Carrier Transicold has launched the Purfresh^TM Transport service under an exclusive agreement with Purfresh, Inc., a chemical-free means to protect produce cargoes from spoilage. Carrier Transicold is a part of Carrier Corp., a business unit of United Technologies Corp.

Purfresh Transport technology purifies air and surfaces inside the container, helping to eliminate molds, yeasts, and microscopic bacteria that can attack and ruin a container-load of perishables.The system generates and injects minute amounts of ozone to actively manage and purify a container’s atmosphere and surfaces. The company said that produce quality thus is preserved without the use of chemicals, resulting in better firmness, weight, sugar content, taste, and value.

“With Carrier’s Purfresh Transport service, a strong protective link has been added to the global cold chain,” said Luke DiMaggio, Carrier Transicold general manager, global service operations, container products. “The Purfresh Transport system can help assure goods reach their destinations in optimal condition, maximizing our customers’ return on investment.”

The Purfresh Transport service can improve customer profitability by reducing typical loss related to decay and food degradation, thus improving the yield of perishable cargoes, according to DiMaggio.

“Globally, up to 20% of post-harvest losses on average occur during transit,” DiMaggio said. “Purfresh technology utilizes ozone to help eliminate bacteria that spoils cargo and profits for growers, exporters, importers and shipping lines.”

Carrier will lease Purfresh Transport active purification systems to customers on a per-trip basis as part of its SeaCare^TM Solutions program. The company’s network of service centers will handle logistics, installation, and removal of the Purfresh Transport systems on refrigerated containers prior to loading and after unloading at their final destinations.

The company expects to make Purfresh Transport service available in the first quarter of 2010, starting with shipping lanes originating in Chile and serving ports on the U.S. West Coast. Carrier plans to roll out the service globally throughout the year.

On November 13, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) released a report from the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), which recommends clear objectives be set for all users of a simpler, globally accepted food supply chain that can benefit from existing commercial systems.

CFSAN commissioned the IFT report in 2008 as part of the agency’s ongoing examination of food product tracing practices. The IFT is a nonprofit scientific society focusing on the science of food.

Food can become contaminated at many different steps in the supply chain. Experience in conducting foodborne disease outbreak investigations suggests that improved product tracing abilities could help identify products associated with disease more quickly, get risky products off the market faster, and reduce the number of illnesses associated with foodborne illness outbreaks.

The IFT report is part of the public record that FDA will consider in determining ways to improve the ability of government and industry to trace food products throughout all stages of the supply chain.

Recently, FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) jointly announced a public meeting on food product tracing in Washington, D.C., Dec. 9 and 10, 2009, and formally requested written input from stakeholders on measures to improve food product tracing.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) have sent a team of seafood specialists to Bangladesh this week to help train local officials on aquaculture safety and quality control techniques.

The goal of the trip is to work with Bangladeshi officials to help the country improve the overall quality and safety of its aquaculture products for both domestic and international markets.

“Collaborating with other countries in this way not only helps to improve the quality and safety of their domestic product, but also what they export to the United States and other countries around the world,” said FDA Deputy Commissioner for International Programs Murray M. Lumpkin, M.D.

The training will include lectures, demonstrations, site visits, and workgroup activities. Using a “train-the-trainer” model, those who successfully complete the program will be qualified to continue training others in their country on accepted “Good Aquacultural Practices.” The FDA and JIFSAN, supported by cooperative partnerships, also provide materials that allow the countries to continue the training programs.

“Because of the rapid development of aquaculture, FDA’s role in protecting the public health is more important than ever,” said Stephen Sundlof, D.V.M., Ph.D., director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “Cooperative programs such as this will help ensure that accepted Good Aquacultural Practices are adopted and practiced around the world.”

Aquaculture is the production of aquatic life such as shrimp, fish and plants under controlled conditions for all or part of their life cycle. Over the last 20 years, the aquaculture industry has grown by more than 11% each year. It is now the fastest-growing segment of agriculture worldwide, accounting for 52% of all fish produced. In the United States, about 85% of the seafood consumed is imported from more than 50 different countries. Of that amount, 40% comes from aquaculture operations, the other 60% from wild harvest.

