Tag Archives: Focus Article

By Thomas Tarantelli

Laboratory reports recently acquired by the Freedom of Information Law from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets show the Sol Andino brand ground cumin to contain 1090 ppm lead as well as 259 ppm chromium. The spice was also analyzed by IS:2446, 1980 method, “Detection of Lead Chromate in Chillies, Curry Powder and Turmeric by diphenyl carbizide.” A positive result was given, indicating the presence of hexavalent chromium, which is a component of lead chromate. Lead chromate is a yellow pigment, not allowed in food anywhere in the world as it is toxic, containing both lead and hexavalent chromium. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets posted a Class I recall of the Sol Andino ground cumin on July 10, 2017, without mention of the extremely high concentration of lead in the product.

Sol Andino, ground cumin — Sol Andino ground cumin recalled

The author could find no record of an FDA recall for the Sol Andino brand cumin powder containing excessive lead.

Some of us remember the four FDA Class I recalls of Pran brand turmeric for excessive lead in October 2013. These recalls were initiated by the New York State Health Department due to an illness complaint—most likely a child with high blood lead levels. The recalled Pran brand turmeric contained 28–53 ppm lead.

Also worthy of mention is the FDA/Illinois Class I recall of Nabelsi brand Thyme (actually a spice mix containing Thyme) on March 17, 2017.

“There have been two cases of high blood levels of lead associated with this product to date. Both cases have been reported through the Illinois Department of Public Health, Environmental Health Protection.”

According to the recall, the “Thyme” was found to contain 422 ppm lead.

Wondering if the 422 ppm lead was caused by adulteration of the “Thyme” with lead chromate or another lead pigment, a food chemist at the New York State Food Laboratory (a Division of NYS Dept. of Agriculture and Markets) requested from Illinois a sub-sample of the “Thyme” for analysis. Lab analysis of the spice found 323 ppm lead, 109 ppm chromium and a positive result for the chromate test. Thus, this recalled “Thyme” contains lead chromate.

In both cases, Pran turmeric and Nabelsi Thyme, illness complaints led to the recall of lead adulterated spices.

The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets has a proactive program. Random samples of spices are sampled from retail markets and subsequently analyzed for unallowed colorants, undeclared allergens and heavy metals. In 2016 this resulted in the Oriental Packing Class I recall of 377,000 lb. of turmeric containing spices for excessive lead. (A typo in the FDA recall attributes the recall to the New York State Health Department, instead of the New York State Dept. of Agriculture and Markets.)

Still, it’s even better to analyze spices being imported into the country at receiving warehouses before the product reaches retail markets. Lead concentrations above 10 ppm can be determined instantaneously with a handheld XRF analyzer.

Adulteration with Sudan Dye Has Triggered Several Spice Recalls

August 29, 2017

FST Soapbox

3 Ways to Ensure Food Safety for Packaged Foods

By Erica Montes

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Food safety and hygiene are very important aspects of food production, processing and consumption. In the absence of proper hygiene and safety protocols, the entire food chain right from the farmer who grows the food till the consumer who eats it is compromised. Food safety lapses like contamination and spoiling of food pose major health risks.

There are many ways in which a perfectly safe food product can turn hazardous. Cross contamination from animal matter, lack of hygiene among workers in processing plants, poor sanitation procedures, inadequate preservation techniques and low-quality packaging can all adversely affect the shelf life of a food product. Raw food spoils much faster than processed food, so fresh vegetables and fruits used in food processing must be washed properly and stored at optimal temperatures before they are processed.

The following are a few critical factors that affect the safety, shelf life and hygiene of food products.

1. Hygiene in Processing Plants

Personal hygiene and excellent sanitation policies are essential to maintaining food safety. Processing facilities potentially have several points of food contact equipment and food contact surfaces. There must be well developed and written standard cleaning practices or sanitation procedures for all such high-touch areas in a food processing plant. All equipment, vessels and surfaces must be monitored for bioburden or presence of microbial matter.

The workers must also be aware of good personal hygiene practices. This will help prevent cross contamination and possible spread of foodborne diseases from humans. Workers suffering from contagious diseases should refrain from coming to work and regular employee health checkups must be carried out by doctors. All staff must be trained in food and personal hygiene, and strictly follow recommended methods of hand washing and drying. Proper usage of hygiene gear including masks, caps, gloves, overalls and footwear must be ensured.

