Building tougher food safety standards into your farm doesn’t come cheap. If these trailblazers are right, though, it’s an investment, not a cost
The avalanche of new food safety standards that started in Europe is crashing into Canada. Now, big retailers are pushing it further down the value chain. Already, Loblaws and Wal-Mart have announced their suppliers must comply with Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) standards.
This means all their processors and suppliers from around the world must meet GFSI benchmarks. But not farms, so far.
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To see what it could mean for you, we go inside Pride Pak Canada, a leader in some in today’s hyper-safety-conscious markets. First, though, remember to sit up straight, find a seatbelt to do up, and adjust your safety glasses.
Like many farms, the food processing industry often sources employees from recent immigrants and foreign workers. One of the challenges with food safety is that it’s communication-based and much of the hands-on work is done by people with English as a second language.
At one time, Pride Pak had 40 per cent temporary labour, speaking 19 different languages. In the last few years, Karr has consciously balanced plant production year-round to limit the number of temporary staff to less than five per cent.
The language barrier is still sometimes a training challenge. When it is, new employees are buddied with experienced staff who speak the same language.
“Our lead hands looks like the United Nations,” chuckles Karr. “But we always have someone that can explain to them (the processes) in their language.”
The managers also give new employees the simpler jobs, working with semi-prepared product. In the Pride Pak plant, the lower down the processing chain means there’s less risk of contamination by human error.
Also, all employees go through visual orientation training. They also try to keep product flow as visual as possible. Coloured totes and gloves identify what stage of processing the product is at.
Building A Business On Safety
To run a business on food safety, there’s only one way to go, says Pride Pak’s Steve Karr. “We spend what we need to spend.”
“When we first started doing this we really thought that food safety was making sure your hands were washed and your knife was clean,” says Steve Karr, owner and CEO of Pride Pak Canada in Mississauga.
Now, those old attitudes seem incredibly naive and innocent. Today, food safety is at the heart of everything that Pride Pak Canada does. In fact, you could easily say that safety is exactly what the company does.
Karr is part of the burgeoning extra-processing industry and a leader in implementing food safety standards that go far beyond global standards with a full system of tracking, testing and documentation in the field, through transportation, and during processing.
“Information is where it’s at,” says Karr. An effective food safety program is about communicating throughout the value chain, testing at the source and continually reviewing and improving processes.
Pride Pak creates ready-to-eat products sold for its healthy convenience, using mostly iceberg, romaine, green leaf lettuces and baby greens. From those leafy green products alone the waste, trim, coring and wrapper leaves peeled and left in the fields add up to 17 million pounds.
“Food safety measures are our greatest costs,” says Karr.
The reality, however, is that Pride Pak can’t raise prices to accommodate increased wastage or extra food safety costs. Often margins are tight, just as they are for the company’s grower suppliers. Yet Pride Pak sets no budget for health and safety and food safety. “We spend what we need to spend to get these right,” Karr says.
Europe’s food processors have more margin to invest in food safety. For example, one-pound bags of iceberg salad retail for $1.29 to $1.79 in Canada while bags less than half that size in Europe go for 2 (approx. C$2.70).
Considered by many in Canada as the “Father of Fresh-Cut,” Karr began processing fresh vegetables and fruit in 1984. The fresh-cut market has since grown to 18 per cent of fresh produce sales and Pride Pak has also expanded into the restaurant market, including quick-serve restaurants. “We’ve seen steady double-digit growth of gross pounds of sales per year, every year,” says Karr.
Before the end of this year, Pride Pak will be moving into a new 120,000-sq. foot plant. Currently, the company employs about 150 people including Karr’s three children.
“People are taking a lot more care in everything,” says Karr. “In our operation, there are fewer and fewer incidents when it comes to quality, things like foreign objects.”
In 2006, tainted spinach got blamed for the deaths of three people and sickening another 204, including one Canadian woman. Pride Pak wasn’t even in the spinach business at the time because Karr knew the difficulty of washing the crop thoroughly and the risks involved.
It was a winning decision. The E. coli worry might have been limited to California, but consumers didn’t differentiate. They steered clear of all spinach, including locally grown crops.
Today, food safety influences virtually every business decision that Karr makes.
Field level
Karr always knows exactly where the bulk of his produce will be grown and how it will be managed even before the seed goes in the ground. “We’re looking for long-term relationships,” Karr says. He’s also looking for growers who are as committed to safety as he is, with at least one person trained and tested to monitor food safety procedures.
“We just can’t go buy on the open market from someone who may not have abided by our rules,” he says. “The risks are too high.”
Pride Pak sources its major inputs including leafy greens and fruits from Arizona, California and Mexico and has strict food-safety requirements. Two years ahead, Karr chooses the land, always looking for mid-to-high range level in case of rains, in five-acre plots. Then Pride Pak meets with the growers to negotiate costs, while discussing expectations on food safety and other contractual requirements.
Since the spinach incident, the California Leafy Greens Agreement says that these types of vegetables must be grown 400 feet away from cattle, from high-density bush and from ponds with life in them and streams.
