How vegetables get from the field to your kitchen
November is Arizona Leafy Greens Month! Yuma County growers are beginning the harvest of all the beautiful vegetables they are growing. The cool weather is a welcome relief to our summer heat.
Food Safety is a crucial part to the production of fresh vegetables. Do you ever think about how many people and processes are involved in the trip your fresh produce takes from the field to your kitchen? Let’s take a look at some of the stops your lettuce, romaine or cauliflower makes.
Once the grower has produced the desired crop, a harvest comes in to remove the crop from the field. These workers receive extensive training and supervision in the safe handling of fresh produce and there are daily checklists that the food safety supervisor for each company goes through to maintain quality. From the field, trucks take the product either to the cooler or processing plant.
At the cooler, if the product is boxed in the field, it is cooled rapidly in the cooling tube to 45 degrees or less and placed in cold rooms to maintain the required temperature. Refrigerated trailers back up to the loading dock and the chilled produce in boxes are loaded. The trucks then travel to destinations across the United States and Canada.
Once at their destinations, the products are unloaded into a handling facility to be delivered to local stores and restaurants. From there it is prepared and served at your table.
All along the trip, there is the potential for the produce to be mishandled. The truck may be delayed and the produce loses quality. It may be so cold that the product freezes in the truck, or the refrigeration unit may not maintain the correct temperature and the produce gets too warm. When the produce is unloaded at the distribution center, there is a possibility that the holding area is not cool enough or a pallet is misplaced and doesn’t make it into storage.
If the vegetables get through to its home or business destination in quality condition, the challenge is now storing and preparing them. All along the travel path of fruits and vegetables, folks handling it are trained in food safety. Depending on the level of emphasis in business, the proper care and handling of food products for food safety is not always the primary concern.
When preparing food, there is always the potential of cross contamination if knives, cutting boards, bowls and cooking pans are not cleaned properly between uses. None of the problems that occur in food safety are deliberate. It is a lack of training and emphasis on the value of food safety practices. There is a continuous process of training, review and reinforcement that prevents food borne problems from occurring.
The United States has the safest food supplies in the world and agricultural producers work continuously to improve growing, harvest, transportation and distribution methods to make sure that the products available are of the highest quality.
To the consumer: Buy the freshest-looking produce, check the “best buy” date that is on packaged items and look at the product in the container, regardless of the date. Buy and enjoy the wonderful variety for vegetables and fruits that our farms grow so carefully for you.