The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Consumer Reports, Stop Foodborne Illness, and other food safety advocates have announced their support of a proposal by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) to declare Salmonella an adulterant in breaded, stuffed, not-ready-to-eat (NRTE) chicken products.
Salmonella spp. have long been associated with low-moisture foods such as nuts and nut-derived products, with varying prevalence observed in tree nuts, including cashews, at retail. Virtually all cashews are imported to the U.S. Some nuts, including cashews, are imported as a "raw" product (i.e., one that has not been subjected to a process to adequately reduce pathogens, such as a kill step). Salmonella contamination of such products has resulted in several notable outbreaks in the U.S. in the past ten years, including those in which cashew-containing products have been implicated as a vehicle. This article presents a brief overview of outbreak investigations of Salmonella infections linked to the consumption of cashews and cashew-containing food products. It also presents challenges encountered, lessons learned, and relevant regulatory requirements for importers and manufacturers of cashews and cashew-containing products.
This article discusses the latest research elucidating the main reason why foodborne pathogens like Salmonella are more resistant to heat inactivation in low-moisture food (LMF) systems, including quantitative data relating thermal treatment temperature and water activity/relative humidity to the log-reduction rate of bacterial pathogens in different LMF. Case studies on pilot-scale thermal treatments for the control of Salmonella in LMF are also presented.
The National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) recently published its 2020 Integrated Summary, which includes data providing phenotypic and genomic antimicrobial resistance (AMR) trends for Salmonella, Campylobacter, generic Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus isolated from retail meat and food-producing animals.
Research on plant defense responses against pathogens, specifically E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella Typhimurium, holds insights to preventing foodborne illnesses and improving food safety practices.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) recently published a summary of a joint investigation of a multi-country foodborne illness outbreak of Salmonella Seftenberg that was possibly linked to cherry-like tomatoes.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently published a new webpage with information about a persistent, multidrug-resistant strain of Salmonella Infantis known as REPJFX01, which has been the cause of many illnesses and outbreaks.
Hygiena® recently announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 11,634,782, U.S. Patent Application No. 16/549,059, and an official registered trademark to protect its BAX® System SalQuant®, a Salmonella quantification solution.
As part of an effort to reduce cases of salmonellosis attributable to poultry products, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) conducted a study with the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) laboratories to gather data on not-ready-to-eat (NRTE) breaded stuffed chicken products purchased at retail stores.