Food Online's Top 10 Of May

By Sam Lewis

What was most important to our readers in May? Take a look back at last month by reviewing 10 most-popular articles that appeared on Food Online in May.

1. Inside Kraft Heinz’s FSMA Inspection Readiness
   While compliance with FSMA and being ready for FDA inspections may seem like a sprint to satisfy FDA directives, the path to complying with the regulations is a long, methodical, marathon-like endeavor. At the 13^th Annual North American Summit On Food Safety, Lauren Di Menna, scientific & regulatory affairs manager at Kraft Heinz, explained how Kraft Heinz has prepared for FSMA and gave insight into the company’s experience with FDA inspections
    
2. Trump And Food Safety: How The Industry Is Responding To Executive Orders
   Back in January, Food Online’s editor, Sam Lewis, penned a column covering a few predictions for the food industry in 2017. One of these predictions was the impact President Trump would have on the FDA, FSMA, and other food safety policies and legislation. In this column, I will illustrate the influence the President’s Executive Orders have had on the industry over the last several months, as well as how the industry is responding.
    
3. The ABCs Of Building A Food Safety Plan: From HACCP To HARPC
   The FDA required hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) for juice and seafood, and the USDA for meat and poultry. The Food Safety Modernization Act’s (FSMA) proposed Preventive Controls rule for Human Food requires a written Food Safety Plan (FSP) be developed using the hazard analysis risk-based preventive control (HARPC) approach. A preventive approach to food safety is nothing new. But the HARPC approach is a new paradigm shift in thinking. This article will explain this new thinking, define, what HARPC approach is, explain how HARPC is different than HACCP, and how employing this thinking helps you arrive at developing a Food Safety Plan.
    
4. 3 Ways Food Manufacturers Can Tackle Combustible Dust
   Most people don’t consider pantry staples, such as flour, sugar, and corn starch, as hazardous materials. However, for food manufacturers, combustible dusts constitute a serious safety concern for manufacturers and their employees and these hazards are generally not as well recognized as they should be. This column will explain three ways food companies can begin tackling the challenge of combustible dust within their manufacturing facilities.
    
5. Practical Tools For Getting Ahead Of Food Fraud
   Food fraud, or Economically Motivated Adulteration (EMA), costs the food industry an estimated $10 to $15 billion annually. Fraudsters are intentionally misrepresenting the true identity or nutritional value of food ingredients, artificially enhancing them with illegal dyes, concealing the use of undeclared banned biocides, or palming off counterfeits while evading detection. But, you can fight food fraud with powerful proactive tools — many of them complementary — that can help you anticipate and reduce your company’s vulnerability to EMA.
    
6. Recall Communications — How To Interact Effectively With The FDA
   Unfortunately, food recalls aren’t a matter of “if one happens,” they are a matter of, “when one happens.” And when one happens to your company, will you be able to quickly and effectively communicate it with the FDA? This article will illustrate the recall process and offer suggestions to help you get through it.
    
7. 5 Current Events Impacting The Food Industry
   Current events outside of the food realm can have a lasting impact on how the food industry approaches business. At the 13^th Annual North American Summit On Food Safety, Miriam Maxwell, senior principal regulatory scientist, corporate scientific and regulatory affairs at Ocean Spray Cranberries offered her insights into some current world and U.S. events and how they’re impacting the food industry.
    
8. Rapid Pathogen Detection Methods — What To Consider
   Rapid methods of pathogen testing have been gaining acceptance in the food industry. Recent advances in technology result in faster detection and identification of pathogens, more convenient, more sensitive, more reproducible, and more specific than conventional methods. The main reasons for their adaptation are because faster results mean: faster intervention and corrective actions, fewer lost lots or reduced amount of product in a contamination event, faster reaction to a problem, improved throughput and reduced warehouse space, decreased manufacturing cycle through faster release of inventory, ability to link strains of pathogens to a specific case, and it accelerates root cause analysis.
    
9. Answering Your Questions About FSMA's Sanitary Transportation Rule
   Food Online hosted a live web chat, Food For Thought: FSMA’s Sanitary Transportation Rule, featuring Jon Samson, executive director of the Agricultural and Food Transporters Conference at the American Trucking Association; and Samantha Cooper, manager of food safety and quality assurance at GMA. In this 45-minute live Q&A, Samson and Cooper answered the audience’s questions about FSMA’s Sanitary Transportation Rule. While the session was educational and informative, there wasn’t enough time to answer every question. Here, Samson and Cooper address the unanswered questions from the live web chat.
    
10. How Do You Evaluate Food Safety Education & Training?
    It’s no secret that food safety education and training is immensely important to food makers. It’s an on-going process, and sometimes, it’s even a struggle. As the food industry evolves, so do the ways companies become educated on food safety practices. To get a good idea of how food safety education and training has evolved, and continues to evolve, some comparisons are needed to draw parallels.