January's Food News

January 2021 Food News

Here we are at the end of January already and it feels like it has been longer than that to me. I’ve been busy helping clients develop their food safety plans and sort out their food safety priorities for the year. Lots of exciting plans in the future.

What are your food safety goals for 2021? Book a call to share and see if we can work together.

Food Traceability Rule

I hope that the FDA’s food traceability rule is going to be a big change for 2021.

These recordkeeping requirements are for businesses that process, manufacture, pack, or hold food on the Food Traceability List. Foods on the FTL are high risk foods shown to be high risk causes of foodborne illness. As well as some fresh fruit and vegetables that are eaten without being cooked, the list includes cheese, nut butters and shelled eggs.

If you have any questions as to your role in this new rule, schedule a call so Food Safety Mid Atlantic can support you.

2021 International Year of Fruits and Vegetables

This makes me happy! I love my fruits and vegetables and I would love to see more people eating their fair share.

The FAO’s objectives for the 2021 IYFV are:

1. Raising awareness of and directing policy attention to the nutrition and health benefits of fruits and vegetables consumption;

2. Promoting diversified, balanced, and healthy diets and lifestyles through fruits and vegetables consumption;

3. Reducing losses and waste in fruits and vegetables food systems;

4. Sharing best practices on:

   1. Promotion of consumption and sustainable production of fruits and vegetables that contributes to sustainable food systems;

   2. Improved sustainability of storage, transport, trade, processing, transformation, retail, waste reduction and recycling, as well as interactions among these processes;

   3. Integration of smallholders including family farmers into local, regional, and global production, value/supply chains for sustainable production and consumption of fruits and vegetables, recognizing the contributions of fruits and vegetables, including farmers’ varieties/landraces, to their food security, nutrition, livelihoods and incomes;

   4. Strengthening the capacity of all countries, specially developing countries, to adopt innovative approaches and technology in combating loss and waste of fruits and vegetables.

Webinar Series on Food Supply Chains and Covid-19

A multi-region, multi-institution research and outreach team investigating the impact of COVID-19 on food and agricultural systems will host a free webinar those engaged in the food supply chain at any level at 2 p.m. EST January 28, 2021.

Participants interested in the webinar can register at here.

This hour-long webinar is part of the Lessons from COVID-19: Positioning Regional Food Supply Chains for Future Pandemics, Natural Disasters and Human-made Crises project. This webinar will be the first of four within this grant project.

The first webinar will include a brief introduction of team members, a holistic project overview, survey tools used and example questions from the first survey, preliminary data from an environmental scan of available resources and insights from prior assessments of the impacts of COVID-19 on the Florida food system. Because this project is in its infancy, participants will also learn how they can participate in the research. You can find more about this project here.

Food Safety Support

Don’t forget to reach out if you have any food safety or food science questions. I love talking to people about the incredible food they are making! Book a call today for support with your concerns.

All the best,

Cathy