The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has announced a virtual public meeting of the full National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) on August 30, 2023 to discuss a report on Cyclospora cayetanensis in produce and a charge on Cronobacter in powdered infant formula.
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.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) recently highlighted a new rapid tool called GeneSeekR that can confirm if Escherichia coli detected in food samples can cause illness in humans.
State and local health departments in Washington are investigating five cases of foodborne illness caused by Listeria monocytogenes in Western Washington, three of which have resulted in death. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) has indicated a common source of infection.
To highlight the economic burden of the emergence and transmission of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) foodborne pathogens, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently released a publication on the topic that also suggests actions and policies countries can consider.
Traditional dairy processors have begun to develop various milk alternatives alongside their standard product lines to adapt to shifting consumer demand. To effectively analyze and test traditional product lines while overcoming the difficulties of testing novel plant-based milk, they must have access to adaptable instruments and accommodate specific food safety concerns.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently updated its list of qualified presumption of safety (QPS) -recommended microbiological agents intentionally added to food or feed. QPS is a regularly updated generic pre-valuation of the safety of microorganisms based on an assessment of published data for each agent.
A recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign concluded that, when sampling powdered infant formula for Cronobacter contamination, sampling with stratification may be more powerful than random sampling, and that taking more samples, even if smaller, increases the ability to detect contamination.
The U.S. and Canada are melting pots of cultures, and one of the most evident expressions of this diversity can be found in the variety of ethnic foods available in markets. While the influx of these foods has brought new and exciting flavors to North American palates, it has also brought the risk of new microbial hazards.
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