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Guide to Food Safety and Quality

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Guide to Food Safety
and Quality During
Transportation
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Guide to Food Safety
and Quality During
Transportation
Controls, Standards and Practices
Second Edition

John M. Ryan, PhD, PCQI


Ryan Systems, Inc., Palm Bay, FL, United States
Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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Copyright © 2017 John M. Ryan. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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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-
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Contents
Background.......................................................................................................................................... xiii

CHAPTER   1 Introduction to Transporter Container Sanitation, Traceability,


and Temperature Controls..................................................................1
Inspection as the Primary Basis for Food Quality and Safety....................................1
Deming’s 14 Points..................................................................................................2
The Need for Technology and Hard Data to Enter the Certification Arena...............5
Moving to Measurement and Causal Analysis............................................................6
Prevention....................................................................................................................7
Risk Factors in Real Time...........................................................................................8
The Forgotten Element: Food on the Move................................................................8
Some Definitions.......................................................................................................11
International Guidance Related to Food Safety in Transportation Processes...........18
CODEX ALIMENTARIUS: International Food Standards..................................18
United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...........................................19
The Sanitary Food Transportation Act of 1990, 49 USC 5701 et seq.,
Chapter 57, Sanitary Food Transportation........................................................19
Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)..............................................................20
Exclusions to the Rules..............................................................................................31
Changes to the Proposed Rules.............................................................................32
Updates Required in the Final Rules.....................................................................32
Transportation Operations: Preventive or Not?.....................................................33
Final Rules Subpart O: Preventing Food from Becoming Unsafe During
Transportation Operations.................................................................................34
Roadside Truck Wash Operations.........................................................................34
The Contract of Carriage.......................................................................................36
Sample Cargo Contract of Carriage......................................................................36

CHAPTER   2 Current and Emerging Transportation Food Safety Models.................43


Return on Investment and Financial Benefits for Emerging
Transportation Monitors........................................................................................43
Basic Traceability and Monitoring Models...............................................................46
Examples of Transportation Process Quality Measurement.....................................49
Inter- and Intrastate Shipping....................................................................................49
Air and Ocean Food Shipments.................................................................................52
Emerging Monitoring Models: Intelligent Delivery Control Systems,
RFID, ILC, and RH...............................................................................................56

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

CHAPTER   3 Introduction to In-Transit Food Safety Auditing and Standards...........83


Quality in Food Safety Transportation......................................................................85
Internal Audits and Teams: Organizing for System Implementation.......................87
Continuous Improvement Team Concepts................................................................89
Internal Audit Team Causal Analysis and Management Reporting..........................90
External Audits and Auditors....................................................................................94
In-Transit Standards: Introduction and Organization................................................96
Container Management System (M) Standards (Level I).....................................96
Container Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) Standards
(Option for Level II Certification).....................................................................97
Preventive Control (PC) Standards (Option for Level II Certification)................99
Container Sanitation (S) Standards......................................................................100
Container Temperature Control Monitoring and Traceability
Controls (T) Standards.....................................................................................100
Employee Training (TR) Standards.....................................................................101
Certification Rules...................................................................................................101

CHAPTER   4 System Management and Record Keeping......................................103


Management System (M)........................................................................................103
Costs of Food Safety............................................................................................110
Classifications for Costs of Food Safety and Food Quality................................110
Management Goal Setting...................................................................................111
Reduction of Returns (Reverse Logistics) and Customer Rejects......................111
Plotting Costs by Time and Category..................................................................111
Tray Wash Reject Rate Analysis.........................................................................112
Shrinkage.............................................................................................................116
Ensuring that Transit Temperature is in Control.................................................116
Ensuring that the Percentage of Containers Washed is on Schedule..................116
ATP Pass/Fail Rate Maintenance as a Process Control Mechanism..................116
Ambient Atmosphere Pick and Delivery Times and Procedures............................116
Pick Tray and Covered Bin Cleanliness..............................................................116
Adherence to Tarmac Time Targets....................................................................117
Pallet-on-Dock Times..........................................................................................117
Contents ix

Temperature variation During Trans-Oceanic Shipment....................................117


Air Shipments......................................................................................................117
Shelf Life Delivery Controls...............................................................................118
Trucks..................................................................................................................118
Records and Documentation Options..................................................................122
Shipper Record Retention Manual..........................................................................136
Introduction..........................................................................................................137
What is Covered?.................................................................................................137
Who is Covered?..................................................................................................139
Document Filing System.....................................................................................139
The Contract of Carriage.....................................................................................139
TransCert Compliance Standards and Record Keeping..........................................142
TransCert Shipper Management Standards.........................................................142
TransCert Shipper Management System Auditor Checklist
(2.3 Appendix D).............................................................................................142
Management Component Record Keeping..........................................................143
TransCert Shipper Preventive Control Standards (2.3) Level I Only...............144
Shipper PC Planning: PC 101–117 Preventive Control (PC)
Qualifiers Only................................................................................................145
Sanitation Component Documentation (2.3).......................................................146
TransCert Shipper Sanitation Standards (2.3).....................................................146
TransCert Shipper Sanitation Auditor Checklist.................................................147
Temperature Control and Traceability Component Documentation.......................148
TransCert Shipper Temperature and Traceability Control
Standards (2.3).................................................................................................148
TransCert Shipper Temperature and Traceability Audit Checklist.....................149
Appendices...............................................................................................................149

