ethical manner.

Virtually all seafood fraud involves the falsification or manipulation of documents created to guarantee that the label on the outside of the box matches the seafood on the inside. Unfortunately, the documents are too often vague, misleading or deliberately fraudulent.

Oceana, an international non-profit focused solely on protecting oceans and ocean resources, has published extensively on seafood fraud and continues to educate the public and government through science-based campaigns.

Seafood fraud is not just an economic issue. If the product source is unknown, it is possible to introduce harmful contamination into the food supply. By deploying two actions simultaneously, we can help address this problem and reduce mistakes and mishandling:

Improved digital tracking technologies deployed along the supply chain
Faster, DNA-based in-house testing to generate results in hours

Strategic collaborations can help industry respond to broad challenges such as seafood fraud. We partner with the University of Guelph to develop DNA-based tests for quick and accurate species identification. The accuracy and portability produced by this partnership allow companies to deploy tests conveniently at many points in the supply chain and get accurate species identification results in hours.

Our new collaboration with SAP, the largest global enterprise digital partner in the world, will help ensure that test results can be integrated with a company’s supply chain data for instant visibility and action throughout the enterprise. In fact, SAP provides enterprise-level software to customers who distribute 78% of the world’s food and accordingly its supply chain validation features have earned global acceptance.

The food fraud and safety digital tracking innovations being developed by SAP will be critical in attacking fraud. Linking paper documents with definitive test results at all points in the supply chain is no longer a realistic solution. Paper trails in use today do not go far enough. Product volume has rendered paper unworkable. Frustrated retailers voice concerns that their customers believe they are doing more testing and validation than they can actually undertake.

We must generate more reliable data and make it available everywhere in seconds in order to protect and strengthen the global seafood supply chain.

Catfish will become the first seafood species to be covered by United States regulations as a result of recent Congressional legislation. This change will immediately challenge the capability of supply chain accuracy. Catfish are but one species among thousands.

Increasingly, researchers and academics in the food industry recognize fast and reliable in-house and on-site testing as the most effective method to resolve the challenges of seafood authentication.

DNA-based analyses have proven repeatedly to be the most effective process to ensure accurate species identification across all food products. Unfortunately, verifying a species using DNA sequencing techniques typically takes one to two weeks to go from sample to result. With many products, and especially with seafood, speed on the production line is essential. In many cases, waiting two weeks for results is just not an acceptable solution.

Furthermore, “dipstick” or lateral-flow tests may work on unprocessed food at the species level, however, DNA testing provides the only accurate test method to differentiate species and sub-species in both raw and processed foods.

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which analyzes the sample DNA, can provide accurate results in two to three hours, which in turn enhances the confidence of producers, wholesalers and retailers in the products they sell and minimizes their risk of recalls and brand damage.

New technology eliminates multi-day delays for test results that slow down the process unnecessarily. Traditional testing options require sending samples to commercial laboratories that usually require weeks to return results. These delays can be expensive and cumbersome. Worse, they may prevent fast, accurate testing to monitor problems before they reach a retail environment, where brand and reputational risk are higher.

Rapid DNA-based testing conducted in-house and supported by sophisticated digital tracking technologies will improve seafood identification with the seafood supply chain. This technological combination will improve our global food chain and allow us to do business with safety and confidence in the accuracy and reliability of seafood shipments.

March 25, 2016

Bug Bytes

How to Find the Right Pest Management Partner

By Zia Siddiqi, Ph.D.

No Comments

When you choose a new vendor to partner with you, the decision is always important. Every vendor plays a role in your business and bottom line.

Some vendors, like pest control providers, can protect your brand and even help boost your reputation in the industry. When you factor in everything your pest control program can affect, it’s clear that picking the right pest management provider is one of the most important vendor decisions you’ll have to make.

Under FSMA, food processing facilities must execute proactive pest control programs and documentation efforts that not only follow and but also implement a risk-based prevention program to protect their product and consumer base — Under FSMA, food processing facilities must implement proactive pest control programs and a risk-based prevention program to protect their product and consumer base. Image courtesy of Orkin.

Consider how pest management can impact your audit scores, especially when you’re expected to be audit-ready at any time. The success of your third-party audit hinges on documentation, and the pest management portion can make all the difference in your score, accounting for up to 20%. FSMA requires food processing facilities to execute proactive pest control programs and documentation efforts that not only follow and but also implement a risk-based prevention program to protect their product and consumer base. Just one low score can cause your customers to lose trust in your business—and if they pull their support, you could see a major impact on your balance sheet.