The Good Aquacultural Practices Training Program was developed by a team of seafood specialists in 2006, and was piloted in Vietnam that same year. The international training program is a joint effort between the FDA, the University of Maryland, and Virginia Tech. Since then, the program has been conducted in Thailand and Indonesia.

JIFSAN was established in 1996 through a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Maryland and the FDA. Since then, more than 800 participants in 18 countries have been trained in Good Agricultural Practices, Good Aquacultural Practices, or Commercially Sterile Packaged Foods.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is proposing to amend the list of regulated articles in its domestic fruit fly quarantine regulations. The regulations currently indicate that smooth-skinned lemons (all varieties of Citrus limon) harvested for packing by commercial packinghouses are not regulated articles for Mediterranean fruit fly. APHIS is proposing to amend the regulations to designate all yellow lemons as regulated articles. This proposed change is based on research indicating that, under certain conditions, yellow lemons are a host for Mediterranean fruit fly. As a result of this proposed action, yellow lemons produced in an area quarantined for Mediterranean fruit fly would be subject to certain interstate movement restrictions in order to prevent the spread of that pest into uninfested areas of the United States. APHIS will consider all comments received on or before November 20, 2009. For more details, see the notice published in the Federal Register.

Interested parties may submit comments by either of the following methods:

• Federal eRulemaking Portal: View or submit comments online, and view supporting and related materials.
• Postal Mail/Commercial Delivery: Please send two copies of your comment to Docket No. APHIS-2009-0002, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238. Please state that your comment refers to Docket No. APHIS-2009-0002.

Comments received on this docket can be read in the USDA reading room. The reading room is located in room 1141 of the USDA South Building, 14th Street and Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC. Normal reading room hours are 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except holidays. To facilitate entry into the Reading Room, call (202) 690-2817 before arriving.

For further information, contact: Mr. Wayne D. Burnett, APHIS Exotic Fruit Fly Director, Fruit Fly Exclusion and Detection Programs, PPQ, APHIS, 4700 River Road, Unit 133, Riverdale, MD 20737-1231; Phone: (301) 734-4387.

Despite getting 280 votes from members of both parties, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (H.R. 2749) failed to garner a two thirds majority in the House on July 30 earlier this week. It is expected that the bill will be back on the House Floor July 31 under a rule that requires only a simple majority for passage. The legislation passed on July 30, by a vote of 283 - 142.

The Act was introduced by Representative John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) and several co-sponsors in June 2009. The purpose of the Act is to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to set forth provisions governing food safety.

The Act would make significant changes relevant to importers and exporters of food. For example, it would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a program for accreditation of laboratories that perform analytical testing of food for import or export, and to establish a corps of inspectors dedicated to inspections of foreign food facilities. In addition, the Secretary would be authorized to establish an importer verification program and to quarantine food in any geographic area within the United States.

It would also require country of origin labeling on food, unique identifiers for food facilities and food importers, and annual registration of importers.

“I am disappointed that the Food Safety Enhancement Act failed to pass the House today despite getting an overwhelming majority of the votes in the House,” stated Congressman Dingell. “With 280 votes, the bill clearly has broad bipartisan support and I am a little disheartened that Americans will have to wait a little longer now to feel safe about their food supply again.”

“Opposition to this bill was primarily a protest against the process that was used on this legislation,” said Congressman Adam H. Putnam (R-Fla.). “Although I supported this bill, I noted there remain significant portions that should be amended. And the parliamentary process the majority attempted to use today did not allow us to offer amendments and greatly limited debate time to only 40 minutes. I will be working with my colleagues to address these changes, and I believe we can agree on a process to get this legislation passed.”

R.G. Edmonson
The Journal of Commerce Online - News Story

Amended legislation will not include penalties for brokers, say lobbyists

Customs brokers apparently lobbied successfully to remove language from a bill that would have given the Food and Drug Administration the authority to license and penalize them for violations of a new food safety bill.

