Food Safety News

Salmonella-tainted ground beef could be the biggest challenge facing the industry, said a leading beef researcher. Scientists have realized they may have misidentified the source of Salmonella in beef cattle. They now realize it may be in the lymphatic system of cattle, making it harder to prevent than E. coli.

AUGUSTA, Maine - Proposed regulations for fruit and vegetable producers would cripple Maine's small farms and cause many to close, according to farmers speaking Monday to federal officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Farmers called the rules, proposed as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act, a "game-changing ...

In the wake of a recent lawsuit against a Salinas Valley grower alleging responsibility for an E. coli-related death, and an ongoing outbreak of sickness caused by a parasite found in bagged salad from a facility operated by a Taylor Farms subsidiary in Mexico, growers are under increasing pressure to extend animal buffer zones around their crops.

The listening session aims to answer questions from farmers and other food producers about the Food Safety Modernization Act New Hampshire farmers and food producers with questions about how the federal Food Safety Modernization Act could affect their operations are encouraged to attend a free listening session next week in Hanover, where federal officials will be on hand hear their concerns and answer questions.

A prepackaged lettuce mix. (Photo: Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY) Story Highlights The national cyclospora outbreak linked to food has reached 397 victims Iowa and Nebraska have fingered prepackaged salad Others aren't so sure about culprit Food safety experts are beginning to grumble that an investigation into the latest food-borne illness is taking too long to find the exact source of the outbreak.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra insisted that its customers were sticking to their supply contracts with the world's largest dairy exporter for the moment, even as Singapore expanded its recall of milk formula products containing a tainted ingredient produced the company.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) struck down China's anti-dumping and countervailing duty measures on broiler chickens from the United States on Aug. 2. Since China imposed anti-dumping and countervailing duties, U.S. exports of chicken products to the Asian nation have been cut by 80 percent. The U.S.

Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a series of stories about how proposed federal food-safety rules could affect California farmers and ranchers. The presence of animals on the farm can be both a blessing and a nuisance for farmers.

PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue: Global Food Safety Testing Market Analysis http://www.reportlinker.com/p0349300/Global-Food-Safety-Testing-Market-Analysis.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=Food_Retailing International trade has led to interconnectivity and dependency which has complicated the food production system and lengthened the food supply chain.

DES MOINES, Iowa - The outbreak of a stomach bug two states have linked to bagged salad came as little surprise to food safety experts, who say the process of harvesting, washing and packaging leafy greens provides numerous opportunities for contamination.

The deal - the largest Chinese buyout of an American firm to-date - would put Smithfield in the hands of Shuanghui International. China is known for lax food safety, which is a major safety concern. In fact, two years ago Shuanghui was under fire in a food-safety scandal at home and admitted it had used a banned, carcinogenic additive in its pig feed.

"The washing and comingling of different batches of lettuce means a hazard that may appear in one field can show up in lots of bags of lettuce because of the common bath," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of the food safety program for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer health advocacy organization based in Washington.

The agreement is between the University-housed Department of Homeland Security National Center for Food Protection and Defense and the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine.

By ReutersFriday, July 26, 2013 11:37 EDT By Carey Gillam (Reuters) - Long-awaited rules aimed at improving the safety of foods imported to the United States were proposed by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed new steps Friday to ensure that fresh produce, cheeses and other foods imported into the United States are safe.The proposed rules, required by a sweeping food safety law passed by Congress 2 1/2 years ago, are meant to establish better checks on what long has been a scattershot effort at guarding against unsafe food imported from more than 150 countries.

A cyclospora outbreak has sickened at least 81 people in Iowa and 53 in Nebraska, as well as an unknown number of people in neighboring Midwestern states, according to the state health departments in Iowa and Nebraska. Nebraska state epidemiologist Dr. Tom Safranek told Food Safety News he knew of additional Cyclospora infections in Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas.

Being a Minnesotan, Jeff Almer searched for a polite term to describe how he feels about a congressional push to roll back the new food safety laws his family fought for when his elderly mother died after eating ­salmonella-laced peanut butter in late 2008.

Download this free 97-page Batch Process Playbook loaded with industry expert advice on topics ranging from control systems, instrumentation, and industrial networks to energy management, security, and system upgrades. Clean-in-place systems for equipment and processes are both common and continually improving, but some food processors are investing in advanced hygiene stations to extend food safety automation to the operators themselves.

100K Genome Project Database Adds 20 Foodborne Pathogen Sequences By Heidi Parsons The 100K Genome Project, led by the University of California, Davis, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (FDA-CFSAN), and Agilent Technologies, announced on July 22 that it has added 20 newly completed genome sequences of foodborne pathogens to its public database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

It began in the mid-'90s, when Monsanto developed genetically modified (GM) crops such as soybeans, alfalfa, sugar beets, and wheat. These Frankencrops were immune to its leading weed killer, Roundup. That meant that farmers no longer had to till the land to kill weeds, as they'd done for hundreds of years.

Each year about 48 million people (one in six Americans) report food-borne illnesses. On January 4, 2011, the Food Safety Modernization Act ("FSMA") was signed into law. The purpose of the Act was to shift the focus toward preventing food-borne diseases, rather than simply responding to outbreaks.

by Ben Chapman While making a recent pilgrimage from Raleigh to Southern Ontario (and back) via minivan I saw a bunch of dirty restrooms. One was so bad (right, exactly as shown) that Dani made us go to the next exit; things almost got messy in the car.

PRNewswire/ -- The report " North American Food Safety Testing Market by Contaminants (Pathogen, GMO, Toxin, Pesticide), Technology (Traditional & Rapid), Food Types (Meat & Poultry, Dairy, Fruit & Vegetable, Processed Food) & Geography - Trends & Forecast to 2018", defines and segments the North American food safety testing market with analysis & forecasting of revenue & volume for the food safety testing.

AKRON - Expected costs from proposed federal rules to make the nation's food system safer are causing concern among some farmers and state agriculture officials. The proposals are part of the Food Safety Modernization Act approved in 2011, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

Updated Nov. 29: I published this post last week, just before the nation went into a turkey coma. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) tonight, and this morning, food-system journalists Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser have weighed in on the bill with an authorative New York Times op-ed .