Volume XXIII, Number I, February/March 1999
Al B. Wagner
Extension Food Technologist
I. Antibacterial Action of Vinegar Against Food-Borne Pathogenic Bacteria Including E. Coli 0157:H7
II. Flexibility Key to Food Safety
III. Science Based Decision Guide May Be Answer to EPA Controversial Rule.
IV. FQPA's Economic IMPACT on Texas Vegetables
V. Items of Interests
A. Alfalfa Sprouts and Salmonella
B. Making Claims Legally
C. Ketchup Marketed for Lycopene
D. Home Cookin'
VI. Coming Events
This newsletter is prepared for the Texas food processing industry by Al Wagner, Extension Food Technologist. It is sent to you as a service of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, an educational agency of The Texas A&M University System. Requests for additional information on topics addressed in this newsletter should be directed to: Al B. Wagner, Extension Food Technologist, HFSB 225, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-2134, (409) 845-7341 FAX (409) 845-8906
Announcements
PRACTICAL SHORTCOURSE IN SNACK FOOD PROCESSING
A short course on ãsnack food processing - tortilla chips and extruded snacksä will be held at Texas A&M University on February 28 - March 5, 1999. For complete information, contact: Dr. Mian Riaz at 409-845-2774 or e-mail at mriaz@tamu.edu. This is a very in-depth course that will benefit anyone involved in producing snack foods.
LABELING OF FDA REGULATED FOODS
A food labeling seminar will be held on March 15 - 16, 1999 in San Antonio, Texas at the Four Points Hotel Riverwalk/Sheraton (210-223-9461). It is co-sponsored by IFT, FDA and AIB. For registration information, please call 800-242-2534 or 800-633-5137.
IFT SUPPLIERS' NIGHT
The Longhorn Section of the Institute of Food Technologists (LIFT) invites you to join us for our annual Supplier's Night. This yearâs Suppliersâ Night will be held Thursday, March 11, 1999 at the Westin Park Central Hotel (formerly the Sheraton Park Central; Coit Road & I-635) in Dallas. We expect approximately 1000 attendees and 225 exhibitors in the food industry. Exhibit hours are 4:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. and registration is FREE. During the evening, an extensive dinner buffet will also be provided free of charge. The 1998 LIFT Suppliersâ Night Technical Seminar will be held the afternoon of Thursday, March 6th from 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. The seminar is FREE to all participants and is designed to make the vast resources and technical expertise available in a seminar format. Please contact Becky Pfundheller, Analytical Food Laboratories at (972) 336-0336, toll free (800) 242-6494 or fax (972) 623-0055 if you have any questions on the events. Technical Session topics will cover: Food Irradiation Techniques and Issues, Y2K Issues affecting the Small Processor, Sensory Evaluation of Products, Food Safety Updates, and others.
TEXAS FOOD PROCESSORS TO MEET IN APRIL
The Texas Food Processors Association will host their Annual Meeting in Corpus Christi on April 14 - 16, 1999. It will be held at the Omni-Bayfront Hotel. Information to members will go out in the middle of February. Other interested persons can get meeting information by calling Rebecca at 409-846-3285. A good mix of educational and social programs has been planned.
AFDO IN SANN ANTONIO
The Association of Food and Drug Officials will hold their Annual Conference in San Antonio June 5 - 9, 1999. Please contact Dan Sowards at 512-719-0243 for more information.
MANUFACTURING FACILITY DESIGN AND LAYOUT
A two day session filled with eye-opening discussions, demonstrations and hands-on exercises...learn dozens of proven techniques for expertly managing the entire layout and design process, from start to finish. Call 1-800-594-2929 for enrollment information. The dates for these sessions are:
March 15 & 16 - Dallas (Richardson)
March 17 & 18 - El Paso
March 29 & 30 - Houston
March 31 & April 1 - San Antonio
News
ANTIBACTERIAL ACTION OF VINEGAR AGAINST FOOD-BORNE PATHOGENIC BACTERIA INCLUDING ESCHERICHIA COLI 0157:H7
This article, by E. Entani, M. Asai, S. Tsujichatera, Y. Tsukamoto, and M. Ohta, appeared as an abstract in the Journal Of Food Protection, Vol. 61 (8) 1998, p. 953-959.
The bacteriostatic and bactericidal actions of vinegar on food-borne pathogenic bacteria, including enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) 0157:H7, were examined. The growth of all strains evaluated was inhibited with a 0.1 percent concentration of acetic acid in the vinegar. This inhibition was generally increased in the presence of sodium chloride or glucose.
