Gale Prince

The sentences handed down in September to two Georgia peanut butter manufacturers for distributing Salmonella-tainted peanut products should be a profound lesson for not just the food industry, but for the industry in general.

FDA is scheduled to release the final new preventive control regulations for the food industry this month.

Product recalls in bakery and snack categories have remained consistent over the years, with undeclared allergens the primary cause. These costly recalls are preventable!

Your customers expect your food production facilities to be clean. They take this for granted when they purchase your products. If they arrived at your plant unexpectedly, would it live up to their expectations?

There are concerns that open-date coding of foods has increased food waste. The food industry and consumers use the dates printed on food packages to manage stock rotation from food manufacturing plants to the consumer’s kitchen. Variation in terminology associated with open dates on consumer packages can result in the disposal of good food.

The number of firms recalling product due to foreign material contamination has increased by 157% in the past six years. While metal fragments have been the leading cause, there have been several food product recalls related to plastic fragments. 

Since the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law in January 2011, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published in the Federal Register nearly 800 pages of proposed regulations on the act’s implementation. 

Changes in food-safety regulations aren’t just limited to the U.S. I recently took part in an international food-safety meeting in China, during which representatives from 19 nations talked about changes underway in food-safety regulations in their respective countries. 

The global food industry is faced with some of the biggest food-safety changes in history. Not only has the U.S. proposed changes in the way food safety will be addressed, but so has Canada, China, India and other countries. 

On Sept. 26, the two owners of Jensen Farms, were arrested for shipping adulterated food in 2011. The charge was shipping contaminated cantaloupe, which resulted in the death of 33 people and sickened 147 people. The two brothers were arrested on misdemeanor charges of introducing adulterated food into commerce.