Food Safety Top Stories

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The fall and winter seasons bring new challenges for food processing facilities and the teams that work to maintain them. One of the most notable challenges they face is increased pressure from rodents that seek out food and shelter within these facilities when outside temperatures fall. A rodent infestation can lead to a facility being shut down if the problem is not addressed promptly and properly. 

Tracking environmental temperature changes for their impacts on food safety is increasingly important, as just a few degrees of change will shape how food risks develop and unfold, according to recent research.

The West appears to exhibit heightened awareness about food safety, with many countries claiming that they maintain high standards during the production, distribution, storage, and sale of food, and that they have mandatory legal requirements to protect people. However, there is less understanding of what makes human diets sustainable in a way that ensures global food security and sustainability.

As food safety professionals, we are faced with a compelling need to sell food safety to corporate leadership. Just being the company's food safety scientist is not enough, however. You must be a technical businessperson and use your scientific skill and training to enable the business to succeed, innovate, and grow.

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.

Ready-to-eat (RTE) foods have been processed so that they can be safely consumed without the need for further heat treatment and minimal to no further preparation. Many of the technologies adopted by the private sector to develop and manufacture RTE foods for consumers were created and first commercialized by the U.S. Armed Forces.

Failure to plan, design, implement and upkeep good Safety Management Systems (FSMSs)along with a strong, positive food safety culture often leads to compromised food safety and subsequent foodborne illness outbreaks at food processing organizations. This phenomenon is observed with a much higher incidence in medium-and small-sized food companies. In this article, ice cream listeriosis outbreak case studies provide context for the importance of PRPs, GMPs, and process control in preventing foodborne illness outbreaks.

As our agri-food systems transform in response to the changing global context, food safety must keep pace to safeguard consumer health and ensure international trade. By providing avenues to explore how the future may unfold, foresight enables strategic preparedness in food safety to address vulnerabilities and ensure resilience.

A high level of commitment and resources is needed in the pursuit of clean packaging. This article covers the background of the issue, addresses why action is needed now, and uses per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and phthalates as examples of the complexities. It also covers recommendations for brands and packaging converters.

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.