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2003 Annual Meeting - Hyatt Regency Tamaya, New Mexico

Seminar summary:
Food Safety and Security-How to Assess and Prevent Risk to Your Finished Product

Joe Dirksen of Ecolab opened the Tuesday afternoon seminar with the attention-getting statistic that 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths annually in the United States are due to food safety lapses. He traced the history of U.S. regulation of the food industry from the Food and Drug Act of 1906 to the recent Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act. Food contamination was classified as microbiological, physical, or chemical. Dirksen discussed hazards inherent in the preparation and packaging of food products. A pipe leaking cleaning solution into a food plant was given as an example of a hazard that could become a serious problem. The root cause of such a problem could be mechanical failure (valve deterioration not detected), negligence due to lack of training (manually turning the valve the wrong way accidentally), or willful tampering (deliberately opening the valve with malicious intent). Several prevention approaches to food industry hazards were discussed-HACCP, TEAM, and FMEA. Most seminar attendees were familiar with hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) system, but threat exposure assessment and management (TEAM) and failure mode effect analysis (FMEA) were new concepts to many. Both of these latter approaches involve the preparation of matrices evaluating the severity of the threat's potential results versus the likelihood of the threat actually occurring. FMEA, however, adds the factor of detectability, evaluating where the threat ranges on a scale from "almost certain to be detected" to "almost impossible to detect." Dirksen emphasized that, no matter which preventive system is used, any facility plan should be location- and threat-specific, be as data-based as possible, and have the input and buy-in of all departments at that facility.

Zane Gray of Ecolab led the next portion of the seminar, on the subject of pest prevention. He defined the goal very simply as "zero pesticide usage," a proactive, rather than reactive approach. Gray portrayed an integrated pest management program as a triangle, with the three sides being prevention, inspection, and control. Plant management must understand the nature of the facility (e.g., wet vs. dry product) and plan prevention specific to the pest threats for that type of facility. Gray emphasized the importance of knowing your pest control operator and that operator's approach to employee training, certification, and continuing education. A detailed facility plan should start with an evaluation of the current program, a review of past problems, and a thorough inspection of the facility's exterior and interior, beginning a quarter of a mile away. Exterior issues include lighting, shrub placement, and debris, such as bone yards. Interior issues involve food, water, warmth, and harborage. The likely pests for each subenvironment of a facility, both inside and outside, must be identified. Next, a plan must be developed from this information, beginning with an exterior strategy that "builds out" pests and that includes working with vendors to prevent pest entry via incoming goods. Gray emphasized the need to ensure that any pesticides used be EPA-registered and applied according to label requirements. Bait station spacing was discussed and the need for bait stations to be tamper-resistant, locked, secured, and labeled as to which EPA-approved rodenticide is used. A good pest-control plan includes a map of the locations of all bait stations, a schedule for their inspection, and appropriate logbook documentation. All pest control program records should be located at one central location at that facility.

The third speaker was Rick Paine, who heads the Co-Products department at Coors Brewing Company. Paine approached food safety from both environmental and economic aspects, in terms of finding uses for brewery by-products rather than sending them into the waterways to the detriment of fragile ecosystems. A brewery has a need to "find a home" for wet grain, spent yeast, and process loss-and it would be wise to turn those process by-products into a revenue stream. Paine quoted Bill Coors' comment about brewery by-products: "Waste is a resource out of place." Coors moved from sending dried by-products to distant markets to a program of selling wet materials to local markets. Spent yeast from the Golden facility has become a nutritious component of animal feed and of pet food produced in the Denver area. Beer process loss is converted into ethanol at the rate of 1.5 million gallons per year and is used as a component of vehicle fuel. Coors has converted an inactive cellar into a temporary storage area for brewery by-products, using 1,000-barrel tanks for waste beer, spent yeast, syrup, and usable brewery effluents.

The seminar had 26 attendees and was moderated by Jim Munroe of Anheuser-Busch, Inc.

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