CHAPTER   5 In-Transit Preventive Control & HACCP Planning


and Implementation: Concepts and Standards.................................151
Contaminant Migration Through the Supply Chain................................................152
HACCP Exclusions in the Transportation Maintenance Sector..............................152
New Hazard Prevention Thinking: Short Transportation Processes.......................153
Preventive Planning.................................................................................................155
HACCP Planning, Implementation and Certification.............................................157
HACCP 101 Plan.....................................................................................................159
Preliminary HACCP Planning.................................................................................161
Food Safety Transportation Goals.......................................................................161
Flowcharts and Zones..............................................................................................161
Planning Food Transportation Controls..................................................................165
Moving the Preliminary Plan to the HACCP Forms...............................................170
x Contents

HACCP 102 HACCP Plan is Supported by Procedures.........................................176


HACCP 103 Support Team.....................................................................................176
HACCP 104 Training..............................................................................................177
HACCP 105 Location-Specific Information...........................................................177
HACCP 106 Identification of Hazards....................................................................177
HACCP 107 Identification of Critical Control Points............................................178
HACCP 108 Establish Critical Limits.....................................................................178
HACCP 109 Monitoring Procedures.......................................................................179
HACCP 110 Corrective Action...............................................................................179
HACCP 111 Record Keeping..................................................................................180
HACCP 112 Verification Activities........................................................................180
HACCP 113 Monitoring Record-Keeping Procedures...........................................181
HACCP 114 Signatures and Dates..........................................................................181
HACCP Implementation Standards and Requirements...........................................181
HACCP 115 Monitoring and Record Keeping Procedures.....................................181
HACCP 116 Records Contain Actual Readings.....................................................183
HACCP 117 Data are Recorded in a Timely Manner.............................................183
HACCP 118 Records and Recording Timeframes are Reviewed...........................183
HACCP 119 Record Formats..................................................................................183
HACCP 120 Record Reviews are Performed and Documented.............................184
HACCP 121 Corrective Action...............................................................................184
HACCP 122 Design of Corrective Actions.............................................................184
HACCP 123 Documentation of Corrective Actions...............................................185
HACCP 124 Corrective Action Reviews................................................................185
HACCP 125 Preventive Actions.............................................................................185
HACCP 126 Preventive Action Documentation.....................................................186
HACCP 127 Preventive Action Records are Reviewed within Timelines.............186
HACCP 128 Record Completeness Review............................................................186
HACCP 129 Instrument Calibration........................................................................187
HACCP 130 Calibration Procedures.......................................................................187
HACCP 131 Calibration Records............................................................................187
HACCP 132 Calibration Activities Match Procedures...........................................188
HACCP 133 Verification Activities........................................................................188
HACCP 134 Verification Completeness.................................................................188
HACCP 135 Verification Documentation...............................................................189
HACCP 136 Verification of Corrective Actions.....................................................189
HACCP 137 Maintenance of HACCP Records......................................................189
HACCP 138 Record Maintenance Period...............................................................189
HACCP 139 Availability of HACCP Records for Duplication..............................189
HACCP for In-Transit Food....................................................................................190
A Focused Preventive Controls Approach: Causal Analysis and Validation.........190
Contents xi

CHAPTER   6 In-Transit Container Sanitation Standards: Packaging


and Control of Packaging...............................................................197
Holes in the Research Base.....................................................................................198
Container Sanitation (S)..........................................................................................199
Standard S 101 Container Adulteration Preventive Planning.................................200
Sample Container Sanitation Monitoring Procedures.........................................202
Preventing Cross-Contamination.............................................................................217
Allergen Cross Contact Control in Transportation Operations...........................217
Food Supply Chain Cross-Contamination and Distribution of
Contaminants During Food Transportation Operations......................................219
Summary..................................................................................................................222

CHAPTER   7 In-Transit Temperature Control Monitoring


and Traceability Standards.............................................................223
Traceability System Considerations........................................................................225
Container Temperature Control Monitoring and Traceability Standards...............225
Standard T 101 Plan................................................................................................226
T 103 Standard: Temperature Monitoring and Traceability Procedures
Exist and Match the Planned System..................................................................227
Sample Temperature Monitoring and Traceability Procedures..........................227
ILC Container or Pallet-Tracker Procedures...........................................................237
Charge the ILC Unit............................................................................................237
Log on to the ILC Internet Account....................................................................238
Configure the Device...........................................................................................238
Starting the Device..............................................................................................238
Install the Device in a Shipment..........................................................................238
Review the Data...................................................................................................239
Retrieve and Return the Device...........................................................................239
Recording Training Events......................................................................................240
Preventive System Components..............................................................................247
The US FBI on Cargo Theft....................................................................................250
Summary..................................................................................................................255

