Food lab testing

Infographic: Who Outsources Pathogen Testing?

By Maria Fontanazza
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Food lab testing

Pathogen testing of food samples, whether in-plant or outsourced, is a critical task. Although some companies find it more cost-effective (and they have the capabilities) to conduct testing in-house, other companies don’t want to touch it due to cost and potential risk.

“Food processors are far more comfortable analyzing samples for nutritional parameters, contaminants and routine microbiology in an in-plant lab, but fewer are comfortable running pathogen tests in-plant,” stated Bob Ferguson of Strategic Consulting in the Food Safety Tech article, Changing Landscape for Selecting a Food Safety Contract Laboratory.

According to Ferguson, some of the factors that lead food processors to outsource pathogen testing include:

  • Need for skilled analysts (including recruiting and maintaining accreditations
  • Lab accreditation (just 20% of food company labs are accredited)
  • Analytical methods require complex equipment, which can be expensive to maintain
  • Risk of in-house pathogen contamination
  • Company size

The below infographic reveals some of the findings, discussed at the 2016 Food Safety Consortium, of a survey conducted of more than 100 food processing customers of food contract laboratories.

 

Food contract labs
Information gathered as part of Strategic Consulting’s survey of food processing customers of food contract labs. Graphics courtesy of Strategic Consulting.
FDA

FDA Revises Draft Guidance for Listeria Control in RTE Foods

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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FDA

Any food facility that manufactures, processes, packs or holds ready-to-eat (RTE) foods should view FDA’s update on its draft guidance, Control of Listeria monocytogenes in Ready-To-Eat Foods. Consistent with FSMA, the draft focuses on prevention, and includes best practices and FSIS’s seek-and-destroy approach. Other recommendations include controls involving personnel, cleaning and maintenance of equipment, sanitation, treatments that kill Lm, and formulations that prevent Lm from growing during food storage (occurring between production and consumption).

“This guidance is not directed to processors of RTE foods that receive a listericidal control measure applied to the food in the final package, or applied to the food just prior to packaging in a system that adequately shields the product and food contact surfaces of the packaging from contamination from the food processing environment.” – FDA

The agency will begin accepting comments on January 17.

Stephen Ostroff, 2016 Food Safety Consortium

Ask the FDA: Recognizing Third Party Accreditation Bodies

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Stephen Ostroff, 2016 Food Safety Consortium

READ: The Multi-Step Process of Third-Party Accreditation Stephen Ostroff, M.D. will keynote at the 2017 Food Safety Consortium on November 29 | Learn moreDuring a Town Hall at the 2016 Food Safety Consortium, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine Stephen Ostroff, M.D. answers an attendee’s question about the agency’s guidance, Third-Party Certification Body Accreditation for Food Safety Audits: Model Accreditation Standards and what progress FDA has made in recognizing accreditation bodies.

Recall

Persistent Strain of Salmonella Triggering Dozens of Recalls

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Recall

The recalls involving powdered milk continue to pile up.

Since December, more than a dozen products containing powdered milk have been recalled due to the risk of Salmonella, including mini eclairs and cream puffs, mac & cheese products, chocolate-covered pretzels, potato chips, seasonings and white peppermint Hostess Twinkies.

Back in November, FDA seized more than 4 million pounds of dry nonfat milk powder and buttermilk powder produced by Valley Milk Products, LLC. The agency used whole genome sequencing to make the connection between the samples that were collected in the facility—Salmonella strains were found from samples taken in 2016 and back to 2010. FDA identified it as a persistent strain of the pathogen.

“FDA investigators observed residues on internal parts of the processing equipment after it had been cleaned by the company and water dripping from the ceiling onto food manufacturing equipment. In addition, environmental swabs collected during the inspection confirmed the presence of Salmonella meleagridis on surfaces food came into contact with after being pasteurized.” – FDA news release

To date, no illnesses have been reported.

University of Surrey, Food scare diagram

New Food Scare Categorization to Help Tackle Compromises in Supply Chain

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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University of Surrey, Food scare diagram

Attend the Food Safety Supply Chain Conference, June 5–6, 2017 in Rockville, MD | LEARN MOREThe global complexity of the food supply chain is only increasing the amount of adverse issues that can occur. In an effort to help the industry mitigate the various risk factors and reduce the incidence of food scares, researchers from UK-based University of Surrey have developed a new system for classifying these “food scares” across the food chain. In a recent report, Food scares: a comprehensive categorization, published in the British Food Journal, a food scare is defined as “the response to a food incident (real or perceived) that causes a sudden disruption to the food supply chain and to food consumption patterns.” The term also takes into consideration consumer distrust in the food supply chain.

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“With food scares becoming more frequent, it is important that we have a categorization system which enables efficient development of strategies to tackle such compromises to our food supply,” said report co-author Professor Angela Druckman from the University of Surrey in a press release.

“A food scare is the response to a food incident (real or perceived) that causes a sudden disruption to the food supply chain and to food consumption patterns.”

The researchers created a diagram (see Figure 1) that categorizes food scares by physical indicators such as chemical, physical or biological contamination and origin such as intentional deception, transparency and awareness issues.

