By Lisa Lupo

When a 2004 FDA study found that food establishments were often out of compliance with the Food Code requirements for proper and adequate handwashing, the agency developed the Employee Health and Personal Hygiene Handbook.

Even 13 years later, it includes some lesser known, or followed, handwashing requirements.

For example, do you know …

Although recent research has shown that there is statistically little difference between the cleanliness of hands washed in hot or cold water (QA, October 2017, https://bit.ly/2sHVSt2), the FDA Food Code specifies a minimum handwashing water temperature of 100°F. As the agency explains in the handbook, not only is this generally more comfortable than cold water, thus encouraging handwashing for the recommended duration, water temperature also can affect the solubility or emulsification of some soils. Warm water also is more effective than cold in removing fatty soils, and an adequate flow of warm water will cause soap to lather and aid in flushing soil quickly from the hands.

It is fairly common knowledge that workers should wash their hands before entering the processing area and after using the toilet; using tobacco, eating, or drinking; and switching between raw and RTE food handling. But do you also instruct employees to wash their hands after touching any bare human body part (other than just-washed hands and lower arms), coughing, sneezing, or blowing the nose, and before putting on single-use gloves and between glove changes?

…What managers are responsible for? Managers are responsible for ensuring that food employees wash their hands, as required. To enable this, they are to:

• Provide accessible, properly maintained, designated handwashing sinks with clean, running warm water; soap; and paper towels or other approved means for drying.
• Post signage that notifies food employees of the handwashing requirement.
• Monitor food employees to ensure proper handwashing and good hand hygiene protocol during the work shift.

… About other general rules of handwashing?

• Hand antiseptics (hand sanitizers) cannot be used in place of adequate handwashing in food establishments. They should be used only in addition to proper handwashing.
• You should avoid recontamination of hands and arms by using a clean barrier, such as a paper towel, when turning off hand sink faucets or touching the handle of a restroom door.

TIPS FOR COMPLIANCE. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, it is estimated that the consistent washing of hands with soap and water could reduce diarrheal disease-associated deaths by up to 50%. According to Handwashingforlife, “The chain of cleanliness risk factors is led by poor handwashing. It is the #1 cited element in outbreak investigations.” Thus, appropriate handwashing practices and the wearing of gloves can greatly reduce the risk of foodborne illness and other infections.

But it’s not always easy to ensure workers are washing their hands thoroughly or donning clean gloves when needed — even when handwashing and glove stations are set at every entrance. So, QA asked a number of industry authorities for tips on what they do or see done in the plant, not only to require, but to motivate, employees in their handwashing and glove-donning efforts.

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Following are their responses:

Back-up gloves. Teach the staff to put three to five gloves on each hand after washing hands. When the hand touches a non-food, non-food contact surface, different allergen or food product, cart, refuse container, etc. or the employee returns to the immediate work area, they are taught to peel off a glove. (A supervisor also should be trained to identify when one touches these non-food contact surfaces and alert staff to remove the glove). When a glove rips, tears, or is wearing thin, alert the staff to remove the glove. When one or both hands are without a glove; remove the other hand’s glove(s) and wash both hands. More experienced food handlers only need three gloves on each hand; novices or new hires should have five gloves on each hand. Four is generally a good number and not too bulky, though gloves should fit snug, not tight. (Bobby Love, Director, Global Food Safety, Technical and Regulatory Affairs, Phillips Foods)

Caught working safely. At MZB, we recognized the need to make handwashing, at the very least, more convenient, so we installed additional stations both in our break area and in strategic locations on the production floor. (We used portable stations on the floor to avoid the high cost of additional plumbing and contract work.) We also have a program that is several years old called “Caught working safely.” As part of the program to promote safe work habits, supervisors give employees a “caught working safely” card every time they’re observed working in a safe fashion or following one of our safety measures to a T. The employee can drop the card in a box, from which we draw a winner each month, who receives a prize. We’ve expanded this program now to include times a supervisor observes an employee washing his/her hands prior to entering production or while working. Naturally, we hold monthly safety and GMP trainings, at which we drill home the importance of good hygiene, GMPs, and workplace safety to the continued success of our operation. (Nigel J. Coelho Director of Manufacturing, Moonachie Opeartions, Massimo Zanetti Beverage)