CHAPTER   8 System Implementation..................................................................257


Ten Rules for Guiding Food Transportation Management.....................................257
Required Training....................................................................................................259
Applying Through-Put Thinking.............................................................................260
Addressing Container Maintenance Issues at an Early Date..................................263
How Should we Start Implementing Food Safety and Quality
Controls for Food Movement Processes?............................................................265
Considerations for Data Systems.............................................................................268
xii Contents

Controlling Risk and Liability: A Vertically Integrated Vision


of the Supply Chain.............................................................................................269
Risk Analysis...........................................................................................................273
Electronic Traceability.............................................................................................273
Recall Controls........................................................................................................273
Ranking Transportation Suppliers: Reducing Risk Using Cause
and Effect Thinking.............................................................................................273
Modeling Risk......................................................................................................275
Reducing Risk Through Transportation Qualification........................................275
Putting an Integrated Transportation Food Safety System Together......................275
Useful Forms............................................................................................................280
Preparing for Certification Audits...........................................................................286
Audit Weaknesses................................................................................................287
External Auditor Readiness Checklist.....................................................................289
Notes on External Audit Scoring.............................................................................289
The Importance of Corrective and Preventive Actions...........................................290
How to Fool the Auditor and Get Caught...........................................................290
Summary..................................................................................................................290

CHAPTER   9 The Future.....................................................................................293


One-Up and One-Down is Dead..............................................................................294
A Path......................................................................................................................295
Some New Technologies.........................................................................................298
Tests and Monitoring: The Dilemma......................................................................298
Aluminum Pallets on the Rise.................................................................................304
New Needs for the Food Transportation Sector Record Keeping...........................305
Seaports....................................................................................................................305
Trade Groups Take the Lead...................................................................................306
The Use of Statistical Procedures for Analysis of Mega Databases.......................306
Calibration................................................................................................................307
FSMA Impact on the International Food Safety Community.................................307
Homeostasis: Achieving Stability in Food Transportation Processes.....................308

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.
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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.

INSPECTION AS THE PRIMARY BASIS FOR FOOD QUALITY AND SAFETY


Readers might have gained a clue to this situation by carefully rereading the first paragraph. The USDA
Food Safety and Inspection Service is just that: an inspection service. It relies heavily on inspection,
certification, and audits. During my 25-year career I have never knew that those activities to positively
Guide to Food Safety and Quality During Transportation. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-812139-9.00001-0
Copyright © 2017 John M. Ryan. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1
2 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPORTER

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.

THE NEED FOR TECHNOLOGY AND HARD DATA TO ENTER


THE CERTIFICATION ARENA
Although new applications for statistical process control may need to be developed, a few bright think-
ers are moving to bridge the gap between inspection and preventive process controls. Writers for North-
west Analytical (John G. Surak), in The Future of Food Regulations [11] and Surak et al. in Integrating
HACCP and SPC [12] spark the imagination. For anyone who might be unfamiliar, HACCP contains
a set of recommended procedures for maintaining process controls in the food production (factory)
environment. These authors note that “a good HACCP program cannot depend on microbiological tests
as the means to prevent a hazard because they are too slow to provide the real-time information needed
to maintain process control properly.”
This statement illustrates the lack of understanding of the problem. We have to depend on microbio-
logical tests as the means of preventing a hazard: inspectors cannot see, smell, taste, or feel biological
contaminants. And HACCP is representative of advanced thinking in the food supply chain. HACCP is
considered advanced because the vast majority of food suppliers and handlers cannot understand what
it is all about or what it means—but HACCP is very far behind the food safety and food quality systems
we need today. Jokingly, the FDA Backgrounder [13] notes that HACCP is “Space-age technology
designed to keep food safe in outer space [and] may soon become standard here on Earth.”
We are in dire need of help. Maybe someone in outer space can give us a hand.
While HACCP has been doodling along for some time now, an attempt by the US FDA was made
to do something to clarify whatever the heck they want. So, along came the preventive control rules
6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPORTER

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.

MOVING TO MEASUREMENT AND CAUSAL ANALYSIS


Did wild pigs really cause the spinach E. coli outbreak in October 2006? Look at it this way: If you
blame wild pigs, then no one is responsible. The government is not responsible, the farm is not respon-
sible, the packer is not responsible, the shipper is not responsible and, more importantly, the auditors
and the compliance system are not responsible. No responsibility means no liability. More importantly,
 Prevention 7

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.