Jon Kent, lobbyist for the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America, said that the House Ways and Means Committee will send an amended Food Safety Improvement Act of 2009 to the House floor on Wednesday without the clauses that raised a storm of protest in the broker community.

The bill will require producers, packers, manufacturers, and other companies in the food chain to register with the FDA, and adopt standard electronic reporting measures to better help the agency track food contamination. FDA will have the authority to levy penalties for noncompliance.

Brokers objected to being included because they are already under the jurisdiction of Customs and Border Protection. However, Kent said that brokers will still have to register with the FDA.

Peter Friedmann, who represents the Pacific Coast Council of brokers and forwarders, said that letters from brokers and the group’s work with congressional staff were “able to force some very good last-minute revisions out of the Energy and Commerce Committee,” where the bill originated.

“Ways and Means has not seen the final bill yet … but we understand the following changes have been made. The bill was written to explicitly say that Brokers will not be subject to penalties, and the section that gave FDA the authority to suspend a broker’s license for substantive violations of the Act was removed,” Friedmann reported to members.

Neither Kent nor Friedmann said they had seen a final version of the bill.

Contact R.G. Edmonson at bedmonson@joc.com.

On June 16, Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Nevada company and its owners pleaded guilty in federal court today to distributing a tainted ingredient used to make pet food, which resulted in a nationwide recall of pet food and the death and serious illness of countless pets across the United States in 2007.

“Millions of pet owners were impacted by the pet food recall in 2007,” said Whitworth. “The conduct of these defendants in violating federal health and safety standards caused the deaths and illness of thousands of family pets, as well as anxiety among dog and cat owners across the country and economic harm to many pet food manufacturers.”

Sally Qing Miller, a Chinese national, and her husband, Stephen S. Miller, both of Las Vegas, Nev., along with their company, ChemNutra, Inc., pleaded guilty to some of the charges contained in a Feb. 6, 2008, federal indictment, and agreed that the conduct charged against them in the remaining counts could be considered by the court as relevant conduct and used against them at the time of sentencing.

ChemNutra is a company that buys food and food components in China and imports those items into the United States to sell to companies in the food industry. Sally Miller is the controlling owner and president of ChemNutra, and Stephen Miller is an owner and chief executive officer of ChemNutra. Each of the three co-defendants pleaded guilty to one count of selling adulterated food and one count of selling misbranded food.

More than 800 metric tons of tainted wheat gluten was imported by ChemNutra and the Millers into the United States from China in at least 13 separate shipments, with invoices totaling nearly $850,000, between Nov. 6, 2006, and Feb. 21, 2007. Those shipments of wheat gluten were tainted with melamine, an unsafe food additive. ChemNutra and the Millers received the melamine-tainted product at a port of entry in Kansas City, Mo., and then sold and shipped the product to their customers across the United States, who used it to manufacture various brands of pet food.

By pleading guilty, ChemNutra and the Millers admitted that melamine was substituted wholly or in part for the protein requirement of the wheat gluten so as to make it appear the wheat gluten was better or of greater value than it was. They also admitted that the labeling of the wheat gluten was false and misleading because the wheat gluten was represented to have a minimum protein level of 75%, when in fact it did not. The labeling was also false and misleading because melamine was not listed on the label as an ingredient.

Pet food manufacturers recalled more than 150 brands of dog and cat food across the nation in 2007, following reports of cats and dogs suffering kidney failure after eating the affected products. There is no coordinated national tracking system to monitor the number of pet deaths. However, consumer reports received by the FDA suggest that approximately 1,950 cats and 2,200 dogs died after eating pet food contaminated with melamine.

Wheat gluten is the natural protein derived from wheat or wheat flour, which is extracted and dried to yield a powder of high protein content. Pet food manufacturers use wheat gluten as a binding agent in the manufacture of certain types of pet food to thicken pet food “gravy.”

