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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA’s AMS) has announced that an additional $21.9 million of funding is being awarded to 111 grant projects through the Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grant Program (MPIRG), bringing total funding to $54.6 million.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its regulatory counterparts in Mexico—the Federal Commission for the Protection from Sanitary Risks and the National Service of Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety and Quality—recently held the second annual Food Safety Partnership Meeting.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has reviewed its investigation of a 2018–2019 foodborne illness outbreak involving chicken contaminated by a multi-drug resistant Salmonella Infantis strain, which was the first time that FSIS identified a strain as “persistent.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is encouraging countries around the world to adopt e-notification systems to bolster food safety, and has released a publication to support such efforts, titled, Technical Guidance for the Implementation of E-Notification Systems for Food Control.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has issued Changes to Accreditation of Non-Federal Analytical Testing Laboratories, which expands the scope of its Accredited Laboratory Program to include microbial and chemical testing.

The European Commission has recently published revisions to its regulation on the use of ethylene oxide in food additives, setting stricter limits for the substance.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued the 2022 edition of the Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards alongside a summary of changes that were made in the latest edition.

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we interview Conrad Choiniere, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Analytics and Outreach at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), about his work leading FDA's Toxic Elements Working Group, as well as the agency’s efforts and considerations related to the Closer to Zero initiative, which aims to reduce the health risks posed by toxic elements in the U.S. baby food supply. We also review the results of FDA's Total Diet Study (TDS) related to toxic elements in baby food samples. 

Additionally, we spoke to Kruti Ravaliya, M.S., Consumer Safety Officer in the Division of Produce Safety at FDA's CFSAN, about how FDA intends to implement Subpart E of the Produce Safety Rule—the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Proposed Rule on Agricultural Water—including the recently extended compliance dates for pre-harvest agricultural water requirements. Finally, Bob Ferguson, President of Strategic Consulting Inc., speaks about his latest Food Safety Insights column on the projects and priorities that food processors put on hold during the pandemic and are now revisiting.

The  U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has launched the third phase of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Imported Seafood Pilot program, which uses AI and machine learning to strengthen the screening process for seafood imports entering the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has released two generic Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) models—one for farm-raised catfish, and the other for wild-caught catfish.