The safety of your products and even the health of your employees are also at stake. Cockroaches and ants can pick up and transfer harmful bacteria. Flies can spread disease-causing organisms when they land—and they land frequently, it can lead to them leaving their traces in an abundance of places.

Then there are rodents, which can also cause serious health problems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, rats and mice are known to spread bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli, as well as more than 35 diseases worldwide, such as Hantavirus.

A Blueprint for Success

From its impact on audit scores to its role in abating health concerns to brand protection, pest control should be a priority for any food processing facility. There are several best practices to follow, most of them falling under the umbrella of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM is the preferred proactive pest management practice in the food processing business, and it can help meet and exceed the requirements of industry auditors.

IPM programs are ongoing, comprehensive and well-documented, focusing on risk-based preventive strategies like sanitation and facility maintenance to help prevent pest activity. They’re also customizable based on your property and the pests you face.

It’s essential to find the right, licensed and experienced pest management professional who will partner with you and your staff to implement a customized IPM program for your facility and help keep pest problems away. When starting your search for a pest management partner, be sure to ask about IPM. One-size-fits-all pest management solutions are simply not effective, so look for a provider who can tailor an IPM program specifically to your needs.

When searching for a pest management partner, look for one that stands out with the following guidelines.

Talk to your peers. If you’re looking for pest management recommendations, start by talking to your industry colleagues about the successes—or challenges—they’ve had with their vendors. If you’re a member of a larger network or GPO, you may have a preferred provider in which to start your search.

Start with an inspection. Once you have a list of options to check out, it’s time to put them to the test. As IPM programs are customizable, insist that your prospects inspect your facility to determine the challenges you face and the services you need.

Get the details in writing. Remember, FSMA requires written risk-based preventive food safety plans that detail likely hazards, corrective actions and results. With this in mind, your pest management professional should thoroughly document any service visits and corrective actions.

Documenting your pest management plan does more than fulfill the FSMA requirement. The best pest management providers will document their every move, using the information to determine pest trends, which can aid in decisions about how to best manage pest activity going forward. These records should be kept on-site for any surprise audits.

Ask for audit help. In addition to documentation, your pest management professional should work with you to ensure all documents are in proper order and audit-ready at any time. Look for a provider that can help you prepare for the third-party auditor and food safety standards with which your facility is required to comply, and even provide on-site support the day of your audit.

Think about your entire staff. One of the most overlooked variables when choosing a pest management provider isn’t how the company works in your facility, it’s how it works with your staff. For your new pest management program to be effective, your staff has to buy in—and your new provider can help.

Your employees play an important role in reporting pest sightings and keeping your facility clean. With this in mind, make sure to ask about resources that your pest management professional can offer your staff. Many offer staff training and educational resources like tip sheets and checklists, and often at no extra cost.

Add accountability, establish thresholds. You may pick an outstanding pest management partner, but ideal results won’t happen overnight. Depending on your facility, creating a pest-free environment can be difficult, even with the best of help.

Progress is achievable and quantifiable when you have pest thresholds. Thresholds dictate how much and what kind of pest activity is acceptable before corrective actions need to be taken, and they are best set by working with your pest control professional because several factors can come into play.

Older facilities or buildings in environments more conducive to pest activity, such as areas near water, locales in warm environments or heavily wooded spaces, may face more pest pressures than newer establishments. Your pest management professional may want to counter these challenges with exclusion recommendations that can include extensive building maintenance and repairs.

If you’re in a newer building and don’t currently battle any present pest issues, it may be perfectly reasonable to move forward with a “one pest is one too many” threshold. To make sure your program stays this effective, your provider may need to adjust tactics of your IPM program over time.

Even with a sound IPM plan, however, if you are currently battling pests like cockroaches, flies or ants, reaching your threshold goals will take time. Work with your pest management provider to create a timeline for steady and reasonable improvement.

Once you choose a pest management partner, keep the lines of communication open and establish roles for everyone involved. Set benchmarks for your pest management program and specific times throughout the year to evaluate the program’s success and areas of improvement with your provider.

Keep all of this in mind, and you can help build a solid, long-lasting partnership. As a result, pest sightings can fall as your audit scores rise.

