When conducting food safety tests, there is little flexibility in the interpretation of or response to results. In most cases, it is either there or it’s not, with limits set in the U.S. by FDA, USDA, or, in the case of pesticides, EPA. However, there are lab processes and practices that can impact these results and challenges which labs face in attaining trustworthy results. Following are 10 tips to help ensure that your lab results are truly resulting in food safety and quality for your products.
 

1. Use lab tests to ensure safety, but don’t expect testing to create safety. For this reason, processors need to design quality into their systems. “You have to build quality into a product, you can’t test it in,” said Janie Dubois, laboratory program manager for the University of Maryland/JIFSAN International Food Safety Training Laboratory (IFSTL). “This is the objective of HACCP in food. You need to look at everything, determine where you should be monitoring, then do it.”
 

2. Test early in the process. “It is extremely expensive to just verify safety at the end of production and not along the way, because at that point, it either needs to be reprocessed or put in the trash,” Dubois said. There are a lot of new tests that can be conducted quickly without a great deal of training. These include such processes as strip tests that can be conducted right on the line; thin films, that need review by an analyst, but not necessarily someone with a Bachelor’s degree in microbiology; and screening tests, which are not the end-all answer, but are inexpensive and can be passed on to the lab for review and confirmation.
 

3. Beware of mistakes. “If you make a mistake, you have a better chance of getting the result you were hoping for,” Dubois said. For example, if a lab tech makes a mistake in preparation for micro testing, it is likely that an extraction would be negative, resulting in a zero count, and showing the product to be within tolerance. On the other hand, if the culture is or becomes contaminated, a false positive could result. And those, Dubois said, are expensive mistakes.
 

4. Monitor the environment. “There’s always inherently more risk when testing finished product,” said Benjamin Pascal, chief business officer for Invisible Sentinel. By regularly testing the environment—then cleaning and/or sanitizing and retesting if needed, you can prevent issues and reduce positive finished product test results. Again, you should have a specific environmental monitoring plan, focused on the how, when, where, and frequency, and have buy-in from and a sense of ownership by all workers. You may be testing, but are you testing raw, post-kill step, finished product? Are you testing the areas of highest risk?

Additionally, “sampling will always be a challenge for every diagnostic,” he said. “How do you find that one bug?” You cannot simply test an area because that is how it always has been done; rather, he said, “There needs to be good logic behind where and how you are testing in the facility.”
 

5. Validate your matrices. When a new product is developed, how do you validate that the test results will be accurate on its matrices? Some products, such as chocolate and spices, are very difficult to test, and any new or redeveloped product needs to have the test validated to ensure it is effectively testing the product and not simply resulting in negatives (real or false) because it isn’t really working on the product. “It is important that we validate that the test truly works,” Pascal said.
 

6. Have a plan. What will you do if a test comes back positive? Pascal asked. You need to be prepared for that, he said. “If we have a positive, here is what we will do, and here is how we will ensure quality.” The plan needs to be well-defined and understood by everyone.

When determining a strategy for action to be taken should a result come back positive, Pascal said, some of the questions to ask include: Is this a high-risk food? Does the process include effective kill steps? How many? Is it sold raw? Eaten raw? “One size doesn’t fit all.” Because of this, she added, “There’s a lot that rests on the shoulders of the analysts and laboratory manager,” Dubois said. “Trust is something you earn.”
 

7. Walk the floor. “I’m a big fan of technical people walking around the plant,” Dubois said. Having a different, technical set of eyes can spot potential contamination issues that may not be noticed by those who work the area every day.
 

8. Provide training and interaction. The mission of IFSTL is to teach fit-for-purpose methods that produce results demonstrating the safety of food products. A key part of this is the interaction opportunities attained by lab analysts during the training, Dubois said. “We have seen that people feel a need for building their network of technical knowledge. People are starved for friends in the industry—someone they can bounce things off of.” Lab managers or workers in larger companies may get the opportunity to go to conferences such as those put on by AOAC, IFT, IAFP, etc., but smaller companies and those in international plants don’t always have this access.
 