Melamine has a number of commercial and industrial uses, but it has no approved use as an ingredient in human or animal food in the United States. Melamine can be used to create products such as plastics, cleaning products, counter tops, glues, inks, and fertilizers. Mixing melamine with wheat gluten made the wheat gluten appear to have a higher protein level than was actually present.

Under federal statutes, the Millers are each subject to a sentence of up to 2 years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $200,000 and an order of restitution. ChemNutra is subject to a fine up to $400,000 and an order of restitution. Sentencing hearings will be scheduled after the completion of presentence investigations by the United States Probation Office.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gene Porter and Joseph Marquez. It was investigated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigation and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Related Story:

FDA Announces Indictments in Connection with the Importation of Contaminated Ingredients Used in Pet Food

Last week, representatives from the White House Food Safety Working Group met and outlined principles to meet President Obama’s goal of upgrading the United States’ food safety system.  The Working Group, led by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has launched a Web site to provide information about the group’s activities and progress.

“The Working Group will be an important tool for gathering ideas as to how we can strengthen the food safety system to be more accountable and accessible to the public it protects, flexible enough to quickly resolve new safety challenges that emerge, and able to meet the robust needs of our rapidly changing world,” said Secretary Vilsack.

The site is intended to be a resource for people who want to stay apprised of the Working Group’s progress, learn about food safety tools and practices, and share views on how to improve the food safety system. It features an RSS feed and a widget that can be downloaded to help individuals stay informed.

A comprehensive approach to an improved national food safety system links statutory modernization to regulatory actions and public health outcomes.  The public health approach that serves as the basis of the Working Group’s efforts aims to focus resources according to risk, apply the best available science and high quality data to the decision-making process, and strive for seamless coordination among federal agencies and their state, local, and international public health partners.

IBM and the FXA Group are collaborating with the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) and the Vietnamese State Agency for Technological Innovation (SATI) in order to accelerate the adoption of traceability solutions to improve food safety.

As part of a pilot project, IBM and FXA will collaborate with several local technology companies in Vietnam to provide a system that will use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track Vietnamese seafood exports. The goal of this strategic initiative will allow tracking of the origin of Vietnamese seafood exports and help ensure seafood’s freshness upon its arrival in global markets. The Vietnamese seafood export market was worth more than US$4.25 billion in 2008.

As part of the collaboration, IBM and FXA Group’s traceability technologies will be tested at selected Vietnamese farms which export seafood to retailers in Japan, the United States and Europe. The organizations will be able to collect data about each batch of shrimp and other seafood — which farm it came from, where it was processed, its current location, temperature, and other relevant data. That information will be accessible to all the parties involved in the seafood supply chain — including wholesalers, shippers, and retailers. Additionally, it will be possible to trace individual boxes of frozen shrimp with a serial number.

The technology allows the collection of details such as a piece of shrimp came from which farm, at what temperature the batch of shrimp was stored, or when and how the shrimp is harvested. If something goes wrong, retailers and authorities would be able to pinpoint where the problem food is, arrange a targeted recall, and potentially minimize the number of people affected.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made available a compliance policy guide, entitled ‘‘Sec. 110.310 Prior Notice of Imported Food Under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002.” The guide provides written guidance to FDA and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) staff on enforcement of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (the Bioterrorism Act) and the agency’s implementing regulations, which require prior notice for food imported or offered for import into the United States.

In the Federal Register notice published on November 7, 2008, the FDA announced the availability of a draft guide. After considering the one comment received, the FDA revised the document, with CBP concurrence, where appropriate. Additional written or electronic comments concerning the guide can be submitted at any time; see the notice published in the Federal Register for information on sending comments.

The FDA is issuing this compliance policy guide as level 1 guidance, consistent with FDA’s good guidance practices regulation (21 CFR 10.115). It represents the agency’s current thinking on its enforcement policy concerning prior notice. It does not create or confer any rights for or on any person and does not operate to bind the FDA or the public. An alternative approach may be used if the approach satisfies the requirements of the applicable statutes and regulations.

For further information, contact: Laura Draski, Office of Regulatory Affairs (HFC-100), Food and Drug Administration, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20857; Phone: (866) 521-2297.