New pathogen testing requirements for produce companies supplying Costco Wholesale Corp. may be the first of their kind, but large suppliers say they were already conducting the tests.Craig Wilson, Costco’s vice president of quality assurance and food safety, said July 18 that the company began requiring its produce suppliers to test finished products for the “Big 6” E. coli strains “a couple of months ago.”
He said the company added the rare strain O104:H4 that recently sickened more than 3,900 people in Europe to its mandatory test list “in the past two or three weeks.”
“The tests don’t make the food safer, but they do tell us if the vendors’ food safety programs are working,” Wilson said.
Source: The Packer
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