Why Food Safety Deserves more Attention in Controlled Atmosphere Agriculture
What’s not to love about lettuce and other leafy greens grown in controlled atmosphere agriculture (CEA)? Venture capital and the continued migration and concentration of eaters in urban areas has and is continuing to support a tremendous boom in CEA. Whether hydroponic, aeroponic, or bioponic the interest in and expansion of various indoor cultivation systems for leafy greens may seem like a welcome development from a food safety perspective. After all, greens produced in CEA systems seem safely removed from the threats of animal waste and contaminated surface irrigation water, linked with the many recent E. coli outbreaks in lettuce.
I know of at least one large food company that has made strategic shifts to leafy greens from CEA to avoid food safety concerns associated with outdoor greens. Outdoor-grown romaine lettuce had so many outbreaks in both the fall of 2017 and 2018, as well as the multi-state outbreak last summer that sickened more than 200 people, that some companies moved to sourcing hydroponic lettuce exclusively to avoid the potential risk and even more serious issue with customer perception. But, is CEA inherently any safer than outdoor greens? What food safety concerns exist in indoor environments? What about in earlier stage, less mature food companies? Who has noted these challenges and how is the CEA industry tackling them?
Dr. Sarah Taber first sounded the alarm about the risks to the burgeoning CEA industry in 2018, in the wake of the most deadly of the recent romaine outbreaks that left 5 dead. A plant scientist and industry consultant, she noted that the sanitizing benefits of air circulation and sunlight that are omnipresent in outdoor systems, don’t exist in indoor systems. Operators of CEA systems must closely and continuously monitor temperature, humidity, and nutrient conditions for breakdowns that could foster dangerous bacterial growth. Also noting the relative youth of the industry, Dr. Taber emphasized the opportunity to mitigate risks through improved management and adherence to existing food safety certification frameworks.
Purdue University Food Safety Specialist Amanda Deering expanded on Dr.Taber’s call for action in her presentation last fall, where she pointed out shared risk factors between CEA and conventional outdoor systems: people and water. Despite industry desire to move toward expanded adoption of automation in production operations, people are still omnipresent in CEA. With people comes risk, and with water that risk can move, contaminating large quantities quickly in new, well-funded CEA facilities.
Industry leaders responded to these risks by forming the CEA Food Safety Coalition where leading companies who have completed third-party food safety audits of their facilities are invited to come together and establish food safety standards for the industry. The coalition announced their formation in 2018, and just completed formation of their governance structure began their search for an executive director next month. This coalition signifies a substantive step in the industry’s maturity and demonstrates their renewed dedicated to educating and protecting consumers health. I am excited to sit down with several founding members of the coalition to discuss their plans for improvement in this important area at NYC AgTech Week on 9/25 and CleanTechIQ in 9/26.