Pride Pak’s protocols are one mile. Karr says in Mexico, the “recorded” distances and boundaries are not as clear. The company manages this extra risk by insisting their growers dig three-foot deep trenches around the fields, use fencing and have traps for smaller rodents.
Pride Pak hires their own auditor to check growers’ paperwork during the growing season and do in-field testing and look for footprints and animal droppings two weeks before harvest. If the auditor discovers anything, a red flag is posted and the crop isn’t harvested for 25 feet around the flag. If the auditor finds three spots, the field is written off.
In the last year, Pride Pak had that happen three times.
The company also has the crop swab tested for pathogens immediately before harvest. “We’re trying to minimize all the risks involved because of the cost of destroying fields,” says Karr. “We need to do testing right at the source instead of bringing product to a centralized facility and worrying about it then.”
When the product arrives at the plant in Canada it’s randomly tested for pathogens again, using outside labs. Microbiological counts are done in-house. This is a final verification process. This in-house lab’s accuracy is also checked against results from the University of Guelph.
Pride Pak doesn’t source leafy greens from Canada because of our weather and their need for longer shelf life and consistent, year-round sources. ”We have never shorted anybody and we’re not about to start today,” says Karr.
Ontario’s summer humidity hurts shelf life. (In University of Guelph tests, the same seed grown in Ontario produced lettuce with up to 25 per cent higher moisture than when grown in California.)
“It (the Ontario crop) is wonderful product if you buy the whole head, chop it up and eat it the next day or so,” says Karr. “But our problem is that we guarantee our salad will last 10 days.”
Pride Pak does source many root vegetables and apples in Canada and has long-term relationships with several growers, including the same carrot grower Karr started with 35 years ago. “We started by working together to find the best storage facilities,” he says.
Karr teamed up with the Norfolk Fruit Growers’ Association over a decade ago to do a two-year study at the Guelph Food Technology Centre on storage, varieties and treatments to keep sliced apples from oxidizing. They discovered that Empire apples stayed the freshest and Nature Seal’s calcium-based acid slowed the browning of chopped apples. Today, Pride Pak is still buying from the Norfolk Fruit Growers and Nature Seal.
Karr says working up with processors and pre-contracting some of the crop is the way of the future for Canadian farmers. Processors and retailers need to know where their inputs are coming from and what food safety and quality procedures the farmers are using. Most American growers have half of their production under contract.
“Every year I get a call from farmers at the end of the apple season offering to sell off apples at two to five cents a pound cheaper,” Karr says “But I can’t take them. It takes business away from authorized growers and I simple don’t know how the product was grown and handled.”
Who should pay for food safety?
“Canadian farmers need to belly up to the bar,” says Frank Schreurs, one of the country’s top food safety analysts. “It has become a customer requirement.”
A decade ago, on-farm food safety programs started popping up across Canada. Commodity associations began encouraging farmers to document best management practices, and then came the manuals, standardized forms and subsequent auditing.
Sometimes, Frank Schreurs, vice-president of food safety and quality at the Guelph Food Technology Centre, wonders if the message really sank in.
Yes, some supply-managed associations forced mandatory involvement, such as the Chicken Farmers of Canada. Over 97 per cent of broiler farms are certified in Canada.
However, for the non-supply managed farms the need for on-farm food safety protocols are driven by customer requirement and so is the uptake. For example, the Canadian Horticultural Council’s program for fruit and vegetable growers, called CanadaGAP, has enrolled 739 producers and packers. It has six crop-specific manuals, and is accepted under new global standards being applied by retailers such as Loblaws and Wal-Mart.
The auditing process helps producers see and fix potential hazards before food safety is compromised.
Schreurs describes a vegetable farm where there was only a bucket and hose — no soap and no towels — for the field workers to wash up after lunch. Traces of an allergens, like peanut butter, could have been on the hands of the farm workers, a relatively new risk but with possibly deadly consequences.
Lax standards aren’t only on farms, he adds. Schreurs recently audited an asparagus plant and saw a bottle of lubricant stored 10 feet from where the asparagus was being trimmed and packed. It had always been there so was just part of the landscape to the managers.
Even so, the market is dictating the food safety needs and Canadian farmers generally don’t understand that as well as their counterparts south of the border, says Schreurs. “In the U. S., they don’t whine and complain about it. They understand that it’s a cost of doing business.”
“It has become a customer requirement,” says Schreurs. “We need to implement systems to mitigate risk and deal with the risk.”
Several food safety programs currently in Canada use acceptable Global Food Safety Initiative standards. However, not all places and companies have the ability — facilities, water quality, infrastructure, employee training and literacy — to quickly comply to these demands.
Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point systems are designed to identify potential health hazards and to establish strategies to prevent those hazards from happening. The Guelph centre is Canada’s largest HACCP trainer and offers internationally recognized programs. Many different HACCP systems are used in food processing and retailers and farmers often use HACCPbased processes.
HACCP was first developed by the Pillsbury Company as a means of assuring the safety of food produced for the U. S. space program. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wanted a “zero defect” program to guarantee safety in the foods astronauts would consume in space.
