The labor union International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been holding nationwide protests at Chipotle locations this month, taking issue with one of the restaurant chain’s suppliers. The supplier at the focus of the demonstrations is California-based produce company Taylor Farms, which supplies tomatoes and peppers to Chipotle, according to Teamsters.
“Over the past five years, Taylor Farms has had more than 20 food recalls for problems such as Listeria, Salmonella and E. coli. In November 2015, Taylor Farms products containing celery and sold at Costco and other retail outlets were recalled for possible E. coli 0157:H7 contamination,” according to a Teamster news release. “At Taylor Farms’ plant in Tracy, Calif., the company has also committed safety and health violations and violations of laws that protect workers’ rights. Recently, the company settled extensive labor rights violations that involved payments of $267,000 to illegally terminated workers and a required posting in which the company promises to never again violate a long list of employee rights.”
The Teamsters protested at 12 Chipotle locations across the country, following 30 previous protests at Chipotle over the past several months.
Teamster Vice President Rome Aloise points the finger at Chipotle for allowing Taylor Farms to “have a total disregard for consumers’ and workers’ health and safety, as well as workers’ rights,” he said. “Chipotle claims to serve ‘Food With Integrity’, but where’s the integrity when it turns a blind eye to its supplier’s behavior? Chipotle must not cut and run – which would hurt Taylor Farms workers – it must carry out its social responsibility and demand Taylor Farms treat workers fairly and with respect.”
Taylor Farms has not released a statement addressing the protests.
As Clear Labs’ latest report on burger products, The Hamburger Report, has gained widespread media attention, the North American Meat Institute is sounding an alarm about the findings. Clear Labs is a “fledging company” that is “up to its same old tricks”, using burgers as its target just in time for the grilling season, said Betsy Booren, Ph.D., vice president, scientific affairs at the North American Meat Institute, in a statement from the organization.
“A review of the company’s procedures suggest[s] collection methods prone to mistakes and a range of errors throughout the analysis process. A look at the company’s own promotional video featuring shots of overpacked freezers and technicians testing products using plastic forks and knives with paper towels would suggest cross contamination in the lab is a very good possibility,” said Booren. “When a single cell can generate a finding, precise methods are crucial. It’s entirely possible that the human DNA found could be linked back to the company’s own staff—we just don’t know. Likewise, when the lab company suggests some products showed the presence of another species, like chicken in a beef product, this finding could also stem from a single cell and even result from the pulling samples from multiple packages in the same room, as the company appears to have done.”
Booren called Clear Labs’ report a marketing ploy and went on to assert that today’s ground beef is safer than ever, saying there have been significant reductions in pathogenic bacteria, which has been “further confirmed by this report [The Hamburger Report]”.
Eva Almenar and a team of researchers at Michigan State University may have found a way to make packaged produce last longer. (Image courtesy of University of Michigan)
Michigan State University (MSU) may have come up with a way to make packaged vegetables last much longer. After conducting an extensive evaluation of current techniques, researchers at MSU found that combining a package’s atmosphere of elevated carbon dioxide and reduced oxygen with a sanitizing treatment of sodium hydrochlorite could help ready-to-use onions last two weeks in a package (meaning that they were acceptable for purchase at this point). The results of the research, which was partially funded by USDA, were featured in an issue of the International Journal of Food Microbiology.
“We focused on ready-to-use onions, which have grown to become one of the five most commonly sold vegetables in the last decade,” said Eva Almenar, MSU AgBioResearch scientist in a news release. “Of all the variations that we tested, this one reduced microbial growth, respiration and discoloration, and preserved the desired aroma.”
The packaging technique could have potential use with other vegetables as well. Almenar is also investigating gas composition packaging and containers made from renewable sources.
Burgers are the quintessential American food. But as prices continue to rise in the beef industry and U.S. consumers seek more health-conscious alternatives such as veggie and salmon burgers, some food companies may be cutting corners. Clear Labs used next-generation genomic sequencing (NGS) to conduct molecular analysis of 258 burger products (ground meat, frozen patties, fast food burgers and veggie burger products from 79 brands and 22 retailers) and found significant issues—instances of substitution, missing ingredients, pathogens or hygienic problems—in about 14% of samples. This is a red flag for industry, indicating a need to remain vigilant about vulnerabilities in the supply chain and the way in which products are tested.