RISK FACTORS IN REAL TIME


Food transported in a dirty container is more likely to become adulterated, and therefore presents a
higher risk to consumers than food transported in a sanitized and refrigerated container. A company that
has a system for sanitizing, tracking, and controlling the temperature in carriers is less likely to provide
opportunities for food adulteration than a company with no system, no standards, and no business strat-
egy designed to protect them from liabilities that go along with such risky behavior.
Like other food facilities, food transportation entities should be required, as “holders” or “distribu-
tors” of food, to be registered with the FDA. Based on information that could be collected at the time
of registration, each carrier can be risk ranked based on the type of business systems they have in place
to protect food during transportation. These could include whether their carrier units are constructed
to established and approved international ATP container standards [14]; their container traceability
systems (none, paper based, electronic); their ability to independently provide real-time in-transit con-
tainer temperature and location data; their ability to provide container sanitation data; and, their ability
to provide such data for each and every container used to move food from one location to another.
Risk ranking such carriers would be relatively simple. By awarding points for each certification
component (temperature controls, traceability, sanitation), a low-risk carrier would be placed at the top
of an established “low-risk” group, which could then be highly promoted to companies needing safe
food carriers. On the other hand, carriers scoring low in their abilities and desires to implement more
protected environments would rank as a “high-risk” group. Companies wishing to employ food carriers
could use such a list to determine which carriers they would like to employ.
One would expect that high-risk carriers and those that hire them would pay higher insurance rates
than those using low-risk carriers. Such factors, of course, weigh heavily in the ability to reduce costs
that might be levied by insurers.
In reality, it would be relatively easy for the FDA or a private entity to build a software system
capable of risk ranking carriers based on sanitary, traceability, and temperature controls. Of course,
the use of such a system should be free for buyers, whereas all food transporters would be required
to register and would be charged a nominal fee to pay for maintaining such accounts. In the spirit of
continuous improvement, all would be able to improve their certification and service records and would
be allowed to upgrade their accounts, thereby possibly increasing their own system rankings.
This carrier risk factor ranking system has other implications. Suppose there is a recall. In such
cases it would make sense to investigate the high-risk carriers first. The opportunity to reduce consumer
and supplier recall exposure and recall times by doing so should be enough incentive to include a car-
rier risk ranking component in the pursuit of an integrated food safety system.

THE FORGOTTEN ELEMENT: FOOD ON THE MOVE


For the past few decades, food safety and food safety improvement efforts have focused on farms,
packinghouses, distribution and wholesale operations, processing plants, restaurants, and retail outlets.
The process that links these operations together and enables their functioning is the transportation
 The forgotten element: food on the move 9

FIGURE 1.1 Food Quality and Safety Transportation Processes

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.

FIGURE 1.2 US Agricultural Import Trend


10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSPORTER

FIGURE 1.3 US Agricultural Export Trend

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
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THE HAPPINESS OF BEING
NEARSIGHTED