University of Surrey, Food scare diagram
Figure 1. Categorization of food scare diagram. Courtesy of the University of Surrey

The authors note the importance of identifying the cause of contamination (as seen in the diagram), as the “method through which contamination occurs is key in devising food scare prevention strategies.”

Frank Yiannas, Walmart, 2016 Food Safety Consortium

Moving Food Safety Culture Beyond Slogans

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Frank Yiannas, Walmart, 2016 Food Safety Consortium

“If you think about evolution and continuous improvement in food safety, it’s nothing new,” said Frank Yiannas, vice president of food safety at Walmart at the 2016 Food Safety Consortium. In the following video, Yiannas introduces his perspective on how food safety culture has evolved and moved beyond a slogan or buzzword.

Stay tuned for more video clips from Yiannas’ presentation at the Food Safety Consortium.

Robert Califf, FDA

Will FDA Commissioner Califf Leave Under Trump Administration?

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Robert Califf, FDA

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, M.D. said that President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has not contacted him. Califf hasn’t even been head of the agency for a full year. It is rumored that if Califf leaves, Stephen Ostroff, M.D., deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, will step in (Ostroff has previously served as acting deputy commissioner of FDA). Ostroff stepped into his current role when Mike Taylor left FDA last June.

Stephen Ostroff, FDA, Food Safety Consortium In the following video, Stephen Ostroff, M.D. discusses: Are Final FSMA Rules Cast in Stone?

 

FBI, food safety, terrorism

FBI to Food Companies: Insider Threat Should Be Big Concern

By Maria Fontanazza
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FBI, food safety, terrorism

SA Scott Mahloch will present FBI’s Role in Food Defense on November 29 at the 2017 Food Safety Consortium | Learn moreIn most cases, contamination that occurs within a food facility is unintentional. However, it’s been documented that terrorists are interested in targeting the food sector, and as lone wolf attacks gain popularity, companies need to be able to identify and protect themselves against the insider threat, said Special Agent Scott Mahloch, weapons of mass destruction coordinator for the Chicago division of the FBI, at the 2016 Food Safety Consortium.

In the following video, Mahloch talks about FBI’s role in the food industry, explains how food companies can protect themselves against terrorism by identifying the insider threat, and discusses some of the FBI’s initiatives surrounding food defense. “One of the biggest concerns that we have is the disgruntled employee and the FBI really isn’t in the position to identify these people,” says Mahloch. “That’s going to be the frontline supervisors, the coworkers that can see somebody’s behavior that maybe deviates outside anything that they would recognize as being baseline behavior.”

Read the article: FBI Says Terrorists May Target Food Sector

FSC 2016

FSMA, Listeria, Fraud and Food Safety Culture Among Top Topics at Food Safety Consortium

By Maria Fontanazza
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FSC 2016

The 2016 Food Safety Consortium was a big success, from the preconference events that included the STOP Foodborne Illness fundraiser honoring heroes in food safety and the education workshops (SQF Information Day and preventive controls courses) to the record-breaking attendance we saw during the main program (with keynotes from FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine Stephen Ostroff, M.D., Walmart’s Vice President of Food Safety Frank Yiannas, and FBI’s Special Agent Scott Mahloch).

As the event winded down, the leaders of each session track shared their insights on lessons learned during the Consortium.

Understanding biofilm and how it forms.  If you’re seeing peaks and valleys in the positives and negatives in your environmental swabbing program, you may have resident Listeria that has formed a biofilm, which requires a deep clean. Focus on biofilm, not just mitigation of the Listeria bacteria itself. – Gina Kramer, Savour Food Safety International. Read Gina’s column, Food Safety Think Tank, where she talks about the latest technology and innovations.

This is the first conference I’ve been to you where food fraud is being more widely acknowledged as a serious, important concern that is distinctly separate from food safety. One of the more significant takeaways is the number of tools that are now available for people to mitigate their risk to food fraud in the supply chain. – Steve Sklare, USP

Warren Hojnacki, SGS
Warren Hojnacki, SGS

A while back food safety was a nice-to-have but not a need-to-have. It’s certainly an absolute need-to-have now. There are three groups of individuals out there: The third that has picked up the baton and is proactive, the other third that are in the middle of it right now, and the other third have their heads in the sand. I come across a sizable portion that is in the bottom third, and it’s slightly scary… It’s the documentation that a lot of companies are having the biggest challenge in dealing with—the death by paper. The resources out there are immense. It’s a necessity to have right now in order to be effective and compliant.  – Warren Hojnacki, SGS

FSMA regulations require us to be risk based, scientifically based and systematic in our approach to our concerns and issues. – Barb Hunt, Savour Food Safety International

There’s potential for greater data and actions: i.e., the microbiome study or particulate contamination analysis, PLM, IR spectroscopy, SEM EDS, [and] raman spectroscopy…Lab customers may need to depend more greatly on contract labs as FSMA develops and in return, labs need to work more closely with the customers to get dependable, defensive data results. – Eric Putnam, Wixon, Inc.

Trish Wester, PA Wester Consulting
Trish Wester, PA Wester Consulting

We need to do a better job of messaging upstream to our corporate senior officials so we get the money and resources we need—there’s still a gap there. We need to find ways to communicate to them.  – Trish Wester, PA Wester Consulting