Back on Earth, Canadian processors are scrambling to update their HACCP programs in their facilities to comply with the GFSI. Eventually these requirements may filter down to the farm level, and so will the additional costs. “It’s driven all the way down the chain,” says Schreurs. “The retailers aren’t paying for all of this.” CG
In the last year, Pride Pak had that happen three times.
The company also has the crop swab tested for pathogens immediately before harvest. “We’re trying to minimize all the risks involved because of the cost of destroying fields,” says Karr. “We need to do testing right at the source instead of bringing product to a centralized facility and worrying about it then.”
When the product arrives at the plant in Canada it’s randomly tested for pathogens again, using outside labs. Microbiological counts are done in-house. This is a final verification process. This in-house lab’s accuracy is also checked against results from the University of Guelph.
Pride Pak doesn’t source leafy greens from Canada because of our weather and their need for longer shelf life and consistent, year-round sources. ”We have never shorted anybody and we’re not about to start today,” says Karr.
Ontario’s summer humidity hurts shelf life. (In University of Guelph tests, the same seed grown in Ontario produced lettuce with up to 25 per cent higher moisture than when grown in California.)
“It (the Ontario crop) is wonderful product if you buy the whole head, chop it up and eat it the next day or so,” says Karr. “But our problem is that we guarantee our salad will last 10 days.”
Pride Pak does source many root vegetables and apples in Canada and has long-term relationships with several growers, including the same carrot grower Karr started with 35 years ago. “We started by working together to find the best storage facilities,” he says.
Karr teamed up with the Norfolk Fruit Growers’ Association over a decade ago to do a two-year study at the Guelph Food Technology Centre on storage, varieties and treatments to keep sliced apples from oxidizing. They discovered that Empire apples stayed the freshest and Nature Seal’s calcium-based acid slowed the browning of chopped apples. Today, Pride Pak is still buying from the Norfolk Fruit Growers and Nature Seal.
Karr says working up with processors and pre-contracting some of the crop is the way of the future for Canadian farmers. Processors and retailers need to know where their inputs are coming from and what food safety and quality procedures the farmers are using. Most American growers have half of their production under contract.
“Every year I get a call from farmers at the end of the apple season offering to sell off apples at two to five cents a pound cheaper,” Karr says “But I can’t take them. It takes business away from authorized growers and I simple don’t know how the product was grown and handled.”
Who should pay for food safety?
“Canadian farmers need to belly up to the bar,” says Frank Schreurs, one of the country’s top food safety analysts. “It has become a customer requirement.”
A decade ago, on-farm food safety programs started popping up across Canada. Commodity associations began encouraging farmers to document best management practices, and then came the manuals, standardized forms and subsequent auditing.
Sometimes, Frank Schreurs, vice-president of food safety and quality at the Guelph Food Technology Centre, wonders if the message really sank in.
Yes, some supply-managed associations forced mandatory involvement, such as the Chicken Farmers of Canada. Over 97 per cent of broiler farms are certified in Canada.
However, for the non-supply managed farms the need for on-farm food safety protocols are driven by customer requirement and so is the uptake. For example, the Canadian Horticultural Council’s program for fruit and vegetable growers, called CanadaGAP, has enrolled 739 producers and packers. It has six crop-specific manuals, and is accepted under new global standards being applied by retailers such as Loblaws and Wal-Mart.
The auditing process helps producers see and fix potential hazards before food safety is compromised.
Schreurs describes a vegetable farm where there was only a bucket and hose — no soap and no towels — for the field workers to wash up after lunch. Traces of an allergens, like peanut butter, could have been on the hands of the farm workers, a relatively new risk but with possibly deadly consequences.
Lax standards aren’t only on farms, he adds. Schreurs recently audited an asparagus plant and saw a bottle of lubricant stored 10 feet from where the asparagus was being trimmed and packed. It had always been there so was just part of the landscape to the managers.
Even so, the market is dictating the food safety needs and Canadian farmers generally don’t understand that as well as their counterparts south of the border, says Schreurs. “In the U. S., they don’t whine and complain about it. They understand that it’s a cost of doing business.”
“It has become a customer requirement,” says Schreurs. “We need to implement systems to mitigate risk and deal with the risk.”
Several food safety programs currently in Canada use acceptable Global Food Safety Initiative standards. However, not all places and companies have the ability — facilities, water quality, infrastructure, employee training and literacy — to quickly comply to these demands.
Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point systems are designed to identify potential health hazards and to establish strategies to prevent those hazards from happening. The Guelph centre is Canada’s largest HACCP trainer and offers internationally recognized programs. Many different HACCP systems are used in food processing and retailers and farmers often use HACCPbased processes.
HACCP was first developed by the Pillsbury Company as a means of assuring the safety of food produced for the U. S. space program. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wanted a “zero defect” program to guarantee safety in the foods astronauts would consume in space.
Back on Earth, Canadian processors are scrambling to update their HACCP programs in their facilities to comply with the GFSI. Eventually these requirements may filter down to the farm level, and so will the additional costs. “It’s driven all the way down the chain,” says Schreurs. “The retailers aren’t paying for all of this.” CG
