Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Textbook Guide To Food Safety and Quality During Transportation Second Edition Controls Standards and Practices Ryan Ebook All Chapter PDF
Textbook Guide To Food Safety and Quality During Transportation Second Edition Controls Standards and Practices Ryan Ebook All Chapter PDF
https://textbookfull.com/product/food-safety-quality-control-and-
management-1st-edition-mohammed-kuddus/
https://textbookfull.com/product/sensing-techniques-for-food-
safety-and-quality-control-xiaonan-lu/
https://textbookfull.com/product/hazard-analysis-and-risk-based-
preventive-controls-improving-food-safety-in-human-food-
manufacturing-for-food-businesses-1st-edition-hal-king/
https://textbookfull.com/product/effective-cybersecurity-a-guide-
to-using-best-practices-and-standards-1st-edition-william-
stallings/
Quality Standards for Highly Effective Government
Second Edition Richard Mallory
https://textbookfull.com/product/quality-standards-for-highly-
effective-government-second-edition-richard-mallory/
https://textbookfull.com/product/computer-vision-technology-for-
food-quality-evaluation-second-edition-sun/
https://textbookfull.com/product/food-aroma-evolution-during-
food-processing-cooking-and-aging-bordiga/
https://textbookfull.com/product/biological-safety-principles-
and-practices-byers/
https://textbookfull.com/product/food-safety-for-farmers-markets-
a-guide-to-enhancing-safety-of-local-foods-1st-edition-judy-a-
harrison-eds/
Guide to Food Safety
and Quality During
Transportation
Page left intentionally blank
Guide to Food Safety
and Quality During
Transportation
Controls, Standards and Practices
Second Edition
Copyright © 2017 John M. Ryan. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our
arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be
found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as
may be noted herein).
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our under-
standing, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any in-
formation, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be
mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any
injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or
operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.
ISBN: 978-0-12-812139-9
vii
viii Contents
ILC Devices...............................................................................................................60
RFID Systems............................................................................................................64
Other Radio Frequency Systems...............................................................................64
Sanitation Issues........................................................................................................68
Automation in Interior Wash and Sanitation.............................................................78
Intermodal..................................................................................................................80
Summary....................................................................................................................81
References�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������309
Index���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������313
Background
If you open your refrigerator and look at all the food inside, do you have any idea of the average
distance that your food traveled to get to you?
In the United States, on an average, food travels around 2000 or more miles to get into your
refrigerator.
Although the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently passed final Food
Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rules on the “Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal
Foods” [1], it should surprise you to know that there are no established sanitation, traceability, or
temperature control food safety standards that perishable food carriers must comply with during the
transportation process. The almost simultaneous finalization of the FDA FSMA Preventive Controls
rules, while almost completely ignoring the transportation sector, clearly lays the groundwork for the
need to begin to understand and implement preventive systems regardless of the supply chain sector.
Food safety standards, inspection and audit programs, and organizations exist for farms, packing-
houses, distribution centers, wholesalers, retailers, restaurants, and food processors; but not for the
companies that physically move the food from one place to another. Your food goes in and out of those
facilities, in and out of trucks and on and off ships and airplanes, but there is no set of standards estab-
lished for in-transit carriers of perishable foods.
This lack of standards means that anything goes as long as the food gets through the supply chain
within the product’s shelf life and at a cost that makes the shippers, carriers, and receivers happy. In
this book, the “in-transit” phase covers all food movements—from the field to the consumer, from the
harvest bin, or tractor trailer to your plate.
This book is not specific to any particular type of food or country, but it is intended to provide pro-
fessionals and advanced students with a sound foundation for the improvement of the transportation
sector responsible for the movement of perishable food. It focuses primarily on the food at load and un-
load operations, in-transit, food movers, container sanitation, maintenance and traceability, food safety
and quality controls. The book is intended to outline delivery monitoring and control solutions and to
provide a standard approach for protecting the food transportation industry, those paying for quality
transportation practices, and consumers.
While food safety agencies and certifying bodies have been focused on producer, processor, retail,
and restaurant food safety, the industry that moves the food has been overlooked by many shippers,
carriers, and receivers while others have established company controls. Millions of dollars are spent an-
nually on food safety systems and visual audits for farms, packinghouses, distribution centers, harvest
crews, retail outlets, processors and restaurants, but except for a few proactive companies, little has
been spent on pressuring food movers to adhere to any set of standards.
Trucks and containers used to move food are often also used to move chemicals and other adulter-
ants during back-haul operations. Truck drivers desiring to save on fuel costs turn off refrigeration units
until they are needed. Trans-Pacific shipping containers are held up by incoming customs inspectors
because of a lack of proper paperwork, leaving the food inside to age beyond usefulness. Truck trailers
used on farms are not cleaned after moving produce from the field to the packinghouse. Harvest bins
are never cleaned or sanitized after being stacked in the field once the harvest is over.
xiii
xiv Background
Such food safety abuses are the result of generations of practice that have focused on how the food
looks, in order to make it sell, rather than a concern for consumer health. Food recall data highlighted
over the past 10 or so years has increasingly brought food supply safety to the attention of consumers
and others. This as well as lack of government oversight has resulted in multiple but nonstandardized
approaches to food safety that are inspection dependent, and that largely ignore the technologies and
practices that need to be brought into the solution set.
