The Analytical Partner You Trust
Despite a string of initiatives on food safety promised by Beijing policymakers, China’s latest seafood-safety mess looks worryingly familiar.
Shrimp injected with a translucent glue-like gelatin was initially spotted by a consumer in Tianjin in September 2009, whose blogging on the issue drew little national notice.
[Read more…]
Remember that part of Forrest Gump where Forrest and Captain Dan are looking for shrimp but can’t find any because there’s too much competition for shrimp, but then the hurricane passes through and suddenly there’s no competition for shrimp and there’s just tons of shrimp to be had? This story is mostly not like that one, except it ends with a lot more shrimp than it starts with.
A new shrimp farming technology devised by researchers in Texas is churning out record-setting levels of shrimp. Called super-intensive stacked raceways, its a system of indoor aquaculture that generates far more shrimp per cubic meter of water than open pond farming or any other aquaculture technique. And it could be deployed just about anywhere.
The shrimp grow in huge enclosed tubs called raceways, stacked four high in a column. As the shrimp develop and grow under computer-controlled conditions (the water is carefully circulated but not completely renewed, keeping environmental costs and water usage in check), they are moved downward from one raceway to the next–baby shrimp go in the top and progress downward to the bottom raceway, from which they are eventually harvested. [Read more…]
A new U.S. fee that is expected to significantly increase the cost of re-inspecting product suspected of a food-safety violation went into effect on Saturday.
As a result, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued some clarification and relief on the collection of these fees, authorized under the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was signed into law by President Obama in early January.
The FDA will begin charging food importers a fee, based on an hourly rate, for any “re-inspection” of product, which is required when the FDA discovers a food-safety violation during an inspection. The fee is USD 224 per hour, USD 335 per hour if foreign travel is required.
The National Fisheries Institute on Saturday e-mailed an alert to its industry members summarizing the FDA’s guidance. And, to the relief of U.S. seafood importers, the FDA does not intend to bill any companies before 1 January, 2012, and fees will not be assessed if the original inspection or recall order occurred before 1 October, 2011. [Read more…]
ADPEN is currently utilizing the validated FDA LC/MS/MS methods which can detect down to 0.3 ppb for seafood and honey. ADPEN has also validated a modification of this method for use in milk by products and other matrices.
ADPEN can help food companies implement proactive food safety monitoring programs in order to mitigate their risk and to protect consumers as well as corporate reputations. [Read more…]