Food supply chain safety

  • Food safetyNew devices tests food for safety, quality

    A new spectrometer will allow consumers to gage the quality of food before they buy it; the device is no bigger than a sugar cube, is inexpensive to manufacture, and could one day be installed in smartphones

  • Food safetyNew app to keep food safer

    FoodCheck, an application developed for Android tablet devices, can minimize dangerous and costly errors in food preparation by automating the process of controlling and monitoring food by using wireless temperature monitoring

  • Food safetyUSDA announces fourth Mad Cow case

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced it had identified a cow suffering from mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE); this is the fourth case of mad cow disease found in the United States since 2003, and the first since 2006

  • Food securityUsing mathematics to feed the world

    In the race to breed better crops to feed the increasing world population, scientists at the University of Nottingham are using mathematics to find out how a vital plant hormone affects growth

  • Food and climateDiet change required to curb most potent greenhouse gas

    N2O is the third highest contributor to climate change behind carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), but it poses a greater challenge to mitigate as nitrogen is an essential element for food production; it is also the most potent of these three greenhouse gases as it is a much better absorber of infrared radiation

  • Food safetyE-beam technology to keep food supply safe

    More than two million people a year, most of them children, die from food-borne or water-borne illness; more than one-third, or 1.3 billion tons, of the food produced for human consumption every year is wasted or lost because of spoilage; the UN nuclear weapons watch dog, the IAEA, says that irradiating food is a more effective solution for preventing death, illness, and food spoilage than techniques currently in use: heating, refrigerating, freezing, or chemical treatment

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  • Food safetyNew food fraud database launched

    DHS defines food fraud as the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering, or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients, or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain; a new database compiles thousands of food fraud reports; the most fraud-prone foods: olive oil, milk, and honey

  • Food safetyBeef Industry Safety Summit notes successes, challenges

    The U.S. beef industry says that beef is increasingly safe and that consumers have more confidence in beef safety, but challenges remain

  • FoodDeveloping crop for livestock in dry climates

    Scientists at the University of Liverpool are working with international partners to develop new forage crop for the hot and dry climate of regions such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

  • Earth crustEarth's crust is slowly being destroyed

    New research shows that the Earth’s crust is now undergoing high rates of destruction; the research shows the sharp decrease in the growth of the continental crust indicates a dramatic change in the way the Earth has generated and preserved this crust in the last 4.5 billion years

  • Food safetyFirefly technology sheds new light

    A new device, employing the same chemical which lights up fireflies, can easily detect food contamination; the researchers who developed the system hope it will soon be used to test for other diseases, including HIV-AIDS

  • Food safetyConfirmed: oil from Deepwater Horizon disaster entered food chain

    For months, crude oil gushed into the water at a rate of approximately 53,000 barrels per day; new study confirms that not only did oil affect the ecosystem in the Gulf during the blowout, but it was still entering the food web after the well was capped

  • Drug resistanceAntibiotic-resistant bacteria proliferate in agricultural soils

    Infectious diseases kill roughly thirteen million people worldwide, annually, a toll that continues to rise, aided and abetted by resistance genes. Now a study finds reservoirs of resistance in agricultural soils

  • Food safetyNew antibiotic to make food safer, cows healthier

    Chemists discovered a molecule very similar to the antibiotic nisin, found naturally in milk and added to food for decades to fight pathogenic bacteria; the new molecule, geobacillin, is more stable than nisin, which could make it more effective

  • Radiation risksRadiation-laced Japanese seafood detected in South Korea

    The effects of the Japanese nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daichii atomic energy plant are continuing to ripple across the world