While the food transportation sector was previously governed by the Sanitary Transportation of
Human and Animal Foods Act [1], many food transportation companies are acutely unaware of or
unwilling to comply with the Act’s sanitation, record-keeping, and shipment control requirements.
The cold chain transportation industry commonly overlooks these requirements (defined in the newly
enacted Sanitary Food Transportation Act [1]) and Department of Homeland Security administra-
tive rules. This book covers these requirements and other international compliance issues, and moves
through vicarious liability and the ever-evolving buyer requirements. Produce precooling operations
are explored as a preliminary input to possible sources of adulteration that leave transporters liable for
shelf life and product losses. Short versus extended supply chains are further explored as potentially
contributing to a lack of supply chain control. International food transportation solutions are discussed
because of similar food transportation control requirements in other regions of the world, and as a result
of tendencies to blame foreign food producers for a lack of control over food adulteration.
The advances in technological testing, sanitation, monitoring, and traceability that have provided
the industry with ample cost-effective solutions are highlighted. Such advances, and a sound under-
standing of responsibilities and liabilities, provide food transporters with the planning mechanisms
needed to move into solid standardized delivery control solutions in line with food safety needs as well
as government compliance.
Armed with a foundation of legal, liability, practical solutions and common standards, food ship-
pers, transporters and buyers will have a solid foundation that enables them to structure company wide
business practices as a part of their overall food safety and quality agenda. For students of food safety
and quality, this book provides much needed insight into a critical but overlooked aspect of the food
safety and quality spectrum. This food transporter piece of the overall food safety and quality puzzle
provides a much needed link to improve the supply chain communication and interdependence sought
by governmental and industry executives.
From a prevention perspective, the revised book provides explanations of Hazard Analysis and
Critical Control Points (HACCP) and adds preventive process control structures intended to keep safe
quality food moving in a more holistic, integrated manner. The transportation sector is treated as a
measurable and manageable process that forms the links critical to an integrated food safety system.
All transportation food safety standards presented in the first edition have been updated to comply
with new FSMA food transportation requirements.
This revision also includes a review of the final United States Food and Drug Administration’s final
Food Safety Modernization Act rules on the sanitary transportation of human and animal foods. New
requirements for mandatory training and all food transportation operations are reviewed.
A system for food transportation food safety planning that relies on teams, flowcharts, and Excel
spreadsheets is included in this revision along with a new technological approach to collecting tempera
ture, sanitation, traceability, maintenance, and other data critical to record keeping and transportation
system management.
Background xv
New considerations for cross- and contact contamination, food theft is included since all food trans-
portation processes are subjected to such hazards.
There are perhaps thousands of different types of food transported around the world: frozen living,
canned, fresh, fish and meat, milk, cheese, eggs, sprouts, avocados, processed, packaged, clean, dirty,
adulterated, contaminated, from Chile to Europe, from the United States to Korea, and from South
Africa to Florida. Food transportation and control over it is taken quite seriously by some companies in
some countries, whereas in other countries fresh produce is transported to the morning market in bags
slung over a carrier’s back.
Some long-distance food carriers have established extremely sophisticated real-time location and
temperature measurement systems designed to control food safety and quality, whereas others would
rather dump a truckload of overripe tomatoes on the side of the road because the road was rained out
and impassable for several days.
No single book could cover such diversity.
Regardless, a system can be established that provides guidance on planning, implementation, and
standards, and is designed to satisfy both internal management needs and external certification audit
requirements.
This book is intended to help begin providing visibility into these areas, and to provide a basis for
those companies and food logistics professionals in need of modern guidance on food safety and qual-
ity during transportation processes.
Page left intentionally blank
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION TO
TRANSPORTER CONTAINER
SANITATION, TRACEABILITY,
AND TEMPERATURE CONTROLS
1
Food supply chains are subject to the vagaries of a number of regional and international food safety
procedures. Distribution centers, farms, processors, retailers, restaurants, and packers are besieged by
hundreds of different standards, all purporting to “certify” the operation to whatever food safety audit
standards have been developed by compliance bodies and approved by government agencies. Because
of costs, the slowness of analysis and the need to generate business, other than processors following
hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP)-type systems, many certification audit practices ex-
clude such basics as testing for hazardous biocontaminants or chemicals, and instead rely on visual
inspection by auditors and documentation reviews.
