Food Safety Summit addresses new concerns; this as romaine outbreak grows

UPDATE 5/9/2018 6:20 p.m.: New numbers from the Centers for Disease Control show an E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce continues to grow.

The CDC says 149 people from 29 states have gotten sick from E. coli. That’s 28 more from last week. The illnesses started between March 13 and April 25, with patients ranging in age from 1 to 88.

The FDA identified Harrison Farms as the sole source of whole-head romaine lettuce that got several people sick at an Alaska correctional facility, but it has not been linked to other illnesses. The FDA said most of the others who got sick reported eating salads at restaurants.

Lettuce harvesting in Yuma ended four to five weeks ago. While the shelf life of lettuce is 17-21 days, the FDA isn’t certain romaine from that area is no longer in the supply chain. However, a lot of lettuce is now coming from California and local ag experts say it is safe to eat.

Preventing something like this from happening again is still a major priority.

From making sure a plot of land is safe for planting, to processing, to loading produce onto a truck, the Western Food Safety Summit at Hartnell College looked at all aspects throughout the supply chain on Wednesday. It is a topic that the ag workforce takes seriously.

“There’s also the consequences of when we fail in taking these measures appropriately and what happens,” said Monterey County Ag Commissioner Henry Gonzales. “And what happens is that people become ill and at times people have died from food that has been adulterated.”

Bob Mills is the chair for the Food Safety Advisory Committee and works as the director of food safety for Misionero. He spoke to KION about the laws aimed at keeping the food system safe. Those include laws regarding documentation of where the product came in, proper growing practices, hygiene and sanitation, even the condition of the truck carrying the produce.

However, contamination can happen anywhere.

“I would say it has to be in the field,” Mills said. “We have so many controls in the plant. That doesn’t rule out the plant, there’s always the possibility because you’re bringing stuff in from the outside. But out in the field, that is where Mother Nature gets in the way. We can do things like trying to minimize deer, cattle and other animals getting into our field. But there’s factors that sometimes we forget we have absolutely no control over.”

Like weather. Rain can send runoff into fields or wind can kick up contaminated dirt and carry it miles away.

There’s new technology coming up all the time. Mills said one of the food safety laws calls for growers to not only verify the technology can do the job, but to validate it and make sure it will do what you want it to do for a specific crop.

Even with all the rules and precautions, things can still happen.

“You got 100 acres out there, and there’s a 100 square foot plot that got damaged, got contaminated but it looks perfectly fine,” Mills explained. “You’ve done all your inspections out there, but you missed that one. It does happen unfortunately and so those are the things that Mother Nature throws a curve at us, as much as I’d like to say I’m an expert hitter and can hit those curve balls out of the park all the time, sometimes even the best of hitters miss it.”

ORIGINAL POST: Food safety is at the top of mind for many now as the Western Food Safety Summit at Hartwell College is underway.

Hundreds of people in the ag workforce attended the summit to receive training on the most current issues and concerns.

With the news of the E. Coli outbreak KION asked ag experts about it. They said harvesting in Yuma ended four to five weeks ago and that the shelf life of lettuce is between 17 to 21 days so consumers should be safe. They said the romaine lettuce is coming from California now.

The summit looked at all aspects of food safety from making sure a plot of land is safe enough to plant the seeds to processing to getting loaded onto the back of a truck.

Folks even heard about how food safety has changed over the years and updates to FDA safety rules and what can happen if the food system can get contaminated.

Monterey County Ag Commissioner Henry Gonzales said, “There’s also the consequences of when we fail in taking these measures appropriately and what happens. And what happens is that people become ill and at times people have died from food that has been adulterated.”

The food system can get contaminated in many ways, rogue animals getting into the fields, birds flying overhead, and weather comes into play.

There’s a new technology coming up all the time and one of the food safety laws calls for growers to not only verify that the technology can do the job but validate it, that it will do what you really want it to do for a specific crop.

KION’s Mariana Hicks spoke to food safety experts about the issue and how the technology is always changing. Watch her full story at 6 p.m.