Posts By: Joelle Mosso
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Connecting the Dots (or Nucleotides) on Microbial Sources
Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) is a game-changer when it comes to food safety. With whole-genome sequencing, we can fundamentally shift how we approach detection, traceback, investigations into root cause, detection technology use/development, and microbial understanding of pathogenesis. In short, insight into the genetic code has ushered in a new era of science and understanding. When you pair…
Revisiting Environmental Monitoring with a Different Lens
One of my favorite types of testing programs is a well-designed environmental monitoring program. Why? It is generally the closest thing in our food safety plans that resembles a true surveillance program. EMPs are built around routinely monitoring our environments to see when and where risks may be increasing, where sanitation is failing and how traffic patterns in the facility may be spreading…
What is Food Safety Data Anyway?
I think a lot about food safety data. I doubt that surprises anyone who knows me, and especially those who have known me in the past few years. I talk about it constantly, almost obsessively. But here’s the twist - I don’t only think about food safety data. Shocking, I know. But many people have first encountered me not as a food safety geek, but as an entrepreneur and business leader, a…
The Food Safety Prisoner’s Dilemma
A scenario described in game theory is called the prisoner’s dilemma. Briefly, the prisoner’s dilemma involves two prisoners (A and B) who are being held independently for questioning. In the exercise, the potential outcomes are described based on each prisoner’s responses during interrogation, the options being to remain silent or confess. The tricky part is that the sentence for each…
The Data Dilemma: Is Data Driving Food Safety or Watching it Fail?
We live in an era where we recognize that data is currency, enormously valuable and spoken about with such grandeur and mystique that it might as well be the Holy Grail…or perhaps Pandora’s Box. Food safety data has that aura – it draws us in, tempts us with the idea that more data will solve our most elusive challenges. But does current food safety data offer these outcomes? Current…
Integrating Sustainability Practices – What Does it Mean for Food Safety?
There is an active group of industry growers, researchers, non-profits, buyers, food safety auditors/certifiers that comprise the Coalition of Food Safety & Sustainability. This group is grassroots, built from the ground up and regularly meets to address the interface between the practice of fresh produce food safety and agricultural sustainability practices. Our mission is to find ways to…
Failure Not Required
There is a common misconception that clear and direct failure must occur before a food safety outbreak. While failures can happen - and they often do – many outbreaks have occurred in companies with robust food safety programs and well-executed compliance records. In short, there was no obvious source of failure, and only a history of compliant programs. In these outbreak scenarios, gaps…
Designing for Success
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” -James Clear, Atomic Habits It is common in business to talk about designing for success. That means intentionally crafting systems and strategies that consistently deliver a product to customers efficiently, reliably and profitably. The faster and smoother we produce, the greater our efficiency— and…
A lot goes into defining a “lot”
Something occurred to me while participating in a metagenomics panel at the International Association of Food Protection (IAFP) this past summer in Cleveland, Ohio. I was attentively listening to the other panelists and how they have found value and promise in this emerging discipline, sharing insights into how they incorporate screening ingredients and processing facilities to understand their…
Western Growers Science Nexus – Putting Risk-Based Management and Community into Action
[caption id="attachment_32487" align="aligncenter" width="428"] Image created from: thewordsearchmaker.com[/caption] Hazards are easy to identify. They sometimes take a bit of looking, but generally and with time, you begin to see them - much like looking at the word search game shown above. At first glance, there are just letters. Soon, however, your eyes recognize the patterns, and you…
The False Dichotomy of Food Safety
For those who have participated in debates, common logic strategies are used to be able to win the argument and sway the audience. While logical fallacies are technically errors in reasoning, they appeal to human psychology and can often convince the audience quite effectively. We encounter logical fallacies frequently – circular arguments, ad hominems, red herrings, slippery slopes, etc.,…
The Risk of Arbitrary Food Safety Limits
I’ll take your 1-mile setback and raise you 3. Balancing Science and Assumptions in Food Safety First attempts are rarely the best. That applies to just about everything—including writing and food safety practices. This document has been edited many times, and that doesn’t make the first version wrong or useless—it’s simply part of the iterative process of finding the best way…
Permission for Risk
Risk-based management has been the on-trend phrase of the past decade within the food safety community. Globally, numerous regulations and food safety standards have adopted language that requires food-producing entities to assess their process and product, and then apply risk-based measures appropriate for the risk. This is a logical and scientifically supported theory – it makes complete…
WG Science Bringing Applied Research Studies to Members
The Western Growers Science team has been working on applied research projects in the produce industry. Most recently, we have worked to evaluate a new technology, the CytoQuant (Romer Labs), on its utility as an additional tool to monitor food contact surface cleanliness and cleaning programs. CytoQuant is a mobile flow cytometer unit that measures intact microbial cells in as little as…
Data’s First Lesson – It’s Not What It Appears.
The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data is expanding, with stated implications ranging from making our lives a bit easier with automatic orders by our refrigerators for items running low, to the slightly more complex problem of solving climate change and world peace. As with most things, the truth of what AI will offer us (especially in the foreseeable future) largely lies…
Permission for Risk pt. 2
This is part two of a two-part series on food safety and sustainability. You can read the first part of this series in the March/April edition of the Western Grower & Shipper. Risk-based management requires that we design systems that consistently and efficiently identify risk so that appropriate measures can be implemented to reduce it. Preventing the first step of identification…
Food Safety and Sustainability: Permission for Risk
Risk-based management has been the on-trend phrase of the past decade within the food safety community. Globally, numerous regulations and food safety standards have adopted language that requires food-producing entities to assess their process and product, and then apply risk-based measures appropriate for the risk. This is a logical and scientifically supported theory – it makes complete…
Activity vs. Value
In food safety and, well, really anything in life, it is always good to check if the actions we are taking are characterized as a valuable activity or just simply an activity. For example, if trying to lose weight and you go to the gym, that activity may be valuable (aka if you run on a treadmill, lift weights, etc.), or it may only be an activity if you simply walk around, chat with other…
Salmonella in the Fresh Produce Industry
Understanding Salmonella In our first installment of “Meet the Pathogens” we focused on Listeria species. A genus of bacteria that frequently challenge the food industry with their ubiquitous nature (found almost everywhere) and capacity to grow in wet cold environments common in the food industry. While Listeria is often spoken about in the context of wet processing plants (though, it…
Listeria in the Fresh Produce Industry – Expected Encounters
Why should I understand microbial hazards? In food safety, the first important step in designing/revising a food safety program is to take time to do an in-depth analysis of the hazards that a process or product may have. When it comes to microbial hazards, that means taking time to understand the organisms, learning their characteristics and trying to understand and predict their capacity…