Most people are acutely aware of the numerous recent adulteration outbreaks in the food supply
chain and the resulting illnesses and deaths. Spinach, green onions, carrots, peanuts, hamburger, and
juices are only a few of the publicly reported carriers over the past few years. What most people are
not aware of is the extent to which these and similar problems go publicly unreported. For instance,
the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) reported that for the calendar year up to October
2006 there was 29 separate meat recalls across the country [3]. What is interesting about the spinach
Escherichia coli outbreak is that the retail industry, not the government, voluntarily removed the spin-
ach from the shelves to prevent its sale.
The author recently moved from implementing quality systems in high-technology electronics manu-
facturing companies throughout the United States and Asia into a position responsible for implementing
a quality system at the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture. When I began my career in technology in
1984, the company where I was a director of quality relied solely on inspection and sorting to “assure” the
quality of their products. The factory the company owned in South Korea was operating in a batch-man-
ufacturing mode. Each process step in the product build was followed by a wall of inspectors responsible
for sorting the good from the bad, with the bad going to rework or scrap and the good going on to the next
process step. Return rates for the final product were at 49%. I have long forgotten the rework rates, but I
do remember many shelves piled with materials awaiting rework. The scrap piles were also something to
be proud of. There was no corrective action, and incoming materials were purchased based solely on price.
Management was convinced that they were doing a good job because the company was making money.
affect outgoing quality or cost savings, except where results were used for causal analysis and to drive
improvements. Organizations that rely on visual inspection are rarely knowledgeable about prevention.
Further, the use of inspection data to drive preventive action is rare. Preventive action is not the same
as what is commonly referred to as “corrective action.”
Here is a list of Deming’s 14 points first published in Out of the Crisis [4]. It is interesting to con-
sider how they apply to the food supply and our control over how food is transported from one place
to another.
DEMING’S 14 POINTS
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to be-
come competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken
to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass
basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost.
Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and
productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets
to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of
production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production
must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with
the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce, asking for zero defects and new
levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the
causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power
of the workforce.
• Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
• Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals.
Substitute leadership.
11. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsi-
bility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
12. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of
workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of manage-
ment by objective.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is
everybody’s job.
Inspection as the primary basis for food quality and safety 3
Clearly the 14 points are focused on management and management’s ability and willingness to
implement systematic changes to what he called common causes. Common causes of quality and,
in this case, food safety problems are management caused problems. Deming points out the fact that
throughout his career, he estimates that up to 85% of all quality problems are caused by the system
implemented (or not implemented) by management. Common or system causes are clearly manage-
ment’s responsibility and with the newly established final rules on the sanitary transportation of human
and animal foods, the liability associated with the failure to establish preventive transportation controls
makes all transportation operations personnel personally responsible and open to legal action.
Take, for example, point number 3 “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate
the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.” This is
particularly important and applicable in our circumstance. Bacteria and chemical hazards cannot be
detected using inspection strategies.
There is a good deal of discussion nowadays about food quality versus safety. Deming is well
known for helping to improve quality, but is that the same as food safety? The 14 points listed before
show that our food supply chain is in need of exactly the types of changes he recommended 30 years
ago. Food safety and food quality go hand in hand. Both rely on and can be seriously affected by the
transportation industry and its ability to improve services.
State, local, and federal level governments rely heavily on inspection when involved in food
enforcement activities. They believe they will achieve quality with visual inspection, audits, and en-
forcement. Interestingly, with literally thousands of inspections going on, there are few focused on
measurement mechanisms that might be established to collect and analyze data or to drive change.
This government reliance on what is commonly called “verification” represents a focus on inspec-
tion and audit and is an anachronism that demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of how to resolve
the complex problems of food quality and safety. In short, verification simply means that the food
safety plan has been implemented as determined by a documentation review. Verification activities
ignore the need to establish any level of proof that the plan and the implementation of the plan actually
work. Verification, by itself is meaningless.
Within the new preventive framework, validation requirements mean that a company must estab-
lish a quantitative, scientific approach to identify causes of problems and must establish a continuous
improvement system to lessen and eliminate identified hazards. Of equal importance, validation efforts
are based on hard or objective data not on subjective inspection and audit observations. Objective data
is obtained from sampling and laboratory reports not from food safety audits.
In more modern organizations, the terms currently in use include “six-sigma,” “supply chain man-
agement,” “leadership,” “teamwork,” “customer focus,” “data-driven decision-making,” “traceability,”
and so on. These terms are only sometimes used in agricultural and food supply organizations. Statisti-
cal process control (SPC) is relatively unknown, as is the idea that one could actually use statistics to
control assignable causes in a process. Remember the comments about Deming aforementioned. While
management causes create 85% of our quality and food safety problems, assignable causes (those con-
trolled everywhere except at management levels) contribute some 15% to the overall food safety and
food quality failure rate.
Although SPC and six-sigma tool kits might be used effectively depending on the particular situ-
ation, they rarely have been thought of or applied in the transportation sector with the exception of a
few forward-thinking companies. In spite of current food safety outbreaks, this gap is probably due
partly to the lack of knowledgeable quality professionals moving into the food safety industry, as there
4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPORTER
is little demand for such people. Furthermore, current coursework in food science colleges focuses
primarily on inspection and compliance audit requirements as a means of achieving quality and safety.
