Articles - Food Safety

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 [...]

Antimicrobial resistance is selected for in human and veterinary medicine alike, and resistance may be transferred from animals to humans and vice versa.IntroductionAntimicrobial (antibiotic, antifungal, antiviral, and antiparasitic) resistance (AMR) is defined as the development in microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, and some parasite [...]

The European food production industry has been shaken over the past two years by multiple reports of foodborne outbreaks. Food safety authorities also report a trend in the growing number of outbreak-related recalls. Is something going wrong?     Introduction The summer of 2019 saw numerous foodborne outbreaks linked to Listeria and Salmo [...]

Antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance; personal experience, policies and regulatory response.     Background Antimicrobial compounds are a natural phenomenon in any microbiome. As an example, in the human microbiome it is estimated as many as 1011 organisms per milliliter are found in the large intestine. A healthy human microbiome, [...]

Russian authorities claim they want to decrease antibiotic use both in veterinary and healthcare systems but any changes have been delayed either because of the cost to the federal treasury, potentially amounting to billions of rubles, or because local businesses do not welcome these changes.Anti-antibiotics campaign is needed in RussiaOn 3 Decembe [...]

Insight to the point of view of animal health authorities, food producers and retailers.     The point of view of animal health authorities in one EU country: education and training are very important, aside the regulations, in order to reduce antibiotic use. In the EU, total antibiotic use on average has decreased significantly over the [...]

A never-ending story and lessons learned.     At the beginning of the first dioxin crises at the end of the last century, we did not anticipate that they would continue to pop up as a problem in the world for so long and that so many unexpected dioxin sources existed in the feed and food sector (see the figure on page 46). Over time, we h [...]

Because of its relatively high price and its liquid form, honey has been a target for food fraud perpetrators from time immemorial.     Honey. Naturally delicious, syrupy and sweet, with a delicate, unique flavour, honey has been prized as a special food since pre-history. Cave paintings in Europe that date back more than 8000 years depic [...]

Do we know how many people suffer from food allergies?        The socio-economic impact of food allergies  Allergy-related health loss is estimated to be of the same order of magnitude as prostate cancer or rheumatoid arthritis and it may be more severe than that of heart disease, skin cancer, or Parkinson’s disease ( [...]

European Union, USA, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zelando: an update      Abstract  As part of an EU-funded project (FP7) to develop “Integrated approaches to food allergen and allergy management”, a database was constructed from publicly available information on allergen recalls between 2011 and 2014 in Eur [...]

Product labeling is uneven in different countries and, even at the European level, legislation has gaps both for food producers and for consumers. Some countries, such as the UK, are moving to implement new national legislation.     Introduction  According to the final RASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed) report for 2018 (Eur [...]