During a nationwide teleconference on Monday Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged “strict market supervision and harsh penalties” to improve food safety and assure costumers that something like the melamine milk scandal will never happen again. “Perpetrators must pay such a high price that they can not afford,” said Keqiang, according to official news outlet Xinhua…. Continue Reading
Europe and America appear to be taking decidedly different approaches to honeybee colony collapse. The European Union just adopted continent-wide restrictions against the neonicotinoid class of insecticides called out by the European Food Safety Authority as especially damaging to bees. In the U.S., however, a newly released comprehensive scientific report on honey bee health says… Continue Reading
You, the consumer, are at the end of a long line of stops food makes before reaching your plate. Being able to trace this food back to its origins can be crucial to government and industry during a food-related recall or outbreak. But you may also want to know whether what you are about to… Continue Reading
A hepatitis A outbreak linked to frozen berries has sickened as many as 56 people in 4 of Europe’s Nordic countries, according to health officials. The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday that 16 hepatitis A infections arising from the same strain of the virus have been reported in Denmark, Finland, Norway… Continue Reading
At least 96 people have been hospitalized and 4 have died in an E. coli outbreak in Guatemala linked to fresh produce. The outbreak, which has affected residents of the town of Santo Domingo Xenacoj in South Central Guatemala, is thought to have originated with contaminated fruits and vegetables, reported the Associated Press Thursday. A male resident… Continue Reading
There have been a few signs this week that state health departments are beginning to prepare for the still unlikely event of China’s expanding outbreak of H7N9 bird flu reaching the United States. The Maine Public Health Alert Network System was used Tuesday to get the word out to local health officials, labs, emergency management officials,… Continue Reading
Back in the day when I was at South Dakota State University, we had a name for our sister land grant universities to the south in Lincoln, Nebraska and Manhattan, Kansas. We called them graduate schools. And I’ve long thought Kansas State University in particular was a pretty smart place. That impression continued with my… Continue Reading
International Recalls for Saturday, April 6 Canada Expanded Recall of Central-Epicure brand Smoked Atlantic Salmon for Listeria monocytogenes Expanded Recall of St. Thomas brand Bottled Lobster for Potential Clostridium Botulinum Contamination
A survey of food manufacturers around the world shows that the biggest barrier to proper food safety training is finding the time to do it. The Global Food Safety Training Survey 2013, published Thursday by a partnership of four food safety support companies, includes feedback from 649 food and drink producers around the world. Over… Continue Reading
International recalls for Thursday, April 4: Canada Expanded Epicure smoked salmon recall for Listeria monocytogenes Spain Recall of frozen chicken from Brazil for Salmonella Cyprus Recall of halva with pistachios from Lebanon for Salmonella
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food safety unit is going to do more “species testing” on imported beef products from Iceland, Ireland, Poland, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, but it will be doing more screenings than detailed DNA analyses, it says. In addition, USDA will be conducting species testing on more imported ground beef… Continue Reading