You’re being watched. A German field study published in February 2018 was based on the idea that humans modify their behavior in a socially desirable way when being watched by others. Building on the assumption that hand hygiene behavior is socially desirable, and individuals would show stronger hand hygiene compliance when being watched, the researchers placed a placard in a women’s public restroom advising that handwashing protects against the spread of pathogens. The placard included a stylized image of human watching eyes. In another restroom, the placard with three stars in place of the eyes was used as a control condition. The analysis revealed a significantly higher percentage of hand hygiene compliance in the watching eyes restroom (83.3%) compared to the control restroom (71.9%). (https://bit.ly/2kOi7d9)

Monitor compliance. Provide enough fully equipped handwashing stations to allow the employees to wash hands in a reasonable period of time; if they have to wait too long, they may be more inclined to skip handwashing. Encourage peer-to-peer monitoring and reporting of failure to follow handwashing procedures; conduct periodic compliance checks; station monitors near sinks with stop watches to see who washes hands correctly or who skips; and/or install CCTV camera to allow random unobserved observation of handwashing. (Elis M. Owens Director of Technical Services, Birko)

APPLAUD AND REWARD. In addition to implementing monthly or quarterly hand hygiene training, Best Sanitizers recommends motivational efforts include:

• Lead by example. When management employees properly wash and sanitize their hands, it shows there is a true commitment to hygiene.
• Recruit a hand hygiene champion(s) for each shift. Sometimes it is better if a peer mentions the need for better hand hygiene than if management does.
• Applaud and reward employees for a job well done. Supervisors and managers should praise employees when they see an employee practicing proper hand hygiene. They should also correct employees when they see improper practices. Implement a Hand Hygiene Star Employee of the Month program to encourage workers to wash and sanitize their hands.
• Choose products employees will want to use. Look for hand soaps and sanitizers formulated with emollients to keep hands soft and healthy, even with repeated use.
• Show and tell. Perform a training with a product that shows areas missed in handwashing, so employees gain insight and see where they are deficient.

MAKE IT ATTRACTIVE. Savvy Food Safety President Francine Shaw details five ways to encourage handwashing by employees:

1. Provide a high-quality, user-preferred soap. Everyone wants to wash their hands if the soap smells good. Install touch-free, reliable, easy-to-service soap and paper towel dispensers, to ensure that these are always readily available. It’s helpful to supply paper towels to thoroughly dry hands as team members don’t typically have time to stand around a hand dryer, nor are these as effective as paper towels.
2. Keep the handwashing stations clean. No one wants to wash hands at a filthy sink.
3. Provide easy-to-understand awareness materials. Use materials such as posters or stickers in the restrooms, on walls, mirrors, and doors. These materials can be fun and whimsical and still get the point across that regular handwashing is essential.
4. Reward employees for good behavior. One example of an effective reward program is: You’ve Been Spotted Cards. Two versions of cards adorned with a Dalmatian (for the “spotted” theme) were created. From a distance, they appeared indistinguishable, but up close, they were unique: The positive cards were flagged for incidents in which the employee was spotted using good hand hygiene practices. These cards included a coupon good for a nominal “prize” (e.g., a cup of coffee or soft drink). When employees receive multiple positive reinforcement cards, they could use them together for a larger prize (e.g., a free lunch).

The second card reads, “We are putting you on the spot for not using proper hand hygiene.” The reason the cards look nearly identical is to prevent embarrassment for the employees receiving the second card. It’s impossible to tell from a distance whether someone has received a positive or negative card, so the system provides important information in a non-confrontational manner. It gives positive reinforcement but also notifies individuals (without public embarrassment) if they need to improve their hygiene habits.

5. Make it fun. Use posters, conversation starters, reward systems, games, etc., to reinforce messages about handwashing and explain why it is so important. Your team is more likely to buy in and comply with the protocols if they understand why they are important than if you just spew statistics and say, “Do it because I said so.” Most people don’t realize that something as basic as not washing their hands can cause an extreme illness or death. Employees don’t purposely avoid washing their hands in the hopes of making someone ill. They might not understand the connection between proper (and regular) handwashing and keeping customers safe and healthy. Don’t just state the rules — explain why these protocols are in place.

And ... from the FDA

• Train. Create opportunities to remind food employees each week about the importance of hand hygiene. Emphasize handwashing at the beginning of a shift, after using the toilet, after handling raw meat, and between changes of gloves. This emphasis will help keep good hand hygiene at the forefront. Make food employees aware of media coverage on local and national foodborne outbreaks. This awareness reinforces the reporting of symptoms, illness, and good handwashing procedures.
• Prioritize. When management enforces handwashing compliance as a mandatory requirement, employees are more likely to comply.
• Motivate. Use incentive programs and other motivation to encourage food employees to take ownership and practice good personal hygiene habits. Positive reinforcement and rewards for compliance have been proven to have a positive impact on improving handwashing compliance.
• Buddy up. Use a “buddy” system so that fellow food employees can support each other.

