Produce Business

Food Safety and the Environment

By Jodean Robbins

As growers have raced to implement food safety standards and protect the integrity of products, a rising conflict with environmental measures has resulted. "Produce growers have to be good stewards of the environment," says Bob Whitaker, Ph.D., chief science officer for the Produce Marketing Association, (PMA) in Newark, DE. "Their major investment is the land they grow on. Recently however, absent good research data and taking into consideration the practicality of producing safe product for consumers, we've seen some practices that some view as being harmful to the environment. For example, building fences to keep animals out of fields, which then disrupts a migratory or feeding pattern, or the creation of buffers around fields because of the concern of animal contamination, which then destroys the natural habitat for these animals."

"After the 2006 and subsequent outbreaks affecting produce, many programs were developed, which then led to some confusion among growers, and perhaps unintended consequences for the environment," explains Scott Horsfall, chief executive officer of the California Leafy Greens Handler Marketing Agreement (LGMA), in Sacramento, CA. "There is a lot of legitimate debate over how some food safety practices affect environmental issues, but there is a bit of a pendulum effect as well. Initially, we saw some extremes, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back now. Some of the farms that had moved away from conservation practices are now back seeking funding and implementing environmental measures again." Finding a good balance between protecting food and the environment is the challenge. "In some cases, the metrics have been taken to the extreme," says Tim York, president of Markon Cooperative Inc., in Salinas, CA. "In general, the industry did the right thing in taking a pro-food safety approach. Now it¹s time to step back and evaluate potential environmental consequences and see how we can balance the two."

"It's all about looking at the science and finding the middle ground," says Horsfall. "We have an obligation to provide safe food and control risk, but at the same time farmers want to be good stewards of the land. The buying community also is looking more and more at sustainability issues as well as requiring safe food, so it will be an important balance to achieve." Communication and sound science are the starting ground. Whitaker explains, "This process starts by making sure everyone is talking to each other -- environmental experts, food safety experts and produce experts. We must make sure we're inclusive and there is already great progress here. Secondly, we need to identify those areas where we need more scientific data, prioritize them and then work to make sure the research gets done. We must make sure the research community understands the issues and help them frame the questions so we get the proper research done and funded."

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