Apr 6, 2009

Position Your Place as a Safe Food Producer

Food safety and how to assure it were top topics at grower meetings and workshops last winter – as they were in the news. The day has arrived when almost everybody in the produce business – from grower to retailer – has to know “the right way” to do things, and then has to use those ways. And then prove they use them.

Your “right to farm” has been modified. You have to farm right to sell what you grow.

On the mundane level, it means no more letting your dog run about during harvest operations. Walk to the porta-potty – no more ducking behind a handy tree. You may have to control things, like problem wildlife, that you just cussed at before. You have to have a procedure telling exactly what’s to be done if an employee on the grading line cuts his finger or sneezes on the produce.

And you need to write it all down. You have to write a manual spelling out what the Standard Operating Procedures on your farm are and what you expect your workers to do. Then you have to let “certifiers” come onto your farm once a year to verify that you do what you say you do. And you have to pay for that privilege.

For some growers, the change has already happened. For others who haven’t done much about it yet, there is a fear their farm’s products could suddenly be refused by buyers.

That probably won’t happen – not suddenly. But buyers are one of the forces driving the change. So is the government. While there hasn’t been legislation demanding Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) or Good Handling Practices (GHPs), USDA has, since July 2007, demanded that food products it buys for government-funded nutrition programs be produced in conformity with FDA-recommended practices – and growers and packers must be audited to verify that they do it.

And that’s how it works. The pressure starts at the top and reaches the bottom. A significant buyer – the government or Wal-Mart or Spartan Stores or Gerber Products – tells its suppliers it wants a verified set of practices. And those suppliers have to implement GHPs on their packing lines and take the message back to growers, telling them they need verified GAPs in place on their farms, too.

All this is not new. But the emphasis is new, spurred by a rash of foodborne illness outbreaks in spinach, tomatoes/peppers and, most recently, peanut butter.

Too big a risk

Chuck Behrend, the food safety director for Spartan Stores, said that he sent letters last fall to produce suppliers, asking them what they currently did to assure safe food handling, asking them what they want to do, and telling them Spartan planned to move ahead with a third-party audit program, but wanted grower and packer input first.

It was an invitation for open discussion.

“Food safety is a primary goal of ours,” he said. “One of the biggest risks we face is food safety.”

Not only is there a direct loss of product when food is recalled because of contamination concerns, there is an impact on store sales and, if your brand is involved, a loss of brand loyalty and consumer confidence. It’s a risk Spartan can’t afford to continue to take, he said.

In March last year, Spartan Stores became the largest food store chain ($2.6 billion in sales last year) in the United States to adopt NSF Shop Fresh certification in its stores and warehouse facilities. That program, Behrend said, combines regular microbial sampling with on-site inspections and unannounced audits to reduce food-related risks.

“The NSF microbial reports provide Spartan Stores with a means to view the invisible,” he said. “These reports have created a heightened sense of awareness by the store associates and provide a sense of assurance to our valued customers that the food they purchase is the freshest, safest available.”

FastCheck, a part of the NSF program, provides an immediate response to customers complaining of food-related illness and includes testing of suspect products.

Food illness outbreaks are the tip of a much larger iceberg. While the peanut butter episode sickened 500 and killed eight, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 76 million foodborne illnesses occur each year, many passing away unreported. A program in which every illness claimed by a customer was investigated would be monumental.

Behrend was a speaker during one of the meetings last winter. About 50 growers and packers from the Grand Rapids, Mich., area came to the Spartan Stores warehouse distribution center in February to attend a GAPs and GHPs meeting put on by Michigan Integrated Food and Farming Systems, which had obtained a grant to conduct the educational programs. MIFFS sponsored four meetings.

Also during the winter, the Michigan Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Association held a series of workshops for its members, many of whom sell apples for processing. The goal was to get them up to speed to pass a USDA audit.

And there was a session during the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market EXPO last December, where produce growers got an introduction to the topic.

Not so new

Don Armock, president of Riveridge Produce, Sparta, Mich., told growers during EXPO that his company has been involved with food safety audit and verification programs since the 1990s, when Riveridge was trying to meet standards to ship apples to the United Kingdom. They used Primus Labs as the certifying agent.

When the USDA edict came in 2007, Armock was faced with getting a new audit to continue selling to Riveridge’s long-standing customer, the government. So now, Riveridge is audited once in the fall by Primus Labs and once in the spring by USDA. And since the company has orchards as well as a packing house, it does both GAPs and GHPs. Justin Finkler has been put in charge of the food safety program, which is helping growers get GAP-certified so the apples they pack through Riveridge can go to government food programs.

Armock isn’t much pleased by the multiple audits and hopes a single standard will ultimately come into being.

Mike Rothwell, president of BelleHarvest Packing in Belding, Mich., tells a similar story:

“A whole cottage industry is developing around auditing,” he said. “We’d like one set of standards.”

Needing to become certified to continue selling apples to the government, Rothwell got BelleHarvest’s major packing plant in Belding GHP certified to meet the USDA standard. But 10 grower/packers at other locations also pack under the BelleHarvest name; many of their orchards and packinghouses are now being certified.

Rothwell will have to meet other audit standards for other buyers. While Wal-Mart uses USDA standards, other buyers don’t, and some, like Gerber Products, have their own standards and do their own certification.

The Gerber program was also described at the EXPO last winter.

“Customers expect a lot. Mothers of small babies expect even more,” said Chris Falak, who works with growers as a fieldman for Gerber Products in Fremont, Mich.

Gerber started a program in 1992 to assure that its baby food met higher-than-government standards of food safety, Falak said. To be a grower for Gerber requires meeting a set of standards and specifications that include restrictions on pesticides used, orchard block spray histories, securing loads and providing field identification on all deliveries, assurance of non-contamination with allergens (like walnuts that might fall from a wild tree onto a truck or harvester), soil testing to assure no residues of heavy metals or organochlorine chemicals from a bygone era, and pre-approval of fields for production.

It’s all spelled out in a three-ring binder developed by Gerber’s parent company, Nestle, and growers who score low twice on performance reviews can lose their contracts to sell to Gerber.

“The crop specification is the focal point, the main document that defines the quality parameters,” Falak said. “The main goal of the Gerber Good Ag Practices Program is to identify and manage the quality attributes of each ingredient prior to arrival at the processing plant.”

A decade old

Most of this is not new. The USDA auditing process came into being in 1999, and a cornerstone of its certification process is FDA’s “Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables,” published in 1997.

The guide and the USDA audit verification program are available on the Web and are good starting points for all growers and packers looking to get started in the auditing process. The USDA material is on the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) Web site, www.ams.usda.gov/gapghp. The FDA document is at www.foodsafety.gov.