Meeting the increasing demands of the global food supply chain while maintaining food safety and testing requirements involves significant levels of natural resources, often leading to large amounts of physical waste. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, due to its quick decay rate, food waste in landfills is contributing to more methane emissions than any other landfilled materials. An estimated 58% of the fugitive methane emissions (i.e., those released to the atmosphere) from municipal solid waste landfills are from landfilled food waste.

In response, the food industry has increased its sustainability efforts to create eco-friendlier processes. One of the fundamental ways food processors have achieved new sustainability initiatives is through microbiological methods, which are intended to grow or detect microorganisms or toxins produced by organisms in their food or environment. (Non-microbiological methods can be temperature measurements and magnetic or x-ray detection of metals or other foreign materials in food.)

This type of testing can help determine if food quality meets desired standards so that it doesn’t spoil or possibly make a consumer sick. Implementing the correct microbiological methods throughout the production of food, from field-to-fork, can proactively prevent food spoilage events, thereby averting significant amounts of food from entering landfills. 

However, increased testing also comes with an environmental cost. The amount of waste produced in a food testing laboratory is rarely considered in the sustainability journey of food. Food processors are now requesting microbiological methods that not only deliver speed and accuracy, but also reduce energy use, water consumption and waste, in order to help them reduce their overall environmental footprint.

A Complex Supply Chain and a Big Environmental Impact

Various types of microbiological tests are performed at different food processing stages including harvest, raw material processing, importing shipments/distribution, pre-production and finished product. Testing is performed at each stage of the chain to prevent cross-contamination, which can result in food safety risks or a spoilage event. While all of this testing is imperative in order to protect consumers and maintain brand reputation by producing high-quality foods, the testing itself can generate significant amounts of waste.

For example, traditional agar testing media has been available for over 100 years and is still used today. But, compared to modern testing methods, agar requires a significant amount of water and energy, in order to create and store agar dishes in large lab refrigerators. Technicians spend hours making agar dishes, and can be exposed to hazardous materials in the process. In-lab agar dish creation can often introduce errors or inconsistencies. When this happens, agar dishes are discarded and remade, creating more unnecessary waste.

Microbiological Methods Help Meet Sustainability Goals in Three Ways

Reducing food waste. Consider this: one test result can impact millions of dollars in finished food products. Using a testing method that provides consistency and accuracy in test results can greatly impact reducing food waste.  

If a test result shows contamination, but turns out to be inaccurate, it could lead to needlessly scrapping enormous amounts of food. If a test shows no contamination, but is later found to be inaccurate, it may result in a costly voluntary recall event after food is already on store shelves. This wastes resources, costs money, may risk consumer safety, and negatively impacts brand reputation.  

Test variability can result from improper media preparation, which often comes with preparing agar in-house. Media preparation variables can include contamination of the media, failing to meet critical temperatures for heating and cooling, inaccuracies when measuring, instrument calibration, and more. However, by using a ready-to-use dry-film testing solution, many of these variabilities are mitigated. 

Reducing media waste. Interestingly, the amount of media waste generated in a food microbiological laboratory is often not considered a part of sustainability metrics. However, as companies look closer into sustainability pathways, this is an optimal area to evolve. Alternative technologies and testing approaches have not only improved food safety testing but offer measurable impacts on sustainability. 

For example, lab managers can adopt alternative tests such as ready-to-use dry-film plates. Dry-film plate technology is well-proven to save labs time and reduce the amount of resources used compared to agar. 

One dry-film technology used 75% less energy, 80% less water, emitted 75% less greenhouse gas, and produced 66% less waste than agar. Lab savings can add up fast over a year.  

Supporting proactive risk monitoring. 

Only testing food products at the finished production line puts food processors in a reactive position. Manufacturers are required to hold food products until test results are delivered. If there is an issue, they perform a root cause analysis to determine if the contamination event was due to a contaminated incoming raw material, failure of a critical control point in their manufacturing process, or an environmental contamination event. This reactive approach means that all the resources that went into the finished product have now been wasted, regardless of when the contamination occurred.  

Alternatively, a robust environmental monitoring program can help companies become proactive and identify the risk of cross-contamination events before they ever happen. A proactive, holistic environmental monitoring program should include ATP testing, allergen testing, pathogen testing, and quality indicator testing. These tests verify cleaning and sanitation practices are carried out effectively to prevent cross-contamination from the processing environment or line changeovers. Environmental monitoring programs allow labs to collect essential data points that can be used to track and identify issues before they become problems that may result in a recall or scrapping of the finished product.

Working Smarter for Safety And Sustainability

Across the entire food landscape, sustainability continues to move from optional to imperative. With food prices rising, growers, processors, retailers and others along the chain can no longer afford to waste viable food products, nor can they risk damaging their brands. 

Consumers demand environmental oversight, but also want high levels of food quality and safety, along with accessible prices. To accomplish these together, we all must work smarter. This means closely looking at lab practices to ensure proactive food safety strategies, choosing accurate and effective testing methods, evaluating and reducing lab waste, and testing in ways that both avoid risk and flag risk as quickly as possible. Sustainability might not have started in a lab, but by evolving our lab practices, food companies can achieve more of their sustainability goals.

Annie Simmons is field application scientist at Neogen Food Safety.