This book provides an overview of issues associated primarily with food safety, shelf-life assessment and preservation of foods. Food safety and protection is a multidisciplinary topic that focuses on the safety, quality, and security aspects of food. Food safety issues involve microbial risks in food products, foodborne infections, and intoxications and food allergenicity. Food protection deals with trends and risks associated with food packaging, advanced food packaging systems for enhancing product safety, the development and application of predictive models for food microbiology, food fraud prevention, and food laws and regulations with the aim to provide safe foods for consumers. Food Safety and Protection covers various aspects of food safety, security, and protection. It discusses the challenges involved in the prevention and control of foodborne illnesses due to microbial spoilage, contamination, and toxins. It starts with documentation on the microbiological and chemical hazards, including allergens, and extends to the advancements in food preservation and food packaging. The book covers new and safe food intervention techniques, predictive food microbiology, and modeling approaches. It reviews the legal framework, regulatory agencies, and laws and regulations for food protection. The book has five sections dealing with the topics of predictive microbiology for safe foods; food allergens, contaminants, and toxins; preservation of foods; food packaging; and food safety laws.

Recent outbreaks of illnesses traced to contaminated sprouts and lettuce illustrate the holes that exist in the system for monitoring problems and preventing foodborne diseases. Although it is not solely responsible for ensuring the safety of the nation's food supply, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees monitoring and intervention for 80 percent of the food supply. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's abilities to discover potential threats to food safety and prevent outbreaks of foodborne illness are hampered by impediments to efficient use of its limited resources and a piecemeal approach to gathering and using information on risks. Enhancing Food Safety: The Role of the Food and Drug Administration, a new book from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, responds to a congressional request for recommendations on how to close gaps in FDA's food safety systems. Enhancing Food Safety begins with a brief review of the Food Protection Plan (FPP), FDA's food safety philosophy developed in 2007. The lack of sufficient detail and specific strategies in the FPP renders it ineffectual. The book stresses the need for FPP to evolve and be supported by the type of strategic planning described in these pages. It also explores the development and implementation of a stronger, more effective food safety system built on a risk-based approach to food safety management. Conclusions and recommendations include adopting a risk-based decision-making approach to food safety; creating a data surveillance and research infrastructure; integrating federal, state, and local government food safety programs; enhancing efficiency of inspections; and more. Although food safety is the responsibility of everyone, from producers to consumers, the FDA and other regulatory agencies have an essential role. In many instances, the FDA must carry out this responsibility against a backdrop of multiple stakeholder interests, inadequate resources, and competing priorities. Of interest to the food production industry, consumer advocacy groups, health care professionals, and others, Enhancing Food Safety provides the FDA and Congress with a course of action that will enable the agency to become more efficient and effective in carrying out its food safety mission in a rapidly changing world.

How safe is our food supply? Each year the media report what appears to be growing concern related to illness caused by the food consumed by Americans. These food borne illnesses are caused by pathogenic microorganisms, pesticide residues, and food additives. Recent actions taken at the federal, state, and local levels in response to the increase in reported incidences of food borne illnesses point to the need to evaluate the food safety system in the United States. This book assesses the effectiveness of the current food safety system and provides recommendations on changes needed to ensure an effective science-based food safety system. Ensuring Safe Food discusses such important issues as: What are the primary hazards associated with the food supply? What gaps exist in the current system for ensuring a safe food supply? What effects do trends in food consumption have on food safety? What is the impact of food preparation and handling practices in the home, in food services, or in production operations on the risk of food borne illnesses? What organizational changes in responsibility or oversight could be made to increase the effectiveness of the food safety system in the United States? Current concerns associated with microbiological, chemical, and physical hazards in the food supply are discussed. The book also considers how changes in technology and food processing might introduce new risks. Recommendations are made on steps for developing a coordinated, unified system for food safety. The book also highlights areas that need additional study. Ensuring Safe Food will be important for policymakers, food trade professionals, food producers, food processors, food researchers, public health professionals, and consumers.

Trends in Food Safety and Protection explores the recent developments and ongoing research in the field of food safety and protection. The book covers improvements in the existing techniques and implementation of novel analytical methods for detecting and characterizing foodborne pathogens.

