15
Sep
If you’ve flipped through a newspaper, turned on the news, or scrolled through your Facebook or Twitter feed recently, you’ve likely heard of the current salmonella outbreak involving cucumbers from Mexico. Rest assured this recent outbreak has not escaped our notice, or the consumer’s notice. We have been asked multiple times over the last few days how this affects us and our cucumber production. The response to those questions isn’t a simple one.
Although we grow cucumbers year-round, our current cucumber production is based out of Georgia and Tennessee. The recent outbreak, of course, stems from Mexico. Yet, starting in November, we will be providing customers with cucumbers out of our farm in the Yucatan Peninsula, a.k.a Mexico. So what is the difference between our Mexico cucumbers and the ones involved in the recent salmonella outbreak?
To begin with, unlike many farms in Mexico, our farm is actually owned, farmed, and operated by Southern Valley. We do not contract out to a grower in Mexico. We are not buying from a supplier. We are the farmer, supplier, packer, and shipper. Southern Valley de Yucatan IS Southern Valley. This makes our farm American-owned and operated unlike many farms in Mexico which only serve as suppliers to an American distributor. We are not simply a farming operation that has invested money into the soil of another company. Instead we are a company that actually owns the soil we farm. We don’t have to assume what is taking place on the farm in Mexico: we know. Because we are the ones who bought the land, prepped the soil, and built the packing houses. We designed and built Southern Valley de Yucatan from the ground up – literally.
Aerial view of Southern Valley de Yucatan’s cucumber fields and worker housing.
While we can not speak for everyone’s production practices in Mexico, we can speak to ours and the production safeguards we have always had in place in regard to food safety.
- We do not use surface water to irrigate in Mexico but instead use only deep well water. This eliminates the risk of bacteria found in surface water, which is regularly exposed to wildlife species and therefore, salmonella.
- Not only do we not use surface water, which greatly reduces the risk of contamination, but we also only use drip-tape irrigation. Therefore, irrigation water never touches the plant but goes directly to the root zone instead.
- Finally, because our cucumbers are Pole-Grown, by the time the vine reaches approximately 1’ in length, it is already being trained to climb the netting. This means that at no time is a cucumber lying on the ground or in water. Again, this greatly reduces the risk of soil or groundwater contamination.
In the packing and processing facilities, which are owned and operated by Southern Valley directly, all produce is sent through a chlorinated wash as an additional step to reduce the possibility of contamination before being packed and stored in a refrigerated cooling space. Our fields and packing houses are Primus Global Food Safety Certified as well as being subject to unannounced 2nd party audits throughout the year. The Primus audit covers Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). FSMS includes the paperwork and management aspect of the program. GAP relates to the safety, sanitation, hygiene and harvesting practices covered in the field while GMP deals with the safety, sanitation, hygiene and food handling practices within the packing house. In addition, Southern Valley was also a leader in the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) which created a case labeling system to aid in the traceability of product in the case of a recall. Southern Valley is also C-TPAT certified, which safeguards product from bioterror threats in partnership with US Customs and Border Patrol.
Although every field and packing house employee goes through food safety training as a part of their orientation when hired at Southern Valley, we also go through the packing house and the fields conducting refresher trainings for the workers multiple times each year. Packing house food safety includes concepts such as wearing a hair restraint, washing hands, and other personal safety and hygiene practices. Following rules like these help keep our packing environment clean and safe for the customer and ultimately the consumer.
No farm can guarantee freedom from the risk of a potential outbreak, but we can implement practices to significantly reduce those risks. That is exactly what Southern Valley has done, not only in Yucatan, but at our farms in Georgia and Tennessee as well. So the next time you purchase a Southern Valley cucumber you can rest easy knowing you are purchasing product from an American-owned and operated farm with food safety practices put into place to protect your family. At the end of the day our food safety practices don’t simply protect our customers, but they also protect our families – the same families who first began farming this soil, were raised on it, and continue to eat the food grown from it today.