Beware Environmental Monitoring Results!?

I’m a cautious bloke! In life, I tend to look ahead and carefully evaluate risks before I act. Yes; it can be very tiresome and somewhat reduces spontaneity (says my wife), but it’s who I am and I have accepted my “risk-aware” trait. As a matter of fact; in my field of work, this trait is quite an asset. Because, when it comes to food safety: “prevention is better than cure!” and my risk awareness feels right at home.

Prevention means, that I have been promoting the use of environmental pathogen monitoring in food factories, because a good monitoring program is like a pathogen smoke-alarm. However, my risk awareness also leads me to be cautious about testing for pathogens, because monitoring for pathogens is like going on a bear hunt; we are going to look for something dangerous and when we find it, it can get us into trouble!

Actually, pathogen test results can get us into trouble both ways; whether we Detect or Not Detect.

You see, most food companies will respond to Detected with some urgency. Pathogens in a food factory are not that common and when we have a positive sample, there may be gaps in our food safety controls that we need to fix.

Our response to Not Detected tends to be different. It is an “expected” outcome and many of us will happily accept this as a good thing; “phew; all clear, let’s go for a beer!” (Think about it: when do we ever call for help, when everything seems fine!?). Over time, this may even lead to an illusion of control: “No Jack, our factory is fine; we take lots of samples and haven’t found them”.

It can be difficult to convince management that a long run of Not Detected only tells us that “we haven’t found them yet” and perhaps a review of the monitoring program should be considered?(because factories are big, and pathogens are very, very small). So, if we are not clear on our purpose for environmental monitoring (to try and find that pathogen, before it finds us!), human nature may lead us astray and a long run of Not Detected results can give us a false sense of security.

However, to me, the most dangerous outcome of environmental monitoring are sporadic pathogen detections: the occasional Detected in a long string of Not Detected. This is where we find a pathogen, take action by throwing our chemicals at it, and do not find it again; until, wait for it, we have another Detected several months later (and repeat our chemical response).

I call this situation the ticking time bomb, where we have created a “new normal”, and are “managing” a low level of pathogen contamination in our factory environment. History shows that this management approach can lead to a product contamination (or worse), because environmental pathogens are very resilient.

So, what can we do to defuse this bomb and change our management response? How can we break this “find – spray – find – spray – find –spray” cycle?

Fortunately, technology can help us, because if we find a pathogen, we can type! We can use Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) to determine the pathogen strain and discover whether these occasional Detected pathogens are linked. And when we realise, that our sporadic detections are one and the same strain, we know our corrective actions have been unsuccessful and we need to up our game. Over time, WGS will build a factory library of pathogen strains and tell us, whether that most recent Detected result is a transient or resident pathogen in our facility.

And for me, this is what “risk aware” is all about; because you never know when and where you are going to meet that pathogen again in the future!

Jack