Vision: A world where everyone, everywhere is food secure
Abstract The produce industry needs a tool to evaluate food safety interventions and prioritize investments and future research. A model was developed in R for a generic produce supply chain and made accessible via Shiny. Microbial contamination events, increases, reductions, and testing can be modeled. The output for each lot was the risk of one, 300-gram […]
Abstract Salmonella prevalence declined in U.S. raw poultry products since adopting prevalence-based Salmonella performance standards, but human illnesses did not reduce proportionally. We used Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) to evaluate public health risks of raw chicken parts contaminated with different levels of all Salmonella and specific high- and low-virulence serotypes. Lognormal Salmonella level distributions […]
Highlights Abstract Aggregative boot cover sampling may be a more representative, practical, and powerful method for preharvest produce soil testing than grab sampling because boot covers aggregate soil from larger areas. Our study tests if boot cover sampling results reflect quality and safety indicator organisms and community diversity of grab sampling. We collected soil samples […]
Highlights Abstract As of August 2023, the two U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official detection methods for C. cayetanensis are outlined in the FDA Bacteriological Analytical Manual (BAM) Chapters 19b (produce testing) and 19c (agricultural water testing). These newly developed detection methods have been shown to not always detect contamination when present at low levels. Yet, […]
Highlights Abstract Fusarium species infect maize crops leading to production of fumonisin by their toxigenic members. Elimination of microbes is critical in mitigating further post-harvest spoilage and toxin accumulation. The current study investigates the efficacy of a previously described multi-spectral sorting technique to analyze the reduction of fumonisin and toxigenic Fusarium species found contaminating maize kernels in Kenya. […]
Highlights Abstract Cronobacter is a hazard in Powdered Infant Formula (PIF) products that is hard to detect due to localized and low-level contamination. We adapted a previously published sampling simulation to PIF sampling and benchmarked industry-relevant sampling plans across different numbers of grabs, total sample mass, and sampling patterns. We evaluated performance to detect published Cronobacter contamination profiles […]
Highlights Abstract Rapid single kernel analysis could enable physical sorting to remove mycotoxins from bulk grains. The purpose of this study was to use visual characteristics previously associated with aflatoxin and fumonisin contamination of maize kernels to calibrate a multi-spectral sorter and then sort mycotoxin contaminated lots. A total of 76 corn samples were collected from poultry farmers in the Dorma-Ahenkro area, Ghana. Paired […]
Abstract Commercial leafy green supply chains often are required to have test and reject (sampling) plans for specific microbial adulterants at primary production or finished product packing for market access. To better understand the impact of this type of sampling, this study simulated the effect of sampling (from preharvest to consumer) and processing interventions (such […]
Highlights Abstract Maize is a staple food in Kenya. However, maize is prone to fungal infestation, which may result in production of harmful aflatoxins and fumonisins. Electron beam (eBeam) food processing is a proven post-harvest technology, but published literature is rare on the ability of eBeam to reduce mycotoxins in naturally contaminated maize samples. This study evaluated the efficacy of […]
Abstract Commercial leafy greens customers often require a negative preharvest pathogen test, typically by compositing 60 produce sample grabs of 150 to 375 g total mass from lots of various acreages. This study developed a preharvest sampling Monte Carlo simulation, validated it against literature and experimental trials, and used it to suggest improvements to sampling […]