WITH THE ongoing frenzy surrounding the Sudan 1 and Para Red debacle, the issue of food safety has never been more prominent in consumer eyes.
The fresh produce industry may have escaped the media probing and public lynching this time around, having no direct involvement with food dyes or any other additives. However, devastating infestations cannot always be foreseen. And now would be an ideal time to ensure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, lest fresh produce be dealt a similar blow.
When asked to define the concept of food safety, the small print of individual company policies may differ but all appear united in the direction of their attention: the end consumer - and the elimination of any anxiety in consuming fresh products.
According to the principles of HAACP, the processes involved in packing fresh produce are regarded as ‘low risk’, relative to other food products and their production processes, says Gerrit Bruwer, of South Africa’s Perishable Products Export Control Board, (PPECB). However, he admits the risks increase when post-harvest chemicals and physical handling, which could constitute a chemical or microbiological hazard, are brought into the equation.
Despite there having been no reported incidences of serious illness resulting from residual chemicals, the issue of pesticide usage is always high on the public agenda.
Douglas Pattie, technical advisor at the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC), says the FPC’s industry standard Code of Practice for the Control of Pesticides leaves no room for confusion about the government’s regulations. In addition, the government-implemented Pesticides Safety Directorate’s sample testings continue to suggest there is little cause for concern for the consumer even in instances of non-compliance with established regulations, he claims.
“The government’s pesticide residue monitoring generally shows that two thirds of samples have no residues at all and almost all samples with residues are within legal levels,” says Pattie. “When an exceedance of the Maximum Residue Level is found, it is extremely rare that it constitutes any sort of risk to the health of the consumer. There have been instances where residues have been found that might cause an infant to feel unwell, but on the whole pesticides are far more of a risk to those applying them [improperly] in the field or orchard than to consumers.”
At the same time, given the pressure to reduce residue levels, a large number of companies are increasingly exploring alternative methods of crop control. “We are developing resistant varieties to avoid excessive use of chemical pesticides and at the same time increasing biological pesticides,” says Agrexco’s UK manager, Amos Orr. “By adopting this approach we do not see the possibility of an epidemic in relation to fresh produce. It is all very much under control.”
While fresh produce may be safe from the destructive forces of parasites such as e-coli, it has not been entirely safe from microbiological infestation. As recently as last October, a batch of lettuce used in catering, and fast-food services was responsible for causing a widespread outbreak of salmonella across the UK.
Alec Kyriakides, head of product safety at Sainsbury’s, agrees that fresh produce could be afflicted at any time. “Microbiological contamination is an emerging concern on which we feel more needs to be done to ensure adequate control of microbiological hazards is in place from the field and through to the finished product,” he says. “We are keen to see the assurance schemes do much more to reflect good hygienic practice to reduce the risk of microbiological contamination.”
In the wake of the food dye scares the issue of prevention is very prominent. And, while some figures have been quick to dismiss the likelihood of a comparable epidemic infiltrating fresh produce, most agree there are lessons to be learned. “We have learned from the recent issues that own label product is more easily controlled,” says Somerfield technical solutions director, Stephen Ridge. ‘We know where to look and have the systems which make it easy to identify an issue and thus take action efficiently.”
While Kyriakides claims these epidemics are specific to the processed product sector, he says the scares demonstrate the complexity of the supply chain, which is likely to become more prominent for the fresh produce industry given the retailers’ continuing drive to tap into the consumer demand for convenience. “Clearly, further processed produce such as bagged salads are much more exposed and as the industry continues to add value through the development of combined products such as protein/salad mixes, it needs to learn the lessons from the Sudan 1 incident and ensure that adequate controls are in place in the supply chain to prevent contaminated materials being used.”
Having complete control over the entire journey from field to fork and being fully informed of all available information is fundamental, Kyriakides continues. “It is impossible to have cast iron assurances for all of the potential illegal compounds that could be used, but companies need to use the intelligence coming out of various sources such as trade bodies and government agencies about illegal compounds that might be entering the system and then ensure their raw material sources have adequate controls to minimise the risk and therefore exposure to such hazards.”
While supermarkets continue to lower the prices offered for produce supplies, the costs and stringency of the procedures involved in attaining the required standards of accreditation show no signs of abating. Kyriakides says retailers recognise the difficulty involved and suggests the BRC and EurepGAP standards were commissioned to minimise the complications involved in compliance. “There is no doubt that the standards in operation today are better than they ever have been but the challenges faced by global sourcing and ‘new’ products has necessitated such improvements to ensure the risks are effectively managed.”
In addition, he suggests the establishment of more specific qualifications is a natural consequence of the retailers’ drive for market superiority. “In most cases, the fundamental food safety requirements of different retailers, especially large ones, are very similar but in a competitive retail environment there is always a need for market differentiation and this must be reflected in differing specifications for certain sectors of products.”
Orr says for a large company, such as Agrexco, meeting the required standards is not unduly difficult, although he accepts that not all companies are in such a fortunate position. With regards to the increasing number of certification standards, Orr is sympathetic to the plight of struggling suppliers. “To a degree I feel that EurepGAP alone should be sufficient,” he says. “It is approved. But as we are all aware, this is not the case. Margins are going down and if the supermarkets ever came to the conclusion that they could contribute towards costs I feel sure that it would meet universal approval.”
According to Graham Campbell of the PPECB, South African producers have steadily been developing their businesses to achieve EurepGAP, HAACP, and more recently, BRC and Tesco Nature’s Choice (TNC) certification, despite demonstrating some resistance to the rigorous nature of the procedures.