Food Protection and Security: Preventing and Mitigating Intentional and Unintentional Contamination of Food and Beverage presents the latest information on our need to protect our food supply from accidental contamination, economically motivated adulteration, and contamination with intent to harm (bioterrorism or agro-terrorism). This book covers all three branches of food protection, providing a comprehensive overview of the methods and strategy involved. Part one covers the need for food protection, looking at potential hazards in the production, processing, and supply chain. Part two looks at detection methods for contaminants in food, with the final section addressing food contamination incidents and prevention and response strategies. - Explores the need for food protection, from natural disasters to contamination in food processing facilities - Examines techniques used to detect contaminants in food, such as microbiological testing and fingerprinting - Provides key ways to address food contamination issues

Food safety regulators face a daunting task: crafting food safety performance standards and systems that continue in the tradition of using the best available science to protect the health of the American public, while working within an increasingly antiquated and fragmented regulatory framework. Current food safety standards have been set over a period of years and under diverse circumstances, based on a host of scientific, legal, and practical constraints. Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food lays the groundwork for creating new regulations that are consistent, reliable, and ensure the best protection for the health of American consumers. This book addresses the biggest concerns in food safetyâ€"including microbial disease surveillance plans, tools for establishing food safety criteria, and issues specific to meat, dairy, poultry, seafood, and produce. It provides a candid analysis of the problems with the current system, and outlines the major components of the task at hand: creating workable, streamlined food safety standards and practices.

The goal of this book is to show how to build and manage a food safety department that is tasked with ensuring food safety within a food retail business. The experiences of the author as the head of Food and Product Safety at Chick-fil-A will be used as the model. Specifically, the book will discuss the specific components of a food safety program, the tactics needed to establish these components (forming the majority of the chapters), how to measure the success of each component, and how to influence the organization to ensure resources to support the program. The book will also focus on how to choose and work with the appropriate partners, validate the value to the business, and initiate the new component throughout the organization, including how to sustain the component within the program. Five features of this book that make it distinctive are: Most current “How to” book on leading a food safety department from the perspective of a respected national brand Provides the proper organization and methods to manage the work necessary to ensure food safety within the organization Provides the means to utilize risk-based decisions linked to business practices that accommodate a business analysis model Demonstrates step-by-step examples that can be used for continuous improvement in sustaining food safety responsibilities Provides examples on how to gain influence and obtain resources to support food safety responsibilities

Food Safety: Past, Present, and Predictions offers a multidisciplinary approach on major food industry regulatory compliance changes that have emerged since the landmark 1993 E.coli outbreak. The book is broad in coverage, providing a look back at 25 years of change in order to better conceptualize the future of effective and sustainable food safety compliance efforts and technologies. Historical case studies and technological developments are written by experts and those who played key roles in events. Topics are explained in a way that not only helps improve industry and consumer awareness, but also offers tools to improve education and communication.

Procedures to Investigate Foodborne Illness is designed to guide public health personnel or teams in any country that investigates reports of alleged foodborne illnesses. The manual is based on epidemiologic principles and investigative techniques that have been found effective in determining causal factors of disease incidence. The guidelines are presented in the sequence usually followed during investigations and are organized so that an investigator can easily find the information needed in any phase of an investigation. Included are descriptions of the following procedures: Plan, prepare, investigate and respond to intentional contamination of food Handle illness alerts and food-related complaints that may be related to illness Interview ill persons, those at risk, and controls Develop a case definition Collect and ship specimens and food samples Conduct hazard analysis (environmental assessments) at sites where foods responsible for outbreaks were produced, processed, or prepared Trace sources of contamination Identify factors responsible for contamination, survival of pathogenic microorganisms or toxic substances, and/or propagation of pathogens Collate and interpret collected data Report information about the outbreak This edition also contains extensively updated and more user-friendly keys to assist investigators in identifying the contributing factors that may lead to the contamination, proliferation or survival of agents of foodborne disease.

Despite advances in hygiene, food treatment, and food processing, diseases caused by foodborne pathogens continue to constitute a worldwide public health concern. Ensuring food safety to protect public health remains a significant challenge in both developing and developed nations. Food Safety and Human Health provides a framework to manage food safety risks and assure a safe food system. Political, economic, and ecological changes have led to the re-emergence of many foodborne pathogens. The globalization of food markets, for example, has increased the challenge to manage the microbial risks. This reference will help to identify potential new approaches in the development of new microbiologically safe foods that will aid in preventing food borne illness outbreaks and provides the basic principles of food toxicology, food processing, and food safety. Food Safety and Human Health is an essential resource to help students, researchers, and industry professionals understand and address day-to-day problems regarding food contamination and safety. - Encompasses the first pedagogic treatment of the entire range of toxic compounds found naturally in foods or introduced by industrial contaminatio - Identifies areas of vital concern to consumers, such as toxicological implications of food, and human health implications of food processing - Focuses on safety aspects of genetically modified foods and the range of processing techniques along with the important food safety laws