One of recent newsletters was released during the week of the recent presidential election. Here at Healthy Trailer, we felt the fatigue that the uncertainty and drama of the political season had placed on us and our customers.
Struggling to know what exactly would best encourage and support our readers (more industry, holiday focus, company news,) we decided stay in our ‘food safety lane’ using a historical perspective from one of our past presidents that could serve as a guide to better understand safe food transportation.
We chose this quote from one of America’s famous (97%) and popular (67%) presidents, Theodore Roosevelt.
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”
It’s impossible to know today whether President Roosevelt was thinking about a specific situation that was happening during a point in our nation’s history. Or maybe something was troubling the American people in general, and his comment was intended to be an encouragement for people to make decisions based on doing the right thing
Regardless of what he was referring to, with a high likelihood that it was not in reference to a foodborne illness outbreak, his quote seems to be referring to those moments in our lives when we understand that we have a choice to make, and while hopefully it is deciding to do the right thing, the ultimate ‘bad’ decision is to ignore the opportunity altogether by ‘doing nothing.’
Our failures that lead to a ‘doing nothing’ result aren’t always a result of making a conscious decision not to do so, but rather, we do things ‘automatically’ out of habit or routine practice. Most people work hard at creating habits that make them productive and successful. It’s when our patterns have a negative impact on something or someone that end up arriving at the same result as ‘doing nothing.’
The Latest In Food Safety News
If you follow food safety news at all, you know that there have been serious foodborne illness outbreaks in the past month, one involving Taylor Farms onions and very recently, Grimmway Farms carrots.
There will be ongoing inquiries to determine the exact causes. If you know anyone who works for a company that has been involved in these situations, you know how exhausting and intense the procedures are that are part of the investigation and PR process. The fresh produce industry will be stronger and smarter on the other side of the ordeal, but it is a long, arduous proceeding.
These tragic events can happen as a result of both a failure to implement a ‘safe food’ protocol, and also following a protocol that has yet to be determined as posing a food safety risk at some point in the supply chain.
Food safety is a practice built on solid science and protocols. When the practice is compromised by negligence or ignorance, illnesses become a red flag that indicates the system's safeguards failed somewhere along the food supply chain.
Food companies, particularly fresh produce companies, are required to follow rigorous food safety standards codified in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). While people in these companies might disagree with some protocols and may question the science used to support them, compliance is not optional.
The Value & Challenge Of Training
Training, monitoring and documentation can be approached with a ‘check the box’ mentality. In other words, doing the ‘right thing’ can be automatic.
However, as mentioned above, even with solid protocols and vigilant oversight, the people performing them are still vulnerable to poor decision-making, which can ultimately harm the public’s health. While we don’t have all the details about the Taylor Farms or Grimmway outbreak, the illnesses could be pointing to a ‘wrong’ decision.
When we first started hiring employees, we felt that workers coming from a sanitation background would be beneficial to Healthy Trailer. What we’ve learned from them was that large produce shippers and processors can be more thorough about following sanitation procedures when the FDA or 3rd party auditor would be arriving for an inspection.
Training can be a challenge, especially if the employees don’t understand the ‘why’ behind each protocol. We struggle with this problem too.
Food Transportation Regulations
Today, food transportation also has regulations to follow in FSMA. You probably haven’t heard of these standards, but they are also codified, and the FDA can legally enforce them.
These standards (called specifications in the FDA’s rule) were poorly written and not based on science like the other FSMA food safety protocols. This means making the right decision about safe food transportation is not straightforward. The result is that many loads being transported today are riding in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Trailer sanitation is rarely publicly a topic of discussion, but privately, it’s rare when it does not come up, for sure in conversations with buyers and shippers.
All these companies have food safety professionals hired to their companies comply with FSMA. There may be questions about how much food safety science can be applied to transportation or how similar protocols can be used in their logistics operations, but most of these food safety employees recommend some level of food safety measures that will keep trailers ‘clean and sanitary.’
So what is the ‘right thing’ for trucking companies to do when there aren’t clear standards but their supplier contracts specifically require a clean trailer? Also, if your contracts are silent or vague about your customer’s expectations about trailer sanitation, how can you avoid trailer rejections at the shipping docks?
Train your drivers, dispatchers, operations managers, and customer service reps.
How To train
Topics for training:
Pre-inspection routines and how to identify problem areas in the trailer
Types of cargo that shippers will reject if they see (or smell) it in a trailer
How to communicate with shipping employees when problems arise
Support your team:
Pre-approve trailer sanitation stations (washouts) based on service quality, convenience, and driver friendliness.
Include these sanitation stations on dispatches or driver networks.
Monitor drivers' decisions based on your customer's expectations or contracts.
The key is to make ‘doing the right thing easy’, so any restriction, confusion, or hassle can become a reason for a driver not to get their trailer clean before loading food.
Final advice
Our last piece of advice that will help safeguard your company and keep your decision making aligned with safe food practices as it functions in the food supply chain is to measure your initiatives and outcomes.
Ask most shippers about the frequency of trailer rejections prior to loading and associated costs to a stakeholder and you will hear estimates without much statistical data. They may be familiar with which trucking companies are most prone to have drivers that do not arrive a shipping facility with a clean and sanitary trailer, but percentages, costs, or impact on team performance is not often available.
Fresh produce processing, shipping and receiving is an incredibly fast paced industry with millions of people working to get product from farm to consumer. The industry has made huge strides in doing this safely and efficiently.
But the pathogen devils lurk where process pushes the protocols off to the side. Trailer sanitation is part of this process and is not immune from exposure to these risks.
Looking at your programs without a specific intent to understand the potential breaches in safe food practices may give you the sense that all is well, but take some time to evaluate, with meaningful and actual metrics, to reduce the likelihood of a ‘doing nothing’ result.
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