Producer Contamination Of Pistachios Is Rather Odd April 3, 2009 Source of
Article: http://www.perishablepundit.com/#22 The decision to close an industry is a
serious one. We wanted to learn as much as we could about the pistachio
situation and so asked Pundit Investigator and Special Projects Editor Mira
Slott to find out more. People were pretty closed-mouthed, but Mira
was able to clarify some important points:
Q: You say there are no current indications
that pistachios processed outside of the Setton Pistachio facility are
affected by this recall. How do you know this? Are you confident the problem
is linked only to Setton Pistachio? A: We’re going by what information was
released by FDA, and from the press briefing. Government testing is being
conducted right now from samples taken at the Setton facilities. Until we
know those results, then and only then is there a confirmation to the source.
Q: What do you mean when you say, “…as a
further precautionary measure, growers and processors are committed to
continuing testing of pistachio shipments going forward” — as you mentioned
in your statement.
Are there additional food safety measures being done that are different than
what was done before? A: We do have good agricultural and
manufacturing practices on the grower and processor side, adopted 15 years
ago. On top of that, each and every processor is going through individual
facility testing. We want to be doubly sure facilities are clean and safe, so
they’re going through and doing additional testing. The last thing anything
would want is to determine that the problem is larger. Q: Are all pistachios roasted, providing a
kill step? A: For pistachios, even raw ones, they do
go through a food safety process when brought in from the field. The outside
hull is taken off and they go through a water bath that has chlorine in it.
Lastly, a drying process removes moisture out of the nut to make it more
shelf stable and also acts as a killing step, and the nuts are heated for
four hours or so at 160 to 200 degrees. Q: Is there any historical precedent for a
problem like this to occur? A: The industry believes this is an
isolated incident. We never had salmonella found on pistachios before. Q: Never? A: In our industry, we never had a problem
with salmonella contamination. Everyone was perplexed when they heard Kraft
reported to FDA the finding of salmonella on pistachios. We appreciate Mr. Matoian’s taking the time
to help clarify this issue for the industry. It would be helpful if he could
be more definitive about the “kill step” – this is typically expressed as a “log reduction,”
which is a 10-fold, or 1 decimal place or 90% reduction in a pathogen. Here
is an FDA log-reduction chart:
And FDA gives this simple example: Two Practical Ways of Looking at 5-Log Reduction: Reduction of
100,000 bad bugs in one contaminated serving to 1 bad bug in a serving. Reduction of
100,000 contaminated servings to 1 contaminated serving. All associations or organizations that
claim they have some sort of “kill step” need to express the efficacy of such
steps in this sort of language if they are to be persuasive to the media and
thus the public. Some food safety experts have told us you need heat of at
least 300 degrees F. to kill Salmonella. Still, we have a product not known to
harbor salmonella and that has some sort of kill step. To leap to the
conclusion from an isolated finding on pistachios that have been sitting in a
customer’s facility for months that this establishes even a prima facie case for
producer-contamination is rather odd. Once again, thanks to Richard Matoian and
the Western Pistachio Association for helping to explain the intricate world
of pistachios to the broader industry. |
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