Potential uses include pathogen and chemical hazard detection, food fraud identification, outbreak surveillance, risk forecasting, and regulatory decision-making. Barriers to wider adoption remain, such as data quantity, quality, and accessibility; confidentiality; and transparency.
Cases decreased by 27.2 percent from the previous year. Although Cryptosporidium can be transmitted through routes other than food, the parasite can enter the food supply through contaminated irrigation water and contact with excrement during cultivation, harvesting, and handling.
Four Salmonella Enteritidis ST11 outbreaks identified in France between May and July 2026 were linked to homemade egg-based foods and traced to a common egg distribution network in Poland. The same Polish food group was implicated in another multinational salmonellosis outbreak in 2016–2020.
The microbiological quality of most ready-to-eat (RTE) plant-based meat, dairy, and fish substitutes was satisfactory, but elevated levels of pathogens and indicators in some commodities raised process and hygiene concerns. An analysis of the products’ physico-chemical properties suggested they could support microbial growth.
Ten Latin American countries are developing national initiatives to strengthen food safety systems by integrating risk analysis into public policy and regulatory decision-making, through a regional project led by UN organizations and assisted by the University of Minnesota.
Going beyond the “ultra-processed foods” debate, the proposal, submitted by observer organization IFT, asks Codex to develop a framework to discern which foods are promoting chronic disease risk from those that are not, building upon existing Codex food categories and risk analysis methods.
The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) attributed the increase to growing food systems complexity driven by global supply chains, cross-border distribution, and online marketplaces.
Organized by a team from Wageningen University and Research, the inaugural AI for Food Safety Conference (AIFS) is set to take place on April 8–9, 2027 in Ede, the Netherlands.
UKHSA said the relatively stable number of STEC notifications in 2025 marked a departure from the steady annual increases observed since 2021, when larger outbreaks contributed substantially to case counts.
The review also identifies six health effect categories for further evaluation as part of efforts to support the development of health-based values for the “forever chemicals.”