No food safety in Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food
Does knowing your farmer make food safer?
Absolutely not.
Maybe if you ask the right questions, and get honest answers, but even then, only a maybe.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new youtube vid has lots of stuff about local and regional, economics but no evidence of why local is better. And nothing about food safety
The 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative, chaired by Deputy Secretary Merrigan, is the focus of a task force with representatives from agencies across USDA who will help better align the Department's efforts to build stronger local and regional food systems. This week alone, USDA will announce approximately $65 million in funding for 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiatives.
To be fair, USDA did announce nearly $10,000 in funding for the University of Minnesota to bring together experts on food safety and regulations for a discussion of marketing to institutions like K-12 schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other health care facilities.
Leave it to the academics to ask for money to meet. Foods safety needs to be front and center of any food initiative.
And this was my farmer near Guelph, Jeff Wilson (above, right). He had outstanding food safety, long before others started talking about it.
Poison pawpaw sickens 7 with Salmonella in Australia
I’ve had pawpaw when in Australia. It’s yummy. And like other fresh produce, can be an excellent source of Salmonella.
The West Australian Department of Health issued a statement on Tuesday saying seven cases of salmonella poisoning linked to the tropical fruit had been uncovered over the past six weeks.
WA environmental health director Jim Dodds said,
"Wash all pawpaws with running tap water immediately before eating, this includes pawpaw that has been cut prior to purchasing. After cutting pawpaw at home thoroughly wash hands, cutting boards and knives."
That's nice. And prevent Salmonella from gettiing on the pawpaw on the farm.
On-farm food safety for peanut producers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asks an important question beyond how did the salmonella get into PCA's Blakely, Georgia Plant -- how did the 2007 Peter Pan outbreak strain get into the PCA plant?
From the AJC article:
Experts at the FDA and the CDC said they are intrigued by an unusual clue.
Two years ago the ConAgra plant in Sylvester launched a nationwide recall of Peter Pan peanut butter after consumers were sickened by a less common strain of the bacteria, called Salmonella Tennessee. It had a unique genetic fingerprint.
On Jan. 22, tests by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture found salmonella with that same genetic fingerprint in an unopened 5-pound container of King Nut peanut butter produced late last year at the Blakely plant.
The possible on-farm link to the peanut butter outbreak has been circulating around for a while (including being something ConAgra suggested during the investigation of the Peter Pan 2007 outbreak). This link reminds me of some of the stuff my good friends Linda Harris and Michelle Danyluk have looked at in the almond industry -- the environmental persistence of Salmonella PT 30 and it's subsequent transfer to the nuts (even frequent barfblogger Don Schaffner got in on some of this action). Maybe there is an environmental reservoir near of in some peanut fields. And if there is, maybe there are things that peanut producers can do to address them. The impact that this outbreak has had on peanut farmers suggests that any food safety hurdles that could be put in place is worth some investigation.
From the AJC article:
Some food safety experts questioned whether the peanut industry is aware some farming practices may increase the risk of salmonella contamination. Only one Georgia peanut farm has sought and received certification of using good agricultural practices, said Arty Schronce, a state Agriculture Department spokesman.
“My impression is the farmers really don’t have good agricultural practices,” said Michael Doyle, who has served as a consultant for ConAgra and the American Peanut Council. Doyle is director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.
When peanuts are roasted, Doyle said, the focus may be more on achieving the right flavor rather than on safety. If salmonella is present in very large numbers, the roaster may not kill all of it, he said.
Doyle said he recently got a call from a peanut industry adviser in Georgia. “The bottom line I got from him: The farmers feel the processor is at fault and should process the salmonella out of the peanuts,” Doyle said. “They’re looking at the peanut as a commodity, rather than a food.”
I hear a lot of talk and read a lot of articles that quote food folks saying that food safety is a farm-to-fork responsibility. True. That's why it's a good idea that the peanut industry (and heck, other nut and seed folks as well -- check this out) take these two outbreaks as indicators of something bigger -- that there may be on-farm Salmonella reduction strategies employable that .
It's not up to me to assign blame for the outbreaks (That's the law and Bill Marler's job) although I'm sure that some peanut growers will feel that's what the AJC article is all about. It's not -- this is the first step in the public dialogue around the good agricultural practices that peanut growers currently have. If there isn't much there, as Mike Doyle alludes to, then it's a good idea to do the research on what the risks are figure out how to address them.
