Food Safety Magazine Editorial Team

With the passage of House Bill 81, Utah will ban the addition of fluoride to public drinking water systems beginning May 7, 2025. Community water fluoridation has come under scrutiny in recent years due to concerns about its affect on children’s IQ. 

A project funded by the Center for Produce Safety is developing an identification and deterrent system for high-risk birds in produce fields based on sound surveillance and artificial intelligence (AI). The tool would automatically deploy interventions to drive away birds that are more likely to spread foodborne pathogens.

The European Commission published a FAQ document to clarify the requirements of Regulation (EU) 2025/179, which mandates whole genome sequencing (WGS) testing and data reporting for important foodborne pathogens when suspected to be associated with a foodborne illness outbreak.

Boar's Head has appointed Natalie Dyenson, M.P.H. as its new Chief Food Safety Officer, a new role at the organization that was established as part of a series of initiatives to prioritize food safety following a significant listeriosis outbreak linked to Boar’s Head deli meats in 2024.

Adding to its existing certification for corn, ImagoAI’s Galaxy Mycotoxins Test has received the AOAC Performance Tested Methods (PTM) certification for aflatoxins, deoxynivalenol, fumonisins, and zearalenone in Wheat, Dried Distillers Grains With Solubles (DDGS), and Corn Gluten Meal (CGM).

TraceGains’ new artificial intelligence (AI) -powered Intelligent Document Processing solution for the food and beverage industry streamlines Certificate of Analysis (COA) processing, reducing manual labor and accurately extracting information from non-standard documents. 

The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) has opened a call to all small- and medium-sized businesses in the novel foods sector that are interested in receiving the agency’s guidance on the application requirements for novel food authorization in the EU.

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has been awarded £1.4 million for the development of a new innovation hub focused on improving the regulation of novel foods and novel food technologies, especially precision fermentation.

The updated Fifth Edition of FDA’s Food Allergen Q&A Guidance has been published in a searchable webpage format. Revisions include the addition of sesame as a major food allergen, as well as the removal of some tree nuts, including coconut, from the list of major food allergens.

In a first-of-its-kind study analyzing large population-level datasets, researchers from the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine estimated that communities exposed to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) -contaminated drinking water experience up to 33 percent higher incidence of certain cancers.