Stay in safe hands

By Rick Pendrous

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Food safety

Stay in safe hands
Money may be tight but steer clear of cutting corners in the area of food safety, as this could create a raft of new problems. Rick Pendrous reports

If, as a food manufacturer, you were ever tempted in the current financial crisis to cut corners as far as food safety is concerned, the clear advice from health safety experts is "don't do it"

That's what Dr Art Liang, director of the Food Safety Office at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told a recent food safety conference, organised by CIES - The Food Business Forum, in Barcelona. As far as detecting food poisoning outbreaks goes, "we can now find a needle in a haystack", said Liang. And he should know. The US has suffered a serious food poisoning outbreak, which has been linked to salmonella contamination at the Peanut Corporation of America's Blakely plant in Georgia. It is thought to have caused hundreds of cases of food poisoning and is linked with eight deaths.

As we know to our cost, globalisation means that one contamination incident can have repercussions across the globe very quickly. The US peanut butter contamination incident caused the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to issue a warning to consumers in the UK. And this followed recalls for products associated with the melamine in milk adulteration scandal in China. The latter probably explained why the Chinese delegation at this year's CIES food safety conference was larger than normal.

The big retailers know better than most how vulnerable they are to bad publicity. "Our reputation is on the line with every product we sell," said Tesco's director of international trading law and technical, Terry Babbs. Food hygiene certification of suppliers plays an important role in ensuring continuing high standards are maintained by suppliers, he said.

Despite the recent problems with the peanut processing plant, third party certification is increasing in popularity in the US, as demonstrated by the greater involvement of US retailers and manufacturers in developing the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).

The GFSI was set up in 2000 by retailers and manufacturers to pursue continuous improvement in food safety management systems, cost efficiency in the supply chain and, above all, safe food for consumers. It is an umbrella scheme for four global standards: The British Retail Consortium (BRC), International Food Safety (IFS), Safe Quality Food (SQF) and Dutch Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP), which the GFSI has been attempting to "converge"

"A single food safety standard would free up a lot of resource," remarked Mike Burness, vice president for global quality and food safety with US firm Chiquita Brands/ Fresh Express.

Private/ public sector collaboration

It was evident by the presence of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Trade Organisation (WTO) and International Standards Organisation (ISO) at this year's CIES conference, that private sector initiatives such as GFSI are gaining greater recognition in the public sector.

Yves Rey, corporate quality general manager for Danone Group and joint vice chairman of the GFSI board, pointed to the progress being made on integrating the food safety management standard ISO 22000 into the set of benchmark food safety standards of GFSI. "This will help to bridge the gap between private and public standards," said Rey.

With representatives of GFSI now sitting on the Codex Alimentarius food standards committee, which are coordinated by the World Health organisation and FAO, plus also on the ISO 22000 committee, we can probably expect an acceleration of convergence of standards.

This ambition was enunciated by Ezzedrine Boutrif, director of the FAO's Nutrition and Consumer Protection Division, who said: "We see an important role for private standards in improving food safety." Robert Madelin, the European Commission's director general of food safety body DG Sanco, remarked that his door was open to those on GFSI.

However, Boutrif recognised that, while things were moving in the right direction, there were concerns about how standards were implemented at country level. "Public and private standards are good. But they are only as good as their implementation at national level," warned Boutrif. This is an issue exercising a number of experts in the field.

One concern is that standards often "set the bar too high" for many developing countries, which fear they are being used as a means of imposing trade barriers rather than ensuring safe food throughout the supply chain. This is debated quite intensely by the WTO, reported the organisation's Marinus Huige.

The World Bank's agribusiness team leader, John Lamb, said some governments needed more help in assisting their often diverse farming sectors to create the institutional frameworks necessary to meet the high standards of more developed markets.

While stressing there "can't be dispensation on what is or is not acceptable" in standards, Tesco's Babbs called for a "measured and informed approach", where the auditing process was "modified to local conditions". This might, for example, allow more time and advice for those being audited, he said.