March 23, 2016

Food Safety Think Tank

Mobile Technology Could Help Your Business in an Outbreak

By Gina R. Nicholson-Kramer

No Comments

Join Gina Kramer at the Listeria Detection & Control Workshop, May 31–June 1 in St. Paul, MN | LEARN MOREI recently spoke with Wes Billingslea, one of the co-founder’s of Till Mobile Corp., a company founded because its team realized large brands needed to connect all the way down to the smallholder and grower level. There are more than 6 billion mobile devices on earth and only a small percentage of them are smartphones. Till uses voice, text, and SMS-mobile to enable two-way communication with smallholders, and to deliver visibility and traceability. The company is able to collect massive amounts of data from growers because there is no resistance to using mobile phones. It works with your existing systems to identify and fill data gaps that create risk. The big brands access detailed analytics and can communicate directly throughout their supply chain to accelerate supplier onboarding, support local and alternate sourcing, and check inventory, pricing, and food safety standards.

I asked Wes, as a food company, how could this technology save me money? To start, it allows you to check inventory and pricing, and helps you adhere to your food safety standards beyond the packinghouse or distributor. It can also help you get more out of your existing systems to protect your IT infrastructure.

In the following video, we discuss the Salmonella outbreak in cucumbers that occurred last summer. In such a scenario, this new technology could help save food retailers money during an outbreak or recall by giving them greater visibility and real-time data, and help them source alternatives directly.

March 22, 2016

FST Soapbox

Inquiries, Responses and Audits: The Chipotle Effect

By Dan Bernkopf

No Comments

In an age where news is reported instantly, those outside the food industry have a heightened awareness and concern over their favorite brands’ commitment to food safety. Conversely, every food industry’s safety and quality operations teams are more than likely putting measures in place to tighten up their supply chain controls and re-evaluate their own food safety programs to ensure that their companies don’t become the next headline.

You better believe suppliers and their customers alike are also re-evaluating their ability to quickly, and effectively, respond to such an incident with the data and records needed to determine root causes—and with good merit, especially if you take a step back and really think about what is needed when a response or inquiry comes in surrounding a Chipotle-type food safety incident. Responses to such incidents typically fall along the lines of:

Evidence of current food safety plan, including comprehensive risk analysis, HACCP/HARPC plan, validation studies or documents
Inspection data and documents on your suppliers, including onsite inspection, transportation and product receiving inspections, complete with non-compliance reports and CAPAs for the last six months
All data records relative to your internal processing CCP(s) or equivalent, including monitoring frequencies and all non-compliance reports, complete with their CAPAs for the last six months
All regulatory and non-regulatory audit reports or actions, including non-compliance reports and their CAPAs
Additional available internal or external laboratory evidence that demonstrates environmental monitoring of your facilities and resulting continuous improvement and sanitation validation for the last two years
Additional internal or external laboratory pathogen monitoring programs for field, transportation, raw material supply and finished products, etc. as evidence to support your food safety program

The sheer volume of records, data and information needed in such an on-demand short timeframe can be extremely overwhelming. Without quick access to the critical records needed to determine root cause or, more importantly, thwart an incident from expanding, food safety and quality operations should be taking a close look at how they are managing their food safety data records and reports.

Are binders full of documents, or a combination of paper/silo data records going to suffice when it comes to inquiries, responses (and audits)? Or, is there a better way to manage food safety and quality data to ensure not only data is accessible, but also that food safety programs are working?

One sure bet is that there will be a higher number of audits and inquiries. Is your team and/or supplier prepared for the increase of these types of activities?

Inquiry: A request for a single or series of data and or documents usually related to a specific FSQA event or question
Response: The collected data, data reports, document or document reports related to a specific audit or inquiry
Audit: An activity that reviews one or many elements of a food safety plan to assure that the plan is complete, performed as described and meets the food safety design as intended. Audits are known and expected activities to review such safety plan elements even though the actual audit date and time may be known or unknown

We all know that audits are often lengthy exercises, yet they are still predictable. On the other hand, inquiries can be more difficult in that information requests may involve a very deep dive into a very specific area of inquiry.

In all honesty, if inquiries or responses or audits have to be planned for in advance, then you are not prepared. In order to always be prepared, it’s imperative to have better systems in place to manage any type of internal or external examination of your food safety and quality information. Regardless of whether it is an audit, response or inquiry, it is important to have easy access to records, verify that your programs are working, have corrective actions in place, and show visibility (and transparency) in your operation.

Thus it all comes back to how you or your suppliers are managing food safety records day in, day out. If FSQA operations are still relying on manual-based food safety and quality management processes versus food safety and quality management technologies, then chances are that you’re reacting to latent results, and you’re not able to identify trends and opportunities for improvement. The burden to manage inquires, responses or audits—as they continue to grow in cadence—will become overwhelming.

