File:Coast watch (1979) (20473876689).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_11 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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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.
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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 1960s, when Pillsbury executives developed the concept while working on packaged food for NASA's space program. They found that staving Continued COASTWATCH 9

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