For third-party audits of companies' food hygiene to significantly reduce the need for costly, time-consuming and often duplicate inspections by individual retailers and manufacturing customers, confidence in them is critical, claimed the experts. But lack of confidence is still a continuing barrier.

"How can we be sure the certificates issued are worth something?" asked Kevin McKinley, deputy secretary general of ISO.

To address this, the GFSI has embarked on initiatives to raise confidence in the process - from the national accrediting bodies to the competence of individual auditors. Kevin Swoffer, independent food safety consultant and chairman of the GFSI technical committee, for example, reported on work to harmonise accreditation requirements at national level to ensure greater consistency in auditor competency across GFSI-recognised schemes.

Hygiene is a people issue

Whatever systems you might put in place, though, they're only as good as the people who use them. "If you treat food safety as a microbiological issue then you are doomed to failure, because it has people involved," warned professor Chris Griffith, head of the Food Research and Consultancy Unit at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC).

It's all about having the right culture within an organisation, he stressed, and that comes down to leadership; the commitment of management; and good communication.

According to Griffith, research showed that 97% of food poisoning outbreaks involved food handler errors. Worse still, a majority of handlers admit to not using the correct safety procedures. "So we have a link between human behaviour and management systems," he warned. "You can have the best systems in the world, but if they are not put into practice they are not worth the paper they are written on."

So it's confidence across the board that needs to be raised.

Which brings us back to the Salmonella Typhimurium incident at US peanut processor Peanut Corporation of America. It was reported at the CIES conference that the plant allegedly at fault had been subjected to various third-party hygiene audits. "If auditing missed basic things, then auditor competence is something we need to address now," said JP Suarez, senior vice president for Wal-Mart Stores and chairman of GFSI. FM

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The growing problem of listeria

US manufacturer of Spam, Hormel Foods, views high pressure processing (HPP) as the future for controlling pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) in ready-to-eat meat products.

Lm is difficult as it arises post-processing; grows aerobically and anaerobically; can grow at low temperatures; survives high salt levels and withstands freezing, said Hormel's vice president for quality management, Bryan Farnsworth. Lm is a growing problem in the US and the EU. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listeriosis is primarily foodborne and responsible for 2,500 cases of food poisoning and 500 deaths a year in the US. "Sliced meats are one of the highest risk products," Farnsworth warned.

He told the CIES food safety conference that HPP was among a raft of approaches that the firm was using to reduce its pathogen counts. While in-package hot water pasteurisation had proved effective, this approach was not suitable for sliced meats because of the surface area involved and the heat penetration requirements.

By contrast, Hormel is using HPP at its Iowa plant and this is proving very effective in treating sliced and other meats, he said. It is used to treat beef, chicken, turkey, ham and hot dogs. HPP has the advantage of applying instantaneous and uniform pressure, said Farnsworth. It causes no shear forces and no distortion to foods - and, importantly, no flavour changes, as occurs with chemical/ antimicrobial treatments.

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Tesco in Slovakia

Concerns have been expressed by supermarket giant Tesco about authorities in Slovakia preventing the retailer from carrying out inspections on some of its suppliers in that country.

In response to a question at the CIES food safety conference in Barcelona about the increasing reliance of EU governments on retailers to ensure that the food sold is safe, Tesco's director of international trading law and technical, Terry Babbs, said: "I don't find it too alarming: we will take it upon ourselves ... to give assurance that all products that are sold on our shelves are safe.

"More concern is in some countries, like Slovakia, where the government is trying to exclude us from some factories ... That is much more alarming."

KEY CONTACTS

BRC 020 7845 8939

CIES/GFSI 00 33 1 44 69 99 21

FSA 020 7276 8829

IFS 00 49 30 726 8829

SQF Institute 001 202 220 0635

UWIC 029 2041 6070

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