[A Closer Look at Labs] Industry Trends Drive Testing

Darwin’s quote could very well apply to food safety initiatives in the food processing industry, and even more specifically to the understanding of, testing for and detection of pathogens in the food supply. When William Brown was in school, sources of food-borne illness focused on three primary pathogens — Salmonella, Staphylococcus and Clostridium. “Now,” said Brown, who founded ABC Research in Gainesville, Fla., in 1967, “there are probably 43, including E. coli and Listeria.”

Along with this increased knowledge of potential disease-causing bacteria have come greater repercussions should the pathogens be found in processed food or actually contribute to disease or death. “The seriousness and cost of recalls is much greater,” Brown said. When a company went through a recall 40 years ago, little public attention was paid and no one remembered it afterward. Today, recalls have a high impact all along the food supply chain: They are highly publicized in the news; they are extremely expensive; and with increased distribution capabilities, contaminated food that is eaten can impact more consumers than ever before.
 
THE WAITING GAME. While pathogen knowledge and recall effects are among the greatest changes in past years, continual changes and trends in the food industry regularly impact food testing as well.

In fact, one of the greatest challenges, said Mansour Samadpour, owner of IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group, Lake Forest Park, Wash., is that the industry still waits for major outbreaks to happen, then reacts, rather than being proactive. “Many times these could be predicted in advance,” he said. “Why wait for a major outbreak?” This prediction can come from good hazard analysis by knowledgeable people on the product produced, and a historical assessment of records. “If it happened 20 years ago and things are still the same, it could happen again,” Samadpour said.

“Hot topics in the news tend to be the hot topics in our lab,” said George Baker, CEO for ABC Laboratories. Trans fat, nutritional labeling, organic certification, pesticide residues, Salmonella contamination: all of these — and more — have led surges or ongoing growth in requests for lab testing as the trends grow and peak. And while such trends, and outbreaks, certainly can be predicted, others are so unexpected as to be unforeseeable. Take the recent recalls for Salmonella.

“We didn’t suspect Salmonella of even being in peanut butter,” Baker said. This finding was completely unexpected, but has since increased the awareness of such potential for both food plants and testing labs.
 
DRIVING FORCES. Much of this trending tends to be driven by negative press, said Tom Zierenberg, Microbac food safety programs director. The Wexford, Pa.-based laboratory is seeing work from Chinese imports; getting requests for testing for unapproved antibiotics; and conducting health-issue and nutrition-panel related testing. “We don’t know what the next thing will be,” he said, adding that if you want to figure it out, just follow the press.

Kurt Westmoreland, division vice president of business operations for Silliker, Homewood, Ill., said trends follow industry and regulatory lines. With the increased scrutiny on produce, for example, more requests come from that industry. The media definitely have an effect as well, primarily because, he said, there is generally some type of associated regulatory response. “Anytime there’s a regulatory response, there’s an upward trend in testing,” he said.

One thing he cautions plants against, though, is unnecessary testing. “If a lab is coming in and recommending a series of tests, the food plant manager should ask why those tests are being recommended.” Rather than spend money on unneeded testing, Westmoreland said, the plant can focus it instead in other areas.

CUSTOMER SERVICE. Even non-safety related “trends” create critical testing needs for food plants, said John Szpylka, technical manager for Medallion Laboratories, a division of General Mills in Minneapolis, Minn. For example, he said, “nutritional values are important because (the manufacturers) are making statements or claims on nutritional values and they want to make sure these are accurate.”

Food producers are very conscientious about what they are giving the customer, Szpylka said, which has increased the focus on and testing of supplied ingredients — particularly as more and more ingredients are coming from outside the U.S. “They want to make sure what they give the customer is what they’re saying it is,” he said. “They’re worried that the ingredients are not exactly what they think they’re buying, so they do qualification on them.”

In addition, Szpylka said, “Analytical testing is one part of the whole quality assurance program. It’s a vital part, but it’s more important that it’s a part” of a bigger testing program that also includes sensory testing and cleanliness. “You put everything together and I think that’s how you make a high-quality product,” he said.

Along those lines, ABC’s Baker sees increasing regulations and customer requirements as increasing the need for laboratory testing. “We see our business continuing to grow because regulations that used to be on the processor are being moved down to retailers, restaurants and quick-service restaurants,” he said, which puts more pressure on the back end of the supply chain. “Producers at the farm level will have to do a better job,” he said.

COMPLEX CHALLENGES. Yet standardization challenges remain in this area. “Regulatory agencies are not uniform in what their tolerances are,” Brown said. “It’s a complicated environment.”

Increased globalization is adding its own challenges throughout the industry, with laboratory testing as a key focal point. Too often this testing is managed on a crisis-by-crisis basis rather than through a systematic program, IEH Labs’ Samadpour said. “Lots of things come from other countries and there are no checks and balances,” he said. Not only are imported goods not always subject to the same testing required of domestic goods, but even if a test is conducted in a foreign country, companies don’t always have proof that those results are valid.

OUTSOURCING QUALITY. It may seem to make sense for U.S. labs to set up shop in foreign countries to facilitate the challenge of global sourcing, and some have been able to do so successfully. But more often testing takes place once the food arrives at a U.S. port. “To have a lab in China, you have to have local people,” said Microbac’s Zierenberg, but with labs located near most of the major U.S. port cities, testing can be conducted much more easily upon arrival. The most common tests on imported foods are those for unapproved compounds, unauthorized dyes and antibiotics.

One of the greatest challenges facing labs is the speed at which things are done, said Julie Honsa, QA manager at RTech Laboratories of Land O’Lakes in Minneapolis, Minn. Because of the pace of business today, including the development process, production and distribution, there is a strong emphasis on and need for faster testing and faster results.

Laboratories face pressure to continually reduce their turnaround time, Zierenberg said, even to the point of labs having to purchase more equipment to conduct the newer, quicker tests: “Customers are becoming more and more demanding. They want results sooner and they want them accurate.”

BIG CHANGES, BIG IMPACT. There was a period of time when the industry did not believe that testing provided any assurance of food safety, Samadpour said. But this paradigm has once again shifted, with an understanding of the solid place that testing has in food safety. “Not only is it a good tool, but it is a very good HACCP point,” he said.

Plants are starting to realize this, in part because of their ever-increasing expertise. “Food companies are hiring more qualified people in more areas,” Zierenberg said, and food scientists currently are in high demand.

Yet, despite all the trends, regulations, outbreak reaction and need for responsiveness to change, as the old adage goes — the more things change, the more they stay the same. Or as ABC’s Brown summed it up: “It’s still the same things as in 1908, but more.”

The author is staff editor of QA magazine.