Five lessons to carry forward as this crisis unfolds.
Once again, our industry finds itself at familiar crossroads. All along the supply chain, growers, shippers, importers, wholesalers, retailers and foodservice operators across North America are on edge, as no one can predict the next recall and fallout from the headlines and questions from anxious consumers.
The arduous work ahead is to collaborate as an industry to keep recalls from happening again.
This is not unfamiliar territory for Produce Business. Twenty years ago, our founder, Jim Prevor — known industry-wide as the Perishable Pundit — thoroughly analyzed the 2006 spinach E. coli outbreak, which killed three people and sickened more than 200 in 26 states, not as a single news cycle but as a warning he refused to let the industry forget.
Jim returned to it again and again over the following decade, insisting that the industry’s real vulnerability wasn’t any one pathogen — it was memory: “As the spinach crisis recedes in time, it may recede in memory,” he wrote in 2007, “but, unfortunately, humans tend to be motivated by threats they perceive as imminent.”
Twelve years later, writing in The Wall Street Journal during the 2018 romaine crisis, he made the companion point: that protecting consumers and rebuilding trust depends on precision and proportion — targeted, evidence-based response rather than broad alarm that has the potential to destroy blameless growers.
Jim passed away in 2022, but the questions he raised have only grown more urgent — and this issue is our answer to them.
The cover story that follows, “Where Do We Go From Here? A Smarter Path Forward for Produce Safety,” gathers voices from across the supply chain — growers, retailers, scientists, trade associations — who are already building the system Jim once could only imagine — one that catches risk before it becomes an outbreak, not after.
The cover story that follows, gathers voices from across the supply chain — growers, retailers, scientists, trade associations — who are already building toward the system Jim once could only imagine: one that catches risk before it becomes an outbreak, not after.
Five lessons worth carrying forward as this crisis unfolds:
1) Don’t let urgency fade with the headlines. Every outbreak generates a burst of attention and investment that tends to erode. The industry’s job now is to convert this moment into durable change, not a memory.
2) Invest in traceability precise enough to protect the innocent. A system that can pinpoint the exact field, lot, crew and all touchpoints along the supply chain protects consumers faster — and spares blameless growers the kind of industry-wide fallout Jim wrote about in both 2007 and 2018.
3) Move from reactive testing to predictive risk management. As several experts in this issue describe, combining environmental, microbial and operational data can flag rising risk before contamination reaches a harvest.
4) Reward transparency instead of punishing it. Companies that proactively share risk data should never be penalized with that same data. A safe harbor for good-faith disclosure will uncover problems sooner than fear of liability ever will.
5) Communicate risk with precision, not panic. Swift protective action and proportionate, accurate public communication are not in conflict — both are necessary to rebuild trust.
Produce Business has spent more than four decades initiating industry improvement. We intend to keep doing exactly that, starting with this issue. In the following issues and going forward, we welcome your input on new pathways toward minimizing food safety risk. If you wish to have your comments published in Produce Business, feel free to send your thoughts and opinions to editor@producebusiness.com.
