New Food Safety Website

According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), most people are clueless about proper safety and storage techniques that can prevent the spread of food borne illnesses—despite the fact that food borne illnesses sicken roughly 76 million people, cause 725,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the US every year.

Now there is a new website that answers all of consumer’s food safety questions. The website includes information such as food storage times, minimum cooking temperatures, and fresh produce safety along with the latest recalls and alerts reported. Consumers can also learn more about food borne pathogens such as Salmonella and E. coli, food safety regulations and how the government responds to pathogen outbreaks. Visit http://foodsafety.gov/ to check out the latest in food safety education.

Food Safety Tip: Store perishable fresh fruits and vegetables (like strawberries, lettuce, herbs, and mushrooms) in a clean refrigerator at a temperature of 40° F or below.

Winner of our Online Survey Announced!

We would like to congratulate Keith Schneider from the University of Florida on winning our drawing from our online survey. Keith has won a 16 GB Touch iPod! We hope Keith enjoys it, and we'd like to thank everyone who entered, we appreciate your time in taking the survey and getting your feedback and insights.

The survey was designed to help us better serve the market as we continue to develop our Food Security product line, which consists of our R.A.P.I.D.® LT Food Security System and our assays for detecting foodborne pathogens including Salmonella, Listeria, E.coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, L. mono and more.

For more information on our food security products please visit: http://www.idahotech.com/FoodSecurity/

Keeping Up on Food Safety Regulations

With outbreaks from food-borne illnesses killing an estimated 5,000 Americans each year and sending hundreds of thousands to the hospital, the Obama Administration has made food safety a priority and earlier this year established a new food safety working group. With the increased focus on food safety, here are a few of the new measures in place:

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will help the food industry create better tracking methods to locate the source of a food-borne illness.
• A network will be created to improve communication among all the federal agencies that regulate food safety.
• To find E. coli contamination, the Agriculture Department's Food Safety Inspection Service will increase sampling of ground beef ingredients.
• The FDA has announced a new regulation to help make eggs safer for consumers to eat. The regulation is designed to cut down the number of illnesses caused by eggs contaminated with the bacterium salmonella.

The key now is that eggs will have to be refrigerated from farm to market.

The FDA said salmonella is a major cause of foodborne illness in the United States, and raw or undercooked eggs are a major source of such infections. An estimated 142,000 illnesses each year in the United States are caused by consuming eggs contaminated with salmonella.

To read more visit: http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/07/07/us-unveils-stricter-food-safety-standards.html

To learn about Idaho Technology's easy, accurate and timely food pathogen identification system which tests for pathogens such as Salmonella, E.coli O157:H7, Listeria and more please visit: http://www.idahotech.com/FoodSecurity/