FDA Publishes a Final Guidance Document That headline is part of the big news here. We are living in the world of draft FDA guidance documents for food safety that are the FDA’s current thinking on a topic. I applaud the FDA for releasing the final guidance document on this topic in June 2019. FDA […]
If you have heard of ISO 17025, you either work in a food testing laboratory or send samples to a food testing laboratory. Clients in the food industry have asked me, is ISO 17025 a requirement? There is no simple answer. For example, state labs are now going through the process of getting accredited to […]
Caliente! Hot Topic! Have you heard? FDA is going to initiate recalls and announce recalls to consumers. Technically, the FDA initiating a recall is not new, because FDA gained the authority to initiate a recall in 2011 with the signing of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). FDA has pumped out three new guidance documents […]
CNN Lets ‘Food Babe’ Spout Pseudoscience on Lettuce Outbreak There’s another wonderful headline. Everyone has something to say about Romaine lettuce and pathogenic E. coli. Everyone I know anyway. I do not spout pseudoscience, but I have previously written about our first Romaine recall of 2018 here, and I use credible sources for my information […]
“FDA Seizes Food and Medical Products Held Under Insanitary Conditions at an Arkansas Grocery Warehouse.” This FDA News Release grabbed my attention. I have known since my first year of Food Science courses that FDA has the authority to seize product but does so rarely. After the Department of Justice filed the complaint in a […]
As a high school teacher in Chicago, in a past career, I was on a school bus headed south to the university campus of Champaign-Urbana, riding through the flat cornfields of Illinois. One of my students pointed out the window and asked, “Dr. Knutson, what are those… factories over there?” My reply was, “that is […]
As Romaine lettuce is planted in Arizona, the FDA has overwhelmed the produce industry with draft guidance documents. When the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed in 2011, the importance of growing, harvesting and processing of fruits and vegetables was recognized as the start of food safety for the familiar term of farm-to-fork. One […]
Looming on the FDA horizon is the enforcement of the last of seven foundational rules in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Intentional adulteration, commonly called food defense, is the deliberate addition to an ingredient or food of a hazard to cause illness or injury which makes the food adulterated. This criminal act could be […]
NOTE: The author is proud to be a cheesehead from Wisconsin. She is passionate about food safety… and football. Pre-season football has begun, and the tourists have descended upon my hometown of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Each year there is a bit of quiet during the months of May and June – after the NFL draft […]
Let’s spend some time addressing a topic that not one single food manufacturer or distributor enjoys discussing: product recalls. Let’s face it, a product recall could be one of the largest headaches your company has to face, but if completing a smoothly operated and well-organized recall means no consumer gets ill or passes away, it […]
