Posts from the "Latest News" category
UK: Flowers not food: Keep daffodils separate, supermarkets warned
UK supermarkets have been urged to keep daffodils away from fruit and vegetable aisles this spring – in case they are mistaken for food.
In a letter to major stores, Public Health England warned the flowers could be confused with onions or Chinese vegetables, and consumption of them was an “emerging risk.”
Daffodils contain toxic alkaloids that can cause severe vomiting, it said. It noted 27 cases of poisoning linked to daffodils and narcissi last year.
Click here to read the full article at Barfblog.com.
AU: Victoria Names and Shames Food Safety Training Offenders
The register of food safety convictions developed by the Victorian government shows an alarming number of companies in the food industry are still not adhering to food safety laws.
The aptly labelled “Name and Shame” register details food vendors and restaurants throughout Victoria that have engaged in serious breaches of food safety law and regulation.
An anxiety-provoking number of restaurants, cafes, and related eateries in Victoria have earned their place on the register for improper food handling practices. The offences were numerous, and despite the ease of access to food safety training across Australia, 25% of the total offenders were convicted with offences directly related to a lack of training.
Click here to read the full article from Australian Institute of Food Safety.
ES: Reported Foodborne Outbreaks Due to Fresh Produce in the United States and European Union: Trends and Causes
This study addresses the occurrence of reported foodborne outbreaks associated with fresh fruits and vegetables consumption in the United States and European Union during the period 2004 – 2012, where data are available. Special attention is paid to those pathogens responsible for these outbreaks, the mechanisms of contamination, and the fresh produce vehicles involved. [T]he pattern of fresh produce outbreaks differed in the United States and European Union by the type of microorganism and the food vehicle involved.
Click here to access the full report in Foodborne Pathogens and Disease.
US: Scientists, public at odds over food safety
The Californian: What worries consumers about the food supply is opposite from what scientists fret over, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center. And 98 percent of surveyed scientists say it’s a problem that average folks don’t know what the eggheads are talking about.
That’s a disparity that causes sleepless nights for Teresa Thorne, executive director of Watsonville-based Alliance for Food and Farming. The mission of the alliance is to promote consumption of fruits and vegetables to maintain health. She said the messages consumers receive – particularly about pesticide residue – can confuse and dissuade them from eating healthy foods.
“While health officials repeatedly tell consumers to eat more organic and conventional fruits and vegetables every day for better health, they [consumers] are also hearing inaccurate and scary statements calling into question the safety of conventionally grown produce,” Thorne said.
Click here to read the full story by Dennis L. Taylor at The Californian.
AU: Watch the wash for food safety in fruit production
All quality assurance (QA) schemes list water as an input to be managed for potential hazards. The challenge with managing water quality is its variability due to multiple environmental factors which are beyond grower control.
However, growers can control water quality at point of use in fruit packing operations. The importance of this was clearly demonstrated in the tropical fruit industry in separate incidents in recent years. On two occasions WA tropical fruit was contaminated with Salmonella and traceback linked the source to the wash water. A treated water source was in use and no previous known issues had been identified with the fruit from routine laboratory testing.
Click here to read the full fact sheet from the Western Australian Department of Agriculture and Food.
This is one of a number of useful food safety documents available from the Food Safety Section of the Western Australian Department of Agriculture and Food website. Click here to access.
Image credit: Andrea R / Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
US: Keep these things in mind to minimise risk of a food safety outbreak involving Listeria monocytogenes in your packinghouse operations – Dr. Bob Whitaker
The US produce industry has witnessed a number of product recalls in the last few years and some illness outbreaks owing to Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) contamination and a number of these have been tied to packinghouse operations where sanitation practices have been reported to be less than optimal. In this post Dr. Bob Whitaker lists a few things to remember about Lm and packinghouse operations.
Click here to read the full article on PMA/LinkedIn.
US: Count of generic Escherichia coli on spinach at the preharvest level determined by the multi-factorial effect of ambient temperature, precipitation, farm management and environmental factors
American Society for Microbiology: A repeated cross-sectional study was conducted to identify farm management, environment, weather, and landscape factors that predict the count of generic Escherichia coli on spinach at the preharvest level. E. coli was enumerated for 955 spinach samples collected on 12 farms in Texas and Colorado between 2010 and 2012. Odds of contamination decreased with implementation of hygiene practices (OR = 0.06) and increased with an increasing average precipitation amount (mm) in the past 29 days (OR=3.5) and the application of manure (OR=52.2). On contaminated spinach, E. coli counts increased with the average precipitation amount over the past 29 days. The relationship between E. coli count and the average maximum daily temperature over the 9 days prior to sampling followed a quadratic function with the highest bacterial count at around 24 °C. These findings indicate that the odds of a contamination event in spinach are determined by farm management, environment and weather factors. However, once the contamination event has occurred, the count of generic E. coli on spinach is determined by weather only.
Click here to access the full abstract from the American Society for Microbiology.
Mars, Inc. and IBM Research Launch Collaborative Food Safety Platform
Food Safety Magazine: Mars, Incorporated has partnered with IBM Research to launch a consortium to drive advances in global food safety. The ‘Sequencing the Food Supply Chain Consortium‘–a collaborative food safety platform–will leverage advances in genomics to further our understanding of what makes food safe.
The research consortium marks an alternative approach in how companies traditionally tackle unsafe food. While many companies, such as Mars, already have rigorous processes in place to ensure food safety risks are managed appropriately, the application of genomics being pioneered by this consortium will enable an in-depth understanding and categorization of micro-organisms and their activity on a much bigger scale than has previously been possible.
Click here to read this article from Food Safety Magazine.
Click here to access the media release from Mars, Inc.
What are industry’s science and technology needs?
Food Navigator: Food fraud, healthy diets and sustainability are among the issues needing innovation in science and technology, according to a major survey from Campden BRI.
Read Article →
EU: Salmonella and raw leafy greens most dangerous according to EU risk assessment model
Doug Powell writes: “The top ranking food/pathogen combination was Salmonella spp. and leafy greens eaten raw followed by (in equal rank) Salmonella spp. and bulb and stem vegetables [onion, leek, celery, etc.], Salmonella spp. and tomatoes, Salmonella spp. and melons, and pathogenic Escherichia coli and fresh pods, legumes or grains. Despite the inherent assumptions and limitations, this risk model is considered a tool for risk managers, as it allows ranking of food/pathogen combinations most often linked to foodborne [illness] human cases originating from [food of non-animal origin] FoNAO in the EU.”
Click here to read the full article on barfblog.
Click here to access the report from the International Journal of Food Microbiology.
Image credit: Liz West / Flickr, CC by 2.0