Food safety recalls have become a constant in the fresh produce industry over the past several years. While the general public may hone in more on meat recalls (especially beef recalls) because of their frequency, recent produce recalls have garnered increased attention. It’s not necessarily that there are more recalls due to foodborne illnesses and contamination than before, but they’re being detected and addressed quicker — and more publicly due in part to social media and advancing technology. Romaine lettuce was recalled because of E. coli contamination multiple times in 2018, including two outbreaks that infected consumers between March and June, and again in October and November, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Even though greenhouse-grown romaine wasn’t the culprit in the most recent recall, growers mustn’t become complacent about their food safety practices. Greenhouse production is, in general, much less prone to food safety problems than field growing, but there is still potential for contamination — and serious repercussions.

In this month’s cover story, we’re taking a proactive approach, and looking at the steps you can take to ensure your greenhouse is a clean, food-safe setting, and avoid a recall. Lisa Lupo, food safety expert and editor of sister publication Quality Assurance & Food Safety (QA) magazine, shares her insights as well as those of food safety specialists from The Ohio State University and Virginia Tech here.

However, as greenhouse growers, you have a marketing advantage — in late November 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb emphasized the fact that greenhouse-grown romaine was not involved in the most recent outbreak. The FDA also announced a voluntary labeling agreement for romaine lettuce growers that denotes the product’s harvest date and location, which could be another opportunity to emphasize its greenhouse origins. Your produce has become more valuable and more trustworthy in the eyes of the FDA, and potentially the consumer. In her Edible Insights column, Leslie Halleck examines how greenhouse growers might benefit from the new voluntary labeling agreement.

If you’ve considered incorporating lighting into your operation, you won’t want to miss the 2019 Lighting Guide. In it, we bring you some of the latest research in lettuce, tomato and cucumber crops, and profile a Cleveland grower whose purple lights have caught the collective eye of the surrounding community. Check it out starting here.

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No label? Don’t eat it. That’s the advice the FDA recently gave consumers about how to proceed when buying romaine lettuce. I suspect such a directive, coupled with the fear caused by the recent E. coli romaine outbreak, may eventually influence consumers to apply that advice to other food they buy. For produce growers that means investing in new labeling or updating existing labeling, voluntarily. In previous columns I’ve written about the need for transparency when it comes to food labeling. The name of the game in 2019 seems to be traceability.

You might not think inspiring confidence is part of your job when you’re a lettuce grower. You’re just supposed to grow really good lettuce, right? The romaine outbreak should serve as a wake-up call to all growers that while American consumers will ignore a host of safety issues with other products proven to be far more dangerous — they completely freak out about food safety issues. All it takes is reports of a couple people getting sick, and your produce is off the shelf and banned in restaurants, whether that reaction is warranted.

Traceability is a system that ties produce to the exact field or greenhouse in which it was grown, using unique codes. Without a traceable label, there’s no way for consumers or wholesale buyers to separate your safe produce from produce linked to a geographically identified outbreak. These days, you’re selling both really good lettuce and the confidence that it is safe.

The FDA hasn’t mandated it yet, but it is urging growers, processors, distributors and retailers to clearly and prominently label all individually packaged romaine products to identify growing region and harvest date. They’ll most likely urge you — or require you — to do exactly the same thing for the next food crop that gets contaminated, be it beans or broccoli. So, why stop with romaine when it comes to transparency and traceability? It’s probably worth it to you as a grower to take a proactive comprehensive approach with all of your crops.

We all want authenticity and transparency when it comes to the food we eat. Traditionally, source or origin labeling was most meaningful to the consumer in regard to the organic and local food movements. As we grew more concerned about how — and how far away from home — our food was grown there were big benefits for growers willing to invest in more detailed labels and packaging. We now need to know exactly where the produce was grown, with a harvest date, to avoid potentially lethal food poisoning. If the grow-organic or grow-local movements didn’t move you to traceable labeling, perhaps food poisoning should.

Detailed labeling provides the consumer the opportunity to learn more about how and where their food was grown. That’s in addition to the brand exposure benefits growers garner from detailed packaging or POP (point of purchase) material. For consumers to feel safe, they may want to develop a more direct relationship between the produce they buy and who grows it. When there is a label that provides the grower information and location, consumers can research you online or with distributors.

A big bonus for greenhouse and hydroponic growers? The FDA is telling consumers not to worry about the romaine grown using these methods. That sends a strong message to consumers, regardless of the crops you’re producing. Hydroponically grown food has traditionally faced significant marketing challenges from the organic food movement. In the face of field crop contamination, hydroponically grown produce offers clear safety and sustainability advantages. You can now shout it loud and proud if you’re growing under glass hydroponically.

