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Eco-Friendly, Affordable, and Food Safe: Finding a Balance
14 Plays2 hours ago
In this episode, Produce Safety Technicians Micah Hutchison and Landen Tetil discuss how to find a balance between eco-friendly practices and produce safety on the farm.
Supplemental Resources:
Factors to Consider When Purchasing Used Produce Equipment (Article)
Building a Low-Cost Wash Pack (Video)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Produce Safety Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Agri-Food Safety Produce Bites podcast, where we discuss all things produce safety and dive into the rules and regulations surrounding the Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm
Meet the Technicians: Micah and Landon
00:00:14
Speaker
Micah Hudgison. I am a produce safety technician at the Genesee Conservation District, and I work with produce growers in Southeast Michigan. And I'm Landon Tiedel. I'm the produce safety technician in the Upper Peninsula. servicing all 15 counties up here.
Challenges in Produce Safety
00:00:30
Speaker
15 counties? That's a lot of driving.
00:00:33
Speaker
It's a little bit of space. What do you think the long... Okay, so what is your longest drive been from farm visit to farm visit? About three and a half hours. Yeah, same.
00:00:44
Speaker
It's not very eco-friendly of us. No, it's not very eco-friendly. I think a lot of food safety is not very eco-friendly. It definitely seems that way. Balancing eco-friendly practices with produce safety on the farm definitely feels challenging.
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's a huge challenge. I feel like one of the things about food safety that tends to get sort of preached a lot is single use, single use, single use, single use. um If you can't clean it and sanitize it, you have to throw it away and only use it once. And that feels very wasteful.
00:01:22
Speaker
It definitely feels wasteful. so Landon, why do we talk so much about single use? Well, it's just to prevent cross-contamination. You know, if we reuse the
Sustainable Packaging Alternatives
00:01:33
Speaker
same thing more than once and that item is not a surface that can be cleaned and sanitized, so I'm thinking like berry pulp boxes or any kind of cardboard box or even a lot of like plastic produce packaging, those things aren't necessarily designed to be able to be cleaned and sanitized. So if we put produce in them more than once, our
00:01:58
Speaker
chances of cross-contamination increase exponentially. Yes. If we're concerned with environmental sustainability, but don't want to give up food safety, what are our options?
00:02:14
Speaker
I have seen some really great reusable containers out there. They look kind of like baby laundry baskets. Baby laundry baskets. Yeah, they have like open sides. They're very sturdy.
00:02:28
Speaker
They are made of you know food grade materials. So they're intended to be that produce contact, that food contact surface. Are these plastic? It's plastic. They're very washable. Do you have to wash them by hand or can you put in a dishwasher? You could put these in a dishwasher. Oh, I'm sold.
00:02:47
Speaker
I think they're a really good option for investing in long-term sustainability. i would love to find out for many growers if they had made that investment and if in the end they They had saved more money over those single-use packaging.
00:03:01
Speaker
I'm assuming you're seeing these at farmers markets where people are going to take their produce directly out of these. What I've seen is the produce then, once it's sold, put into paper bags and then given to the customer.
00:03:16
Speaker
Ooh, paper bags is a single-use item again. single-use item that can be composted at home, can be made from a more reusable or renewable resource than a lot of our plastics.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yes, can be composted at home or put into your weekly compost curbside pickup bucket. Or placed in curbside recycling. Okay,
Paper Towels vs. Pants: A Hygiene Experiment
00:03:38
Speaker
so on the scale of single-use products...
00:03:42
Speaker
I feel like we've established that paper bags are are a pretty good choice, more so than single-use plastic. Yeah, it's a scale. It's balancing. yeah What else is on the scale?
00:03:55
Speaker
Paper towels. I have a love-hate relationship with paper towels. Same. I didn't use paper towels until I had a child. Honestly, same. it There's like something to be said about being able to just throw it away.
00:04:10
Speaker
yes And like, I get it because a single use paper towel is for sure going to prevent cross-contamination issues that happen when multiple people are using the same towel to dry off.
00:04:26
Speaker
The thought of using a paper towel after someone else is really kind of gross. Yeah, yucky. So first of all, it's soggy. Second of all, it feels weird. And third of all, there's probably some amount of leftover bacteria on that paper towel that you are now rubbing onto your hands.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yes. And the same thing happens with regular towels too. Time for a confession. How often do you change your hand towels at home?