Whether you institute a buddy-up system, a caught-working-safely incentive, or multi-glove program, the key is to ensure workers — and supervisors — understand the importance of handwashing, are regularly encouraged to do so, and know the repercussions of non-compliance. The more handwashing is brought to the forefront in any way, the more it will be top of mind for all.

The author is Editor of QA magazine. She can be reached at llupo@gie.net.

By Lisa Lupo

Food authenticity is not a new concept, but it seems to be surging both within the U.S. and on the global front. What’s all the buzz about food authenticity and why has it come to the forefront of the industry? Is it the ultimate solution to food fraud? Or is it simply a way to help assure consumers are getting the product they believe they are buying? To find out more about this emerging movement, QA spoke with four industry experts: Michael Roberts, executive director, UCLA School of Law Resnick Program for Food Law & Policy: John Spink, director, Michigan State University Assistant Professor and Food Fraud Initiative; Karen Everstine, Decernis Senior Manager, Scientific Affairs; and Mitchell Weinberg, International Food authenticity Assurance Organization (IFAAO) founder, president, CEO, and Chairman of the Board.

What is the relationship between food authenticity and food fraud?

Spink: The terms are often used interchangeably, which is confusing. Food authenticity is a state of being. Food authentication testing is a process to evaluate that state of being. Food fraud is the act that creates the problem; it 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. Food fraud prevention is the process to reduce the chance of food fraud occurring; food fraud mitigation is the process to reduce the impact of an incident after it occurs; and, finally, food authenticity testing is a process to support the food fraud prevention strategy. (See What is ...)

Weinberg: Food fraud is economically motivated adulteration of food. Food authenticity means that the food has not been adulterated, but it is much broader than food fraud. For example, the issue of GMOs touches directly on food authenticity. A natural question that must be asked is whether genetically modified food can be considered authentic. Food authenticity is relevant to marketing and branding, has trade and economic implications, and can mean the difference between whether food is safe or not and whether it is qualitative or not.

Roberts: Food fraud can be very broad —from economically motivated adulteration (EMA) to counterfeiting, sabotage, and false labeling. Food authenticity is a positive way of approaching the problem of food fraud or EMA. It is a process that proves a food or food ingredient is original or genuine and can be verified as such. Food authenticity is a solution that also speaks to value, proving that the food is what it purports to be. Most importantly, food authenticity enables consumers to get what they pay for and increases their overall level of trust of food.

Everstine: Many people talk about food fraud because that is the challenge we are trying to tackle, but the goal is really to ensure food authenticity along with food safety and quality. Food authenticity means that foods and food ingredients are accurately and appropriately represented to the customer (whether that be another food company or the final consumer). This concept of accurate and appropriate representation can apply to the contents of the food as well as the production methods, geographic origin, and other relevant characteristics.

Food authenticity is not a new concept. Why is it now coming to the forefront of the industry?

Everstine: The occurrence of multiple widespread and widely publicized incidents of food fraud over the past decade has increased media attention to issues of food authenticity as well as focus by both the food industry and regulatory agencies.

Roberts: It’s a historic accident that it has taken this long. Food authenticity as a concept in the U.S. was arguably inferred in the meaning of “pure” in the 1906 Pure Food & Drug Act and, as a value, was embedded in the adulteration provisions of Section 402(b) in the 1938 FD&C Act. The Act doesn’t specifically define food fraud or food authenticity, but it does list components we typically subscribe to food fraud. But food authenticity got swallowed up in issues of substitution, such as the margarine/butter wars where margarine was originally presented by the threatened industry as a fraudulent product. Thus, food authenticity as an ethical or legal concept never really developed. What really triggered attention on food authenticity, or at least fraud, was the melamine scandal in China nearly a decade ago, involving pet food and infant formula. But, while EMA did become a subject of regulation, it has continued to escape enforcement because it is not a public health concern. Instead, EMA is seen as a sort of second-tier adulteration problem that generally only gets FDA’s attention if it threatens food safety. If we take off our blinders, we should see food fraud as a crime the type of which we don’t tolerate in other industries.

