So … a guy walks into a bar and says, “What sort of quality and safety issues do I need to worry about in all the beer I’m about to drink?” Will you have the answer?

Hazard Question #8 – What have been the most common safety/quality issues reported in beer over the past 10 years?

Hint: The answer to the guy’s question is NOT “If you drink enough beer you won’t have any more worries.” But it’s super easy to find the correct answers in HorizonScan by whipping out your phone, logging into HorizonScan, doing a search on beer, then entering a 10 year date range in the bar graph summary. You’ll have your answer in less than 30 seconds. Sharing the results may be a great way to get that guy to go somewhere else to drink.

HorizonScan also covers wines, spirits and liquors, etc., plus juices, concentrates, soft drinks, mineral water and a host of other beverages, not to mention the peanuts and pretzels on the bar, all the ingredients in the pizza you just ordered, the greens in your salad, the oils and spices in the dressing … you get the idea.

To request updated pricing information or a free demo of HorizonScan, just reply now to this message and we’ll get back to you with answers to all your questions.

Kind regards,
The HorizonScan Team at FoodChain ID

Answer to last week’s Quiz – Since 1999 HorizonScan has recorded 194 reports of Salmonella Agona, spread over a wide range of food products. What food group has accounted for 50% of those reports?

For sure, the most alarming occurrences of Salmonella Agona over the past occurred in infant food and formula. But Feedstuff accounted for 97 of the cases reported since 1999, with Poultry meat and products a distant second. The chart below breaks down all 194 reports.

If you’ve been keeping up with our previous Quizzes you know that you can search for hundreds of specific food commodities in HorizonScan and see what types of issues have been affecting them over the past 15-20 years. This week we’re going to flip the script and look for a specific hazard – Salmonella Agona – and see how much you know about it.

Hazard Question #7 – Since 1999 HorizonScan has recorded 194 reports of Salmonella Agona, spread over a wide range of food products. What food group has accounted for 50% of those reports?

Hint: Okay, we know this is a toughie and even highly experienced QA managers and food scientists may be hard pressed to come up with the answer. But if you had to know, how would you figure it out? If you had several hours to burn on Google searches you might be able to get some clues, but with HorizonScan you could have the answer in less than a minute by doing a keyword search on “agona” then sorting the 194 results by Commodity Group. The answer would jump right off the page.

With more than 150,000 records dating back as far as 1999, HorizonScan provides an ocean of valuable data on food quality and safety issues that have been gathered and updated daily from more than 120 reliable sources. Its user-friendly interface makes it simple to search the data by commodity, country of origin, hazard type, date, supplier name, etc., or you can do keyword or combination word searches for almost any terms related to food quality. For example, a search on “agona AND infant” will bring up the thirteen cases where Salmonella Agona was found in infant formula or food.

To request updated pricing information or a free demo of HorizonScan, just reply now to this email and we’ll get back to you shortly and answer all your questions.

Kind regards,
The HorizonScan Team at FoodChain ID

Answer to last week’s Quiz – Over the past 20 years, what was the second most reported issue in chicken meat? What about over the past 5 years? The past 1 year?

We know that Salmonella is far and away the #1 culprit when it comes to adulterants in chicken meat. If we combine all types of Salmonella (the first and second bars in the three graphs below) we see that the second biggest issue over the past 20 years has been Veterinary Drug residues. So, that must mean we should make drug detection one of our top priorities, right? Well … not necessarily.

If you look at the second chart you’ll see that in the past 5 years Veterinary Drugs don’t even make our top 5 hazard list anymore. Instead, the #2 issue during over the past 5 years has been Campylobacter. In other words, there were a lot of Vet Drug reports 5-20 years ago, but not so many since then.

And if you look at the third chart you’ll see that in the past 1 year Listeria has elbowed its way into second place, after the two Salmonella categories.

Conclusion: While it’s true that Veterinary Drugs have historically been a problem in chicken meat, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should allocate much of your testing and preventive control budget to that issue. Why? Because there is scant evidence that it’s currently a significant issue. While I would never discourage anyone from testing for any particular adulterant, I would say that if you’re looking to optimize your budget and your resources, it pays to use HorizonScan to see what the actual threats are right now and to adapt your budget to that current reality. Otherwise you may waste your time and money chasing ghosts from the past!

We may never know which came first, the chicken or the egg, but we’re going to look at both of them over the next two weeks. At the risk of inciting a philosophical debate, we are choosing to start with eggs. Did you know that production of eggs has more than doubled since 1990, with nearly 1.4 Trillion eggs being produced in 2018? That equates to over 175 eggs per human being per year. A problem in eggs could impact a lot of people!

Hazard Question #5 – Historically, Salmonella has been the most frequently reported issue in eggs, but from July through November 2017 another issue dominated the industry and triggered massive recalls, especially in Europe. What was it?

Hint: If you had access to HorizonScan you could find the answer in a matter of seconds by doing a search on eggs, entering the date range described above in the chart filter, then clicking on the #1 issue shown in the resulting bar chart. We’ll show you what that looks like next week when we provide the answer.

The good news is that according to HorizonScan, no inspection agency in the world has reported a recurrence of this issue since March of 2018, which suggests that even though it was pretty catastrophic when it happened back in 2017, it’s probably no longer an issue that you need to spend a lot of money and resources controlling. That’s the beauty of having access to the accurate data contained in HorizonScan: you can efficiently target your budget to focus on the issues that are genuine threats to the supply chain right now, and not waste your resources controlling issues that may no longer pose a significant threat, or being unaware of new issues that do.

To request updated pricing information or a free demo of HorizonScan, just reply now to this message and we’ll get back to you shortly and answer all your questions.

Kind regards,
The HorizonScan Team at FoodChain ID

Answer to last week’s Quiz – What are the most commonly reported hazards in Cashews, Macadamias and Pine Nuts?

While Aflatoxins are far and away the most commonly reported hazard in tree nuts as a group, Salmonella has historically been the most commonly reported issue for these three nuts. (See HorizonScan summary charts below.) The good news is that unlike Aflatoxins, Salmonella can easily be mitigated with a process control such as a thermal kill step.