Contamination Control

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This article discusses the consumer and regulatory drivers of the current focus on heavy metals in foods for babies and young children, and also explores the congressional investigation and FDA's subsequent Closer to Zero effort. It also discusses the latest developments and what moves can be expected next from FDA. 

A project funded by the Center for Produce Safety has collected information about, validated, and evaluated the efficacy of the cleaning and sanitation practices for harvest equipment among blueberry harvesters and packers.

Implementing an effective Listeria environmental monitoring program enables knowledge of where Listeria can enter, harbor, and move through a facility, which is the first step toward keeping the pathogen on the run and not allowing it to impact production surfaces or finished product.

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.

Eagle Product Inspection recently launched MAXIMIZER RMI, a new physical contaminant detection solution for the poultry processing sector.

The Reagan-Udall Foundation for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a new report outlining efforts to explore a public-private partnership to improve the tracking of antimicrobial use (AMU) in food-producing animals. 

The effects of climate change are projected to increase the economic burden of foodborne Vibrio infections in the U.S., warns the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA’s ERS).

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.

A recent report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and three other global organizations has laid out priority research areas for mitigating the rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) at the interface between the agrifood, healthcare, and environmental sectors.