General Manager’s Report
By Terry Appleby and Roy Raven

Some Things Your Supermarket Will Tell You (That Others May Not)

This is the second of three articles based on a report in the August ’01 issue of Smart Money magazine involving common practices in the grocery industry. Terry’s first article was in the September issue of the Co-op News.

In her article "10 things Your Supermarket Won’t Tell You," author Anne Kadet lists the following four food safety issues as problems that your supermarket won’t tell you about.

1. Based on reports from the New York State Department of Agriculture, she asserts that as many as 15 percent of surveyed supermarkets have problems with rodents and other pests infesting their stores. Many stores compound the issue by using and storing pesticides in the vicinity of food.

2. Through conversations with North Carolina officials, she learned that employees may be the number one cause of cross-contamination of food products. She suggests this is due, in part, to poor standards in supermarkets and, in part, to cost-cutting by management to reduce labor costs, leaving less time for cleaning and sanitizing work spaces.

3. Inspections and enforcement of food safety standards by health officials are compromised by inconsistency in the application of the national food code updates regularly issued by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She found that some jurisdictions are using the 1976 Food Code.

4. Laws regulating freshness and repackaging are not very stringent. In a majority of states, no type of freshness dating is required on food.

Co-op Practice in the Area of Food Safety
Our Co-op takes its responsibility for food safety seriously. To this end, the Co-op has a standing operations committee (Food Safety) charged with the responsibility to oversee efforts in that area. The Food Safety Committee — comprised of the two store managers, meat managers at the two food stores, the Produce Merchandiser, the Food Service Director, the Merchandising Director, and the Education Director — develops standards and practices aimed at safeguarding the food we sell. They meet biweekly to review the organization’s practices and develop guidelines for use by the operations staff. For obvious reasons, their work is focused on the departments handling the most perishable foods, such as dairy, meat, prepared foods, and seafood, but also regulates the use and storage of potential food contaminants such as cleaning agents.

In its capacity of oversight for food safety, the Committee examines operational activities and develops procedures intended to ensure safe handling, storage, and packaging of the food we sell. During the past four years, they have established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in the areas of personal hygiene and health; glove and uniform use; cleaning and sanitation of surfaces, equipment, and smallwares; temperature monitoring of food products at receiving, storage, and display; and sanitary ice handling, among others. The standards comply with the 1999 FDA Food Code and will be updated to meet the 2001 Food Code being released as we go to print.

The implementation and monitoring of the SOPs is the responsibility of the food store managers and the Food Service Director. The Food Safety Committee does periodic surprise inspections of all five of our locations to ensure compliance with SOPs and to identify potential problems. Like other retail food establishments, the Co-op also receives regular inspections from local health inspectors. The Food Safety Committee reviews all inspection results and initiates any corrective action on any problems which may have been identified. I am willing to share the results of our inspections with any interested member.

At the Commissary
Over half of the staff working in the Co-op’s Commissary Kitchen have had ServSafe training, with periodic attendance at refresher courses. In addition, the Commissary Kitchen staff follows a hazard analysis critical control points (HACCP) plan with close quality control monitoring of ingredients and finished products from receiving through production and sales.

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