Floors, walls, drainage facilities, narrow cat-walks and all surfaces in the processing area must be cleaned thoroughly using high quality cleaning materials. The standard cleaning practices must be diligently met each time and the supervisors should ensure that the crew is doing their job properly. Quality and consistent employee training, and effective instant monitoring methods like ATP testing will help achieve these goals.

2. Good Packaging Is Crucial

The quality and suitability of packaging are also very important in determining the safety, longevity and hygiene of food products.

Evolving consumer habits, growth of online marketplaces, increased consumption of high-protein foods, popular demand for smaller portions due to shrinking family size and the rise in new global distribution channels have all impacted packaging requirements.

Sustainable and responsibly sourced packaging materials are the hallmark of advanced packaging technology. They are environmentally friendly and do not deplete natural resources. Clean label packaging focuses on using recycled materials, high-pressure packaging technology, digital packaging and 3-D printing techniques, and outsourcing of more activities to save money, time and resources.

The need for reducing food waste has been an important objective of all recent packaging innovations. According to a recent report by The Guardian, almost half of all U.S. food produce is thrown away. Global food waste can be reduced by extending the shelf life of packaged foods, thereby avoiding early disposal and excessive purchasing. Latest innovations include in-built freshness sensors in packaging that alert customers when food goes bad, vacuum skin innovations, barrier bags and modified-atmosphere packaging.

3. Consumer Awareness Is Key

The end user or the customer who buys the food product for consumption also needs to be aware of good food use, preparation and storage methods.

Fresh veggies and fruits should be washed thoroughly, chopped, diced, and sliced, and stored in clear, airtight containers in the fridge. Prepare and cook raw foods like fish, poultry and meat to extend their storage life. Cooked food can be safely frozen for a long time. In addition, many food items like casseroles, soups, sauces, stir-fries and baked foods stay safe for cooking and consumption even beyond their typically assumed use-by date.

As responsible consumers, we must be aware of the difference between use-by, sell-by, best-before and expiration dates. This will prevent us from throwing away a whole lot of perfectly edible food items from our pantries.

Conclusion

Food safety is a matter of global concern and affects the well being of billions of people all over the world. Ensuring safety, hygiene, freshness and long shelf life of food items will help reduce food waste, hunger and starvation in the world. It will also reduce the burden on limited natural resources and will help ensure a sustainable and efficient food chain.

August 24, 2017

FSMA IQ Test Part I: Foreign Supplier Verification Program

By Food Safety Tech Staff

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The FSMA Foreign Supplier Verification Program (FSVP) has many elements that must be met. Do you know the correct response to these questions?

Working with Bill Bremer, principal of food safety compliance at Kestrel Management, LLC, Food Safety Tech is continuing its FSMA IQ test series. Results will be posted monthly in our Food Safety Consortium newsletter leading up to the 2017 event.

Confirm your company’s responsibility in meeting FSMA FSVP compliance by answering True or False.

Erin Mann, Food Protection and Defense Institute

August 21, 2017

FST Soapbox

Targeting Agent Detection with Horizon Scanning of Food System Disruptions

By Erin Mann, MPH

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Agent detection to identify contamination of food products is required in food safety and defense programs. Detection typically involves laboratory methods or technologies, such as biosensors, that are used in close physical contact with food products. While the field of food protection has benefited from the development of novel agent detection methods in recent years, the challenge of determining which food products to test remains. The sheer volume of food produced within and traded across U.S. borders makes agent detection a daunting, time-consuming and expensive task. The decision of when to utilize detection methods depends on the risk of a particular product being contaminated. Contamination may be unintentional or intentional, including economically motivated adulteration (EMA).

The risk of contamination fluctuates over time and is a function of several factors. Risk depends on the biochemical makeup of the product, supply chain characteristics such as complexity and transport distance, and a wide range of natural or manmade events that may disrupt supply and potentially incentivize intentional adulteration. This is particularly true in the case of EMA. Events include but are not limited to natural disasters that destroy or reduce the usual supply of an ingredient, political instability that disrupts usual trade patterns, interruptions of routine food safety inspections, and market fluctuations that impact global prices. While data exists to monitor these risk factors of contamination, optimal use of this information by government and private industry is hindered by several challenges. For example, valuable data often exists across multiple data systems with data across systems appearing in inconsistent formats. In addition, the amount of data that must be reviewed to find a signal within the noise is frequently overwhelming.