Without a doubt, the Chipotle effect is being felt throughout the industry. There will be increased accountability to ensure an adequate food safety program is in place and verification that the program is working. It will become even more imperative—and expected—that data and records are readily available to efficiently respond to inquiries, responses and audits.

March 21, 2016

In the Food Lab

Food Labs: Authentic and Safe Food is Key

By David Fried

No Comments

The recent Foods Lab Conference (co-located with Pittcon) was an intersection of compliance, technology and best possible practices. One of the goals of this international symposium was to have laboratories and the food industry recognize one another as part of an effort for a more intentional and collaborative system in the industry, especially in terms of policies and practices.

As a Food Science student from Tallahassee, Florida I ended up at this incredible conference after seeing a blurb for it on LinkedIn and was able to attend as an intern. The two main objectives of my role were to assist with various tasks to help ensure the event transitioned smoothly, as well as further my knowledge base of the enormous realm of food safety. The following are some themes that I heard throughout the two days.

Having the analysis and validation performed or overseen with preventative types of controls from a qualified individual should ideally occur before the food safety plan is implemented. This appears to be desired by the consensus and was a common thread during the conference. If there is a change in a process control, it can have a serious impact on the legitimacy of the documentation if the change is not taken into account. The ISO implementations are food safety management systems and hazard analysis identification, which is the international benchmark for compliance standards.

Analytical scientific instrumentation is absolutely necessary for guaranteeing data and reproducibility on a consistent basis. The scope and complexity of modern technology should be considered when used for repeated trials in which the narrowest margins of results are being demanded by consumers and industry. Microbiologists confirm their peace of mind is reliant on the ability for reproducible experimental trials. In a laboratory, the presence of variables and species must be handled in an extremely controlled manner. All too frequently undesirable organisms appear in foods, and this is often the result of poor food handling practices, fraudulent practices or summed up, lazy shortcuts for the most unthinkable reasons. An effort to decrease these microbes is being made through transparency in supply chains to trace the journey of the food from seed to the table.

Food production is being shaped as a result of FSMA, which is a milestone in food safety. A few features of this legislation are to offer assistance for the food technology sector and address questions about policy and safe handling practices. It has and will continue to influence the process of laboratory accreditation, validation and compliance in order to provide thorough transparency for the development of more modern food systems. There were many fascinating perspectives shared about validation and accreditation for both laboratories and facilities. Many large companies have their laboratories in-house, because it is easier from a production perspective if the product is going to market, to test it repeatedly in order to have less delay in the market launch. There have been times in which carcinogenic fillers or fake foods were portrayed. Examples would be the horse meat and melamine scandals. An additional perspective would be the possibility in protecting the own interests of the company by not disclosing true ingredients, practices, or actual comprehensive food safety evaluation. All are truly unacceptable with regards to mega food base distribution companies. Small- to medium-sized businesses typically source laboratory evaluations to third-party assessors to perform product validation because it’s simply too expensive to implement on their own because of labor, technology and space constraints. Claims of 100% pure olive oil are not true the majority of the time. A sunflower oil and chlorophyll solution can be made to mimic the coloration of pure extra virgin olive oil. So it is commonplace for this sort of solution to be created and combined with pure olive oil at a ratio of 2:1, as a conservative figure. True wording and claims are becoming a thing of the past, because it is way too simple for big food business to engage in such unthinkable practices to maximize their own profits.

A key thread running throughout the conference was the importance of necessitating the collaborative efforts needed to achieve a comprehensive dialogue set in place as a universal type of database. This database would serve as the foundation to ensure safe food practices throughout worldwide food production companies, accredited laboratories, governments, and consumers.

The Food Labs Conference was truly one of fantastic speakers, interesting participants, and fascinating conversation. The advanced topics were explored by professionals who share a deep passion for this vital industry sector. Food Laboratories and the conference, respectively, will become even more revolutionary in terms of future technology, the influence garnered by key publics, and future experts.

