Food Safety Top Stories

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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.

This article examines the food safety and quality aspects of plant-based protein products. Consumers may perceive food safety risks for plant protein as lesser, and may not be as vigilant when preparing plant protein products. Food manufacturers must be diligent in applying the same comprehensive food safety strategies used for meat and poultry production and processing to plant-based protein production to ensure food safety.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to pivot to virtual food safety audits and inspections, but there has been reluctance to sustain this model of remote evaluations. Recently, advances have emerged in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and development of novel approaches to auditing that have worked to bridge the gap and help virtual audits and inspections move closer to gaining equivalency to traditional onsite formats.

Food safety and quality systems do not have to be cumbersome and difficult to follow. The 5S system, when launched and properly maintained, can have a positive impact on food safety and quality programs, as well as operational efficiency.

Fresh Del Monte continuously evaluates and monitors its food safety programs to ensure that the highest level of food safety is met every day. In this article, Dr. Takashi Nakamura shares a preview of his Food Safety Summit presentation, to take place on May 11, on how data-driven analytics and insights enhance traceability and food safety programs.

To address the changing landscape of food safety, GSFI Director Erica Sheward explains how the world must shift to more sustainable production and consumption patterns, as well as make food systems less fragile and unequal; all while combatting food fraud and managing the impacts of climate change.

GFSI is focused on creating a pathway to professional development and for the recognition of food safety auditors as a way to improve the attractiveness of the profession. GFSI's new model of auditor qualification introduces a Professional Recognition Body to conduct the first auditor qualification program.

This article provides an overview of the status of the rules and regulations regarding nutritional labeling of food packaged at the global level and its impact on consumers' understanding. New and consumer-friendly proposed solutions (e.g., Nutri-Score, also known as the five-color nutrition label) are also presented. 

Understanding the types of violations observed during inspections is a requirement for correctly citing a violation and providing quality feedback to the facility operator. Breakdowns in this chain of communication can lead to additional inspections and possible enforcement actions, which waste valuable time, money, and effort. To ensure that this chain is firm, inspectors are provided with access to training and continuing education, as needed, to properly identify violations and apply their guiding regulations.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, all industries that need to maintain microbiologically safe environments have shown a renewed interest in antimicrobial coatings and their application.