OAK BROOK, Ill. -- The past year has been a scary one for consumers of produce, with outbreaks of food-borne illnesses from store-bought items as well as restaurant meals.
In the past fortnight, two fast-food chains have dealt with E. coli issues from their food, while earlier in the year, tainted processed and bagged spinach led to the deaths of three people, and salmonella-bearing restaurant tomatoes sickened nearly 200 people in the United States and Canada.
And in July 2004, at least 400 people got sick from salmonella-tainted [image-nocss] tomatoes in sandwiches purchased at Sheetz Inc. convenience stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and six other states. Federal investigators traced the tomatoes through the chain's supplier to a Florida packing house, but said nothing was done wrong there to taint them.
C-stores, though not generally thought of as retailers of produce, have gotten into the foodservice business in a big way in the past decade, and in convincing people of their viability as food outlets, have emphasized freshness. Since nothing says fresh like displays of crisp, brightly colored fruits and vegetables on tables and in grab-and-go fruit cups and prepared foods like sandwiches, c-stores have invariably gotten into produce.
Instead of going to the grocery store, you have to have confidence and faith that you can go to this convenience store and get it for the same price and get it quick and get out and get back to what you were doing, Jack Cushman, the foodservice director for Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes, Canastota, N.Y., told CSP Daily News. Along with its prepared-foods business, Nice N Easy also sells potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, head lettuce, bagged lettuce, apples and peanuts in the shell.
It takes a couple years before you see margin, Cushman said. We've rounded the curve in the stores that have had it a few years, and they're actually selling a lot more so the turns are there and the margins are literally doubling.
Cushman said c-stores are far less liable for bulk produce problems than for that which has been processed in-house because the average consumer knows the produce needs to be washed at home before use. Though many illnesses have come from the journey produce makes from farm to storehaving been processed and handled several times along the wayhe said buying from reputable and safety-trained partners gives retailers their best chance at selling safe product.
Cutting up bulk produce nearing the end of its shelf life to save a sale by putting into a cup is good business sense, but risky, he said.
Have you developed a program, have you talked about food safety, have you trained the people the right way, do they have the tools and resources to take that leap? said Cushman, who conducts food-safety classes for Nice N Easy employees and franchisees. The average guy knows, if he gets a head of lettuce, he probably ought to wash it off when he gets it home. He's not going to take it and eat it right out of there, and if he gets sick, blame the convenience store. But if he gets a salad and gets sick, he's going to get a lawyer and blame the convenience store.
It is inevitable that any retailer who sells food will have to deal with illness claims, said Cushman, so a company policy is a must.
We have a pretty rapid response to these things, he said. We'll get a recall from a manufacturer for a product that has listeria, then we have to get a hold of our distributors and make sure the product's pulled, check the codes, see if there's any in the stores. Within hours of a manufacturer saying, Hey, we've found high levels of listeria with product code XYZ of potato salad or whatever, we pull it and invariably I basically fire the manufacturer.
Cushman's opinion is that the only way to better ensure fewer outbreaks of E. coli, listeria and salmonella in produce is to better regulate and inspect it. On Monday, U.S. lawmakers vowed to investigate the produce industry's safety processes, which are much less stringent than those for meat, for instance.
According to a New York Times article, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has little regulatory authority over the produce industry and has fewer than 2,000 inspectors for more than 12,000 facilities, 250 inspectors fewer than in 2003.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which regulates meat, has 7,600 inspectors for 6,000 facilities. FDA inspectors don't inspect farms unless there is a problem. Also, the checks and balances system on imported produce is almost nil, and according to the FDA, 35% of the fresh fruits and vegetables sold in the United States are from other countries.
Brian Donoghue, head of foodservice for Town & Country Food Stores, San Angelo, Texas, said he'd rather not see more regulation. If the system's working, then let's not put any other things in it to create more bureaucracy, he told CSP Daily News. That creates cost and that's not good for anybody.
About 100 of Donoghue's 158 stores sell prepared foods as well as bulk produce, such as bananas, apples, oranges, lemons, limes, lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, cucumbers and bagged baby carrots for the same reason as Cushman's stores.
Donoghue isn't blind to illnesses in the news, but wonders if it's simply the law of averages setting off alarms in a better-informed society. He suggests that common sense is a solid safeguard, and that no one should be in foodservice if not committed to safety from top to bottom.
If you buy from reputable and good sources, you're really setting yourself up to be in a good place, he said. It's when you buy from less-than-reputable places, that's when you can have problems. Watch your temperature controls, make sure you're dating and rotating your cases from behind, pushing products forward, so you're always having fresh product. When we utilize products in anything that we prepare, it's cleaned and washed properly. Those are the things that you have to do, and it's ongoing. This is not something new that anybody in the foodservice business hasn't been doing or hasn't done in the past. We believe that because we handle foodservice well, it's a logical extension.
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