March 17, 2016

Food Safety Attorney

Federal Government Takes Regulatory and Criminal Offensive Against Food Industry

By Shawn K. Stevens

2 Comments

There was been a significant uptick in the amount of foodborne illness outbreaks and food product recalls (there were more than 500 food product recalls last year), many of which have been caused by dangerous pathogens. As FSMA plays a role in addressing this alarming trend, FDA is making several policy changes that will only continue to intensify. The agency is conducting microbiological profiling both inside food processing facilities during routine inspections and testing large amounts of food at the retail level. In addition, it has launched criminal investigations against food companies distributing products that have the potential to cause human illness. In many of these cases, company executives did not have direct knowledge that their products were causing, or had the potential to cause, illness. Many investigations involve Listeria monocytogenes (LM) found in food processing environments or in food products in commerce. Under FDA’s new approach, the failure to eliminate sporadic LM findings in the environment can subject companies to criminal liability. The immediate challenge to the food industry is to find a more effective solution to identify and reduce pervasive pathogens in the processing environment using pathogen-reduction technologies, while simultaneously employing written food safety protocols that can provide additional protection against criminal sanctions.

PulseNet Makes Foodborne Illness Link

Following the conclusion of the infamous the Jack-In-The Box outbreak that sickened 600 and killed four people more than two decades ago, the federal government recognized that similar outbreaks were probably occurring throughout the country, but there were no viable means of detection. As a result, the CDC created the PulseNet database, a mandatory foodborne illness reporting system to detect and track outbreaks in real time. From there, when a patient tested positive for a pathogen of concern (such as Listeria Monocytogenes, Salmonella or E. coli O157:H7), his or her doctor had to report that finding to the state health department. Each state requests copies of the isolates and tests them for the specific genetic DNA fingerprint of the pathogen of interest. These fingerprints are uploaded to PulseNet, and when indistinguishable genetic DNA fingerprints are uploaded from multiple victims, the CDC can recognize that an outbreak is emerging. The agency shares this information with FDA and other federal, state and local health departments as they work to determine a common source. Despite the fact that most illnesses uploaded to PulseNet remain unsolved, the database has helped CDC and FDA solve hundreds of outbreaks that have affected thousands of victims.

My subsequent columns will look at the emerging challenges faced by the food industry, including recent federal criminal investigations, some solutions designed to assess environmental contamination and reduce pathogens, and strategies that you can employ to reduce criminal liability.

March 7, 2016

Retail Food Safety Forum

Break the Pencil: Goodbye Paper, Hello Technology

By John Sammon III

No Comments

With the passage of FSMA, any location that handles food for public consumption must implement Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plans to reduce food safety risks across the food chain. Many businesses with multiple locations in the restaurant and retail industries are finding that traditional paper-based methods of record keeping are no longer adequate to comply with the FSMA. By abandoning paper-based systems and adopting cloud-based technology, restaurant and retail locations can embrace and enforce stronger food safety cultures and help eliminate human error.

According to the CDC, each year an estimated 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from foodborne disease.

Why? The process of purchasing, transporting, preparing and serving food heavily revolves around individual human behaviors related to cooking, cleaning, handling and refrigerating food. When employees do not follow the correct processes and procedures, it can lead to accidental food safety issues.

FSMA & HACCP Plans

In an effort to shift from responding to food contamination incidents after the fact to proactively preventing them, the FDA introduced FSMA in 2011. To allow businesses time to adjust to new rules and regulations, the FSMA requirements are implemented in phases, which began in September 2015 and will continue through May 2016.

As part of a larger food safety initiative, FSMA requires any business that handles food for public consumption to implement a HACCP plan. The purpose of the plan and its procedures is to identify potential hazards in any food-related processes where a lapse in attention or failure to complete a task could turn a potential hazard into an actual one.

The three main components of an HACCP plan that are required to be documented are:

Hazards: Evaluate potential hazards that exist in the enterprise. For example, how, when and why Salmonella or Listeria could migrate into a finished product
Critical Control Points: Identify critical control points where failures could occur, such as when products are moved from preparation to the sales floor
Preventative Steps: Establish the preventative steps that must be followed at each critical control point to reduce hazards, for example, interval checks to make sure correct temperatures, whether hot or cold, are consistently maintained

FSMA also mandates a record of food safety compliance to ensure a company follows its HACCP plan. Every location must document all actions, including ongoing monitoring of when a problem was spotted and corrective actions taken. These records, which have traditionally been created and maintained with pen or pencil and paper logs, must be kept for a minimum of two years.

Deli worker checks cold food temperatures using a handheld probe and wireless device. Maintaining proper food temperatures and recording checks for consistency is an important part of HACCP guidelines.

Compliance Challenges

With multiple locations and an ever-changing labor force, it is difficult for companies to be confident that the food they sell is safe and that every employee is acting diligently when it comes to food safety across the entire enterprise.

