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The food industry is still in hysteria over Listeria, as recent news has qualified outlandish negligence on the part of auditors related to the October 2011 contaminated cantaloupe epidemic. The unfortunate outbreak resulted in 30 deaths, 146 illnesses and even prompted one woman to suffer a miscarriage after consuming the infected fruit. In a shocking twist to the incident, recent federal investigation of Jensen Farms, the responsible distributor of the tainted cantaloupe, discovered a slew of hazardous factors noted in the same audit that granted the farm a “superior” rating.
The auditors responsible for the rating were sent from Primus Labs, one of the nation’s largest food facility auditors, who were directly hired by Jensen Farms to do their reoccurring auditing. Primus Labs has a strong track record of passing the vast majority of farms they audit, validating that approximately 98.7 percent of the clients they audit pass regulations.
A reassuring notion in theory, but the facts illuminate a far more dangerous and hazardous reality: auditors are passing food facilities that have no business being passed.
For instance, the dodgy factors that led to the ultimate Listeria food fatalities at Jensen Farms were such negligent basics as unsterile equipment, numerous dirty pools of bacteria-filled water on farm premises, discontinued antibacterial wash use and a refusal to pre-cool recently cropped cantaloupe, (a common sense process widely used in the fruit industry to stop bacteria growth.)
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