And here’s an easy solution for you. Order the ultimate guide for consumers on food safety! NutritionAction.com’s From Supermarket to Leftovers: A Consumer’s Guide to Buying, Preparing, Cooking and Storing Food Safely provides quick and easy tips for avoiding disease-causing microbes that can make you acutely ill within hours, days, or weeks of eating.
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Tagged Consumer’s Guide, easy solution, Food Safety, Storing Food Safely
Food safety is a concern worldwide, and one that is growing in visibility for the public, food companies and regulators. Food recalls are frequent, and regulations to help address food safety do not always meet expectations. Consumer concern grows along with the increasing recalls and resulting media coverage. Food producers continue to make sizable investments in food safety improvements but still remain at risk, and food service and retail companies continue to increase requirements of food producers. These issues are exacerbated as the global sourcing of the food we eat increases.
Food Micro, Eighth Edition: Microbiology Testing in the Global Food Industry (Food Micro—8) tracks and compares microbiology test volumes, market values and methods used by food producers around the world, based on detailed interviews with more than 450 food production facilities in North America, Europe and Asia, including China and India.
According to Food Micro—8, the global food industry will conduct 966.5 million microbiology tests in 2013 to ensure the safety of food products and detect dangerous pathogens in food. The report provides detailed breakdowns by microorganisms, food segments (meat, dairy, fruit/vegetable and processed foods) and geographic regions, and summarizes key trends and concerns in microbiology testing in food production facilities around the world.
This Proposal seeks to update Standard 1.6.1 with regards to criteria for Listeria monocytogenes limits in ready-to-eat foods; aligning with international (Codex) standards, Food Safety and Primary Production and Processing Standards and associated FSANZ guidance material.
Full information and documents from the link above.
Posted in Bacteria, Food Hygiene, Food Illness, Food Inspections, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology, Food Poisoning, Food Safety, Food Standards Agency, Food Testing, Foodborne Illness, FSANZ, Hygiene, Laboratory, Listeria, Listeria monocytogenes, Microbiology, Pathogen, Research
Tagged Food Safety, fsanz, Listeria monocytogenes, Proposal
As covered in last week’s blog, the 40,000 food plants worldwide are finding the running of in-plant food labs to be increasingly complex. Faced with FSMA and the possible requirement of lab accreditation, particularly for analysis of food safety compliance samples, more and more food companies are questioning the role and scope of their food plant labs (FPLs)—and considering alternatives.
One alternative is to utilize a food contract lab (FCL) for all compliance samples while continuing to analyze other food safety samples at the FPL. Another is to shut down the food plant lab entirely and utilize FCLs for all food safety test analysis. Yet a third is to have a food contract lab locate a ‘lab-in-a-box’ just outside the food plant or to have the FCL take over the food plant lab operations.
An independent council is being set up to advise the Government on food safety issues. Food Safety Minister Nikki Kaye says it will have six members skilled in food regulation, public health, science, business and international relations.
Establishing the Food Safety Assurance Advisory Council was one of the 29 recommendations that came out of the Government’s inquiry into Fonterra’s whey protein contamination crisis.
“At the moment there’s no independent group that looks at the whole of New Zealand’s food safety and assurance system and is able to provide high-level independent advice and risk analysis,” Ms Kaye said.
“The council is being set up to do this. It will also identify current and future trends and risks that may impact on our food safety and assurance system.”
Members will be appointed in time for the council to hold its first meeting in July
The Government has established a new food safety council to give it independent advice on food safety and risks.
Food terrorism poses an eminent danger to the United States, according to antiterrorism specialists. While the need for higher quantities of food is only increasing, the standards for food safety have been at a standstill or worse—nonexistent. The Voice of Russia got to interview three antiterrorism food experts on the rising threats in American society. Not only did they mention the dairy sector of being in danger, but the US’ produce is also in a compromising position.
Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has many checks and balances in place to give consumers a solid guarantee that their food is safe to consume. As early as December 2013, the FDA announced a new proposal entitled the Food Safety Modernization Act. This would be a proposed rule under Focused Mitigation Strategies to Protect Food Against Intentional Adulteration. To get into specifics, the guideline pinpoints terrorist-tampering within the food cycle.