In a busy restaurant or retail environment with ever-changing customer demands for a variety of different products and services, a food safety culture and plan can unintentionally become compromised.

With local farmers to international food manufacturers supplying fresh, frozen and prepared foods and a variety of workers in contact with each for different reasons, it can be difficult to track food safety procedures.

Add an inefficient, manual, paper-based food safety record-keeping system that does not proactively remind employees to complete tasks or prompt corrective actions when needed, and you are opening the door to potential problems.

It’s Time to Break the Pencil

Companies must implement the highest standards of food safety processes at all levels and locations. Once a food safety culture is defined, it needs to be enforced every day. Employees should be well trained on policies, feel empowered and mandated to behave consistently.

A major part of the solution is abandoning traditional pen or pencil and paper-based record-keeping systems. By adopting technology, restaurants and retail locations can embrace and enforce stronger a food safety culture and help eliminate human error.

Electronic and intelligent checklists and digital record keeping on mobile, handheld solutions that are integrated into the Internet of Things (IoT) represent a major technological advancement over what was previously possible, and can manage and dynamically influence food safety processes. Through connectivity to the cloud, mobile, digital solutions can be deployed anywhere throughout a business, from warehouses to sales floors, to prompt the desired behaviors and provide a detailed, accurate audit trail of completion. Devices can also keep track of relevant safety alerts and recalls to improve efficiencies and initiate steps that may not be part of a typical routine.

Daily employee work schedules can be preloaded and custom electronic-based checklists and templates can be built specifically around potential hazards to manage employee tasks and processes. Any missed steps or violations are flagged for easy correction.

As tasks are completed, data is electronically gathered and transmitted directly to the cloud where it can be stored, analyzed and reported for compliance.

In addition, through the cloud and IoT, employees at various levels of an organization, from corporate headquarters to store managers, can view and access real-time data from each location. New information can be uploaded from any location and automatically distributed to a particular store, region or all locations across an enterprise. Enterprise-wide access helps ensure all locations are practicing the most up-to-date HACCP plan and procedures.

Digital food safety solutions have many benefits for a business:

Overall Food Safety: Ensures critical control points are monitored and proper corrective actions are taken when necessary
Higher Performance: Employees are reminded to complete assigned tasks, so more tasks are completed on time with fewer misses
Audit Trail: Detailed, automated audit trail of who completed the action, what time it was completed and the data retrieved from the action
Process Improvement: A single database of comprehensive information detailing timing, missed checklists, commonly missed items and top violations to help improve overall processes
Cost Savings: Fewer resources are needed to complete food safety inspections, a 60% reduction in time compared to pen or pencil and paper-based systems¹
Quality Improvement: In addition to HACCP compliance, the information gathered can be used for quality control. For example identifying where there has been over- or under-cooking in the food preparation process

Handheld, wireless and cloud-based technologies can serve as more accurate, reliable and efficient systems. Electronic systems are part of the solution for businesses to comply with new FSMA regulations and improve food safety procedures. When implemented properly, these technologies can help turn food safety in a positive direction and potentially avoid the next foodborne illness outbreak.

Reference

National Grocers Innovation Center, Center for Advancing Retail Technology. Intelligent Checklist for Quality and Safety in the Supermarket. Retrieved from http://info.partech.com/whitepaper-intelligent-checklist-for-food-safety

Deirdre Schlunegger, CEO of STOP Foodborne Illness

March 1, 2016

Food Safety Culture Club

A Face Behind Foodborne Illness

By Deirdre Schlunegger

2 Comments

How is it possible that we are already near the end of the first quarter of the new year? Time Marches on (pun intended). STOP Foodborne Illness continues to hear the devastating stories of foodborne illness. I am glad that companies vow to turn things around once things have gone wrong, but I do wish that the same companies had been paying attention long before individuals and families had to experience foodborne illness and live with life-long consequences. I believe that, when conducting in food safety training, sharing stories of those impacted by foodborne illness makes a difference. FSMA implementation is being taught, lectured about, absorbed, integrated, regurgitated and debated. FDA Deputy Commissioner of Foods and Veterinary Medicine Mike Taylor, along with his staff, intimately understand the “why” behind FSMA. Every step of the way, human life has been at the forefront of his prevention-based strategy and plans for new food safety legislation.

As company stock prices fall due to foodborne illness outbreaks, there are heartbreaking stories of families that may never recover emotionally—and this doesn’t always make the news. Chris, who was sick during the fall season, recently shared his story.