Today, food authenticity, the absence of food fraud, is aligned with the food movement that emphasizes local, quality, and authenticity. Now, with the enhanced ability to detect food fraud problems and to verify food authenticity, it presents an opportunity in the marketing and branding of food.

Weinberg: Consumers are demanding transparency as to where their food comes from and what is in it. Additionally, food authenticity represents a fresh starting point to address the issue of food integrity. Efforts thus far have ranged from being very effective to ineffective and a new approach will help to assess and streamline what has become highly fragmented and disjointed. As opposed to food fraud, which is seen by the industry as a negative, food authenticity can be positively positioned. If the food industry is able to prove food is authentic, brand value, reputation, and profits can be enhanced.

What is being done today and by whom?

Weinberg: Academic institutions and the Food Authenticity Network (the UK government initiative to help bring together those involved in food authenticity testing) are employing science to prove whether something is authentic. Technology companies are trying to develop technologies to determine authenticity. IFAAO is employing a collaborative multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach to educate and help institutions like Codex Alimentarius and its member states both define food authenticity and ensure there is a single harmonized approach taken across the globe.

Spink: Food authenticity testing is a form of quality control or specification confirmation. This is a complex food-science concept, so the activities have naturally grown out of food science groups. A criminology forensic chemist would usually focus on different activities but using food authenticity testing would be key for them to confirm a crime has occurred.

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Roberts: Because consumers are becoming more aware, they are driving the industry to become more interested. The industry is seeing challenges and lawsuits as to whether their food is authentic, and that is also going a long way to connect branding and marketing with authenticity.

Additionally, it helped when food integrity became a focus of US Pharmacopeia (USP); having such a reputable organization involved increased awareness. But there is a lot of resistance because we don’t really understand the full scope of the problem, and it is rightfully seen as a difficult problem to solve. Even the making of food standards to define what constitutes “authenticity” for food has come to a grinding halt. The honey and olive oil industries have been petitioning FDA for years for a standard, but the agency continues to steer clear of developing this legal tool.

What are the food quality and/or food safety issues of inauthentic food?

Spink: The vast majority of food fraud incidents do not cause a public health threat — but they could. Food fraud is a root cause of food safety incidents. Thus, groups such as GFSI have taken a total quality management approach and focused on reducing the root cause which are vulnerabilities. Thus, food fraud prevention focuses on vulnerabilities first before evaluating and addressing risks.

Everstine: The biggest concern with food fraud is if the substances used will be harmful to human health, such as what happened when melamine was added to milk supplies resulting in illnesses and deaths in babies who consumed infant formula made from that milk. However, beyond that, when we consume foods that have been misrepresented in some way, we are not able to ensure that they were produced with the appropriate food safety controls. We are trusting food safety to people who are intentionally misrepresenting the food they are selling, which is a gamble.

Weinberg: Inauthentic food can be of poor quality and be a safety risk. From a quality perspective, authentic food ingredients may command a higher price. If foods are inauthentic, then they should not command the same price as authentic food.

Can we completely authenticate the provenance of every food and ingredient?

Weinberg: Yes. It will take a harmonized combination of science, technology, intelligence, policies, standards, and laws.

Spink: Theoretically, probably, in most cases. In reality, no. The food itself is so variable… if there is more rain, then some of the profiles can change. Also, there are so many ingredients — let alone molecules — that authentication is complex. Food is not a synthetic chemical that is refined to be 99+% pure. We can continue to find ways to determine certain aspects such as DNA, ionization of water, etc.

But what if water from the San Fernando Valley is used to irrigate crops in Napa Valley? The authenticity testing of the ionization of the water may identify fraud. The wine is labeled and presented as a product of Napa Valley and does not state anything about the water that is used. Authentication is too costly and time consuming. Consumers don’t want to pay $10 for a single regular old apple.

Everstine: We need to be strategic in our approach to ensuring food authenticity. In cases where the provenance or production method adds value to the product, stakeholders along the supply chain will probably want to put in place extra measures to ensure authenticity. But it is certainly not feasible to conduct extensive testing on foods at every point in the supply chain. An effective plan for ensuring food authenticity will focus on those foods and ingredients that are the most vulnerable, use a combination of risk reduction strategies, and ensure resources spent on analytical testing are as targeted as possible.

Roberts: Too often, consumers either don’t know to ask questions about the authenticity of their food, or if they know, they don’t know whom to ask or if that person would even know. The industry, especially smaller companies, often doesn’t know how to authenticate the food back to the source — and the effort to do it would put them at an economic disadvantage.

