The lesser-known redlegged ham beetle, also known as the copra beetle or ham beetle, can cause big issues in the pet food industry. These pests prefer to dwell in meat products with a high grease or fat content, making pet food highly favorable to the beetles.

The beetles are known to feed on—you guessed it—ham, but also other potential pet food ingredients such as dried bone meal, dried egg, and cured and dried meats. In the right conditions, females can lay up to 3,000 eggs, depositing them within the cracks and crevices of food items and surrounding areas. Food manufacturers are facing a growing problem as the prevalence of these metallic blue-green pests continues to increase. Without sufficient pest management strategies, a puppy’s dinner may double as a beetle’s habitat.

Not originally native to the United States, the redlegged ham beetle has recently been identified as a serious concern to food manufacturers. As the presence of this beetle is likely to continue to increase in the coming years, pest control providers are at the forefront in identifying, managing, and partnering with manufacturers to stay ahead of the curve.

Help Protect Your Facility

This pest can have serious financial implications in food warehouses and stores if infested items are transported from manufacturing plants. If you notice the following signs around your facility, you may be facing a redlegged ham beetle issue:

• Damage to food items and packaging;
• Live larva and adults; or
• White silken cocoons on infested food items.

So, how does a food manufacturing and handling facility help protect itself against these beetles? By implementing an integrated pest management (IPM) program.

Most food-handling businesses likely have heard of IPM programs, especially if they are regularly audited by food quality and safety inspectors. These programs are implemented by qualified pest control technicians in collaboration with a business’s food safety and quality assurance team to help deter pest activity and prevent infestations. IPM programs focus on preventive techniques such as exclusion, sanitation, and maintenance to keep pests where they belong—outside of your business. When it comes to the increasing threat of the redlegged ham beetle, there are a variety of techniques that can help keep these pests at bay:

• Proper inspection of products is necessary to check for introductions, infestations, and potential harborage areas or areas that require cleaning;
• Sanitation is the most effective way a manufacturer can keep their products safe and untouched, so having a routine cleaning schedule of any cracks and crevices that may contain grease that draws beetles will help prevent introduced beetles from settling in;
• Proper storage of products including protective packaging and product rotation will help to preserve the integrity of the product;
• Exclusion measures such as installing screens on windows and ensuring doors shut properly and are equipped with door sweeps help keep products from being exposed to beetles; and
• Insect pheromone monitoring devices, which are also available to help with early detection and management of pests like redlegged ham beetles.

Infestation Prevention

In case of an infestation, it is important to quickly remove any infested items and ensure un-infested items are stored properly in protective packaging. Treating cracks and crevices near food resources with cleaning agents, probiotic treatments, and/or other special treatments are all ways to immediately reduce populations and help ensure they don’t have easy places to return to. In cases of extreme infestation, more aggressive pest treatments such as fumigation may be necessary.

Investing in a staff training plan to teach your employees how to spot signs of pests is also an effective way to prevent infestation on the front end. Your employees—mainly those on the production floor of your facility—see and hear more than you might know, which makes them invaluable in helping to identify pest issues. Trained staff, paired with an effective monitoring program, helps ensure that beetles are found quickly. Most pest control providers offer complimentary staff training, making this tactic cost-effective for your operations. Once your staff know the types of pests that frequent your facility, persistent hot spots, and the process for reporting activity, they’ll be able to help you address pest issues quickly and effectively.

Make a Plan

Now that you understand the threat of this beetle and ways to help prevent and control an infestation, don’t forget to review your unique IPM plan with your pest control provider. As the prevalence of this pest continues to grow, your pest control provider should stay informed, monitoring your facility year-round to ensure quality and cleanliness. If you don’t have a reliable pest control provider or an IPM program in place, now’s the time to implement a plan before this pest becomes a costly issue. Redlegged ham beetles pose a growing threat to pet food manufacturers around the world, and staying on top of the issue will help keep your products and facilities pest free.

Williams is a technical services manager for Rollins and a board-certified entomologist.

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Manufacturing is being squeezed by labor and skills shortages. The numbers of people older than 55 in the technical workforce in the U.S. are increasing, signifying that not enough young employees are not replacing older ones. Meanwhile, technical demands for manufacturing have grown, making it difficult to hire the right workers. These companies need workers with the same skills as the workers who are currently retiring. For the most part, these are highly skilled people who have gained their expertise over 25 to 30 years.

The latest report released by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute predicts that as many as 2.1 million manufacturing jobs could be unfilled through 2030. The report warns that the worker shortage will hurt revenue and production and could ultimately cost the U.S. economy up to $1 trillion by 2030.

With these looming statistics, manufacturers face enormous pressures to stay competitive. But it’s not all doom and gloom: To combat these labor challenges, manufacturers are increasingly looking to technology and connectivity to expand productivity, decrease labor costs, increase uptime, and slash error rates.

Increased Plant Automation

Automation helps manufacturers reduce errors and costs while increasing productivity, quality, and safety standards. With the increased data coming from the production line, it’s now much easier to determine ways to improve efficiency and productivity and reduce error rates. Through an increased use of sensors and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), machines can talk to each other and seamlessly react to any problems that arise. If a machine spots an issue, it can quickly alert other machines and employees, allowing the issue to be addressed in real time.

Using smart machines that can communicate with each other means that full traceability and transparency are possible across the entire food manufacturing value chain. That capability, in turn, reinforces food safety and helps a business meet regulatory needs in the most efficient manner.

Sensors and SCADA

Adding technology such as sensors that monitor whether a machine is working properly instead of having someone check out a problem is an ideal solution for areas with worker shortages.

Sensors pick up on performance aberrations that simply can’t be detected through manual spot checks and personnel monitoring. By detecting the underpinnings of potential issues in real time, sensors can alert maintenance teams of the need to investigate and prevent a machine failure before it happens.

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is a system of hardware and software elements used to control processes both locally and remotely. Such systems are crucial for organizations as they help maintain efficiency, process data for more well-informed decisions and communicate system issues to help mitigate loss and downtime. SCADA systems perform data acquisition and communication, information and data presentation, and monitoring and control.

These functions are performed by sensors, controllers, and a communication network. The sensors collect and send the information to the controller, which displays the status of the system. The operator can then give commands to the components of the system, depending on the status. SCADA systems allow communication between the operator and the connected devices. Real-time systems have thousands of components and sensors; each gathers data and helps ensure that every part of a facility is running effectively. The real-time applications can also be controlled remotely. Access to real-time information allows entities to make data-driven decisions about how to improve processes. Without SCADA, it would be difficult to gather sufficient data for consistently well-informed decisions.

Remote Monitoring

Another way to reduce unplanned downtime is with remote alarm notification software, which allows fewer employees to monitor many more assets using devices that people already have, such as smartphones and tablets. Uninterrupted remote availability is essential to ensuring systems can be continuously monitored, even without staff onsite or with fewer people working at the facility.

Remote monitoring of critical plant systems has been extended beyond email, texts, and phone calls to include apps that feature time-saving tools like real-time alarm acknowledgements, team chats to troubleshoot and resolve plant problems, and detailed reporting for preventing future incidents. Not only does this mean fewer emergency shutdowns, but it also means fewer resources are spent on overtime and maintenance.

A mobile alarm notification app is software that seamlessly integrates with the SCADA or HMI software of an industrial operation, allowing an employee to monitor, receive and acknowledge plant and machine alarms on their smartphone or tablet, freeing them up to work from home or any other remote location. Hardware and software are available that can constantly monitor equipment and, by applying machine learning to historical data, warn when a breakdown or other problem is imminent. Bolstered by wireless technology and IIoT, these customizable systems have the potential to bring predictive maintenance to a new level.

The benefits of using a remote monitoring and notification software system via a mobile app include:

• Streamlining decision making. Push notifications let users quickly see what is wrong, send an acknowledgment, and monitor alarm condition changes in real-time, right from smartphones.
• Promoting team problem solving. Chat helps the entire team converse, brainstorm, and share solutions on the fly, from anywhere—whether in the plant, at home, or on the road.
• Working more efficiently. Team visibility shows who has seen an alarm as well as who has acknowledged it, reducing guesswork and redundant responses.
• Providing multiple communication channel support. Ensures resiliency through voice notification and SMS messaging in the event of internet connectivity issues.