When Dr. St. George Mivart contributed to a well-known English


periodical his article, “The Happiness In—Ahem!”—the title naturally
attracted immediate attention and won for the paper a consideration
which led to the universal discussion that immediately followed. No
one wished or expected to go to the place concerning which he set
forth some of the particulars, and even some of the secrets; but as
everybody had friends who were in danger of such a fate, and
enemies who were certain of it, there was naturally no little curiosity
to learn from the writings of the early Fathers and later learned
ecclesiastics whom Dr. Mivart quoted how these persons would fare
there. To the general surprise, he disclosed that even in that dismal
abode, with an eternal summer of a temperature the height of which
no thermometer known to earthly science could measure, there was
yet to be expected at times a certain degree of felicity. Christmas
and Easter, it may be remembered, were days off, when holiday
existed, the fires were banked and comparative coolness prevailed.
To the man or woman of acute sight, who sees everything far or
near without the necessity of optical aids, and to whom all
surroundings are definite and clear, and who recalls the fellow-being
who must either wear glasses or grope and stumble and be
uncertain of environment, it would appear nonsense to say that there
is a happiness in being nearsighted. And yet in a certain form of
nearsightedness there are sources of delight which even the man of
perfect sight never knows. There are scientific distinctions which the
oculist who examines your eyes and the optician who is anxious to
sell you a pair of glasses will explain between the nearsightedness
which compels you to pore over a book, holding it close to your eyes,
and the other form which enables you to read the finest print without
glasses, and yet debars you from recognizing your wife or mother-in-
law half way across the street. There is certainly not much happiness
in the former, because, although it may give the impression that you
are a close student and a man of deep erudition to go about with a
book or newspaper directly at the end of your nose, the appearance
you present is not heroic or graceful, and the young ladies seeing
you are apt to smile; and being regarded as a book-worm and
pedant you can never hope to create much of a figure in society.
It is only the nearsighted man who can not distinguish things very
well at a distance, and who, therefore, gets a strictly impressionist
view of life, who really enjoys existence. He can do without his
glasses, if necessary, or if he does not think them becoming, and yet
experience almost perfect comfort. For him, indeed, the world never
loses its illusions, and years, far from robbing him of this boon, only
adds to the glamour of enchantment in which he lives. There are
those who maintain that the really great men of history have always
been short—not in funds, but in stature—and they instance
Socrates, Napoleon, Edmund Kean, Victor Hugo and a multitude of
others; but, in point of fact it may be still more conclusively shown
that the majority of great men have been short-sighted. Much of the
romantic view of existence taken by the ancients we may ascribe to
the fact that many of them were near-sighted and had not the use of
spectacles, which did not come into vogue until the Thirteenth
Century, although the Chinese, it is said, had them for some time
before that. Nothing but nearsightedness could have so stimulated
the imagination of Shakespeare and idealized everything about him,
although, indeed, it is true that we have no portraits or busts in which
he is shown to have worn glasses. Still, there are so many
references in his writings to “thickness of sight” and difficulties of
vision, and there are such exquisite descriptions of color effects, that
we can not doubt him to have been the victim of what the doctors
would call optical infirmity, although it is quite the reverse.
The fact that many of our famous modern poets did not wear
glasses is no proof that for definite seeking they did not require
them. Byron, Shelley or Keates, we may be sure, never would have
worn glasses in any circumstances, as such appurtenances would
have been out of character. There was not in their time the great
variety of the pince-nez that we have at present, rimless and almost
invisible; but there was the very fashionable single eyeglass, rather
larger than the monocle in use at present, and that Beau Brummel
himself, and later Count D’Orsay, did not disdain. The Duke of
Wellington used a single eyeglass, tied to a black ribbon, which hung
about his neck, habitually, and through it saw the Battle of Waterloo,
and, before the engagement was over, Blücher’s columns coming
up.
But to enjoy the happiness of being nearsighted the eyeglasses
and spectacles should be dispensed with and life viewed through the
natural organs alone. Then it is, as already remarked, that we get the
impressionist effect, which is the only one worth having. The man
with what are called good eyes perceives all the details, and
consequently all the coarse and ugly particulars of the life, still and in
motion, about him, and all its faults and shortcomings. After all, what
we want is feeling; the thousand intricacies of form we do not need
or desire; give us the general effects and our spirit transfigures them.
Give us figures, incidents and scenes in vague and poetic mass, and
the most delightful and thrilling emotions are aroused.
These are the results obtained by the nearsighted man. To him
there is very little that is ugly in life, and especially is it true that all
women are beautiful. As I go through the streets I meet at every turn
the most exquisite girls, of whose features, indeed, I know little in
detail, but there comes to me a general effect of brilliant eyes, lovely
complexions and entrancing hair. Every figure is elegant and each
walks with the step of a goddess. There are some old women, but
none middle-aged or faded; I know not that most distressing of
mortal wrecks, the woman “well preserved.” I catch a swift glimpse of
a face at a window, or one flashes from a carriage—it is always fair;
in the crowded thoroughfares of the shopping districts the tall and
picturesque hats, covered with flowers; the soft gowns, the ribbons
of myriad colors flit by, giving me but a glimpse, and ravish me. Still
more enchanting are these graceful beings at night by the electric
light, or vaguely disclosed in the wan beams of the moon.
Natural scenery has a charm which the unhappy man who is not
nearsighted can never know. Everything looks uncertain, dim, hazy
and very often mystical; colors affect the eye with a delicious
softness; there are no keen and cruel contrasts; distant woods and
skies, with the multitude of intermingled hues in summer, and the
browns and grays of autumn and winter, fall tenderly upon the vision.
The changes of light upon the mountain side, and, still more vividly,
the seashore, early in the morning or at sunset, stir the deepest
sources of sentiment. The nearsighted eye is never photographic;
the lines and colors are everywhere mingled and confused, and in
both rest and action there is a delicious complexity and
indefiniteness.
One can imagine no more interesting scene of movement than
that in the evening at the height of the season on the esplanade at
Atlantic City. I never witness it without thinking of two of the dreams
of De Quincey, which he describes in some detail—the one of the
crowd moving by in endless procession, like the figures on a frieze,
on and on forever, the other of the innumerable faces of his vision
revealed in the incessant convulsions of the ocean. At about half-
past eight o’clock in the evening toward the end of July, when the
season is at its climax, this impressive throng, in two lines, moving to
the right and to the left, is most numerous. There is, so far as I am
aware, nothing precisely like it anywhere else in the world—so
variegated, so well-dressed, so lively and so complicated. To enjoy it
perfectly there must be the vagueness of a veiled vision, and then, in
addition to the passing faces, you catch the soft, dreamy effects of
the costumes—whites and pinks, sometimes even the bold
Mephistophelean red; the dim azures, the pale greens subsiding into
yellow. In the two tides goes this strange army, slow in motion,
laughing, volatile, the silvery tinkle of feminine laughter and the
deeper murmur of conversation. To observe this throng has an
absorbing fascination, but if at times you rest, it is to look over the
railing of the esplanade at the darkness of the ocean and watch the
waves rushing in, like sheeted women with outstretched and
affrighted arms.
Summing up, if I were asked to define the special enjoyment
derived from nearsightedness, I should say that it arises from two
sources—the serenity of the scenes disclosed by the sight, the
absence of harshness in sky, landscape or environment anywhere;
the fusing of mean details into an agreeable mass. And even
stranger and pleasanter than this is the mystical effect; the softness
and dreaminess of atmosphere and distances; the indolent,
abstracted and slightly melancholy tone of mind produced; the
beguiling idealization of existence.
—Walter Edgar M’Cann.
“An XVIII Century Beauty.”

From the miniature by Hugh Nicholson.


