Laboratory Management

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At the July 15 grand opening event for the new USDA-FSIS Midwestern Food Safety Laboratory in Missouri, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins teased the agency’s new food safety policy plan aimed at reducing foodborne illness. 

SGS North America has expanded its food safety and quality assurance testing capacity with the opening of a new, larger and improved facility in Fairfield, New Jersey.

Designed to address key challenges faced by food safety professionals, the new Sampling Plan Module for Hygiena’s SureTrend platform offers a streamlined, efficient approach to sampling management.

Neogen® Corporation’s new Petrifilm® Automated Feeder works with existing Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced equipment to help labs efficiently process microbial tests and meet food safety standards.

Torrey Pines Scientific has unveiled its EchoTherm™ Model IC50—a Peltier-driven, chilling/heating dry bath with exact sample temperature control.

Part 3 of this Food Safety Insights series on rapid testing asks food safety professionals whether the vast increase in outsourcing of testing to contract labs has made rapid methods less useful, or if the methods' ease of use and speed are still important for better management and decision-making.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released its new Integrated Food Safety System Regulatory and Laboratory Training System (IFSS RLTS) Strategic Plan 2024–2028, and will hold a stakeholder call on April 2, 2024.

A new company, Confience, born through a merger of two existing companies, has announced its vision to provide a new standard in laboratory information management system (LIMS) software, applicable to lab and quality professionals in the food and beverage sector.

Ongoing debates about the use of rapid microbiological test methods in food safety have led to the rise of many questions about the future of this type of testing. This column will explore which methods are being used, food processors' views on what attributes of the tests are most important, how fast is fast enough, and what even faster tests would enable them to accomplish. It also explores where the growth may continue and whether rapid methods used in commercial labs will continue to drive growth, or if a plateau is likely. Growth in regions outside of the U.S. and Europe will also be examined, along with whether rapid testing technology is evolving to the point where it may be acceptable to bring back the analysis to an in-plant lab.

Ongoing debates about the use of rapid test methods in food safety have led to the rise of the question: Has the vast increase in outsourcing testing to contract labs made rapid methods less useful, or is the ease of use and speed of the methods still important (if not essential) for better management and decision-making in food safety? Food Safety Insights asks food safety professionals their opinions on this question.