9. Speak the same language. One of the greatest challenges that Dubois sees for in-house food labs today is that of multiple labs within a single company caused by its expansion or mergers. As companies get bigger, they have more labs that need to talk with one another, but they don’t always speak the same language. They may be using different equipment, test kits, etc., so even when they talk with each other about the results they attained, they may not be talking about the same thing. Thus when companies merge, or simply communicate from one facility to another, technicians need to ensure they are talking the same language.
 

10. Have a trustworthy data system. If all the above is in place, but the resulting data isn’t retained in a secure system, there could be questions on the final results.

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

America has long been known as the land of plenty, and when compared to many nations of the world, the adage rings true. “We’re used to having ample food—not running out of food, and we take for granted that our food will be safe,” said Elizabeth Brewster, Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) FutureFood 2050 managing editor. Contrast that with underdeveloped countries where a third to half the food grown spoils in the field.

Both the overabundance of food and inability to get food to the people lead to waste. “And that is where technology plays a part,” Brewster said. “A lot of food gets wasted today. To stop that, you need some sort of technology. The problem isn’t production, it’s getting it to the people in a way that’s safe and useful.”

It is just such global issues that led to IFT’s creation of FutureFood 2050. Extremists tend to dominate conversations about the evils or infallibility of modern production. “Whoever is the loudest and says the craziest thing gets the most attention,” she said. For this reason, the FutureFood 2050 project focused on finding a middle ground between the extremes and promoting discussion based on science and facts instead of on people’s emotions.

A similar initiative was developed by the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Alliance to Feed the Future, with a mission to raise awareness and improve understanding of the benefits and necessity of modern food production and technology to meet global demand. The industry has been on the defense so much, it has forgotten the positive aspects of modern food systems, said IFIC and Foundation President and CEO David Schmidt.

In the land of plenty, we like to think that everyone can go to the farmers’ market and get local food. “That’s a nice idea, but it’s not practical,” Brewster said. When you consider the amount of the world’s food that spoils in the field, is eaten or destroyed by insects, is blighted by post-harvest losses, or simply is not able to reach people, “there is an obvious need for food technology.”

In fact, 842 million people in the world (one in eight) suffer from chronic hunger, said Margaret Enis Spears, director of the Office of Markets, Partnerships and Innovation, USAid Bureau for Food Security. It is not so much a matter of productivity as it is producing nutritious food and getting it to the populations, she said. “Look at Africa, there is a big gap between what is being produced and its potential.”

To address this, the Feed the Future Initiative was developed in 2009 with a goal to have a lasting impact to reduce the number of undernourished and ensure the availability of a safe, quality food supply. A key focus is on the use of irrigation, fertilizers, and hybrid seeds that allow for higher yields—such as those that are widely accepted and used in developed countries. Feed the Future works with local and international public and private partnerships to implement and train on techniques and technologies to improve food quality and safety, particularly through enhanced processing capabilities to extend shelf life, increase nutritional value, improve post-harvest handling.
 

Sustainability.

Whether implementing technologies in underdeveloped areas or one’s own manufacturing plant, industry needs to keep sustainability in mind. “In trying to solve one problem, you can’t create another,” Spears said. If a technology or other process is environmentally detrimental, you may have short-term gain, but it won’t be able to be sustained long-term.

Consumers want manufacturers to be sustainable, but there is a lot of confusion about what sustainability means, Schmidt said. While this could be seen as a negative, it actually gives the industry an opportunity to define and explain what sustainability means and what it is doing to further it. Overall, he said, the goal of a sustainable initiative should be to produce healthful, quality food, but in ways that retain the availability for future generations. Modern food technologies fit into this because, he said, “When you talk in terms of sustainability and the benefits of sustainability, feeding more people with less land is a top benefit of technology.”

Additionally, there is a growing movement toward all-natural foods from farm to fork. However, Brewster said, “people tend to forget that not everything natural is good. E. coli is natural. Salmonella is natural. We need some processing to take care of that.”
 

Industry’s Role.

“The industry needs to get out in front of things more instead of assuming the facts will speak for themselves,” Brewster said. Too often, it seems that manufacturers think that because they know an additive, ingredient, or technology is beneficial, the consumer won’t care. But when the consumers find out, they may feel as though the manufacturer was hiding something—and in many cases, there are plenty of counter-activists talking about why the additive, ingredient, or technology is harmful instead. “People latch onto things even if it is not backed by science,” Brewster said. “And food is personal; you’re putting it in your body.”

