The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has released a report that provides the first comprehensive global review of the food safety hazards, controls, and regulatory considerations associated with modern indoor farming.
Perceived benefits of indoor farming, or controlled environment agriculture (CEA), include sustainability, adaptability to climate change, and improving food security. In the present day, CEA production of short-term crops such as microgreens and baby leaf, along with mature leafy greens that are traditionally cultivated outdoors, has become commercially viable.
Although it is often assumed that CEA offers more easily managed food safety risks than traditional farming, the publication emphasizes that food safety issues linked to indoor-farmed crops are generally similar to those found in conventional outdoor agriculture. Specifically, microbial hazards exist related to seeds, growth substrates, and water, as well as operations that share features with sprouted seed production. While the hazards are comparable to those in conventional farming, differences in production systems create complexity for risk assessment and management.
While indoor farming eliminates some of the uncontrollable routes of contamination inherent to outdoor farming, outdoor environments also promote some natural pathogen die-off through microbial competition, fluctuating temperatures, and desiccation. The stable conditions in CEA may enable longer pathogen persistence, but indoor systems may also often offer more opportunities for proactive control over inputs such as seeds, water, growth substrates, and fertilizers.
Read more at Food Safety Magazine
