Gayla
Jan 3, 2006, 11:06 PM
Post #27 of 46
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Re: [caldwelld] Treating Veggies and Fruit
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Don, thank you for providing that link. I followed some of the links within it and there was certainly alot more information on testing and sanitation of produce than any of us are probably interested in. My information was from training classes that I had through the National Restaurant Association in the Serv-Safe and Sani-Serve programs. My certification is up for renewal this year so it will be interesting to see how they address this issue now. In rereading my bullet #2 I probably should have qualified it by saying that sanitizing agents like mycrodine, cholorine, etc. will kill some portion of the potentially harmful pathogens, but not all of them.
However, in reading some of the scientific testing (in the links you provided) that was done by the USDA I was mostly struck by a few things. - At least one of the studies stated that the incident of contamination in produce is actually quite small
- The testing appeared to have been done with the idea that potable water is readily available since it clearly stated as the best method for removing contaminates from produce
- The testing appeared to have been done primarily with the large U.S. agribusiness/growers in mind (not that that's a bad thing, it's not, it's just I'm wondering if we're comparing apples to apples here.)
I've had the good fortune to spend time in the fields in the Salina/Monterey growing region in California, truly an interesting experience. I've seen lettuce picked and packed in the field for shipment directly to Japan vs. the picked and sent to the packing house for repackaging and then domestic distribution. I've gotten to eat Driscoll strawberries off the vine, a somewhat scary concept given how they're grown. And then there were the artichokes in Watsonville, kinda gives one a whole new appreciation for the job that the Mexican migrant farm workers really do. Celery harvesting by comparison is pretty boring. But perhaps the most intersting experiences have been in following a field that has been just picked to the packing plant. It generally arrives fairly quickly from the field and is off loaded into huge climate controlled holding bays. Actually the entire packing plant is climate controlled, i.e. it's cold. The produce is packed by type and, depending upon how may conveyors they're running, they may be processing 2-4 different types of produce at the same time. From the receiving bays it goes onto conveyors where women remove outer leaves and generally get it ready for coring, peeling, chopping shredding, slicing, dicing, whatever. It's washed, it's sanitized, it's spun dry in 55-gallon sized drums by centrifigal force before being dumped out onto yet another conveyor to be electronically deposited by weight into the appropriate packaging. Yep, American agribusiness can get fresh produce from field to antiseptic processing to hygenically sealed bags (they literally are not touched by human hands) in 3 or 4 hours depending upon the time of the harvesting season. But the whole process takes water, lots and lots of clean, potable water, which usually isn't too much of a problem in most parts of California. Actually, the most amazing thing about these processing plants is that once the deal is done in Salinas and Monterey, the plants are disassembled lock, stock and conveyor belts, put on trucks and rail cars, shipped to the Imperial Valley, and reassembled in time to process the produce coming out of there. No wonder we were able to put a man on the Moon.
I really don't want to belabor the point, nor am I really trying to argue the point one way or another. The post you provided has gobs of terrific information, and I should have been more careful in the way I worded my statement. But sometimes scientific research and the real world are not always on the same page. If, as stated by the USDA research, washing produce under running, potable water is the most efficient way of removing the majority of contaminates, essetially rinsing them down the drain, how can it be viable in a country where potable water isn't always available and running potable water out of a tap is not always the norm?
Hey, we all have a choice in how we want to handle our own produce and we have expectations in how we expect those feeding us to handle the food they serve us. The use of sanitizing agents may not be 100% effective, but it sure makes a whole lotta people feel better to know that an effort, if nothing else, has been made to ensure the safety of the produce their eating.
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