DEGREES OF SAFETY

DAN ALAIMO / ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Anne Hollyday

Thermometers are hot.

Rising concerns over food safety are causing supermarket operators to focus more of their attention on temperature-monitoring technologies.

From simple bimetallic thermometers to electronic thermistors and thermocouples, retailers are seeking to address in-store concerns over food-borne pathogens, like listeria monocytogenes, E. coli 0157H:7 and viruses. Looking ahead, wireless radio-frequency systems are seen as a way of increasing precision while saving costs in this very labor-intensive task.

Interest in the issue is increasing prior to an industry meeting July 19 to 21 in Orlando, Fla., for the International Food Safety Congress, jointly sponsored by the Food Market Institute and the National Restaurant Association, both based in Washington, among other organizations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently launched a consumer-education campaign promoting the use of food thermometers in the home. Featuring a cartoon character named "Thermy," the campaign includes a televised public service announcement, as well as informational materials for consumers, educators and health professionals. Supermarket participants in the program include Giant Food (Landover, Md.), Tops, Bi-Lo, Stop & Shop, Giant Food (Carlisle, Pa.), Wegmans, Schnucks, Spartan, Big Y, Supervalu, Richfoods, Farm Fresh, Albertson's and Kings.

For the retailers part, many have adopted the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) continuous inspection system. This system helps ensure food safety by analyzing the hazards of food production, identifying points where hazards can be controlled and documenting each step.

In terms of in-store technology for food safety, retailers' attention is focused on the conscientious and state-of-the-art use of thermometers to make sure products are kept at the proper temperature.

"Customer trust is very important to us," said Mike Hillyer, director of quality assurance, Wal-Mart Stores, Bentonville, Ark. "Day-in and day-out, we guard that with everything we can. That's why we put a lot of emphasis on cold chain management. That really does help protect the products throughout our distribution centers and enables us to deliver quality products to our customers."

Wal-Mart Supercenters have a sophisticated temperature monitoring system, with thermocouple sensors in all permanent cooler or freezer cases connected to computers in the main offices, Hillyer said. "A dedicated team of associates here in Bentonville monitors those temperature readings," he said. "We closely monitor them to make sure that the cases are functioning and that the product is being held at the right temperature so that the customer gets a quality food product. We take great care of that throughout our whole system," Hillyer said.

This cold chain management is part of the entire supply chain, he added. "Temperature monitoring is an important aspect of our operation from the supplier, throughout the distribution center, our trucks and the delivery. We monitor and check temperatures constantly throughout the whole distribution chain. We ask for the suppliers to work with us in bringing those in-bound perishables in under temperature control, and we have monitoring devices in the inbound loads." In some cases, this is done manually, while in others electronic systems are used.

Wal-Mart is starting to turn to a future of wireless temperature monitoring and smart chips with information embedded into them by the supplier, Hillyer said. "That technology is already starting to show up. The more you automate using computers and by putting parameters in, the more it takes a lot of the human element out of the decision making and you have a computer that can do multiple tasks at the same time," he said.

"Supermarkets, food services, food processors all have the ultimate responsibility to make sure that the food is safe," said Tim Wiegner, director of food-safety programs, the Food Marketing Institute, Washington, D.C. The different parts of the industry each realize that they can't do it by themselves, he said. "Through cooperative efforts, we are working with regulatory, academia, and research and consumer groups, and it is this cooperative approach that is going to ensure that we provide safe food for consumers, who also must realize that they have a role to play in food safety," he said.

Wiegner identified three key trends in the area of food safety technology:

A greater emphasis on temperature and time control, such as proper cold handling, cooking and cooling. "With those three, you can solve a lot of the problems that we have," he said.

Using current temperature-monitoring technology to make the job easier. "You eliminate some of the manual labor and time, you minimize human error and you use the technology to track trends."

Dealing with the science of food safety. "We know about organisms such as listeria monocytogenes that are in the environment. We do not live in a sterilized environment and based on that, we must learn how to use science and technology to minimize the risk associated with these organisms," Wiegner said.

"Our food safety program encompasses everything," said Cas Tryba, food safety manager, Big Y Foods, Springfield, Mass. "We take caution against communicable diseases among employees. We train employees on proper hand washing and viruses." Big Y is participating in the FMI's Total Food Safety Management Program for designing policies and procedures, he noted.

Big Y recently rolled out the Quick Check data-logging HACCP compliance system from Sensitech, Beverly, Mass., to 40 stores, Tryba reported. "It's a thermistor attached to a hand-held computer. You can punch in the name and location of a product; it's preprogrammed to register the appropriate temperature range. That information is downloaded at each store.

"One of the big time-saving elements of this system is that normally we manually filled out temperature logs. This eliminates the problem of department managers checking cooling temperatures and manually entering that information," Tryba said.

Additionally, all of Big Y's refrigeration units are alarmed. "Anytime there is a breakdown, the alarm sounds," he said.

H.E. Butt Grocery Co., San Antonio, has mandated the use of thermocouples, said Fred Reimers, manager, food safety. "We want to make sure that all our foods are cooked and, for example, that every chicken is checked for accurate temperature."

Thermocouples and other state-of-the-art devices tell the retailer more about whether a food item is safely cooked than a standard thermometer, he said. "This is really a food-quality issue, and it makes food safety a no-brainer. You must have a standard operating procedure. We just completed validation of the FMI food safety models. We started this program a year ago," he said.

H-E-B is now using thermodors company-wide, Reimers noted. "These electronic thermometers require calibration at least once a year. That doesn't mean you don't check them more often. You can't calibrate these yourself. The vendor checks and calibrates them and that way, you know your equipment is in good shape," he said.

For the future, Reimers sees the retailer using hand-held devices for entering temperature data, and then using RF technology to send the information to a computer. "All you do is put a probe into the product and the information is broadcast into your computer," he said. "We also worked with a company to review the entire refrigeration system outside of the store," Reimers said. The food quality safety system, which can be monitored by a third party or internally, "allows us to put probes right into the food and gives us a reading every 20 minutes in real time," Reimers said. If refrigeration goes out over the weekend, for example, the system will automatically beep a quality assurance staff person with the last temperature that the food product was refrigerated at, Reimers explained. With these kinds of systems, the quality assurance staff person can precisely monitor food item temperatures.

But some retailers report that they are doing well enough on food safety using traditional methods. "We have tried a few new things, but we keep coming back to the good old digital probe thermometer," said Steve Lange, HACCP coordinator, Harry's Farmer's Markets, Roswell, Ga. "We get a lot of samples from companies. Some are good; some are pretty bad. But we find the most reliable thing for checking internal temperatures of seafood products to be the properly calibrated probe thermometer," he said.

"It works for us here on our scale. It certainly is the most foolproof method. There is a lot of hands-on and there is accountability. We can't blame technological glitches around here," Lange said.

Store personnel carry the thermometers all the time. "We monitor temperatures 24 hours a day. Our sanitation crews check all the coolers and self-serve display cases." Some of the systems are wireless, he noted. "They will alert us when something is exceeding a variation. That alert will go directly to a security switchboard, and they will call the store and have somebody check it out right away," he said.