Remaining Competitive

Rapid globalization, technological advancements, changing consumer preferences, and evolving government policies are reshaping the manufacturing industry. Trying to meet these challenges with manually intensive processes and outdated technology is difficult; however, by seamlessly integrating advanced technology such as remote alarm notification software, manufacturers can increase productivity and efficiency, and reduce maintenance costs.

Bann is director of engineering at Austin, Texas-based WIN-911. Reach him at cody.bann@win911.com.

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Over the past few decades, the food industry has boomed, prompting a remarkable transformation. In the past, consumers would visit their local grocers to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables, usually in a small store offering limited choices sourced from local farms. Today’s consumers, however, have a huge variety of options, including multiple supermarkets in every town, online shopping, and even same-day delivery. Suppliers are now competing on a global scale in which stores receive produce from much further afield. This explosive growth in the food market has led to increased expectations among consumers, who now demand a wider variety of high-quality products, year round, at lower prices.

To meet these ever-evolving demands, the food industry has started to leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics to optimize every stage of the production process, starting with the growing of raw ingredients in the field.

For food manufacturers, the challenge lies in balancing these demands with the increasing costs of food production. As we have seen recently with inflating costs of food products and intermittent supply chain interruptions, this task can be incredibly challenging. If food producers are unable to keep up with the rising costs of energy and other inputs, it means that food production is no longer a viable business option. In countries like the UK, this challenge has led to a shortage of various ingredients, a scarcity first seen in eggs and then extending to a huge host of fruits and vegetables such as peppers, cucumbers, and raspberries. In the U.S., we have also seen food suppliers struggling with staving off viruses in products such as lettuce and oranges, efforts that, in turn, are creating a national and global shortage.

Crop Quality

The food supply value chain encompasses a vast network, stretching from selecting and planting the initial seeds to stocking the shelves of stores and supermarkets with finished products. Big data can now be harnessed right from the outset of food production, particularly during the crucial growing stage. These tools assist with fundamental tasks such as fertilization, irrigation, and crop disease management; however, the applications and benefits of this data go far beyond these underlying aspects, extending further along the production line, especially to the food manufacturing process, where crop quality becomes paramount.

Traditionally, food manufacturers have paid a fixed price per truckload of product, regardless of the quality of the load. Unfortunately, any issues related to quality often surface only during the manufacturing process, when the goods have already been received and paid for. For example, consider the case of pomegranates: Nutritional inputs during the growing stage of the fruit determine its acidity levels, which influence whether the pomegranate is suitable for juice production or for sale as a fresh fruit, showing the knock-on effect of agricultural practices on the food manufacturer, months down the line. This inconsistency in fruit quality poses a significant challenge for juice producers who strive to maintain a consistent product standard for consumers; not only is their supply of fruits for juice variable, but the flavor of the fruits can vary dramatically, producing inconsistent batches.

Similar variability can be observed in almonds, where properly fertilized trees yield almonds with superior oil qualities. Higher quality almonds offer better health benefits, as well as a longer shelf life, enabling producers to offer a healthier, longer-lasting product to their customers.

When a truckload of produce fails to meet a food manufacturer’s quality criteria, it may have to be completely discarded. This results in substantial waste but, crucially for the food manufacturer, it means an uncertain output of their final product per truckload. In the event of large quantities of low-quality input ingredients, food manufacturers must pay for additional sorting to salvage the usable portions while covering the added cost of unacceptable product disposal. Lastly, they must make up the difference by finding last-minute additional produce, usually at a significantly higher price. Although rare, should manufacturers receive higher-quality, higher-yielding produce, they may need to source costly storage space to cope with the additional raw materials and yield produced. These challenges have a direct impact on the bottom line for food manufacturers and lead to additional costs throughout the supply chain. For many players in the industry, this can lead to increasing product prices and risking their competitive advantage in the market.

Crop Data

To ensure consistently high output and minimize costs, it is imperative for food manufacturers to improve the quality of their input ingredients. Fortunately, a solution to the unpredictable nature of these ingredients lies in balanced crop health and nutrition. Leveraging the power of big data and AI enables growers to accurately calculate and tailor crop nutrient requirements to individual crop types and growing conditions. Data such as rainfall, temperature, and soil type can be combined with fertilization and yield data specific to each crop variant. This comprehensive understanding of the individual crop’s nutritional and management needs allows for local adjustments in growing protocols based on changing conditions. Digital solutions are now able to take into account local conditions such as soil and weather and adjust these growing protocols in real time to account for conditions in a specific location.

The next stage is to employ advanced AI algorithms to analyze this data, empowering food manufacturers to ensure that their growing practices are efficient, cost effective, productive, and sustainable. By providing personalized, real-time crop nutrition plans to their growers, food manufacturers can guarantee top-quality ingredients and predictable truckloads from their suppliers. This approach unlocks further environmental benefits by reducing waste and minimizing disruptions to production processes.

The potential benefits of leveraging crop data extend far beyond pomegranates and almonds. Agricultural technology (agtech) innovations offer the means to improve the production of numerous food products across the wider industry. These technologies play a pivotal role in making crop nutrition plans more advanced and accessible than ever before, providing essential decision support systems for both growers and food manufacturers. Where this information used to take years to produce, it can now be produced at the click of a button. As a result, innovation and improvement can occur faster, allowing a spiral effect of further innovation and improvement, facilitating long-term, measurable benefits across the food industry. By implementing these digital solutions at the field level, manufacturers can adopt a more vertically integrated role in the food supply value chain, ultimately leading to increased profitability.

The digital nature of these AI solutions also creates opportunities for extensive collaboration, enabling agronomic research on a global scale. Researchers can combine their data with a wealth of global knowledge on specific crop varieties, disease management, nutritional needs, and more. By pooling resources and expertise, stakeholders can collectively address industry-wide challenges.

Sustainability is a long-term concern. Globally, we know that food production accounts for a large portion of our carbon emissions; however, calculating this accurately is very difficult. Tracking these emissions on an individual basis is also difficult, but it’s essential in order to improve the sustainability of food production at the field level and mitigate the impact of climate change. Recent developments in this area show promising progress, leading us toward more accurate and efficient carbon emission tracking in agriculture.

Data-Driven Strategies

Ultimately, technological advancements like these are instrumental in improving quality standards and sustainability, as well as enabling food manufacturers to meet consumer demands for high-quality products at competitive prices. With the rapid development of AI and the increasing prevalence of digital solutions throughout the food supply value chain, the positive impact on the wider food industry is evident.

By embracing data-driven strategies, food manufacturers can secure a quality crop and maximize their output. Additionally, they are enabling food manufacturers to track and improve carbon emissions associated with their product. The benefits of harnessing data extend beyond those involved in crop harvesting and have the potential to revolutionize the food industry.

Baruchi is CEO of Agmatix. Reach him at info@agmatix.com.

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To ensure that only the best and safest food products reach consumers, processors constantly test and monitor contaminants in their inbound raw materials, which is not an easy feat. That’s where high-sensitivity analysis and accurate data comes in, allowing decision makers at the quality management level to effectively screen raw materials to determine their suitability for use, and to ensure product value, safety, and compliance.

Proper screening ensures that contaminants don’t exceed the maximum residue levels (MRLs) in the food product. Compliance risk aside, food processors want to put their brand name on only the highest quality food products. Brand reputation suffers when a product’s quality does not line up with the brand promise stamped on its packaging. For example, “all natural” or “100% organic” claims may invite further scrutiny if it’s revealed the food contains higher levels of contaminants. The impact can be far reaching, leading to media attention, a loss of consumer trust, recalls, and costly litigation.

A New Way to Test for Residue

Processors know that early detection of contaminants, such as glyphosate and mycotoxins, within inbound products saves time and money; however, such testing historically requires sending samples to a qualified lab for analysis by liquid chromatography (LC), sometimes coupled with advanced detection using mass spectrometry (MS). It can take days or even weeks for the test results to come back from the lab.