Ironically, perhaps the biggest problems that The Hamburger Report revealed surrounded meat-alternative products. Out of 89 vegetarian samples, 23.6% were found to have issues, from ingredient substitutions to rat DNA to pathogens (see Figure 1). “We were surprised by the higher rate of problems in veggie burgers,” says Mahni Ghorashi, co-founder of Clear Labs. “There were nearly twice as many problems in those samples as their meat counterparts, which is surprising, because you normally think of a veggie product as perhaps a safer bet, but we actually found more cases of pathogen strains. And we found things like beef in veggie products, which isn’t acceptable. That was somewhat troubling.” Ghorashi suggests that manufacturers should be doing more to ensure consistency and adequate labeling of best-handling practices for consumers. “The message is that we need more awareness about the unknown risks and the potential need for more stringent safety measures,” he says. “We follow a great deal of these practices when it comes to meat-based products. Perhaps we’re not as sensitive toward veggie-based products.”
Figure 1. The Hamburger Report found a higher rate of issues with meat-alternative burger products. (Figure courtesy of Clear Labs)
The report also uncovered several high-risk pathogens in samples, but not the typical ones (i.e., Listeria, Salmonella, E. coli) that make news headlines. Out of the 258 samples, 4.3% contained pathogenic DNA, with vegetable products accounting for four of those instances. Pathogens found included Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, Yersinia enterocolitica, clostridium perfringens, and klebsiella pneumonia. Although these strains are often rare, they still have health implications and can cause tuberculosis-like symptoms, digestive issues and gastroenteritis. Typical methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are used to detect pathogenic strains such as Listeria, Salmonella and E. coli, but can potentially miss other strains. “The industry should take off their pathogen blinders and start to test for lesser known and potentially dangerous pathogens using these types of blind-testing techniques,” says Ghorashi. “It’s worth casting a wider net and filter in order to catch these [pathogens].”
Although the screening method that Clear Labs used is currently unable to determine whether a pathogen is dead or alive, nor the count, there are other benefits to using next-generation DNA sequencing, says Ghorashi, who thinks the method has the potential to become the technology of choice in the food industry. “The strength of this platform as it differentiates itself from existing solutions is its ability to look unbiasedly and universally into food samples and tell you everything that’s there,” he says. “It’s able to detect any type of DNA-based species within a sample as opposed to specific queries that you might be looking for. This technology can detect everything that’s there, so it often catches things that one might miss. Existing solutions look very focused on one particular item.”
What are the implications of The Hamburger Report in the context of FSMA?
Ghorashi: It’s very much in line with what FDA is rolling out with FSMA. This speaks back to where industry is headed in terms of rolling out more preventive measures versus responsive measures. It plays into economic adulteration and fraud. It also plays into the concept of proactive testing and measures, a better sense of the overall landscape of the supply chain and where the weaknesses are. These are all the areas that software-driven and data-driven platforms can help emphasize. We look at FDA as a forwarding-thinking organization and an ally in this initiative. Hopefully emerging companies, including ourselves, that have new disruptive technologies can help assist the food industry, whether producers, manufacturers, retailers or distributors, in building more air-tight safety programs and complying more closely with FSMA regulations.
Clear Labs is working towards building out its first product, Clear View. The software data analytics platform integrates NGS technology and is designed to aggregate test data in the cloud to provide food manufacturers, suppliers and retailers with insights about their supply chains. The company is also continually growing its internal database, which, according to Ghorashi, is currently the largest molecular food database in the world.
Q&A Part I: Hiring and Training, Understanding FSMA Remain Big Industry ChallengesIn part two of Food Safety Tech’s Q&A with TraceGains, Anthony Arocha (customer success consultant), Rajan Gupta (vice president of customer success), and Jason Ulrich (customer success manager) explain the factors at play surrounding the lack of supplier documentation in the food industry.
Food Safety Tech: Just 44% of respondents said they automate supplier documents. What information can you glean from this? Why aren’t more companies automating?
Arocha: Companies understand that using technology is essential to manage the increasing demands on accurate food safety documentation and verification. For many companies, it is likely to be just a timing and resource issue as to why they have not yet adopted automation—timing as in they have not yet reached the pain threshold required to justify the new cost to implement and to have a resource to support or focus on it. As companies grow and new budgets get created, it is just a matter of time before they will have to include automation help if they have not already.
Gupta: I believe lack of internal respect for QA and thus lack of education and funding are key contributors to this area. Most of the quality staff is stuck doing daily activities with limited time to explore options to make their processes better. Lack of empowerment to make business process changes is also a large factor in not adopting technology. Marc states that the companies have silos as indicated by the transparency gains from technology—while that is true, the root cause of this may be that the various groups within an organization have never really paid attention to FSQA areas and thus never envisioned having access to information that can help the organization proactively manage risk and increase food safety awareness.
