Blog
- November 28, 2011
- Program Specialist Position
The National Center for Food Protection and Defense is seeking a Program Specialist. Further information and application instructions are available at this link. No calls please.
- November 11, 2011
- Economically Motivated Adulteration
- The National Center for Food Protection and Defense has undertaken a project focusing on economically motivated adulteration (EMA) of food products. The 2007 melamine-tainted pet food event that resulted in the death of thousands of dogs and cats, followed by the 2008 Chinese melamine-tainted milk scandal that led to 290,000 infant illnesses, are two compelling examples of EMA events that had serious public health consequences. One of the primary reasons that melamine adulteration was successful was that the quality assurance test for protein content in wheat gluten and dairy products was not sufficiently specific to prevent adulteration with an alternate nitrogen source.NCFPD is leading an effort to develop indicators for EMA potential in food ingredients. Part of this effort includes a review of industry-standard QA methods in terms of their ability to detect EMA. This will primarily be accomplished by reviewing each of the approximately 1,100 monographs in the Food Chemicals Codex (FCC).NCFPD is reaching out to the large community of food and analytical chemists in academia, industry, and government for help in reviewing the monographs through an online questionnaire that requires 10-15 minutes to complete. Familiarity with at least some of the monographs in the FCC is necessary to be a reviewer, and all reviewers will be duly acknowledged in the final project report.We hope that you will join this important nationwide effort. If you would like to volunteer to be a monograph reviewer, please follow this link.If you have any questions please contact ncfpdemasurvey@gmail.com.
- November 10, 2011
- Message from the Director November 2011
October 16th marked the annual occurrence of World Food Day, which this year focused on "Food prices: from crisis to stability." Food Day primarily focused on the impact of insufficient food, traditional food security, and price volatility as problems contributing toward the various challenges globally, ranging from riots to food outages and starvation. Rather than just looking at rapid price swings as being a potential problem, it focused on some of the reasons for the volatility which tie back to production variabilities in countries where that increase in production was not sustainable long-term. It also looked at the population growth that the world is facing and the difficulty in feeding all those new mouths. On biofuels, not unexpectedly, FAO favors elimination of what it considers the current distorted subsidies and policies, because they do end up diverting potential food grains that could be used for food instead of fuel. However biofuels are being produced in countries that are often not suffering from food insecurity, so the real impact is hard to measure.