Imagine this all-too-common experience for food and agricultural facilities: A supplier pulls up with a truckload of grain. You collect and send a sample of the grain off to a lab to be screened for mycotoxin or pesticide residue. In the meantime, the grain sits in storage, risking cross-contamination with other raw materials. While waiting for laboratory results to arrive, you are left wondering how much time—and money—you could save if you could screen the raw materials for contaminants before the supplier unloads or leaves the premises?

The good news is that on-site testing technologies are available that can produce precise results in minutes, not days or weeks. The aim of both a laboratory-based analytical technique, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and a rapid test is the same: to measure whether a sample contains certain compounds. That’s where the similarities end. LC requires an accomplished laboratory technician to extract the target analyte from the sample and perform the analysis with an organic solvent according to a well-documented standard operating protocol (SOP).

Everyone is familiar with lateral test strips, the same format used with COVID-19 diagnostic test kits. Quantitative lateral flow strip tests can, in a matter of minutes, alert test users to the presence or absence of a specific target, whether it is SARS-CoV-2, mycotoxins, or glyphosate. Further, unlike LC, rapid test strips employ a water-based extraction method that any company owner, quality control professional, USDA or FDA licensed inspectors, or factory worker can perform on site. Administering on-site testing with lateral test strips is less costly and increasingly more sustainable given that samples never leave the site, which eliminates the packaging, shipping costs, and transportation emissions necessary to send samples to a lab for analysis.

The benefits of rapid on-site testing are that data-informed decisions can be made in the moment, allowing time for action and remediation. Processors can decide sooner whether to use a particular batch of raw materials or to source a substitute or replacement ingredient instead. Quality control managers can make specific plans for each raw material based on its quality. Operational efficiency improves and quality teams can have greater confidence in the quality of the inbound materials faster, eliminating the worry and uncertainty that attends untested inbound raw materials until they are confirmed clean. All of these are reasons to turn to rapid test methods at the food manufacturing facility.

Out of the Lab

Still, as with any new form of technology, some will remain hesitant or skeptical about implementing a new, unfamiliar way of testing. After all, results so important to their business and human safety cannot be left to chance.

Continuous learning is a proactive way to ensure ongoing success with any monitoring tool. Implementing rapid test methods outside of the lab is no exception. Annual retraining and simple procedure posters hung around the facility with QR codes that lead straight to full guides or step-by-step videos online help to improve the confidence of test operators and help to ensure consistent, accurate data collection. Scientist or not, the user’s confidence in their ability to perform the test will make all the difference in day-to-day work satisfaction, as well as obtaining sensitive, and accurate results.

On-site testing is a first line of defense in keeping low quality raw materials out of the facility and out of the global food chain. Access to rapid strip test screening kits has the potential to change the way raw materials are cultivated, harvested, and processed. Being able to customize a cultivation plan or harvest crops in a way that minimizes worker exposure to contaminants or microfungal toxins enables producers to make data-informed decisions that impact how they perform their jobs. Ultimately, the highest value is to protect consumers by ensuring food is free of contamination. Rapid test technologies mitigate risk much earlier in the value chain, which bolster preventive strategies and offers a more holistic approach to food safety.

Jackson is VICAM market development manager for Waters Corporation. Reach her at patricia_jackson@waters.com.

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Mycotoxins are on the rise. These toxins can be found in everyday foods such as corn, wheat, soy, peas, and peanuts, and can cause acute and long-term health effects if ingested. Additionally, they are heat tolerant, meaning they can be present in foods that are processed and prepared under conventional temperatures (80°-121°C), affecting the finished product.

Mycotoxins impact a number of commodities including grains, produce, spices, alcohol, and coffee. They can even reach dairy products through secondary exposure from animal feed. Further, these toxins are resistant to decomposition and are not removed by traditional food safety measures such as cooking, washing, or sanitizing.

Not only do they impact humans, but they also put many pets at risk, as they affect core pet food ingredients. Testing pet food is especially important, because pets typically eat the same food every day, and their food is traditionally stored at room temperature and served at the floor level.

There are six major types of mycotoxins that are consistently detected in food and pose safety risks: aflatoxins, trichothecenes, zearalenone, fumonisins, ochratoxins, and patulin. The side effects vary from food poisoning to cancers and long-term health issues.

Why Are Mycotoxins on the Rise?

Rain creates a damp environment for mycotoxin growth. A recent study, published in late 2022 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (doi: 10.1029/2022GL099955), concludes that climate change is causing more intense rainfall across the country. In tandem, an uptick in consumer demand has trickled down to manufacturers and farmers who, in adapting to deliver more sourcing materials, are extending the growing season. Farmers cannot wait for the dry conditions to balance the consumer demand, which has exacerbated the problem. This has created a perfect storm in which mycotoxins can thrive, resulting in more food safety concerns across the supply chain.

Dietary Habits Have a Direct Impact

Food is a circular economy: Consumer demand and dietary habits drive agriculture production, and so on. Dietary shifts toward alternative meats and vegan-based meals increase demand for raw materials such as soy and pea protein. A March 2022 report from Acosta, a research firm based in Jacksonville, Fla., concluded that 40% of consumers purchased plant-based meat and/or dairy products within the prior six months.

As a result, more farmers are expanding their crop offerings to support this trend. As consumer demand increases, processors need product more rapidly and, in some cases, farmers are harvesting prematurely, before their crops dry out. As this trend expands, producers will likely try to harvest in new areas that may be susceptible to mycotoxin production.

Food Testing Poised for Growth

Food testing is critical to verify that foods that are at a higher risk of containing mycotoxins are not reaching consumers. The goal is to get more testing upstream and catch mycotoxins early on. Domestic grain elevators present a strong testing location, as it consolidates supply across various suppliers. Inspectors at the beginning of the process they can scan shipping containers and conduct sampling for analysis at the source. The key is for food inspectors to be efficient, providing quick turnaround for customers. It’s equally important that testing is accessible across all geographies, especially as farming areas expand and new crops are established.

Preventing Mycotoxins

There are things we can do today and in the future to prevent the spread of mycotoxins and ensure food safety. In the short-term, strong testing practices and procedures must be put in place in food manufacturing plants to ensure that mycotoxins don’t reach store shelves. Regulations are already in place to ensure that this occurs at manufacturing facilities. Farther up the chain, preventive measures can help reduce incidence. Certification and employee training comprise the first step, informing suitable areas to grow crops, seasonality, and best practices such as separating lots, depending on the crop. Armed with this knowledge, we can reduce the risk of mycotoxin exposure early in the process, as opposed to discovering contaminated foods at the end of the production cycle.

As the current workforce ages, it’s important to upskill existing employees and keep them abreast of the latest food safety standards and best practices. Continue to train all employees involved in the process to avoid loss of this knowledge.

Ultimately, we can all be better stewards to our planet to slow climate change, avoid extreme weather, and create stability in the food ecosystem. Sustainability has become a larger focus for individuals and corporations as people seek to reduce their environmental footprint over time.

Food safety is closely coupled with consumer demand, dietary preferences, and environmental impact. Heightened demand creates a chain reaction from fork to farm and farm to fork. The presence of mycotoxins can be expensive for food producers and an ongoing threat to public health. Preventing a toxin from entering the food chain requires consistent and reliable analytical testing. Testing and certification remain integral to overall consumer safety and the future of food production to minimize the increased impact of mycotoxins in today’s changing landscape.

Sharp is VP Commercial Operations North America at Bureau Veritas. Reach him at waylon.sharp@bureauveritas.com

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In the U.S. and Europe, food manufacturers are preparing for a number of new regulations that target per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of “forever chemicals” that persist in the environment and can harm human health.

Testing for PFAS and tracing them through supply chains and life cycles is a daunting task, but labs are rising to the challenge. New techniques make it possible to identify more PFAS than ever before, with increasing sensitivity and confidence.