Campylobacteriosis is an emerging foodborne illness of high relevance and implication for public health and is frequently linked to the consumption of inadequately prepared poultry. Despite extensive scientific efforts to find possibilities to eradicate the bacteria at the production stage and particular measures currently implemented, it has not been possible to provide Campylobacter-free poultry to the consumer. Therefore, it is important to inform consumers about the risk and appropriate mitigation measures. The primary goal of this study was to investigate Swiss consumers’ knowledge of pathogenic bacteria and mitigation measures and domestic food safety behaviour. Thus, the relevant information that should be included in risk communications could be identified. The secondary goal was to identify target groups for risk communication who exhibit particularly unsafe behaviour when preparing poultry. These research questions were investigated in a mixed-method study, combining findings from a qualitative pre-study with the quantitative findings from a survey administered to a large sample of people who occasionally cook poultry (N = 465). The core of the questionnaire was behaviour and knowledge scales, as well as variables assessing risk perception and cooking experiences. Despite a high overall level of knowledge about pathogenic bacteria in poultry and mitigation measures, prevalent misconceptions and knowledge gaps were uncovered. Major violations of food safety behaviour were reported related to avoiding cross-contamination. Lack of specific knowledge and personal risk perception were estimated to be central reasons for violations of food safety behaviour during poultry preparation. Three different consumer groups were identified and analysed according to socio-demographics and socio-psychological variables: unsafe cooks, who reported overall unsafe behaviour, intermediate cooks, who reported some unsafe behaviour, and safe cooks, who reported only little food safety violations. As a last step, the study’s findings were discussed in terms of implications for further research and risk communication practice by isolating the most important knowledge and behaviour aspects. Furthermore, targeted risk communication strategies are considered for the three different target groups.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of ultraviolet-C (UV-C) light inactivation as affected by the location of pathogens on the surface and at stem scars of whole grape tomatoes. A mixed bacterial cocktail containing a three strain mixture of Escherichia coli O157:H7 (C9490, E02128 and F00475) and a three serotype mixture of Salmonella enterica (S. Montevideo G4639, S. Newport H1275, and S. Stanley H0558) were used. Tomatoes were spot inoculated using approximately 100 μL of inocula to achieve a population of about 107±1 CFU/tomato. Additionally, the effects of treatment on color, texture, lycopene content, and background microbial loads during post UV-C storage at 4 °C for 21 days were determined. Results showed that UV-C doses of 0.60–6.0 kJ/m2 resulted in 2.3–3.5 log CFU per fruit reduction of E. coli O157:H7 compared to 2.15–3.1 log CFU per fruit reduction for Salmonella on the surfaces. Under the same conditions, log reductions achieved at stem scar were 1.7–3.2 logs CFU for E. coli O157:H7 and 1.9–2.8 logs CFU for Salmonella. The treatment was effective in controlling native microbial loads during storage at 4 °C as the total aerobic mesophilic organisms (PCA) and anaerobic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) counts of treated tomatoes were significantly (p < 0.05) lower during storage compared to the control group and the yeast and mold populations were reduced significantly below the detection limit. Furthermore, the firmness of tomato and its color was not affected by the UV-C doses during storage. UV-C radiation could potentially be used for sanitizing fresh tomatoes and extending shelf-life. The results of this study indicate that the specific location of pathogens on the produce influences the effectiveness of UV-C treatment, which should be taken into consideration for the design of UV-C systems for produce sanitization.
Ingenta Connect – Impact of Traditional Practices on Food Safety: A Case of Acute Toxoplasmosis Related to the Consumption of Contaminated Raw Pork Sausage in Italy
Ingenta Connect – Assessment Criteria and Approaches for Rapid Detection Methods To Be Used in the Food Industry
The concept behind food safety infosheets is to take recent foodborne illness media coverage, and relevant evidence, and provide it to food handlers in a nice package. At first, they were text heavy, boring and weren’t very good. After a couple of years of refinement food safety infosheets turned into tool resulting in measured changes in practices.
Info Sheet Link – Campylobacter in Pate Outbreak
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Tagged food handlers, Food Safety, foodborne illness, relevant evidence
FoodWorld 