Last month's congressional subcommittee revelations revealed that there's a bad operator in the middle of this outbreak, but peanut farmers, one of the groups hit hardest by the fallout, need to make sure they are part of the solution and truly make peanut butter food safety farm-to-fork.
Looking out for the farmers of the "safest food in the world"
This summer at the Kansas State Fair, I felt like I was getting a lot of strange looks. I tried to brush it off, telling myself that it was no crime to have never slopped a pig or stolen eggs from under a roosting a hen—I should still be welcome at the fair.
I was positive there were other non-farm girls there. Probably even some that grew up in the city; I, at least, shared a property line with a cow pasture. But people just kept staring.
I really got embarrassed when a representative from the Farm Bureau Federation started to laugh out loud and point at me.
When it finally donned on me that I was wearing my Don’t Eat Poop t-shirt that day, I turned to let him read the back: Wash Your Hands.
I explained that I worked for an organization that wants to turn the public’s attention to food safety.
He seemed to think that particular method was effective. “But do you make farmers look bad?” he asked while raising one eyebrow.
I told him we felt it was important that everyone does their part, from the farm to the fork.
He smiled, but I think he remained skeptical.
I raised my eyebrow today at a press release in which the director of congressional relations in the California Farm Bureau National Affairs and Research Division, Josh Rolph, was quoted as saying,
"Congress and the new administration will be sure to consider changes to the way the government oversees the safety of food production. We want to make sure that any changes don't prove to be burdensome to farmers, who are growing the safest food supply in the world."
I wish I could meet this guy and stare strangely at him. If anyone’s going to claim to grow the safest food in the world, they’re going to have to take some pains to prove it.
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“The nation's farming community understands the need to improve food safety, Rolph said, but the farm-level impact to producers must be considered in any new food safety proposals.”
Salinas vegetable farmer Dirk Giannini referred to the surge in food safety action plans following the outbreak of E. coli from spinach in 2006, and explained that a frenzy of “non-scientific ideas” were putting farmers out.
"And don't get me wrong,” said Giannini, “The farmers do not want to jeopardize anyone's health or life—we have the safest food supply in the world. But the scientific-based decisions are the ones that we need to move forward."
Of course any actions to increase the safety of the food supply should be backed by scientific evidence, but public claims of safety should have the same foundation.
To the farmers who grow the food I appreciate every day: In your products and in your claims, Don’t Sell Poop.
Too lame: Attack of the killer tomatoes
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The Washington Post reported today that teams involved with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Tomato Safety Initiative have completed their Virginia visits and went to more than 50 growing fields and three packing facilities.Jack Guzewich, a specialist in foodborne diseases at the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, was cited as saying that because water can carry bacteria, investigators look at irrigation water, wells, chemical mixing procedures and the results of drought and flooding, adding,
"Animals can be anything from reptiles to birds and mammals -- the whole zoological garden. Feces get into land and water, and, in some cases, an animal comes in contact with the plant."
FDA documents 12 outbreaks with a total of 1,840 cases of food-borne illnesses linked to fresh and fresh-cut tomatoes have occurred since 1998, and most were traced to Virginia's Eastern Shore and Florida, two major growing areas, and a few to Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio and California. Salmonella was the main culprit.
The program will move to Florida during the fall growing season, with plans to reach other locales.
My team and I have spent a lot of time with greenhouse tomato growers in Ontario. There are numerous on-farm barriers to actually implementing good agricultural practices.
Check out our papers below:
Luedtke, A., Chapman, B. and Powell, D.A. 2003. Implementation and analysis of an on-farm food safety program for the production of greenhouse vegetables. Journal of Food Protection. 66:485-489.
Powell, D.A., Bobadilla-Ruiz, M., Whitfield, A. Griffiths, M.G.. and Luedtke, A. 2002. Development, implementation and analysis of an on-farm food safety program for the production of greenhouse vegetables in Ontario, Canada. Journal of Food Protection. 65: 918- 923.
We also published a book chapter entitled Implementing On-Farm Food Safety Programs in Fruit and Vegetable Cultivation, in the recently published, Improving the Safety of Fresh Fruit and Vegetables.
