MONTEREY, CA — Food-safety programs do not come one-size-fits-all and are "not something you can take off a shelf," because every company at every level of the produce supply chain has differences in its facilities and does some things different in its operations than every other company. Therefore, its "risk profile will be different," said Robert Whitaker, chief science and technology officer for the Produce Marketing Association.

Speaking July 21 at an educational session at the PMA Foodservice Conference, here, Dr. Whitaker emphasized that because every operation is unique and every situation is different, "food safety is personal" and requires personal involvement. It cannot just be a written protocol, nor can responsibility for its implementation be relegated to one person in the company or to a consultant.

"No matter where you are in the supply chain, unless you are personally involved with a food-safety program, then I would put to you that you do not have a food-safety program," he said. "You have to take responsibility for it. You have to be responsible for getting in there and doing the risk management."

Dr. Whitaker, who earned his doctorate in biology from State University of New York, said that he finds people in the industry are often looking for a "flip-the-switch solution. But food safety is never done. It is the classic continuous improvement activity," he said.

The produce industry is complex, he observed. "It is not a one-to-one relationship. Some products are handled four or five or six times before the consumer ever gets them, and every one of those interactions involves somebody else that needs to have their food-safety game on, needs to know what they are doing to manage the risk on their various pieces of the supply chain."

It only takes a single positive test for a pathogen to stimulate a recall, he said. "And one person getting sick from any one of our products is one too many." Aggravating that concern is the fact that "the media is focused in on produce right now."

Every day, "there are recalls all across the country with different food products, yet we don't hear about them. We don't see them," Dr. Whitaker said.

Because he subscribes to technical information services that most people don't see, he is aware of how many recalls in other products never get reported to the public. They come "all day long in my email, yet we don't see them on CNN," he said. "Yet last week, CNN featured a story on a recall on nine boxes of Romaine. Nine boxes. That makes its way onto CNN."

News reports such as that stir up the regulatory environment, he said.

Meanwhile, "we are in the process now of waiting for the rules to come out for the Food Safety Modernization Act. They were supposed to have come out in January, and now some are wondering whether they will be out before the end of the year.

"The people who are engaged with having to protect the public health are just as challenged as we are to determine what is the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do," he continued. "We see wild inconsistencies, sometimes, in how different events are handled" by regulatory agencies. That puts the produce industry "in the eye of the storm."

Further complicating the issue is the complexity of the buyer-seller relationship. Buyers, of course, want to protect their brand. "They don't want to go through a recall," Dr. Whitaker said. But sellers are asked to do different things by different buyers, "and it causes frustration. It causes overlaps. It causes duplication." It also "takes our eye off the ball of things that we can do to make our product safer."

The science of food safety has improved tremendously, but still 'we are dealing with a knowledge deficit," he said. "the fact of the matter is we don't always know where these bacteria come from. We don't always know how long they will survive when they are there. And we don't know how to absolutely get rid of them every time. There are things we can do to manage those risks, but we don't have all of the answers yet."

When a food borne illness does occur in the produce industry, he said, "a number of things had to line up" to bring it about. It is "a perfect storm."

Food-safety programs, by contrast, are never perfect and must be continually evaluated and improved.

Dr. Whitaker discussed seven questions that need to be considered in an ongoing food-safety program, in each case looking at what is good, what is better, and what is best.

His first question was, "Do you have a written food-safety plan?" A good written plan, he said, will involve both internal inspection and audits. A better plan will involve risk assessment, preventive control and corrective action. The best plan will also involve continual validation, updating and analysis.

The other questions he discussed dealt with the good, better and best ways to deal with washing products correctly, effective sanitation, effective communication of the food-safety program not just to customers but to employees, knowing "who touched your product," keeping up with emerging science and engaging in regulatory issues.