This leaves the college-educated food science and food safety communities with a 100-year-old gap in
quality improvement practices.
The weak legal framework for food quality and safety is based on weak inspection standards that
often intentionally exclude hard and more objective data. With regard to our current interest—the
transportation sector—there is virtually no oversight, no measurement, little data, no analysis and no
preventive action. Without such data and management, prevention is nearly impossible.
Whereas many laws are enacted with the intention of improving produce quality, implementation,
and enforcement, except in the case of recalls, are virtually nonexistent. The National Organic Program
(NOP) [5] is a good example of quality avoidance. The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 [6] lev-
ies perhaps the greatest burden of compliance on organic farmers by establishing “national standards
governing the marketing of certain agricultural products as organically produced products.” The Act
relies heavily on certification, and on certification of the certifiers. Those familiar with the International
Standards Organization (ISO) approach to quality systems understand what this means. Food safety
certification, as implemented today, neither implies nor assures safety or quality. Typically, auditors
with extensive training in procedural implementation analysis will visit an operation and go through a
set of questions and review activities to determine the level to which the organization has implemented
or attempted to control hundreds of items. The final score determines whether the business is certified.
Certification is generally handled by a certifying agency responsible for training and certifying the
auditors, and for the scoring system and documentation strategy. A great deal of certification takes
place at all levels, at great expense in terms of time and money. Usually, only larger organizations can
afford to become certified, but some smaller certifying agencies will work with smaller companies for
a reasonable fee. Many food supply businesses cannot afford to become certified, or do not wish to be
bothered by government regulations and interference. Many others simply cut costs that are negative to
delivering safe food. This is known as “economically motivated adulteration.”
Currently, no standards, inspection, certification, auditing, or testing for hazards are required for
containers that actually hold the food during transportation processes.
The problem is that, like ISO, implementation of standards and guided improvement practices
and certification are top-down driven. Many (most) larger retailers (e.g., Safeway, Wal-Mart) have
fallen into the certification trap and require their suppliers to be “safety certified” to enter the sup-
ply chain. If Safeway stores want a distributor to be safety certified, the distributor quickly requires
its supplier farms also to be safety certified. The assumption is that auditing and certification will
improve things.
Moving away from organic products, readers might wish to review good agricultural practices
(GAP) [7], good handling practices (GHP) [8], and good manufacturing practices (GMP) [9], which are
all inspection- and certification-based initiatives, all written to establish armies of certifying agencies
responsible for certifying armies of certified inspectors out to certify thousands of farms, distributors,
and producers. What is really interesting about many of the standards set up by certifying agencies that
have interpreted these codes are the standards they have established for certified inspectors to follow.
The following are four examples from the USDA Good Agricultural Practices and Good Handling
Practices Audit Verification Matrix November 1, 2006 revision [10]:
1. Water quality is known to be adequate for the crop irrigation method and/or chemical application.
2. If necessary, steps are taken to protect irrigation water from potential contamination.
need for technology and hard data 5
3. The farm sewage treatment system is functioning properly and there is no evidence of leaking or
runoff.
4. Processing water is sufficiently treated to reduce microbial contamination.
(Source: USDA Good Agricultural Practices and Good Handling Practices Audit Verification
Matrix November 1, 2006 revision.)
Most food safety or quality initiatives would more likely be inclined to establish standards that actu-
ally mean something. For instance, what is “adequate” water quality? What is a “properly” functioning
sewage treatment system? Number 4 is the best one: just what is “sufficiently” treated water?
Standards like these are simply not standards. Interpretations left open to certifying agencies and
individual inspectors are unreliable, prone to failure, and an utter waste of time and money—but this
is the best we have!
Like the company I referred to at the beginning of this section, agriculture, the US Department of
Agriculture, the FDA, certifying agencies, and the inspectors, after decades of worry and handwring-
ing, are still in batch-processing mode. They insist on following the assumption that food safety and
quality can be inspected into the product, container, transporter, produce, food, farm, or outdoor facili-
ties. But inspection, and in particular subjective inspection, as a primary quality or safety tool has never
and will never meet food safety needs satisfactorily.
It is time for the food transportation sector to begin to wake up to the 21st century. Many transport-
ers are currently employing higher quality and safer standards and tools than the government or the
certifying agencies, and they are doing so on their own account, in their own time, and without the help
of university, state, or federal enforcement agencies.
that clearly call for environmental monitoring and, at first glance, move in the direction of objectivity.
Alas, such is not the case. Under preventive control rules the food safety plan must be approved by a
qualified individual who has been trained in preventive controls that include validation. Unfortunately,
the preventive control rules focus solely on HACCP while minimizing validation (hard, objective, sci-
entific evidence that the plan works). One would have to guess that the food side of the FDA could not
understand what the drug and medical side of the FDA means when they call for causal analysis and a
reliance on more objective data than that provided by inspection and audits.