Food suppliers should take advantage of new gains in PFAS testing and take the time to understand the substances’ occurrence in supply chains. These actions can help suppliers get ahead of regulations and respond proactively to increasing consumer concerns.

A Brief History of PFAS

The first PFAS were created in the 1930s. These chemicals repel both oil and water and are used in everything from food packaging to firefighting foam, fracking liquid, and consumer products such as lipstick and electronics. Some studies have found that the chemicals can cause cancer, kidney disease, and immune problems, among other ailments, and can persist indefinitely in the environment.

The first and most studied PFAS, perfluorooctyl sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), have been mostly phased out from use, but they remain in the environment and in our food systems. In the meantime, thousands of other PFAS compounds have proliferated. For most, there is little toxicity data available and the risks are unknown.

Testing for and analyzing PFAS requires liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) capabilities, which were not available in most labs until the early 2000s. A validated method for testing for PFAS in drinking water was first set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2009. Over the past few years, the EPA also began exploring methods for identifying dozens of PFAS in groundwater, biosolids, and the air.

In January 2023, the European Union proposed the most wide-reaching PFAS regulation yet; it would ban 10,000 PFAS chemicals from use in most products. Whatever shape the final EU regulation takes, this new ban and other similar ones have created a need for more extensive PFAS testing.

In March 2023, the EPA proposed nationwide, legally enforceable limits for six PFAS chemicals in drinking water, and it is currently exploring limits for 23 other PFAS that can be identified and monitored using existing tests. These new standards are much stricter than existing recommendations. Still, drinking water is just one piece of the problem. Food is also a major source of PFAS exposure.

How PFAS Can Enter the Food Supply

A March 2023 study published in the journal Environmental Research found PFAS in freshwater fish in rivers, lakes, and streams across the country (Environ Res. 2023;220:115165). The researchers concluded that catching and eating one fish could be as toxic as drinking contaminated water for a month. Other recent studies have flagged high levels of PFAS in imported clams, dairy milk, and a variety of seafood, with lower levels in just about everything else.

A 2017 study (Enviro Sci Technol Lett. 2017;4:105-111) concluded that food can become contaminated by the chemicals when it touches wrappers or “biodegradable” forks and bowls that are made with them; the study found that people who ate out more had higher levels of PFAS in their blood. As a result, 11 U.S. states have implemented bans on PFAS in food packaging, most of which will go into effect by 2025.

But packaging is only one pathway for food contamination; PFAS are also located in soil and groundwater as a result of industrial uses, in the landfills where consumer products wind up, and even in the air.

Even our best attempts at a sustainable, circular food system can increase PFAS exposure in food. Fertilizers made from biosolids reclaimed from sewage treatment plants were once lauded as a sustainable farming solution, but most of these biosolids were never tested for PFAS, and tainted sludge can contaminate fields for decades, harming both farmers and consumers.

Best Practices in Testing

These different sources of PFAS can create food safety risks. Because food can be contaminated directly through packaging or indirectly through environmental pathways, food suppliers will increasingly need to identify and address PFAS sources to update supply chains.

Most states with PFAS packaging bans have banned specific substances, which can be identified through targeted analysis. But some states, like California, have set limits for total organic fluorine as a proxy for thousands of other PFAS, including some that may not have been added on purpose. This requires a non-targeted approach and quick and robust testing, as PFAS detection begins to impact critical business decisions and more companies request tests. Mass spectrometers allow testing labs to detect very low levels of PFAS contamination. In addition, they are very selective, increasing confidence in the lab results and ensuring that they are not detecting a false positive.

To reduce the amount of PFAS entering supply chains indirectly, the Environmental Defense Fund recommends that companies test proactively. The organization suggests prioritizing testing first for food grown near known sites of high ­contamination, then testing meat and seafood and finally testing products containing fat and oil. Forensic testing techniques can help suppliers examine which types of PFAS may have originated in their supply chains, so they can implement new practices or change suppliers accordingly. This will be especially important for producers exporting to Europe if the proposed EU ban on PFAS goes into effect.

A Foundation for the Future

Finding a capable PFAS testing partner now will prepare you to weather the quickly shifting regulatory winds. Having a strong testing partnership in place can also help you respond quickly to other emerging risks. After all, PFAS are not the only environmental contaminant of concern. The chemicals that we already know to test for are just the tip of the iceberg: If the story of PFAS teaches us anything, it should be to expect the unexpected.

The EPA estimates that there are 12,000 forever chemicals on the market today. Many are affecting our food supply and environment in ways that are not yet known. More regulation is needed, but for chemicals already in the supply chain, improvements in testing provide a starting point for defining the problem.

Dr. Butt is the manager of applied markets, global strategic technical marketing, for SCIEX.

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The writing is on the wall for brewers: Consumers are drinking less alcohol than ever before. But this hasn’t kept them from drinking beer—they’re just drinking nonalcoholic (NA) offerings from both traditional brewers and smaller upstarts. In 2022 alone, sales of NA beers grew by 20%, and worldwide, NA beer had become a $22-billion industry—projected to reach $40 billion in the next decade, according to a 2023 report from Global Market Insights.

In a $750-billion global beer market, $40 billion might seem like a drop in the bucket, but it’s a drop that major brewers are taking seriously. Among the most significant indicators of the market shift toward NA offerings is the news that brewing colossus AB InBev, owner of Budweiser and Corona as well as many other beers, aims to make 20% of its beers NA by 2025.

The Challenges

Despite a similarity in taste and texture between NA and traditionally brewed beer, the two products are made very differently. The challenge appears from the very beginning, says Richard Preiss, co-founder and lab director at Guelph, Ontario’s Escarpment Labs, which cultivates and produces a variety of yeasts for both professional and home brewers. “The most important thing is going to sound pedantic,” Preiss says, “but what makes regular beer different from nonalcoholic beer is alcohol. And we have to also consider what alcohol is. It doesn’t just have intoxicating effects; it defines the product in every other way imaginable. Even if everything else was exactly the same on a molecular level, the fact that there’s not alcohol changes the taste and everything else about the product, so it is really important. Alcohol is one of the flavors that brings these things all together. You take it away and the whole system is thrown out of balance.”

Bryan Donaldson is brewing innovation manager for Petaluma, Calif.-based Lagunitas Brewing Company, which saw enough success as a craft brewer over past decades that Heineken ultimately bought a 50% stake in the company. He’s blunt about the vacancy created by the absence of alcohol. “Turns out, alcohol is a great carrier of flavor,” Donaldson says. “Without alcohol in the product, the challenge of replicating flavors becomes almost infinitely more difficult, but it also challenges you to become more creative.”

Preiss agrees, saying, “Alcohol can make certain flavor molecules much more flavor-active to us. It can make other flavor molecules less active to us. In the context of regular beer, that is part of what creates the sort of standard flavor profile and quality. Alcohol is super critical from a flavor perspective. Immediately, if we take the alcohol out or don’t produce it, we have some gaps we need to fill in.”

Both Preiss and Donaldson underline the preservative, antimicrobial role that ethanol plays in regular beer; in its absence, brewers have been forced to figure out their own food safety protocols.

John Walker agrees. He is co-founder of Athletic Brewing Company, a brewery that produces only NA beers that has grown to command a significant share of the American NA market. As Athletic was developing its products, Walker says, there was no literature on food safety for NA beer. “So, we were trying to figure a lot of stuff out,” he adds. An added challenge was the fact that with NA beer, because you need this microbially stable product, you lose out on a number of steps that you usually get to enjoy in normal brewing with ethanol as a preservative, such as adding fruit safely during or after fermentation, or dry hopping. “All these things that add complexity to the brewing process become either not doable or an extreme challenge in nonalcoholic,” he says.

Brewing Without Alcohol

A primary challenge in brewing NA beer is simply learning how to create beer without alcohol; humans have brewed beer for more than 10,000 years, but only in recent years have brewers begun committing themselves to creating alcohol-free beer. Accordingly, brewers cannot simply brew NA products using the yeasts, tools, and processes they’ve developed for traditional beers.

