Contamination Control

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The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is launching an educational campaign to address widespread misconceptions about “vegan” versus “free-from” labels and raise awareness about precautionary allergen labeling. 

The European Parliament and Council have reached a provisional agreement on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which, if ratified, would require all packaging used in the EU to be recyclable, set restrictions on plastic packaging, and ban the use of toxic PFAS in food contact packaging.

States like California have been active in the past few years passing laws to regulate PFAS in products. So far, 12 states have enacted laws that ban or impose reporting or disclosure requirements for PFAS in products. As states continue to move forward with emerging PFAS product restrictions, those who manufacture, distribute, and sell such products must prepare for the changing legal landscape.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has updated its list of chemicals that are undergoing postmarket safety assessment. The list also newly includes information about the status of the postmarket assessments and links to public information about postmarket actions that have been taken.

To encourage the use of Salmonella vaccines for poultry flocks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) intends to exclude current commercial vaccine subtypes of Salmonella confirmed in FSIS raw poultry samples from the calculation used to categorize establishments under the raw poultry Salmonella performance standards.

A study aims to determine how irrigation water that is treated to control microbial activity may affect pathogens on crop surfaces or soil, with the end goal of developing a quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) for industry to gauge the reduction in microbial risk from treated water applied preharvest.

A recent study has demonstrated the food safety concern of microplastics contamination in cell-based seafood.

bioMérieux has entered an agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to collaboratively develop tools to combat foodborne pathogens.

Funded by the Center for Produce Safety, a University of Georgia researcher is leveraging cutting-edge technology to improve the standard method for detection of viruses on foods, and then will use the method to study infectious norovirus persistence on berries.

FDA has announced that, thanks to voluntary phase-out by industry, toxic PFAS are no longer being sold by manufacturers for use in food-contact grease-proofing agents in the U.S. FDA also said it is working towards a validated analytical method that would enable the agency to monitor the market for PFAS in food packaging.