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ANNOUNCEMENTS
JIFSAN Hosts Shanghai Food Quality Supervisory Authority Delegation
On February 13, 2009, a delegation of six officials of the Shanghai Food Quality Supervisory Authority, led by Mr. Xin Yuanqing, Deputy Chief for Food Safety, visited JIFSAN. Ken Hunter, Dr. Juliana Ruzante, and Judy Quigley met with the delegation to discuss a series of JIFSAN’s training programs, including the Food Safety Risk Analysis Professional Development Program; Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs); Good Aquacultural Practices (GAqPs); and specific China programs such as, the World Trade Organization Sanitary and Phytosanitary (WTO-SPS) Professional Development Program, and training for China Inspection and Quarantine (ICQ) pesticide regulatory officials. Knowing their particular interest in risk analysis, Dr. Ruzante provided illustrations of the application of food safety risk analysis.
JIFSAN’s New Website
JIFSAN's Website (jifsan.umd.edu) has recently been relaunched. Along with major updates to the infrastructure of the site and minor updates to the design, a few new features have been added. A "News & Announcements" section can now be found on our homepage. The events section has been updated to keep all of our events in a database to easily separate and access old and new events and proceedings. Also, buttons have been added to the website's header for easy access to JIFSAN's other two major websites; the Food Safety Risk Analysis Training website and FoodRisk.org. Updates for FoodRisk.org are explained in more detail below. JIFSAN's Food Safety Risk Analysis Training website (http://jifsan.umd.edu/prodev/) has received a design overhaul to match JIFSAN's new website, as well as restructured for easy access to course information and registration.
CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS
JIFSAN Advisory Council Meeting (March 11-12, 2009)
Left to right: David Lineback (UM), Samantha Watters (UM), Elizabeth Calvey (CFSAN/FDA), and Donna Rosenbaum (S.T.O.P.)
The meeting was held at the Greenbelt Marriott Hotel, Greenbelt, Maryland. It began with a half-day symposium entitled: "New Dimensions and Strategies for Promoting Food Safety Globally," giving a brief synopsis of programs being sponsored, co-sponsored or under development by the Institute. The symposium focused on three areas: (a) Research Efforts; (b) Risk Analysis; and (c) International Training. A discussion at the end of the session focused on identifying emerging risks and potential areas for developing future partnerships. Symposium topics included:
- Impact of Consumer Perceptions of Food Recalls and Current Consumption
- Evaluating Public Health Impacts and Cost-Effectiveness of Implementing Good Agriculture Practices (GAPs)
- Pilot Observational Study of Food Safety Practices in Retail Deli Departments
- An International Collaboration: Understanding Uncertainty in Food Safety Risk Analysis Documents
- FoodRisk.org: An On-line Resources for Food Safety Risk Analysis
- Potential Impact of Good Aquacultural Practices Training in Indonesia
- Piloting a New Program to Promote Food Safety in the Food Processing Sector
- Developing a New Paradigm for Sustainable International Food Safety Training
The second day of the Council meeting was a closed full-day business meeting, moderated by the newly appointed chair, Dr. Richard Lane. The session began with annual updates from JIFSAN’s Interim Director, Dr. Jianghong Meng, Dr. Stephen Sundlof, Director, FDA, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and Dr. David White, Director Office of Research, FDA, Center for Veterinary Medicine. The meeting concluded with reports from the Council’s standing and Ad Hoc committees. These committees have been actively involved in advising JIFSAN of its programs and future directions. The next meeting of the Advisory Council will convene in November 2009.
2009 Annual CSL/JIFSAN Joint Symposium Methods and Systems for Tracking, Tracing, and Verifying Foods, Greenbelt Marriott Hotel 6400 Ivy Lane, Greenbelt, Maryland USA (May 13-15, 2009)
This is the tenth in a series of annual symposia on food safety and applied nutrition. The symposia are jointly organized by the Central Science Laboratory (CSL*), UK and the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), University of Maryland, College Park, MD USA and co-sponsored by the EU TRACE project.
The focus of the 2009 Symposium will be on methods and systems for tracking, tracing and verifying foods throughout the food supply chain. Invited speakers will be drawn from regulatory agencies, public interest groups, universities and research institutions in Europe and North America. Additionally, speakers involved with the EU Trace Project (http://www.trace.eu.org/) will participate. Sessions will include discussions on advances in analytical technologies to characterize the origin of food products; application of technologies for tracking food through the supply chain; IT tools for electronic exchange of information; and barriers to adopting these technologies.
For more information visit the JIFSAN website at: jifsan.umd.edu/csl2009.htm
*On April 1, 2009, CSL became part of The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), the new URL is www.defra.gov.uk/fera.
