Wageningen University Food Safety Research recently launched a four-year project with the goal of developing an early warning system to detect the presence of mycotoxins in European cereal grains.
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 European Food Safety Authority’s European Scientific Network on Microbiological Risk Assessment recently convened for its 22nd meeting to discuss various national efforts related to microbial food safety hazards such as prevalent foodborne pathogens, mycotoxins, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and other risks.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Agricultural Research Service has discovered 33 new species of mycotoxin-producing fungi belonging to the genus Fusarium.