This oversight is symptomatic of a lack of understanding of common causes (85% management
controllable = FDA controllable) and represents a significant failure on the part of those who apparently
spent a lot of energy and time fighting against the definition of a system that would prevent food safety
problems. We should have more respect for those people managing food transportation operations than
that. Many of them are actually competent problem solvers and are clearly more dedicated to food
safety during transportation processes than the new rules might lead us to believe.
Rapid, low-cost tests are needed for food suppliers to determine, beyond visual audits, what is really
going on with their products. Such testing could be applied to farm harvests, distribution, transporta-
tion, and virtually any place in the food supply chain. The hard and objective data supplied by testing
could support quality and food safety control, management decision-making, and preventive and cor-
rective actions. And electronic traceability systems should become mandatory—required, and not the
subject of “guidance.” Using manual, paper-based traceability systems in this day and age when laptop
computers cost less than $300 is an indication of resistance to change, not concern for consumer safety.
Traceability technology is available to measure temperatures, humidity, and tampering throughout all
transportation processes, and the application of these technologies can be shown to provide not only
return on investment but also marketing leverage.
However, such is not yet the case, especially with regard to many types of container used to trans-
port food. Since such containers are rarely cleaned, testing for contaminants would be a waste of time
and money.
Although audits and visual inspections provide very basic help in terms of driving the cleanup of
an operation, they are incapable of finding and preventing what the quality profession calls “specific
causes.” The gap between subjective audit information and the harder, more objective data supplied
by testing and electronic traceability and measurement is huge, and this gap is frequently denied or
downplayed by those with so much invested in the visual audit approach.
In the transportation sector, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) testing is considered a basic (nonspecific)
sanitation test for the presence of living organisms. Primarily used to test for surface deposits (surface
sanitation monitoring) and bulk water, ATP has been in use for many years and is often required to test
the extent to which a system can maintain at least basic cleaning verification control. Used in food-
carrying containers after a washout, ATP bioluminescence testing provides at least some assurance that
the wash had some impact on the living organisms that might remain.
there is no preventive action to be taken in spite of the fact that the spinach industry has lost, according
to one source, an estimated $270 million dollars over the scare.
The reader may recall that it took weeks to trace the outbreak back to the farm(s) involved. In qual-
ity, we tend to think in terms of “swimming upstream” to look for causes. If we think in terms of the
impact that a supply chain in any industry has on the potential outcome of a product or service, it is
notable that the United States requires very little in the way of a food traceability system, so do state
governments. Canada and Europe, on the other hand, are well established in their efforts to control food
quality and safety through traceability systems capable of finding potential causes quickly.
PREVENTION
As quality professionals, we like to think of prevention in terms of the money spent on planning, train-
ing, closed-loop control systems, simplification, management commitment, and so on. Inspection and
audit are clearly classified as appraisal activities and, as such, add tremendous cost but little value to
the product or service. In the case of food supply maintenance, primary emphasis and the leading ex-
penditures fall into the appraisal category. There is clearly a need for a shift away from the current food
safety approach, depending primarily on inspection, audit, recall, and enforcement, to a more balanced
approach that also requires the inclusion of harder and more objective real-time data and management to
verify the existence or lack of adulterants and contaminants. Without that basic shift to hard data collect-
ed in a real-time monitoring fashion as part of a preventive program, the very high external failure costs
(recalls) associated with the audit-only approach will continue to fail in the face of food safety impact.
Some might argue that the technology is too challenging—but presumably these same people use
cell phones, and use GPS on their tractors to guide planting and harvesting.
It is notable that no statistics on crop or distribution yield losses, returns, recalls, sorting, dumping,
or any negative measures are given in any of the USDA Field Offices’ publications that report state-level
statistics. Measurement of transportation food safety and food quality costs and losses are rarely collected,
summarized, or published. However, a farmer may buy crop insurance from any of a number of insurance
companies, and even restaurant chains are quickly becoming aware that food safety certification means
lower risk, and that lower risk translates into reduced insurance premiums and lower costs. On the govern-
ment end, data do not exist that would allow for industry-wide planning, but somehow insurance companies
have enough actuarial data to make crop insurance a profitable business. However, this scenario is chang-
ing, as many insurance companies are now making food safety risk part of the insurance cost equation.
The lack of preventive-level data analysis and planning is another indicator that the current ap-
proach to food quality and safety is strongly in need of a more dynamic system that begins to bring
more modern methods of food safety and quality management into play.
Food quality and safety in the transportation sector of the supply chain will eventually be driven
by the industry and the people dependent on the food supply chain. Although government agencies
enact laws, promote good practices, create guidelines, attempt to enforce weak standards, and manage
recalls, their impact is minimal and ineffective. Governmental and other organizations involved in
creating requirements, inspecting, auditing, and attempting to enforce food quality initiatives would be
far better off looking for the causes of the problems and coming up with solutions.