But to solve a problem, one should start with the lowest hanging fruit which includes honey, olive oil, spices, juices, and seafood. Why not start with products where we know there’s a problem and build from there? Technology is often seen as the panacea for the problem, but I keep reminding folks that while we need technology and testing to combat this problem, effective governance and enforcement are also essential.

How would globally harmonized standards be of benefit?

Weinberg: A globally harmonized standard would level the playing field for countries and stakeholders in the food industry. If everyone is acting in accordance with a single standard, it is easier to regulate the issue of food authenticity. For consumers, food authenticity means that consumers can know where their food is coming from and what is in it, and have comfort in knowing that they are getting what they are paying for.

Spink: Harmonization of terms and management systems will help everyone at least start on the same page. In the past there have been different projects with different scopes of work, and the findings could not be combined. I was at a conference where a European business person said he was working on TACCP and VACCP (threat and vulnerability assessment and critical control point systems). Because these are GFSI concepts that are being more generally adopted, the U.S. colleague knew exactly what they were talking about. Those two people could immediately start talking about the details and sharing best practices. An important part of the international harmonized activity is the shift to prevention — and that of an interdisciplinary and complex focus on the entire problem, not just pieces. For example, the root cause is a human adversary, so the fraud opportunity is based on criminology theory such as situational crime prevention. But long before considering what to do for the “risk treatment,” there is a need to diagnose the problem and include a way to evaluate if the treatments actually help reduce the problem. Additionally, food fraud prevention theory shifts the focus from emergency room reaction to a long-term focus on your total health which includes some preventive measures. (For example, it can be likened to the preventive use of sunscreen vs. applying aloe vera on a sunburn or being treated for resulting melanoma.)

Roberts: In 2017, our UCLA program published a white paper, The Pursuit of Food Authenticity, explaining that a well-developed definition of “authenticity” could be emulated elsewhere and facilitate global harmonization. Next, we need to be able to verify authenticity, so we need to have standards. As I have mentioned, standards making has fallen out of favor; however, perhaps we need to reassess the purpose of standards and our approach in making them.

Everstine: Global standard-ization can be helpful to both industry and consumers by providing a common set of requirements that increases food safety and facilitates trade. For example, GFSI’s business-driven initiative that benchmarks global food safety standards can enable and simplify communication, drive harmonization, and benefit the industry and consumers.

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Where is food authenticity going from here? What needs to be addressed?

Roberts: We need to have a verifiable approach to food authenticity, but it also needs to be based on technology and governance.

Technology creates a double-edged sword in that we get better at testing, but cheaters also increase their ability to deceive. As to governance, who will enforce it? Will it be solely FDA? Or also the Department of Justice? The INTERPOL sting in Europe in 2016 resulted from a combination of agencies working together — that’s what it takes.

Unfortunately, this sting was a one-time hit, but it does set an important precedent. Organizations, like the International Food Authenticity Assurance Organization (IFAAO) with which I am involved, need to continue to step up and work the system. IFAAO is working closely with Codex Alimentarius in defining and promoting food authenticity.

Finally, we need the industry to commit to the pursuit of authenticity. In our white paper, we suggest that the industry should adopt the value of authenticity just as it has sustainability. Incorporating authenticity in a real and meaningful way is a chance for the industry to self-regulate and create for themselves a market value.

Spink: I think the next evolution is actually a very slow and steady harmonization of the definition of terms and scope of work. The scope is expanding from reaction and detection to prevention and deterrence. This expanding scope is incorporating criminology to consider the root cause and also business decision sciences for “how much is enough.”

Weinberg: The approaches taken by the food industry to address food fraud are woefully inadequate. The issue should never have been exclusively assigned to food safety and quality people. Those individuals are extremely competent at what they do, but food fraud is a criminal issue and should have been assigned to people accustomed to dealing with criminal conduct. Food fraud occasionally presents food safety issues, but the larger issue is one of economics. Consumers are being cheated every time they purchase consumer ingredients or food that is not genuine. None of the solutions put forward thus far by the food industry have addressed this critical issue.

Everstine: This is a rapidly developing area and the good news is that many organizations are working hard to develop tools and resources to support the food industry in its goal of ensuring food authenticity.

The author is Editor of QA magazine. She can be reached at llupo@gie.net.