There was almost no difference in sensitivity to the bacteriostatic action of vinegar among the strains of pathogenic E. coli. Vinegar had a bactericidal effect on food-borne pathogenic bacteria, including EHEC 0157:H7. This action against EHEC 0157:H7 was synergically enhanced by sodium chloride, but was attenuated with glucose. For EHEC strains (0157:H7, 026:H11, 0111:HNM), the difference in the inactivation rate due to vinegar among strains used was small, although an enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) 0111:K58:H- strain was more sensitive, being more quickly killed compared with EHEC strains.
The inactivation rate due to vinegar was constant irrespective of inoculum size. However, it differed greatly, depending on growth phase of the cells, where logarithmic growth-phase cells were more sensitive and easily killed than stationary phase cells.
The bactericidal activity of vinegar increased with the temperature. Various conditions for bactericidal effects on EHEC 0157:H7 were examined by the multiparametric analysis of five factors: acetic acid concentration in the vinegar, sodium chloride concentration, temperature, incubation time, and viable cell number.
The combined use of vinegar and sodium chloride, with use of an appropriate treatment temperature, was found to be markedly effective for the prevention of bacterial food poisoning.
FLEXIBILITY IS KEY TO FOOD SAFETY
Reprinted from Science Communicators Newsletter, Institute of Food Technologists, February 2, 1999.
Efforts to ensure food safety must be flexible to allow quick responses to changes in human ecology, host susceptibility, and pathogens themselves, IFT told the Food and Drug Administration in January. IFT delivered its comments January 9 in response to the governmentâs Food Safety Initiative Strategic Plan and the National Academy of Scienceâs report, ãEnsuring Safe Food From Production to Consumption.ä To develop effective new strategies for dealing with such changes and reducing the incidence of food-borne illness, several primary aspects of food safety are in critical need of further research, said IFT President Bruce R. Stillings. These areas of research priority include:
+ Knowledge of the ecology of pathogens, such as Escherichia coli 0157:H7, Cyclospora, Cryptosporidium, and viruses, beyond their primary hosts or vehicles.
+ Improved understanding of the responses of microorganisms to stresses in their environments.
+ Development of intervention methods that reduce the carrier frequency of primary hosts for pathogens.
+ Better understanding of how pathogens acquire the ability to override host defense mechanisms, and cause disease.
+ Better understanding of how pathogens emerge, i.e., how microbial virulence develops and evolves.
+ Improved (e.g., faster, convenient) analytical tools to detect and identify pathogens and their metabolites (e.g., toxins).
+ Assurance of the effectiveness of detection methods for pathogens cultured from a variety of environmental conditions.
+ Innovative methods to destroy pathogens throughout the food system, particularly for fresh fruits and vegetables.
Once safe and innovative pathogen control technologies are developed, their evaluation and application must be conducted more rapidly, Stillings said. IFT supports the continued use of third-party reviewers to assist the agencies in reviewing control technologies efficiently and expeditiously, he added. IFT also cautioned the federal agencies involved in food safety not to lose sight of the issue of dietary supplement safety.
IFT NEWS RELEASE: SCIENCE-BASED DECISION GUIDE MAY BE ANSWER TO EPAâs CONTROVERSIAL RULE
CHICAGO - A two-year dispute between and eleven-society consortium and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the agencyâs proposed rule to regulate genetically modified, pest resistant plants has culminated in the near finalization of a rule that the consortium maintains is ãscientifically indefensible.ä The crux of the consortiumâs concern is that the rule seeks to regulate inherited traits in plants as though they were chemical pesticides. Since the scientistsâ concerns have apparently been ignored to date, members of the consortium have proposed a risk- and science-based decision guide for incorporation in the final rule that would exclude safe plants from onerous EPA regulation.
ãCalling plants Îpesticidesâ does not make any scientific sense,ä said Calvin O. Qualset, head, Genetic Resources Conservation Program, University of California at Davis. ãThe U.S. government stands alone among nations in viewing safe, pest-resistant plants this way.ä
In a series of six "yes or no" questions, the ãDecision Guide for EPA Review of Plants with Inherited Traits for Resistance to Pestsä would exclude from review as a ãplant pesticideä any plant with an inherited pest-defense trait that is:
1) naturally-occurring and heritable, derived from plants of the same or sexually compatible species (i.e., gene transfers from one potato species to another);
2) new to the plant species, and its sexually compatible relatives, and results in changes in physical structure or form (i.e., leaves with hairs that prevent or discourage insect attack);
3) involved in defense mechanisms expressed as a cascade of biochemical and genetic events triggered by incompatibility between the pest and the plant (i.e., hypersensitive reaction or programmed plant cell death);
4) responsible for pest defense effects that are widely known and common within the plant, animal, and microbial kingdoms, and are not characteristic of pesticides, such as enzymes; or
5) derived from pest genes, such as viral coat protein.