How often can the Salinas spinach farmers, or Taco Bell, who have paid for inspections and audits,
as well as been subjected to myriad government regulations, recuperate from the losses partially in-
duced by the inadequacy of the system supposedly regulating them? As in other supply chain situations,
8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPORTER
the customers must specify quality requirements and the industry must work to implement those quality
tools that work.
sector. Food may be moved in raw, processed, frozen, or other forms, and the containers used to move
food from one location to another, or to embrace the food during any interoperation movement, include
trucks and truck trailers, harvest bins, pallets, shipping containers, and other open or enclosed devices.
Although some more progressive companies have established standards and tight controls, in gen-
eral, food movers and their potential impact on food safety have been relatively overlooked by food
safety professionals. Of equal importance, and somewhat less overlooked during transportation, is the
issue of food quality.
Recent movements in the food safety industry have begun to include food safety and food quality
in the same realm. Both need similar, albeit different, control plans. In many cases critical controls
required for food safety and food quality overlap, thereby providing solutions for both disciplines.
Of equal importance, quality personnel may be cross-trained to deal with food safety issues, thereby
reducing the need to hire and train food safety individuals and creating a new function in the organiza-
tion. Fig. 1.1 illustrates some of the differences between transporter food safety and food quality.
Owing to cold chain distribution patterns and the implications of greenhouse gas emissions, there have
been a number of studies focusing on the politics and problems related to fossil fuel consumption. In “Food,
Fuel, and Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emis-
sions” [15] issued by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in June 2001, in the early 1970s the
average distance traveled by food was close to 1500 miles from the farm to the consumer, and now prob-
ably exceeds 2200 miles. Although those figures include imported food, the average distance traveled by
American food is somewhere between halfway across the United States and from coast to coast. Arrivals
by truck in 1998 were estimated at 89.9% (increasing over time) and by rail at 13.1% (declining over time).
The trend in US agricultural imports between 1987 and 2010 is shown in Fig. 1.2. The data show an
increase from about US$7 billion per year in 1987 to over US$80 billion per year in 2010.
Fig. 1.3 shows a US agricultural export trend line for the same time period. Exports have stayed
relatively flat around US$10 billion annually.
Taken together, with imports increasing so drastically and exports remaining flat, there is no doubt
as to why the distance food travels have increased so much and continue to increase [16].
Fig. 1.4 shows a trend of the value of agricultural and fish products moved by truck across the
United States between 2005 and 2009. The upward trend is indicative of food truck hauling trends for
all food products.
In April 2010, the Federal Register published proposed rules for the Implementation of Sanitary
Food Transportation Act of 2005. In paragraph F-2 the Register summarized a report by the Eastern
Research Group, Inc. The Eastern Research Group was contracted to perform a literature review and
an expert opinion study of food handling practices and preventive controls for food transportation
food safety hazards. The Group reviewed numerous transportation guidelines, potential contamination
types, and best food transportation practices. The proposed rule making for the Sanitary Food Trans-
portation Act of 2005 [17] resulted in a list of 15 food risk problem areas, including:
• Refrigeration and temperature control
• Transportation unit management (prevention, sanitation, etc.)
• Packing
• Loading and unloading
• Security
• Pest control
• Container design
FIGURE 1.4 Agricultural and Fish Products Hauled by Truck in the United States 2005–09 ($millions)
Some definitions 11
• Preventive maintenance
• Employee hygiene
• Policies
• Handling of rejected loads
• Holding
• Traceability
The Group recommended the following preventive controls:
• Employee training
• Management review
• Supply chain communication
• Loading and unloading
• Load documentation (wash, temperature readings, time tracking)
• Packaging and packing (including pallets)
SOME DEFINITIONS
Throughout this book the following basic definitions will apply. A container is a device used to carry
food products from one location to another by a company serving as a carrier. Larger containers may
be and often are sanitized, and may have traceability tags applied to them by maintenance stations.
Maintenance stations may include truck wash facilities or other operations capable of sanitizing the
container or installing some type of traceability tag on the container. Carriers are companies whose
primary function is to enable the containers to become mobile.
Food safety is focused on freedom from adulterants that would be harmful to any person or animal
consuming the food. Adulterants may include biological, chemical, radiological, or other contaminants
(glass, wood, insect parts, etc.) that could potentially cause the consumer of the food to become ill.
Food quality, on the other hand, is focused on those factors that human consumers are most likely
to use to judge quality. These include appearance, taste, and nutrition.
Container: Any device used to transport food or food products between or among distant operations.
Containers include bins, pallets trucks, truck trailers, shipping containers, and other similar devices,
and are used to move or hold food on the move. The term “device” excludes what is commonly re-
ferred to as packaging.
Carrier: Any company or individual responsible for the transportation of food and food products.
