Readiness to implement the "Food Safety Modernization Act" at packinghouses and produce processors

Date

2020-05

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law by President Obama in 2011. The FSMA regulation gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a mandate to prevent foodborne illness. The FSMA law is composed of seven rules. The objective of this study was to use checklists to evaluate the level of preparation with two FSMA rules: The Produce Safety Rule and the Preventive Controls Rule for Human Food rule. An additional objective was to evaluate the inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) and of a Salmonella cocktail in produce wash waters that had low or high levels of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD). The “TTU Tools” were the checklists used to perform the pre-FSMA and post-FSMA preparedness study. Farm packinghouses (apple and produce) under the Produce Safety Rule and apple packinghouses and minimally processed produce facilities (MPF) under the Preventive Controls rule were evaluated before and after the FSMA implementation.
In general, facilities under the Preventive Controls rule obtained higher scores than the packinghouses under the Produce Safety rule. For facilities under the Produce Safety rule, the apple packinghouses had a higher level of preparation than the produce packinghouses. All facilities scored better on the post-FSMA audit, which indicates that training affects the total scores. Subparts B –General Requirements, Subpart E- Agricultural Water and Subpart N-Analytical Methods were the sections with lowest scores for packinghouses under the Produce Safety rule. Facilities under the Preventive Controls rule had lowest scores on the Subpart B- Current Manufacturing Practices Requirements indicating the need of training and adequate facilities. For facilities under the Preventive Controls, the scores of the apple packinghouses were better than the scores of MPF facilities. Apples were washed in the laboratory simulating the processing conditions of one apple packinghouse. Tomato solids were used to simulate low and high Chemical Oygen Demand (COD) levels during the apple wash process. The study evaluated the effect of low COD (210 mg/L) and high COD (800 mg/L) on the inactivation of L. monocytogenes and a Salmonella cocktail using chlorine and peracetic acid as sanitizers.
The pathogen concentration used in the study exceeded 5 log CFU/mL. At the residual free chlorine (FC) used in this study, the efficacy of chlorine was not affected by high or low COD in the wash water (p >0.05). This study showed that peracetic acid (PAA) at low COD was the most effective sanitizer. The dissertation study provided information to help packinghouses and MPF facilities evaluate their wash processes when the wash water is re-used. Packinghouses are not mandated to validate the wash process but will be seriously affected if an outbreak takes place. MPF processors are mandated per FSMA to validate the wash process, and make sure that the process is effective controlling pathogens.

Description

Keywords

Packinghouse, Food Safety Modernization Act

Citation