Thus, a manufacturer should be upfront and transparent, stating risks and benefits of an additive, ingredient, or technology; then noting that there may be some drawbacks, and explaining why it feels the benefit outweighs the risk. Let people know what is going on early on, and any activist backlash will be greatly diffused. Brewster noted GMO labeling as an example. It’s a little too late to lead in this area, because GMOs are already perceived as negative, she said. But if it had been explained up front; if there had been more transparency, it’s unlikely the industry would be facing the extent of criticism it sees today.

The terms used to describe technologies also can have an impact. “We have to quit using terms like GMO,” Schmidt said. “GMO is an activist term that is scientifically misleading. It’s not even accepted by FDA.” Instead, he recommends that we use the word bioengineered, discuss food production aspects as biotechnology, and focus on individual uses rather than lumping them all together. “Technology is neutral; let’s talk about the benefits of each individual case not whether or not to use it in general.”

Manufacturers also need to be careful about backing down to pressure. “The more you agree to quit using a certain technology or certain food, the more you are putting yourself in a box—which you may regret in the long term,” Schmidt said.

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

Occasional invaders are pests, primarily insects, that live outdoors but will venture into structures in search of food, water, or shelter. Although they are not normally considered to be structural pests because they do not breed indoors, those that do get into the processing areas of a facility, or worse, into the product itself, will be considered a contaminant or adulterant. “Occasional invaders are considered to be nuisance pests for the most part,” said Clark Pest Control Food Safety Field Trainer and Content Developer Al St. Cyr. “But when they get indoors, they can quickly pass from nuisance to significant economic problem.”

Occasional invaders may include a variety of insects depending on the region in which your facility is located and the time of year. Some of the most common are centipedes, millipedes, ground beetles, crickets, spiders, and night-flying insects. In certain areas, boxelder bugs, stink bugs, and cluster flies also can become pests in the spring and fall. But no matter what the insect is, “these pests winding up in a facility demonstrate a lack of structural integrity,” St. Cyr said.

This lack of structural integrity means that other pests can get in as well. As such, said Western Pest Entomologist John Kane, “Occasional invaders can be kind of like the canary in a coal mine.” They are a warning signal that if they can get into your building, so, too, can higher-risk pests. “The presence of occasional invaders indicates permeability to pests,” he said.

Occasional invader entry also can be due to employee practices, Kane said. “When I see them, it implies that there is access somewhere within a reasonable distance. It may be a structural issue or a cultural issue—such as employees propping doors open.”

Thus, the best defense against occasional invaders is prevention. “What you need to do is develop a long-term strategy,” St. Cyr said.

Steps to consider for inclusion in such a strategy are:
 

1. Inspect the facility and property. Conduct a detailed, honest inspection of the facility and the property, using sticky traps to determine exactly the pests with which you may be dealing, St. Cyr said. Look at the history: “There is something that is attracting the pests. Find out what it is and remove it.” It also is important to look not only at the plant’s property, but also at any areas that are immediately adjacent that may be attracting the pests or providing conditions conducive to their survival. In some cases it may be necessary to take a situation into your own hands—such as the food processor did who was having issues with occasional invaders originating from the field of an adjacent airport. Because the airport would not mow the field, the processor eventually hired a lawn company to do so—which eliminated 90% of its problems.
 

2. Use glueboards at entrances. Using glueboards at doors can help reduce the migration of insects into the plant in the same way that flying insect traps can catch flies before they have a chance to move farther into the facility. One easy way to do this is to place glueboards in the rodent control stations that are set at these points and check them regularly for any insect captures.

Using glueboards by doors also can double as insect monitoring stations, Kane said, providing a warning signal that insects are gaining access and indicating a need to determine the cause.
 

3. Manage the exterior. “Bugs try to stay in their natural habitats,” said Guardian Pest Control Technical Director Hao Yu, so if you don’t create a “walkway” into a structure, pests are less likely to go there on their own. Such walkways could include mulch or other ground cover up against the building; instead, it is recommended that a six- to eight-inch non-vegetative buffer be maintained around the perimeter of the building. “If you can do a foot out, it’s even better,” Yu said.

