Amazon may have plans to expand its grocery delivery service into convenience stores. According to The Wall Street Journal, the retailer may open convenience stores and offer curbside pickup to Amazon Fresh customers (the online grocery delivery service). Amazon Fresh currently offers traditional grocery items such as packaged goods, beverages, condiments, baking goods, seasonings and pasta, along with perishable items such as cheese, eggs, frozen foods, and meat and seafood to consumers in certain cities. Based on location, consumers would also be able to order items from local retailers. Through the new reported expansion, Amazon Fresh customers would order shorter shelf life food items via their mobile devices for in-store pick up, and items with a longer shelf life would be available for online order and delivery. It’s possible that Amazon will open one of these locations in Seattle within the next few weeks, according to the Journal.
FDA issued revisions to the Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards (MFRPS), which are food safety standards for state regulatory programs that oversee facilities that manufacture, process, pack or hold foods. Updates have been made to the standards, along with newly defined terms, and new sections and appendices.
Currently 43 state programs are enrolled in MFRPS, which aims to provide an integrated national risk-based food safety system. Ten standards make up the regulatory program standards; elements include program’s regulatory foundation, staff training, inspection, quality assurance, food defense preparedness and response, foodborne illness and incident investigation, enforcement, education and outreach, resource management, laboratory resources, and program assessment, according to FDA.
“The MFRPS establish a uniform basis for measuring and improving the performance of prevention, intervention, and response activities of manufactured food regulatory programs in the United States,” according to an agency release. The MFRPS promotes stronger partnerships between FDA and state programs, offering dedicated staff to work with program staff, provides opportunities to apply for funding to assist in implementation efforts, offers tools to help companies build a quality management system in order to measure and enhance performance and accountability, and aims to promote internal program consistency.
Northland Laboratories has broken ground on the build-out of a new state-of-the-art food science center. The 33,000 square foot facility will house microbiology, chemistry, sensory, specialty, research and consulting services specific for the food and beverage industry.
“The new facility will expand capacity of current services provided and offer incredible new resources available with a full service food science center to include many research capabilities,” states D.J. Alwattar, president of Northland Laboratories.
In addition to the new facility in Mount Prospect, Ilinois, Northland Laboratories recently expanded its laboratory facilities in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The newly expanded 12,000 square foot facility was designed to increase capacity for microbiology and chemistry testing services, include a new area for its expanding Proficiency Testing services, and integrate new automation equipment used for scalability of testing.
“This positions Northland Laboratories to service the needs of the food and beverage industry for the immediate and long term future,” adds Alwattar.
Completion of the Mount Prospect, Illinois facility is scheduled for early 2017.
A new rapid assay may help growers make faster and more informed decisions right on the farm. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts and Cornell University are developing a test that addresses the challenge of sampling produce and assessing risk in a timely manner. The dipstick would enable rapid detection of Salmonella in agricultural samples in about three hours.
How It Works
“Users simply place a leaf sample in a small plastic bag that contains enzymes and incubate it for about 1.5 hours. Users would then squeeze a small liquid sample through a filter and place it in a tube with bacteriophages—viruses that are harmless to humans but infect specific bacterium, such as Salmonella or E. coli. Some phages are so specific they will only infect one bacterium serotype while others will infect a broader range of serotypes within an individual species. Phages also will only infect and replicate in viable bacteria, ensuring that non-viable organisms are not detected. This distinction is useful if prior mitigation steps, such as chlorination, have already been used. The phages used in the test were engineered to insert a particular gene into the bacteria.” – Center for Produce Safety
“We have been developing dipstick assays for ultra-low detection limits,” the technical abstract, Rapid bacterial testing for on-farm sampling, states. “Our preliminary data suggests that our fluorescent dipstick will have a detection limit of Salmonella spp. cells which makes the test ideal for on-farm use and appropriate federal requirements.”
