The Clean Sourcing Myth: Does Bacteria in Raw Come From Bad Sourcing?

When pathogens are found in raw pet foods, a common assumption is that the sourcing for the ingredients were subpar and that’s how the contamination happened. Statements such as “organic, grass-fed, pasture raised protein will have less pathogens since the animals are healthier” follow the same vein of thought. Taken one step further, some also claim that good sourcing is the only thing you need to ensure that raw food is pathogen free. Many misconceptions start with an element of truth, so let’s take a look at how these beliefs came about and what the reality is. 

A common misconception is that pathogens come from an unclean processing environment where the food is made or from sick animals at the farm. While this can be true, pathogens are usually introduced through raw materials. But most pathogens of concern (Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, STEC E.coli)are naturally found in the intestines and fecal matter of livestock and rarely in the muscle or organ tissue that we eat unless the animal is severely ill. So how does it end up on the meat?

What if you’re sourcing from a small local farm? Isn’t that safer since they’re processing their own meat? This isn’t necessarily true. Most family farms do not process their livestock themselves since meat needs to be processed under USDA inspection in order to be legally sold for human consumption. Local farms will send their livestock to be processed at nearby facilities that serve many growers in the area. If they are processing their livestock themselves, they may not be following best practices or benefiting from USDA inspectors checking for quality. 

We spend thousands each month testing our raw materials for indicator organisms such as Generic E.coli, Enterobacteriaceae, Coliforms,and Salmonella spp which are bacterial families that contain both harmless and harmful bacteria. But if clean sourcing doesn’t prevent pathogens, why invest in so much testing? There are several goals for monitoring & testing your raw materials: 

All kill steps have an upper bound in terms of how much bacterial contamination it can handle (ex. 1,000 CFUs/g) and it’s important to establish that your raw materials come in under that threshold (ex. <10 CFUs/g). If your raw materials are testing higher than expected, then you may need to look for more aggressive pathogen control measures or evaluate different suppliers. 

When most people think of evaluating suppliers, they look at claims such as “organic”, “humanely raised”, “wild-caught” etc. While these aspects are important, testing for indicator organisms reveals another layer to product quality that is harder to discern otherwise. Indicator organisms reflect a supplier’s food safety practices such as how well fruits & vegetables were washed or how quickly meat was frozen after processing. High microbial loads can not only indicate potential pathogen problems but also issues with product freshness and spoilage.

As an example, organic green beans were our “dirtiest” ingredient for a while (you may be surprised to learn that vegetables frequently test higher than meat for indicator organisms) which was because the supplier didn’t have a robust wash step after harvesting so dirt & fertilizer residues contributed to high microbial loads. We’ve since switched our green bean suppliers and saw our indicator counts improve dramatically. We’ve made several similar changes in our sourcing & supply for cleaner, better quality ingredients based on data from our raw material testing. 

Regular testing will help you establish a baseline for indicator organism levels for any given ingredient. If you notice indicator levels spike for a specific batch of ingredients, this would be a sign for you to investigate further with your supplier. It could be that there was a change in your supplier’s process, an issue during shipping & delivery, or a change even further upstream. Testing and catching potential issues at this stage is always better than discovering an issue once the product is made and shipped to customers. 

Clean sourcing is an important part of any company’s food safety approach but it can’t be the only practice used since all raw ingredients - meat, fruits, and vegetables - can easily carry pathogens. Clean, quality, sourcing works together with other aspects of your food safety approach such as facility cleaning & sanitation, and pathogen control technologies to make sure your food is safe. That’s why we’ve heavily invested in testing our raw material since it offers a way of objectively evaluating the quality of our ingredients that goes beyond label claims like “organic” or “humanely-raised”.