• Scientists: Oil spill's "grim reshuffle" of Gulf food web may destroy region's fishing industry

    The initial impact of the BP disaster on the maritime food chain in the Gulf are already apparent; scientists warn that if such impacts continue, they will result in a grim reshuffling of sea life that could over time cascade through the ecosystem and imperil the region’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry

  • Obama heralds Food Safety Act

    President Obama had an organic vegetable garden planted at the White House, and since taking office has been pushing a more aggressive approach to food safety; the administration’s approach is encapsulated in the Food Safety Modernization Act, which would give the U.S. government more effective tools to monitor food safety

  • Oil spill threatens a range of Gulf coast food stocks

    University of Arizona researchers said more than 240 kinds of “historically eaten, place-based foods” are at risk for being lost from what has been a cornucopia for generations of Gulf Coast residents. The majority of food items on that list are there because of the oil spill; oysters, crayfish, brown shrimp, redfish, grouper are at risk, as well as Tabasco sauce, okra, and gumbo file

  • Video study finds risky food-safety behavior more common than thought

    New study finds that that risky practices in restaurants, cafeterias, and other food-service places happen more often than previously thought; one expert says: “Meals prepared outside the home have been implicated in up to 70 percent of food poisoning outbreaks, making them a vital focus area for food safety professionals”

  • FDA should adopt risk-based approach to food safety: report

    Experts say that for food inspection in the United States to be more effective, FDA should implement a risk-based approach in which data and expertise are marshaled to pinpoint where along the production, distribution, and handling chains there is the greatest potential for contamination and other problems

  • Wooden or plastic pallets are a dangerous link in food chain

    Pallets are often stored in warehouses or outside behind grocery stores, where they are easily reached by debris from garbage or bacteria from animals; new sanitation tests found that about 33 percent of the wooden pallets it tested showed signs of unsanitary conditions, where bacteria could easily grow; 10 percent tested positive for e. coli, which can cause food poisoning, and 2.9 percent had an even nastier, and often deadly, bug called listeria

  • Safer food imports goal of public-private venture

    With imports accounting for 15 percent of the U.S. food supply, the United States needs a better way of ensuring food safety than border inspections; the University of Maryland teams up with a Massachusetts company to launch training center for foreign foodproducers

  • Food-labels contaminate food

    Chemicals used in adhesive which is used to attach food labels to packaging can seep through packaging and contaminate food; one of those chemicals is considered highly toxic and found in high concentration in some adhesives

  • Faster salmonella strain detection now possible with new technique

    New scientific method identifies salmonella strains much faster than current methods in use; faster detection of specific strains can mean recognizing an outbreak sooner and stopping tainted food from being delivered and consumed

  • Failure to test for six strains of E. coli leaves gaps in U.S. food safety network

    Six E. coli strains are not regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; E. coli O157:H7 causes 73,000 illnesses and 50 deaths every year in the United States; the six other strains are considered less pervasive, sickening an estimated 37,000 people a year and killing nearly 30; they could be causing more illnesses that labs do not detect because they are not testing for them

  • Smart plastic to be used in food packaging to monitor freshness of food

    New type of smart plastic could be used for packaging supermarket products or transporting produce; the new material has sensors embedded in it which will be used for measuring basic parameters such as temperature and humidity and more advanced markers that indicate produce quality; the new smart packaging will also measure the amount of hexanol — an indicator of deterioration in food — in the vapors emitted from foods

  • Food safety products: global demand to reach $2.9 billion in 2014

    Two trends have contributed to a sharp increase in the number of people who fall victim to food-borne illnesses in the United States and other advanced economies: the centralization of food production and distribution domestically, and the rapid growth of imports of food stuffs and food ingredients from countries in which health and safety standards are weak or are not being enforced; companies which offer food safety products and solutions benefit

  • HHS IG: U.S. needs more FDA food inspections

    Federal food inspectors are conducting fewer reviews of food manufacturing plants, with many facilities going more than five years without being checked; the reason: budget cuts since 2001 have shrunk the workforce at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); an estimated 76 million people in the United States get sick every year with food-borne illness and 5,000 die

  • Farmers are first line of defense against agroterror

    A rogue crop duster, someone tossing an infected rag over the loafing lot fence, or an upset employee with access to a food processing facility could conceivably commit an act of agroterror with widespread and dramatic consequences

  • Experts: Weak biosafety laws in Africa an invitation to bioterrorists

    To feed the growing number of people on the African continent, food production on the continent must be increased by up to 300 percent by 2050, and scientists say the only way to do so is by using biotechnology; many are worried that weak or nonexistent biosafety laws in Africa would make it easy for bioterrorists to exploit increased biotechnology activity for their nefarious purposes