Last week the CDC announced the end of its investigation involving Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) in General Mills flour and flour products. However, many consumers may still have these products in their homes, and thus the agency is warning that it expects to see more illnesses. As of September 26, 2016, the CDC recorded 63 infections with strains of STEC O121 or STEC O26 in 24 states, 17 of which resulted in hospitalizations, and no deaths. The agency continues to urge consumers to refrain from eating (this includes a simple “taste”) raw dough or batter. It is also advising against giving playdough made with raw flour to children.
CDC worked with FDA and used PulseNet to identify illnesses that were part of the outbreak. This investigation led General Mills to initiate several recalls of its branded flours (May 31, 2016, July 1, 2016 and July 25, 2016), affecting more than 10 million pounds of product.
“In an epidemiologic investigation, investigators compared the responses of ill people in this outbreak to those of people of similar age and gender reported to state health departments with other gastrointestinal illnesses. Results from this investigation indicated an association between getting sick with STEC and someone in the household using Gold Medal brand flour.
Federal, state, and local regulatory officials performed traceback investigations using package information collected from ill people’s homes and records collected from restaurants where ill people were exposed to raw dough. These initial investigations indicated that the flour used by ill people or used in the restaurants was produced during the same week in November 2015 at the General Mills facility in Kansas City, Missouri, where Gold Medal brand flour is produced,” according to the CDC’s outbreak summary.
Today food companies will have access to a new whole genome sequencing (WGS) test that could help them prevent dangerous pathogens from getting into their products. Released by Clear Labs, the test takes a detailed approach to identifying pathogen strains in samples, providing information about their geography and from which food groups they originate.
In an exclusive interview with Food Safety Tech, Mahni Ghorashi, co-founder of Clear Labs, explains how he expects the company’s new test, which has a five- to seven-day turnaround time, will offer companies with a more accurate yet less expensive alternative to protecting consumers by actively monitoring their supply chain for emerging pathogens.
Food Safety Tech: What differentiates this WGS test from current available solutions?
Mahni Ghorashi: No one has been able to provide the food industry with modern whole genome sequencing techniques for food safety. What we’re releasing is a quantum leap in terms of what’s been available on the market today. Whole genome sequencing has been largely siloed to regulatory bodies like FDA and CDC to trace outbreaks and inform investigations—the technologies and techniques that they’re using are actually fairly old; they’re some of the original WGS techniques that emerged on the next-gen sequencing platform. We’ve taken the most advanced techniques on the NGS platform for human disease exploration and personalized medicine and adapted them for food industry.
What gives our WGS test a competitive advantage over legacy-based methods is two fold:
1. Clear Labs has a 2-million+ entry-curated database of genomic information and sequences for the accurate ID of food ingredients (pathogenic organisms and microbiomes). Its accuracy and the confidence level that comes behind our matching is a huge step above anything that’s available in the public domain today.
2. Being able to place pathogenic strain information in the context of overall food ingredients and samples. The whole genome sequencing test we developed has been specifically catered for the food industry, and for food samples in particular, [versus] FDA’s GenomeTrakr, CDC’s PulseNet, or other food safety labs that are offering full genomic sequencing of pathogen strains—they’re using some of the earliest methods to do this. On the NGS platform, we’re able to put those strains in the context of food ingredients and suppliers: Specifically, [matching] bacterial strains with food ingredients [and] suppliers.
FST: Does this test target specific foods?
Ghorashi: Our platform particularly shines in complex foods. The value of next-gen sequencing and DNA barcoding over PCR-based technologies, which is the gold standard in food safety, is its stability to break down complex food ingredients into all of their known parts, and to look in a universal and unbiased way into food samples. It’s untargeted, so you don’t have know what it is that you’re looking for—and that’s the real power.
FST: What impact do you anticipate for this test, especially in the context of FSMA?
Ghorashi: Our customers are using [the test] for monitoring ingredient supplies and the effectiveness of preventive and sanitary controls [and] to match specific pathogen strains to specific food ingredients. They are using it for proactive testing for FSMA compliance—there’s a lot of movement in this direction and hefty budgets are being allocated to put new preventive controls in place in response to FSMA; whole-genome sequencing will play a big role, and we anticipate large-scale partnerships with agencies and private industry on that front. And the most obvious use case is that it’s being used for techniques to mitigate or reduce the risk of product recall and outbreak.
