Tag Archive for: Food Microbiology

July 21, 2021, 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM ET

Food allergies constitute a significant public health issue that affects approximately 32 million Americans. The Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE) reports a 377% increase in the diagnosis of anaphylactic food reactions between 2007 and 2016. Although research is ongoing for therapeutics, the primary management for food-allergic consumers is strict dietary avoidance. Food choices, however, may be limited for these consumers because of widespread and inconsistent use of precautionary allergen labeling (e.g., statements such as may contain). The concept of reference doses based on a threshold effect is routinely used in public health risk assessment to inform the approach to risk management. For food allergens, dose response modeling of clinical data from oral food challenges in food-allergic individuals has the potential to inform allergen risk management decisions and drive consistency in allergen labeling. This session will explore the current understanding and application of reference doses for food allergens (derived from the modeling of individual thresholds) and consider what information and tools are needed to progress toward reliable allergen risk assessment and management decisions.

Bayesian Hierarchical Evaluation of Dose-Response for Peanut Allergy in Clinical Trial Screening
Lynne Haber, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH

Occurrence of Allergens in Pre-Packaged Foods in Conjunction with the Use of Precautionary Labeling in Canada: Learnings and Future Directions
Samuel Godefroy, Université Laval, Department of Food Science, Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences, Quebec City, QC, Canada

Practical Applications of Quantitative Risk Assessment of Allergens
Benjamin Remington, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

This session is supported by the IAFNS Food and Chemical Safety Committee.

July 21, 2021, 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM ET

Cold plasma is an emerging technology proposed as a nonthermal process to reduce food safety risks on a variety of foods. Atmospheric cold plasma has a benefit in that it can be applied to packaged foods to reduce surface contaminants such as Salmonella or STEC on fresh fruits and vegetables or L. monocytogenes on high-moisture cheeses. This symposium will present an overview of the technology, examples of inactivating microbes as well as demonstrating it as a novel approach to reduce the presence of mycotoxins on grains. Results from validation studies will be presented and challenges to commercialization will be addressed.

Featured Speakers:

Introduction to Technology, Barriers to Commercialization, Regulatory Approval/Worker Safety
Brendan Niemira, PhD, USDA Agricultural Research Service

Case Study: Inactivation of Aflatoxin/Grains
Kevin Keener, PhD, University of Guelph

Case Study: Inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes in Soft Cheese
Melha Mellata, PhD, Iowa State University

Case Study: From Bench to Prototype for Fresh Produce Safety
Paula Bourke, PhD, University College Dublin

This event is supported by the IAFNS Food Microbiology Committee.

July 19, 2021, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM ET

Powdered products are burdened by low-prevalence, low-level contamination that is typically heterogeneously distributed. Multiple commodities and products could benefit from improved management of these risks as evidenced by outbreaks of foodborne disease linked to dairy powders, wheat and nut flours, and powdered infant formula. This session will focus on advances in powder sampling and provide depth in one well-studied commodity, dairy powder, upon which other commodities may draw analogous lessons.

As manufacturers supply domestic and global markets, they must continue to manage rare microbiological contamination with foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella, chemical contamination with mycotoxins such as aflatoxin, and meet increasingly stringent customer quality requirements for indicator and spore counts, to ensure product compliance with regulatory standards. While product testing is one fundamental component of food safety and quality management, traditional best practices like ICMSF-style manual N60 grab sampling is underpowered when those hazards are at low prevalence and level. Modern technologies like autosamplers provide opportunities to improve practice by automating the process of sample collection. This opens the possibility to take many more, smaller samples with complex stratification and true randomness.

Currently, the food industry is needing improvements in practices to meet safety and quality challenges. This session meets that need by addressing knowledge gaps around the benefits of improved sampling plans, technologies and implementation strategies, using dairy powders as an example case. The session will start with a speaker presenting recent statistical theory modelling powder sampling to define the performance of traditional grab compared to auto sampling approaches. The next speaker will present work simulating dairy powder sampling to better define the variability of sampling plans when applied to specific production and hazard scenarios. Finally, we will hear from an industry speaker providing perspective on the value and practicality of getting this done in a multinational company.

Modelling the Effect of Sampling Methods on Detection Tests for Powdered Products
Roger Kissling, Fonterra

Simulating Production and Hazard Scenarios in Powdered Product Sampling to Improve Food Safety Sampling Plans
Matthew J. Stasiewicz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Industry Need and Role for Improved Sampling of Powdered Products
Pamela Wilger, Cargill

This session is supported by the IAFNS Food Microbiology Committee.

July 20, 2021, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM ET

The food safety industry must ensure analytical methods designed to detect hazards are fit-for-purpose for their specific commodities. Meanwhile, the food industry is developing hundreds of new ingredients and products that will require screening for microbial hazards. With the ever-expanding diversity of these food products, what happens when a testing laboratory is presented with an urgent request for testing a matrix that was not included in the method’s original validation study? The laboratory is asked to deviate from the intended use of the method by testing a different matrix or a different test portion size.

This situation can occur when a food manufacturer requires a faster turn-around time for product release than their standard method allows, when there is a sudden issue with the performance of a rapid test kit, or if a test kits from the manufacturer are backordered. Do these situations constitute an emergency? Arguably, this upset in product distribution could constitute an emergency in terms of the supply chain which is already under stress due to pandemic disruptions – with real effects on consumer well-being and the economy.

This roundtable will consider the key components required for a matrix validation and acceptable strategies for matrix validation that can be used in emergency situations. What approaches will allow expediency while assuring that the method is fit for purpose?

View Resources and Verification Guidance Documents

Invited panel participants:
• Deann Akins-Lewenthal, ConAgra Brands
• Patrick Bird, Technical Consultant, AOAC INTERNATIONAL
• Megan Brown, Eurofins
• Tom Hammack, US Food and Drug Administration
• Kelly Stevens, General Mills

This session is supported by the IAFNS Food Microbiology Committee.