Rightly, included in EPA regulations under the decision guide, would be plants with pest-defense substances that act as pesticides when extracted from their hosts and tested in vitro and in the environment, such as nicotine, scorpion toxin, spider venom, and crystalline Bt endotoxin.
The EPAâs proposed rule will not only financially burden land grant universities and small companies developing pest-resistant plant varieties, it will also slow down the development of safer genetic alternatives to synthetic chemical pesticides as well as worldwide consumer acceptance of safe, genetically modified foods. EPAâs proposed rule fails to provide for and in fact, stigmatizes, current developments in plant breeding that permit precise, multiple gene transfers. Further, it is the product, not the process, that matters in terms of assessing safety. The eleven-society consortium urges the EPA to base its regulations on the toxicological characteristics of plants, rather than the techniques used to develop them.
ãThe EPAâs proposed rule sends a signal to the world that the United States views its own genetically modified plants as hazardous to people or the environment,ä said R. James Cook, Ph.D., plant scientist and endowed chair in wheat research at Washington State University. ãNo evidence exists that these plants produce any hazard, and it is scientifically indefensible to regulate them as though they were synthetic chemical pesticides. Moreover, labeling seeds or crop commodities as pesticides would undermine global public confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply. If plants are safe for human consumption, there is no reason to label them as pesticidal, creating unnecessary concern for consumers worldwide.ä
As the consortiumâs views, articulated in ãAppropriate Oversight for Plants with Inherited Traits for Resistance to Pestsä (July 1996), and a public meeting with EPA, have apparently been excluded from the nearly final rule, it is hoped that the decision guide may yet bring a risk and science based rationale to this important public policy.
The eleven-society scientific consortium includes the American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Phytopathological Society, American Society for Horticultural Science, American Society for Microbiology, American Society of Agronomy, American Society of Plant Physiologists, Crop Science Society of America, Entomological Society of American, Institute of Food Technologists, Society of Nematologists, and Weed Science of America.
STUDIES ESTIMATE THE FQPAâs ECONOMIC IMPACT ON TEXAS VEGETABLES
This article by Kent D. Hall appeared in Chemogram, published by the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, Texas A&M University
Two recent Texas studies project an economic impact that could by very damaging to our stateâs vegetable production as a result of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). The 1996 Act requires an EPA review of all existing pesticide labels by the year 2006. Organophosphates (Ops), carbamates, and those on EPAâs B2 carcinogen list (here referred to as FQPA target pesticides) are under review first. Potentially, current uses of these pesticides could be revoked.
Rodney Holloway and I examined the economic impact on the Winter Garden area if certain FQPA target pesticides were withdrawn from use on potatoes, cabbage, spinach, and carrots. Jason Johnson, Juan Anciso, Lynn Brandenberger, and Stormy Sparks looked at the loss of FQPA target pesticides on onions, melons, carrots, crucifers (cabbage and broccoli), and peppers produced in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. In the Winter Garden, potato growers would lose an estimated $11.5 million (32 percent of crop value) if phorate, an OP insecticide, were not available. Negative impact on the state economy: about $43.6 million. Cabbage, spinach, and carrot growers collectively would lose an estimated $5.4 million if the OP diazinon was withdrawn. Negative impact on the state economy: about $20.5 million. For the same three crops, loss of methomyl, a carbamate insecticide, would cost growers and the state an estimated $2 million and $7.7 million, respectively.
In the Lower Rio Grande Valley, without either chlorothalonil or iprodion, farm revenue losses would likely exceed $19 million (over 20 percent of the entire farm value of the vegetables and melons considered). The greatest negative effect would result from the removal of FQPA target fungicides, followed by insecticides, herbicides, and fumigants. Loss of chlorothalonil alone would cause melon production in the Lower Rio Grande Valley to become economically infeasible. The impacts estimated in these two studies would be sufficient, if realized, to significantly disrupt current price- and cropping-pattern equilibriums. Assuming similar impacts elsewhere, the withdrawal of FQPA target pesticides from use on all crops throughout the nation would cause a huge disruption in national production. Consumers would pay much higher prices for agricultural commodities. And the U.S. agricultural balance of trade would decline substantially.