To address finding signals within vast quantities of data sources and systems, the Food Protection and Defense Institute (FPDI) developed technology to curate and help make sense of this data. With support from both the FDA and the Department of Homeland Security, FPDI developed FIDES or Focused Integration of Data for Early Signals to perform “horizon scanning” of food system disruptions in support of food protection efforts, including agent detection. FIDES was designed to help users forecast, monitor and identify food system risk factors and adverse food events. The FIDES web application fuses multiple streams of data from disparate sources and displays information in the form of an online dashboard where users browse, search and layer both dynamic and reference data sets related to food system disruption events. Examples of data currently included in FIDES are import refusals, global disasters, animal health alerts, food defense incidents, historical food safety incidents, import data, price alerts and reference data on food production worldwide.

Events in recent years illustrate the value of gathering intelligence and utilizing data related to food system risks to inform decisions regarding product targeting. Tsunamis, crop failures and disease outbreaks in humans and animals around the globe have threatened supply of products such as shrimp, spices, cocoa and eggs. When supply is disrupted, companies are often forced to quickly identify new and sometimes previously unvetted suppliers, including spot market purchasing. Likewise, supply disruptions often lead to price increases. As prices increase in the absence of adequate supply, concerns about EMA also increase. In both of these instances, the risk of product contamination—both unintentional and intentional—may rise and an increase in product screening or a change in agent detection methods may be appropriate.

For example, the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak had a significant impact on West Africa, the primary production region for the world’s cocoa supply. Disruptions from the outbreak, including border closures and other trade interference, led to uncertainty about supply availability and prices. This raised concern for EMA, particularly given that many cocoa products are sold as powders, butters and liquors— forms that are more vulnerable to EMA than raw ingredients. As a test case, FPDI reviewed FIDES data streams during the peak of the outbreak. Real-time data on the outbreak was layered with data on global cocoa production and import patterns. Import refusal data from multiple global systems was assessed to identify any concerning patterns. Historical food defense and food safety incidents were also reviewed to determine which cocoa products had been previously contaminated. A similar approach could be used by the food and agriculture sector to guide decisions about targeted inspections—which product(s) and region(s) to monitor, which method(s) to use and which contaminant(s) to test. FIDES could support targeted screening and enhanced awareness of product risk profile that would allow the food industry to assure continued supply of authentic and quality products.

August 17, 2017

Food Safety Over Past 25 Years: ‘Everything Has Changed’

By Maria Fontanazza

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The effect that the 1993 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak had on the food industry was tremendous. Responsible for more than 600 illnesses and the deaths of four children, the outbreak led to significant changes in the industry’s approach to food safety. “[It] drove a shift in food safety that many had been working toward for years,” said Rima Khabbaz, M.D., acting deputy director for infectious diseases at CDC during the “We Were There” CDC lecture series, adding that the focus moved to food suppliers and how they could make their products safer. “The outbreak drove a paradigm shift that opened the door to food safety,” said Patricia Griffin, M.D., chief of the CDC’s enteric diseases epidemiology branch during the lecture.

Deirdre Schlunegger and Michael Taylor — Deirdre Schlunegger, CEO of Stop Foodborne Illness, and Michael Taylor at Stop event celebrating Food Safety Heroes during the 2015 Food Safety Consortium.

Within a few years, several actions and initiatives paved the way for notable progress. In 1994, Mike Taylor, who was administrator of USDA’s FSIS at the time, made a speech that “shocked and outraged the industry,” said Griffin, where he stated, “we consider raw ground beef that is contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 to be adulterated within the meaning of the Federal Meat Inspection Act.” From there, the USDA worked on the first major advance in meat regulation. In 1996 the agency established the Pathogen Reduction Rule to improve meat inspection. The same year CDC’s PulseNet was born, the nationwide lab network that uses DNA fingerprinting to help identify outbreaks early, along with the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet), an epidemiological system that tracks incidents and trends related to food.

In a Q&A with Food Safety Tech, Mike Taylor, most recently the former FDA commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, discusses the dramatic change that industry has undergone during the past 25 years, from FSMA to technology advancements to food safety culture.

