SAINT PAUL, Minn. (KEYC) -Over the past month Taylor Farms has made headlines with food recalls for cyclospora in iceberg lettuce sourced from Mexico and salmonella in jalapeno products sent out through Coast Citrus Distributors across over a dozen states.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture said incidents like these unfortunately happen from time to time, due to multiple levels of security required to keep food safe including everything from water quality and worker health on the farm, to sanitation and testing at a food processor and storage and hygiene at distributors.
Erin Smilanich, the the department’s recall coordinator with the Food and Feed Safety Division’s Rapid Response Team, said for Minnesota specifically, while it was part of the jalapenos recall, no contaminated lettuce from Taylor Farms made it into the state.
Smilanich said outbreaks like these can be difficult to track due to the multiple levels of accountability that need to be checked.
Contamination can come from a wide variety of sources including sick workers, contaminated soil, water, or just a failure to follow procedure, and even a small amount of contamination can affect a large amount of food.
“It’s also super important to realize that not every outbreak was caused by one careless person or one obvious mistake. Our job is to follow the evidence, determine where the system failed and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Smilanich said.
When a major outbreak occurs in the state, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture responds, but when it is part of a wider national outbreak, Smilanich said her team often plays more of a supporting role tracking its impact with local distributors and companies.
When an outbreak occurs, and a company has been found to be the source, Smilanich said the affected company will often put out a recall notice to consumers and their partners, to make sure the affected product is taken off the shelves.
It is then that company’s responsibility to help state and federal officials track down what went wrong, make changes to avoid future contamination, or potentially face fines.
The department recommends Minnesota consumers that want to know what products might be facing a recall in their area, subscribe to its Recall and Consumer Advisory Newsletter.
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