Adulteration, pesticides and unauthorized ingredients were among fraud and non-compliance issues discussed by European countries recently.
The number of food and other fraud suspicions raised by EU member states dropped in November. The 232 alerts are down from 292 in October. This compares to 213 in September and 222 in August. There were 325 notifications in July, 265 in June, 281 in May, 341 in April, 345 in March, 318 in February, and 277 in January.
A global food standards setting agency has supported guidance on several topics to try and improve food safety, including traditional markets and ciguatera.
The United Nations food standards body, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, was established by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Texts adopted at a meeting in November include guidelines for food hygiene control measures in traditional food markets and a code of practice for the prevention and reduction of ciguatera poisoning.
According to a new study from Stanford University, the influenza virus can remain infectious in raw milk stored at refrigeration temperatures for up to five days. The research, published Dec. 12 in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, underscores the potential health risks associated with consuming unpasteurized milk at a time when outbreaks of avian influenza in dairy cattle are raising alarm.
Suspected or confirmed cases of Norovirus and Yersinia will soon have to be reported to government health officials by laboratories in England.
The move is part of a decision to amend the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations 2010.
Subject to parliamentary approval, the updated legislation will come into force in April 2025.
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has initiated a public consultation on its latest draft scientific opinion concerning the potential health risks associated with perchlorate in food. This consultation is a response to a request from the European Commission to re-evaluate perchlorate's health implications, incorporating updated methodologies and new evidence since EFSA's previous assessment in 2014.
A recent investigation, conducted by CVUA Stuttgart - one of the 4 official food control and animal health laboratories of Baden-Wuerttemberg, a state in southern Germany-, raises concerns about the safety of some spices typically used during Christmas festivities, revealing unexpected pesticide residues.
The European Commission has officially adopted a ban on Bisphenol A (BPA) in food contact materials (FCM), addressing rising concerns over its potential health risks. The ban also extends to other bisphenols known to harm reproductive and endocrine systems.
WHO and FAO have published the full report of an exercise that ranked foodborne viruses according to frequency and severity.
The first part of the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) meetings focused on food attribution, analytical methods, and indicators.
While raw milk consumption is an elusive figure, it’s generally accepted that it is both more popular and more risky today than at any time in the past several decades.
It’s not just the usual threats like E. coli 0157:H7 and campylobacter but the new threat from the H5N1 avian flu virus. About 99 percent of the H5N1 threat can be controlled by pasteurization, but this would mean that raw milk, sometimes referred to as “fresh” milk, would cease to be raw milk.
In 2023, listeriosis cases reached their highest level since 2007, while campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis remained the most frequently reported zoonotic diseases in the EU. Overall, reported cases of zoonotic diseases in humans increased, but foodborne outbreaks saw a slight decline. These are the main findings of the annual EU One Health Zoonoses Report by EFSA and ECDC.
Researchers have shown the significant impact and costs of Campylobacter infections from contaminated chicken in Australia.
Scientists quantified the cost of illness attributable to specific domestic risk factors for Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli. They used data from a 2018 to 2019 case–control study to estimate odds ratios and attributable fractions for risk factors. Data on national incidence, hospitalization, and premature mortality was used to quantify burden. The team then applied costs related to healthcare use, pain and suffering, premature mortality, and lost productivity to each risk factor.
A recently released report covering food safety in the supply chain has revealed there were 60 outbreaks that affected 1,500 people in the United Kingdom in 2023, which is up from the year before.
The United Kingdom Food Security Report includes data available from 2021 to 2024. There are five themes, including one on food safety and consumer confidence.
Researchers from Germany, Belgium, and Spain have presented their work on solving outbreaks and pathogen-specific questions at a European meeting.
The European Scientific Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ESCAIDE) was organized by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
Since 2020, integrated genomic surveillance (IGS) has been introduced for surveillance of salmonellosis in Germany with routine sequencing of common serovars such as Salmonella Enteritidis and Typhimurium and event-based sequencing of other types.
The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has produced a book to teach children about food safety.
The book “Luis’ and Maya’s Adventure in the shrinking lab: Looking for Clues in the Kitchen” features Luis and Maya as two schoolchildren who visit the BfR shrinking lab, where they meet Fred the friendly bacillus.
The trio follow the trail of a bacterial villain that leads them directly to the crime scene – the dark refrigerator. Together with the characters, children learn about kitchen hygiene and food safety.
A European project is aiming to create a platform where stakeholders can come together to discuss food fraud.
The European Food Fraud Community of Practice (EFF-CoP) is led by Saskia van Ruth, Professor of Food Supply Chain Integrity at University College Dublin’s School of Agriculture and Food Science.
Professor van Ruth said food fraud reaches every dining table and undermines trust in foods.
The ADI, which reflects the safe amount of a substance that can be consumed daily over a lifetime, covers saccharin and its sodium, calcium and potassium salts (E 954). The previous ADI was set in 1995 based on the increased incidence of bladder tumours observed in rat studies. However, there is now scientific agreement that these tumours are specific to male rats and not relevant to humans.
A rise in Salmonella infections in Sweden has been linked to the consumption of alfalfa sprouts.
Folkhälsomyndigheten (the Public Health Agency of Sweden) said 92 people from 18 regions have been infected with one of 12 genetically closely related Salmonella Typhimurium sequence type (ST) 36 variants.
The European Commission has reported on developments related to the food safety control systems of five potential European Union countries, including Ukraine and Turkey.
As part of the Enlargement Package, the EU Commission assessed how prepared Serbia, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Turkey are as they work toward EU accession. A previous article covered Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.
One person has died in a multi-country Salmonella outbreak linked to salad from Italy.
A foodborne outbreak with about 200 Salmonella Umbilo cases occurred between July and September 2024 in nine European countries. Germany was the most affected with 118 infections.
A cross-border outbreak of Salmonella Strathcona ST2559 is ongoing in the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) and the United Kingdom (UK). From 1 January 2023 to 5 November 2024, 232 confirmed cases of S. Strathcona ST2559 have been identified in 16 EU/EEA countries according to the European case definition: Austria (33), Croatia (3), Czechia (10), Denmark (9), Estonia (1), Germany (62), Finland (3), France (23), Ireland (1), Italy (67), Luxembourg (2), the Netherlands (2), Norway (3), Slovakia (5), Slovenia (2) and Sweden (6). Twenty-nine cases were also identified in the UK. Among the travel-associated cases, the most frequently visited country was Italy.
