We all love “fails” on the internet, as long it is not us.
I asked a question of the LinkedIn Fresh Produce Safety Traceability Group this question:
What is the biggest “fail” related to the ongoing investigation into romaine- E. coli outbreak?
As always the group was thoughtful and provided some interesting insight:
PK: Our Food Safety program is not working if the confidence is not in the testing. We have the trace back in place and where (are) the results?
CC: We have had two significant outbreaks and investigators have been unable to close out the cases leaving consumers and the industry in precarious positions. Traceability programs have not delivered as promised. Now were moving to new FSMA regulation that is all about searching and destroying food borne pathogens. The fundamental question to answer is the “how to” //attack the fundamental flaws in the supply chain.
JB: Personally, I think the industry needs to stop pointing fingers at regulators and take some responsibility for PTI not being as effective as it could easily have been. I remember my citrus grower clients making cogent arguments that prioritizing PTI compliance on relatively safe commodities like citrus was less important than making end to end traceability a reality for other commodities in a higher risk category. And having PTI in place does little to rapidly track down the source of an outbreak without a distributed ledger system in place so that rapid data analysis can be achieved. Finally, don’t get me started (again) on the obvious need for consumer facing electronic transparency. A QR code (tm) like a smartlabel(tm) or datamatrix code on packaging could easily be used by savvy consumers to inform themselves in the event of a future food safety crisis. Why the industry does not embrace this off the shelf technology today (or ten years ago for that matter) defies logic.
KM Have they looked at the water source? Testing history? Any growers in question - how close is the nearest animal farm? Until they nail down the cause, it’ll happen again.
TK: I think the lingering uncertainty about the cause of the outbreak has hurt growers not associated with the outbreak, and that is a big fail. Messaging has been a challenge for the industry and regulators. Perhaps the inability for investigators to close out the case is most disappointing. There are too many fails to choose one.
