Food Safety – IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group – The Institute for Environmental Health

Will Daniels: Humanizing Food Safety – Food Safety Matters

IEH — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 05:27:54 +0000

In this episode of Food Safety Matters Will Daniels, president of the produce division at IEH, discusses “the human side of food safety as part of public health, reestablishing a relationship with the consumer, reliving the 2006 spinach outbreak, educating and engaging your workforce, engaging senior management in food safety, how to counter complacency in your food safety plan, the ongoing saga of romaine lettuce outbreaks, the role of whole-genome sequencing in outbreak surveillance, why romaine is such a challenging commodity to keep safe, irrigation water standards, moving beyond the regulations to improve food safety even more, what drives food safety programs, keeping food workers safe during the pandemic, and where we go from here”

Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 contamination on food plant surfaces as determined by environmental monitoring

IEH — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 20:14:15 +0000

Covid-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2 corona virus, has disrupted life on earth, causing a pandemic that has resulted in millions of infections and deaths. During the early phase of the pandemic there were large scale outbreaks in food production plants. In March of 2020 we helped to implement infection control strategies in 116 food production plants that included environmental surface monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 contamination. Even though individuals who were symptomatic for Covid-19 were not allowed to work, we found that 1.23% of surface samples showed SARS-CoV-2 contamination.

Additionally, we found correlation between positive test results of environmental surfaces and plant personnel. Our findings indicate that environmental monitoring of high touch surfaces can help to identify the presence of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic personnel in workplaces and may aid in controlling infection spread. Please view our publication in Journal of Food Protection.

Make Food Safety Consumer-Focused

IEH — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 20:12:32 +0000

Food Safety Summit 2020 featured Will Daniels with a keynote presentation titled “Back to Basics: Consumer-Focused Food Safety.”

2020’s Food Safety Summit gets underway virtually today – Food Safety News

IEH — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 20:13:28 +0000

“Keynote — “Back to Basics: Consumer-Focused Food Safety” — Will Daniels, president of the produce division at IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group will discuss how COVID 19 has changed the world.

In the wake of this pandemic, food manufacturers have stood up to the challenge of performing as an essential business and have shown the world how well this industry attempts to respond to a crisis; working together to maintain a safe work environment for the employee while producing safe food.”

Backlogs At Smoke Testing Labs Force Washington Wineries To Get Creative – Forbes

IEH — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 04:06:24 +0000

As wine regions around the world face the immediate effects of devastating fires, the threat of smoke exposure is of concern. Wildfires and controlled burns generate smoke particulates that could be taken up by the berries and leaves of grapes in nearby vineyards.

While the chemical composition of smoke from wood pyrolysis is rather complex, free volatile phenols (VPs) are believed to be the major aroma compounds that confer the smoke exposure characteristics to grapes and wines. In the vineyard, these VPs can permeate the grape skins and rapidly bond with the sugars inside to form molecules called glycosides.

Once the grapes are fermented, the acidity in the resulting wine will begin to break these bonds (even after bottling), rendering the phenols volatile and releasing their smoky flavor once again. IEH Analytical Laboratories in Seattle, WA offers expedited volatile phenol testing services to the wine industry.

IEH Announces Acquisition of Brooks Applied Labs

IEH — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 01:10:20 +0000

Brooks Applied Laboratories brings extensive capabilities in trace metals and metals speciation to IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group. Toxicological and nutritional properties of a chemical element critically depend on the form in which it occurs in food. Some elements are an essential part of a healthy diet, but others, such as lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium, offer no nutritional benefits to humans and are actually toxic. Local and international regulations require manufacturers to monitor levels of hazardous elements in foodstuffs. In addition, Regulators require food manufacturers and suppliers to label food with ingredients and nutritional information. As a consequence, trace element speciation, particularly for toxic trace elements such as Arsenic, Chromium, Lead, Mercury and Selenium, and trace element bioavailability is of critical importance to ensure the safety and nutritional quality of raw ingredients and finished products products throughout the food supply chain.