However, the increasing demand from UK retailers is serving to alienate some South African producers from the market. “Perhaps an aspect that should be reviewed is the certification of small farmers,” Campbell says. “In South Africa, where many of the farms are fairly big in terms of physical size and volumes produced, smaller producers are marginalised as they pay the same cost for certification as larger producers do.”
Producers are also bewildered by the manifold ways in which the different standards are interpreted and applied by the various bodies involved in certification, he says. “This can obviously be attributed to certification bodies not being audited by their accreditation bodies (cross border accreditation) but could also be construed as a means to create a competitive advantage. This obviously creates the scenario that private schemes can be brought into disrepute and may lose credibility amongst producers.”
With the increasing specialisation of standards, the industry is hugely reliant on information technology to make the process as efficient as possible for auditors and farmers alike. According to Jeff Goulding, sales director at Muddy Boots Software, thanks to its ‘platform independent’ Quickfire technology, the days of filling in endless auditing forms with a clipboard and pen are a thing of the past. The software is compatible with various hardware systems and can be pre-programmed with all the major industry audits.
“Completing an audit is often the easy part,” he explains. “It’s the subsequent management of the corrective actions plans generated from non-conformance issues that really consumes business’s time and resources. Quickfire provides a simple tool that helps them manage the entire audit process, from data capture to audit tie-off.”
Ian Michell, group agronomist at Flamingo UK, has been using Quickfire to audit the company’s 15 UK and international suppliers for the past six to eight months and agrees it has revolutionised the entire process. “Auditors perceptions can change and everybody has their favourite ways of writing reports but now for our food safety and due diligence it means that all our audits are conducted to the same standard,” he says.
Individual companies have also benefited, says Michell. “They get a standard report sent so they can see very quickly where they have passed and what needs to be done for further compliance. Many of them have said it is a lot clearer, for example, to see their compliance in the different pillars for EureGAP and TNC.” And auditors have learned how best to guide them in working towards higher standards, he adds.
With more than 200 questions to answer for the main schemes, all the necessary aspects of food safety are encompassed in the audits, Michell claims, although a universal certificate might be more efficient, he says. “There are 232 questions for TNC and 211 for EurepGAP, 138 of which are standardised. Long term it would be nice to have one official standard but with the competition in the supermarkets I don’t know if it will ever happen.” Campbell agrees that having one audit to complete would benefit the individual business by cutting down on the travel costs issued from different audits being completed at different times.
A number of food-related regulations are due to be updated within the next year, including the Food Hygiene Regulation, established in 1990, which will challenge many food processors, according to Andrew Skinner, training services director at the Society of Food Hygiene Technology.
“From January 2006, all food manufacturers in the UK will be required to comply with the new European Union Directive on the Hygiene of Foodstuffs regarding HACCP or they could face enforcement action,” says Skinner. While, for larger producers with dedicated technical managers and training teams, this will be a question of formalising in-house procedures, smaller companies, growers and packers will be left to interpret the minefield of regulations on their own, he says.
According to Lindy Groenewald of the PPECB, the Department of Agriculture (DoA) in South Africa has recently been focusing on updating food safety regulations in accordance with EU directives. “The DoA has taken a proactive approach by introducing the official export food safety control system for regulated products of plant origin, which will be implemented as of May 1, 2005,” says Groenewald. PPECB has been appointed as the assignee to do the official audits for all food business operators.
Despite these newly updated legislations, however, according to Clive Lawrance, managing partner of independent consultancy Jensen Associates, one area of the supply chain is still being overlooked. Air-freighting produce is responsible for a vast amount of unnecessary wastage, says Lawrance, which is not only burdening innocent parties in the supply chain but also compromising food safety to a dangerous degree.
“There is a large gap in the chain which has the largest cost and the largest impact on the management of food safety and that is the middle bit between the produce leaving the exporters and arriving at the importers,” he says. “Airfreight is the weakest link in the cold chain because it is a non-ambient environment and it takes as long to get the products through the terminal as it does to fly them into the country.”
As such, produce is left for considerable periods in non-chilled conditions and all products are handled together. “There are very limited cold stores in airline warehouses at Heathrow - apart from British Airways perishable handling centre and one or two very small temperature-controlled facilities - and there is no segregation of the products because the airlines don’t want to increase the additional costs and the airport operators don’t want to build the necessary facilities.”
Lawrance says the airports should be accountable for this situation but they do not have stringent protocols in place like sea-freighters. “Airlines say they do it all properly but some major importers are going through mainland Europe these days because it is cheaper and quicker. They have got to wake up to the fact that if auditors actually visited the airports and saw the conditions produce is kept in they wouldn’t be in business for long.”
Consumers are equally unaware of the situation, he suggests. “If people saw how their food is handled before they get it they might be horrified.” Lawrance says 30 per cent of all fresh produce is currently going to waste because of this drastic incompetence, which is going unnoticed because it is not included in the supermarkets’ auditing structure.
According to Lawrance, importers are bearing the brunt of this loss in supplies but some kind of reform is due. “The exporters and the importers are paying the costs rather than the airlines which are introducing more and more add-ons that cannot be justified,” he says. “I think we will see some fundamental changes with importers standing up and taking notice but it has to come from them first and foremost.”
So how successful are these retail specifications? “Ask any food safety expert and they will tell you that nothing comes without risk and that goes for any activity or food,” says Kyriakides.
Retailers have been working hard over the past couple of decades to ensure food safety is managed sufficiently and the number of associated incidents within that time has been minimal, he says. “Of course no-one can be complacent and we see new hazards emerging all the time - that is why all of us in the food industry cannot stand still and accept that what was good 10 years ago will remain so.
“Our food safety management systems have to evolve to manage emerging hazards and ensure food safety risks do not increase.”
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