Articles - Food Safety

The COVID-19 pandemic will lead to a fundamental change on how we view the health of food industry workers. It will impact every aspect of the plant layout, the physical distancing, the methods for disinfection.   Background   No single global event in recent history has had such a profound impact on food industry workers as the spread of [...]

The second quarter of 2020 saw a drop in RASFF notifications, a plausible consequence of the pandemic measures, but has the anticipated increase in food fraud actually occurred?     It is hard to think of another event that has had such far-reaching effects in such a short period of time as the COVID-19 pandemic. We have been witness to s [...]

While consumers around the globe have gradually lost trust in poorly-applied precautionary allergen labelling (PAL) schemes, the UK food industry appears to be willing to embrace the new allergen approach utilising allergen thresholds.      Introduction Food allergies are a significant problem, with an estimated 20 million sufferers [...]

Despite tightened sanitary controls, sausage and processed meat containing African swine fever virus (ASF) are still found in Russia and some of its neighboring countries. On August 18, a routine inspection by the Russian veterinary watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor revealed the presence of the ASF genome in sausage products manufactured by a meat process [...]

Is it possible for valorised food processing by-products to be both safe and sustainable?      The European Commission’s aspiration to move towards a circular economy is no secret. With the recent unveiling of the Green Deal, an ambitious plan to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050, it is clear that in the near future, businesse [...]

Are regulatory limits a good compromise between public health and economic interests?     The EU undoubtedly has the strictest mycotoxin regulations in the world. The complex and supposedly well-structured system that enforces these regulations and guarantees the highest level of safety for EU citizens actually has some weak points and ev [...]

An overview of the last ten years of notifications related to food contaminated with mycotoxins.     In order to protect food consumers and livestock, mycotoxin levels in food and feed need to be controlled because they have toxic properties that can sometimes cause chronic negative health effects (Bhat et al. 2010; Wild and Gong 2010). W [...]

Whether it is an administrative case or a criminal case, the consequences for noncompliance in the preparation and handling of foodstuffs and feedstuffs appear to vary widely. We interviewed four legal experts in the field.The problem of safety of use in the cereal chain is primarily linked to mycotoxin contamination. ochratoxin A (OTA), zearalenon [...]

Affidia interviewed two of the principle players in testing inspection and certification of grain shipments to learn how real investigations are conducted and to understand the unmet challenges in this field.Globalization has increased the international circulation of commodities. For some of these commodities, globalization has meant the establish [...]

Unsafe foods incidents occur for many reasons and can lead to public health issues, sales losses, and harm to a company’s reputation. The response to unsafe food crises requires careful methods and precise procedures.     Food businesses are placing more and more emphasis on quality and safety control and on the traceability of prod [...]

One of the most expensive nuts is sometimes contaminated by aflatoxin at levels above EU regulatory limits. Here we try to understand to what extent the dramatic decrease in Iranian pistachio border rejections has been due to the change in regulatory limits.     The origin of the word pistachio comes from the Persian word pesteh. Iran has [...]

Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, faces mycotoxin-related challenges in an expanding export market. This article explains how grain stakeholders in Ukraine conduct mycotoxin risk management, which analysis methods they use, and why they choose them.     The impact of mycotoxins on human health and on the economy M [...]

A changing environment and ambitious plans to ramp up wheat exports pushes Russian veterinary watchdog Rosselhoznadzor to enhance control over the presence of mycotoxins in grain.Rosselkhoznadzor is currently designing a new traceability system to ensure exported grain is free of mycotoxins. Russia needs to tighten control over the quality of expor [...]

A lot of words, reports, and good will but where is the reduction in agricultural antibiotic use?      “Antimicrobial resistance is the ability of microorganisms, such as bacteria, to become increasingly resistant to an antimicrobial to which they were previously susceptible. AMR is a consequence of natural selection and geneti [...]

The presence of antibiotics in fresh water: the global antimicrobial resistance threat, inadequate legislation, and technical gaps in water treatment systems.     The worldwide use and abuse of antimicrobials in the past 50 years has had a heavy impact on the planet’s ecosystems. Antimicrobial-resistant genes, already present in bac [...]