“Produce safety is everyone’s responsibility.”
This is a statement I’ve repeated several times and I know that I hear it on stage at events, in meetings with industry leaders and in conversations between businesses as they establish new partnerships. Here’s another statement I’ve heard several times.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”
That particular quote is Einstein’s, and I think that it rings as true for our industry as my first statement. Just in the past 18 months we have seen outbreaks involving romaine, cut melons, cilantro, papaya and cut vegetables — all capturing national media attention with consumer advisories and numerous product recalls. Each of these instances directly affects our ultimate goal of growing consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and in turn, growing our businesses. This is more than a story about profit. I have never met anyone in the industry who didn’t take pride in the products we grow, distribute and sell. These are some of the healthiest products available and growing consumption will grow a healthier world. I believe that one of the greatest barriers we face in these efforts is the constant noise of recalls and consumer advisories we’ve experienced over the past 20 years because we keep doing the same thing, expecting it to turn out differently.
That’s not to say that there hasn’t been great effort made in the last 20 years to learn more, know more and do more to address produce safety challenge. The Center for Produce Safety is one such organization investing in research that helps us to create better produce safety programs. At its 2019 CPS Symposium in Austin it broke its attendance record with 400 attendees, and with that many people in the room, fewer than 100 produce companies were represented. I have to ask myself, is doing more enough if we aren’t doing the right things in the first place? I know that is a hard thing to hear in the industry, but I think that we are at that point where asking the hard questions is essential to moving us forward. We move product all over the world, supplying a growing population with fresh produce year round. We have accomplished this by being innovative and taking advantage of technological advances. But when something goes wrong in that intricate supply chain, it can be crippling. It creates doubt in consumers’ minds, and we lose their trust.
There are leaders in the industry that are prioritizing their food safety efforts, investing in the right people and technology and leveraging the latest science. When there’s an outbreak, they learn and adapt, making appropriate adjustments. On the other end of the bell curve there are those who rely on the belief that a food safety incident “won’t happen to them,” or they claim that it’s too expensive for their operation to handle. These are the extremes and the minorities. The vast majority of the industry looks at produce safety as a cost of doing business and their programs are about meeting minimum expectations and complying with regulations. One has to question if this is best for their business, their customers, and consumers.
As the science and technology improves, our ability to detect illness outbreaks is improving as well. It is clear, as nearly every commodity has been touched by an outbreak or product recall in the last decade, that compliance with the minimum expectations is not enough.
This brings me back to my initial statement — Produce safety is everyone’s responsibility. As product moves through the supply chain, it transfers through several partners. If a mistake is made at any point in that chain, not only do all involved partners suffer, the entire industry suffers. Affected commodities can take months or years to recover. I will repeat, this is more than a story about profit, but a produce safety mistake can be one of the costliest mistakes an organization can experience. It is in the best interest of all of us to get this right.
In order to get this right, we have to go beyond compliance and change our industry’s mindset. The term “food safety culture” has been around for many years. At its core, it’s about change management and creating a business environment where produce safety is at least as important as any other operation in the company and perhaps more important than most. This mindset shift takes us beyond the checklist and the bare minimum, and this change starts at the top. When CEOs establish a culture of produce safety, it moves produce safety from something that the organization does to why and how the organization operates. When a company values produce safety as a core competency, food safety professionals can work to actually solve produce safety problems instead of just checking off items for compliance.
Education remains a key tool that companies can employ to improve their produce safety performance. This is different than training though training is still important. Training teaches people what to do. Education, however, teaches them why they do what they do. Empowering your team members with knowledge about why their role is essential in your efforts to keep the products safe for your consumers means they will be armed with this knowledge each time they make a decision in their day-to-day work. This is one of the biggest reasons why when the Produce Marketing Association and industry leaders on our board of directors were deciding what we could do to really impart change in produce safety, we chose to start with education and developed the Fresh Ed program.
Fresh Ed is PMA’s new learning platform and will tackle a variety of critical industry topics and knowledge centers over time. With the initial launch, we are starting with The Essentials of Produce Safety, a certificate program for food safety managers to explore seven modules, with 25 sessions of content that uses the latest science to educate around best practices in produce safety and why they are important. This training is online, providing users to move at their own pace, and most importantly, to participate on their own time without having to leave the office. All participants can earn a certificate upon completing the modules and exams, a credential that will showcase their mastery of the content and provide their organization with a tangible representation of their commitment to moving produce safety beyond compliance.
This program will give the industry a common language to speak with partners across the entire supply chain. It will empower your employees with the knowledge to reinvent your produce safety programs. Unlike other food safety trainings available, Fresh Ed: The Essentials of Produce Safety is designed specifically for the challenges and opportunities unique to the produce industry.
Produce safety is everyone’s job, and I am thrilled that this program will be a part of the work that I leave for the industry after my retirement.
(Bob Whitaker is the chief science and technology officer for PMA)
