Articles Tagged with ''risk assessment''

What does it take to have an extremely effective Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA) technician team on the production floor? This article shares practiced perspective on "what it takes." Attributes for success are identified and explained. How they are integrated within a FSQA team on the floor will go a long way to galvanizing the success of that team. For food and beverage companies, "success" means effective risk identification and management, protection of public health, reduced costs of poor quality, and the manufacture and sale of high-quality food and beverage ingredients and products.

In food safety, multiple issues always need to be addressed. To get things done, however, food safety professionals need to prioritize certain projects over others. What are those priorities now? The Food Safety Magazine audience shares their views on a number of topical issues to give an idea of where their focus will be in the coming months and years.

There are no public health or food safety issues posed by popular non-nutritive sweetener steviol glycosides, according to a risk assessment conducted by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ).

The level of consumer exposure to genotoxic and carcinogenic nitrosamines in foods raise a public health concern, according to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published a draft scientific opinion that updates the risk assessment of mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOH) in food and is inviting stakeholders to provide their input on the draft. MOH comprise a wide range of chemical compounds obtained mainly from petroleum distillation and refining.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has released data on the risks to human health posed by the presence of grayanotoxins in honey. Grayananes are a type of chemical produced by certain flower species that can contaminate honey and affect humans.

A recent China–Australia collaborative review examined similarities and differences in the food safety risk assessment systems of China, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S., with the aim of identifying areas that could support improvements to the Chinese system.

Food safety sampling and testing strategies must seek ways to adapt food safety plans that reflect the reality of contamination to improve hazard detection and ultimately help ensure that food is safe for consumers. One solution is to maximize the power of sampling plans to detect target hazards present at explicitly defined risk levels—prevalence, level, and/or distribution. This would allow food safety professionals to better manage risk in their specific system.

The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Meeting in Microbial Risk Assessment (JERMA) convened in response to a Codex Alimentarius Committee request to develop microbiological risk assessment models for Listeria monocytogenes, and to provide recommendations to inform possible future revisions to Codex guidelines on hygienic controls for L. monocytogenes.

The European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA’s) recently updated risk assessment of sulfur dioxide and sulfites concludes that dietary intakes of sulfites may be a food safety concern, but there remain problematic gaps in toxicity data.