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Improving Food Safety in Cantaloupes
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In this episode, we talk with Scott Monroe, a food safety educator with Purdue Extension, about Indiana’s cantaloupe industry and the ongoing research to enhance its safety. Scott shares insights on the studies being done in response to the Evansville cantaloupe outbreaks, how the new FSMA water rule may help to reduce future similar outbreaks, and the work growers have done as part of their commitment to improving the safety of the cantaloupe.
Additional Resources:
Purdue, FDA join Indiana produce growers in multiyear food safety study
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Transcript
Introduction to Produce Safety Rule
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Agri-Food Safety Produce Bytes podcast, where we discuss all things produce safety and dive into the rules and regulations surrounding the Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule.
Meet the Experts: Alison and Scott
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello, my name is Alison Buskirk and I'm a digital media designer with MSU Extension.
00:00:18
Speaker
My name is Scott Munro and I am a food safety educator with Purdue Extension. I work with my colleague Amanda Dearing and together we try to cover the whole state and work with growers on food safety issues.
Cantaloupe Farming in Indiana
00:00:32
Speaker
Can you give us a short history of the cantaloupe industry in Indiana and then kind of give us an overview of what you've been seeing in terms of food safety?
00:00:41
Speaker
I think the first thing that would surprise most people is that cantaloupe has been grown in the southwestern part of the state as a significant crop for well over 100 years. In the early days, they were known as decker gems. The growers would harvest and pack them in crates and ship them by rail to the cities for retail.
00:01:06
Speaker
As we approached the 1990s, we started to see an increase in the number of acres the industry started to grow. One of the things that brought that on was the use of plastic mulch, which allowed us to bring the crop to market earlier and gave us a more consistent harvest window.
00:01:24
Speaker
ah Beyond that forced air cooling was a technology that was developed and introduced to the area which allowed us to extend the shelf life of the product from you know historically 72 hours to a week and a half or more. If you look at some of the most recently available statistics which goes back to 2010, 2011, 2012, Indiana has ranked as high as fourth nationally in cantaloupe production. So it's you know regionally, it's it's it's fairly significant.
Cantaloupe Safety: Past and Present
00:02:01
Speaker
Recall that in 2011, the Jensen
00:02:05
Speaker
a farm's outbreak occurred in Colorado and with listeria and That was one of the largest outbreaks of foodborne illness ever recorded for produce. That was in 2011. In 2012, we had our own homegrown version. We had an outbreak of salmon elosis linked to one of our farms in Southwestern Indiana.
00:02:32
Speaker
And as an industry, the cantaloupe growers in Indiana really stood up and have really put a lot of effort into addressing the issue. Indiana growers were in groups going to Colorado to learn what they could from the Jensen outbreak.
00:02:54
Speaker
We had farms that went out and literally invested in entirely new packing lines and packing facilities designed with food safety as their primary component. Now that being said,
00:03:09
Speaker
FDA as they do their routine surveillance sampling tells us that occasionally they are still finding salmonella in some of the cantaloupe. So, you know, our growers again have invested in food safety.
00:03:26
Speaker
They're all passing their produce safety rule inspections, ah routinely scoring 99% or more on their GFSI benchmarked food safety audits. But from what FDA is telling us, there's there's something that's going on. And sporadically they've detected you know strains of salmonella at at an incredibly low level. But what we're thinking is that you know we we need to make sure that we are continually getting better. And part of that is understanding how we can develop even better interventions to to make sure that nothing's getting into the system.
00:04:10
Speaker
So that's that's kind of the the impetus and the driver for our our current work in that area with the cantaloupe industry.
Pathogen Research in Indiana
00:04:19
Speaker
Can you talk about some of the research that's being done to improve the safety of cantaloupe and who's involved in the research?
00:04:26
Speaker
What are we doing and who's involved? Time to name names. Okay. What we've got is an entire team dedicated to making sure that Indiana is producing the safest product possible. We have multiple agencies involved in this project.
00:04:49
Speaker
FDA, their scientists, their researchers, their non-regulatory personnel are providing a lot of the laboratory support and the funding for this project. Of course, Purdue Extension, Purdue University, Department of Food Science, very heavily involved in terms of on the ground carrying out the the project itself. Also we're partnering with the Indiana Department of Agriculture. Our Department of Agriculture is non-regulatory. So the Department of Agriculture in Indiana is involved primarily in advocacy and have just been amazing to work with in terms of advocating for the growers, advocating for this project. We also work with the Indiana Department of Health
00:05:34
Speaker
who does have regulatory authority for the Produce Safety Rule in Indiana. And and the other important piece of this, probably the most important is the cantaloupe industry itself. it's It's just a big supportive team is is what we have. Right now we're involved in a longitudinal study, which means we're trying to understand how these pathogenic organisms move in the environment.
00:06:03
Speaker
and where they're located in the environment. So to that end, starting in April, we went out and every other week we went to multiple sites and did passive air sampling and soil sampling. Then once a month, we would go to multiple sites and do water sampling. So this is yeah a complete effort to understand regionally how these things are moving in the environment and where there might be reservoirs that we need to be aware of.
00:06:33
Speaker
I have had several theories since this project began. Is is the salmonella moving because of wildlife? Does it move in rivers and streams? Is it endemic in the soils? you know Is this something that could be splash dispersed from animal scat or something? ah you know There's a lot of theories. So what we're looking at is, again, trying to understand where this is in the environment.
00:07:02
Speaker
You know, so that's that's kind of where we're at. ah One thing you learn very quickly is that everybody has a theory. ah You know, human nature being what it is, everybody has a theory, everyone has an idea. And in the absence of data, every theory is pretty well valid and relevant. So, you know, that's why we try to keep this as data-driven as possible and see what the data suggests. And that's kind of the direction we go as we develop our hypotheses.
Understanding the New FSMA Water Rule
00:07:30
Speaker
Do you want to talk about the new FSMA water rule and how that can help reduce potential for future similar outbreaks? As someone from a scientific background, I like quantitative data. you know Statistical distributions make me feel kind of fuzzy inside. It's something I can look at and understand. you know So in all honesty, the the new water rule, I think there's some very positive things that'll come out of that, but I also... I also really know I'm going to be challenged to to to look at it from a ah ah qualitative standpoint. But I think one of the biggest strengths of that is that it's going to encourage growers to take a more holistic view of their overall water system. Let's say it's very difficult to test your way to food safety.
00:08:30
Speaker
So, you know, most of our growers in Southwest Indiana are going to continue to do testing as part of their food safety program, as part of the requirements for their third party CAHPS audits.
00:08:45
Speaker
But in addition to that, doing an assessment is going to allow them to step back and and maybe look at it from a different perspective. And I think that's the valuable part is that they're going to be looking at it from a different perspective, thinking in terms of the entire system instead of focusing in on this water source as opposed to that water source as opposed to that water source. So I think that's probably the value and in the new water rule for for our grow
00:09:18
Speaker
I think I've rambled enough.
Closing Remarks and Future Episodes
00:09:23
Speaker
Links to anything referenced in this episode are provided in our show notes, which can be accessed on the website at canr.msu dot.edu slash agri-food underscore safety. Thank you to everyone for listening, and don't forget to tune in next month for another episode of our Produce Bites podcast.