Traceability can not only create a great marketing opportunity, it can also help you improve your systems and reduce losses. When there is a contamination outbreak or other issue, having traceable lots helps you determine whether or not they should be recalled. It can also help you better manage your inventory and improve turns. When there is a general customer complaint about quality, you can trace such complaints back to specific harvests.

Now, let me say that I am of course conflicted about adding more packaging and labeling to bulk produce. The last thing this planet needs is more plastic. In fact, packaging guilt is a big reason I choose to grow more of my own produce at home. I get heart palpitations trying to make sure all that produce packaging is recyclable, or even worse, throwing it away if it’s not. I’m not suggesting that all produce not currently packaged should be just so it can have a label.

For bulk produce we can at least make sure vendors have the POP they need to communicate to the end customer exactly where and by whom the produce was grown. Good signage that identifies the grower and specific growing location with traceability information, should be the norm. That’s exactly what the FDA is urging growers do with bulk unpackaged produce.

As always, no matter what you’re growing or selling, communication is key. The more information consumers have about where and how their food is grown, the better chance you have at cutting your losses to foodborne illnesses.

Leslie (CPH) owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. lesliehalleck.com

That does not mean, however, that greenhouse and hydroponic produce is not susceptible to contamination by foodborne pathogens. Rather, according to Ohio State University assistant professor and food safety state specialist Sanja Ilic, current growing processes are not designed to prevent contamination.

“Greenhouse production centers around controlling environmental conditions; however, current practices are not designed to reduce microbial contamination,” she says. In fact, those very conditions that allow intensive, year-round greenhouse/hydroponic production are unfortunately conducive to the survival, growth and spread of foodborne pathogens, she explains.

It is for such reasons that Virginia Tech fresh produce food safety team coordinator and extension specialist Amber Vallotton recommends that all greenhouse growers follow the framework of the Produce Safety Rule of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). “Whether or not the grower falls under the Produce Safety Rule, every grower is required to produce the safest product they can,” she says. So she gives the same advice to all growers — field or controlled environment — teaching a preventive approach to make produce as safe as possible.

“You can’t eliminate contamination altogether, but you can put practices in place to reduce and mitigate risk,” she says.

Greenhouse pathogenic protection

Some key practices that can prevent foodborne-pathogen contamination of greenhouse-produced fresh produce include:

Worker hygiene

Handwashing. “One of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of contamination — and one of the most difficult practices to enforce — is handwashing,” Ilic says. Ranked as the most effective strategy to prevent contamination with foodborne pathogens in the greenhouse, handwashing is especially effective for the pathogens that originate from humans such as norovirus, Ilic says. “Our survey found that workers in the majority of tomato greenhouses — 78 percent — do not wash their hands prior to harvest.” To prevent contamination, workers should thoroughly wash and dry their hands before starting work, before wearing gloves, after toilet use, and after breaks or absences from workstations. However, handwashing is difficult to enforce; to be effective, proper equipment must be present and workers must receive adequate training.

Footwear. Another aspect of worker hygiene is clean clothing, especially footwear, Ilic says. “Although this aspect is not discussed for field production, contaminated footwear can track pathogens in the greenhouse and lead to contamination of produce.” In fact, research by her team isolated Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) from greenhouse workers’ shoes. Footbaths containing sanitizer can be a good strategy to prevent the entry of pathogens in the greenhouse and should be installed and maintained properly, she says. 

Health. Adequate health policies also need to be in place. “If a greenhouse worker is sick, there are the same risks as in the field,” Vallotton says. For example, if a worker has norovirus, he shouldn’t be allowed to work in a field or a greenhouse.

Irrigation water

Contaminated water has been implicated in numerous foodborne outbreaks. Thus, Ilic says, “Management of irrigation water in the greenhouse, and especially [in] hydroponic production, is critical to prevent contamination with foodborne pathogens.” In hydroponic greenhouses, pathogens can rapidly spread via water to surfaces, the environment and the plants. Water treatment should occur prior to mixing with additional source water, when water is recirculated, or when fertilizers or pesticides are dosed. 

Growers also should consider the water source risks and testing — whether it is from a public system, a well or surface source, Vallotton says. “The same for the spray system — it has to be potable water.” Additionally, she says, if the controlled-environment growers are adding acid to reduce the pH in the water, they need to be very careful with the storage of the acid. For example: Never leave a vat of acid sitting next to a packing table. “It’s not a foodborne pathogen, but it is a risk to people and product,” she says.

Soil

Although soil is more controlled in greenhouses, it, and any soil amendments, can carry risk, Vallotton says. Such risk can vary by the grower’s use of compost or biological amendments and the kind of produce being grown, e.g., whether it is leafy greens or other high-risk foods. “If you’re bringing in compost amendments, it’s not much different at all from field-grown produce,” she says, adding, “I advise growers to not use manure-based amendments for leafy greens.” If you are, get a certificate of analysis (COA) on how it was made and cured; the process used to kill any pathogens, etc. The grower also needs to consider the architecture of the crop, such as, she says, “Will the edible portion touch the ground?”

