Year: 2016

Cornell University will be home to a comprehensive center combining food safety research and training for New York growers and producers, offering a farm-to-fork bulwark against foodborne illness in compliance with new, stricter federal regulations. …

Sometimes it takes time to find a winning formula. That’s how it was with First Step+ 10, according to Joshua Gurtler, an Agricultural Research Service scientist at the Eastern Regional Research Center, in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania. Gurtler and his collaborators at NatureSeal, Inc., tested hundreds of antimicrobial formulations, in a series of carefully designed laboratory experiments, before they found the right combination of lactic acid, fruit acids, and hydrogen peroxide for a wash that reduces the risk of food-borne pathogens contaminating fresh produce in food processing operations. …

In the fields on the 240-acre Musser Fruit Research Farm, Jeff Hopkins pointed to confused trees in late December that displayed — on the same branches — leaves from last summer and new growth of recent weeks. …

Thomas Produce Company of Boca Raton, FL is recalling 174 bulk-packed containers of Cucumbers. This product has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella may experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. …