A new free eLearning tool for small and medium-sized food businesses across Northern Ireland has been launched by safefood to provide basic food safety training to new staff as they manage a post-pandemic increase in demand.

Food industry workshops hosted by safefood revealed that many staff working in SME food businesses don’t have a high level of food safety knowledge.

Staff also revealed that they struggle to prioritise food safety due to the competitive pressures of the food industry, coupled with small profit margins and high staff turnover.

‘Safefood for business’ is a free online training programme in basic food safety for SME food businesses across food service, catering, retail and manufacturing sectors in Northern Ireland.

The interactive training programme covers key areas of food safety training in short, practical and engaging modules using real-life scenarios and work-place scenarios.

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Nine out of 10 people believe a better food safety culture in the workplace would improve food safety overall, according to research from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).

 The FSAI’s Food Safety Consultative Council on Thursday hosted an open meeting to discuss new EU regulations, requiring food businesses to establish, maintain and demonstrate an appropriate food safety culture.

‘Food Safety Culture — How Food Businesses and Consumers Benefit’ provided an opportunity for leading specialists to share insights into the value of food safety culture in food businesses

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 Introducing the new eLearning tool, Ray Dolan, CEO of safefood said, “Building a culture of good food safety benefits both the public and those food businesses that supply them. There are approximately 50,000 business producing food across the island of Ireland and around 80% of these are small food producers. Having met many small food business owners through our Knowledge Network, we understand the pressures they face and how they have a lot on their plate, including food safety training. Our aim is to provide business owners with a free and practical food safety training tool that fits their needs.”

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 A company in the Republic of Ireland has been punished for breaches of food law including forging and altering documents.

Arrabawn Co-Operative Society Limited was convicted in a recent district court ruling and fined €40,000 ($46,400). Arrabawn employs 400 people and collects milk from more than 1,000 shareholder farmers. It also has food ingredient and agri business units.

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During World War I, British soldier Private Ernest Cable arrived unwell at a hospital in France. A sample of Shigella flexneri – the bacteria that causes dysentery – was taken from Private Cable, and this sample was the first and founding culture of what is now among the oldest ‘living libraries’ of bacteria in the world – the National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC).

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safefood has launched ‘safefood for business’, a new free e-learning programme on the fundamentals of food safety for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) operating in the food production sector. This includes SMEs working in food production, food processing, retail, catering and food services.

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Food and You 2 is the FSA’s flagship biannual consumer survey and it covers topics such as food safety in the home, food shopping, eating out, food security, concerns about food, and trust in the FSA and food supply chain. The FSA uses the information to inform policies and its work with consumers.

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Professor Robin May, the FSA’s Chief Scientific Adviser, explains why urgent progress is needed to support a unified eco-labelling system for food in the UK in order to support a fully sustainable food system.

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New advances in sequencing technology could help transform the way microbial food safety is managed both within our own laboratory network and throughout the global supply chain. The implementation of rapid whole-genome sequencing (WGS) could help transform microbial risk surveillance across the food industry from a factory and ingredient surveillance approach to a more preventive approach—one in which we can identify outbreak indicators to predict, and take steps to prevent, a problem before it even occurs. The reduction in cost per sample, while maintaining a practical testing time, could provide vital tools during incident investigations, enabling manufacturers to make rapid, informed decisions on product releases to ensure the supply chain—and therefore the consumer—is safe from microbial contamination.

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EFSA has begun work on a new assessment looking at the risk of antimicrobial resistant bacteria spreading during animal transport.

The assessment, which was requested by the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI), will focus on the risk of resistant zoonotic bacteria spreading among poultry, pigs and cattle during transport to other farms or to slaughterhouses.

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Cold plasma has captured scientists’ imagination in almost every field, and food safety is no exception. The USDA and consumer groups continue to fund cold plasma research, and the results are potentially revolutionary.

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Counterfeit copies of Nestle's Nescafe Gold brand of instant coffee have been found on sale in Germany, and may contain broken glass or plastic.

