Contamination Prevention -- Striving for Zero Tolerance

A September mailing from the NCC to cotton gins reinforced the need for increased awareness of foreign materials during harvesting and ginning. This increased awareness can be traced to the recent uptick in the amount of foreign materials reported in some U.S. cotton growths.

NCC technical service staff began receiving samples and pictures of materials found in cotton bales in June.  Materials included yellow plastics that are similar to round module wrap, thin black plastic film that looks like the mulch used in vegetable production, PBI tags, oily bale pictures and other types of foreign materials.  Some materials were traced back to a cotton gin or gins.  In other cases it was determined that suspect gins could not have been the source of the materials.  The NCC and other organizations will continue to catalog contamination incidents and increase our collective contamination prevention efforts.