• U.K. potential food crisis

    Many climate experts believe a slight rise in U.K. temperatures would be beneficial for the farming industry as  yields could increase; as temperatures continue to rise, however, farmers would need to use more and more fertilizer on their crops and some livestock would not be as productive; consumers could thus face reduced food choices

  • Even a limited India-Pakistan nuclear war would substantially reduce global crop yields

    Worries about nuclear winter have faded since the end of the cold war, but existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons still hold the potential for devastating global impacts; researchers have found that the climate effects of a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan would greatly reduce yields of staple crops, even in distant countries

  • Developing a new test for safer milk

    Brucellosis is the most common animal-to-human infection worldwide, with more than 500,000 new cases reported each year; it rarely causes death, but it can result in prolonged health problems; researchers received a 3-year grant of $500,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a new technology that can rapidly test milk and other dairy products for harmful pathogens

  • USDA releases requests for applications for the AFRI food safety challenge

    The Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture says that this year’s grants under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative will focus on promoting and enhancing the scientific discipline of food safety, with an overall aim of protecting consumers from microbial, chemical, and physical hazards that may occur during all stages of the food chain, from production to consumption

  • Do nano-pesticides hold promise or pose threat to greener agriculture?

    Nanotechnology has developed significantly in the past decade and was able to create many new materials with a vast range of potential applications; the risk that nano-particles may pose to human and environment health, however, is not yet fully understood; a precautionary principle suggests keeping environmental release of nano-particles minimal until their fate and toxicity is better understood

  • New salmonella species food safety test kit

    Salmonella is a genus of bacteria that are a major cause of foodborne illnesses throughout the world. The bacteria are generally transmitted to humans through the consumption of contaminated food; new salmonella test kit unveiled

  • Global food-trade network vulnerable to fast spread of contaminants

    As the world’s population climbs past seven billion, the sustainable production and distribution of food is balanced against the need to ensure its chemical and microbiological safety; this is not easy: a rigorous analysis of the international food-trade network shows the network’s vulnerability to the fast spread of contaminants as well as the correlation between known food poisoning outbreaks and the centrality of countries on the network

  • Veterinary profession trends short-change biosecurity, food security, public health

    More than half of veterinary students in the United States seek training in companion animal or pet medicine – with fewer and fewer graduate veterinary students pursuing Ph.D. training which would prepare them for academic careers, key jobs in the public sector, and some positions in industry; the result is a dwindling supply of veterinarians to fill jobs overseeing and enforcing food safety and animal health standards, conduct research in human drug development and advances in pet health, and participate in wildlife and ecosystem management, infectious disease control, biosecurity, and agro-terrorism prevention

  • Making food, water supply safe is a challenge for today's sensors

    Sensors that work flawlessly in laboratory settings may stumble when it comes to performing in real-world conditions; these shortcomings are important as they relate to safeguarding the U.S. food and water supplies

  • New 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

  • New 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

  • USDA 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

  • Using 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

  • Diet 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

  • E-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