Environmental sanitation

Foodborne pathogens are commonly found throughout the greenhouse environment, and a study by Ilic’s team isolated Lm from 37.5 percent of surface samples, including harvest bins and boxes, scales, tarp floor covers and doorknobs in tomato greenhouses. “Sanitation of equipment, tools and surfaces during propagation, growing and post-harvest handling is critical to ensure produce safety,” she says.

According to Ilic’s team survey, few greenhouse operations conducted sanitation of floors, gutters and other surfaces. Additionally, some hydroponic growers do not do a cleanup between the crops at all, but interplant for continuous production.

To prevent contamination, written sanitation standard operating procedures (SSOPs) should be developed for pre-growing cleanup and cleaning at certain periods during growing, she says. Tools used in the greenhouse, such as clippers, should be cleaned and sanitized after each use. There are a number of sanitizer options for greenhouses with different properties, including chlorine bleach, quaternary ammonium compounds, hydrogen peroxide and peroxyacetic acid.

Overall, food safety is a matter of looking at your system, assessing the risk, and setting a plan for prevention and corrective action, Vallotton says. For example, if you have overhead lights, do you have supplemental protection in place in case of breakage? If you’re starting seeds or transplanting plants, have you washed the containers or using new ones? If you’re using tools to cut plants, have you ensured the tools are washed and sanitized? “Follow the flow of the food,” she says, from before the start to harvest and distribution.

It is not difficult to develop a safety program based on testing, environmental controls and sanitation. But, Ilic says, “Because there is in general lack of understanding among the growers about the requirements for the Food Safety Plan, this task is perceived by many greenhouse growers as more difficult and time-consuming that it is.” As such, her team is working to develop sanitation protocols for hydroponic growers of leafy greens to enable them to quickly customize for the needs in their operation. Also, a Food Safety Plan (FSP) workshop has been developed and will be piloted in early 2019 to help growers write their own plan working directly with educators. “This should make the development of a food safety program much easier for the growers,” she says.

“A lot of it is about following [good agricultural practices]; and since lettuce has been implicated so much, be super meticulous,” Vallotton says.

Lisa is the editor of Quality Assurance & Food Safety (QA) magazine. llupo@gie.net

Abhi Ramesh launched Misfits Market this past summer, with its first orders being shipped out in August 2018. Ramesh, the founder and CEO of the business, founded it after working in the food supply chain and logistics.

When in that part of the industry, Ramesh became interested in food distributors and where the supply chain was lacking. One such area was the “vast” amount of inefficiency and waste in that system. That sparked his idea to found Misfits Market, a food delivery service that delivers ugly and imperfect fruits and vegetables.

“Unlike a lot of food entrepreneurs, I didn’t come from the consumer side of the industry,” Ramesh says. “I don’t have a restaurant background. I was looking at the ugly part of the food world.”  

How Misfits Market came to be

Ramesh got the idea for Misfits Market on an apple-picking trip in Eastern Pennsylvania. While at the orchard, he spoke to the farmer and asked to look at the processing facility. When on the tour, Ramesh saw workers inspecting apples one by one; for every perfect apple they’d find, Ramesh says there would be two or three apples that were deemed imperfect. From there, the “imperfect” apples would be put into storage before the company would attempt to sell them. But the apples would likely be thrown out or composted, according to the farmer.

“I said, ‘That’s crazy,’ because there were 10,000 apples in that bin that someone could purchase from you or eating,” Ramesh says.

According to Ramesh, Misfits Market sources its produce from the same greenhouses and farms that the other produce sold in grocery stores comes from. For months after the apple-picking trip, Ramesh contacted growers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and got them on board with his business idea. And according to Ramesh, there are some customers that find the imperfect produce more interesting because of its imperfections, once they understand that aesthetic issues do not always mean the produce is bad. 

Different options for consumers 

Currently, Misfits Market offers two different boxes to its customers — the Mischief box that retails for $19 and comes with 10 to 12 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables, and the Madness box that retails for $34 and comes with 18 to 20 pounds of the produce. Boxes could include anything from kale and arugula to cauliflower and potatoes to apples and plums depending on the season. Customers can choose between weekly or every-other week delivery, or request a one-off order (at a higher price) to try out the box. 

“I think the convenience factor is huge,” Ramesh says. “Meal kits showed that.” 

Currently, Misfits Market is available in five states — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Connecticut — with eventual plans to expand to other regions. Most of the produce comes from farms in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and is available based on the season.

“Nature doesn’t produce everything in perfect symmetry,” Ramesh says. “And what’s not perfect can be really fresh and really tasty.”