00:04:54
Speaker
Surprisingly frequently. I do too, but I think we're like not, normal? um I change the definitely hand-drying towels probably every use in my kitchen now. It's not practical. I honestly, at least once a day, use more often more multiple times a day.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yes. Because i was yuck. Yuck. I look at the towels now and I'm like, oof. What about drying your hands on your pants?
00:05:28
Speaker
Oh gosh. Yeah. Uh, ooh. Okay, so on a farm setting, not allowed. Anti-food safety. um i would be lying if I said I didn't do it sometimes at home. in which is Which is extra gross for me in particular because, like, the amount of stuff that my children wipe on my pants. Yeah.
00:05:54
Speaker
Like they're toddlers, like they're always sticky. Like I know that it's not a good practice. I remember taking microbiology and like as part of the lab exercises, the professor had us wash our hands. Use paper towel, swab our hands and put like that swab on half of a Petri dish. And
Sustainable Practices from the Conference
00:06:12
Speaker
then he had us wash our hands again and dry our hands on our pants and then swab our hands and put it on the Petri dish. and let me How many colonies formed? So many. many.
00:06:24
Speaker
So many. Was that peachy dish just like confetti? Yeah, it was a beautiful assortment of textures and shades of yellow and brown, maybe some green.
00:06:37
Speaker
Okay, but how was the paper towel half of the dish? Paper towel half of the dish was fine. Okay, okay. So I guess that's like a score one for paper towel, score zero for pants. Yeah.
00:06:53
Speaker
Do you remember the first conference we went to in Indianapolis? Uh-huh. In the bathroom of the place where the conference was being held, they had baskets of cloth towels.
00:07:10
Speaker
And then you disposed of the cloth towels in a garbage can for relaundering. Micah, how do you remember what was in the bathroom at a conference we went to seven years ago? Because I thought it was so cool that this hotel and conference center was like dedicated enough to that like idea of sustainability that they made it so easy in the bathroom to only use this cloth towel once and dispose of it in a way that felt very natural.
00:07:40
Speaker
i think
Creative Reuse in Food Safety
00:07:41
Speaker
I took pictures. That is rather nice. That's very nice. um I am a firm believer that every farm should have a washing machine in their pack shed, like where you farm. That is a great idea.
00:07:54
Speaker
I'm a big advocate, especially for the farms that have more environmentally friendly items that require laundering to keep sanitary.
00:08:05
Speaker
So, Lyndon, what are some of the best options you've seen out there when it comes to reusable harvest bins? Oh, I feel like I've seen a lot of different versions.
00:08:16
Speaker
And there are some um some budget and eco-friendly ways to go about that. So, for example, go to your local bakery and ask for empty food buckets and their food grade. And usually the restaurants will just give them to you for free or like a dollar a bucket.
00:08:39
Speaker
And that's recycling and it's food grade. I see a lot of those white frosting buckets. They're handy. I used to work at a bakery and and we would we would sell them for a dollar a bucket.
00:08:53
Speaker
And it's like, we we couldn't hold on to them. Like people are just always looking for food grade buckets. It's a great alternative. Should we talk about what are the signs that you should swap out those buckets and harvest bins and maybe not take them or buy them for a dollar?
00:09:10
Speaker
Are they... In good repair, are they dirty? Yeah, do they look and feel clean? And I think both are important. So i know the produce safety rule is like free of visible filth, but also do they feel clean? Because you can't always see a biofilm, but you can feel a biofilm.
00:09:31
Speaker
It's going to feel slimy and gross. Yes. Also, you can feel and sometimes see, but definitely feel those little scrapes and cracks and dents that get into the plastic on the inside of some of these buckets when you reuse them? Ah yes, the Harbridge points. Harbridge points.
00:09:52
Speaker
The tiny little bacteria condos. Oh man, they just move right in. They really do and they're like, oh this is cozy, perhaps I'll have six million babies.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yes. And that is the thing about plastic. So plastic is, for as long as it's in good condition, a smooth and cleanable surface that's compatible with a lot of cleaning detergents and sanitizers. However, plastic is also soft.
00:10:23
Speaker
It can be scraped. Just from general use. It's not even like you got to take a knife to it. Just from everyday practices. Right. And the produce safety rule says that our things have to be in good repair. So free of visible filth and in good repair. So we got to replace them then.