COMMENT

We take great pleasure in presenting to our readers this month the


first installment of a serial story by the famous Spanish novelist, D.
Ramon Ortega y Frias. The translation is the work of Mr. L. Solyom,
of Washington, whose ability as a linguist is well known and of a very
high order. “Elena’s Daughters,” a romance full of the charm of
movement and color, depicts, with unusual skill, the life of the
Spanish people in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, when
Philip IV was king, and when love was won by the sword and honor
was held to be a priceless thing. The manners and customs, the
superstitions and ignorance, the desperate bravery and cunning of
the times are made to contribute to the absorbing interest of the
story, an interest that is fully maintained to the concluding sentence
of the last chapter.
D. Ramon Ortega y Frias was born in 1825. Long sickness and
family misfortunes compelled him to give up studies and to devote
his life to literary pursuits. He is one of the most popular Spanish
novelists—in fact, he may be considered the father of the Spanish
novel, being the first to replace the numerous French translations
which were almost exclusively read before he wrote his original
compositions. His subjects are drawn from Spanish history and give
true pictures of the manners and customs of the country. He has also
translated some works from the French, and has written poetry and
numerous critical literary articles.
Through the courtesy of Mr. Hugh Nicholson, the well-known
English miniaturist, we are enabled to reproduce one of his most
important miniatures. It is called “An Eighteenth Century Beauty,”
and was given the place of honor in the inaugural exhibition of the
London Society of Miniature Painters, held in 1896. Mr. Nicholson
has been engaged in painting little portraits of prominent
Baltimoreans for the past two seasons, and his recent return to
Baltimore from abroad proves the continuance of his well-merited
popularity. His work is distinguished by exquisitely delicate coloring
and technique, and never lacks the strength necessary to the
successful portrayal of character.

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.

At the first meeting of the organizers of The Municipal Art


Association of the City of Baltimore, it was stated that the articles
and by-laws governing this new society had been taken almost
bodily from those of the New York organization. It was argued that as
they had been thoroughly tested and proved to be of great working
value in New York, therefore they must of necessity be suited to the
needs of Baltimore. In a certain measure this is true, but the
reasoning is rather fallacious and misleading. The artistic conditions
that prevail at the present time in the two cities are by no means the
same: New York has a Metropolitan Museum, filled with the finest
specimens of ancient and modern art, which is always open to the
public, besides an Academy of Design, a Society of American
Artists, an Architectural League and any number of galleries that are
constantly instructing the people in what is being done by native and
foreign contemporaneous artists—whether they be painters,
sculptors, or architects. In Baltimore we have only the Walters’
Gallery,—a wonderfully fine collection of paintings, ceramics, and
bronzes, to be sure, but one that is practically unchanging and that is
open to the public for only a comparatively few days of the year,—
and such small exhibitions of pictures as can be collected from time
to time through the efforts and enterprise of Mr. David Bendann and
the Charcoal Club—an organization that is far from being supported
as it should be by those interested in the artistic development of the
City.
General Felix Agnus forcibly voiced the feeling of a great many of
the gentlemen who founded the new society when he suggested that
the scope of The Municipal Art Association of the City of Baltimore
be enlarged by such changes in the articles of incorporation as
would eventually empower it to erect a public Museum, and to
receive bequests in the shape of paintings and other works of art.
We would go farther than General Agnus and suggest to the board
of Directors that the New Art Association be not only empowered to
collect funds to build a Museum, but a fire-proof, well-lighted gallery
also, constructed especially for, and devoted solely to a yearly
exhibition of works by modern artists. Until this is done Baltimore
must of necessity remain more or less ignorant and provincial in all
artistic matters. Galleries for such yearly exhibitions exist in every
other large city of the United States, and that one has not been built
here long ago is due, we are sure, not to a dearth of funds or taste,
but solely to a curious lack of co-operation among those who have
the power and the inclination to stimulate the rational development of
a love for things of beauty.
We therefore hope that The Municipal Art Association of the City
of Baltimore will not imitate too closely the objects and the by-laws of
the New York Society, but will add these other two extremely
necessary projects to an already praiseworthy program, and thereby
render our citizens more appreciative of the artistic attractions they
propose to offer them in the near future.
There is no spectacular display, either in the old world or in the
new, to compare with the New Orleans Mardi Gras. But there has
been too little care paid to the development of the floats and of the
costumes of the mummers,—those which are directly under the
control of the committee which is usually placed in charge.
We are always interested in art, and in the artist, and would
suggest that our New Orleans friends might add greatly to the
excellence of their entertainment by consulting men more of an
artistic than of a business temperament in arranging their annual and
unique displays.

