Reducing food waste is imperative for fighting world hunger, and technologies to reduce food waste can also help improve food safety, quality, and shelf life.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly shifted consumer demand away from restaurants and foodservice to home meals and ready-to-eat (RTE) meat and poultry products. As a complement for more convenience-type items, consumers began focusing on product expiration dates to limit trips to retail markets. Combined with consumers' nutritional focus on sugar, sodium, fat content, and additives, meeting these expectations and requirements is a serious challenge for meat and poultry processors. The most common challenges for reformulation are reduction of sodium and replacing additives such as nitrite and preservatives.

The Peanut and Tree Nut Processors Association Technical Forum gathered food industry leaders from across the world. Here are their top food safety mandates.

While conventional bacterial reduction solutions in the dry food industry are limited, low-energy electron beam (LEEB) technology is an innovative solution to ensure the safety minimally processed spices, seeds, and herbs.

In the last Food Safety Insights, we surveyed and interviewed 240 processors in the United States, Canada, and around the world on the impact of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on their supply chains. In Part 2, we will look closer at how what they learned is guiding how they adapt and change. We especially looked at the changes that processors say are here to stay. 

Cannabis edibles and beverages production, although still a growing industry, needs to have its own set of quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) regulations.