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FAPC holds national food safety conference
Oklahoma The Robert M. Kerr Food & Agricultural Products Center held a national food safety conference that focused on regulatory changes, food safety issues and solutions, and food traceability technologies. About 75 food industry representatives attended the conference held in Oklahoma City on Sept. 13 and 14. The FAPC partnered with the Oklahoma Department of Public Health, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce and the Charles B. Browning Endowed Professorship to hold the event. "FAPC research and development focuses on food safety and effective pathogen interventions from raw and cooked food products to minimize food safety risks," said Chuck Willoughby, FAPC business and marketing relations manager and conference chair. "We were pleased to offer a national conference that encouraged discussion and collaboration about food intervention strategies." The two-day conference featured three keynote sessions, and participants heard from 13 national food-industry leaders. The speakers included Armia Tawadrous, Food Safety and Inspection Service; Joseph Baca, Food and Drug Administration; Doug Powell, Food Safety Network; Stanley Gilliland, FAPC; Douglas Ware, Nutrition Physiology Corp.; Peter Muriana, FAPC; Lori Marsh, Virginia Tech University; Linda Harris, University of California - Davis; William Daniels, Natural Selection Foods; Yifen Wang, Auburn University; Gary Smith, Colorado State University; Elizabeth Nutt, Tulsa County Health Department; and Kristy Bradley, Oklahoma State Department of Health. Powell, who spoke in the first keynote session and discussed the media's impact on food safety, explained the Food Safety Network provides research, commentary, policy evaluation and public information on food safety issues from farm-to-fork. The network has adopted the slogan "don't eat poop," and the Web site, http://donteatpoop.com, encourages people to wash their hands. The Food Safety Network also created a barfblog, http://barblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu, where researchers provide commentaries about food safety issues. Daniels spoke during the second keynote session and discussed how his company managed through an Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak last year. Natural Selection Foods voluntarily recalled its fresh spinach sold under the Dole brand. Daniels explained the steps his company took to manage through the crisis. The steps included activating the company's Incident Management Team, recalling the product voluntarily, notifying key stakeholders, expressing empathy to the victims, tracing the source of the outbreak, reimbursing medical expenses for customers who had been affected by the outbreak, investing in a Quality Assurance and Organic Integrity Program and integrating a validation program. "In an effort of gaining deeper knowledge, we are using testing program data to develop a deeper understanding of what's needed to prevent outbreaks," Daniels said. "We must test as a processor to detect, so we can prevent." Smith was one of the speakers during the third keynote session. He has traveled the world researching meat traceability systems and discussed these systems during his presentation. "Traceability of a food consists of development of an information trail that follows the food product's physical trail," Smith said. "Traceability is a truly daunting task because we live in a world with over 4 billion livestock animals." Smith said the U.S. is behind many countries in developing traceability systems for food, in general, and especially livestock, poultry and their products. The FAPC was pleased with the outcome of the conference. "Responses from the attendees were very positive," Willoughby said. "They benefited greatly from the information presented. We are looking forward with great anticipation to the next Food Industry Trends Conference." Date: 11/8/07
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