He wrote, “I wish that I could express to another person what this experience has been like for me. The physical symptoms are so much more severe than a typical stomach flu or food poisoning, but the truly difficult part has been the emotional anguish I have felt. This illness has been traumatic for me, and I still struggle with the effects of it. I wish it would never happen to another person and I greatly fear having to go through it again when I am older or less healthy—I truly believed it would kill me. I also wish that others would be able to understand how scary it is to feel your life slipping away through illness like this. Feeling like your body is out of control. For it all to occur from eating what I thought was clean and healthy food is sad for me and I hope that no one ever has to feel or experience what I went through.”

Food safety is not a flavor of the month cause or a nice thing in which to aspire. It is critical for the good health of individuals and the good health of business.

Thanks for reading.

February 29, 2016

FST Soapbox

Substituted Ingredients Are Only the Tip of the Iceberg

By John M. Ryan, Ph.D.

No Comments

While the United States has no legal definition of food fraud, current thinking tends to be focused primarily on companies and products involved in the illegal substitution of one ingredient for another in a product. Such substitution generally involves substituting a cheap filler in the place of the labeled ingredient. In recent news, Parmesan and Romano cheeses have captured news headlines because of illegal “misbranding” of foods meaning that the label on shredded cheeses from companies like the Castle Cheese, Inc. company in Slippery Rock, PA include ingredients found through FDA testing that are included in percentages beyond allowable levels. In the case of shredded cheeses, so called “imitation” cheese better is known as wood pulp. The labels stated that the ingredients were 100% cheese.

Perhaps Slippery Rock is an apt name for the Castle Cheese operation where the inclusion of wood pulp was cheaper than the inclusion of real parmesan cheese. Such activities are becoming increasingly known as “economically motivated” and the practice is one of economically motivated adulteration. The FSMA final rule, Focused Mitigation Strategies to Protect Food Against Intentional Adulteration, will make these practices illegal.

Such intentional cheating has a long record in the history of food. No one really knows the extent of such food fraud activities, when they started (perhaps at the beginning of time?), or who could claim to be the first person to win an international award for creativity.

There are so many ways to commit food fraud that it boggles the mind and creates an almost complete inability on the part of governments, testing laboratories, food processors, retailers and the public to identify, let alone fully prevent and capture the guilty every single time.

Think about a few things. Is it fraudulent to leave the identification of GMO ingredients off of labels? If a packer knowingly packs a product in dirty packaging, is that practice fraudulent? If the food safety part of the government knows how high the levels of fecal coliform are on most of the produce we eat but does not acknowledge the problems or inform the public, is this practice fraudulent? How about the idea that a retail outlet replaces an “expired” label on hamburger with a new unexpired label? Or how about the time Sysco was shipping perishable foods in refrigerated trucks and storing eggs, milk, meat, chicken and other products in the same storage sheds where you might keep leftover junk from your garage? Do “Good Things Come From Sysco”?

But none of those examples have anything to do with intentionally substituting a cheaper ingredient for an ingredient on the label. Honey, olive oil, coffee, juices, fish, alcohol, milk and dairy products, fish, vitamins, meat, spices, organic foods, maple syrup, peanut product, flavorings, preserves, cereals, colorings, wines, vinegar, purees, sweeteners ,and other ingredients are involved. And food fraud occurs in manufacturing, processing, packing and food holding operations. Such large opportunities for all foods in all operations means the entire food chain is—at one time or another, in one place or another—suspect.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) estimates that food fraud may cost the global food industry between $10 billion and $15 billion annually with lost sales between 2% and 15%. They estimate that approximately 10% of all commercial food products are impacted.

Considering the fact that the food industry claims their profit margins are only a few percent, it would seem that if they wanted to reduce food costs, food fraud would surely be a prime business improvement target. And GMA, unfortunately, is also focused on economically motivated adulteration such as unapproved additives, mislabeling, counterfeit ingredients, transshipment (shipping from one country to another to repackage and relabel in order to avoid taxes), and dilution.

When a consumer enters a supermarket in search of fresh meat, poultry or fish to cook for dinner, he or she knows little about how those products were packaged. Adding water to the pad that is often inserted under the meat to soak up blood, adds weight to the scale and money to the price. Packing the meat using carbon monoxide is common in order to “preserve” the product color. Red meat should look red, right? While the FDA considers this practice generally recognized as safe (GRAS), studies regarding how carbon monoxide interacts with the foam packaging and the clear plastic wrap covering the package are nonexistent. What makes the practice deceptive is the lack of information on the label that tells consumers carbon monoxide is used to preserve color. Of equal importance are recent studies that clearly show that many of the plastics used in today’s food packaging operations contain toxic chemicals shown to be dangerous to humans.

