Latest headlines

Food Engineering Plant of the Year and Sustainable Plant of the Year winners announced

Food Engineering recognizes two outstanding food plants, Kraft Heinz and Dairy Farmers of America.

January 9, 2018

Both awards will be presented at Food Engineering’s Food Automation & Manufacturing Conference and Expo at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point in Bonita Springs, Fla. held April 8-11, 2018.

How a warehouse execution system assists with recalls

Don’t rely on an ERP system to manage all aspects of your warehouse—not if you need real-time connectivity.

Wayne Labs

January 8, 2018

A dedicated warehouse management system can not only manage recalls, but it can also manage a fully automated warehouse automation system.

FDA announces ‘enforcement discretion’ for specific FSMA regulations

Although FDA has temporarily relaxed some specific rules, processors are not necessarily off the hook, and may want to contact their food safety consultants.

Wayne Labs

January 8, 2018

The FDA intends to exercise enforcement discretion for certain provisions in four of the FSMA rules until it can work out issues presented in feedback from several entities or stakeholders, especially farms, packing facilities and importers.

CPU security vulnerabilities pose broad-spectrum issues

Meltdown and Spectre side-channel vulnerabilities threaten most computer microprocessors and operating systems—including portable devices, and potentially industrial control systems exposed to the Internet.

Wayne Labs

January 7, 2018

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) reports several CPU hardware implementations are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, being referred to as Meltdown and Spectre (also KAISER and KPTI).

E. Coli

E. coli outbreak hits U.S., Canada

Source of outbreak not yet identified in U.S.

Casey Laughman

January 5, 2018

An E. coli outbreak has led to 17 illnesses and one death so far in the United States.

Packaging

StackTek expands into baby food

Single-serve PET containers snap together to form a ‘stack,’ creating single-serve portions, each individually sealed in BPA-free, reusable containers.

Crystal Lindell

January 5, 2018

StackTek may be best known for its applications in the wine industry, but now it’s making its way into the baby food market.

Food recalls

Leading cause of recalls in 2017 undeclared allergens, mislabeling

Food Industry Counsel LLC says 438 total recalls were reported.

Debra Schug

January 3, 2018

There were 438 recalls in total and the leading cause of these recalls was the presence of undeclared allergens and products being mislabeled.

Unclear which agency should be inspecting catfish

GAO says the FDA and USDA’s FSIS need to get together on testing imported catfish for residual drugs.

December 20, 2017

The saga dates back to 2012 when the Government Accountability Office said that the responsibility for inspecting catfish should not be reassigned from FDA to the USDA. However, that’s not what happened.