Search Results for: food

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL health officers have been asked to assess the suitability of a new streamlined European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) system checking whether microorganisms used in food are harmful. This Qualified Presumption of Safety (QPS) procedure would assess the safety of groups of microorganisms, regardless of their use in food or animal feed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) expert panel has concluded “it is not possible to establish a correlation between enterobacteriaceae and salmonella” because this pathogen is “rarely present” in these child dairy foods. However, they recommended powdered infant and follow-on formulae manufacturers test for ‘enterobacteriaceae’ bacteria, to identify the presence of pathogen E sakazakii in such products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) Joint Research Centre (JRC) is opening three new reference laboratories this month (March 17) to monitor reliable testing of contaminated food items and animal feed. The new laboratories, at Geel, in Belgium, will test for heavy metals, mycotoxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), all key environmental health concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FOOD quality assurance schemes (QAS) need to be well-promoted and free from red tape to thrive, a European Union (EU) study has concluded. The EU’s Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) has been researching QAS which highlight food products’ home region and/or production methods, plus issues such as the environment or animal welfare.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, is pumping US$18 million into the planned roll-out of Azerbaijan’s first mass market food retail chain. This investment will help the Azeri-owned ADA Group open more than 50 ‘Almali’ grocery stores in and around the oil-rich country’s capital Baku over the next three years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s agriculture committee has taken a tough line on whether food products labelled organic can carry small traces of genetically modified material, insisting that no “products produced from or with GMOs” may be used in organic production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has launched a European Union (EU)-funded Euro 725,000 research aimed at improving health standards within the food industries of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. The studies aim to suggest ways of promoting a “new decision-making culture on food quality and safety among managers and policy makers”, for national sectors able to easily export foodstuffs to consumers in Britain and other EU countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) researchers have developed new computer test models for assessing the likely migration of plastics ingredients from packaging into foodstuffs, which they say will save manufacturers from underestimating contamination, risking expensive recalls. The EU ‘FOODMIGROSURE’ project, led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (IVV), has developed mathematical models based on extensive tests using various plastics and foodstuffs: one shows how plastics ingredients move about in plastic; another shows how these substances migrate from plastic packaging material into food at the contact surface; and a third model describes how the migrants disperse in the food itself.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has launched a European Union (EU)-funded Euro 725,000 research aimed at improving health standards within the food industries of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. The studies aim to suggest ways of promoting a “new decision-making culture on food quality and safety among managers and policy makers”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INSECT specialists have isolated a pheromone that locusts emit when they want to be left alone to mate, and claim this could prove a new effective weapon against this destructive species. Whilst the pheromone is clearly useful to the species when they are in their winged mature state, its impact on adolescent wingless ‘hopper’ locusts makes them vulnerable, says the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), in Nairobi.…