EQUIPPED FOR SAFETY

AMY SUNG

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.

Bonne said he believes the freshness of meat and poultry is the No. 1 purchase criteria for consumers, and from an industry or a grocery distribution standpoint, consistent freshness is the No. 1 reason that consumers decide what store they're going to shop in. At the same time, meat and poultry are the single largest revenue-generating product category for supermarkets, and also carry the greatest exposure to problems given their perishability, he added.

“From a packing industry standpoint, the whole purpose of what it is they do for a living is to transform these perishable products into products that can withstand the ravages of the distribution channel and get to the consumer in good shape. So all of that put together is why we decided that there is good reason to develop the products we've developed,” Bonne said.

“From the CDC statistics, we realized there's a real safety issue out there, and it gave us that much more impetus to produce these products.”

The controversy surrounding modified-atmosphere packaging and carbon monoxide-treated meat delayed release of the label last year, but prompted FQSI to make sure the freshness indicator label worked with both MAP and non-MAP products. The company is also working on similar products for seafood and produce.

Sterilox Food Safety, KES Science and Technology, and Ecolab have also created equipment to improve freshness and food security in produce departments, and behind the counter in deli and meat departments.

Ecolab, a cleaning, food safety and health protection product provider, has a new self-contained, mobile foam generator called the Formula Foam cleaning system, designed for food retailers.

The thick foam is meant to increase surface contact time and provide better control of application. It also reduces product usage and water waste and can be used on a variety of surfaces, including display cases, floors, walls, slicers, prep surfaces and holding racks.

The Formula Foam equipment increases the removal of protein soils from vertical surfaces by more than 80%. It also supports environmental sustainability by reducing cleaning-chemical and wastewater effluent by over 50%, according to Bobby Mendez, vice president and general manager, Ecolab Food Retail Services.

“There is very strong interest, especially from our retail development partners,” Mendez said.

“They essentially designed the final product. It's recognized as a major advance for cleaning and sanitizing in fresh departments. We believe every major retail chain has an opportunity to improve their operations using the Formula Foam system.”

Other recent food safety innovations from Ecolab include a pathogen-reduction product for produce wash water, and a solid drain sanitizer for pathogen reduction in drains.

Sterilox Food Safety, a division of Puricore, Malvern, Pa., offers retailers a food safety system used for misting produce departments and crisping produce, a method retailers use to rehydrate produce by running it under water. Usually, the product arrives at the store dehydrated from traveling from the field and through the distribution channel.

“One of the problems with [in-store crisping] is that it's a Critical Control Point in the process,” noted Tom Daniel, senior vice president of Sterilox. If a retailer receives a contaminated case of product, it is likely that any pathogens on that product will contaminate other fruits and vegetables washed in the same sink.

Sterilox's washing-machine-size generators use an electrical current to convert an environmentally friendly mix of salt and water into a nontoxic, bacteria-killing solution that also boosts the shelf life of flowers and produce by several days, reducing spoilage and shrink. At lower concentrations, the solution can be used in misting systems to keep biofilms, yeast, mold and other bacteria from growing on produce cases and misting nozzles.

Other options, such as specialized air purification systems, can help improve safety and cut shrink as well. Brookings Natural Foods, Brookings, Ore., installed the KES-manufactured and NASA-developed AiroCide PPT air purification system, and after the first month was able to cut produce spoilage by 50%, Joyce Tromblee, general manager, Brookings Natural Foods, said.

The system kills airborne pathogens responsible for spoilage, along with the ethylene gas that causes produce to ripen more quickly. Since it doesn't use chemicals or produce ozone, it's especially suited for organic produce.

“Ethylene gas removal may be the initial attention-getter for King Kullen, Rouses Supermarkets, Whole Foods Market, independents and natural food co-ops that use the system in their produce departments, but it is the ability to kill airborne pathogens like molds, fungi, bacteria and viruses that give these retailers a holistic approach to food safety,” said Charlotte Pietrowski, spokeswoman for KES Science and Technology, Kennesaw, Ga. The system only requires annual maintenance in the form of changing its ultraviolet lamps.

These new innovations are geared not only toward improving food safety, but also simplifying employee training and cutting back on the time required to complete routine tasks.

“Part of the reason that so much of this equipment can be adapted into a retail setting is because it's designed with that in mind,” Hollingsworth said.

“The fact that there's going to be a lot of employees coming and going, they all have to be trained on how to keep the equipment clean and how to use it properly. I think when that equipment is designed and entered into the working environment, [it keeps] in mind that a lot of employees are going to have to know how to use it, how to keep it clean, how to operate it properly. Plus, a lot of the new equipment and technologies we see require less attention.”

Sterilox has field training specialists who will train store associates, but the system is designed to be simple to use and labor-reducing.

“It definitely makes it easier for employees to work,” Daniel said. “We've replaced the crisping water in the sink; it's a plug-and-play system. We reduce labor because the product stays fresher longer, so associates are not reworking it and trimming back the dead leaves and things like that.”

Ecolab's products are also designed for labor savings, with users in field tests reporting 25%-35% reduction in the time required to clean a meat room, Mendez told SN.

“Store employees will be trained on the system at the time of installation, but one of the key elements of the Formula Foam's design is its simplicity. It's intuitive and easy to learn in a few minutes,” said Mendez.

FQSI will provide in-store materials to educate consumers about the freshness label.

“We will be working directly with the meat managers at the grocery level so they can express what's there, and at the same time we will be working through mass media in order to communicate with the consumers,” Bonne said.

Industry executives agreed that adequately training employees is one of the challenges when it comes to food safety equipment.

“Training has to be a continuous and constant type of program for retailers because of the high rate of turnover,” Hollingsworth said.

Food safety also must be built into the job so employees practice it consistently, Hollingsworth added.

Language barriers can also pose challenges when training employees, said Shirley Bohm, consumer safety officer, retail food program, at FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

FMI's SuperSafeMark program offers training in different formats to remedy this problem through two-day in-class training, reference books in different languages and online computer programs.

But given recent foodborne illness outbreaks, product recalls and contamination scares, perhaps the greatest challenge for supermarkets right now is restoring consumer confidence in the safety of products sold at their stores.

“Consumer perceptions of food supply safety are at an all-time low, and retailers must provide assurance to their customers they're taking every step to protect the food products they sell,” Mendez said.

A recent survey from the FMI states that the percentage of consumers confident that the food they buy in the grocery store is safe dropped from 82% last year to 66% this year.

“I think by and large the biggest challenge that the food industry faces is just finding ways to more directly and interactively articulate the safety and viability of the food products they're providing to the consumer,” Bonne said.

The industry is working on education, said Jeffrey Lineberry, executive director for the Conference for Food Protection, Lincoln, Calif.

“Through labeling and educational campaigns, consumers have become more aware of their role in preventing foodborne illness,” he said.

“The retail food industry has spent great sums on new technology and training to more tightly monitor the risk factors and control food from its origin to the store shelf.”

Daniel agreed, but noted that coming up with the money to invest in new equipment and technology is another challenge for retailers.

“Publicly, of course, everybody's going to say that food safety is paramount, that it's the most important thing, but you still have to put a dollar to it,” he said. “At the retail level, everything has to have a [return on investment].”

Retailers will continue to invest in food safety equipment and technology in the future, Geoff Koontz, spokesman for Sterilox, said.

“Food safety is just a long journey, and there are many Critical Control Points from the time it leaves the field — whether it goes through a processor in bags, or whether it goes through the distribution system,” he said. “So, technology development is going to continue to improve safety all along the distribution channel.”