Feature Channels: Food and Water Safety

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Today, a coalition of animal welfare, consumer, public health, and environmental organizations called on grocery stores, restaurants and meat producers to reject the use of a misleading label scheme known as One Health CertifiedTM (OHC) and the standards behind it. The label was approved for use on chicken and turkey products earlier this year and is now being used by a handful of grocery store chains, including Aldi and BJ’s, and at least one restaurant chain. Consumer Reports recently assigned the OHC label its second poorest rating because the standards behind the label essentially reflect current problematic industry practices related to antibiotic use, animal production, and environmental impact.

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Today, data.org announced the eight global winners of the $10 million Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge, which aims to address major societal challenges through computer and data science. Among the winners is a project by BASE (Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy) and Empa that aims to give smallholder farmers in India access to sustainable cooling facilities through a mobile app to reduce food waste.

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Researchers from NUS Engineering have developed a new aerogel that autonomously absorbs water from the atmosphere and then releases it effortlessly without any external power source. This invention is a promising solution for sustainable, freshwater production.

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Engineers have developed an inexpensive chlorine dispensing device that improves the safety of drinking water in remote and low resource regions at the point of collection. It requires no electricity and very little maintenance, and provides a quick and easy way to eliminate water borne pathogens.

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Close to 5,700 lakes in the Northern Hemisphere may permanently lose ice cover this century, 179 of them in the next decade, at current greenhouse gas emissions, despite a possible polar vortex this year, researchers at York University have found.

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A novel sensor network using glass fibers to safeguard drinking water supplies is being developed under a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant in a cross-campus collaboration at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System.

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A team of researchers -- including engineers from Iowa State University -- have used transmission electron microscopy and 3D computational modeling to quantify and visualize why some desalination membranes work better than others.

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In an effort to understand the potential risks associated with exposure to micro/nanoplastics, the Emerging Risks of Micro/nanoplastics: Perspectives From Diverse Sectors symposia at the 2020 Society for Risk Analysis virtual Annual Meeting, December 13-17, 2020, aims to highlight the current state of knowledge associated with physical and chemical transformation, hazard characterization, environmental effects, social implications and policy limitations.  

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Food businesses and consumers coping with COVID-19 impacts in five countries in Asia and Africa now have access to customized resources, and experts mentored by the Institute for Food Safety at Cornell University.

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Without drinkable water there is no life. Yet, nearly 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to fresh water and another 2.4 billion suffer from diseases borne by unclean drinking water.

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Fiber in food is critical to nutrition and health. This conference for nutritionists and researchers provides an international perspective on fiber science.

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Despite many occurrences of red tide and blue green algae in Florida waters, the understanding of the health effects of exposure to these blooms is limited. Researchers will evaluate short- and long-term health effects of exposure to harmful algal blooms (HABS) in Florida to capture key areas of human exposure and a wide demographic population profile. They also will evaluate the potential effect of exposure to COVID-19 on susceptibility to HABs and health outcomes in this study population.

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According to the current state of knowledge, there are no cases that have shown evidence of humans being infected with the novel coronavirus via the consumption of contaminated food.

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Food allergies cost billions of dollars and cause enormous suffering for people. Researchers are trying to remove the source of food allergies altogether — troublesome proteins made by our favorite crops.

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The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety, co-located at Cornell and Purdue Universities, has announced $2.9 million in grants for research projects to improve food safety and prevent foodborne illness in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya and Senegal.

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A Cornell University-led project will use computer modeling and outreach to find optimal strategies to minimize COVID-19 cases and transmission among workers in food processing facilities, while maintaining the best possible production.

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Contaminated soils – and foods – influenced by soil factors

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Researchers are working to help cacao farmers manage harmful cadmium levels in the soil.

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Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have investigated how hexavalent chromium, known as Cr(VI), can form in drinking water when corroded cast iron pipes interact with residual disinfectant.

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Escherichia coli, known as E. coli, are bacteria which many people associate with causing mild food poisoning, but some types of E. coli can be fatal.

