By STEPHANIE BEECKEN
6 News Reporter
KNOXVILLE (WATE) - A Knoxville farmer spoke Tuesday about the safety measures he uses to protect produce as the concern over the safety of cantaloupe continues.
Six people in Tennessee were sickened from cantaloupe contaminated by salmonella. The cantaloupes have been traced back to Indiana.
Dennis Fox owns The Fruit and Berry Patch, and he's been a farmer for 30 years. He keeps a close eye on all national food safety concerns.
"Just about every year they have one or two recalls of something due to bacteria contamination," Fox said.
He also says animals carry salmonella, but often the cause of the large outbreaks comes from contaminated irrigation water being sprayed on the entire crop.
To avoid this, Fox has his water checked to make sure it's clean. "We've had our water tested that we use for frost protection and it came up 1/10th the amount the contamination that they allow for swimming," he said.
Fox inspects his farm each year for cleanliness and safety. He says most farmers make sure animals are far enough away from crops and employees are washing their hands and using good hygiene.
Large farms supplying produce to companies are given a safety audit by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Fox explained. Some of the things they check include "whether or not you have restroom facilities available, whether or not you have hot and cold running water, whether you wash your equipment."
Fox says farmers can be as careful and clean as possible, but there's no way to keep all contaminants off the produce.
So consumers need to take precautions. "If you want to be real careful, get a scrub brush and scrub them down with water," he said.
The bigger outbreaks seem to be happening more often because a growing number of companies are using large farms as suppliers, Fox explained. That means if one batch is contaminated, it could be a thousand acres of the crop.
"If you want to be real careful, get a scrub brush and scrub them down with water," Dennis Fox said.
