News of foodborne illness outbreaks and product recalls has led consumer concern about food safety to new highs, but the food industry and equipment manufacturers are working together to create technologies that promise to help improve food safety at the store level, while also boosting operational efficiencies and reducing shrink.

“There's quite a few new innovations in food safety,” said Jill Hollingsworth, group vice president of food safety programs for the Food Marketing Institute. “And the retail industry is very interested and doing a lot with different manufacturers and suppliers to look at ways to bring new technologies and science into the retail environment to help support and enhance their food safety programs.”

Hollingsworth noted that FMI has recently seen a marked increase in the number of companies that provide cleaning or sanitizing services, or that design new types of easy-to-use equipment or chemicals designed especially for environments where food is stored, prepared or displayed. Many of those companies have become associate members of FMI.

“It's created a very nice relationship, where our core membership is supermarkets, but now they have this pool of associate members that can provide them with all kinds of new technologies and services,” Hollingsworth added.

Examples of popular new equipment range from redesigned deli slicers that have fewer movable parts, to new plastics that inhibit bacteria growth on surfaces such as cutting boards and knife handles. New chemical innovations include foams designed to clean tough areas like drains, and specialized fruit and vegetable washes that eliminate dangerous bacteria while inhibiting spoilage.

Retailers say that these new products help simplify safety training in their stores, while reducing the risks of foodborne illness.

Publix Super Markets, Lakeland, Fla., for example, has worked with its deli retail business unit, facilities, sanitation service and slicer provider to update its deli slicers to reduce the number of nooks and crannies where bacteria can survive, Maria Brous, spokeswoman for Publix, told SN.

“We have worked hard over the last two years to get corporate quality assurance involved in new store design and equipment review,” Brous said.

“Deli service cases have also been updated with sliding doors that prevent bacterial harborage areas. Because hand washing is the No. 1 process associates can follow to reduce the likelihood of foodborne illness, we've worked to design fresh departments with hand sinks in the right locations based on process flow.”

Publix is also working with its chemical service provider, Minneapolis-based Chemstar, to develop a liquid-based fruit and vegetable wash to add a further layer of protection. This is currently being rolled out in the chain's South Carolina stores as a pilot, Brous said.

Sanitation programs have also seen more innovation, not only with the chemical compounds that are used in sanitizing, but also how and where these chemicals can be dispensed and used throughout a store.

“Anything from foams that can be sprayed on the floor and just mopped up so you don't have water splashing, to things such as rings or disks that [are fitted into] floor drains to kill bacteria as it's washed through the floor drain,” Hollingsworth told SN. “A lot of those kinds of sanitation technologies and new advances are being made in a simple form so that they're easily adapted into a retail environment and any retailer can use them.”

Kowalski's Markets, St. Paul, Minn., uses a foam cleaner in its meat department and has partnered with a lab that goes to its stores on a weekly basis and swabs the equipment, the slicers and employees' hands for testing.

“We have that information turned pretty quickly back to us so we can kind of monitor how things are going at store level with sanitation,” Terri Bennis, vice president of perishable food operations, told SN.

“We do have standards and procedures in place for cleaning all of our equipment, but I think our basic philosophy has always been that it still comes down to the people.”

As risk factors leading to contamination are researched and become more identifiable, equipment manufacturers have taken the opportunity to develop equipment that enhances food safety in high-risk areas, such as places where cross-contamination commonly happens, or areas where a failure of oversight can be especially dangerous.

Food Quality Sensor International, Lexington, Mass., has developed a label that is applied by the meat packer to the inside of meat and poultry packages to provide the consumer with a clear indication of the product's freshness. The label will be introduced to supermarkets and restaurants sometime this fall.

“A lot of work was done to study what the market needed, and what it ultimately came to, in terms of where we put our efforts, was the determination that meat and poultry freshness is an important factor, from the consumer standpoint, the industry standpoint and the grocery distributor's standpoint,” said Marco Bonne, president and chief executive officer of FQSI.