We’ve been able to significantly reduce the price point on whole-genome sequencing, and all of our tests across the board, because we’re intimately familiar with how the inner workings of these platforms and how to best optimize them for scale and cost efficiency. We think the test will be more accurate and leaps and bounds ahead of what’s available, as well as cost competitive. We’re excited about the work we’re doing and its impact on food safety. I don’t think the food industry—retailers and manufacturers—have ever had access to these kind of tools and they’re being made available just in time for FSMA, as the industry moves towards a more proactive approach to food safety and [takes] preventive measures in their supply chains. Hopefully we’ll soon be living in a world where outbreaks, illness and the financial toll are a thing of a past.
Clear Labs also just released a microbiome test that helps companies associate microbiomes with specific food ingredients.
Mahni Ghorashi: The microbiome test we’ve developed is able to sequence samples from the human gut and from food, and look at how the microorganisms are interacting. Our customers for this test have been large brands that have advanced R&D departments and academic research centers that are looking for how diet research and the microbiome interact together and how new product development can help us move toward personalized diets when it comes to prebiotic and probiotic diets.”
The impact of the microbiome and the correlations between bacteria of the human gut and the bacteria in the food we eat. The prevailing thesis at the moment is that the microbiome has a significant impact on our health when it comes to disease risk and diet, inflammation and mood disorders. We’re seeing very forward thinking brands like Nestle, ConAgra and Mars putting a lot of attention on the impact of the microbiome when it comes the development of new products, [such as] prebiotics and probiotics, or even specific food products as it pertains to the microbiome. We believe that this intersection— nutrigenomics and the personalized diet—is going to be a massive market, and we’re at the early stages of that.
Today, September 19, marks the first major FSMA compliance date. Larger companies (500 employees or more) must meet certain requirements of the Preventive Controls for Human Food final rule related to current good manufacturing practice requirements. In anticipation of the questions surrounding these requirements, FDA has released a Q&A with Joann Givens, co-chair of the FSMA Operations Team Steering Committee and director of the agency’s Food and Feed Program in the Office of Regulatory Affairs.
“We know that this is new territory for food companies; it’s new territory for us too. For years we’ve been talking about the FSMA rulemakings and our implementation plans,” says FDA’s Joanna Givens. “Now, an important compliance date is here for some companies. As we enter this new chapter, the FDA’s primary focus will continue to be on education, training and technical assistance to help companies comply with the new requirements.”
In a deal that publicly began months ago, it’s now official: Bayer is buying Monsanto for a whopping $66 billion ($128 per share). The all-cash transaction is expected to generate synergies of nearly $1.5 billion in three years, according to Bayer. The combined companies will have an annual pro-forma R&D budget of about €2.5 billion.
“We are fully committed to helping solve one of the biggest challenges of society – and that is how to feed a massively growing world population in an environmentally sustainable manner,” said Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer AG in a video statement. “What we do is good for consumers. We help to produce sufficient, safe, healthy and affordable food. It is also good for our growers. Because they have better choices to increase yields in a sustainable way.”
Hugh Grant, chairman and CEO of Monsanto stated, “we are entering a new era in Agriculture – one in which growers are demanding new solutions and technologies to be more profitable and to be even more sustainable. The vision for this combination was born out of that desire to help farmers grow more with less. Together with Bayer, we are going to be able to offer growers even better solutions, faster.”
