World Supply Chain News
Key Scientific Impacts of New US Food Safety Legislation
The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) has commended US Congress for passage of landmark food safety legislation, which represents the largest changes in the country’s food safety laws in more than 70 years.
“This is a critical moment when it comes to the safety of the food we eat every day, because it puts science at the forefront of public policy,” said IFT President Bob Gravani, PhD. “This legislation will be a platform to build on that ensures the consuming public continues to have safe, nutritious and healthy food.”
48 million sickened by food-borne illness
ATLANTA — New figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year from food-borne illness. The agency said the new figures are more accurate than previous estimates due to better data used. The findings were published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases Read More
What's in the box? Victorian project may have security answer.
The discovery this week of two explosive devices concealed in air freight packages has again reminded Americans of the need for thorough cargo screening. A local supply chain initiative could exponentially improve security levels, the Victorian Freight and Logistics Council believes. Read More
China to ensure grain safety: official
27 Aug 2010 China Daily - BEIJING - China is enacting various measures, such as increasing its annual grain harvest and creating new grain safety legislation, to ensure a food-secure society, according to an official of the country's top economic planning body. Read more
China seizes 100 tonnes of melamine-laced milk powder
22 August 2010 ABC A total of 103 tonnes of milk powder from four dairy brands in Hebei, Shanxi and Tianjin provinces were found to be laced with the industrial chemical melamine, in the latest case of food safety problems in the world's most populous country. Authorities have detained 41 suspects in the case Read More
China milk powder blamed for 'baby breasts'
August 9 2010 SMH, Parents and doctors in central China fear that hormones in milk powder they fed their infant daughters have led the babies to prematurely develop breasts, state media reported Monday. Read More
Chicken Feed May Be Source of Salmonella in Egg Recall: FDA
THURSDAY, Aug. 26 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. health investigators say they've found positive samples of salmonella bacteria in feed given to chickens at the two farm enterprises implicated in the ongoing egg recall. Read More
Food safety efforts produce mixed results
ATLANTA — A report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the number of severe infections associated with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O157 (STEC O157) declined significantly in 2009, reaching the lowest level since 2004.
Tracing E. coli upstream
Why has the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture resisted the idea of finding the source of the deadly pathogen E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef for years? Why has it always put the blame for the pathogen on ground-beef grinders, makers of fresh, raw product who have no food-safety interventions, as well as no real way of introducing the pathogen into the meat at their plants?
Fight brewing over proposed new USDA HACCP validation guidelines
Fourteen years ago, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service completely revised its meat and poultry inspection requirements, mandating that meat and poultry plants use a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system to ensure its products were safe for people to eat. Since then, for the most part, the government inspection agency has dictated minor changes in the way the food safety system should be carried out.