The developing discipline of Food Crime requires the analysis of food safety responsibility from a critical structural perspective. Analyzing the Canadian dairy industry, this project seeks to answer how the legal definition of food safety impacts the production practices of farmers, and where farmers place the burden of food safety responsibility, while partially testing institutional anomie theory. A legal discourse analysis of food safety law in Canada is performed to contextualize individual interviews with six active family-farmers in rural southern Ontario in order to determine how dairy farmers experience food safety legislation. As hypothesized, farmers experience food safety law through forms of disempowerment and alienation involving dairy production products, leading to a partial displacement of responsibility for safe food. The ideas of institutional anomie theory were insignificant or inconclusive for these case studies. More research is required to determine potential policy implications concerning the safety of Canadian food.

Assessment of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points Principles in Primary School Feeding Schemes in the Western Region of Gauteng Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the need for standard hygiene and safety practices for the National School Nutrition Program (NSNP). Food safety procedures and practices can be implemented as part of the Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points (HACCP) program. Background: The National School Nutrition Program (NSNP) forms part of the Integrated Nutrition Program (INP) of South Africa and was implemented as a poverty alleviation strategy introduced in 1994 by government as part of the newly founded democratic Republic of South Africa. The NSNP is implemented in primary schools. Design: A questionnaire was designed to investigate, the hygiene and safety practices in primary schools in the Western Region of Gauteng. Both rural and urban schools using the NSNP were targeted. Research Project: The NSNP staff from 26 primary schools completed the research questionnaire focused on hygiene and safety practices. Results: Data collected indicated the need to implement a very basic HACCP program that include identifying the HACCP team, training for food handlers, standardized equipment and the implementation of hygiene and safety procedures. Conclusion: To implement HACCP in the NSNP, the role players from the managerial structures and food handlers at schools, the training needs of the target group and the equipment needed to comply with HACCP procedures, should to be identified. Documentation must be in place for monitoring, evaluation and verification procedures to implement the HACCP program. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Dietetics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Many problems facing policymakers are complex and cannot be understood by reducing them to their component parts. However, many of the policy responses to complex problems continue to be based on simple, reductionist methods. Agent-based modeling (ABM) is one alternative method for informing policy that is well-suited to analyzing complex problems. ABM has practical implications for different stages of the policy process, such as testing alternatives, assisting with evaluation by setting up a counterfactual, and agenda setting. The objective of the research presented in this dissertation is to explore the opportunity for using ABM to examine complex problems of relevance for policy. To do so, three separate models were developed to investigate different aspects of food safety inspection systems. Complex problems involve interrelated feedback loops, many actors, exponential growth, asymmetric information, and uncertainty in outcomes and data, and food safety exhibits these traits, providing an interesting case study for the use of ABM. The first model explores three inspection scenarios incorporating access to information. The main finding was that the number of sick consumers is greatly reduced by giving consumers and inspectors more information about whether a retail outlet is contaminated, even if that information may be uncertain. The second model incorporated theories on risk and the role of transparency in encouraging consumer trust by giving consumers access to inspection scores. Overall, the findings were more nuanced: having access to restaurant inspection scores results in a slightly higher mean number of sick consumers, but less variation overall in the number of sick consumers. As well, a greater number of compliant restaurants results in fewer sick consumers. Rather than investigating the structure of the inspection system, the third model examines the potential for mobile technology to crowdsource information about suspected foodborne illness. This model illustrates the potential for health-oriented mobile technologies to improve the surveillance system for foodborne illness. Overall, the findings from the three models support using stylized ABMs to study various aspects of food safety inspection systems, and show that these models can be used to generate insight for policy choices and evidence-based decision making in this area.

Enterococcus faecalis 710C is a lactic acid bacterium that produces two bacterocins, ent7A and ent7B. Both ent7A and ent7B have strong activity against gram-positive food pathogens including Listeria spp., Clostridium spp., vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Mass spectrometry analyses revealed that both ent7A (5201 Da) and ent7B (5207 Da) have formylated N-terminal methionine. The amino acid sequences, structural gene sequences of ent7 from nucleotide position 1-275 and immunity gene were determined. Circular dichroism data suggest that in aqueous solution ent7A and ent7B have 20 to 25% alpha-helical region. Addition of membrane-mimicking reagent (trifluoroethanol) did not significantly enhance the alpha-helical content in ent7A and ent7B. Chiral analysis by gas chromatography- mass spectrometry showed that the amino acid residues elucidated in ent7A and ent7B were all in L-configuration. / Food Science and Technology

Food safety has become an important topic in today's mainstream media. Food safety incidents, specifically related to the beef industry, have the potential to damage the beef industry severely, and negative coverage in the media can alter consumers' perceptions and attitudes toward the beef industry. This study examined consumers' media dependency during normal times when a food safety incident is not occurring or is not expected to occur and during times of a potential food safety incident. This study also compared rural, urban, and suburban respondents' media dependencies and described consumer perceptions of the beef industry. The target population was Texas A & M University former students registered with a valid email address in a database maintained by The Association of Former Students. An online questionnaire was created on surveymonkey.com and sent to respondents over a four-week time period. Most of the respondents were educated, married, 50 years of age, and had some agricultural experiences. Respondents reported using more media during normal times than during a potential food safety incident. There was a level of concern among respondents toward aspects of the beef industry, such as use of antibiotics and growth hormones, and some concerns about respondent's health being affected by a food safety incident. The researcher concluded that respondents use multiple mediums to receive information about any issue; therefore agricultural communicators should target consumer messages to multiple mediums. Messages also should be constructed to address concerns with the beef industry to ensure consumers that the beef food supply is safe. It was recommended that similar research be conducted during or immediately after a national food safety incident, and research could be conducted on a different population.

Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) have important public health and food safety implications. Cattle are the primary reservoir for STEC, which are transmitted to humans via contact with cattle or related food products. Dairy farms in particular have been incriminated as an important source of STEC. The broad aim of this study was to examine in depth the epidemiology of STEC on the dairy farm. The presence of STEC on three Australian dairy farms was surveyed. This aimed to provide data on the prevalence and nature of STEC on Australian dairy farms, as well as to examine in more detail the pre-harvest/slaughter ecology of STEC. STEC, E. coli O157:H7 and E. coli O26:H11 prevalences were similar to those from dairy farms in other countries. Replacement heifers were the most important source of STEC on the farms. Calves excreted STEC from an early age, with faecal prevalence peaking at weaning. Higher STEC prevalence was also associated with group housing of calves during weaning. Calf isolates were potential human pathogens based on serotype and virulence markers. Clonal relationships between isolates were analysed. Calf isolates were diverse and had a high clonal turnover. STEC isolated from within the same farm had a higher genetic similarity than those from different farms. Vertical and horizontal transmission were both identified among cattle. The farm environment was also identified as an important source of STEC. Reasons for increased levels of STEC excretion by calves were investigated. Two broad hypotheses for higher faecal shedding were proposed and examined individually. The first was that an animal is more likely to excrete STEC when its exposure to STEC is greater, thus promoting inoculation of the gastrointestinal tract. Calves were experimentally inoculated with a traceable STEC strain to examine the infection dynamics of STEC within cattle groups, and explore the effect of calf management procedures. Calves which were housed in groups and co-jointly fed and managed had a higher prevalence of the inoculation strain than animals housed individually. The test strain was readily isolated from the hides and saliva of inoculated calves, as well as their immediate environments. Calves become infected with STEC via the faecal-oral route, iv either by direct contact with other calves, or indirectly through contact with faecally contaminated materials. The second hypothesis was that individual animals are variably susceptible to intestinal colonisation by STEC, which leads to differing magnitudes and durations of STEC carriage. Factors influencing colonisation susceptibility to STEC and the mechanisms behind these factors were also examined. In order to compare enteric colonisation under a range of different conditions, a suitable experimental system was developed. In vitro organ culture of explanted ruminant colonic tissues provided a laboratory model that was representative of in vivo bacterial-mucosal attachment. The degree of STEC colonisation was enumerated using an immunofluorescent filtration technique. The quantitative colonisation assay was applied to determine the effects of host-dependant variables on STEC colonisation. Colonic tissues from weaning calves and adult cattle did not differ significantly in their susceptibility to colonisation; nor did tissues from cattle fed either high forage or high grain diets. Colonic explants from sheep, however, demonstrated significantly higher numbers of adherent STEC than bovine explants. It was therefore concluded that while species-specific differences in host tissues may mediate STEC carriage differences, this did not explain in vivo variability in age and diet related excretion. Factors that indirectly affect the susceptibility of host tissues to colonisation were examined. E. coli O157:H7 cultured in media designed to represent the enteric contents of a well-fed ruminant colonised the colonic mucosa in reduced numbers, indicating that age and diet may be correlated with differences in STEC carriage and excretion because of differing physiological augmentation of the intra-enteric environment. In conclusion, while group dynamics and management practices may increase STEC shedding prevalences for cattle via increased STEC exposure, factors that modulate an individual ruminant’s gastrointestinal carriage of STEC have a significant role in mediating STEC excretion. Either directly or indirectly, species, age and diet can affect the numbers of STEC that colonise the bowel wall, thereby influencing the magnitude and duration of STEC excretion. Both of these features of ruminant STEC ecology should be addressed in order to reduce the pre-slaughter/harvest presence of STEC.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2004. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (MSc.(Animal Science))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Keith D. Harris / Food processing facilities are faced with many challenges in ensuring that the food supply is safe for consumption. Listeria monocytogenes is a food pathogen that has been linked to ready-to-eat foods, including tree nuts. Listeria monocytogenes is part of the ubiquitous microorganism genus, Listeria. The most likely cause of Listeria contamination in food is post-processing contamination. The purpose of this research is to identify and examine possible solutions a nut processing facility might employ to mitigate a food safety risk. The outcome of this research helps to establish the most financially viable method a processing facility may implement to address and mitigate an established risk given defined premise construction and constraints. The research objective is to identify a solution, implement a course of action, and establish safeguards to prevent recurrence of the issue. Factoring in facility specific variables as well as industry data and relevant analyses, the research conducted concludes with recommended actions for the facility to make, including a combination of structural design changes coupled with extensive chemical sanitation techniques.