By Lisa Lupo

China is the reputed birthplace of tea where, according to legend, Emperor Shen Nung discovered it nearly 5,000 years ago when a leaf from an overhanging tree fell into water he was boiling. Since then tea has become a staple around the world, but China remains the largest producer and consumer — producing 40% of all tea in the world and consuming nearly two billion pounds annually.

As any tea drinker knows, all teas are not the same. In fact, the most exclusive of teas have been known to sell for thousands of dollars per pound. While the teas of Xi’an-based Qinba Tea are more accessible than that, they are some of the rarest of Chinese teas to be available outside of China. It was in late 2017 that Cha Gardens Founder and CEO Joe Muscaglione contracted an exclusive agreement with Qinba to distribute its teas in the U.S., and in early 2018 that QA was invited to be the first U.S. media outlet (in fact, one of the first of any foreigners) to visit Qinba’s Xi’an facility and Daba Mountainside tea gardens.

CHA GARDENS AND QINBA. Muscaglione is a noted sommelier in Las Vegas, Nev., who founded Cha Gardens as an outlet for his growing interest in and appreciation of teas. It is an apt name for this exclusive distributor as chá is Chinese for tea. While the evolution from wine to tea may not seem to be a logical transition, the more one knows about both wine and tea the more logical it becomes. The distinctive characteristics of both wines and teas are highly defined by their terroir. That is, the environmental conditions in which they are grown give the end products their unique traits.

Wine connoisseurs are very familiar with the concept, but in the U.S., it has not been as widely connected with teas. But, just as with wine, the terroir of tea is influenced by the composition and chemistry of the soil in which the plants grows the dissolved mineral content in the water that irrigates the tea, the purity of the air that surrounds it, the altitude of the land on which it sits, the weather to which it is subject, and the essence of flowers or fruits grown with it. At its simplest, terroir is the plant’s “sense of place.”

It is for all such reasons that Qinba’s green tea is so distinctive. It takes 38,000 buds to make a single pound of its Wu Hao tea; each bud is picked by hand at elevations as high as 2,300 meters (nearly a mile and a half) in the pure air of the Daba Mountains — a World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-protected region. “Qinba tea is something so special, the first time I tasted it, I said ‘I have to tell this story to as many people as possible,’” Muscaglione said.

“I always liked tea, but I first tasted it seriously about 10 years ago with a famous chef.” Upon tasting China’s famed Pu’er tea, he said he found it to be like drinking old burgundy wine. “It is very complex with lots of flavors. I started getting into tea then,” he said. So about five years ago, Muscaglione started looking for something really special, learning about tea-growing regions, and making connections. “The more I learned, the more I fell in love with tea,” he said.

Lisa Lupo

Then about 2-1/2 years ago, he become a small partner in a Las Vegas Chinatown hotspot, introduced 30 teas from China, and started making contacts. One of those was Qinba, but the company did not have enough tea to sell to the United States, Muscaglione said. “So, I put that on the backburner.”

Then a new Asian-themed Las Vegas hotel asked Muscaglione to source a really special tea for its grand opening. “They said, ‘Source the best tea you can get, we don’t care what it costs,’” he said. So, he reached out to some friends in China and asked about the best tea. “They said, ‘The best is whatever somebody likes, but what if we find you the purest tea?’” he said. That tea was Qinba, and Muscaglione quickly realized it was not only the best tea he’d ever tasted, it was, indeed, the purest.

So he worked with Qinba’s 29-year-old Owner Ming Long Chen and Marketing Manager Dong Mei Feng to not only be the first to bring the tea to the States for the grand opening, but to become its exclusive distributor. “I’m really the only one in the U.S. with teas from that area,” he said. “It took lots of negotiation; I’ve been developing this project for about three years. I wanted to find something really special; I didn’t need to go into the tea business.”

TEA PRODUCTION. QA’s visit with Ming and Dong in Xi’an and the tea gardens showed why this tea is so special. We toured the Ankang area fields where the workers were plucking buds for Qinba’s chao qing (stir-fried) green tea; the 1,200-meter lower Daba Mountain tea gardens where the purer, more expensive Mao Jian green tea is grown; its experimental gardens where new teas are being evaluated for the future; and the Xi’an facility where it is all processed. Qinba’s rarest Wu Hao tea is grown in its gardens that are 2,300 meters high, but because this requires a hardy, hours-long trek up the mountain, we did not journey there.

