Michelle Smith: U.S. Food and Drug Administration - (ThePacker.com)
June 3, 2008 – 11:08 pmFrom the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations Good Agricultural Practices guidance issued in 1998, to the Produce Safety Action Plan in 2004, to the FDAs Food Protection Plan of last year, Michelle Smith has been a witness to all of it.
Smith, a scientist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations Office of Plant and Dairy Foods, took some time for The Packer in mid-April to discuss some of the produce safety work a the FDA.
One of my messages to anybody is that the presence of pathogens is not the natural state of produce, and this is good news, she said.
Whats more, Smith said food safety measures the industry puts in place can greatly reduce the opportunity for pathogens to become a problem in fresh produce.
For the complete news item and interview transcript, please visit http://thepacker.com/icms/_dtaa2/content/wrapper.asp?alink=2008-11516-825.asp&stype=q$a&fb=
MORE:
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/foodsafety/news/fsnews.cfm?newsid=26358
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