Maintenance station: Any company involved in the sanitation of or traceability implementation for
carriers or containers.
Food safety: Freedom from adulterants, including chemical, bacteriological, radiological, or metal,
glass, wood, etc.
Food quality: Adherence to commodity standards, taste, and nutrition.
(FDA FSMA Rules on the Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Foods, http://www.fda.
gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ucm383763.htm, November 8, 2016.)
12 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPORTER
Since the FDA has finalized the “Rules on the Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal
Foods,” we must consider definitions provided in Subpart O (the rules). The following FDA definitions
are provided for reader review:
Adequate means that which is needed to accomplish the intended purpose in keeping with good
public health practice.
Animal food means food for animals other than man, and includes pet food, animal feed, and raw
materials and ingredients.
Bulk vehicle means a tank truck, hopper truck, rail tank car, hopper car, cargo tank, portable tank,
freight container, or hopper bin, or any other vehicle in which food is shipped in bulk, with the food
coming into direct contact with the vehicle.
Carrier means a person who physically moves food by rail or motor vehicle in commerce within the
United States. The term carrier does not include any person who transports food while operating as
a parcel delivery service.
Cross-contact means the unintentional incorporation of a food allergen as defined in Section 201 (qq)
of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act into food, except animal food.
Food not completely enclosed by a container means any food that is placed into a container in such a
manner that it is partially open to the surrounding environment. Examples of such containers include
an open wooden basket or crate, an open cardboard box, a vented cardboard box with a top, or a vented
plastic bag. This term does not include food transported in a bulk vehicle as defined in this subpart.
Loader means a person that loads food onto a motor or rail vehicle during transportation operations.
Operating temperature means a temperature sufficient to ensure that under foreseeable circumstances
of temperature variation during transport, e.g., seasonal conditions, refrigeration unit defrosting, mul-
tiple vehicle loading and unloading stops, the operation will meet the requirements of § 1.908 (a) (3).
Pest means any objectionable animals or insects including birds, rodents, flies, and larvae.
Receiver means any person who receives food at a point in the United States after transportation, whether
or not that person represents the final point of receipt for the food.Shipper means a person, e.g., the manu-
facturer or a freight broker, who arranges for the transportation of food in the United States by a carrier
or multiple carriers sequentially.Small business means a business employing fewer than 500 full-time
equivalent employees except that for carriers by motor vehicle that are not also shippers and/or receivers,
this term would mean a business subject to § 1.900(a) having less than $27,500,000 in annual receipts.
Transportation means any movement of food in by motor vehicle or rail vehicle in commerce within
the United States.
Transportation equipment means equipment used in food transportation operations, e.g., bulk and
non-bulk containers, bins, totes, pallets, pumps, fittings, hoses, gaskets, loading systems, and unload-
ing systems. Transportation equipment also includes a railcar not attached to a locomotive or a trailer
not attached to a tractor.
Transportation operations means all activities associated with food transportation that may affect
the sanitary condition of food including cleaning, inspection, maintenance, loading and unloading,
and operation of vehicles and transportation equipment. Transportation operations do not include any
activities associated with the transportation of food that is completely enclosed by a container except
a food that requires temperature control for safety, compressed food gases, food contact substances as
defined in Section 409 (h) (6) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, human food byproducts
transported for use as animal food without further processing, or live food animals except molluscan
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
THE HAPPINESS OF BEING
NEARSIGHTED
A most important event in the artistic life of the South, and one
whose ultimate results are likely to be of such a far-reaching nature
that is impossible to even roughly estimate their valve at the present
time, occurred on January 18th., 1899. On that day a group of
representative and influential gentlemen met at the residence of Mr.
Theodore Marburg and founded what is known as The Municipal Art
Association of the City of Baltimore. Although the idea of such an
organization is not a new one,—such associations already exist and
are in a flourishing condition in New York, Boston and other Northern
Cities,—no such society can be found elsewhere in the South.
Baltimore can therefore for once be justly congratulated on having
shown a spirit of real enterprise and civic pride, which, sooner or
later, is sure to be followed by all her Southern sisters.
The main object of this new municipal art association is to receive
and collect funds for the beautifying of the public squares and
buildings of the City. It will also use its utmost endeavors—through
experts and disinterested, broad-minded laymen—to have such
funds judiciously expended. It is proposed to enlarge the
membership, which is somewhat limited at present, as much as
possible and at the same time, to form a woman’s auxiliary branch
that will work in harmony with the main organization, composed
exclusively of men. It is estimated that a body of at least two
thousand public-spirited men and women can thus be found and
eventually welded into a powerful association devoted to the very
best artistic interests of the people of Baltimore. If this calculation is
correct, a considerable amount of money will accumulate annually in
the treasury of the society, solely from the collection of the yearly
dues, which have been wisely fixed at the small sum of $5.00. In
order to increase the association’s resources much more rapidly
than is otherwise practicable, it has been resolved that life
membership may be procured by those who are willing to pay the
sum of $100.00, and that the title of “Patron” will be bestowed on all
those who are liberal enough to donate the sum of $1000, or more.