The higher the altitude at which the tea is grown, the purer the air, thus the purer the tea. But regardless of the elevation, the tea is planted in straight lines with space on either side for harvesting. In the field gardens, fruit and flowering trees, such as cherry and peach are grown at intervals throughout, adding their flavor and essences to the teas. The tea bushes, themselves, are pruned annually to a height of about three feet and diameter of three to four feet. This facilitates harvest and aids in bud production.

While Qinba’s black teas are processed by machine, its green teas are all processed by hand. Qinba has 15 employees in its processing facility, including two tea masters: Liao Wie Xiong, who was personally trained by Tea Master Cai Ru Gui (see Cai Ru Gui: The King of Shaanxi Tea, page 17), and Cheng Liang Jun, who is being trained by Liao. Liao has made tea for more than 20 years, Cheng for five. Tea mastery is critical to the process because, in addition to the skill needed to ensure a fine tea, Dong said, “The tea master controls the taste. It can be very different when processed by different people.”

Lisa Lupo

Lisa Lupo

Lisa Lupo

Lisa Lupo

Lisa Lupo

Lisa Lupo

From harvest to processing to distribution, Qinba green tea-making follows the traditional hand-made art, with updated concessions made only where needed for food safety, quality, or regulatory requirements:

• Plucking. Workers individually hand-pick only the newest tea buds at the top of the bushes. Once gently plucked, the leaves are placed into wicker baskets, as these enable air circulation and help keep the leaves from being crushed. Qinba employs 20 workers during harvest which lasts only about a month for these high-end teas. Its 500-hectare (1,235-acre) field of tea bushes, along with 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of tea gardens, spread up various levels of the Daba Mountains.
• Sorting. The plucked buds are then transported to Qinba’s Xi’an processing facility. Because the buds are plucked one by one by hand, there is little extraneous matter, but to ensure this, the leaves are gently sorted and any non-bud material removed.
• First Drying. The tea process begins with the tea master tipping handfuls of the buds into a concave firing pan heated to 150-180°C (300-350°F). The tea masters gently and continuously lift, agitate, and drop the leaves back into the pan by hand for 15 minutes to aerate and shape them as they dry. “The pan must be very hot to make the tea to shape while it dries,” Dong said.
• Cooling. The tea buds are then scooped onto a round wicker mat. The buds cool for a half hour, with the tea masters periodically agitating the mat in a practiced lifting/shaking motion to separate the buds and augment the cooling. Proper drying is critical because leaf that is not completely and properly dried will mold and become unusable.
• Shaping. Once cooled, the tea leaves are gently shaken into the horizontal channels of an open-top tea-shaping machine. The machine vibrates and tumbles the leaves shaping them into the precise form to best impart the essence of the leaves. Again, it is highly trained and skilled tea masters who work this process, as the speed of the vibrations must be properly set and continually increased. As this nears its end, a wooden roller is placed in each channel to press it to its final shape.
• Second Drying. Once properly shaped, the leaves are emptied from the machine back onto the wicker mats and, again, gently shaken and tossed for further drying. “Drying makes the tea smell sweeter,” Dong said.

Once processed, the dried leaves are reduced to about 75% of the freshly picked volume. When infused with hot water in teamaking, the leaves rehydrate somewhat back to their natural state.

Qinba is subject to food safety and quality inspections by the government, which, Dong said, occur on a weekly or monthly basis. The company also holds a number of food safety and quality certifications, including those by the China Quality Certification Centre for compliance with FSSC 22000, GB/T and CNCA Good Agricultural Practices, and Organic Production. All Qinba tea is completely natural and organic. No pesticides are used in any of the fields.

Although the black teas were not in production during QA’s visit, we did a walk-through of that processing area where machinery was used to process these less-delicate teas, and tests are conducted for temperature, humidity, and weight.

Qinba also produces other teas, such as oolong, but specializes in green and black, Dong said. “We can do every kind of tea, but we are best at green tea and black tea.” In addition to distributing to the U.S. through Cha Gardens, Qinba sells its teas, along with dried plants, spices, and tea accessories, in its shop in Xi’an. Ming also is developing a Tea Street adjacent to the processing facility. With only the building facades completed at the time of QA’s visit, the plan was to open the new market by year end.

Generally considered the national drink of China, tea has a rich history filled with traditions that are still followed today, such as that of the hand-picking and production of the rare teas, and the Gongfu Tea Ceremony). As such, tea is virtually inseparable from the country’s culture. As the country itself continues to expand its global reach, so, too, do its traditions and food and drink — as evidenced, in this particular case, by the fact that, even at prices of hundreds of dollars per pound, Qinba’s exclusive teas are selling out in the U.S.