The foliage around a building can also be attractants and enable pest survival, he said. “If you have boxelder trees outside, you will, for sure, have boxelder beetles.” Additionally, native plant species are better than exotic, as native species will support local insects, but will keep populations down because there is a natural balance. Exotic plants, however, can overly support a particular insect species, enable large populations to build, and increase the likelihood that this insect will make its way indoors.

This is an area where the pest management professional can be very helpful, St. Cyr said. They can examine what is planted and explain, for example, “Here’s what you can expect, and here’s how to prevent it or how you can change the plants to prevent it.” It is also in this respect where a PMP/plant partnership is particularly important. For example, he said, the pest management professional’s inspection may reveal that you need to take out plastic that was put beneath mulch or plants, and use natural rock or some other barrier instead.

Once attracted to and at the exterior of the building, the insects will find gaps and cracks to slip through and into the structure. Thus managing the exterior means conducting regular inspection and maintaining the structure and grounds, removing attractants, and sealing and repairing any gaps and cracks. While newer buildings are less likely to have insects invade through worn seals, loose siding, eaves, etc., inspections need to be regularly conducted to watch for the beginnings of any structural deterioration, etc.

Additionally, Kane said, “The way a building breathes is often overlooked.” That is, determining whether a structure, or area of the structure, has positive pressure (which will push insects out) or negative pressure (which will draw them in) enables corrective action, where and when needed.

4. Manage exterior lighting. “I frequently find exterior lighting is very important to occasional invader presence,” Yu said. The insects, such as night-flying insects, are attracted to the lights; then other pests, such as spiders, are attracted to the night-flying insects. To prevent this, LED, high-pressure sodium vapor, or halogen lights should be installed, which are less attractive to insects than incandescent and fluorescent lighting.

5. Manage the interior. While occasional invaders do not—usually—breed indoors, conducive conditions can enable them to survive longer and get farther into the building (and, even, sometimes breed indoors). For example, if ground beetles come in through loading dock door #7, where interior conditions are moist and dark, they will be able to survive longer and potentially move into processing areas.

Prevention is also important because elimination methods, such as fumigation, can kill the insects, but leave dead insects within the walls, which can cause secondary pest invasion, such as warehouse beetles, which feed on the dead insects.

6. Track pest records and seasonal impacts. “A good facility manager should evaluate pest management records on a regular basis,” Kane said. Track any trends, both seasonal and location within the structure, as this can point you in the direction of corrective action. When you do find a trend, follow the “5 Whys” of an iterative question asking:

a. Why is there a wasp on the glueboard? (It got in from outside.)

b. Why did it get in? (The door was open.)

c. Why was the door open? (It was propped with a wooden block.)

d. Why was it propped? (Employees wanted to get in and out easily.)

e. Why did employees want easy access? (They wanted to take a smoking break.)

The final answer explains the issue, its corrective action, and why an alternative solution (e.g., spraying for wasps) would not have worked. “It’s almost never a real mystery,” Kane said.
 

7. Educate employees. “From a pest control point of view, the fixes are usually simple,” Kane said. “The challenge is getting buy-in from management and employees.” For example, management may fix the issue by requiring that doors not be propped open, but if employees only comply in the presence of management, the issue will remain. The best way to get buy-in, Kane said, is to educate employees on the actual costs of occasional invader (or any pest) presence; explaining the tens of thousands of dollars that could be lost if a shipment is rejected for insect presence, a recall is required, or a food poisoning occurs. Then explaining, further, how this could lead to company cut backs, including worker job losses. “The consequences of failure to follow GMPs can be high,” he said. “Consequences are happening every day.” Thus, “compliance is safeguarding yourself and safeguarding your staff.”

8. Understand the pest. Beyond indicating an access issue, accurate identification and understanding of the type of pest found also can indicate further issues. For example, springtails can indicate a moisture issue; the predatory/scavenging nature of ground beetles can be indicative of dead insects in walls; fungus beetles can mean that roofing materials were contaminated during construction and need to be replaced; and what may initially be thought to be an Oriental cockroach could actually be a new invasive species of Turkestan cockroach. Pest species also can be a warning signal of needed corrective action.

