How a direct-to-consumer food company ended up with toxic ingredients in its ‘healthy’ food — This was originally published in The Rotten Apple, an insider’s view of food safety and food fraud. The CEO of Daily Harvest explains Last year, multiple customers of Daily Harvest, which sells sustainably sourced plant-based foods direct to consumers, ended up in hospital, with many requiring surgery. After months of…

The Good, the Bad and the Frustratingly-vague — AI is all over the mainstream food media like a rash at the moment, and so many AI-in-food articles are thinly disguised public relations (PR) exercises containing vague platitudes with no juicy details. It’s frustrating. Reminder: AI stands for artificial intelligence, computer-generated algorithms and models which enable machines to learn…

Scientists think they found the toxic compound in tara protein flour — I love (loooove) it when scientists answer pressing problems. Last week, researchers from the University of Mississippi published the results of their investigation into a mysterious ingredient that seemed to cause hundreds of (unsolved) food borne illnesses last year. They did the research in record time while the food company…

Unpacking an outbreak in the USA — One of my most memorable breakfasts was a delicate dish of precision-sliced raw fish, with a pale, sweet dollop of wasabi on the side, eaten soon after dawn in a sashimi bar in Tokyo’s famous fish markets. The sashimi was so fresh it zinged. Not many food safety specialists eat…

Employee whistleblowing is powerful. And risky — Ray Dirks was an insurance company analyst. In 1973 Ray was told about a massive scam being perpetrated by senior executives in a publicly listed insurance company in the USA. He decided to reveal it to financial regulators. After blowing the whistle on the fraud, Dirks was left fearing for…

Wealthy countries are not immune to child labour problems — Child labour violations pose major challenges in the ethical sourcing of food. But we usually imagine that child exploitation is only a problem in developing countries. Unfortunately, even the wealthiest countries have child labour problems. And in one wealthy country, the size of the problem is growing terrifyingly fast. …

What Makes Mould Edible? — Mouldy food is spoiled food, right? And definitely not safe to eat. Except for a few cheeses, they’re okay to eat with mould. Oh, and salami, which has fine white mould on its outer casing. But definitely no other foods are safe to eat if they have mould, right? Except…

What is being done about AMR in food? — Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an urgent global threat which resulted in the deaths of 5 million people globally in 2019, according to the US CDC. By comparison, COVID-19 has killed 6.9 million people in the three years since the pandemic began (source). Antimicrobial resistance, therefore, is more deadly than the…

Food safety risk management is more than science — Risk analysis is a field of work that includes risk assessment, risk communication, and risk management. And risk management, it turns out, is more a question of politics than science. Risk analysis = risk assessment + risk communication + risk management Risk assessment is a scientific process that attempts to…