- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The USDA issued a news release on Friday announcing $55 million in block grants to enhance the competitiveness of specialty crops around the country, with California receiving more than $17 million. Of the 64 California projects, 19 are led by researchers affiliated with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.
A large share of funding - $1.4 million - goes to nine food-safety projects to be coordinated by UC’s
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Association attributes the state egg industry's safety record to the voluntary California Egg Quality Assurance Program developed in 1995. The program, implemented by 95 percent of the state's egg producers, requires:
- Chicks and pullets be purchased from hatcheries...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A recent, well-publicized report that connected attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to pesticide residues on fruit and veggies has the director of UC Davis' Food Safe Program concerned. Carl Winter was quoted in an Orange County Register blog as saying the research shouldn't deter parents from feeding their children fruits and vegetables.
“The most important thing consumers can do is eat fruits and vegetables,” he was quoted. “There’s not, at this stage, the evidence that this causes ADHD. There...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The reported foodborne illness outbreak in Ohio, Michigan and New York this week differs from other recent leafy green contamination episodes in the type of E. coli that was identified in the lettuce, according to an article published today in Western Farm Press.
Trevor Suslow, a UC Davis Cooperative Extension food safety specialist, told reporter Cary Blake that E. coli 0157:H7 is the classic type of E. coli that can cause serious illness and potential death.
“E. coli 0145 is well recognized as a type that can cause these...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Food safety authorities were in Monterey County earlier this week gathering information from farmers, conservationists and scientists about new rules regulating the fresh produce industry, according to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle.
UC Cooperative Extension was represented by the director of Monterey County's UC Cooperative Extension office, Sonya Varea-Hammond. She is pictured at the meeting with the director of the Food Safety Project, Jim O'Hara, in the