The worldwide food supply will be under intense strain, as the population is anticipated to grow to nearly 10.5 billion by 2100. A new position paper released by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) stresses the need to address five key challenges confronting the food and agricultural industry:
Food nutrition and security
Climate change
Environment
Health and safe food
Inequality
WUR is maintaining the position that the Common Agricultural Policy, an initiative of the European Union, should be revised to emphasize an urgency for sustainability rather than agricultural productivity goals. It identifies the following innovations, which would also lead to a more integrated agricultural and food policy, to address the above challenges:
Genetics
Digitization and big data
Energy and bio-based transitions
Chain redesign
Social innovation
“We need a policy that addresses the consumer concerns on the food chain and admits that the actors in the food chain are much bigger than in the past, including most farms,” said Krijn Poppe, Research Manager & Senior Economist at Wageningen Economic Research in a press release.” ‘One size fits all’ will not do in a more complex Europe; to keep it simple and affordable we need a combination of several targeted instruments.”
Graphic courtesy of Wageningen University & Research
WUR also proposes five new pillars for a successful Common Agriculture & Food Policy:
Income support and risk management to guarantee food security
Public issues and eco-system services
Rural development to support innovation and quality of rural life
Consumer food policy and consumers themselves, retail and food industry in effort to push a healthier diet and healthier climate
Companies are under more pressure to analyze food samples for pathogens, but not all of them have the expertise to handle the complexity involved in laboratory analysis. In addition, companies don’t want to risk contamination throughout their facility. As a result, many are outsourcing these services to contract labs.
Strategic Consulting, Inc. recently conducted a study of food processors and the trends in outsourcing their laboratory testing work to food contract laboratories. The firm spoke with 100 food processors nationwide in 15 food processing categories, including protein, dairy, vegetables and packaged foods, inquiring about the types of samples they collect, how many are collected on a daily and monthly basis, their target analytes, and where they have the analysis performed (an in-plant lab, central company lab or an outsourced food contract laboratory); the firm also spoke with folks at leading food companies and a number of large food contract labs.
Bob Ferguson, managing director at Strategic Consulting, shared his insights with Food Safety Tech about the survey, the details of which will be presented at the Food Safety Consortium in December.
Food Safety Tech: What were some of the major findings?
Bob Ferguson: Food processors continue to outsource more and more of their lab analysis. This is a trend that we outlined in our Food-8 market report in 2014, and it is clearly continuing and growing. The impact is particularly acute in microbiology testing, especially when analysis is for pathogens. Of the companies we surveyed, 87% did some amount of routine microbiology testing and 67% of those analyzed the samples at an in-house lab. But when asked about pathogens, 77% of the companies analyze samples for pathogens but only 34% analyze the samples at an in-house lab. Clearly there is a higher level of concern in handling pathogens at in-house labs.
Food Safety Tech: What are the processors’ concerns regarding pathogens?
Ferguson: I would say that their concerns fall into two major categories: Technical and operational. From a technical perspective, there is always a risk when working with pathogens in a food processing facility. Microbiologists understand how easily bacteria can travel through a facility—being carried on employees, their clothing, or equipment, through air currents, or even through penetration connections such as drains. And most diagnostic tests not only require handling pathogen samples but also enriching the samples prior to analysis. The presence of food samples with high concentrations of pathogens can present a risk for the spread of contamination into production areas.
From an operational standpoint, running a food analysis lab is becoming increasingly more complex. Analytical methods continue to get more sensitive and sophisticated, and this requires more expertise and a greater focus on instrument service and calibrations. Requirements for accreditation of food testing laboratories are also raising the bar for in-plant labs. Finally, running a food lab requires recruiting and hiring skilled analysts. More food processors are coming to the conclusion that none of these functions are part of their core competencies and are electing to outsource that work to a contract lab.
Robert Ferguson, managing director, Strategic Consulting, Inc., will discuss the results of the survey at the 2016 Food Safety Consortium in December | LEARN MORE
Food Safety Tech: What does this mean for food contract labs?
Ferguson: This could become a significant business growth opportunity for food contract laboratories. As we indicated in our Food Contract Laboratory market report, microbiology is one of the largest business areas for most food contract laboratories, comprising, on average, approximately 52% of lab revenues and growing on average at 12% annually. The average lab also reports pathogen testing growth at more than 13%. This is remarkable in that the overall growth in sample volume is only growing 6%, so labs are clearly gaining a greater share of samples.
