Food Safety - Produce Traceability (Left and Right agree?)

Vanity | Jan. 22, 2010 | Self

[BillCompton]

I would like some opinions on where the following stands from a Political (left/right) point of view.

Currently, when cartons of produce (tomatoes, etc) arrive at a grocery store, very little information is available about where the product came from and how it got there. This is how almost the entire tomato industry was shut down in the summer of 2008 Wikipedia link. 257 people were hospitalized and one person died. The tomato growers were financially devastated. It turned out to not be tomatoes at all (Mexican jalapeño peppers.) The CDC had 50 people trying to trace through the shipping documents to narrow down where the problem came from. They basically said "it could have come from anywhere. Shut down everything." There existed no way for the investigators to narrow anything down, so the scope kept expanding.

Should the government mandate traceability labels on each carton of produce? The knee-jerk Conservative point of view is no. But suppose terrorists decided to target the produce industry. Suppose they kind of went into the freight hauling business and they poisoned five truckloads of various produce in various places. Currently, it is a dead certainty that we would have to throw away all produce in the entire country. Plus, how could we keep it from happening again a month later? We couldn't.

The produce industry has created the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) in response to the problem. It calls for every carton of produce to have a standard barcode that identifies the packing house (where the produce was put into the box) and giving it a serial number. Then, they must keep electronic records that track what field/farm it came from and where it was shipped (you must be able to provide the FDA with traceability information within one hour in the event of an investigation). If all cases had these barcodes on them, you could quickly narrow down who could possible be involved. There would be no need to shut everything down. There would likely be false positives, but almost all of the industry could be excluded for the recall. Within hours, the problem could be identified as having to do with trucks and the FBI could be hot on their trail.

I am interested in the opinions here.

[patlin]

And you do know they through the box away without ever recording the info that is on the box. Nor does the distribution center on receiving or on shipping. And I too have been dealing with fresh produce shipping daily...for 25 years.

Oh, really? Stores & distribution centers/warehouses save no documentation? We are required by law to keep ALL shipping docs for a certain number of years, as well as every warehouse/distribution center in the USA. You also obviously have never been to a produce farm. You obviously have never seen how the some of the worst sheds handle the produce during packaging. And, you obviously have never heard of “don't drink the water in Mexico.

I have personally seen or been involved in every aspect of produce from picking, to packaging to shipping for over 30 years. Mostly dealing with produce coming from Mexico or South America, Arizona & California. We currently deliver to warehouses as well as stores directly and every i has to be dotted & every t crossed and the origin of the product is on every shipping bill of lading in which they keep a copy of.

I have seen all the horrors from illegal immigrants defecating in the produce fields to the disgusting regurgitated water they supposedly use so they can call the product pre-washed.

Pre-washed my a$$, pre-washed in waste, and that is in California. and if employees are getting sick from merely handling the produce, then there is an in-house problem with handwashing before those hands come in contact with the face/mouth. Most quality sheds in Cali make their employees wear rubber gloves when working with the produce.

It is common sense to wash all food when you do not know personally the farm in which it came from. Even then, you should still wash it.

So, I say ‘Horse Hockey’, we have eaten produce straight off the truck, but never before carefully & properly washing it first and we have never gotten sick from it. Even the product from Mexico.

More government bureaucracy is not the answer. That will only lead to skyrocketing food costs because of all bureaucratic red crap!

[Balding_Eagle]

I can remember, as a farmer, back in the 70’s all we wanted was Country of Origin labeling.

Farmers were, and still are, completing with lower quality foods from other countries offered at a lower price on the same store shelf. The consumer has no idea he is buying something from a foreign country, produced to very different standards.

We couldn’t get it done then in the 70’3, it hasn’t been done since, it won’t be done. The only labeling inplemented will be for libeling the grower.

[BillCompton]

Oh, really? Stores & distribution centers/warehouses save no documentation? We are required by law to keep ALL shipping docs for a certain number of years, as well as every warehouse/distribution center in the USA

Maybe you and I could dial the passion back a notch or two.

Yes the BOLs have some details on them that are useful for traceability. But if you will recall, you said the farm was on each box. That is great, if you have the original carton, which you probably won't.

During the 2008 event, competent people used the current data and tried to figure out the source. The 257 sick people implicated the entire tomato industry...because the tomatoes were not the cause. I suggest that if the PTI had been implemented at the time, they would have concluded that tomatoes could not be the cause within a few days of the original sicknesses. That would have saved tens of millions of dollars in destroyed produce.

You seem like a knowledgeable guy. If you were to target (as a terrorist) the produce industry, could you not basically destroy the whole industry for months at a time? Then we are not talking about tens of millions, but many billions of dollars. Not to mention long-term damage to the industry (some people would be afraid of fresh produce.)

[patlin]

When that tomato scare came out, I immediately knew it was bogus and I contacted my reps in DC and asked them to request the Depts to check into foreign produce coming over the border through TX, Nogales, AZ, Calexico & National City, Ca.

Any reputable produce warehouse & grocer carefully documents each and every pallet of product. If there is more than one product on th pallet, the pallet is broken down so that there is only one product per pallet and that includes all those lovely prepackaged salads. Each type has its own pallet. The label placed on each pallet must coincide with the product number on the master list that includes product number as it is shown on the box & the individual prepackaged items in the box. People out there not following these govt guidelines are the problem and only make it costlier to those of us who do.

So again I say: ‘Horse Hockey’. This story is nothing more than the statist & progressives libs attempts to panic the public, just like they are doing over health care & global warming. It is a HUGE false flag and I will not sit back while we are turned into a complete nanny state, including what we put on our dinner plates.

Wash your produce & poultry thoroughly, wash your hands but especially, wash all cooking surfaces including cutting boards with a solution of 1 TBSP bleach to 1 QT of water after preparing vegetables & meat. I keep a bottle next to my sink at all times.

It is nothing more than ‘Common Sense’.