Ulrich: This is all about people money, and time. The industry as a whole doesn’t have enough in quality departments. The lack of qualified individuals available in QA departments has always been an issue. The money is usually used to improve production and other departments except quality. That leaves the limited resources in the department with very little time to review and implement new processes or software.
FST: Regarding supplier documentation management, where are companies falling short?
Arocha: Supplier document management is not easy. You are at the mercy of your vendors. I think the biggest issue is trying to do everything too fast versus having a risk-based approach and focusing on the top priority items first. Build on success. If you try to do too much too fast, it is hard to pick out the success stories easily and can become overwhelming.
Gupta: Anthony is right but he is also stating the obvious problem – “mercy of vendors”. We believe that technology such as TraceGains Network can improve efficiency greatly in sharing documentation and risk-based data, but lack of education and rapid acceptance within the industry of new approaches hinders innovation and limits already stretched resources to take shortcuts that may not be the best course of action long-term.
Ulrich: In addition to what Marc, Anthony and Raj stated most are afraid to challenge the supplier. There is a fear of making them angry or asking for too much.
Today FDA published a draft guidance to help qualified facilities in complying with the FSMA Preventive Controls (PC) for Human and Animal Food rules. Businesses that are defined as qualified facilities are subject to modified requirements of the PC rules, which can be met by submitting a form to FDA confirming that the site is implementing PCs to address hazards related to its food or is in compliance with non-Federal food safety laws and regulations.
The draft guidance, “Qualified Facility Attestation Using From FDA 3942a (for Human Food) or Form FDA 3942b (for Animal Food)” discusses how to determine whether a business meets the “qualified facility” definition and how to submit the form that demonstrates this status.
The Federal Register is scheduled to publish the document on May 16, at which point the draft guidance will be available for public comment for 180 days.
A new industry survey is highlighting several issues facing food safety and quality assurance professionals, from employee retention to understanding the final FSMA rules. The 2016 Annual TraceGains Food Safety & Quality Assurance (FSQA) Professional Survey digs into the top priorities (FSMA compliance, audit readiness, supplier relationship management, etc.) of professionals and sheds light on some of the current challenges that companies are facing, especially in the area of compliance, FSMA readiness and supplier documentation.
“We’re seeing a recipe for stress in the food and beverage industry: Take one-part low margins, blend in one-part increased government regulation, one-part unannounced audits, one-part increasing customer demands, and one-part manual paperwork,” says Gary Nowacki, CEO of TraceGains. “Mix well, bake on high, then spread thinly with a limited pool of FSQA professionals.”
Anthony Arocha, customer success consultant at TraceGains
Nearly 500 FSQA professionals participated in the survey. In a two-part Q&A with TraceGains, Anthony Arocha (customer success consultant), Rajan Gupta (vice president of customer success), and Jason Ulrich (customer success manager) explain what the results mean in to the broader industry.
Food Safety Tech: Were there any surprises with this year’s survey?
Anthony Arocha: FSMA compliance is across the board a top priority with staffing/training as one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. I would say this is a huge opportunity for automation to help reduce the risk and long-term costs incurred by the increasing demand for accurate documentation.
22% and 19% cited training and staffing respectively as a big challenge. Graphic courtesy of TraceGains.
Rajan Gupta: I do not think there are any surprises but a very strong restatement that FSQA staff is difficult to hire/retain due to limited individual growth, low salaries, inadequate training, incentives, etc. All of these lead to the fact that most food companies look at food safety and quality as a nuisance that they must deal with versus as a function that is a necessity or a requirement with adequate funding.
Rajan Gupta, vice president of customer success, TraceGains
FST: With FSMA being a top priority among survey respondents, are you finding that companies are concerned about any of the rules in particular?
Arocha: Honestly, it seems that most folks are trying very hard to get a handle on all the new rules and what their responsibility is for compliance. Not sure they have gotten to the point of having just one or two main concerns yet. There is more emphasis on creating strong relationships with the downstream and upstream customers and suppliers than ever before. Some of the rules seem vague, which will require an operation to be prepared to support how they meet a particular requirement or may be potentially exempt from it. These have been some of the concerns that seem to be popping up most.
Survey Question: What, if anything, hinders your company’s ability to on-board, recruit, and retain skilled FSQA staff? (Graphic courtesy of TraceGains)Jason Ulrich, customer success manager, TraceGains
Gupta: The main theme that we hear from our customers is that there is confusion. Companies have had to deal with many requirements in the past, some of which conflict each other. I think lack of a thorough understanding of food safety within an organization is a key limiting factor to truly determine what is needed at each organization to meet FSMA guidelines.
Jason Ulrich: Companies are concerned about FSMA. Most are concerned with FSMA as a whole. Many have taken steps to educate themselves, but the law is vague, especially for companies that are in multiple areas of food manufacturing.
