Food Safety Top Stories

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There are many vehicles to provide food safety learning to industry professionals. While none can provide a one-time or all-encompassing food safety learning experience, all learning opportunities are investments in one of industry’s most essential resources—the people directly supporting safe food production.

This article addresses the requirements of the 3-A Sanitary Standards and some common misconceptions. It also describes the relationship between the 3-A Standards and U.S. federal regulations, as well as hygienic requirements beyond the sanitary design of the equipment—installation, validation, and maintenance.

This column explores food processors’ comments on the potential impacts of important industry developments, including the establishment of FDA’s Human Foods Program and USDA’s developing new regulatory approach to Salmonella in poultry. The article also delves into processors' priorities for their food safety programs in 2025. 

Food safety programs based on strong relationships are crucial for ensuring food safety, a continuous and quality supply, and smooth operations. This article explains how establishing strong relationships with suppliers and other key internal and external stakeholders is part of being an effective food safety business leader.

Hydroxyl radicals offer an effective, safe, and scalable approach to food plant hygiene and food safety. This outcome can be achieved by devices that use ultraviolet (UV) energy to generate hydroxyls from water vapor, turning the ambient air into a mechanism for cleaning. 

This article explores the science behind the controls required to ensure consistent, safe production of both hot and cold smoked fish, using generated wood smoke and liquid smoke, and focusing on two of the most relevant hazards—non-proteolytic Clostridium botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes.

The Pre-Harvest Agricultural Water Rule amends existing provisions within the Food Safety Modernization Act’s Produce Safety Rule, representing a shift from strict microbial quality criteria to a nuanced, systems-based assessment approach, intended to support food safety by addressing contamination risks through an adaptive, comprehensive framework.

The objective of a water quality and maintenance program is to ensure that the water is safe and is of the proper quality for each application.

Coordination across the agricultural, food safety, cybersecurity, and emerging cognitive security landscape must become a top priority and be seamlessly integrated across the international and national biodefense enterprise. Part 2 of this column series explores food safety and business decision-making in the face of cognitive security threats.

Despite new regulations, food safety programs, and third-party audits, food recalls are expected to reach a five-year high. This article speculates about the reasons for this trend, and identifies a list of precursors that, if identified and addressed, could close critical gaps and help prevent recalls.