Apple Risk Factors

Apple Risk Factors

Apple Risk Factors. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

With the Food Safety Modernization Act staring us in the face a lot of talk has been going around about how to make food safer and that starts in the orchard. Diane Wetherington, CEO for iFoodDecisionSciences talks about a project regarding safe handling.

WETHERINGTON: The project was to start looking at the risk associated with apple growing and packing, microbial risk factors. So we started with the project in 2010 collecting data in the Washington industry, first of all a survey on food safety programs and types of testing that was being done. We followed that up by collecting actual testing data and then from that we went into the next program which was funded by CPS and the Tree Fruit Research Commission.

She says what they were looking at was the probability of getting sick when you consume an apple that has E.coli contamination.

WETHERINGTON: There have been no known food born illnesses associated with fresh market apples and yet there is a potential risk because they are a raw commodity and anything happening in the field through the packing environment there is the potential to introduce the risk.

They hoped that through this data they would be able to improve handling.

WETHERINGTON:The benefit of having this quantitative microbial risk assessment is it enables us to identify practices that exist and improve upon them and also, this is what the FDA has said, going forward, they're going to need to make modifications to any of the rules.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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