Preiss identifies four main processes for brewing beer without alcohol. Two are technical alcohol-removal processes that dealcoholize beer originally containing alcohol, while two processes involve yeast and fermentation to produce beer with low alcohol content from the beginning. “There are really two subcategories of technology [to dealcoholization],” he says. “There’s distillation, usually done through a vacuum distillation process so it’s a little bit more gentle on the actual product in terms of flavor stability. And there’s also membrane technology, basically reverse osmosis, to remove alcohol through high pressure and filters.”

Each of these technologies requires significant investment in retooling, Preiss says. Whether for vacuum distillation or for membrane osmosis processes, Preiss warns that a brewery should be ready to spend “mid-six-figures.” He advises brewers to “have really done your homework before you commit to that.”

Meanwhile, says Walker, “If you have a process where you’re removing alcohol or separating a finished product and then blending it back, you’re going to have a whole different level of sophistication that you need to understand—how to make things consistent after they’ve been adulterated in the first place. So there’s one challenge there.”

Fermentation

The second method to produce NA beers involves fermentation alone, and it’s broken down into two approaches: arrested fermentation, or fermentation with a maltose-negative yeast. Arrested fermentation is exactly what it sounds like: A brewer makes a standard beer wort, which is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer, albeit lower- strength than a wort for regular beer. The brewer then allows it to ferment until it reaches the upper limit of 0.5% alcohol, which is the standard ceiling for NA beers across most places in North America.

At that point, the brewer stops fermentation by either dropping the temperature to stop fermentation, or deliberately killing or removing the yeast entirely. “One way or another, you basically have to stop the yeast before it makes more alcohol,” he says, explaining that, while this process is simple, it also takes place fairly quickly (it can be done within four hours) and is popular with breweries that operate 24 hours a day, since there’s always someone on hand to check hourly and stop fermentation the moment it approaches the critical 0.5% threshold.

“It’s a great method,” Preiss says, “but because you’re not doing a complete fermentation, you don’t get the complete flavor. So that’s number one. And the other, the number two, is that you have fermentation intermediates that don’t really get resolved until the end of a normal fermentation. One of the primary ones is called diacetyl: It tastes like butter popcorn. You have to use an enzyme that breaks it down. That’s an enzyme that would never enter into the production of traditional beers.”

The other fermentation method uses a yeast that is maltose-negative, meaning that it doesn’t ferment the sugar maltose and therefore generates significantly less alcohol. “Maltose-negative yeast basically has the fundamental ability to make a beer with the desired parameters for non-alcoholic: being under half percent and tasting fermented and beer-like.”

These yeasts don’t ferment maltose and malt sugars—the vast majority of sugars that appear in unfermented beer wort. “If you add a yeast that doesn’t ferment those [sugars],” Preiss says, “it’ll only really touch the simple sugars like the glucose. Luckily for us in beer wort, if we make a low strength beer wort about half the strength of normal, and we add a negative yeast, it’s really, really easy to have that recipe and process designed so that it’s sort of set-it-and-forget-it. You don’t have to babysit the batch. The yeast ferments the glucose and fructose and yields under 0.5%.”

However, there’s a challenge that comes with maltose-negative yeasts, Preiss says. They’re not conventional yeasts that brewers are familiar with, and often they taste different than standard yeasts. “Most of the dozens of [maltose-negative] options that we screened just didn’t taste good,” Preiss says with laugh. “They had flavor, but they didn’t have good flavor.”

In short, this means that any brewer developing NA beers faces a challenge. For Walker ad Preiss, this called for a lot of trial and error. Preiss talks about how developing NA beers requires the commitment both of capital and creative energy, and Walker embodies the exertion of creative drive in developing NA products.

Trial and Error

At the beginning, Athletic Brewing was a two-person operation run by Walker and his partner Bill Shufelt. Walker recalls arriving and looking at the small brewing system Shufelt had procured for the company and reporting that the system was still far too large for R&D purposes. “I told Bill we needed to start off in home brew batches, which is five gallons at a time,” Walker says, “because we needed to be able to crank out a ton of iterations of this process and development so that we could learn more about it, and split batches in three ways to see how different treatments reacted. It’s all about trial-and-error R&D, paying close attention to the small tweaks you make at each step. Then, [it’s] trying to hone that in on the process that will work and will make a great product.”

Walker and Shufelt spent the beginning of Athletic Brewing creating test batches based on what Walker calls a “clean, neutral beer recipe” as a baseline for R&D. “We picked that brew to proof our process because we know it’s very lean, it’s very clean, it’s very simple,” Walker says. “We know exactly what the expression of the hops is going to be like. And so we knew that that beer would help showcase any flaws in our process.”

The goal, above all, was to make NA beers that had the same appeal to consumers as traditional products, that drinkers would experience in much the same they would beers with alcohol. “We wanted to mimic and recreate the beer experience, but in that non-alcoholic format,” Walker says. “So that comes in the mouth expression of the product—it’s the minerality, it’s the body, it’s the mouthfeel, but it’s also the marketing component: How do you make this product feel celebratory and positive? We looked at the traditional brewing process and started from ground zero with the target as the end experience.”

Donaldson at Lagunitas says that “as brewers, we know what levers to pull with regard to flavor and composition; it is just slightly more difficult [with NA]. Ultimately, we are still making beer. That being said, we also always believe there is room for improvement, so every batch just about turns into R&D, with the caveat that it is all still saleable. In many ways beyond beer, innovations are more troublesome because we don’t have the same experience and, often, the equipment is not ideally suited to making things aside from beer. The fun of it all, for brewers like us, is to identify the challenges and figure out how to overcome them while still making something delicious.”

A Growing Market

For Preiss, the future of NA beers might well be full of new flavors—provided enterprising brewers do the work of exploring new maltose-negative yeasts and discovering their possibilities. While there is significant challenge in such R&D, Preiss notes that as more brewers begin offering NA options, new flavors offer crucial brand differentiation in a market growing saturated with NA hazy IPAs. “As that market develops, there’s going to be a need for more differentiation,” Preiss says. “Again, this comes down to recipe design and also branding and marketing. How does a brewery position a brand to be unique and have its own space in the market as well, so that it can be long lasting? We have to make sure that [NA beers are] a whole genre of beverage. There’s a lot that can be done, but you have to think about long term: If I’m going to put this energy into developing this process and this brand, how do I make sure that this is actually going to pay off in the long run?”

The big breweries have developed NA lagers that Preiss acknowledges are “actually quite good,” but he’s happy to report that “there are holes left for market challengers to emerge.”

Preiss says there are many opportunities left on the table and product gaps left in the market. He believes those gaps will be filled with new flavors from yeast collectors. A big part of the future of NA beers, he predicts, will involve advanced experimentation with new yeasts. “We haven’t screened everything [in our yeast collection] either,” Preiss says, “so there’s likely potential for more flavor diversity. It becomes a big challenge to even uncover that in the first place. Maybe one strain is disgusting in normal wort, but with the right ingredients, it’s not. Maybe the reason it tastes horrible is because we didn’t give it great nutrients. In terms of fermented low-alcohol, non-alcoholic beverages, you actually have a pretty huge diversity of organisms that you can work with. You can also work with bacteria to make sour beverages. There’s lots of potential.”

Walker agrees, noting, “we’ve been very public about the fact that we’re hoping that other people join this category, but they need to do it in a thoughtful way. We want this category to grow exponentially. And we think that it has the room and the ability to grow over the next couple of decades.”

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No one entity can protect food safety on its own. In FSMA, FDA clearly stated that the role of industry is to produce safe foods. FDA’s role is oversight in their jurisdiction, to ensure that industry is doing its job. Ensuring that food is safe requires a collaborative approach; government, industry, and consumers must work together to achieve the common goal of protecting public health. The fact that multiple agencies and inspectors have regulatory oversight over food safety at U.S. retail and foodservice establishments can create some definite challenges to achieving this goal, however.

At both the state and local levels, for example, health departments are responsible for inspecting and regulating foodservice establishments within their jurisdictions. At the federal level, FDA regulates food safety, including food processing, distribution, and labeling.