The author is Editor of QA magazine. She can be reached at llupo@gie.net.

Should the U.S. have a single food safety agency? Is it possible? It’s a question that continually arises in the industry and has begun to resurface more regularly on the federal level.

Most recently, it was a topic of the Trump Administration’s proposed  Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations  which was released June 20, 2018. In the document, the current system was described as a “fragmented and illogical division of Federal oversight” of food safety. The plan proposed reorganizing the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the food safety functions of the FDA into a single agency within USDA.

It’s not the first time that consolidation or increased coordination has been proposed — even under the current administration. One recent example is that of FDA and USDA taking their own step toward defragging the system with the January 2018 formalization of an  inter-agency agreement  for increased cooperation and coordination. The agreement, on which FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue worked together, “identified several areas where we can strengthen our collaboration to make our processes more efficient, predictable, and potentially lower cost to industry; while also strengthening our efforts to ensure food safety.”

That move may have been, at least in part, a response to the January 2017 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which, while not going so far as to endorse a single entity, did recommend that a national strategy be adopted as “a first step toward improving the federal food safety oversight system.” The report was compiled in response to a Senate request to examine efforts toward and options for addressing fragmentation in the federal food safety system.

Additionally, while noting that FDA and USDA have primary responsibility for food safety oversight, the report noted that the safety and quality of the U.S. food supply is “governed by a highly complex system stemming from at least 30 federal laws that are administered by 16 federal agencies.” Given that, I’d say consolidation and defragmentation is a bit more complex than moving FDA food safety functions to USDA.

However, I am, and have long been, a strong advocate of consolidation and a single agency — but it has to be done right. If we were to disregard the food safety activities that fall under the other 14 agencies, moving FDA under USDA has the advantage that some infrastructure exists already. But the clear disadvantage is the inherent competitive nature of the two agencies and the fact that one will be “in charge” of the other. Making that work will take a generation of change and is not realistic.

Thus, I am not sure that putting a new system under USDA — or FDA — is the right approach. Rather, given the need for the creation of a major FDA/FSIS hybrid, it may be better to develop a new agency altogether without all the USDA or FDA baggage.

But, even as a strong advocate, and even with the increased emphasis on creation of a single agency, I just am not sure that it can realistically happen, at least not as simply as the Administration seems to propose.

Take, for example, just a few of the challenges noted in the GAO report (besides the current number of agencies), such as that of the differing statutory authorities of FDA and FSIS; the inspection differences in which FDA frequency is focused on associated risk, while USDA/FSIS continuously examines the carcasses/parts of covered animals and all processed food products; and the issues of resource allocation not necessarily connected to risk.

Additionally, it’s interesting that the new report recommends moving FDA activities to USDA when FDA currently regulates 80% of the food supply. Not to disparage USDA by any means, but would that agency be as adept at demonstrating “strong and effective leadership in food safety and maintain(ing) an expert understanding of food safety issues from the farm to the fork” (as the report states) if it were to increase its oversight by 80%? If it were to add regulation of the vast array of farm and food production now regulated by FDA to its current meat, poultry, and egg product expertise? If it were to have to inspect all 150,000 domestic food facilities, not to mention the 71,000 foreign food facilities, registered with FDA (as of 2017)?

It’s also interesting that the Administration recommended USDA as the agency which would absorb FDA, when it is considered that USDA was the one agency that disagreed with much of the GAO report, including the need for a national strategy and the ability of a strategy to “result in significantly different outcomes” in protecting public health, and citing the fact that the agencies do have many collaborative efforts, activities, and mechanisms currently in place.

Further USDA is not focused on public health as a primary mission unlike the public health-centric Department of Health and Human Services of which FDA is a part.

There are multiple challenges to the consolidation of food safety oversight under a single agency. But that does not mean we shouldn’t work toward that end. Change is rarely easy, but that also doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Thus, a single food safety agency should be an ideal for which we strive. An endeavor with which all stakeholders should be involved, with careful step-by-step planning and gradual alignment that takes all the challenges and opportunities into consideration.

The more steps that are taken toward that end, the more ideas and options that are generated — whether they be a GAO push for a national strategy, an interagency agreement for cooperation, or an Administration’s proposal for consolidation — the more the agencies can become aligned and the closer we may come to jurisdictional unity.

As former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court William J. Brennan, Jr. said, “We must meet the challenge rather than wish it were not before us.”