A Taste of Wellness for Savoury and Snacks
Givaudan
The US Department of Agriculture and the US Food and Drug Administration are turning to scientific advisers to find out how "use-by" date labels on ready-to-eat foods should be used to ensure the products are safe to eat when consumed, Food Chemical News reports this week.
According to the article the FDA and the USDA want the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods to help them develop labels based on food safety considerations, not the quality of the product when it is eaten.
This move follows an extensive risk assessment on Listeria monocytogenes by the US government that discovered that the length of time ready-to-eat products were refrigerated and the temperature of that storage are critical in determining the relative safety of those products. Products held for a long time had a greater chance of carrying a large number of harmful organisms because any microbes present would have an opportunity to grow.