“We have the safest food supply in the world. Despite the listeria outbreak, the sheer volume of produce, fresh or processed, that is consumed by the American public with little or no incidence is testimony to that fact.”

That according to Pete Suddarth, product development and field director of customer relations for Abbott & Cobb Inc., Feasterville, Pa.

Testify. Fact. Sounds a little spiritual (appropriate since so much of food safety is faith-based).

The Packer reports that food safety has become a major focus of seed companies and they work to adapt their products to a changing environment and increased market demands.

The rest of the story was about disease resistance, quality and yield, although Art Abbott, president of Abbott & Cobb, said the firm is working on reducing the heavy netting on cantaloupes to make them less susceptible to moisture absorption. This trait would help to reduce possible pathogen infections.

May reduce. May.

Can you seed types do anything about sprout seeds?

A total of 14 people have been infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli O26 from 6 states in the fifth outbreak involving sprouts served on Jimmy John’s sandwiches in the past four years

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control report the number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Iowa (5), Missouri (3), Kansas (2), Michigan (2), Arkansas (1), and Wisconsin (1).

Two ill persons have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.

Preliminary results of the epidemiologic and traceback investigations indicate eating raw clover sprouts at Jimmy John's restaurants is the likely cause of this outbreak. Preliminary traceback information has identified a common lot of clover seeds used to grow clover sprouts served at Jimmy John's restaurant locations where ill persons ate. FDA and states conducted a traceback that identified two separate sprouting facilities; both used the same lot of seed to grow clover sprouts served at these Jimmy John's restaurant locations. On February 10, 2012, the seed supplier initiated notification of sprouting facilities that received this lot of clover seed to stop using it. Investigations are ongoing to identify other locations that may have sold clover sprouts grown from this seed lot.

Based on previous outbreaks associated with sprouts, investigation findings have demonstrated that sprout seeds might become contaminated in several ways. They could be grown with contaminated water or improperly composted manure fertilizer. They could be contaminated with feces from domestic or wild animals, or with runoff from animal production facilities, or by improperly cleaned growing or processing equipment. Seeds also might become contaminated during harvesting, distribution, or storage. Many clover seeds are produced for agricultural use, so they might not be processed, handled, and stored as human food would. Conditions suitable for sprouting the seed also permit bacteria that might be present on seeds to grow and multiply rapidly.

Earlier this week, William Keene, senior epidemiologist at Oregon Public Health Services, told The Packer that problems with sprouts originate with how they’re produced.

“It’s a generic problem, not a this-guy-was-doing-something-wrong problem. The conditions for generating sprouts commercially are almost like designing a process to grow bacteria. It’s wet, it’s not too cold. The sprouts grow luxuriantly and so do the bacteria.”

Trevor Suslow, an extension research specialist at the University of California-Davis, said it’s critical for regulators, industry representatives and academics drafting the FDA rule on sprouts to address seeds.

“I am not sure it will include seed production. Based on an outline, they were starting at the seed distributor, which is not adequate to protect the public. I hope they’ll put this back in….It appears to be very difficult to keep seed that has some low level of contamination from being introduced into the sprout production stream.”

The secret to keeping sprouts free of foodborne pathogens lies in industry's intense attention to cleanliness of seeds.

"Once seeds have germinated, it's too late. Sprouts are extremely complex structures with a forest-like root system that conceals microorganisms. Just a few E. coli cells can grow to a substantial population during germination and sprouting, and it's very difficult to get rid of them all," said Hao Feng, a University of Illinois associate professor of food and bioprocess engineering.

Feng's study is the cover story of the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Food Science. Two other papers that detail his work with sprouts will appear in upcoming issue of that journal and in the Journal of Food Protection.

In his experiments, Feng used both the FDA-recommended dose of chlorine to kill microorganisms and a new sanitizer that was a combination of surfactant and organic acid. He used a laser-scanning confocal microscope to look at micro-slices of seeds, then employed computer software to get a three-dimensional view of their surface structure. This allowed him to calculate each seed's surface roughness.

