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/

Beef Recall for Salmonella Announced Today

Beef Packers, Inc., a Fresno, California, establishment, is recalling approximately 825,769 pounds of ground beef products that may be linked to an outbreak of salmonellosis, the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

The ground beef products were produced on various dates ranging from 5 Jun 2009 through 23 Jun 2009 and bear the establishment number "EST. 31913" printed on the case code labels. The ground beef products were distributed to retail distribution centers in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Utah. Because these products were repackaged into consumer-size packages and sold under different retail brand names, consumers should check with their local retailer to determine whether they may have purchased any of the products subject to recall.

Please use the following precautions when handling meat:

Wash hands with warm, soapy water for at least 20 seconds before and after handling raw meat and poultry. Also wash cutting boards, dishes and utensils with hot soapy water. Clean up spills right away.

Keep raw meat, fish, and poultry away from other food that will not be cooked. Use separate cutting boards for raw meat, poultry, and egg products and cooked foods.

Cook raw meat and poultry to safe internal temperatures before eating. The safe internal temperature for meat such as beef and pork is 160 deg F [71 deg C], and 165 deg F [74 deg C] for poultry, as determined with a food thermometer.

Refrigerate raw meat and poultry within 2 hours after purchase (1 hour if temperatures exceed 90 deg F [32 deg C]). Refrigerate cooked meat and poultry within 2 hours after cooking.

Please visit http://tinyurl.com/nc6unf for the full story on this recall.

More Fallout from Peanut Corporation of America

Stricter Regulations coming your way in Georgia…

Sonny Perdue signed a bill into law last Friday (5/2/2009) that makes the state the first to adopt stiff new food safety requirements.

The new food safety regulations would require hundreds of food processors to alert state inspectors if internal tests show their products are tainted within 24 hours. It also gives Georgia agriculture officials the power to order the manufacturer to conduct more tests.

http://rwjf.org/publichealth/digest.jsp?id=10555

Personally, I'm just glad it's safe to eat peanut butter again!! It's great that we have solutions like the R.A.P.I.D.® LT Food Security System to keep our food safe:

http://www.idahotech.com/FoodSecurity/