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When vegetable farmers harvest crops, they often rely on postharvest washing to reduce any foodborne pathogens, but a new University of Georgia study shows promise in reducing these pathogens – as well as lowering labor costs— by applying sanitizers to produce while it is still in the fields.

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Current poultry food safety guidelines for Salmonella, the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks, are inadequate. A new study conducted by Thomas Oscar, USDA Agricultural Research Service, “Salmonella prevalence alone is not a good indicator of poultry food safety,” published in Risk Analysis, explores additional factors that must be considered in order to identify poultry products that are truly safe for human consumption.

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There is currently much interest in the gastrointestinal microbiota and its modulation as it relates to implications for host health. A notable aspect is the bidirectional communication between the gut microbiota and brain, referred to as the gut-brain-axis. Nutritional interventions have powerful effects on the gut microbiota but another significant and often overlooked factor is the influence of physical activity.

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The current recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) call for introducing to infants one single-ingredient food at a time and waiting three to five days to observe for food allergy before introducing another new food. However, the long waiting period might be too long, given that food allergy becomes apparent within minutes to a few hours after eating a new food. A recent survey of pediatricians, published in JAMA Network Open, found significant variability in their recommendations to parents about solid food introduction, which calls into question the relevance of the current guidelines.

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Potatoes are a multi-billion-dollar crop in the US. Potato harvests can be reduced by up to 80 percent because of disease caused by Potato virus Y (PVY) that attacks both the tubers and leaves.

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oronaviruses were detected in a high proportion of bats and rodents in Viet Nam from 2013 to 2014, with an increasing proportion of positive samples found along the wildlife supply chain from traders to large markets to restaurants, according to a study published August 10 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Amanda Fine of the Wildlife Conservation Society and colleagues.

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As a doctor, I didn’t expect to find myself living in a tree at the age of 63, but here I am: 82 feet (25 meters) off the ground in a lovely grove of old cotton wood trees trying to stop construction on an oil pipeline.

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A new microchip that enables continuous monitoring of pH and chlorine levels in swimming pools will vastly improve water safety and hygiene for more than 2.7 million Australians as new research shows it can deliver consistent and accurate pool chemistry for reliable pool management.

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Small farms in Zambia that use the latest hybrid seed for maize, help reduce deforestation and tackle climate change in a new Cornell University study.

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Infusing prepared foods with an edible coating that contains green tea extract may lower consumers’ chances of catching the highly contagious norovirus by eating contaminated food, new research suggests.

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A new large-scale, open source hydrological and water resources model will enable different stakeholder groups and scientific communities to engage with a hydrological model and support their investigations.

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A single protein derived from a common strain of bacteria found in the soil will offer scientists a more precise way to edit RNA.

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Toyota Tsusho Canada, Inc. (“TTCI”) will team up with McMaster engineers and biochemists to move a promising new food-safety technology from the lab to the marketplace.

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A new Cornell University study finds that when small-scale farmers are trained in food safety protocols and develop a farm food safety plan, new markets open up to them, leading to an overall gain in revenue.

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A new portal is increasing access to surface and groundwater water quality data from shale gas regions around the state to inform stakeholders about trends in water quality.

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Researchers have discovered that bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli have a backdoor to capitalize on our reliance on leafy greens for a healthy diet. Wild strains of salmonella are delivering foodborne illnesses by circumventing a plant’s immune defense system to get into the leaves of lettuce.

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Researchers are using high-resolution printing technology and the unique properties of graphene to make low-cost biosensors to monitor food safety and livestock health.

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Children's Hospital Los Angeles offers summer safety tips for children and families so they can enjoy summer activities in a safe and healthy manner

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Over the past year, Columbia Engineering researchers have been refining their unconventional desalination approach for hypersaline brines—temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE)—that shows great promise for widespread use. The team now reports that their method has enabled them to attain energy-efficient zero-liquid discharge of ultrahigh salinity brines—the first demonstration of TSSE for ZLD desalination of hypersaline brines.

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Senior chemist Beverly Klein tells her experiences doing essential water quality testing during the pandemic--alone.

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Beneficial bacteria in reused poultry litter can reduce Salmonella levels