Food safety still a top concern
The city of Salinas held an Agtech meeting on Tuesday in hopes of cultivating new ideas and bringing technology to the Salinas Valley. One of the most important issues facing the $8 billion agriculture industry is food safety.
According to the Monterey County Farm Bureau, food safety became a top concern when three people died and more than 250 people got sick after eating spinach tainted with E. coli that came from the Salinas Valley in 2006. Since then, the ag industry has made strides in food safety and many hope technology will help keep the food supply safe.
“That means from everything to the field, to the processing plant, to the consumer in the store that there’s proper handling techniques and that we make sure we’re producing and handling food in a matter at which we’re not going to add contaminants to it,” said Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau, said.
One of the safety measures is the 1997 Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, where farmers affected by floods have their water and soil tested for contaminants before planting. Some food safety regulations are getting stricter. With the passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the FDA hopes to shift the focus from responding to a contamination to preventing it. Some of those efforts include having a food safety plan and inspection and distribution records.
More safety measures are underway at the Western Growers Innovation Center inside the Taylor Farms building. There are two start-ups that are all about safety. iFood Decision Services weighs risk assessment for ag companies and Inteligistics tracks product temperatures from the field to the shelf, which could affect quality.
“Fruit or vegetable in the store, it may look OK, but then you take it home and in a day or two, even if you kept it refrigerated, you know, it goes bad and moldy and you know, bad color. And if you or your children eat that, you know, it’s not good,” said Rao Mandava, president of Inteligistics.
Food safety also comes down to teaching the grower. The Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association, or ALBA, says food safety is one of the most important things it teahes its student farmers.
“We give anywhere between six and eight workshops that we do open to the public on food safety,” said Kaley Grimland, business enterprise development specialist for ALBA. “It could be record-keeping and just the general basics of food safety. We’re constantly creating this culture of food safety.”