Food Safety Tech: Is this good news for the food contract laboratory companies?
Ferguson: Well, I would say that this will dramatically change the nature of competition and will be good news for some lab companies, namely those who can best adapt to the changing market conditions, but certainly not all. Our analysis shows, for example, that about 70% of pathogen samples outsourced are sent to a lab within 100 miles of the food processing facility. This bodes well for labs with a robust national network of locations. Single-location or limited-location labs may have trouble competing and will be acquired or otherwise may not survive. Also, as more samples get outsourced, the most efficient laboratories will have a competitive advantage. Our data also shows that outsourcing does not occur uniformly across all types and sizes of food processing companies, and laboratories may be at more or less risk depending on their customer mix or concentration in a particular food processing segment. Food contract laboratories that understand these factors will be in a better position to compete and thrive as the market changes.
Wait! Wait! Don’t go yet!
Sign up for our FREE newsletters and get the top stories from FST right in your email inbox.
Food Safety Tech is the leading online trade journal.
Join the Food Safety Tech community and stay engaged the way you want to!
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookies should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for these cookie settings.
We use tracking pixels that set your arrival time at our website, this is used as part of our anti-spam and security measures. Disabling this tracking pixel would disable some of our security measures, and is therefore considered necessary for the safe operation of the website. This tracking pixel is cleared from your system when you delete files in your history.
We also use cookies to store your preferences regarding the setting of 3rd Party Cookies.
If you visit and/or use the FST Training Calendar, cookies are used to store your search terms, and keep track of which records you have seen already. Without these cookies, the Training Calendar would not work.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
Cookie Policy
A browser cookie is a small piece of data that is stored on your device to help websites and mobile apps remember things about you. Other technologies, including Web storage and identifiers associated with your device, may be used for similar purposes. In this policy, we say “cookies” to discuss all of these technologies.
Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect and use information from and about you when you use This website and certain other Innovative Publishing Co LLC services. This policy explains more about how we use cookies and your related choices.
How We Use Cookies
Data generated from cookies and other behavioral tracking technology is not made available to any outside parties, and is only used in the aggregate to make editorial decisions for the websites. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent by visiting this Cookies Policy page. If your cookies are disabled in the browser, neither the tracking cookie nor the preference cookie is set, and you are in effect opted-out.
In other cases, our advertisers request to use third-party tracking to verify our ad delivery, or to remarket their products and/or services to you on other websites. You may opt-out of these tracking pixels by adjusting the Do Not Track settings in your browser, or by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative Opt Out page.
You have control over whether, how, and when cookies and other tracking technologies are installed on your devices. Although each browser is different, most browsers enable their users to access and edit their cookie preferences in their browser settings. The rejection or disabling of some cookies may impact certain features of the site or to cause some of the website’s services not to function properly.
Individuals may opt-out of 3rd Party Cookies used on IPC websites by adjusting your cookie preferences through this Cookie Preferences tool, or by setting web browser settings to refuse cookies and similar tracking mechanisms. Please note that web browsers operate using different identifiers. As such, you must adjust your settings in each web browser and for each computer or device on which you would like to opt-out on. Further, if you simply delete your cookies, you will need to remove cookies from your device after every visit to the websites. You may download a browser plugin that will help you maintain your opt-out choices by visiting www.aboutads.info/pmc. You may block cookies entirely by disabling cookie use in your browser or by setting your browser to ask for your permission before setting a cookie. Blocking cookies entirely may cause some websites to work incorrectly or less effectively.
The use of online tracking mechanisms by third parties is subject to those third parties’ own privacy policies, and not this Policy. If you prefer to prevent third parties from setting and accessing cookies on your computer, you may set your browser to block all cookies. Additionally, you may remove yourself from the targeted advertising of companies within the Network Advertising Initiative by opting out here, or of companies participating in the Digital Advertising Alliance program by opting out here.