Items of Interest
ALFALFA SPROUTS AND SALMONELLA
Due to ineffective pathogen control in seeds, alfalfa sprouts are a high-risk source of Salmonella, concluded researchers investigating the cause of a 1995 North American outbreak of Salmonella enterica serotype Newport. ãThe fundamental problem is that the sprouting process contains no Îkill stepâ that would eliminate pathogens [harboring in sprout seeds] without compromising a seedâs germination potential,ä the researchers wrote in the January 13 Journal of the American Medical Association. ãConsumers are left with little protection other than chance.ä Investigators uncovered a direct association between the distribution of a seed lot shipped to multiple growers and the distribution of cases. They noted unique epidemiological features, including: a prevalence of adult women with illness, perhaps highlighting the difference in eating habits between men and women; a medium incubation period for cases longer than the normal three or fewer days cited as the maximum in a standard communicable disease reference; and recall of eating alfalfa sprouts by only a minority (41 percent) of cases, pointing to the likelihood of cross-contamination during salad or sandwich preparation or of sproutsâ concealment in other food. The Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 31, 1998, warned consumers at high risk for food-borne illness not to eat alfalfa sprouts.
Reported from IFT Science Communicators Newsletter: 1/13/99.
MAKING CLAIMS LEGALLY
Can your ads claim your productâs superiority over your competitorâs? Yes. If you can substantiate your claim, federal law will protect you from being sued by the competition. But, be careful of what you say. False or misleading statements in print, TV, radio, or the Internet can make you liable not only for your competitorâs losses, but for injury to the public as well. Federal law, originally designed to protect businesses from injury by another company, has expanded to include consumer protection. Unfortunately, what constitutes deception is often open to interpretation. ãUsually these cases arenât black and white,ä says Kenneth Plevan, law partner and co-author of The Advertising Compliance Handbook. ãThey turn on what consumers perceive.ä Penalties, imposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will vary. They can be anything from an immediate halt to the ad campaign, with a warning about future behavior, to running a corrective campaign. The agency may also request more stringent measures, such as appealing to the judge for civil or criminal penalties, or the payment of damages to consumers or the business. Depending on the state, the competitor who sues is eligible to collect for double or triple the actual damages incurred.
Entrepreneur, April 1998, p. 82.
KETCHUP TO BE MARKET FOR ITS LYCOPENE
This month, the HJ Heinz Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., will market its ketchup as a source of lycopene, an antioxidant associated with reduced risk of certain cancers, the Associated Press reported on December 17. Print advertisements will run in January in the New York Times Magazine, USA Today, Health Magazine, and Prevention Magazine. Heinz will not change the productâs label or ingredients. Editor's Note: Salsa manufacturers should take note of this.
HOME COOKIN': CONSUMERS' KITCHENS FAIL INSPECTIONS
When it comes to food safety, consumers have higher expectations of other food handlers than they do of themselves. According to a survey conducted across the country in late 1997, when people prepared meals in their own kitchens, they failed to follow food safety and sanitation practices over 99 percent of the time. These practices included hand washing, preparing and storing ingredients at proper temperatures, and avoiding cross-contamination. While different government agencies regulate food safety procedures for restaurants and institutions, there is no equivalent requirement for homes, says Richard Daniels, Ph.D., president of Audits International, an independent firm that specializes in food safety and food quality evaluations. The survey, conducted by Audits International, categorized kitchen violations as minor, major, or critical. A violation that in itself can potentially lead to food-borne illness is considered critical. Major violations, though on their own are unlikely to cause food-borne illness, are frequently cited as contributing factors. To be considered acceptable, homes could have no more than four major violations and no critical violations. Of the 106 households surveyed in 81
cities throughout the United States and Canada, cross-contamination occurred in 76 percent of kitchens; neglecting hand washing occurred in 57 percent; and improper cooling of leftovers occurred in 29 percent of kitchens -- all critical violations. At least one critical violation was found in 96 percent of households, with an average of almost three per home. Major violations such as storing foods without covers, improper thawing, and smoking, eating, drinking, or chewing gum while preparing food were observed. In the end, only one house received an acceptable rating. None rated excellent. Daniels says the survey results are significant when compared with institutions with professional food safety systems in place. He said that restaurants with far more complicated kitchens than those in most homes consistently receive acceptable, even excellent, ratings. Daniels also stressed that consumers wonât have to spend a lot of time or effort to upgrade their practices. He insists that avoiding cross-contamination, washing hands at appropriate times during meal preparation, cooking foods to the appropriate temperatures, and cooling leftovers properly are all easy improvements to make. ãOur country enjoys the safest food supply in the world,ä says Daniels. ãWith a little care, we can all ensure that the food we prepare at home will be safe as well.ä
FDA Consumer, September/October 1998.
Rules and Regulations