The movements in the local security markets have shown a


somewhat halting tendency of late. This is not unnatural, following
the sustained upward movement and the broad and active buying
which has marked the operations in stocks and bonds for several
months. Operators and dealers are not disturbed that the market
should rest for awhile, and confidence is easy where it is felt that the
rising trend to values will again occur as soon as investors have
been able to scan the field anew and to digest the conditions which
affect the values of securities.
There has been no decline here, as this is essentially an
investment and not a speculative market. Prices are not stimulated
or advanced by stock jobbing operations and false rumors which so
seriously affect values in speculative centres, but rest solely on the
merits of the property which the security represents. There has been
a slight shading of values in a few instances in issues which had
been rapidly advanced by the strong public demand. This was
notably the case in the shares of some of the new trust companies.
The Continental Trust stock had an abnormal rise to $285 a share,
representing a premium of $85 a share, as $200 a share will be paid
in by the stockholders. Since the Stock Exchange permitted trading
in the receipts of this company the premium has declined 25 points,
as at the close of last week it was reported that the stock had been
offered 110, with 100 the best bid. Citizens’ Trust shares have also
fallen off from 57 to 49½, with declines less marked in the shares of
the older institutions, and with many of them showing gains.
The announcement of the entrance into the local trust field of a
new company with large capital and influential backing probably had
some unfavorable effect on the stocks of the companies recently
started. This new concern will be a strong bidder for business, and
while it is expected to work in a field of development, it is not unlikely
to receive some business which would have gone to the other
companies.
This field of trust seems to be a favorable and a profitable one,
however, for large combinations of capital.

We spoke in our last issue of the opportunity that was about to be


given to erect a fine and lasting monument to the memory of the
Confederate and Federal soldiers who lost their lives on the battle-
field of Antietam. This opportunity presented itself early in January to
the judges in charge of the competition for a commemorative
monument, or statue, for the erection of which ample funds were
voted by the Maryland Legislature. We had some misgivings as to
the artistic merits of the sketch that would be chosen,—owing to the
fact that such awards are usually left to the taste of artistically
incompetent persons, instead of to men whose training and
experience guarantee that the work shall be, if not great, of at least a
fair average quality,—but we had no idea that even judges selected
at random (as these evidently were) would be willing to put
themselves on record as approving a design that, while not out of
place for a summer-house or a soda-water fountain, is altogether so
in a memorial erected to the glory of our dead heroes.
If these gentlemen paid for the monument out of their own pockets
and offered it to the State as a gift, it still ought to be refused as
utterly unworthy the subject, or of public acceptance, but it is nothing
less than outrageous to force the taxpayers of Maryland to accept
and to furnish money for such a travesty on good taste. To make
matters even worse, and that, strange to say, the judges found was
entirely possible, the award was given to a New England contractor,
so that we are not only to have a most inappropriate monument, but
an inappropriate one made in another State for which an important
sum of money must be paid by the people of Maryland. We are not
narrow-minded in these matters, and believe that, to fittingly honor
our brave dead, we should have the best sculptor or architect that
can be procured, no matter whence he comes, but it can hardly be
claimed in this case that it was necessary to go outside the State.
In fact, it seems to us, it would hardly have been possible to find
anything more trivial or unsuitable, even had a prize been especially
offered for that purpose. That such things are accepted with so little
complaint by the press and public almost justifies one in abandoning
hope that we shall ever see any real improvement in our muddled
way of looking at questions of this sort.

No military organization in the United States is better and more


favorably known than the Fifth Maryland, distinctively a Southern
regiment.
For over thirty years it has stood the equal of any militia regiment
in the country. In latter years the only organization, in the popular
mind, that challenged its supremacy was the Seventh New York, and
when the famed Seventh declined to go to the Spanish war and the
Fifth, in a body, volunteered for government service, to go anywhere
they were ordered to go and do anything they were asked to do,
there could be no further doubt that the Fifth Maryland, which has
always clung to its gray uniform, emblematic of other days, was the
“real thing,” as far as the militia of the country was concerned.
It seems a shame that not only the people of Baltimore and of
Maryland, but the people of the South generally, should not take
vigorous offence that at this time, after the regiment has served its
country for over three months, and has returned to its armory in
Baltimore, for what are, apparently, political reasons and reasons of
personal gratification, this splendid body of men should be
threatened with dissolution.
In this condition which confronts the command several things
enter.
In the first place, there never was any discord, never any
disagreement among the officers until a certain element appeared.
This element has gone now, but other troubles have arisen. Its old
commanding officer, whom all the men loved, was prevented from
going to the Spanish war with his command—questionably
prevented,—as subsequent events have shown. With him,
“physically disqualified,” were other officers, quite as well beloved
and respected by the men, and all of these gentlemen still hold their
commissions from the State of Maryland.
The order retiring them was one from the Adjutant-General of the
State, which order, by the way, has very recently been revoked,—
and now a board has been appointed to examine these officers
physically and otherwise. Before the Adjutant-General recalled his
retirement order, they had asked to be returned to the offices to
which their commissions lawfully entitled them.
The make-up of the board appointed to treat the cases of these
officers has been questioned, not only upon the ground that it is
partisan, but because some of its members are not qualified to serve
upon it. Before this number of “Dixie” goes to press the board will
have met. Possibly it will have reached its decision. It is probable, if it
disqualifies these men, that numbers of Southerners will consider it a
case of hanging them first and trying them afterwards.
The people like the Fifth Maryland. Its officers like it. And if the
“retired” officers are not allowed to go back to their command,—
these officers whom their men love,—there will be no more Fifth
Regiment. Its other officers will resign, its faithful enlisted men will
vanish like smoke, and in the place of the Fifth of fame there will be
a hybrid combination, sustained by that sort of political power that
commands no respect from honest-thinking men.
There is yet time for the “powers that be” to pause. The Fifth
Regiment is not a thing to be ruthlessly slaughtered. Parties come
and parties go, but there are elections yet to come, and the men of
Maryland and of the South will not forget those who killed their
cherished Fifth Maryland.
BOOKS & AUTHORS
TWO POET-NOVELISTS.

