The U.S. food supply is the foundation of the nation's heath"and one of its greatest hazards. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year 76 million people get sick, more than 300,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die as a result of food-borne illnesses.
That may not seem so surprising given the spate of food-borne illness outbreaks in recent years"involving peanuts, jalapeno peppers, cookie dough, spinach and other items.
The federal government is stepping up efforts to the meet the threat. In calling for quick improvements to the food safety system, the Obama administration asked for nearly $1 billion in its most recent budget proposal for the Food and Drug Administration to spend on improving food safety.
In the meantime, the FDA is exploring several food safety technologies. One is an online food registry that keeps track of safety-related incidents (see sidebar). Another is a risk assessment software tool from Sandia National Labs, which FDA is distributing to food service organizations.
The software, dubbed "CARVER + Shock" , is an "offensive targeting prioritization tool," adapted from the military and customized for the food industry, according to the FDA. The tool can be used to assess vulnerabilities in the supply chain and is designed to help food processors protect their product form deliberate contamination.
FDA expects the software to be used by state and local food security agencies, industrial providers and any other parties interested in food defense. An initial version of the software, focused on food manufacturers, was introduced in 2007, said Jon Woody, policy analyst, food defense oversight team at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
The FDA is launching version 2 of the software, which will consist of three separate "modules," One, for agricultural products, began shipping in November. Another, an updated version of the manufacturing application, will be available in January. And a third, aimed at retail food services such as grocery stores and fast food restaurants, will be available in spring 2010.
The software will be available for free download from the FDA Web site. "People are downloading it and using it to identify vulnerabilities," said Woody, who expects the new version to be used in cafeterias, schools, commissaries and large-scale kitchens.
"This tool can span the entire farm-to-table continuum; that's the purpose of the three modules," he said. "It's a phenomenal tool to assist companies" in identifying vulnerabilities, and suggest possible mitigation strategies.
Supply chain vigilance
Meanwhile, government food-safety policy organizations are increasingly using location-tracking tracking technology to trace the location of food products and help protect against tampering, spoilage and other food-borne health threats.
Hawaii's Department of Agriculture and the Hawaii Farm Bureau in February launched a three-year pilot program that will use a radio frequency identification device (RFID) to track fresh produce throughout the state's food supply chain.Designed to provide product visibility down to the farm level, RFID provides detailed, real-time information that can improve inventory control and enable recalls in less than an hour, according to John Ryan, administrator of the department's Quality Assurance Division in Honolulu. Many of Hawaii's leading growers, distributors and retailers are participating in the voluntary program, which is tracking several types of fresh produce, including asparagus, eggplant, pineapples and tomatoes. The project is part of the state's Food Safety Certification system, Ryan said.
In the first phase of the project, auto-identification system developer Lowry Computer Products created an RFID system using hardware from Motorola and Symbol Technologies, and software from Globe Ranger. The application uses waterproof labels with RFID inlays to gather supply chain data ranging from when produce is planted and harvested, which pesticides are used and when and where RFID-tagged boxes are scanned.
Data is then automatically uploaded into a database, where it can be accessed by program participants. The Hawaii health department offers growers the opportunity to participate by either "slap-and-ship" tagging or by using a hand-held RFID system. Boxed produce is scanned at distribution centers upon entry and exit of both the physical facility and cold storage. Tags are read again at the retailers' point of entry, removal from cold storage and at end of life.The participants can use data gathered to increase product visibility, reduce produce "dwell time" on shipping and receiving docks, accelerate transportation times between trading partners and improve inventory turns.
Hawaii officials are also considering enhancements such as deploying RFID-enabled cell phones to allow more farms to participate, and using produce temperature tracking to reduce the threat of food spoilage.
The pilot is now in the transition phase" moving from full case and pallet UHF tagging to a lower-cost version that uses temperature and humidity RFID tags on pallets and barcode tags on cases loaded on pallets. "This gives us a much lower cost transportation and traceability combination," said Ryan.
The project was also designed to meet the requirements of the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI), a food-industry project designed to create a standard traceability process that will allow fast tracing of produce cases between supply chain members. The initiative was created by the Produce Marketing Association, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association and United Fresh Produce Association. Its goal is to achieve supply chainwide adoption of electronic traceability of every case of produce by the year 2012.
Directing sensing
If risk assessment and location tracking are important tools in the food safety arsenal, today's direct sensing technologies may be the most advanced.
Sentry9000 Inc. offers a system for school kitchens and other food service providers that includes a wireless temperature probe that captures food temperatures; a hand-held PDA and a Webbased data management application.
Based on the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), a systematic approach to food safety required by the FDA and USDA, Sentry9000 puts all necessary food safety forms into a handheld computer that records real-time data and wirelessly transmits critical information to a customized Web site for easy viewing and monitoring for each school in a district.
The system, called Sentry9000 Digital HACCP Food Service Management System, records who takes food temperature readings, when readings are taken, and which menu items are measured. Once data has been collected it can be organized into concise reports. The system also analyzes data and automatically generates a corrective action form if the data doesn't meet pre-set requirements.
The Sentry9000 system was developed in 2005 in response to a USDA mandate requiring school cafeterias to have a documented food safety programs in place. The La Vernia IndependentSchool District in La Vernia, Tex., has used the system for several years.
"Sentry 9000 is now our HACCP program, from the time groceries enter the back door until the last child is served, to cooling down leftovers properly," said Darla Hurley, the lead manager and HACCP liaison at La Vernia.
Hurley says the technology enables constant monitoring on coolers, freezers and warmers. Workers can check and monitor food temperatures against computerized data, and receive alerts whenever temperatures aren't correct.
"The quality of food has improved and it shows," said Vicki Spessard, the child nutrition director for the district. "The accuracy of the documenta