Yesterday the FDA, Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and the Department of Health Canada signed an agreement that recognizes their food safety systems as comparable. Signed at an FDA-CFIA Health Canada Joint Committee on Food Safety meeting, the agreement will allow the agencies to leverage their regulatory systems and partner on various activities such as oversight when prioritizing inspections, scientific collaboration, and outbreak response.
“This arrangement is part of the US-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council in which the countries intend to better align their food safety regulatory systems, reduce unnecessary duplication, enhance information sharing, and to the extent possible, leverage resources so that the agencies can better meet their public health objectives,” said Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at FDA in a statement.
According to an FDA release: “Systems recognition involves reviewing a foreign country’s domestic food safety regulatory system to determine if it has legal authorities and regulatory tools that together provide public health outcomes comparable to those provided by the FDA. Domestic systems provide the baseline level of public health protection that helps assure the safety of exported foods from that country. Systems recognition will help the FDA be more risk-based in planning the scope and frequency of its inspection activities, including foreign facility inspections, import field exams, and import sampling.”
The agencies used the International Comparability Assessment Tool to conduct a systems recognition review and assessment involving elements of Canada’s national food safety control system. This included examining laws and regulations, inspection programs, response to outbreaks, and other compliance, enforcement and lab support activities.
Learn innovative ways to mitigate the threat of Listeria at the Listeria Detection & Control Workshop | May 31–June 1, 2016 | St. Paul, MN | LEARN MORE–UPDATE–May 5, 2016–The CDC has reported that eight people have been infected with Listeria from three states from September 2013 to March 2016. According to an FDA release, whole genome sequencing conducted from a routine product sampling program by the Ohio Department of Agriculture revealed Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) from frozen corn and that it was closely related genetically to seven bacterial isolates from those sickened. It found a similar result from frozen peas, with an Lm isolate closely related genetically to one isolate from one person. “This close genetic relationship provides additional evidence that the people in this outbreak became ill from eating frozen vegetables produced by CRF Frozen Foods,” the release stated.
In March FDA collected environmental samples from Oregon Potato Company (also located in Pasco, WA), which were found to be closely related genetically to seven isolates of sickened people linked to the outbreak. As a result Oregon Potato voluntarily recalled its wholesale onion products. “FDA is working to identify other parts of the relevant supply chain that may have product relating to this outbreak. However, FDA is prohibited by law from releasing publicly certain information about supply chains, which may constitute confidential commercial information,” according to the release.
The agency is trying to determine whether there is a connection between product sample isolates and environmental samples taken. FDA called it a “complex and ongoing investigation”.
–END UPDATE–
Pasco, Washington-based CRF Frozen Foods has expanded a nationwide voluntary recall of its frozen fruits and vegetables over concerns that the products may be contaminated with Listeria. The recall, which also includes products sold in Canada, encompasses more than 358 consumer products sold under 42 different brands of frozen organic and traditional fruit and vegetable products that were manufactured or processed in CRF’s facility since May 2014. Seven people from at least three states have been sickened and hospitalized due to Listeria. According to an announcement on FDA’s website, “Some of these illnesses have been linked to consuming CRF-manufactured or processed products. CDC also informed us that, sadly, two of these individuals later died, but that Listeria was not the cause of death in either person.”
CRF suspended operations at its facility in Pasco, Washington on April 25 (following the first voluntary recall) and all affected retailers have been notified.
According to the FDA announcement:
“Products include organic and non-organic broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, cauliflower, corn, edamame, green beans, Italian beans, kale, leeks, lima beans, onions, peas, pepper strips, potatoes, potato medley, root medley, spinach, sweet potatoes, various vegetable medleys, blends, and stir fry packages, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, peaches, raspberries, and strawberries.”
Today the USDA announced that is providing $6 million in funding for research surrounding antimicrobial resistance. Available via the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative and USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, funded applications must tackle one or more areas:
Development of new systems approaches to investigate the ecology of microbial resistance microbes and gene reservoirs in the environment in animals, crops, food products or farm-raised aquaculture products
Development, evaluation and implementation of effective and sustainable resources and strategies. This approach includes alternative practices, techniques, technologies or tools that mitigate emergence, spread or persistence of antimicrobial resistant pathogens
Identify critical control points for mitigating antimicrobial resistance in pre- and post-harvest food production
Design training, education, and outreach resources (including web-based) that are adaptable by users across the food chain (from policy makers to producers and processors to retailers and consumers)
Design and conduct studies that evaluate the impact and efficacy of proposed research, education and extension/outreach interventions on antimicrobial resistance across the food chain
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