The Packer’s Tom Karst visited June 9 with Scott Horsfall, CEO of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement about the group’s food safety efforts.
“Over the course of the last year we’ve completely revamped how we were organized to address food safety issues,” said Horsfall.
The group has in place several subcommittees that consider water, soil amendments and sanitation issues, but Horsfall said recent development called for another area of focus.
“When the FDA published their final investigation report, they really drilled down on neighboring properties, adjacent properties, grazing lands, not so much the CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), which had been debated in the past, but looking at animal grazing as opposed to confined operations.”
The Adjacent Lands Subcommittee was established a week after the Food and Drug Administration release a report on three separate E. coli outbreaks from 2019 linked to romaine lettuce. The FDA didn’t find a single specific source of the E. coli, but reported it was likely adjacent cattle grazing areas were the source.
LGMA has now appointed a new subcommittee that’s going to look specifically at adjacent lands issue, he said.
The Packer’s Food Safety Coverage
