Almond Food Safety is Big Priority

Almond Food Safety is Big Priority

Patrick Cavanaugh
Patrick Cavanaugh
Almonds being the major food crop in the state of California. You bet. Food safety is top of mind. Richard Waycott is president and CEO of the Almond board of California.

“I think, as we've seen around the world, you know, food safety is just becoming more and more of an issue,” said Waycott. “Some of that's because we can detect things now that we couldn't years ago, but also because invasive species and contaminants and other things that are more pervasive. So we have taken a very principal and high priority role in terms of food safety for our industry, starting with the grower practices, obviously, right through our handler community. And 10 years ago implementing a pasteurization program for the industry.”

And here again, the almond industry led a bigger industry that low moisture industry into a better food safety program. “It has been quite honestly being a leader in a developing pasteurization for low moisture foods, which really didn't exist much prior to the program that we put together. And it's been a great help to the other tree nuts and to peanuts and others. Looking at how we went about that and, taking the lessons learned to those industries as well.

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