United Fresh Senior Vice President for Food Safety and Technology Dr. David Gombas held a series of meetings this week with member companies in the Salinas, Calif. area to discuss two projects currently underway on microbiological testing. First, Dr. Gombas and a team of member companies and academic experts are preparing a white paper on microbiological testing objectives, methods, measurements and analysis in different produce industry operations. The goal of the paper is to give all stakeholders a roadmap to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of testing, and what kinds of testing may be most appropriate in different settings. In addition, Dr. Gombas met with industry experts to continue work on a United Fresh Research & Education Foundation project to build a confidential industrywide database of microbiological test results. "These results will be aggregated and blinded for protection to prevent disclosure to any unauthorized parties, but will be tremendously useful in identifying and tracking industry trends," Dave said. "Companies that participate in the database project will also be able to compare their own confidential test results against the industry database, and gain an immediate understanding of their own operations compared with industry averages." For more information, contact Dr. David Gombas, 202-303-3411.