Interestingly enough, the European Union has a definition of food fraud:

‘Food fraud is a collective term used to encompass the deliberate and intentional substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, or food packaging; or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain’.

After the monster European horsemeat scandal (remember that one?) in which horse meat was substituted for beef to the embarrassment of many companies, such as Burger King and Ikea, the United Kingdom promised proactive solutions from food laboratories and improving supply chain audits in an effort to slow and diminish the number of incidents reported annually.

In the United States, we frequently point to the melamine (milk substitution) in baby formula or the pet food problems that came out of China as evidence that foreign companies are primarily to blame for food fraud. Coupled with governmental trade agreements and the attitude that other countries are dumping substandard product on American consumers, it seems easy to blame others for food fraud –except for the fact that we in America are dealing with so many incidents.

The problem with our inability to tackle food fraud in part comes from the gap between our ability to identify and develop appropriate and targeted food ingredient testing capabilities. So many types of food, so many types of tests, so many types of ingredients, and so many types of ways to intentionally or accidentally cheat the system all combine to confuse and confound our efforts to quickly and economically establish detection systems.

In most food distribution arenas, food traceability systems are slowly being agreed upon and implemented. However, the FDA does not seem to be able to help with establishing data and other standards that would help establish traceability requirements designed to quickly and accurately get to the source suppliers in food fraud events. Other industries under FDA medical device and drug laws have worked to establish solid chain of custody systems. Chain of custody implies that the suppliers and handlers are legally responsible and clearly identified. Leadership in this area is clearly needed.

While there are many good resources evolving both within and outside of the United States, those resources are scarce and relatively immature. It seems that without some basics, such as legal definitions, standardized testing practices, and an agreement that food fraud is much more than substitution of one ingredient for another, we have a very long way to go if we expect to get the food fraud system under control.

February 11, 2016

Food Safety Think Tank

Listeria, the Pesky Bug is Everywhere!

By Gina R. Nicholson-Kramer

2 Comments

“When a flower doesn’t bloom you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” A quote, by Alexander Den Heijer, trainer, speaker, purposologist, that rings true in food safety. When there is a contamination issue in food processing, one must fix the environment in which food is being processed. Safe food is a product of a clean environment.

We have better environmental sampling programs in our food manufacturing plants and processing facilities, and we have sanitation standard operating procedures, so why are we seeing a prevalence of Listeria, and in rising numbers? I recently sat down with Jeff Mitchell, vice president of food safety at Chemstar, about the recent increase in Listeria outbreaks and how you can rid your facility of the dangerous pathogen.

We’re seeing Listeria—in product recalls and outbreaks—over the last couple of years, and in multiple numbers. Why do you think this is happening?

Jeff Mitchell, Gina Kramer, Listeria — My interview with Jeff Mitchell about the increase in *Listeria* recalls. Watch the video

Jeff Mitchell: The distribution of Listeria in the environment has not changed, and the processes that we use for processing food really haven’t changed. What’s changed is the way that we collect data. We have PulseNet now, which gathers information. If someone goes to a medical treatment facility with a foodborne illness, they’re going to investigate that and they’re going to get the whole genome sequencing on the pathogen.

There’s a difference between understanding what transient Listeria is and resident Listeria. I think there are a lot of sanitation efforts being put forth to eliminate the resident populations—those are the populations we’re most concerned about, and they’re the ones that are being related back to a lot of these recalls.

If I have resident Listeria in my facility, why can’t I find it?

Food Safety Tech is organizing a Listeria Detection & Control Workshop, May 31 – June 1, 2016 in St. Paul, MN. LEARN MOREMitchell: Resident populations of Listeria are found in a biofilm—most bacteria aggregate within a biofilm. A biofilm is a survival mode for the bacteria; it protects it from sanitizer penetration. That layer actually masks it from sampling. You could swab a surface or an area and not pick it up, because the biofilm is masking it.

Jeff goes on to discuss the type of sanitation program that companies should have in place to get rid of resident Listeria. You can learn about the steps you need to take in my video interview.

A Blueprint for Success

PulseNet Makes Foodborne Illness Link

FSMA & HACCP Plans

Compliance Challenges

It’s Time to Break the Pencil

Reference

How We Use Cookies