Last Friday, Dr. Betsy Booren, Director of Scientific Affairs at the American Meat Institute, received a long-awaited letter from the Food Safety Inspection Service. It had been five long years almost to the day since the AMI had petitioned them to “Recognize the Use of E-beam on Carcasses as a Processing Aid.”
AMI asked for …
Eighteen months ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) signaled that the meat industry’s 2005 request to use low-dose irradiation as a processing aid to reduce unwanted microbes — and not have to label the meat as irradiated — was not getting much traction.
Late last week, FSIS finally issued…
The E. coli crisis currently sickening more than 3,800 and attributed to German-grown sprouts illustrates the need to keep produce safe, and the way to do this is through irradiation. So argues a recent opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal.
The article, “Europe’s Organic Food Scare,” is a sign that there’s…
Food-safety engineers from Texas AgriLife Research at Texas A&M University report they’ve devised a method to reduce the amount of irradiation needed to kill pathogens like Salmonella or E. coli O157:H7 that can contaminate fresh produce.
That’s significant not for safety reasons–irradiation does not cause foods to become radioactive and irradiated food is not harmful–but …
Part II in a two-part series on food irradiation. On foodborne illness outbreaks caused by ground beef, fresh leafy greens, and spices–all foods that could arguably be made safer through irradiation–and the future of the technology and its impact on the safety of the food supply.
Part I in a two-part series on food irradiation, with a focus on the science behind the technology.
With summer underway, barbeque season is in full swing. For some, that means a fresh salad, for others it means grilled chicken, and for others it’s biting into a juicy hamburger. Not to mention the spices that…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could improve transparency and recordkeeping on key decisions on irradiation petitions, according to a new report conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
This report was produced in response to a Congressional request for information on food irradiation.
According to the GAO, there were two objectives to the …
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is not moving forward on a meat industry request to approve carcass irradiation as a food safety technique, according to Meatingplace.
The American Meat Institute (AMI) sent a letter to the agency’s deputy under secretary for food safety, Jerold Mande, in September requesting the meeting to discuss …
Two and half weeks before The New York Times put the beef industry’s safety flaws under a microscope, the meat industry had renewed its campaign for beef carcass irradiation starting with the new administration right where it left off the old one.
In a letter to Jerold R. Mande, the deputy Under Secretary for the …
