Food Safety Magazine

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli strains can cause foodborne illness, necessitating the expansion of testing for these organisms.

The ability to rapidly detect the presence of viable pathogens along the production chain is essential for determining intervention and control strategies.

Food safety testing can be conducted in-house or outsourced to a third-party laboratory. Which one is the right fit for your business?

Transgenic methods have been used for over 25 years to incorporate well-characterized genes from a foreign (different plant or nonplant species) donor into a plant host that endows it with some desirable trait.

As a result of the changing regulatory landscape, there is need for more accurate identification and quantification of contaminants in environmental and food-related samples.

The data indicate that processors are making preventive efforts to maintain or improve the performance of their allergen programs.

With so many food testing laboratories out there, how do you find the one that’s best for your business? Here are some tips to help you get started.

Foreign material is introduced in two ways: via raw materials and internally by the production process. They offer different challenges and require specific strategies to address them.

The number of reported incidents and recalls related to Listeria and L. monocytogenes has been increasing, and processors are making efforts to rid their facilities of harborage organisms and sites.

Most physical contaminants of foods, such as pieces of hard plastic or wood, can cause consumers immediate injury; this includes all types of foods, including beverages, bottled water, and nutritional and functional products.

The intent of adulteration is rarely to cause harm to health, since this would defeat the purpose of slipping a cheaper ingredient under the radar.

This new sensing mechanism can detect very faint traces of foodborne viruses that can help prevent epidemics and further transmission.

Green sprouts have been the poster child for a fresh produce item that causes more than its share of food safety concerns.

The way processors view their responsibilities regarding microbiological testing is changing. Regulatory pressure and a focus on food safety are causing changes in where processors do their testing.

Increased consumer interest in food safety and quality issues, combined with expanding regulatory initiatives, are increasing the importance of testing.

Whether you are just setting up your environmental Listeria monitoring program or reassessing your existing program, there are basic elements that you will want to include.

Advancements in testing automation have allowed for the development of smaller, more flexible solutions that fit into existing laboratory configurations and workflows. BioControl System’s Assurance GDS® system utilizes the targeted isolation capabilities of immunomagnetic separation and the specificity of DNA-based detection to provide fast and accurate results for even the most challenging food samples.

As molecular methods for pathogen detection continue to improve, emerging pathogens are being described around the world in molecular terms. The use of real-time PCR methods developed by Bio-Rad has the benefits of automation, high sensitivity, high precision and accuracy, and the flexibility to assay for more than one pathogen simultaneously.