The Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food Rule, often simply referred to as the Sanitary Transportation Rule, is enforced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the goal of protecting food during transport. This rule is one of the seven foundational rules of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Contamination can occur at any point in the food supply chain, and actions must be taken to reduce these risks at all stages, including transport. Because of this, the Sanitary Transportation Rule contains transportation requirements to avoid potential food safety risks that may occur.

The purpose of this white paper is to convey findings of a large Hard Cider Sensory Project conducted from 2020-2022, with realistic applications for how best to communicate the sensory quality of cider. Recommendations made in this white paper are based on the most current research in the field initiated by researchers at Virginia Tech and Cornell University. These sensory-focused research projects were funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to support growth of the hard cider industry particularly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic United States.

This fact sheet describes what food safety hazards are, who is required to conduct a hazard analysis, the purpose of hazard analysis, why conducting a hazard analysis is important, the components of a hazard analysis, resources to help evaluate hazards, and a novel worksheet to guide a food producer through the hazard analysis process.

The Hazard Analysis Worksheet to go along with Writing a Food Safety Plan: Resources for Conducting a Hazard Analysis (FST-474).

The Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food Rule, often simply referred to as The Sanitary Transportation Rule, is enforced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the goal of protecting food during transport. This rule is one of the seven foundational rules of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Contamination can occur at any point in the food supply chain, and actions must be implemented to mitigate these risks at all stages, including transport. Because of this, the Sanitary Transportation Rule contains transportation requirements to avoid potential food safety risks that may occur.

Washing produce is an important step to keeping your family healthy. Since produce is grown in close contact with the ground, bacterial contamination may be introduced from animals, soil, and water. Produce may also be handled as it moves through the supply chain to the consumer. Washing produce can remove potential bacterial contamination or soil. It can be hard to know how and when to wash your produce, and there is a lot of information out there, so this publication provides important considerations to think about (a guide to help).

This is a fact sheet explaining water activity, how water activity is related to food safety/spoilage/shelf-life, defining water activity-controlled foods, determining if a product is classified as water activity-controlled, working with the Food Producer Technical Assistance Network to conduct and interpret water activity testing, and recommendations for the frequency of water activity testing.

Salmonella contamination in dry and low-moisture food processing environments is a food safety concern recognized by the FDA. For a microorganism to grow in a food processing environment, there must be enough available moisture for the organism to use. In a dry or low-moisture processing environment, there are typically not enough consistent sources of moisture for microorganisms to grow; however, Salmonella has shown the ability to adapt to this low-moisture stress and survive for long periods of time through accumulation of osmoprotectants, up-regulation of outer membrane porins, alteration of gene expression, rRNA degradation, entering a viable but not culturable state, filamentation, and biofilm formation.

This comprehensive website is intended to provide information about the efforts of the Virginia Fresh Produce Food Safety Team, as well as timely and science-based resources geared to reducing fresh produce contamination risks, beginning at the farm level, progressing through the marketplace to the final end-user, the consumer. The site also includes a blog that highlights our research and extension work on many fronts.

Effective education of food producers relies heavily on Extension efforts that emphasize tackling community and societal issues at the grassroots level. Educators across the Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) system work closely with food producers to improve learning outcomes; however, educators engaged in this work must first identify their stakeholder needs to provide these producers with effective education. Overcoming these barriers requires substantial effort in producing or translating training materials in multiple formats. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the most significant obstacles to acquiring food safety knowledge and changing behaviors before embarking on developing further educational programs.

This document will cover the importance of cleaning and sanitizing food contact surfaces and how operations can systematically develop a sanitation program through the step-by-step process. Steps involved in a systematic approach to creating a sanitation program include validation, monitoring, verification, recordkeeping, standard operating procedures, training, and the cumulative sanitation program.

Improperly prepared food can lead to the growth and survival of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms. Spoilage microorganisms can affect food by causing undesirable changes in appearance, texture, taste, and smell. Pathogenic microorganisms, however, can cause foodborne illness in humans while also being undetected in food, as they do not cause physical changes in foods (like spoilage organisms do). Reducing the ability of pathogenic microorganisms to grow in the food is an important way to keep food safety risks low.

This comprehensive website is intended to provide information about the efforts of the Virginia Fresh Produce Food Safety Team, as well as timely and science-based resources geared to reducing fresh produce contamination risks, beginning at the farm level, progressing through the marketplace to the final end-user, the consumer. The site also includes a blog that highlights our research and extension work on many fronts.