By their very definition, occasional invaders only occasionally invade structures, and when they do, it is because there is something attracting them inside. Because of this, in most cases, the occasional invaders are a facility issue, with corrective action to be dealt with through structural or cultural improvements rather than pesticides. As St. Cyr said, “It’s not always easy, and it doesn’t always come out of a one-gallon spray can.”

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

I always look forward to writing these articles, but admit that they do concern me. I want to write about positive things and actions that are being taken in the industry, but it seems that most people with whom I discuss the food industry (particularly those who don’t work in the industry) only have bad things to say. So I’ve decided to give both good and bad news this time.

Let’s start with the good news. CDC released data in its 2011 report on food safety showing that the numbers of illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths from food poisonings all were down compared to the 1999 report. This is great news for those of us in industry, and it should be great news for all those people who like to badmouth Big Food or food conglomerates. But did you hear any of this in the media? I certainly didn’t. I happened to notice that other authors were using new numbers in their writing and decided to look into it. Now if you are the Food Safety Geek at your company, you’d surely want to tell your team that they are improving and creating safer food for the people of America. I like to pat the team on the back as often as I can. So why didn’t the media cover this positive news—as they did the negative 1999 report?

That brings us to the bad news: There is still a multitude of people who don’t know enough about their food and who like to blog in unscientific (or pseudoscientific) blogs about the shortcomings of the food industry. Noone ever does enough. Here’s a short list for which “corporate food” is under attack and supposedly responsible: social responsibility; feeding the additional two billion people coming to the planet using only organic methods; organic vs. natural vs. the corporate farm; genetically modified foods; too many certifications; marketing unhealthy foods to minors; food waste; differentiating best by, sell by, use by, freeze by; imported food vs. locavores; vitamin fortification—needed or not; special taxes on foods deemed “bad” by someone; fad diets (the other guys’ are bad for you, but mine is good). How are you and I as food safety professionals supposed to maintain our reputations and continue to improve with all this hostility?

Hopefully you read the last issue of QA (May-June 2014) and saw the article by the editor about “Proactive Customer Education.” There were some interesting statistics in that article that made me think again about the positive nature of the food industry. It was a nice article about how some of our group is trying to beat back the door of hostility and pseudoscience. Pull that old magazine back from the friend to whom you loaned it and read that article again. Bottom line is: “If you don’t do anything, you only guarantee more of the same thing.”

Apparently I like to read about the food industry because I also found a good book about the naysayers. (What’s that? A good book about the naysayers?) Dr. Jayson Lusk, a food economics professor in Oklahoma recently published “The Food Police.” In an unabashed attack on the pseudoscientists and control freaks that frequently find fault in the food industry, Dr. Lusk takes us from sitting on the sidelines in our own game to wanting to be activists.

Calling the anti-food folk the Food Police, he describes what he believes is their agenda and how to debunk their pseudo arguments. It’s a very positive read for anyone who’s read the views of the other side. I recommend that you all buy one, read it, and then pass it around your office and book club and share it with as many folks as you can.

A friend recently gave a presentation about how the public views the GMO issue. The one thing I took away is that if you’ve already made up your mind, being educated in a truthful fashion is the only way that mindset can be changed. The bad news is that you also get to decide if what you learned was truthful; so in reality, you’re probably not going to change your mind.

Even with all the bad news, there’s so much good news that it needs repeated and shared. Don’t let the Food Police tell you or your friends just the bad news and the negative arguments. As food safety professionals, we need to not only be out there talking and educating and getting the message to the consumer, we need to be the first ones to be there, so consumers get the real facts first and don’t get converted to the myths of the naysayers’ position. The food industry is doing a good job keeping people safe. We’re improving. We’re minimizing waste; we’re making the food safe; we’re the ones who get food from a raw state into some edible form and get it transported from the farms to the consumers in all those big cities.

There is a balance. Listen to all sides, but be sure you are just as active as—or better yet, more active than—the naysayers, telling people that we are doing well; explaining that without the food industry, the food safety professionals, the food processors, and the handlers/transporters, none of us would have the chances we have now to live in a city and not spend 85% of our time working to put a plate of food on the table every night.

Keep up the good work making food safe, and keep talking about it.