The fakes were reported by Nestle Deutschland, which said it had discovered counterfeits of what appears to be an old style of Nescafe Gold jar, which is no longer commercially available and has not been used for years.

The counterfeits were neither manufactured nor distributed by Nestle, according to the company, and were discovered mainly at markets and smaller shops. The outlets have been asked to stop selling the illegal products, and Nestle has also asked the authorities to look into the fraud.

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The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), based in Parma, Italy is looking for a Scientific Officer
(Contract Agent, Function Group IV)

Please send us your application by no later than 30 November 2021 at 23:59 (local time), following the instructions in the ANNEX.

The purpose of this call is to establish a talent pool (reserve list) that may be used for the recruitment of staff when a position becomes available and will be valid until 31/12/2023. The validity of the talent pool may be extended.

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Five European countries have reported salmonellosis infections linked to the consumption of sesame-based products such as tahini and halva imported from Syria.

Up to 121 people have been affected since January 2019 in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Several types of Salmonella are linked to the outbreak – S. Mbandaka, S. Havana, S. Orion, S. Amsterdam, S. Senftenberg, and S. Kintambo.

The products are sealed and ready to be consumed, which suggests that contamination occurred before they reached the European market.

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Biofilm, which is a cluster of pathogens encased in a protective matrix, is a common enemy across diverse food manufacturing industries.

From dairy, produce, meat, poultry, ready-to-eat deli foods and other products, biofilm is a concern at the farm level and at processing and manufacturing plants.

The protective layers generated by pathogens that create the biofilm, known as extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), resist sanitation efforts and are adept at spreading in moist environments, through a process known as “seeding dispersal.” According to Sterilex Industries, which offers products to treat biofilms and the pathogens they harbor, seeding dispersal is similar to a dandelion releasing seeds to encourage species growth.

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EIT Food’s vision is a world where everybody can access and enjoy sustainable, safe, and healthy food – with trust and fairness from farm to fork. The intention of this Call for Proposals is to maximise the societal, economic and environmental impact of innovative ideas and consortia within the scope of EIT Food’s Impact Framework, as described in our Strategic Agenda 2021-27.

EIT Food’s Impact Framework targets four primary Impact Goals for food system change:

1. Improvement in conditions for enhanced public trust in the food system
2. Reduction in relative risk of obesity & Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) prevalence in target populations due to known dietary factors
3. Improved environmental impact of agri-food systems
4. Enabling transition to a circular & sustainable economy

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Researchers have suggested opportunities are being missed to prevent listeriosis from pre-packed sandwiches.

Eating pre-prepared sandwiches served in hospitals was the most common source of Listeria infections in England and Wales between 1981 and 2015.

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The specific concentrations of flumequine and oxolinic acid in non‐target feed for food‐producing animals, below which there would not be an effect on the emergence of, and/or selection for, resistance in bacteria relevant for human and animal health, as well as the specific antimicrobial concentrations in feed which have an effect in terms of growth promotion/increased yield were assessed by EFSA in collaboration with EMA. Details of the methodology used for this assessment, associated data gaps and uncertainties, are presented in a separate document. To address antimicrobial resistance, the Feed Antimicrobial Resistance Selection Concentration (FARSC) model developed specifically for the assessment was applied. 

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The coronavirus pandemic, Brexit and resource issues severely challenged the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) in 2020, according to the agency’s annual report.

Food inspections, sampling and enforcement orders all declined but food and allergen alerts rose compared to 2019.

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Scientists have found half of prawns sampled were contaminated with Vibrio in the United Kingdom but the strains of bacteria identified do not cause severe disease in humans.

Quadram Institute researchers studied Vibrio in prawns in the UK to understand the bacterium’s contribution to human disease and its resistance to antibiotics. Non-cholera vibrios are not a notifiable pathogen in the UK and surveillance programs do not actively test and analyze for it.

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