Processing seafood poses uniquely challenging and complex safety concerns.
In a recent Food Safety Magazine webinar sponsored by Hygiena, industry experts Lisa Goché (CEO, Seafood Collaborators LLC), Colin Oliver (Managing Director, Produco), and Dr. Danielle Sohier (Director of Scientific Affairs, Hygiena) discussed the challenges of seafood safety and offered tips on methods that can help prevent contamination.
Colin Oliver, Managing Director of Produco, started the webinar by breaking down six reasons seafood is one of the most demanding categories for pathogen testing:
He said that the risk profile for companies comes down to “determining when and where in the supply chain you fit and which products are most relevant to you.”
As seafood is processed, Oliver said it faces several key drivers of persistent pathogen contamination:
Lisa Goché, CEO of Seafood Collaborators LLC, began her comments by giving a harrowing account of the complexity of seafood safety and the “thousands of species and product forms” that must be protected.
She highlighted the design of the processing environment as a major factor in seafood product safety and the necessity to constantly account for time and temperature. But she also highlighted a personal pet peeve: the employee with the hose.
“Everybody who has sanitation operations or if you're an auditor, pay attention to the cleaning crew because I can't tell you how many times I've seen this in the hundreds of plants that I've been in around the world. You've got people in the plant diligently cleaning, blasting everything with high-pressure hoses. That’s great, except that you have harborage areas. There’s bacteria on the floor, there might be Listeria in the drain, there's debris on the equipment on the walls. And when you do that, it spreads it all over the place.”
She also highlighted the dangers posed by standing water, and how the hosing of equipment during wet cleaning can exacerbate this issue.
She said it is key that supervisors look at how the cleaning crew is actually operating and that they are not “potentially creating a bigger problem for you.”
Colin Oliver talked about how “that behavioral piece is so important,” and that nothing can replace time spent on the floor.
“There is that behavioral piece which is so important, and it's that time spent on the floor,” adding that ironclad verification and validation measures are essential to ensure microbial risk is controlled.
Oliver spoke about the importance of documenting cleaning and sanitation actions and adopting a mindset of questioning actions, not simply checking a box.
“It’s about asking some of those positive and negative questions, and I think also changing and challenging your checklist so you don't get that sort of checklist blindness where employees are used to answering yes to everything and putting a tick in the box.”
Lisa Goché spoke about how consumers are becoming more demanding about food safety and about knowing what is in the products they consume, arguably making it even more important for companies to uphold the highest safety standards.
Oliver also emphasized the importance of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) guidelines, and said that while HACCP has been used for decades, “I feel that in a number of environments you enter, there is a lack of knowledge around HACCP.”
Oliver also presented a breakdown of the Global Food Safety Initiative that requires mandatory HACCP guidelines for fish and fishery products. GFSI also mandates that all covered processors conduct a hazard analysis and operate a HACCP plan where hazards are reasonably likely.
Lisa Goché said that critical limits must be indexed and science-based, highlighting the importance of data in the verification and validation process.
These documentation methods include:
Doctor Danielle Sohier, director of scientific affairs at Hygiena, spoke at length about the company's environmental monitoring and microbiological sampling tools and their role in contamination prevention.
Sohier described what a “proper seafood program” tests for:
She said that better testing and data-based analysis are key to preventing potentially devastating safety incidents.
“It’s about the process and controlling and evaluating the trends. If you see an increase, you react, and it's better to react and follow these trends than to be late. Because that is usually when you have a pathogen in the finished food.”
She said that data management “it’s not about paperwork anymore; it's about managing collective actions to uphold your food safety culture and make sure you’re in compliance with major food safety certifications.
She also highlighted her company’s testing products and how they are part of a rapid testing system that detects risk earlier in production.
In the closing question-and-answer section, Lisa Goché highlighted a mistake that people often make in corrective actions.
“That's one of the deficiencies I see; it’s that corrective action isn't “I fired the person that did it.” Corrective action is actually about what caused the problem in the first place,” she said, adding that training and understanding are key to preventing further safety issues.
She also said that third-party auditing “isn’t a one-and-done thing; it’s not a guarantee. What it does is verify that you have a proper system in place.”
Did you miss the live broadcast? The webinar will be available on-demand until September, 2027. View it on-demand here.