E coli and food safety

[Chris Smith]

The recent outbreak of e coli in Europe has many people here extremely worried. As the body count increases I am becoming worried too. How will this affect us? Well, I have seen a dramatic drop in sales lately. This is in part due to many of my regular customers returning to Alaska and other northern latitudes for the summer. I do believe the scare is slowing my sales too. I am having a hard time getting new customers with the bad publicity on lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. Even though the outbreak is on the opposite side of the planet there is fear here.

Now more than ever it is important for us to come up with some food safety guidelines for the growing aquaponic industry. These guidelines need to be based on science not blanket rules that do not apply to aquaponics. If we do not do this on our own I fear that food safety regulations that are influenced by agribusiness will squash aquaponics by hyping the fact that have fish feces in our systems.

Recently Friendly Aquaponics lost their Costco account because a leading food safety company has changed their stance on aquaponics. The food safety company no longer consider aquaponics safe because of fish manure in the system. The fact that cold blooded animals do not carry or transmit e coli seems to be irrelevant. I have watched Tim and Susanne drink system water on a regular basis for more than a year and a half and they have never had a problem. I have drank system water as well and I have never gotten sick either.

I know a local coffee farmer who had a similar problem based on regulations that should not apply to his crop. Here is a quote from him:"I was appalled by the news that the Food Safety folks had put the hurts to you(Friendly Aquaponics) by in effect knocking you out of Costco for the time being. On a much smaller scale I was forced to build a "coffee roasting facility" last year because the organic folks elected to enforce a law that really shouldn't apply to coffee at all. Also they dinged me two years ago because I used a manure containing (organically certified) fertilizer within 120 days of harvest. The fertilizer  was on the ground for a crop that is picked off a tree, skin removed, dried in the sun, parchment milled off, roasted to 450F, then boiled/steamed by the customer. Go figure."

The upcoming aquaponics conference could be a good time for the players in commercial to get together, discuss, and adopt guidelines for aquaponics safety.

[Ralph R. Zerbonia]

I found this report on Aquaponics and food safety. It is dated 2004 and was written by Gordon A Chalmers, DVM. It talks a bit about e.coli as well as many other food safety issues.

[Ralph R. Zerbonia]

UV would totally disrupt the biological filtration process, I would think.

TCLynx said:

I'm personally not into the whole Ideal of "sterilization" and I definitely don't like the idea of sanitizing using chemicals but...

 

This might be one situation where something like UV sterilization might be appropriate.  To a large extent the bacteria in an aquaponics system are not motile and they will be attached to surfaces and most of them will be safe from a UV sterilizer that is having system water pumped through it and the UV can help keep things like e.coli and/or salmonella under control in a commercial situation.  Though the fish don't catch either of these diseases, if the system gets contaminated by outside sources (like human skin) the bacteria can survive in a system quite nicely.  Now most of the e. coli that is all over most of us humans in small quantities is not the kind to make people ill in low doses but it is a kind that will cause the tests to be positive.  And though fish don't get/carry e. coli or salmonella, if it is present in the water in high enough quantity, it will be on their skin too.  Now usually a big issue with freshwater fish since they are normally cooked before consumption which kills those pathogens but many of the veggies in an aquaponics system are commonly not cooked so it is best to avoid contamination.

 

And where confidence is not high for the bio-security and the system is being used to feed the public, perhaps UV sterilization might be the appropriate measure.

 

Biggest problem here is UV sterilization is yet another flow rate dependent thing to calculate to make sure it will actually be effective and it's an added cost to an already tight budget for most commercial operations.

[TCLynx]

Most of the bio-filter bacteria in a media based aquaponics system lives in the gravel beds, I don't think that a UV sterilizer on the water pumping around the system would have that great an impact on the bacteria.  I'm sure it would have some impact but definitely not totally disrupt the bio-filtration unless you are using a floc type system.

 

And I've started reading through the document posted looks like the pathogen info starts around page 12

[TCLynx]

Ugh, as I continue reading the document, it is starting to seem that nothing is safe to eat.