Although E. coli could be eliminated on the alfalfa seeds because of their relatively smooth surface, broccoli and radish seeds have rough surfaces. Their texture renders these rougher seeds more susceptible to the attachment of pathogens and makes these microorganisms very difficult to remove, he said.

Feng assured consumers that sprouts are carefully tested for the presence of pathogens. "When there is one positive result, the entire batch is thrown out," he said.

Feng said this research demonstrates the importance of eliminating all pathogens on seeds before sprouting.

"The food industry must maintain very strict control in the sprout production process, focusing on the cleanliness of seeds and expending money and effort on prevention. Then consumers can be assured that these nutritious food products are safe to eat," Feng said.

But with no food safety marketing at retail, how do consumers know which sprouts came from safe(erer) seeds?

The farm at the epicenter of the German sprout storm that has killed 53 and sickened over 4,000 from E. coli O104 is sparkling clean to reopen after testing and removal of all fenugreek seeds.

But as science-types have pointed out, the farm may function with the clarity and cleanliness of Marie Antoinette’s but that won’t prevent future outbreaks if the seeds themselves are contaminated.

As reported by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), despite the epidemic curve’s trending down, the outbreak can’t be considered over. The ultimate source — the contaminated seeds from which salad sprouts were grown — has been so widely distributed that no one really knows where they have gone or for how long they might remain for sale. One prediction, based on the probable package labeling, is that they could remain on shelves for 3 more years.

Wired magazine reported the first wave of cases, in Germany in May, arose from a firm that grew and sold sprouts at wholesale. The sprouts from that farm would subsequently be linked to 41 separate clusters of cases; all of them could be traced back to that facility’s sprouts, re-sold as a produce item somewhere in Europe.

A second wave, in France in June, initially confounded investigators. Out of those 16 cases, 11 had attended the same event. They did eat sprouts there — but not sprouts from the German farm. Instead, the sprouts had been grown by the event’s catering firm, from seeds the company had bought at an everyday garden center.

That shifted the focus from the German farm’s practices to the seeds that both the farm and the caterer used. The German farm sold two blends of grown sprouts, spicy (grown from fenugreek and radish seeds and black and brown lentils) and mild (fenugreek and alfalfa seeds, adzuki beans and lentils). The French caterer had used three seed types: fenugreek, mustard and rocket (or roquette; what Americans call arugula). The only type in common with both companies and all the mixtures was fenugreek.

That discovery sent EU investigators in pursuit of fenugreek seeds back down the European food chain, in a rapid-fire search that deployed personnel from eight countries’ food agencies as well as the ECDC, World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. They drafted a detailed 4-page questionnaire that fed data into Excel spreadsheets and a relational database. They crunched (and crunched and crunched) the numbers, and this is what emerged:

All of the seeds came from a single shipment that left a port in Egypt almost 2 years earlier, on Nov. 24, 2009.

The seeds took a tortuous path. That initial shipment — which was immense, 15,000 kg (33,000 lbs) — was containerized at the port of Damietta in Egypt, shipped by boat to Antwerp in Belgium, went by barge to Rotterdam in the Netherlands where it passed customs, and then was trucked to Germany. There, an importer broke up the shipment:
10,500 kg to a single German distributor;
3,550 kg to nine other German companies;
375 kg to a Spanish company;
250 kg to an Austrian distributor that sold the entire lot to a single Austrian company;
and 400 kg to a company in England.

The German importer broke up the 10,500-kg shipment into multiple lots. Only 75 kg ended up at the German farm that sparked the first wave of illness. The rest went to 16 other companies. One of those 16 broke its shipment up further, selling the seeds on to 70 additional companies: 54 in Germany, 16 in 11 other countries within the EU.

A new report details the complexities of the E. coli O104 outbreak investigation. Thanks to Albert Amgar in France for sending it along.

Source food from safe sources; including seeds and other inputs.