Sir,I am writing with reference to your article (‘Industry resists inspection charges’, Food Manufacture, April 2015, p37) on the proposal to impose further costs on the food chain by requiring the industry to accept charges for hygiene inspection.
Food giant Nestlé has suggested that the huge amount of data collected by companies such as itself and regulatory authorities like the Food Standards Agency (FSA) should be shared so that it can be ‘mined’ for information about emerging food safety problems.
A plasma project to kill germs on fresh vegetables is poised to start trials suitable for commercial applications later this month, according to a leading researcher on the programme.
Charging for hygiene inspections – so-called official controls – of food businesses within the EU is under consideration, which could have a big impact on costs, especially if full cost recovery is the preferred option.
The Food Standards Agency’s (FSA’s) new Food Crime Unit (FCU) is likely to remain secretive about much of its activities for fear of alerting criminals currently under investigation, said Steve Wearne, the FSA’s director of policy.
Serious food safety problems can rear up as a result of overlooked aspects of plant design and factory managers must beware of such issues, industry experts have warned.
This year’s Anuga FoodTec achieved a 14% rise in visitor numbers over the last time it was held in 2012, with more than 1,500 companies presenting the latest food processing solutions.
The campylobacter crisis is set to heat up, with warmer spring and summer weather likely to push up poultry contamination levels, Jeremy Hall, technical director of Bernard Matthews, has warned.
Food firms can now harness the fabled detection skills of Sherlock to boost product quality, thanks to innovation from Insort, which won a 2015 International FoodTec Gold Award at Anuga FoodTec.
Food safety and integrity throughout the whole supply chain will be the focus of the Food Manufacture Group’s 2015 one-day ‘Food safety conference – from the harvest to the home’, which takes place at The Lowry in Manchester on Tuesday September 29.
Manufacturers have been urged to raise their voices in the fight against plans to introduce mandatory country of origin labelling (COOL) for meat used in processed food, which recently won the backing of the European Parliament but has yet to become law...
Retailers have again failed to reach targets for campylobacter contamination in fresh shop-bought chickens, with almost three quarters of samples in the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA’s) latest survey results testing positive for the bug.
Feeding peanut protein to babies significantly cut the risk of them developing allergy to the nuts, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
News of new food and drink manufacturing jobs leads this edition of Good news, bad news, your sideways look at the past seven days in the UK food and drink industry.
Which? has named and shamed the local councils with the poorest food safety enforcement records for the foodservice sector, with London not doing so well.
Many serious accidents involving forklift trucks in food and drink manufacture could be avoided by better factory layout, which segregates pedestrians from trucks, together with better driver training, it has emerged.
Suppliers of adhesives and other critical components in food-contact packaging should carry out as much risk assessment as possible on potential by-products and decomposition products, rather than leaving this to downstream supply chain partners, a food...
Dutch company QLIP, which carries out composition and quality checks on farm milk samples for dairy firms in the Netherlands, is using the Delvotest T equipment from DSM Food Specialties as the national reference test to detect antibiotic residues in...
A “raft of initiatives” has been launched by the Red Tractor quality assurance scheme in a bid to improve its effectiveness and provide increased scrutiny of the supply chain.
The growing trend for serving rare burgers in restaurants across the country has raised serious concerns by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) about the increased risk of food poisoning through minced beef patties that haven’t been cooked sufficiently to...
UK food and drink manufacturers have welcomed a recommendation from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that exposure to the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) poses no risk to human health.
Food safety guidelines for insects destined for human consumption have been created for the first time in response to their likelihood of becoming widely consumed in Europe.
US food safety inspectors will audit Scottish beef production following the lifting of a BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) related ban, according to Scottish food secretary Richard Lochhead.
The food industry must engage more with consumers if it is to reassure them about what it does and get their buy-in for new advances in science and technology, according to a new survey published by research group Campden BRI on January 6.
A Premier Foods engineer has received a significant amount in compensation after he was left with life-changing injuries following a devastating accident at its Moreton cake factory.
The EU has banned horsemeat imports from Mexico, including meat from horses of US origin, after fears they may threaten food safety, according the Humane Society International (HSI).
Consumer pressure group Which? claims supermarket bosses should “hang their heads in shame”, after the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA’s) latest testing results revealed a big rise in the levels of campylobacter infections in the chickens they sell.
LB Enterprises faced legal costs of £604 after Ealing District Council’s food safety team seized 16.2kg of hazardous sweets at the premises of its supermarket Quality Foods.
Organic matter exuding from chicken carcasses provides the perfect environment for campylobacter to breed in food manufacturing sites, according a study from the Institute of Food Research (IFR).
Faccenda Foods has agreed to buy Cherry Valley Farms’ duck processing business Cherry Valley Foods by the end of December 2014 in a move that broadens its portfolio of poultry processing operations.
Work aimed at reducing the surface levels of campylobacter contamination on poultry could be overtaken by events, as new research suggests internal spread of the pathogen in chickens as well.
Manufacturers will face much tougher scrutiny and audits from their retail customers, which could face soaring financial penalties running into millions of pounds for mislabelled products under new EU rules, a regulatory expert has warned.
A row has broken out between the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) over its retail survey charting Campylobacter contamination of poultry in stores.
Killer bugs and ways to spot and manage food safety risks were some of the topics discussed by speakers at Food Manufacture Group’s Food safety conference last week (October 15).
Retailers have denied failing to support a new treatment that could slash the incidence of campylobacter food poisoning because it could add to cost of poultry.
Doctors, vets and farmers should stop rowing about who is responsible for the spread of antimicrobial resistance and work together to beat the “apocalyptic threat” it poses.
A new technique to control campylobacter infections in poultry – which killed 110 Britons last year – is being developed at the modest cost of only 4–5p a bird.
Plans to name and shame retailers that sell chicken contaminated with high levels campylobacter have been confirmed by the Food Standards Agency (FSA), nearly a year after they were first revealed at the Food Manufacture Group’s Food Safety Conference.