Furthermore, FDA’s 2022 Food Code (10th edition) and the Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards are a framework for safeguarding public health and ensuring that consumers’ food is unadulterated. USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) inspects and regulates meat, poultry, and some egg products and plays a vital role in federal regulation. The CDC promotes food safety in retail environments.

Launched in 2000 by leading consumer goods companies, the Global Food Safety Initiative is a non-governmental global group organized after a number of food safety crises occurred. With the goal of reducing food safety risks and increasing consumer confidence in the delivery of safe food, these companies began requiring that manufacturers do more than the legal minimum required by the individual country of origin or destination, so they adapted an accredited certification model and a series of best practice standards applicable to their suppliers. “When retail and food establishments are required to follow different food safety regulations depending on their location, it can cause confusion, frustration, and loss of trust for operators and staff, which can ultimately result in unsafe food safety practices,” says Melissa Vaccaro, a senior food safety program specialist at the National Environmental Health Association.

According to Donald W. Schaffner, PhD, professor, extension specialist, and chair of the department of food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., challenges are especially significant for national and regional retail and foodservice chains. “These organizations often have stellar food safety programs which they try to implement uniformly across all of their operations. But, challenges can occur when inspectors on either side of a state line enforce different regulations, or when different jurisdictions interpret state food codes differently within a state.”

Every four years, FDA publishes a new version of the Food Code to ensure it’s updated consistently to help jurisdictions adopt uniform food safety standards; however, many jurisdictions continue to use older versions because the timeframe to adopt a newer version can be long. In some cases it can take years, says Ashley Eisenbeiser, MS, senior director of food and product safety programs at FMI–The Food Industry Association, headquartered in Arlington, Va. In fact, one state, South Dakota, is still using the Food Code from 1995.

The variability and patchwork of Food Code adoption across the United States creates a significant challenge for retailers that have to know and comply with each jurisdiction’s requirements in which they operate, Eisenbeiser adds. California is the only state that hasn’t adopted any version of the Food Code, which is voluntary.

Although FSMA rules don’t apply to retail food establishments, they do apply to most suppliers and manufacturers of food sold in stores, including the suppliers of ingredients and products used to prepare food in retail delis and fresh prepared departments in stores, Eisenbeiser says. Supplier programs play an important role in assuring food safety and that food is purchased from approved sources. FSMA includes a new Traceability Rule in section 204 that establishes additional traceability recordkeeping requirements which will become effective January 20, 2026.

Best Practices to Overcome Challenges

Retail and foodservice establishments face ongoing challenges related to regulatory compliance with the Food Code. They include failure to have a strong hazard analysis (including identifying biological, chemical, and physical hazards); maintaining the highest standards of personal and facility hygiene, including strict handwashing practices; proper handling and labeling of allergens and avoiding allergen cross-contact; and proper temperature control of food items and monitoring temperatures during receiving, storage, preparation, cooking, and holding, says Tracy Fink, PCQI, director of scientific programs and science and policy initiatives at the Institute of Food Technologists in Chicago.

Fink advises maintaining a robust Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system with a mindset toward preventive controls, even though they aren’t universally mandated for all retail and foodservice establishments. “This system has been proven to be an effective approach to food safety and demonstrates a commitment to providing safe and high-quality food products to consumers,” she says.

Fink also recommends conducting internal audits and working with external retail and foodservice auditing companies to conduct second-party audits to best protect consumers and public health.

Regarding hygiene, Vaccaro says poor personal hygiene is the root cause of norovirus, which is responsible for 58% of foodborne illnesses in the United States, according to CDC. Active managerial control, training, and accountability are key to ensuring that good hygiene is practiced within a food establishment’s culture.

New allergens also pose challenges. On January 1, 2023, FDA named sesame as the ninth major food allergen recognized in the U.S. “Retail and food service establishments should now be aware of any ingredients that carry a potential risk of including this allergen,” Dr. Schaffner says. “They should provide this information to customers by stating it on a product’s label, including a notification on a menu, or through other means.”

Temperature monitoring and holding time controls fall under the Food Code, and include but aren’t limited to facilities and equipment. FDA’s Current Good Manufacturing Practices for temperature control, and thermometer calibration programs are also applicable best practices, Fink says.  Vaccaro adds, “The primary challenge is to ensure that food managers and employees use calibrated thermometers to take food temperatures after cooking, cooling, storage, or any other situations in which foods need temperature control. This should be a part of an establishment’s food safety culture.” Equally important is to develop and maintain Standard Operating Procedures for all aspects of food receiving, handling, preparation, storage, and service, including waste disposal.

Keeping Up with Regulations

To comply with the myriad regulatory requirements, Fink advises frequently checking the websites of regulatory agencies responsible for food safety in your region to obtain the latest updates on food safety regulations, recalls, and outbreak notifications. Sign up for email alerts or subscription services offered by regulatory agencies, as well as by health departments and food safety authorities. Consider joining industry associations and networks, which often provide members with information about industry best practices, regulatory changes, and emerging food safety issues. Additionally, it’s imperative to collaborate with local health authorities and establish a positive relationship with regulatory officials in addition to following regulatory agencies on social media.

Have executive or C-suite buy-in for fostering a culture of food safety within an organization is another big area to manage alone. Senior level support can really help with budget development and training resources. “Create an environment that supports collaborating with local health authorities and industry associations to gain valuable insight and guidance on navigating compliance challenges,” Fink says.

Recall notifications, market withdrawals, and safety alerts can be found at FDA’s Recalls, Market Withdrawals, and Safety Alerts webpage; USDA’s Recalls & Public Health Alerts webpage; and CDC’s Foodborne Outbreaks webpage. Additionally, many government agencies and food safety organizations offer email or RSS subscription services that provide notifications about food recalls, outbreaks, and other food safety alerts, Fink says. Government agencies and news outlets often share food recall and outbreak information on their social media platforms.

Work with suppliers to ensure the quality and safety of ingredients entering your establishment. “Verify that suppliers meet food safety standards and request relevant documentation, such as a Certificates of Analysis,” Fink adds, if that’s applicable to the type of business involved.

Many organizations provide training programs, tools, and other resources to help retail and foodservice establishments stay compliant with regulations. Fink recommends that these establishments invest in comprehensive food safety training for both new and long-term staff and management. For example, the National Restaurant Association administers ServSafe, a food and beverage safety training and certification program that covers critical aspects of food safety and handling in the foodservice industry. It’s accredited by the American National Standards Institute and the Conference for Food Protection, and has widespread recognition by the industry.

Stop Foodborne Illness has developed resources to help food establishments educate employees and advance their internal food safety culture. The organization’s Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness provides a free Food Safety Culture Toolkit with insights and resources for assessment, communication, and gamified learnings, says Vanessa Coffman, PhD, the program’s director at Stop Foodborne Illness in Chicago.

Current FDA Initiatives

FDA is embarking on some new programs to ensure food safety. In the third core element of its New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative, New Business Models and Retail Modernization, FDA is working to address how to protect foods from contamination as new business models emerge and change to meet modern consumers’ needs, according to an FDA spokesperson.

“The evolution of how food gets from farm to table continues with the emergence of e-commerce and new delivery models,” an FDA spokesperson tells Food Quality & Safety. “Changes in how food is produced continue to occur as new business models advance innovations in novel ingredients, new foods, and new food production systems.”

Regarding food sold at retail establishments directly to consumers, FDA is working with the Retail Food Safety Regulatory Association Collaborative to create tools and interventions to help regulators and industry implement science-based food safety laws and regulations, i.e., a Food Code adoption tool kit, and tools for industry to control risk factors for foodborne illness, i.e., use of Active Managerial Control and Food Safety Management Systems.

In October 2022, FDA and CDC entered a memorandum of understanding (MOU) designed to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness in retail and foodservice. According to an FDA spokesperson, the MOU outlines three primary goals:

1. Increase uniformity, consistency, and capacity of state, local, territorial, and tribal (SLTT) retail food protection programs;
2. Promote the retail food store and restaurant industry’s Active Managerial Control of foodborne illness risk factors and promote a culture of food safety; and
3. Maintain a strong FDA National Retail Food Team and CDC National Center for Environmental Health workforce to assist SLTT retail food protection programs.

