Posts from the "Latest News" category
A-NZ: Questions and answers about the revised Food Standards Code
Food Standards Australia New Zealand: FSANZ has reviewed the Food Standards Code to make the requirements clearer and to ensure it better meets the needs of stakeholders. The Code is enforced in Australia by state and territory authorities, the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture for imported food and the Ministry for Primary Industries in New Zealand. One of the reasons for changing the Code was to ensure it was more closely aligned with the food Acts of the Australian and New Zealand Governments and Australian states and territories, which rely on requirements to be clearly stated. The changes will reduce uncertainty when it comes to code enforcement issues.
All industry stakeholders will benefit from a clearer, easier to follow, and in-turn, easier to enforce Food Standards Code. Both the current and revised provisions of the Code have been developed with regard to the main objective of protecting public health and safety and ensuring that Australia and New Zealand has a safe food supply.
Click here to read the full article from Food Standards Australia New Zealand, including links to the new Code.
The hepatitis A virus – an overlooked cause of foodborne disease
Food Safety Watch: Bacteria are by far the most common and best known causes of foodborne illness in the developed world and the food industry is well aware of the risks presented by Salmonella, E. coli O157 and other bacterial pathogens. But there are also a small group of disease-causing viruses that can be transmitted by contaminated food. Noroviruses are the most familiar to many people, but the hepatitis A virus (HAV) is also an important cause of disease worldwide. In 2013 an unexpected spate of foodborne HAV outbreaks in Europe and North America drew attention to the virus as a potential food safety hazard. A closer look at the characteristics of HAV suggests that it would be dangerous to underestimate the threat of the virus in today’s food supply chains.
Click here to read the full article from Food Safety Watch.
US: The importance of food traceability
Food Safety News: Traceability has become increasingly important. The global food supply chain today has evolved into a tangled web as companies seek to enhance their capabilities to feed the world’s growing population. While food safety problems remain rare, when they do occur, time is the enemy as public health and lives are at stake, as well as the livelihoods of industries, companies and employees. The Global Food Traceability Center is intended to assist companies to better understand and implement ways to track and trace the paths of products through the food chain, to improve food safety and security and to avoid or mitigate devastating public health and economic impacts.
Click here to read the full article from Food Safety News.
Grocery shoppers vote for food safety, by Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett: Australia’s grocery buyers have voted food safety as their top factor likely to influence which supermarket retailer they shop at, but only by a very narrow margin. A 2014 survey by Roy Morgan Research of nearly 16,000 shoppers put food safety just ahead of proximity, value, trading hours, even price.
Read Article →CN: Smashing time! Four tons of watermelons are squashed to a pulp after a batch contaminated with illegal pesticide causes mass food poisoning
Daily Mail: Crowds gathered to smash a giant pile of watermelons weighing four tons with their bare hands in China after they were contaminated with an illegal pesticide and caused a mass outbreak of food poisoning. Officials invited people to destroy the poisonous batch of fruit after 17 people were taken to hospital with severe stomach pains after eating them.
A woman who was four months pregnant was taken to hospital and was forced to abort her baby due to the seriousness of her condition.
The shocking incident caused a ‘melon fear’ in Qingdao and people refused to buy watermelons, and sales of the fruit dropped by up to 80 per cent in the past three weeks.
Click here to see the full report, including a slide show of melon destruction, from the Daily Mail.
NZ: Entries open for the 2015 NZ Food Awards
Massey University: Entries have opened for the NZ Food Awards, providing local food and beverage producers with the opportunity to highlight the success of their products and businesses. The NZ Food Awards, in association with Massey University, enable producers of all sizes to showcase their products, receive feedback from an expert judging panel, benchmark themselves against industry peers, and achieve recognition and profile to grow their brands and business.
Importantly, winners are eligible to use the NZ Food Awards “Quality Mark” which highlights the award-winning products as “the best of the best” to both consumers and industry, which can help boost sales and distribution locally and overseas.
Award categories are open to small and large food and beverage manufacturers, primary food producers, food service providers and ingredient supply companies.
Massey University Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey says the annual awards programme celebrates new initiatives in New Zealand food and beverage manufacturing in nutrition, enterprise and food safety.
Click here to read the full article from Massey University.
US: Source of Cucumber-Linked Outbreak Determined Too Late to Alert the Public
Food Safety News: In late February, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a detailed report describing a summer 2014 outbreak of Salmonella linked to cucumbers grown in the Delmarva region of Maryland.
The outbreak resulted in 275 confirmed illnesses and the death of one man. Considering that CDC estimates only one in 30 Salmonella cases are confirmed, the outbreak is believed to have had a wide-reaching impact on consumers.
Given the size of this Salmonella outbreak, some consumers were surprised and even alarmed to first hear about it several months after it ended. Why did CDC not previously alert the public, as they do with many other foodborne illness outbreaks?
Click here to read the full article from Food Safety News.
US/AU: Treatments may speed vegetable replanting of Salmonella-contaminated soil
Center for Produce Safety: Simultaneous field trials are being conducted half way around the world to determine whether cover crops, soil or bed solarization, or a combination of both can help remediate Salmonella enterica-contaminated soil.
The research is being led by Trevor Suslow, University of California Extension Research Specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences, Davis, California; along with co-investigator Robyn McConchie, Associate Professor in the Department of Plant and Food Science and department head, University of Sydney, Australia.
Read Article →FI: Noroviruses easily spread by workers’ gloves
The Packer: A Finland study confirms what may seem like common sense: Noroviruses are easily transferred to ready-to-eat foods via foodservice workers’ handling.
Human noroviruses are a leading cause of foodborne gastroenteritis throughout the world and the study by researchers at the Finnish Food Safety Authority and the University of Helsinki confirm virus-free food ingredients and good hand hygiene are needed to prevent contamination of prepared foods.
Click here to read the full article from The Packer.
Contaminated Food Causes 14 Percent of Norovirus Outbreaks Worldwide
Food Safety News: According to new work by researchers from the Netherlands, New Zealand and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 14 percent of all norovirus outbreaks are attributed to contaminated food.
Noroviruses are one of the leading causes of gastroenteritis worldwide. In the U.S., the virus causes 19-21 million illnesses, 56,000-71,000 hospitalizations and 570-800 deaths.
Determining the transmission route during an norovirus outbreak investigation is complicated because transmission can occur through multiple sources in a single outbreak. If a virus is first transmitted through food, it can continue person to person or through the environment, making it hard to trace the disease back to contaminated food.
Click here to read the full article at Food Safety News.