00:10:42
Speaker
Got to replace them. We have to go buy new $1 frosting tub. Or we can spend more money and buy the like really nice produce specific harvest containers.
00:10:55
Speaker
It's all about baby steps, Landon. It's about baby steps and also like there's truly nothing wrong with reusing a food safe container. It's definitely more sustainable because it's keeping plastic out of a landfill.
00:11:09
Speaker
Then again, investing in those harvest bins is also sustainable. It's just keeping the things in mind. How long should you use them? Have that plastic been scratched?
00:11:20
Speaker
And what are the best options to balance the farm's dedication to sustainability? And the produce safety rule. There's balance.
Materials Evaluation for Food Safety
00:11:28
Speaker
Okay, I feel like we've thoroughly discussed plastic now.
00:11:32
Speaker
Metal is a smooth and cleanable surface, pretty compatible with most cleaning agents. h What about wood?
00:11:42
Speaker
I think that wood is fine. Again, it's cleanable. It is cleanable. It's not as easily cleanable. But it is cleanable.
00:11:54
Speaker
It is not able to be sanitized, though. It is not. You can't sanitize wood because of its porous material. Our colleague Phil Toko says a thing about wood. it's It's something like, wood is the least good, good option for food contact surfaces.
00:12:16
Speaker
I like that. You can
Thrift Store Solutions for Food Safety
00:12:18
Speaker
t-shirt. It's still one of the good options. It's not like a bad option, like, carpet but an old shirt that's dirty that you picked up off the ground but it's the least good of the good options and I I do like to i think a of it that way thank you Phil Togo shout out so I see super super common for farms to use wooden pallets to like keep food up off of the floor they make a new floor with pallets I see that a lot too
00:12:50
Speaker
I think it's a good reuse of palettes. The suggestion is to put some restaurant-grade mats on top of it. Oh. I don't see anything wrong. I think it creates a great floor for a wash pack and a low-cost one.
00:13:04
Speaker
I've never seen it with a mat on top. That's kind of that's kind of a good idea. Yeah, okay. Thrift stores. Thrift stores? What about thrift stores? Is that a way to source materials?
00:13:15
Speaker
what are you What are you buying at a thrift store? You getting your sponges there? Oh. Yes, Landon, I'm getting all of my sponges at the thrift store. I'm thinking about like when you walk through thrift stores and you see things like old colanders and old maybe salad spinner parts, things that are in good repair that you know are a food contact surface. Is that an option that growers could use? Yeah, why the heck not? Exactly.
00:13:42
Speaker
Exactly. I guess that is a good good idea, though, with the thrift store thing. Like, thinking about, i mean, i I am no longer commercially farming. I've just got a small backyard garden. But ah my main harvest container is one of the plastic mixing bowls out of my kitchen.
00:14:03
Speaker
You could easily get mixing bowls or, like, large bowls, serving bowls, whatever, from a thrift store, and it would be just fine. And now that I think about it, they could be double use.
00:14:15
Speaker
Could you display produce in those thrifted, cleanable, sanitizable plastic bowls? they Like have like real dishes for your display at farmer's market? Yeah, or just, you know, the like the big plastic mixing bowls. Like I am going to use this at market versus investing in those produce baskets specifically for market.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, and honestly, it's probably so like an even better option than the wicker or wooden baskets that we often see at farmers markets because they look farmy, you know?
00:14:52
Speaker
Yes. Are we like saying people should start fridgescaping their market tables? Yes. And here is a thrifted portrait of a tomato next to the salad bowl of tomatoes.
00:15:06
Speaker
I think that's a great idea. I honestly do too. You could thrift the tablecloths. Yes. And wash them. And then wash them in your farm washing machine. Yes.
00:15:18
Speaker
Did we just solve the world's problems? I don't know if we solved the world's problems, but we definitely are creating a really nice wash pack and market table.
Conclusion and Resources
00:15:30
Speaker
have to go thrifting this weekend. Links to anything referenced in this episode can be found in the podcast description. For more produce safety resources, tools, and upcoming trainings, visit the MSU Agri-Food Safety website at gaps.msu.edu. That's G-A-P-S dot M-S-U dot E-D-U.
00:15:51
Speaker
We hope today's episode helped you take another step towards safer produce.