Since entering the MOU, FDA and CDC have established a steering committee with a dedicated charter to develop a strategic action plan by September 2023 and implement it by October 2023 that includes both short- and long-term initiatives. Some of the focus areas within the plan include:

• Increasing focus on employee health practices and policies; SLTT regulators can provide training and tools to operators to help them create well developed and implemented employee health programs.
• Increasing SLTT retail food protection programs use of risk-based inspection methods and implementing environmental assessments during foodborne illness investigations.
• Achieving closer alignment to the national standard’s criteria for Foodborne Illness and Food Defense Preparedness and Response documents; and
• Increasing the use of effective intervention strategies to reduce occurrences of out-of-compliance foodborne illness risk factors.

Food safety practices in the retail and foodservice space are of vital importance to protecting public health, and regulations and food safety culture at that level can reduce risks. “With many different regulatory requirements nationwide, it’s important for retail food service facilities to know and understand the regulations that apply at each specific location,” Vaccaro says. “The best rule of thumb is to always apply the strictest regulation to all establishments.”

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According to data from the Food and Agriculture Information Sharing and Analysis Center on the 200 to 300 ransomware attacks tracked each month in the U.S., approximately 10 to 20 are directed at agrifood businesses. The most famous case in recent years was the attack on JBS in May 2021, which resulted in an $11 million ransom payment after the meat giant had to close all of its beef plants across the country.

Even when no ransom is paid, the consequences of a cyberattack include high direct costs, disruptions up and down the supply chain, and damaged brand reputation, with the possible addition of theft of trade secrets and legal consequences. In April 2023, a network breach forced cold storage and logistics company Americold to take compromised servers offline, blocking all inbound and outbound deliveries. “With an attack like the one that hit Americold, you’ll have damages on both sides of the equation,” says Michael Delaney, corporate attorney at legal firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, based in St. Louis. “The manufacturer will have to either stop production because they don’t have enough storage space at the plant, or find an alternative distributor. On the other side, the distributor cannot get the product out to the retailer. The manufacturer may sue the distributor, while the retailer may sue both, if they breached the contract.”

Although most cases of cyberattacks that we read about on the news affect large public companies, smaller businesses are not exempt from risk. In an FBI notification issued in September 2021, the agency warned that larger agrifood businesses “are targeted based on their perceived ability to pay higher ransom demands, while smaller entities may be seen as soft targets.”

Food Safety Risks

Ransomware attacks tend to hit IT environments, which focus on data storage and communication. For food manufacturers, however, the risk extends to the operational technology side of the business that controls production. In a hypothetical attack, cybercriminals could exploit the vulnerability of industrial control systems (ICS)—the hardware and software that control equipment and processes—finding their way to the production floor and putting the quality and safety of food products at risk. “ICS systems control all sorts of devices, such as temperature sensors, gate valves, or automatic sampling systems,” says Col. John Hoffman, senior research fellow with the Food Protection and Defense Institute at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. “By taking control of them, one could increase the temperature of an oven, shut down a refrigerator, or change parameters of a recipe, possibly adding an unwanted allergen.”

Most ICS systems used in the food industry are built on legacy technology that wasn’t designed to be connected to the internet. Now that they are plugged in for data collection and remote monitoring and servicing, their lack of protection is putting production plants at risk. Their gradual replacement with modern IoT devices might actually create new vulnerabilities, rather than reduce them. “Smart devices that send and receive data over the internet tend to bypass a lot of the security measures—such as firewalls—that protect both modern and legacy systems, exposing them to attacks,” says Rich Witucki, principal industrial consultant at industrial cybersecurity company Dragos.

As Eran Fine, CEO and co-founder of NanoLock, an Israel-based developer of cybersecurity solutions for industrial systems, says, connectivity itself is a variable that increases risk: “Hybrid systems are not necessarily more secure, but create different problems. While legacy technology is extremely vulnerable, it’s also less connected. IoT devices bring about more connectivity. They may be harder to breach, but once that happens, intruders may jump from the legacy into the new and vice versa.”

Even a single act of sabotage could have disastrous consequences. In 2015, 300,000 chickens in South Carolina were killed after someone tampered with the barn’s climate controls. In 2018, 1,200 pigs died of suffocation in an automated barn in the Netherlands, due to a malfunction of the remotely-controlled ventilation system. Although neither case was a cyber­attack, as the industry is relying more on remotely controlled equipment, autonomous tractors, and smart sensors, the risk of something similar being done by cybercriminals is real.

Cyberattacks may start long before they are discovered: “Cybercriminals usually do some kind of recon first, looking for vulnerable targets,” says Witucki. “Once they’re in, they try to elevate their user privileges so they can exploit other pieces of software. For example, they might move from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) to the manufacturing execution system (MES), to the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, which monitors and controls all phases of food preparation, such as recipes, time, and temperature.”

In most cases, what allows the intrusion is human error: “Employees are the biggest vulnerability,” says Hoffman. “They may compromise their home computer and then use it to log into the company’s system to clock in work hours or check their email on their work computer and click on something they shouldn’t  click on. Insufficient cyber hygiene is a big issue.”

National Security

Ransomware cases are increasing across all industries, as they are a quick and effective way to make money. But a criminal’s motive can be more than purely financial: “Companies sometimes are targeted by competitive moves,” says Hoffman. “Imagine a supplier that won a bid for a large contract, and a competitor breaks into its ICS to compromise the quality and safety of products. The company wouldn’t be able to comply with its obligations, eventually losing the contract. These attacks occur especially in China and Asian markets, but we’re beginning to see them in the U.S. and Europe, too.”

The breach can also be caused by insiders: “A criminal might pay a disgruntled employee one year’s worth of salary just to plug a USB stick into the system during a night shift, to change the ingredients’ dosage and cause severe quality issues,” says Fine.

But motives could be even more worrying. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) identified food and agriculture as one of the 16 sectors that are critical to the country’s security, health, and safety. Such strategic importance makes the industry an appealing target of state-sponsored cyberattacks: “If you wanted to take out a country, the first thing you would do is contaminate their food and water,” says Kristin Demoranville, CEO and founder of AnzenSage, a cybersecurity advisory consultancy for the food sector. “Thankfully, right now, cybercriminals are financially motivated, so they’re not going to kill anybody, at least not intentionally. But if they decide to flip the switch, the food supply chain is still so legacy driven that it could have horrible consequences.”

Recent attacks on producers of staple foods offer a glimpse of what could happen on a larger scale. In 2021, an Iowa farming co-op had to go completely offline and use manual processes after being hit by a ransomware; in 2022, a similar attack forced H.P. Hood Dairy to close its 13 plants; in 2023, a cyberattack shut down 10 water controllers in agricultural areas in Israel, temporarily halting the irrigation systems. “A synchronized cyberattack that completely disrupts the supply of water, bread, or milk could bring a country to its knees,” says Fine. “Besides, food is necessary not only for consumers, but also to armies. And when you starve an army, you’re in a better position to win.”

Risk Aversion in the Food Industry

The increasing attacks on agrifood businesses are a signal that the response to these threats is still insufficient: “In the food industry, cybersecurity is usually considered of secondary importance compared to production uptime and safety,” says Demoranville. “With food contaminations, the reaction is instant and visceral, because it’s clear to everyone that people might die. The same goes for cyberattacks, but people don’t understand it yet.”

“Many companies have an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality,” says Hoffman. “The legacy operating systems they’ve been using for years still work fine, and they like the convenience of connectivity, so they decide to keep them without segregating them into a separate network.”

One symptom of insufficient cybersecurity culture is lack of alignment within organizations: “Cybersecurity officers and production managers speak different languages,” says Fine. “While one will want to implement stronger passwords and multifactor authentication, the other needs to keep up with the production schedule and might see those measures as a waste of time.”