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.”

“He rises and begins to round,


He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake—”

The lark-note is not, however, the leading characteristic of Mr.


Meredith’s muse, although quite within the scope of it. It is rather the
lark’s joy in nature clothed with the more artificial vocalism of man.
Mr. Meredith is pantheist in large measure when he attunes his lute-
strings to the demands of Mother Earth. For him the gods of Greece
do not live only in the pages of Lempriere, as most modern poets
would have us believe, but they still maintain, albeit in more subtle
form, their old supreme habitation in lawn and sylvan hollow, or mix
with the familiar miracle of grey eve and rose-red dawn. In his verse
Mr. Meredith hastens to undo the harness of that worldly wisdom that
binds him in his novels. He re-baptizes himself to the graces of
nature pure, rejoices in all that belongs to the idealism of primitive
life. The poet can pipe as rustically as a faun when he is so minded.
He can pay a moving tribute to young love and the romance of
vernal feeling, as proved by that beautiful lift of minstrelsy, “Love in
the Valley,” with its limpid, ecstatic meter, its delicious imagery and
spiritual sweetness of thought; not to speak of many other lyrics of
the same sort. These lighter pleasures and profits of George
Meredith, together with his more serious efforts, like “Ode to the
Spirit of Earth and Autumn,” a magnificent color-poem, uniquely
accenting the bacchic abandon of October and trumpeting mightily
the note of triumphant manhood, and “The Nuptials of Attila,” full of a
haunting rush of language, ought to afford substantial relish to the
general admirers of high art.
Has George Meredith’s vigorous, almost massive harp a message
for humanity? is the natural inquiry of those who reading Wordsworth
or Tennyson find in their works sure faiths and consolatory teaching.
And is such message so abeyant that only those of his readers who
are endowed with power of subtle divination may find it? Certainly in
the case of the seer the debt of clear utterance is obligatory, just as
from the lyricist we look for delight and tears and mellifluence; it is a
responsibility that falls from heaven with the mantle of inspiration,
only a congenital inceptitude for lucidity excuses it. Too often, it must
be confessed, it is only the ghostly sense of a message that trails
through Mr. Meredith’s work, glimpsing and disappearing in will-o’-
wisp fashion. The thirsting traveller chasing such mirages of
meaning over the sands of obscurity may be pardoned if he
conclude that to only the very privileged few does the Fata Morgana
of his muse grant a kindly haven of specific instruction. But while this
is true of passages and poems, it is not true of all his poems. There
is much in his volumes of verse that state distinctly his philosophical
principles. The ground-work of Mr. Meredith’s philosophy is the worth
of nature as distinct from the artificial institutions of man. In nature
pure exists the true temple of wisdom; it is the tribunal whereat all
knowledge and sentiment must finally receive its endorsement or its
condemnation. In nature we open the real book of life. It is, therefore,
that in his verse we find continually a worship of the liberty of the
forest, a recognition of its power to promote the vital growth of heart
and head. Mr. Meredith would not have us forget that the mind and
spirit are integral elements of nature. Particularly in “The Woods of
Westermain,” beginning,

“Enter these enchanted woods,


You who dare—”

is this philosophy stated forcibly and at length. Naturalness in all


things is the keynote of his utterance. It is from his poetry that we
gain the clue to that humorous and seemingly harsh, satirical attitude
towards worldliness which distinguishes his novels and has
occasioned the frequent outcry that Mr. Meredith is a heartless
epigrammatist. The truer criticism is that he derides the artifices, the
sham decencies and mawkish sentimentality of society as the
earnest champion of the natural. Thus we find Sir Willoughby
Patterne in “The Egoist” demonstrating the pursuit of a spurious
worldly philosophy, as we find the hero of “Richard Feverel” proving
the mistake of yoking nature to an artificial system, while his women,
such as Clara in “The Egoist,” Nataly in “One of Our Conquerors,”
and Diana in “Diana of the Crossways,” are clear, protesting voices
against masculine prejudices and feminine bondage. This is also the
teaching of his remarkable poem entitled “Modern Love.” George
Meredith has within the last few months added to his poetical works
a work called “Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History”
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), which while having a Pindarian
sublimity of intent, a plentitude of rapt and fiery passages is too
involved and vague to constitute a real master-work. Whatever be
said of Meredith’s faults, a serious reading of his verse cannot but
persuade one that he is a poet who is distinctly virile and worth
while. Though much that he has written may have the mark of
mortality, there is much also that wears the amaranthine wreath of
eternal life, either for beauty of phrase or for profundity of philosophic
truth.

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

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