FSMA Fridays: Listeria - The Conversation Continues (Part Two Of Four)

View the entire webcast or read part one of the series

In part one of FSMA Fridays: Listeria - The Conversation Continues, SafetyChain Software’s VP of Marketing, Jill Bender was joined by TAG’s VP of Scientific Affairs Dr. Peyman Fatemi and TAG’s Senior Director of Food Safety Randy Porter to discuss listeria control under the FDA. Here, in part two, the trio continues their conversation.

Jill: Randy, I'll go ahead and ask you this one: Is there an acceptable level of positive for Listeria species, such as zone three and four?

Randy: Well, you would like to say that the goal is certainly zero. But, that's not reality because Listeria is so ubiquitous in the environment and in the facilities. If you have a facility that has a product mix and/or has a wet environment, called storage environment, certainly you're at a much higher risk to have positives that show up in your environmental program.

The FDA Listeria Document talks to understanding the effectiveness of your program, and if you have all the zeroes your program likely is not well designed to find them. The goal is to search, to seek, and to destroy. You should expect to find some occasional positive. Now having said that, if you have more than the occasional hit, if you have daily, weekly, and multiple hits, that's going to be an issue with the FDA. It really comes back to how robust your program is and are you actively seeking to destroy, to find, and to find the sources and then to destroy them with good, solid corrective actions? Again, it's really about how well you’re managing the program and how well are you’re finding positive test results. And more importantly, how well are you eradicating those from your facility.