Food Safety Past, Present and Future at the 2017 Food Safety Consortium: Recognizing the 1993 Jack In the Box E. coli outbreak as the event that propelled the current food safety movement. Mike Taylor, Bill Marler, Esq. and Ann Marie McNamara (Target Corp.), who took the reins from the late David Theno at Jack In the Box, will discuss Theno’s impact on the industry. The session continues through a timeline of the evolution of food safety from 1993 to present, and then the future, where we will cover the IoT, social media, food safety culture and technology. It will be followed by the STOP Foodborne Illness Award Ceremony. Wednesday, November 29, 2017, 4:00–5:30 pm | LEARN MORE

Food Safety Tech: Reflecting on how far the industry has come since the E.coli O157:H7 outbreak involving Jack in the Box in 1993, what key areas of progress have been made since?

Michael Taylor: I think there are very major ones obviously. You have to remember where things were when the Jack-in-the-Box [outbreak] happened. We were in a place where USDA programs said it was not responsible for pathogens in raw meat and that consumers are supposed to cook the product; [and] industry was operating under traditional methods. Microbial methods were typically conducted for quality not for safety; you had the loss of public confidence and a terrible situation in which consumers were pointing at industry, and industry was pointing at consumers, and no one was taking clear responsibility for safety of the product.

Now we are in a completely different environment where not only is there clarity about industry’s responsibility for monitoring pathogens, there’s also been enormous progress by industry to put in place microbial testing, something David Theno pioneered and is now a central part of food safety management systems for meat safety.

Everything has changed.

These [institutional] arrangements exist not only in the meat industry, but now across the whole food industry. There’s the emergence of GFSI taking responsibility for managing the supply chain for food safety, food safety culture taking hold broadly across leading companies in the industry, and FSMA codifying for 80% of the food supply that FDA regulates the principles of risk-based prevention and continuous improvement on food safety.

I think it’s rather dramatic how far the industry’s food safety regulatory system has come since [the] Jack in the Box [outbreak].

FST: How has FSMA helped to align industry priorities?

Taylor: Let’s focus on the events first leading up to FSMA—for example, the outbreaks or illnesses associated with leafy greens [and] peanut butter, and problems with imported products—those events in the world aligned industry priorities around the need to modernize the food safety laws and to enact FSMA. It was the coming together of industry and consumer interests, and the expert community around the principles of comprehensive risk-based prevention that vaporized into FSMA. Now FSMA is the framework within which companies are organizing their food safety systems in accordance with these modern principles of prevention.

And clearly what’s been codified in FSMA and some of the key elements are becoming organizing principles where industry is aligning our priorities for food safety. Environmental monitoring where that’s an appropriate verification control for a company’s hygiene and pathogen control—that’s clearly a priority that folks are aligning on. The issue of supplier verification for domestic and foreign supply is a priority that has been elevated by FSMA, and so has the whole issue of training and employee capacity, whether it’s in processing facilities or on farms, as well as food safety culture. If you’re going to be effectively preventive you need to deal with the human dimension of your food safety system.

These are examples of ways in which FSMA is aligning industry priorities.

Read the rest of the interview on page 2 (link below).

Pages: 1 2

August 15, 2017

FST Soapbox

How Proper Record Keeping Can Help Reduce Food Waste in the Supply Chain

By Jordan Anderson

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One stringent component of FSMA and the Final Rule on Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food is record keeping. Depending on the type and size of business, the FDA can demand proof of record anywhere from under one year and upwards to two years, all while needing to address their inquiry within 24 hours. Failure to do so will be considered a “prohibited act” and violators can be tried for civil and criminal penalties.
This new rule, put in place by the FDA, will put immense pressure on the food transportation industry, not only to make food safety a priority, but also to ensure that proper food safety practices and measures are being properly implemented, by way of record keeping.

While the litany of rules and regulations pertaining to record keeping best practices is intense, let us break down the basic requirements applying to records in layman’s terms:

If HACCP procedures aren’t documented, it didn’t happen
Records must be verbatim accounts of what happened
- The need for real-time recording is paramount
Corrective actions must be executed immediately if an issue occurs
- If not, liability risk increases exponentially

Companies must determine the most efficient and plausible manner by which they will comply. Traditional storage of records in filing cabinets and input of data in spreadsheets is antiquated, and leads to errors and the potential for misplaced records. Now, more than ever, is the time for businesses along the food chain to deliver value to their organization via digital technologies and automated data gathering solutions. This will ensure constant visibility and ensure quality control throughout the process from farm to fork.

Where Does Waste Happen?

