The purpose of the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA) is the prevention of foodborne disease. We’ve invested billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of years of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) professional time since 2011 to make that so.
When foodborne disease happens, FDA, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state…
The U.S. Senate has voted to shut down the nation’s only catfish inspection program, a move that would put more Americans at risk of exposure to carcinogens and antibiotics from Asian white fish, such as Vietnamese pangasius. Senators approved the Joint Resolution by a vote of 55-43 on Wednesday. It now goes to the…
CHICAGO — The Food Safety Summit produced some polite discussion Wednesday, but no clamor for bringing back the Microbiological Data Program (MDP) to test more fresh produce before it reaches consumers. The MDP, about $5 million of annual federal funding for state agricultural laboratories to test fruits and vegetables at picking time, ended after 2012.…
Only two more Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rules remain to be finalized. Final rules for Sanitary Transportation and Intentional Adulteration are due out next spring. But with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) release last week of final FSMA rules on Produce Safety, Foreign Supplier Verification, and Accredited Third Party Verification, long-sought reform…
Back from Portland, OR, where the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) annual meeting was held this year, it’s natural to be thinking about the big things. This time of year, one that comes to mind is the safety of all the fresh fruit and produce we are scooping up. As “grown at altitude” Rocky…
Back in the day, before the fresh fruit and produce industry managed to kill it, the Microbiological Data Program (MDP) came under fire from growers for not providing timely results, sometimes resulting in recalls of fruit that consumers had already eaten. 
That was 18 months ago and MDP — the joint venture of about 10…
It was not perfect and it was not everywhere, but the U.S. government did, prior to this year, have a trip wire set up that might well have prevented that rare strain of hepatitis A from the Middle East and North Africa and that nasty cyclospora parasite from south of the border from getting into…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Thursday that a multi-state Salmonella outbreak was likely caused by the consumption of cucumbers imported from Mexico. The announcement came one day after USA Today reporter Liz Szabo reported that the FDA would be conducting 18 percent fewer food inspections this year due to a loss…
Consider the following hypothetical scenario: Working together, a public health authority, a health management organization and some major food processors have set up a non-profit food safety monitoring center. This center has created a website that invites members of the public to report possible food-related illnesses, and has widely distributed a free smartphone app for …
The Microbiological Data Program, which used to conduct 80 percent of all federal produce testing for pathogens like Salmonella and Listeria, officially shut down on December 31, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official confirmed.
The $4.5 million program had been in shutdown mode since mid-November. State agriculture departments, which tested samples of leafy greens,…
