Convenience Vs. Safety
March 1997 -- Perspectives

By: Pam Erickson Otto
Contributing Editor

  Convenience foods seem like a recipe for disaster: multiple-component, minimally processed low-acid products, placed in modified-atmosphere, reduced-oxygen packaging and shipped through a distribution chain that might not closely watch temperatures.  "More and more, consumers want their foods to appear as minimally processed as possible," says O. Peter Snyder, Ph.D., of the Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management, St. Paul, MN. "They think that the more processed a food is, the fewer nutrients it has. And that's a very dangerous concept."  Yet, oddly enough, there hasn't been a major food-borne illness outbreak attributed to refrigerated-prepared foods -- the convenience products of the 1990s.  Arguably the safest foods produced, canned foods have had their share of problems; so have frozen and dry products. But save for the occasional, isolated incident, and despite the mainstream press' "Chicken-Little-sky-is-falling" attitude (remember The New York Times article warning of fresh-cut produce's microbial dangers?), the convenience-food safety record is unblemished.  "We can demonstrate 'in the laboratory' that we can kill ourselves with convenience foods every day of the week," says Aaron Brody, Ph.D., managing director, Rubbright--Brody Inc., Duluth, GA. "We don't have to stretch the laboratory experiment very far to create all kinds of microbiological and pathogenic problems with chilled prepared foods.  "But we're only getting a handful of incidents a year -- actually fewer than a handful -- from these foods," Brody says. "What are we? Blessed? Cursed? Or is the fuse lit, and when it blows it's going to kill 140 million people?  "Is there some sort of scientific principle we don't know about? Or is everyone doing everything so beautifully that no incidents can happen?"  Clearly, the answer to the last poser is a resounding "no." People still control the food-processing network and nobody's perfect. But that doesn't mean quests to develop perfect processing systems should be aborted. Many new technologies are aimed at this goal. Those in their final tweaking stages include:ohmic heating;aseptic processing for particulates;high-pressure processing; high-pressure extrusion.  Means for detecting food pathogens also continue to become more sophisticated. A biosensor developed by researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, can detect the presence of Salmonella and E. coli organisms. Researchers at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, have come up with an inexpensive sensor that can instantly detect E. coli 0157:H7.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved pulsed-light as a food-pasteurization process. This technique kills surface microorganisms, but doesn't penetrate into the food. And consumer resistance to another approved process, irradiation, continues to abate.  Then there are Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) programs, mandatory for meat and poultry and soon to be required for seafood. Additionally, processors of many other product categories are following voluntary programs. Brody believes that HACCP should be mandated for all chilled modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) foods.  Since developing a 100% safe food processing technology is impossible, the R&D sector also can continue to rely on systems of hurdles, or barriers, to deter microbial growth and pathogenic production. Hurdles include such elements as:temperature;water activity;presence of other inhibitors such as pH or salt;pasteurization and sterilization; andpackaging.  When combined, these various elements frequently function in synergy, enhancing their overall effect.  The increasing popularity of modified atmosphere packaging underscores the importance of temperature, according to Brody.  "The use of modified atmosphere, which is effectively the reduction of oxygen concentration and, to some degree, the elevation of carbon dioxide, is intended to retard aerobic growth as well as maintain quality for longer periods of time," he says.  "But modified atmosphere will work only at reduced temperatures," Brody says. "That means you get your greatest effect at 29°F. It sort of stops around 40°F.  "Modified atmosphere is probably the best way to retard quality losses from prepared foods. But if you let that temperature rise out of control, you provide the opportunity for Clostridium botulinum spores to grow, because you've removed the oxygen."  However, Brody adds that it would take a horde of C. botulinum spores to really cause a problem.  "Although one spore is capable of growing and producing toxins in a modified-atmosphere, reduced-oxygen packaged product, it has never been demonstrated, except under extraordinary laboratory conditions, to actually do so," he says. "You've got to have a load.  "The actual count of Clostridium botulinum spores in normal food products, unless they've been grossly mishandled, is one spore in every two or three samples," he says.  