[Earl ward]

I plan on sanitizing the water with chlorine then running the system and remove through aeration. Then cycle the system. When I say test the water only for the pathogens of concern. In a green house situation there would be no birds or warm blooded animals. You have to look at your systems and cover the issues involved in the food safety audit.

[Chris Smith]

Thank you Earl this is good information! You have given me some direction to get started and much research to do!

Earl ward said:

The times they are a changing, yes food safety is not enforced or evaluated by scientists. Im one of those people, I work for USDA FSIS. The Best advice I can give is to know what regulations cover your products. Next develop a HACCP Plan to cover all of your products. E-coli is not in cold blooded animals; so, It is not a hazard likely to occur, I know that and you know that, but it will not be accepted by any certifying agency unless you have a peer accepted document to show this, from a university or other scientific document. The 2^nd way acomplish this is to test your water. In the Haccp plan I’m writing -is to sanitize the water before cycling, then cycle the water and add fish. After the fish are added test the water on a monthly basis for generic E-coli and salmonella, after a year decrease the testing time frame because now you have historical data showing no E-Coli or salmonella. Also any added water would have to be sanitized and then added to the system. Now one more thing all fish are not covered under the same rules, Catfish are under the authority of USDA, FSIS and the rest are under FDA.

 

[David Waite]

There is not any aquaculture operation that sanitizes their water before they put it in there system. I dont think we need to start it here. I can see a water test annually on the well or water source but to sanitize is not economically viable. The report stated that e-coli and samonella  can survive in water but it didnt say it could survive in our systems. Our system have a .25 ppt of ammonia which kills both e-coli and samonella. The only documented cases of ecoli in aquaculture product came from handlers or processors and not one case came from the grower here in the US. Fish farming is the safest meat by far compared to all the others combined. It would be foolish to add a bunch of regulations to this based on theory. Processing will be the cause of desease spread or infection in aquaponics way before the fish transfer warm blooded pathogens to humans. Just a thought.

[Earl ward]

Unfortunately the regulations are all ready in place by certifying agencies and I’m not talking about the government. If you are going to sell to the Costco’s, or any other large purchasers you are going to have to have a HACCP plan and a food security program. Most contamination would be from cross contamination. All I’m saying is before you even  try to sell to these types of businesses have your ducks in a row know what  they are going to ask for, be proactive.

 

[TCLynx]

If you are drawing water from already treated municipal water or from a tested well, then I would seen no need to sanitize the water.  However, there are many places that get their source water from say ground water, lakes, ponds, rivers or even rain water collection.  I expect such a set up would need to sanitize the initial system start up water and make sure incoming top up or water change water is also of drinking water quality before adding it to a system.

 

No, there have been no cases of illness from aquaponic systems but then again there have been no cases of illness from gray water recycling but in many places it is still illegal to re-use your gray water in any way.

[Earl ward]

Thanks TC

I forgot to mention I use well water.

[Sylvia Bernstein]

While I'm not a commercial farmer I've been thoroughly intrigued by this discussion...and I think it has wide implications in the backyard world as well.  I wrote a blog post this week title "Aquaponics, Safe Food and Public Perception" that is about the e. coli scare and how it relates to what happened at Friendly.  Those of you involved in this discussion will probably find it interesting.

[Green Acre Aquaponics]

Great blog Sylvia!  Yes, there are absolutely potential huge implications here for the commercial aquaponic industry, however it can certainly filter into the backyard realm as well.  Perhaps not for those already practicing aquaponics and have a clear understanding of the inherent safety of aquaponic grwoing, but for those not yet informed and potentially scared away by this notion of animals or animal waste too close in proximity to the food and/or processing area.  

 

In light of these recent events, I think it is safe to say that the primary agenda of the Aquaponics Association that we are forming is now to focus on educating consumers and the food saftey certifying industry regarding fish, fish waste and how it relates to e-coli and other potential hazards. 

 

Most of you know that we are organizing the first annual Aquaponics Association Conference for September in Orlando.  It is our hope that many of you will attend and want to be involved in this intstrumental formation of this organization that will help promote aquaponics through education and by eliminating the myths surrounding growing aquaponically.