TRAINING AND WORKSHOPS
Upcoming Summer Integrated Program in Food Safety Risk Analysis (SIP), June 2009
JIFSAN is offering this year’s Summer Integrated Program in Food Safety Risk Analysis from June 8th to June 26th, 2009. The curriculum is composed of six courses on food safety risk analysis including two new intermediate courses in Quantitative Risk Assessment that were developed and will be taught by Greg Paoli from Risk Sciences International Inc. The courses can be taken individually or in clusters and provide high quality training and the opportunity to interact with food safety professionals from around the world.
Please visit our website for course descriptions and enrollment information http://jifsan.umd.edu/prodev/courses/sip/
Customized Online QRA Course for Norwegian Institute of Public Health
After a very successful experience with the face-to-face Quantitative Risk Assessment Methods course in JIFSAN's Summer Integrated Program (SIP) and the online Food Safety Risk Assessment course, two members of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health organized a special online class for several of the NIPH staff. For six weeks, participants worked together with instructor, Dr. Charles Yoe, Ph.D. (UMCP Department of Nutrition and Food Science) on a series of individual and group exercises that enabled them to master Monte Carlo process software and numerous probability and modeling skills to aid their model building capability. The "graduates" of this online program will be applying their new skills at NIPH, and several of its advisory boards and panels. Coupled with JIFSAN's successful Croatian Food Safety Authority training in risk management, this program has firmly established the effectiveness of JIFSAN's online courses as an effective means of serving the global food safety community.
Overview of Successful Implementation of Listeria monocytogenes Intervention and Control: an American Meat Institute Foundation & JIFSAN Workshop
On March 5th, JIFSAN helped organize a half-day workshop where members from the American Meat Institute Foundation (AMI) were able to present the recent strategies and methods that the meat industry is adopting to control Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat meats. The workshop was help at the University of Maryland (UM). Professionals from Food Safety and Inspection Services (FSIS/USDA), Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN/FDA), UM and students attended the workshop. The agenda can be found http://jifsan.umd.edu/news/event_record.php?id=17.
Good Agriculture Practices Training in Choluteca, Honduras
The week of March 30 through April 3, 2009, approximately 45 attendees participated in a train-the-trainer GAPs program organized by JIFSAN and the Honduras Department of Agriculture (Servicio Nacional de Sanidad Agropecuaria de Honduras - SENASA). The training came shortly after a FDA CFSAN pre-shipment inspection held in December 2008. Motivated by a Salmonella outbreak associated with melons, the audience and instructors spent additional time focusing on discussions concerning melon production and handling GAPs. This further enhanced the program for the attendees. Teams participated in analyzing JIFSAN’s Melon Case Study and each team presented their results to the training participants at large. In addition to class room instruction and team activities, the group toured two large melon-producing farms each having nearly 1,000 employees. Although finding these to be well managed operations, the group observed areas needing improved practices. These observations and suggestions for improvement were discussed in private meetings with the instructors and Honduran government officials from SENASA. This was one of JIFSAN’s most effective GAPs trainings.
Commercially Sterile Packages Foods (CSPF) Training in Morocco
January 26-30, 2009, in collaborating with USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), JIFSAN successfully piloted its training program on Commercially Sterile Packaged Foods (CSPF) in Casablanca, Morocco. As more food products are imported from other countries into the U.S., it has become increasingly important to educate international producers in good farm/manufacturing practices so that foods they ship into the country are produced under conditions that avoid or minimize microbial and chemical contaminations. Representatives from JIFSAN, FDA, and Campbell Soup Company conducted the first CSPF workshop, which focused on food safety and inspectional aspects of packaged foods. Thirty-nine individuals, consisting of government inspectors and food industry representatives from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, attended the workshop, which encompassed three and one-half days of classroom lectures as well as hands-on training in a processing facility. Participants were actively engaged, asked many questions and were eager to learn, with subject knowledge increasing by 32% as measured by testing. The Workshop will help strengthen producer knowledge of food preservation and improve the safety of packaged foods exported to the world market. Additionally, lessons learned from this pilot training will assist in laying the foundation for future CSPF courses.
RESEARCH
Analysis of Uncertainty in Risk Assessments
Samantha Watters, an undergraduate double major in English and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, is a JIFSAN intern working on a joint research project "Analysis of Uncertainty in Risk Assessments" that includes researchers from JIFSAN, FDA/CFSAN and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA, unit Met@risk). Samantha is helping to develop terminology to describe the way risk assessors express uncertainty in risk assessment and risk management documents. By developing this terminology and determining what it is that the risk assessors actually say, we will be able to analyze the various levels of uncertainty expressed in risk assessment documents from United States and Europe. This is being done using an Access database developed by our INRA collaborators, and we are currently working to perfect the database and the uncertainty terminologies so a wide variety of risk analysis documents can be analyzed and uncertainty data can be extracted.