While covering a lettuce farm in central California, National Geographic discovered that numerous loads were dumped each day due to procedural mistakes , including improperly filled, labeled and sealed containers.¹ Due to the mishaps, the loads were then dumped. Between April and November that year, the local Waste Authority landfilled 4–8 million pounds of fresh vegetables from those fields.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that:

54% of world food waste occurs during production, handling and storage
46% occurs during processing & distribution

These numbers are not only staggering, but they illustrate the seriousness of this issue.

Many of these mishaps occur when standard recording procedures are done manually, which leads to improper documentation that invalidates the integrity of shipments—to which the above figures illustrate and corroborate.

But can shippers, loaders, receivers and the like secure their procedures and eliminate wasted product by implementing stricter digital HACCP solutions?

Lost Food

While improper execution of best practices can lead to FDA imposed sanctions and profit loss, it also perpetuates the problem of food waste globally. This issue has become an epidemic and one that greatly affects the lives of many.

In a recent National Geographic article, The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests the following:¹

One-third of food produced for global human consumption is annually lost or wasted along the supply chain
Food waste equates to 2.8 trillion pounds each year, which is enough to feed 3 billion people per year

Consider this: The World Food Programme estimates that nearly 795 million people in the world do not have access to the proper amount of food needed to live a healthy, active life, which equates to roughly one in nine people on earth.

The amount of waste created along the supply chain each year is enough to feed the hungry and malnourished people of the world three-times over. While waste is inevitable, even a 50% improvement would be able to feed those most in need.
We understand the nature of business is overcoming competition while expending the least capital possible, ultimately leading to profit. However, food-related businesses along the supply chain must ask themselves whether or not they are their own competition. Are best practices being properly executed? How can they ensure this in order to mitigate waste?

Ultimately, however, it becomes a human issue. Companies must be responsible and possess the empathy to understand this. While domestically we may not feel the effects of global hunger as much as other third-world countries, these businesses must be aware of the epidemic in order to elucidate this topic while simultaneously maximizing its businesses potential.

By leveraging new food safety solutions such as mobile devices, the cloud, IoT, sensors and more, you can better protect your customers while also gaining a tangible ROI. Wherever consumers purchase and shop for food today, they are likely to find a larger selection than ever before. From the bread aisle to the cheese counter to the produce section, food options and manufacturing processes today are more diverse than ever. While variety is positive on a consumer and cultural level, it can create challenges for food safety from farm to fork.

Reference

Royte, E. (October 13, 2014). “One-Third of Food Is Lost or Wasted: What Can Be Done”. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141013-food-waste-national-security-environment-science-ngfood/.

August 14, 2017

Egg Contamination Spreads Across Europe

By Food Safety Tech Staff

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At least 17 countries have been hit with the European egg scandal involving insecticide contamination. Ground zero of the problem has not been definitively identified, as Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are reportedly pointing fingers over which country is to blame and how long they knew about the problem. Dutch authorities may have known about the problem as far back as November 2016.

The eggs have been tainted with the pesticide Fipronil, doses of which are not harmful to humans engaging in short-term consumption. When consumed in large doses, it can cause damage to the kidneys, liver and thyroid glands.

Farmers in the Netherlands used a company, Chickfriend, to delouse their chickens, but this company reportedly mixed fipronil into the cleaning solution and could have contaminated nearly 180 farms in the country as a result, according to The New York Times. As many as 20% of Dutch egg-laying chickens could be affected. Chickfriend was recently raided by authorities and two of its directors were arrested. Antwerp-based Poultry-Vision stated that it provided Chickfriend with fipronil via a source in Romania, according to The Guardian.

Contaminated eggs, which have been distributed to at least 17 countries (mainly in Europe) have also been found at producers in Belgium, France and Germany, and as a result, millions of eggs have either been destroyed or removed from store shelves.

August 10, 2017

FSMA Exempt? FDA Guidances Explain

By Food Safety Tech Staff

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This week FDA released three guidances to help food producers understand how the FSMA rules apply to their commodities. The regulations covered in the guidances pertain to low-acid canned foods (LACF), juice HACCP and seafood HACCP. Since FDA’s regulations for HACCP and LACF were in place before the FSMA final rules were established, the agency is clarifying the FSMA requirements as well as exemptions for these products.

