International Specialty Supply
Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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International Specialty Supply Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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820 East 20th Street Cookeville, TN 38501 USA 931 526 1106
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Safe
Sprouts. It is a Matter of Risk
Reduction The
last SproutNet stirred up several people to become interested in seed sampling.
It also stirred up more than one grower to consider a class suit action
against the FDA. Personally,
I appreciate the efforts of the FDA and other health organizations. The industry has greatly improved because of their efforts. The
FDA has reason to be concerned. The
outbreaks, with few exceptions, have come from pathogens that enter the
sprouting facility on the seed. There
is no sanitizing method that will completely eliminate pathogens from seed
all of the time. Even if your sanitizing method does remove all the
pathogens, you still have to worry about who has handled that seed, and where it
has been in your facility prior to sanitization. Seed in not just a
problem, seed is the problem that has hounded the industry since the
first outbreak. As
an industry, if we want the health organizations to shut up we need to quit
having outbreaks. Yes, I realize that it will take a couple of years
without outbreaks to quiet the presses. Put plain and simple - no
outbreaks, no more bad press. Sounds
easy doesn't it. Actually, it is. Sprout
growers need to quit buying contaminated seed! About
a year ago, while attending a trade show, I was sitting at a lunch table
with another sprout grower. There were about six others at the table
as well. As it turns out, one of them was a seed supplier. I
recognized his name because the company he works for also sales seed to the
sprouting industry. The sprout grower had never heard of the company
though. A conversation struck up that went something like this: Grower: "It's always good to find more sources of seed. Do
you test your seed for pathogens?" Seed
Co: "Oh, absolutely, we always test our seed for
pathogens". Grower:
"Wonderful! What kinds of
seeds do your carry?" At
that point, I realized that the grower heard all they needed to hear.
The company "tests their seed for pathogens". I
had to ask:
"How do you test your seeds for pathogens?" Seed
Co: "We send a sample off to a lab." This
may have been what the sprout grower wanted to hear, but it told me that the
seed company probably didn't have a clue what they were doing. While writing
this article I called a nationally known pathogen-testing laboratory.
The lab said that in order to test alfalfa seed for pathogens they need
25 grams of seed for the salmonella test and 25 grams for the E.coli 0157:H7
test. This is typical of most labs.
If Seed Co. sent a sample to a lab who tests 25 grams, and if the lot of seed
were contaminated at .7 cells/kg with one of those pathogens, the
likelihood that any of the contaminated seeds would show up in the 25 gram sample
is only 1.7%! However,
had he sampled 25 grams from each of the 880 bags, sprouted it, and
tested the runoff water, the likelihood of capturing the pathogen from that
same lot of seed increases from 1.7% to over 99.9999%. In
other words, Seed Co. did nothing except give the grower a false sense of
security. Even if they had sent a
50-pound sample to this pathogen test lab, the test would have been useless,
because they only test 25 grams. I
am not saying that Seed Co intentionally deceived the grower. They
may be trying very hard, or they might just be covering their rear, but what
they are doing is useless. Until growers become educated on how to purchase well sampled
and tested seed, seed suppliers will continue to placate them.
This is only natural. Many of the growers themselves were guilty of
the same thing. A produce wholesaler would ask them if their sprouts
were safe and they would say, "We test all our sprouts for pathogens."
Then the FDA went to the sprout facilities and found a great deal of
sprout growers didn't even know how to either test or have their sprouts tested for
pathogens. If
you are involved in an outbreak, it will be little comfort to the victims, and
probably useless in court, that "your seed supplied said the seed had been
tested for pathogens". Insist
on two documents from your seed supplier: 1.
General Procedures.
Get the written procedures your seed supplier uses to sample and test the seed
they send you. These are general procedures and are not lot specific.
Then evaluate these procedures! Just because the seed supplier is a major
supplier to the industry does not mean they have the industry at heart.
Make sure the procedures include sampling at least 3 kg of seed, with the
largest sample being no more than 30 grams (about two ounces), and that the
entire sample is sprouted and the runoff water is tested after 48 hours. 2. Seed Sampling & Pathogen Testing - Lot Specific. Get the procedures they actually did on the particular lot of seed you are purchasing. This should include who did the procedures, and when it was done - An actual name and date! Don't settle for anything less. If the seed company did the work they will be delighted you asked. If they didn't do the work, don't financially support them with your business. Demand properly sampled and tested seed! The alternative is to properly sample and test the seed yourself, which is a good practice even if the seed supplier does it also. Seed
purchasing is the most important critical control point in your HACCP plan.
An example of the information you should require from your seed supplier
(and/or do yourself): Seed Sampling Pathogen
Tests If
you don't know the probability of detection on a particular sample size, ask
your ISS sales representative. The
seed supplier can't guarantee that there won't be an outbreak with the seed.
However, if there is an outbreak, he can guarantee that he did all the safety
steps he said he did for the particular lot of seed you received. The
growers themselves need to be responsible for evaluating the information given
to them about the lot to determine if the information is of any value. The
growers are the ones responsible for the end product. I am not advocating anyone replace any of their existing GPM's with proper seed sampling and testing. I am saying that because nearly all the outbreaks have been seed oriented, seed is the most important Critical Control Point and should be treated as such. When
all sprouting seed is properly sampled and tested, either by sprout growers or
sprout seed suppliers, and all growers are using safe manufacturing procedures,
the outbreaks related to contaminated seed will be gone. So will the bad
press. |