To follow-up on the progress of the project, Sandrine Blanchemanche from INRA - Unit Met@risk, Food Risk Analysis Methodologies Unit and Akos Rona-Tas from UC San Diego came to JIFSAN to meet with the project research team, Dr. Ruzante (JIFSAN/UM), Dr. Gendel (FDA/CFSAN), Dr. Calvey (FDA/CFSAN) and Samantha Watters (UM) to discuss the development of the projects.
COLLABORATIONS
Instituto Superior de Agricultura (Universidad ISA), Dominican Republic
In early March, Drs. Jianghong Meng, Elizabeth Calvey, and Paul Mazzocchi visited the Dominican Republic to identify areas of mutual interests that could lead to the establishment of a sustainable food safety training program through the development of regional networks. During their visit they meet with the president and faculty of the Instituto Superior de Agricultura (Universidad ISA) in Santiago. They held discussions with government officials and visited several food safety and public health facilities in Santo Domingo. JIFSAN and ISA have agreed to develop a partnership to foster regional food safety training that will benefit the Dominican Republic producers to be more competitive in international trade consistent with the goals of the US Agency of International Development (USAID) AgroRED program and the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) programs associated with the DR-CAFTA. During the discussions several collaborative project areas were identified. Currently, we are developing an MOU between JIFSAN, the University of Maryland and Universidad ISA.
FoodRisk.org
MedVetNet Workpackage 24 Meeting: Campylobacter Risk Assessment Framework
Dr. Ruzante attended the MedVetNet Workpackage 24 meeting in Berlin in mid February (http://www.medvetnet.org/cms/templates/doc.php?id=70) to give a presentation on FoodRisk.org; to learn about a new tool developed by the MedVetNet working group lead by Dr. Maarten Nauta; and to explore potential collaborations. MedVetNet is an European Network of Excellence working on the prevention of zoonoses and foodborne diseases. Through its Workpackage 24, “Development of a European consensus framework on risk assessment of Campylobacter in broiler meat,” they developed a Campylobacter risk assessment framework (CRAF). CRAF provides information on the modeling structure of quantitative microbiological risk assessments for Campylobacter in broiler meat, developed in the UK (VLA), Denmark (Food-DTU), the Netherlands (RIVM and CVI), Germany (BfR) and New Zealand (NZFSA) and can be accessed at http://www.rivm.nl/craf.
Australian Listeria monocytogenes in Ready-to-Eat Meats Model
In collaboration with Dr. Tom Ross from the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research, FoodRisk.org has made available the risk assessment model developed by Dr. Ross and collaborators. The model was created as part of a study to assess the public health risk due to Listeria monocytogenes in Australian processed meat products, more specifically lunch meats, pâtés/liverwursts and cooked sausages. The model predicts the concentrations of L. monocytogenes on products at the time of consumption using industry and other survey data augmented by predictive microbiology models. The model performs calculations in seven stages: 1. Storage at the processing plant; 2. Transport: Processor to Retail Distribution Centre; 3. Storage at Retail Distribution Centre; 4. Retail Display; 5. Transport: Retail – Consumer; 6. Storage by Consumer (Package unopened) and; 7. Consumer by Consumer after Package opened. More details can be found on FoodRisk.org under the "Exclusives" section: http://foodrisk.org/exclusives/models/AU_listeria.cfm
Food Handling Practices Model v1.5
In September of 2007, the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) contracted with Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG) to update its Food Handling Practices Model (FHPM) originally developed by RTI International (http://foodrisk.org/exclusives/FHPM/version1_0/). The model allows FDA to estimate the effects of various retail and household practices on the incidence of foodborne illness. In addition to the reviewing of the data, the update included: surveying the literature and collecting data from secondary sources, eliciting experts, and updating the user application. The full model can be found at http://foodrisk.org/exclusives/FHPM/version1_5/
U.S. EPA, Office of Water Microbial Risk Assessment Thesaurus In September 2007
U.S. EPA, Office of Water developed a microbial risk assessment thesaurus. The thesaurus is a compendium of risk assessment terms found in frameworks, methodologies, and assessments and provides insight into how various entities use specific microbial risk assessment terms in their activities and helps those responsible for such assessments both conduct and communicate about them more effectively. A link to U.S. EPA website is now available under ‘Research tools’ at FoodRisk.org website http://foodrisk.org/resource_types/tools/microbial_risk_thesaurus.cfm.
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