The following guidances are available on FDA’s website:

August 8, 2017

As Food Fraud Grows, More Comprehensive Tools Emerge

By Maria Fontanazza

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Many foods, from honey to olive oil to spices, fall victim to fraudsters each year. Often a time-consuming process, conducting research about each product or ingredient can involve combing through many websites and databases for information. To save companies from doing all that heavy lifting, newer tools are aggregating the data into single platforms. One most recent example is the World Factbook of Food, developed by the Food Protection and Defense Institute (FPDI) and funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The tool was released earlier this year, and Erin Mann, project manager at FPDI, explains how it is helping food companies mitigate the risk of food fraud in their supply chain.

Food Safety Tech: What are the fundamental advantages of using the World Factbook of Food and how is it different from other tools that companies can use to assess their risk?

Erin Mann: The World Factbook of Food is a central reference location for data related for food. It pulls together a lot of high quality data points from a lot of different sources into a single tool.

Companies can look for information on a lot of different food products and a lot of different sourcing regions and countries. We have more than 125 food profiles (and growing) and more than 75 country profiles (also growing). [There are 10 food profiles and 10 country profiles that are available for free] Each of the profiles covers a large number of topics. On the food profile side, there are data points on how the product is used, codes, information about standards and grades; and a lot of data about trends and consumption, production and trade patterns; there’s information about processing and supply chain characteristics; and another section about food defense and food safety.

It’s a resource that can be used anytime a company needs to get up to speed quickly on a product, because it covers a lot of different types of risks. If a company wanted access to information related to risk about past economically motivated adulteration (EMA) or intentional adulteration (IA) incidents, the Factbook has that. There’s also data on past recalls, information about major producing countries around the world—a wealth of information in one place that companies can use broadly for risk assessment—basically any use case where they want access to a lot of information from lots of sources, the Factbook can be a great place for that.

FST: Can you expand on the food defense component of the Factbook?

Mann: One of the primary sources that we pull for the food defense section comes from a complementary tool that we use here at FPDI—our food adulteration incidence registry, called the FAIR tool, which is a database of past EMA and IA incidents. On the technology side, the Factbook is directly linked with the FAIR tool. If you’re looking at a profile for a particular product, it will access the FAIR tool and display relevant incidents for that product. It won’t give you access to the entire FAIR database, but it will give you a high-level summary of what food defense incidents have happened in the past with the product, where they happened, the year and a summary.

What we’ve seen with the FAIR tool is high incidents of food adulteration in products like oils, spices, seafood—those are the major products impacted by food adulteration, particularly EMA.

Food Adulteration Incidents Registry (FAIR) tool

FST: From what sources are the data curated?

Mann: There’s a source list at the bottom of each profile and all the data points are referenced throughout. In terms of a high-level description of where we pull data from, it includes the USDA, FDA, Codex, the U.S. International Trade commission, United Nations data, and other industry and trade groups. It also pulls data from the World Bank and the FAIR tool.

New Leadership at USDA, Almanza Heads to JBS

By Food Safety Tech Staff

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Over the past week, the USDA has undergone changes in top leadership. Following 39 years with FSIS, Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety and FSIS Administrator Al Almanza retired. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the appointment of Carmen Rottenberg as acting deputy undersecretary for food safety and Paul Kiecker was named acting administrator for FSIS. Rottenberg and Kiecker will serve in these roles until presidential nominees are confirmed by the Senate.

“Highlights for me have been using a science-based approach to modernize the poultry slaughter inspection system, implementing the Public Health Information System (PHIS), reducing listeriosis and E. coli O157:H7 illnesses from FSIS-regulated products and adding six other dangerous strains of E. coli to the zero-tolerance list, and implementing performance standards for Campylobacter and Salmonella.” – Al Almanza reflecting on his time leading the USDA

Almanza has been hired by U.S.-based meat processor JBS to serve as the global head of food safety and quality assurance. The company has more than 300,000 customers in more than 150 countries. “During his long and storied career at FSIS, Al earned the respect and admiration of his peers for his team-based management approach and his willingness to partner with both industry and public health organizations to ensure the provision of safe, quality food to consumers,” said JBS Global President of Operations Gilberto Tomazoni in a company press release. “JBS is privileged to have someone of Al’s caliber join our company.”

1. Hygiene in Processing Plants

2. Good Packaging Is Crucial

3. Consumer Awareness Is Key

Conclusion

Where Does Waste Happen?

Lost Food

Reference

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