Perhaps of more immediate concern are organisms such as Listeria and Salmonella, the little beasties that will grow at temperatures as low as 32°F. To retard to these noxious nasties, Brody offers a hypothesis.  "The Aaron Brody theory is that if you get the temperature down to about 31°F, you won't have any problems and you'll have the longest shelf life," he says. "People say: 'Whoa -- that's below freezing.' But it's not, because you're not dealing with pure water.  "They also say they don't know how to get it down to 31°F," Brody says. "But when it came time put Häagen-Dazs ice cream into the marketplace, they managed to figure out a way to reduce the temperature to the -20°F required to maintain quality."  Supporting his theory, Brody points to the 250-plus cook-chill facilities operating nationwide.  "This is a massive example of centrally prepared, low-acid, ideal-for-microbial-growth food products: chicken a la king, mushroom soup, cheese sauce, chili con carne," he says. "They distribute at 31°F.  "They fill pouches of pumpable food at 190°F, then place them in tanks of ice water to drop the temperature, in less than 30 minutes, to 34°F," Brody says. "They then take them out and chill them to 31°F, with no incidents at all that I'm aware of."  For prepared foods to maintain their respectable safety record, controlled temperature distribution must be a priority, Brody claims.  "It's everyone's responsibility: the manufacturer, the warehouse, the truck driver, the consumer," he says. "We've got to literally restructure our distribution system to accommodate these foods."  Distribution temperature abuse desperately needs attention, Snyder says. While working to ensure consistently safe temperatures, food processors must also improve product uniformity.  "Food processors have to begin to get consistency in their ingredients and their processes," he says. "The ones I know right now are overcooking everything. They're washing the hell out of it in chlorine because their ingredients aren't uniform and so their processes aren't stabilized."  Snyder cites examples from other industries to make his point.  "When you're building automobiles and widgets, you want everything coming off the drill press to be exactly the same size," he says. "Those manufacturers measure process stability to judge just how good, how stable, that process is. And it shows in the uniformity of the products being made.  "In the food world, we don't do very well with that," Snyder says. "We specify 2 oz. chicken pieces, but the reality is that they're anywhere from 1 1/2 oz. to 2 1/2 oz."  By improving consistency, safety will follow, he maintains.  "I've always advocated HACCP-based total quality management," Snyder says. "In order to have quality control, I've always got to cook the same ingredients for the same amount of time. Those same procedures also produce a safe product. Consistency and safety are inseparable."  Snyder and Brody say education on all levels also will help ensure convenience-food safety.  "Food processors are far ahead of the chef and the housewife as far as using good methodologies for accomplishing a high degree of safety," Snyder says. "The housewife doesn't have a thermocouple, she doesn't keep her sink very clean. We need to provide the end users with a better level of knowledge."  Brody further recommends coursework and a certification process for manufacturing-line employees.  "We require certification for retort operators," he says. "Why not prepared foods? Is it going to eliminate the possibility of a food-borne incident? No. Will it reduce the probability of a problem? Yes. So why not?"Turning 'heads'  Consumers love the open-and-eat convenience, not to mention the nutritional appeal, of a garden in a bag.  Researchers, on the other hand, love to prove that these products are never truly dissociated from the ground in which they grew, that their surfaces are rife with all sorts of mangy microbes, and that a food-borne outbreak of epic proportions is potentially just a carelessly washed carrot away.  To help ensure the salad-eating public receives a safe, steady supply of table-ready produce, and to throw a bit of sanitizer-laden water on the claims of naysayers, there is the International Fresh-cut Produce Association (IFPA).  Based in Alexandria, VA, the 10-year-old trade group offers its 250-plus members a long list of publications, programs and workshops aimed at keeping the fresh-cut produce supply safe.  The cornerstone of IFPA's publications is its Food Safety Guidelines manual. Now in its third edition, the comprehensive book covers everything from raw materials to the growing and harvesting of the raw produce all the way to a stock recovery program.  Its chapters cover plant-environment sanitation, employee Good Manufacturing Practices, and creating a Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Point plan.  The HACCP chapter also is available as a separate publication. It contains a HACCP model that can be adapted for implementation in virtually any fresh-cut facility.  "The whole focus of the fresh-cut industry is to create a product that's extremely safe, convenient, wholesome and healthy," IFPA spokeswoman Edith Garrett says. "Fresh-cut has a terrific image, and our members intend to keep it that way."Back to top