As a group of industry food safety volunteers, the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy's Food Safety Committee has had many dialogues about Cronobacter controls and how to improve programs. As can be imagined, every company's approach and programs are impacted by their situation, plant design, customers, and many other factors. To help share some of the learnings industry has assimilated for Cronobacter control, this article follows the journey of a theoretical example—a typical ready-to-eat (RTE) dry powder plant that is on a mission to reduce and, ultimately, eliminate the incidence of Cronobacter in its environment.

This hypothetical plant had an opportunity to service a new customer, and in the process, it accepted a Cronobacter specification. The plant has a long history of Salmonella control, so plant personnel assumed they would have no issues supporting a Cronobacter testing requirement. For Salmonella, the plant has a strong pathogen environmental monitoring (PEM) program that requires mapping of identified sites, establishing links between selected sites and the potential risk to product they represent, and verification that executed control strategies are effective.