The money so collected from dues and voluntary contributions is to
be carefully husbanded until the amount becomes sufficiently large
to justify the directors in opening a worthy competition for the
decoration of some public building, the erection of a statue, or the
building of a monument of real and lasting artistic merit. It may not
be possible to procure enough money to purchase such a work of art
annually, but it will be a question of only a few years at most before
the results of this much needed society will become evident to the
least observant. It is with feelings of the greatest pleasure that we
commend this highly laudable and intelligent movement to the
people of Baltimore, and we hope they will give it their unswerving
and enthusiastic support.
GEORGE MEREDITH.
Art and artists are continually suffering at the hands of “belletristic
triflers.” Phrase-making is the passion of the day; and as a falsity or
a half-truth concerning literary matters is so much easier of utterance
than the awkward whole truth, that demands lengthy qualifications,
we seldom find the latter gaining in the race with glittering
mendacities. It is not, for instance, the saner body of Matthew
Arnold’s criticism that has been generally absorbed; it is his more or
less questionable catch-words and airy brevities of characterization.
These seem apt to the understanding because they fit so well the
tongue; their convenience gives them their fatal persuasion. The
world likes a criticism in little, a nut-shell verdict, something of
intellectual color that can readily be memorized for dinner-table
parlance, the vague generalization that conceals the specific
ignorance. Macaulay’s “rough pistolling ways and stamping
emphasis,” Scott’s “bastard epic style,” and the conception of
Shelley as “a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his
luminous wings in vain” have thus come to be solemn verities with
many who care more to talk literature than to read it. A whilom gaiety
of journalism served to convince the public that Whitman’s voice was
a “barbaric yawp”; and consequently his “Leaves of Grass” is seldom
glimpsed save in a spirit of derision. These are some of the unhappy
results of our latter-day strain after “a pregnant conciseness” of
language.
George Meredith like many of his predecessors has suffered much
from the thumb-nail criticism of the day. His judges are apt to insist
upon his mannerisms and to insist on nothing else. The generality of
readers hearing so much about the “mereditherambic style” rest
under the belief that this writer is a tripod of frenzied incoherence;
that he lacks, especially as a poet, both style and substance. That
this is far from being the truth about Meredith’s verse anyone who
has read it with attention well knows. Not only does much of it fulfil
the requisites of orthodox style, but it contains, even more than his
novels, the vital convictions of his mind. Indeed, it is in his verse we
come nearest the real teacher, as we come nearest the man in his
relation to life at large—to the general scheme of things.
A realization of George Meredith’s poetical virtues by the reader of
real literature is due a writer who has proved his claim to genius in a
monumental series of novels, a writer who, while not acceptable to
all, has yet many admirers that regard him as one of the strongest
towers of modern thought. One can, however, scarcely hope for
more than a limited acceptance of his poems; that he should be
popular in the ordinary meaning of the word, as some poets are
taken to heart by the sons of men, is indeed scarcely conceivable.
Such popularity, which is after all an equivocal tribute for the most
part, Mr. Meredith has never aimed to secure. His has been a life of
remoteness from profane ambitions, a life steadfast to the standard
early set for himself—a standard of the highest kind.
And yet, while Mr. Meredith may not exercise the attraction of
many other poets for the general reader, few will deny that in his
fruits of song one tastes the flavor of an original, deep-seeing mind;
that there is in the character of many of his poems what well rewards
the serious attention necessary to their complete comprehension.
Difficult in part they may seem in the casual reading, owing to
combined entanglement of rhetoric and ideas, but few who press
their inquiry past the line of a first natural discouragement of perusal
can fail totally to be affected by the spell they cast over the mind.
Beauty there is unquestionably lurking beneath what seems often a
wilful obscuration of theme. Coming here and there upon some
apparently dry metrical husk of thought, there falls, as from some
frost-bitten flower-pod, a shower of fairy seeds that lodge as a vital
donation within the remembrance. Groping in the midst of a
Meredithian mystery, even the less sensitive ear catches a ritornello
of exquisite, wholly seductive sound. For it is not so infrequently that
like his “The Lark Ascending.”
THOMAS HARDY.
Genius proves itself as much by the tenacity of its taste for one
handicraft as by anything else; it evidences itself not so much in
versatility as in volume. It is rather a mark of mediocre mentality
when a man must needs lay his hand to the doing of this and that.
Genius, as a rule, has no such itch; generally speaking, he is content
to fulfill himself in one given direction—to maintain his being in a
single sphere with a passion superior to that of his fellows. Thus it is
we seldom find after leaving the regions of facile talent writers whose
inspiration expresses itself in prose and poetical form with equal
seriousness; one is the vehicle of the divine voice, the other a mere
diversion. Goethe, it is true, has given us “Wilhelm Meister,” Victor