Not so long ago when a person complained of becoming ill after eating a meal, the culprit often blamed was the main course, such as chicken, beef, or fish. Little did we know then that the real culprit may have been that sprig of parsley off to the side of the plate, or even the side salad.

While the produce industry has for a very long time enjoyed being considered a part of healthy living, advances in medical technology are now holding produce responsible, in some cases, for food poisoning.

In the US, consumer confidence in the safety of processed produce has plummeted due to recent outbreaks of food-borne illness. In one case involving spinach in September 2006, a food-borne illness took the life of a two-year-old boy named Kyle Allgood.

With the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that some 76 million people will become sick from food-borne illnesses, the potential problems facing the produce industry could be disastrous unless it adopts new standards and guidelines designed to prevent produce-linked outbreaks.

As a US citizen and member of the produce industry, I am pleased with the recent efforts undertaken by our national associations such as the United Fresh Produce Association and the Produce Marketing Association, which are working with the government and industry to develop standards and guidelines for the produce industry designed to ensure higher levels of safety.

However, I remain concerned about those people in the produce industry or government (and we know they exist in every country and every government) who will use these efforts as an opportunity for creating protectionist barriers to international trade.

We have become a global community and so has our food supply chain, which is rich with regional produce products. As WUWM chairman, I believe we must do all that we can to ensure our global food supply chain remains open and, yes, safe.

This is a time for all of the world’s associations, produce industry leaders and governments to work together to develop a set of globally accepted standards and guidelines for ensuring a safe global supply chain. This course of action can begin at the regional level and work its way up to international agreements.

The WUWM has been working at a regional level to develop good-practice guides for food markets. It is one of our association’s goals to have regional food market good-practice guides, based on a set of common principles, that not only establish safe environments for the storage, handling, and distribution of produce, but promote and facilitate international trade as well.

If we wish to continue the success of the produce industry, we must remember that while standards and guidelines may make our industry safer, we must still maintain the trust of the consumer.

To do this, we must demonstrate that we are all working together, and not against each other, to ensure our global food supply is safe.