Imagine if you left the supermarket every time you took one-third of your shopping and threw it straight into the trash. Wasting so much food sounds like something only the crazy would do, but that’s what happens on our planet every day. How is it possible that such significant quantities of our vital sustenance end up squandered? Of what is grown as perishable foods, over 45% never ends up being consumed. 34.7% of fresh fish and seafood is lost or wasted. Even though dairy products are the least wasted of all foods, the reality is that 17.1% of all milk...
ruth
FDA proposes a new rule for FSMA food traceability as part of the New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a proposed rule for traceability and recordkeeping requirements for the most vulnerable foods. The goal of the proposal is to track the foods at every step of the supply chain. Comprehensive traceability, with more inclusive records associated with critical tracking events, can help the FDA identify the exact sources of foods involved in outbreaks. Better traceability will allow the fast removal of unsafe products from the market, thereby preventing illnesses and death. Recent outbreaks of foodborne disease tied to fresh leafy greens and papayas emphasize the importance of better traceability. Complete records...
ruth
FDA recalls 150 brands of hand sanitizers: How can consumers keep track?
With the need to clean hands frequently during the COVID-19 pandemic, hand sanitizers became a hot commodity. The familiar brands such as Purell disappeared from the shelves and consumers needed to resort to buying unfamiliar brands. However, we all quickly discovered that many of the hand sanitizers contained poisonous, undeclared compounds. Early on during the public health COVID-19 emergency, the FDA issued temporary policies to provide flexibility to meet the demand. The guidelines were updated in April, indicating that at least some of the ethanol-based products had harmful chemicals, including gasoline and benzene, known as human carcinogens. Two months ago,...
ruth
The VITAL project combines lab-on-chip rapid method and Artificial Intelligence for the rapid method validation
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a revolutionary tool bursting into several fields, offering notable advantages such as speed, accuracy, a recommendation of actions, and faster decisions. Microbiology is a field in which AI could be beneficial, and currently, there are some AI projects under development. This blog reports an innovative project that relies on a combination of two of the most cutting-edge innovations: lab-on-chip rapid method and AI. It is a food safety related-project, focused on the search of a personalized validation scheme for a lab-on-chip rapid method for Salmonella detection by using AI. One of the drawbacks of adopting a...