past 14 years to update things," Jackie 

 Varnam says. 



But HACCP training did convince the 

 couple to make a few changes, such as 

 buying fluorescent lightbulbs covered with 

 tubing and storing cleaning products in 

 another location. 



Jimmy Johnson, owner of Washington 

 Crab Co. Inc. and chairman of the N.C. 

 Marine Fisheries Commission, strongly 

 supports the principles behind HACCP. But 

 he tries not to think about how much 

 money and time he has spent complying 

 with the program, particularly in these tight 

 times when the Asian financial crisis has cut 

 labor costs in half for his competition. 



"The price we're getting for crabmeat 

 is the cheapest it's been in four years," 

 Johnson says. "There's no margin in 

 it — we're just hanging on until 

 something happens. We were hoping 

 that HACCP would give us a market- 

 ing edge." 



Johnson hired Sarah Harris to 

 write and oversee the HACCP 

 program at his crab-processing plant. 

 The company, which employs about 

 100 workers during crab-picking 

 season, has never had any reports of 

 illness related to its products. In two 

 years, Johnson estimates he will have 

 filled a four-drawer filing cabinet 

 with HACCP documents alone. 



The beauty — and burden — 

 of HACCP is in the documentation. 

 For example, plant owners can now 

 pull records to show they correctly 

 cooked a particular batch of crabmeat 

 or they stored a shipment of tuna at 

 the right temperature. 



They can do that because they 

 now record the time and temperature 

 at which each batch of crabs is 

 cooked and monitor their coolers at least 

 twice daily to make sure they work 

 properly. 



At first glance, Harris seems to be an 

 odd choice for a crab-processing plant's 

 HACCP administrator. Before she went to 

 work for Johnson, she supervised quality 

 control for a pharmaceutical company. 



nc 'beauty - 



burden — of HACCP is in the 



documentation 



For example, plant 



owners can now 



pull records to show they 



correctly cooked 



a particular batch of 

 crabmeat or they 



stored a shipment of 



tuna at the light 



temperature. 



"But whether you look at a drug 

 process or a crab process, the 

 principles are the same — it just 

 smells worse," she says, laughing. As 

 she talks, workers heft crate after 

 crate of wriggling, fighting crabs into 

 a cart destined for the steam cooker. 



Harris' challenge is to make sure 



employees realize their role in making 

 sure products are safe to eat. Unlike the 

 pharmaceutical industry, the seafood 

 industry has difficulty attracting local 

 workers — 70 percent of Washington 

 Crab Co. Inc.' s employees are seasonal 

 guest workers from Mexico. Some of 

 the company's few American workers 

 quit this year when they were asked to 

 sign documents stating that they 

 completed in-house HACCP training 

 sessions. The employees were afraid that 

 signing the paperwork might somehow 

 "jeopardize" their Social Security benefits. 

 Johnson says. 



"I can put in all the time I want 

 coming up with a beautiful plan," Harris 

 says, "but if they don't understand the 

 concept behind HACCP, it doesn't 

 matter. That is our biggest challenge." 



The HACCP idea has been around 

 since the 1 960s, when Pillsbury 

 executives developed the concept while 

 working on packaged food for NASA's 

 space program. They found that staving 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 9 



