The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA’s APHIS) has announced 12 awards totaling more than $3.2 million in cooperative agreement funding to create antimicrobial resistance (AMR) dashboards. AMR is a crucial threat to food safety and global public health that is aggravated by the use of antimicrobials in food animal agriculture.
Following a May 2023 announcement of a new framework for systematic post-market reassessment for chemicals used in foods, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a public inventory of certain food ingredients and additives determined to have unsafe uses in food because they are unapproved, as well as lists of select chemicals currently under the agency’s review. FDA also shared insights about the agency’s work to enhance the assessment of ingredients in foods on the market.
A nationwide study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has revealed that nearly half of all U.S. drinking water is contaminated by per- and polyflouralkyl substances (PFAS), also known as “forever chemicals.” Dietary exposure to PFAS is an issue of increasing concern due to the growing body of evidence regarding the chemicals’ harm to human health.
Based on an assessment of the impact of glyphosate on the health of humans, animals, and the environment, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has determined that there do not exist any critical areas of concern.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has put out a call for experts to estimate the global disease burden of certain conditions associated with dietary exposure to cadmium, methylmercury, inorganic arsenic, and lead.
Following a One Health approach, Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial governments have made a 5-year commitment for concerted action to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through ten shared priority actions across five pillars. The action plan provides a 5-year (2023–2027) blueprint for strengthening Canada's collective AMR preparedness and response across the One Health spectrum.
According to new tests by Consumer Reports, although the amounts of lead, arsenic, and cadmium in baby foods appear to be getting lower, the overall risk hasn’t changed much in the last five years.
An extensive literature review has pointed out knowledge gaps about the migration of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) oligomers from food contact materials (FCMs) into foods, as well as inadequate risk assessment for the chemicals.