Chris Blanchard, Rock Spring Farm

In the middle of the recent heat wave, one of my neighboring farmers called me late one afternoon.

I spend a lot of time talking to farmers about food safety, and have given workshops on the subject everywhere from Alaska to Iowa (and am scheduled to do it from Missouri to Pennsylvania this winter) writing about food safety for a long time, because the whole subject of microbiological contamination of food is just kind of gross, both in its causes and its typical results. But having just spent two days in food safety training sessions, I think it's time to say something.

I cut my market farming teeth on mesclun mix back in the early 1990's, so I've always tended to take food safety seriously. When you sell a ready-to-eat product, you owe it to your customers to make certain it won't make them sick. And sickness has become more and more common from fresh produce over the years. Some of this has come from the growing virulence of microbial pathogens, and some of it has come from their greater spread, particularly (I think - I can't cite resources on this one) with the spread of factory farms. Once virulent strains get into the environment, they tend to spread via wildlife as well as via livestock, and dust and water and flies can carry them around as well.

Food safety experts describe October of 2006 as the "9/11 of the produce industry." That's when some 1500 people across the country were sickened by spinach that became contaminated somewhere along the chain of production. Most people don't realize that over 50 billion (yes, billion) servings of leafy greens were consumed in this country that year, which points to a pretty darned-safe food supply; but still, if you or someone you loved was one of those 1500, it doesn't really matter how much safe food was out there that year.

For me, the most compelling impact of the spinach outbreak was what happened to the industry. Spinach growers in the Midwest were completely shut down, because nobody was buying spinach, even if it was grown far away from the contaminated fields. And spinach sales still haven't returned to pre-2006 levels. Just from a pure moneyed-business interest, we clearly need safe food. I worry about what will happen to programs like farm-to-school if an outbreak at a school is ever tied to a local food producer. And I worry about kids getting sick.

(Please keep in mind that the vast majority of microbial contamination happens in the kitchen, from unwashed hands and cross-contamination from meat.)

When we put up a new packing house in 2006, we made certain that it complied with good food safety practices. We installed dedicated hand washing sinks, washable walls, and good drainage. And we separated the keep-it-clean spaces where we package products from the get-it-clean spaces where we get the dirt off. We've always used dedicated containers for harvesting and packing produce, and our wash basins are stainless steel and food-grade plastic, and only used for washing produce. Since then, we've standardized practices for sanitizing our wash water (we've always sanitized our wash water, but we upgraded and institutionalized our practices), and begun a program of quarterly testing of our well water. We have a pleasantly boring system to monitor for pests, and we keep a regular log of cooler temperatures, so that we make certain people are checking them on a regular basis. And last fall, we upgraded a tracking system that was already considered a model to provide even more accurate tracebacks, so that I can tell you from which field and on which day the carrots in this week's CSA boxes were harvested.

We were especially pleased to pass our USDA GAPs audit with flying colors last fall, a recognition that our efforts are paying off. After all, food safety is not just a legal responsibility, it's a moral and ethical obligation that I have with the people who eat the food from my farm.