ASU Team Wins Grant to Ensure Safety of Produce Supply Chain

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has given William Nganje's team of Arizona State University researchers a $247,000 grant to find ways to ensure the safety of the produce we eat.

Nganje, of Queen Creek, is an associate professor at the ASU Polytechnic campus in Mesa. He and his colleagues are trying to determine the most efficient ways to ensure that produce that enters the United States from Mexico is safe.

Specifically, he and his colleagues are looking for ways to strengthen the security of the supply chain, not just against naturally occurring diseases and food tainting, but "from acts of terrorism," he said. 

"In either case, our response must be swift and accurate," he said. "It's critical that we are able to trace exactly where a threat has come from."

Produce from Mexico comes to the U.S. from thousands of fields large and small, and it goes from farmers to packers to truckers to distributors and then to warehouses on the border, Nganje said.

Learning how to trace produce along every link of that chain is critical to our medical and financial health, he said.

Source: The Arizona Republic