Testing & Analysis

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A pervasive trend exists to take larger and more frequent samples to address microbial contamination. This trend has touched almonds and is expected to hit other nut products, which can be considered for aggregated sampling as a solution.

Two reports by the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) have advised the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) on microbial testing of ready-to-eat (RTE) foods and the safety of recycled water in food production, respectively.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) with optical imaging may be a promising solution for detecting pathogens in foods, and would save the food industry time and resources, according to a recent study.

Two ongoing studies funded by the Center for Produce Safety (CPS) are looking to improve detection and control methods for Cyclospora cayetanensis.

QualiTru Sampling Systems has introduced the first of three new products planned for 2023—the new TruStream7 Adjustable Tanker Port with Security Lid, specifically designed for sampling in dairy and other liquid food tanker trucks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update the protocol for the development and registration of antimicrobial treatments for preharvest agricultural water, removing Listeria monocytogenes from the organism test panel.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently highlighted various fellowship projects across Europe, providing insight into the recent and ongoing work of EFSA in the realm of food safety risk assessment for various chemical and microbiological hazards. 

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.

Many methods are available for verifying the viability of a sanitation program, and most facilities use a combination of different methods to ensure that the sanitation program is performing as expected. Pathogen environmental monitoring (PEM) programs are a key prerequisite program to a sanitation program and to any facility's overall food safety program. There is no one-size-fits-all PEM program for facilities; rather, a PEM program is based on a facility's risk factors and what product(s) the facility manufactures.

Advances in information technology, rapid advances in diagnostic sensitivity, and shifting regulatory requirements are changing the nature of food safety, while macroeconomic trends like globalization, competitive consolidation, and maturation of the industry are altering the structure of the markets. These trends are colliding with shorter-term disruptions like the economic recovery from COVID-19, inflation, and the war in Ukraine, making the near-term future difficult to see.