June 15, 2012

Food safety to star at IFT in Las Vegas

When the Institute of Food Technologists gather for their annual meeting and food expo June 25-28 in Las Vegas, food safety will be front and center.

With 46 sessions, the conference features several seminar tracks, including one called “Food Safety and Defense.” Two especially relate to fresh-cut produce.

“Case Studies in Fresh Produce Safety, Fast Food, Food Processing, and Foodservice,” on June 27, will discuss steps taken by researchers and government agencies to update practices and modernize equipment to ensure the safety of fresh produce. These practices are being driven by bacterial outbreaks, increased awareness of the health benefits of eating raw food and the 2011 passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Presenters will discuss the current legislative and regulatory climate by exploring actual and effective food safety practices used by growers and processors for post-harvest intervention, fast food restaurants and U. S. Navy foodservice operations.

One of the presenters will be Kai-Lani Grace Ho, principal scientist for Fresh Express. She will be talking about her work in improving the effectiveness of chlorinated water (CW) in fresh-cut produce. This water can be affected by a number of factors, including pH and the presence of organic matter.

“In order to minimize the possibility of reduced chlorine efficacy due to environmental processing conditions, a need to develop alternative sanitizers to replace CW in produce wash water systems was identified,” Ho said. “In the presentation, I will review some recently developed and commercialized fresh produce sanitizers, and the importance of using proper processing conditions and parameters for validating novel sanitizers for fresh produce will be emphasized.”

Progress is being made on the issue of food safety across the entire supply chain, said Ho. Growers are using the FDA’s Good Agricultural Practices guide at growing sites (particularly those in proximity to animal operations), higher standards for irrigation and other water that can come in contact with crops, prohibition of potential contaminants, such as raw manure, and better employee hygiene. Other parts of the system are implementing prevention-based Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point practices.

New research projects, said Ho, include those “aimed at identifying potential sources of human pathogenic contaminants, the probable vectors or mechanisms for the transfer of human pathogens, the microbial ecology of these microorganisms, the potential to survive, persist and/or grow these pathogens
on the plant tissue, and the technologies for mitigating or eliminating them.”

Additional presenters are Michelle Smith, senior policy analyst for the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Food Safety Produce Safety Staff; Robert Gravani, a professor at the Cornell University Department of Food Science who specializes in food safety issues; and Brendan Niemira, lead scientist for food safety and intervention technologies with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.

The second symposium, “Improving the Safety of Fresh Produce: An Integrated Approach,” will be June 26 and focus on the National Integrated Food Safety Initiative.

During its 12 years in existence, the competitive grants program has awarded 80 grants to researchers working on an integrated approach to food safety problems.
One of the program’s areas of emphasis is improving the safety of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables. It has received $11.5 million in grant funding since 2007.

Speakers include Jodi Williams, a program leader in food safety at the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture; Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia; Jeffrey LeJeune, a researcher and professor at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center’s Food Animal Health Research Program; and Lawrence Goodridge of Colorado State University’s Department of Animal Sciences.





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