Former NASA Food Coordinator Pioneered the HACCP System

“As [we] bought ingredients, we checked the microbiological, which was the key or the most important issue in terms of safety, would be whether they would get sick. I mean, [could] there be a [food poisoning] problem?” Lachance said in NASA’s Oral History Project. “We found that some categories, such as spices, were heavily contaminated [microbiologically], and we had to find a way to make sure that we processed them before they would be used so that they would have no pathogens. They were loaded with pathogens. In fact, [would preserving assure safety]? Then, of course, you have the problem [indicators] that are known. Salmonella is associated with chicken and eggs, milk products, so we needed to screen that.”

Taking Critical Control

Lachance asked for assistance from the Natick lab, saying, “Well, what can we measure that we can [use] as biomarkers, that are true pathogens and yet we can use them as biomarkers, and also maintain the one that’s usually used by the industry? But that brought up the whole issue of the sequence of things you do and how you get contamination and the idea of critical control points.”

NASA was already using critical control points in engineering, and the process lent itself to food manufacturing. Pillsbury incorporated the system into its space food program, and later into its own food manufacturing for consumers.

When NASA started planning for manned space travel in 1959, the challenges of sustaining life in space meant addressing vital issues: How and what to feed an astronaut. There were two main concerns: preventing food crumbs from contaminating the spacecraft’s atmosphere or floating into sensitive instruments, and ensuring freedom from potentially catastrophic disease-producing bacteria, viruses, and toxins.

Lachance was flight food and nutrition coordinator for NASA in the Crew Systems Division from 1963-1965, and held the same position in the Biomedical Research Office from 1965-1967, according to a NASA biography. He earned a BS in biology from Saint Michael’s College in Burlington, Vt., in 1955, and in 1960 he received a PhD in biology-nutrition from the University of Ottawa in Canada. After graduating, he joined the U.S. Air Force Aeromedical Laboratories in Dayton and was an aerospace food and nutrition scientist until 1963. In 1967, after his work at NASA, he became associate professor in the department of food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., then director of the graduate program in food science, chair of the department of food science, and, finally, director of the school’s Nutraceutical Institute before retiring from that position.

Lachance won a Gemini Support Team Group Achievement Award (1966), Meritorious Achievement in Cereal Chemistry Award from the New York Section of the American Association of Cereal Chemists (1972), and a National Science Foundation International Food Safety Leadership Award for Lifetime Achievement in Education and Technology (2009), among others.

He has written more than 100 technical papers and 100 scholarly chapters, according to the Saint Michael’s College Magazine. He also is a consultant in the developing world: He instituted a program to feed vitamin-fortified tortillas to Guatemalan children that reduced mortality rates by 45%.

Lori Valigra is a frequent writer for Food Quality. Reach her at [email protected].