The risk of such a siloed mentality is to leave large portions of a company’s network unprotected: “Devices such as electronic door locks, security cameras, and door security systems aren’t part of a food production line, but are usually connected to the network,” says Hoffman. “A lot of companies don’t realize that those devices are exposed too: Bad guys could get into the camera’s firmware, and from there to more critical items.”

Fine believes the food sector needs a specific approach to cybersecurity: “Food manufacturing is not like a bank, which is very structured and allows you to control who gets in and who stays out. It’s a high-traffic and chaotic environment, where hundreds of people can influence production. Floor staff, but also visitors and vendors, may—knowingly or unknowingly—bring malware in when they connect to your equipment. Trying to outsmart the bad guys is futile: They have enough time, resources, and motivation to find the vulnerability. What we see companies do is try to detect attacks, while what they should really do is prevent and protect and realize that cyberattacks can come from any direction.”

If attacks can come from anywhere, the best defense, says Witucki, “is a layered structure, with firewalls in front of the legacy devices, network monitoring, and regular backups, so if somebody exploits a vulnerability to attack your system, you could get back up to speed relatively quickly. Also, you should have an incident response plan specific to ICS, so you would know what to during an emergency.”

When responding to an attack, it’s also important to address all possible legal implications: “You should immediately check the contracts and purchase orders with your customers to see if you are under obligation to report the incident to them and if you have any liability. The next step is to check if you have any insurance coverage,” says Delaney.

For Demoranville, the change to increased security must come from the top: “The executive level and the board need to agree that cybersecurity is a priority,” she says. “If that doesn’t happen, anything that gets done will be disbanded quickly. More companies should set up a strong change management board where representatives from all departments, including production and quality, meet once a week to discuss what’s happening in their environment. Ultimately, you can save lives and money if you do that properly.”

Tolu is a freelance writer based in Spain. Reach him at andrea@andreatolu.com.

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Claims on foods are ubiquitous, with almost every food now bearing at least one claim on its front packaging. Given the continued growth in the use of label claims, food regulatory agencies are revisiting the circumstances under which certain label claims can be used. FDA and USDA both recently announced efforts to review label claims, with the goal of increasing consumer trust in and reliance on label claims.

Front-of-Pack Nutrition Information

FDA is currently conducting a consumer study on the impact of front-of-pack nutrition labeling, with the goal of creating a standard front-of-pack labeling scheme for foods. Front-of-pack labeling is intended to provide consumers with high-level nutrient information to allow consumers to make quick decisions about which foods to purchase and consume. FDA’s study will evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of several proposed schemes. The study, and the anticipated future labeling scheme, are part of FDA’s efforts to increase healthy eating, as directed by the White House.

Front-of-pack labeling schemes that currently exist on the market are not enforced by FDA, nor are these schemes expressly permitted by FDA regulations. Instead, FDA determined that the agency would exercise enforcement discretion as to companies that use certain industry standard front-of-pack labeling schemes. The Facts-up-Front Nutritional Panel is a good example.

Studies of consumer perception of food labels demonstrate that the vast majority of Americans are aware of front-of-pack nutrition labeling, and more than half of study participants stated that they do consider front-of-pack nutrition labeling when making purchase decisions.

FDA Dietary Guidance Claims

Dietary guidance statements are statements that state or imply a food may contribute to a particular diet pattern. FDA released a draft guidance detailing the agency’s current thoughts on these types of statements. Though not binding, the guidance details the agency’s considerations when determining whether a label is misleading. In the guidance, FDA states that dietary guidance statements are not nutrient content claims (and are therefore not subject to the regulations applicable to nutrient content claims). These statements, however, must focus on the food or food group’s contribution to or maintenance of a nutritious dietary pattern and cannot include references to or implications of disease risk reduction or treatment. Claims that a food or food group may serve to treat or prevent a disease would be considered impermissible health claims and would be subject to FDA’s regulations and scrutiny.

Dietary guidance statements, however, should be based on consensus reporting endorsed by a group of experts that reflects the current thinking of the scientific community with regard to particular diet patterns. Companies can also rely on the dietary guidelines published by FDA and USDA as a consensus report to support a dietary guidance statement. Dietary guidance statements should reflect the key or principal recommendations provided in the consensus report. In addition, foods that bear a dietary guidance statement should meet nutrient limits identified by FDA.

“Product of the U.S.A.” Claims

USDA FSIS current policies permit the use of “Made in the U.S.A.” and “Product of the U.S.A.” on meat and poultry products that are processed in the United States, regardless of where the animal was born, raised, or slaughtered. However, following petitions and studies to assess consumer understanding of these claims, FSIS has determined that this policy is misleading to consumers and does not align with consumer expectations. Therefore, FSIS has developed a proposed rule that would redefine the requirements for the use of these voluntary claims. Under the proposed rule, these claims could only be used on FSIS products where all FSIS-regulated components of the product are born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the U.S., and any non-FSIS-regulated components (other than spices and flavors) are of U.S. origin. The proposed rule does not impact any required country-of-origin labeling.

In addition, qualified claims, such as “sliced and packaged in the United States from imported pork,” would be permitted when truthful and not misleading. A description of the processing steps that occurred in the United States must be included in the qualified claim.

Animal Raising Claims

FSIS recently began an effort to evaluate and strengthen the approval and substantiation of animal raising claims. Animal raising claims include claims that state or imply that an animal was “humanely raised” or was antibiotic or hormone free. A 2019 labeling guidance issued by FSIS details the substantiation required to make animal raising claims; however, some advocacy organizations allege that FSIS does not consistently follow and enforce those requirements.

FSIS intends to issue an updated labeling guidance following the agency’s evaluation. In addition, to specifically address “no antibiotics” claims, FSIS will conduct sampling to determine whether antibiotic residues are present in products bearing the claim. Currently, FSIS is requiring in-plant inspectors at establishments that slaughter cattle with “raised without antibiotics” claims to complete a questionnaire. The results from the questionnaire are then used to determine the appropriate sampling plan. In turn, the results from such sampling will dictate how FSIS moves forward in its efforts to reevaluate animal raising claims.

Safe Handling Instructions Requirements

FSIS regulations require that all raw and partially cooked meat and poultry products include federally mandated safe handling instructions on the product label. The specific text and formatting of the safe handling instructions are also defined by regulation, prohibiting companies from modifying the text or formatting of the instructions (9 CFR 381.125(b) and 9 CFR 317.2(l)).

Though these instructions have been required since 1994, FSIS conducted a study on the efficacy of the label in 2013. Following this study, the agency determined that FSIS should conduct consumer research and make changes to the required safe handling instructions. Since then, FSIS has conducted a number of consumer studies to evaluate possible revisions. Now, the agency has announced that it will be conducting consumer focus groups to evaluate safe handling label designs created in response to the learnings of the previous studies.

Consumer groups and other stakeholders have advocated consistently for updated safe handling labeling to ensure labeling requirements provide consumers with education and direction that reflects the changes in food safety science and best practices since the instructions were first adopted in 1994.

Organic Enforcement

USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is responsible for regulating the organic food industry. Recently, AMS published a final rule that strengthens oversight and enforcement of organic regulations. The rule is codified in 7 CFR Part 205 and will be implemented in March 2024. Once implemented, the rule will require additional businesses within the organic supply chain to be certified, improve and strengthen documentation requirements for organic products, and increase authority for inspections of certified operations. AMS developed this rule to respond to the possibility of organic fraud, where a product is sold and labeled as organic but was not, in fact, certified organic.

With a continual increase in claims made on food labels and an increased focus on consumer protection, regulatory agencies have committed to revisiting label claims that may require additional regulation or changes to existing regulations to improve compliance.

Stay tuned as these new approaches to labeling are refined and implemented by USDA and FDA.

Stevens is a food industry attorney and founder of Food Industry Counsel, LLC, and a member of the Food Quality & Safety Editorial Advisory Panel. Reach him at stevens@foodindustrycounsel.com. Presnell, a food industry consultant and lawyer who is also with Food Industry Counsel, has worked in the food industry for nearly a decade. Reach her at presnell@foodindustrycounsel.com.

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