Food safety Armageddon: Challenge your product with a worst-case scenario
Ideally, contamination of food is avoided through rigorous quality and safety controls applied consistently throughout the entire supply chain. But what if dangerous bacteria do make their way into a product? Is it inevitable that the product will then make people sick? Depending on how they’re designed, product formulations, processing techniques and packaging can all […]
Categories: Food Science
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Restaurants Canada’s 2014 Chef Survey: Allergy awareness the number-one concern
The 2014 Restaurants Canada (formerly the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservice Association, CFRA) tradeshow was held in Toronto from March 2–4, 2014. A presentation by Laurie Harada, Executive Director of Anaphylaxis Canada, highlighted the growing importance of allergen awareness in our communities. The Serving Consumers with Food Allergies session looked at the results of the Restaurants […]
Categories: Trends in the Industry
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Common Approaches to Food Safety in US and Canada – Part 2
As set out in the first of this two-part series on the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Safe Food for Canadians Act, similar themes run through both Acts. In this second part of the series, I will continue to outline the common aspects of the two food safety systems. Import Both Acts specifically focus […]
Categories: Regulatory Compliance
Tags: FSMA
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Common Approaches to Food Safety in US and Canada – Part 1
As set out in the first of this two-part series on the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Safe Food for Canadians Act, similar themes run through both Acts. In this first part of the series, I will outline the common aspects of the two food safety systems. Prevention Both Acts focus heavily on preventing […]
Categories: Regulatory Compliance
Tags: FSMA
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Is Health Canada Shooting Down My Red Bull® Wings?
That 3 o’clock caffeine boost has just gotten a little weaker. Health Canada has recently capped the caffeine content in drinks sold in Canada, forcing more than 28 products currently on the market to reformulate. These products, known as “energy drinks”, contain caffeine at levels ranging from those found in a weak cup of coffee […]
Categories: Regulatory Compliance
Tags: ENERGY DRINKS
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You Have HACCP; You Need Preventative Controls: Can You Get from Here to There?
As the industry begins digging into the Preventive Controls draft rule, working to discover what it really means to them and what will need to be done for compliance, questions abound. Many of those we are hearing revolve around Preventive Controls vs. HACCP: Are the Preventive Controls really just HACCP in disguise? What are the […]
Categories: Industry Standards
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“Smarter Information, Smarter Consumers,” — Review of an Article in Harvard Business Review, by Richard H. Thaler and Will Tucker
Review by John Hnatio, Chief Science Officer FoodQuestTQ LLC A well-written and entertaining article BUT “choice engines” are nothing really new. Turbo Tax is a good example. Turbo Tax takes the labyrinth of complex and confusing government tax regulations and interprets them to produce a simple and easy to use question and answer format to do […]
Categories: Trends in the Industry
Tags: Choice Engines
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Third-Party Audits – Their Crucial Role in Moving Forward With FSMA and Food Safety
I recently had the honor of speaking at the 2012 SQF International Conference in Cincinnati on the topic of the crucial role of third-party audits in moving forward with FSMA and food safety. In the talk, I spent time looking at what is working well with third-party audit systems, and where some of the vulnerabilities […]
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FSMA Delay Spurs Curious Partnerships and Regulation Pleas – But They Are Likely to Have Zero Impact
In an industry traditionally anxious to be self policing and oppose regulation, the tide has turned. The first evidence of this was in 2006 after the large E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to spinach, when the produce industry was seriously requesting FDA to develop regulations around fresh produce. Since then, we have seen repeated outbreaks […]
Categories: Regulatory Compliance
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Why Allergen Training is Important to You!
Most customers are very concerned about food safety, but none more so than people living with food allergies. Food allergy is a growing public health concern in Canada. Currently approximately 2.5 million Canadians have self reported at least one food allergy, representing about 7% of Canadians. With this many Canadians affected from some sort of […]
Categories: Trends in the Industry
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