AU: Watch the wash for food safety in fruit production
All quality assurance (QA) schemes list water as an input to be managed for potential hazards. The challenge with managing water quality is its variability due to multiple environmental factors which are beyond grower control.
However, growers can control water quality at point of use in fruit packing operations. The importance of this was clearly demonstrated in the tropical fruit industry in separate incidents in recent years. On two occasions WA tropical fruit was contaminated with Salmonella and traceback linked the source to the wash water. A treated water source was in use and no previous known issues had been identified with the fruit from routine laboratory testing.
This is one of a number of useful food safety documents available from the Food Safety Section of the Western Australian Department of Agriculture and Food website. Click here to access.