By Brenda Van Goethem, Nerac Analyst
Most of us don’t even give it a second thought; we take it for granted that everything we eat is safe. The U.S. food supply is one of the safest in the world. Even so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 76 million people become sick, more than 325,000 people are hospitalized, and 5,000 people die from foodborne illnesses each year. Once again, food safety is making headlines due to recent bacterial foodborne outbreaks. E. coli bacteria, implicated in two major foodborne outbreaks in the last three months, is now the pathogen “du jour.”

In September 2006, three people died and 199 people in 26 states were sickened with E.coli 0157:H7 after eating contaminated spinach that was grown and packaged in California. Three months later the same E. coli strain hit Taco Bell and Taco John’s restaurants. Investigators are still tracing the origins. Fortunately, no deaths were attributed to those outbreaks.

Ensuring food safety is an arduous and expensive undertaking that is the responsibility of all links within a supply chain. Given the severity of the E.coli outbreaks in the last three months, it is in the best interest of restaurant chains and the fresh produce industry to establish industry standards to ensure food safety for the end consumer. With the economic cost of foodborne illness in the U.S. estimated to be up to $83 billion each year, the companies that decide to wait for stricter regulatory enforcement may not be in business when the regulations are finally handed down.

Just as Americans try to focus on healthier diets, including salads, greens, fruits, and vegetables, the possibility that bacterial contamination will make them sick could have a negative impact on this industry segment. Since the recent taco restaurant E.coli outbreaks, the public is demanding stricter regulatory enforcement and industry standards for food safety in the fresh produce industry. But legislation, regulations, and industry standards targeting the fresh produce industry can take years to develop and implement. So, in the meantime, what can companies do to ensure food safety from farm to table? Part of the answer may be found by looking at history.

Lessons Learned
Foodborne outbreaks in the last 20 years forced U.S. regulatory agencies to take a more proactive approach to controlling pathogen risks in the dairy, seafood, and meat industries. In the 1980s, the pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes, was found to be associated with soft, fresh cheese; undercooked poultry; hot dogs not thoroughly reheated; and food purchased from delicatessen counters. In the 1990s, over 700 people were sickened and four children died after eating E. coli-contaminated ground beef served at a popular hamburger chain.

The result was that the FDA and FSIS initiated risk-management strategies to address foodborne hazards in fresh and processed products. The agencies worked with processing plants to improve their sanitation procedures, and many companies implemented hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) systems to minimize contamination within their processes. As a result of these efforts, the average annual rate of illness from Listeria monocytogenes declined significantly.

The E.coli hamburger outbreak in the 1990s changed the meat industry paradigm that pathogens are a natural part of the raw meat environment and should be reduced primarily by food preparers through cooking. In 1996, FSIS published its rule on Pathogen Reduction and HACCP systems, which required all plants that slaughter and process meat and poultry to implement HACCP systems to prevent contamination from pathogens and other hazards. To ensure HACCP systems are adequate, the rule also set in-plant pathogen reduction performance standards for Salmonella, the most common cause of foodborne illness associated with meat and poultry products. Later, the Pathogen Reduction and HACCP rule included in-plant reduction standards for E. coli, an indicator of fecal contamination.

Produce Industry Should Not Wait
In the wake of the E. coli lettuce outbreak, the fresh produce industry shouldn’t wait for the government regulators to legislate food safety directives. Lessons the meat and dairy industry learned can certainly be applied to the fresh produce supply chain. All producers, processors, distributors, and users within the fresh produce supply chain need to be cognizant of food safety from farm to table.

It starts in the fields. Fresh fruit or vegetable producers should be responsible for implementing and documenting prevention programs and food safety awareness training for workers at all levels of the agricultural and packing environments.

Fresh-cut or value-added processing facilities need to evaluate their entire production flow for potential food safety breaches and initiate good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and hazard analysis and HACCP systems to minimize contamination within their processes.

The restaurants that buy the produce, meat, or dairy products and cook it for the consumer may bear the greatest food safety responsibility in the supply chain. Not only are restaurants responsible for proper handling and cooking practices to prevent food safety issues, they are also responsible for selecting their raw material vendors. It is certainly in a restaurant chain’s best interest to have a rigid vendor selection and qualification process and to routinely audit these vendors to ensure all food safety and HACCP parameters are adhered to. In addition, a restaurant chain may choose to quarantine raw materials from vendors and conduct outside lab testing before using these materials to ensure safety and quality. This is especially important when using a fresh ingredient that is ready to eat and will not undergo any type of heat processing.

McDonald’s Model Can Work
To some companies all the monitoring, documentation, and auditing needed to ensure food safety may seem like an expensive fairy tale that only applies to the meat, seafood, and dairy industries. However, in 1996 McDonald’s initiated an intrepid vendor food safety/HACCP audit to ensure that all vendors implemented a HACCP program for food safety. McDonald’s started the audit process with vendors supplying their Atlanta distribution center to avoid the embarrassment or economic catastrophe of a foodborne outbreak at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The McDonald’s vendor audit lasted two days with extensive touring of the vendor’s plant, sanitation records, pest control records, finished product quality records, and a detailed examination of the vendor’s HACCP program. A key part of the audit was the McDonald’s auditor quizzing the production workers on GMPs and the HACCP control point that they were directly responsible for.

Consumers shouldn’t have to even fathom the thought that eating a hamburger, or taco, or spinach salad will make them sick. Food safety is a mandate for all links within the supply chain that often requires a proactive, not reactive, mindset. A proactive mindset worked for McDonald’s without any government urging. It can work for the fresh produce and restaurant industries too.