Social media platforms are increasingly gaining popularity for various usages in higher education. However, research in this domain is still in nascent stage, especially in India.
Through a systematic review process, this study has summarized some of the major findings of the 184 papers published in the last ten years (2010-2019) in highly reputed journals that are indexed in SCOPUS and EBSCOHOST. The findings are classified as emerging from Indian and international studies and research gaps have been identified. Future studies should explore this gap to help the policy makers at national and various institutional levels to come up with appropriate strategies for reaping more benefit of social media in higher education.
Reviewing current state of research on the use of social media in education, 2021
International Journal of Multidisciplinary pp.70-77
Social media platforms are increasingly gaining popularity for various usages in higher education. However, research in this domain is still in nascent stage, especially in India.
Through a systematic review process, this study has summarized some of the major findings of the 184 papers published in the last ten years (2010-2019) in highly reputed journals that are indexed in SCOPUS and EBSCOHOST. The findings are classified as emerging from Indian and international studies and research gaps have been identified. Future studies should explore this gap to help the policy makers at national and various institutional levels to come up with appropriate strategies for reaping more benefit of social media in higher education.
Reviewing current state of research on the use of social media in education, 2021
International Journal of Multidisciplinary pp.70-77
The U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is amending its regulations to define yak and include it among “exotic animals” eligible for voluntary inspection under 9 CFR part 352. This change is in response to a petition for rulemaking from a yak industry association, which FSIS granted in 2015.
Additionally, FSIS is revising the definitions of antelope, bison, buffalo, catalo, deer, elk, reindeer, and water buffalo to make them more scientifically accurate.
Moreover, FSIS is responding to comments on whether all farmed-raised species in the biological families Bovidae, Cervidae, and Camelidae, if not already subject to mandatory inspection, should be eligible for voluntary inspection, and whether any species in these families should be added to the list of amenable species requiring mandatory inspection.
ProMed mail reports in some of the drier parts of inland Australia (quite removed by distance from Bairnesdale in Victoria), there is a wild legume (_Indigofera_ spp.) containing the toxin indospicine. This plant tends to be more abundant during the wetter seasons in the desert country and/or is a more preferred food of some herbivores at these times.
This toxin can accumulate in the offal and musculature of monogastric herbivores (e.g., horses). If said meat from such animals finds its way into pet food and forms a substantial proportion of the pets’ diet, it causes a non-responsive acute hepatitis.
Indospicine in the diet of equines also causes chronic liver disease and a hepatic encephalopathy condition commonly referred to as “walk-about” disease (not to be confused with the condition of similar cause arising from consumption of hepatotoxic _Crotolaria_ spp. By horses in the wetter tropics and sub-tropics). Affected horses compulsively pace or walk, initially causing dumping of the toes of the hooves (especially rear) and progressive loss of coordination with progression to head pressing and, ultimately, death. Feral horses (of which there are sizeable numbers scattered over the drier inland areas of Australia) and domesticated horses showing early signs of walk-about disease are more likely to find their way to knackeries.
This condition was researched and established in Alice Springs by Dept of Primary Industries and Fisheries and a local private veterinary clinic (in collaboration with CSIRO, Long Pocket Research Station in Brisbane, Qld.) in the early-mid 1980s after a run of very good seasons in the central Australian deserts, and seasonal occurrence of acute, non-responsive, fatal hepatitis affecting pet dogs.
Adam Barnett and Katie Pearson report in the Mirror that a woman who fell ill with food poisoning on her honeymoon has developed a rare condition that “paralysed” her stomach so she can no longer digest food.
Jessica Heather, 30, from Wirral in Merseyside, who is studying design and innovation, might need a feeding tube for the rest of her life.
She caught the bug while on her honeymoon in Turkey with her new husband Wayne, 33, in July 2014.
The couple thought it was food poisoning.
She said: “I knew something was wrong when Wayne bounced back and I didn’t.
“I was seriously fatigued, forgetting people’s names and even how to talk.”
Ms Heather was hospitalised with severe stomach pains and bowel issues when she returned to the UKFinally last December she was diagnosed with Bechet’s Syndrome – a rare condition that results in the inflammation of blood vessels and tissue.
“It took six years until I was finally diagnosed”, she said.
“I still don’t know the cause, but doctors think it may have been something bacterial I picked up from my honeymoon.”
The Bechet’s Syndrome had attacked her stomach and left her with a gastroparesis – a condition that ‘paralyses’ the stomach and leaves it unable to digest food properly.
She said: “The condition had damaged a nerve connecting my brain and stomach so it couldn’t send signals properly.
“Food wasn’t being digested properly and just sitting in my stomach – causing me to be sick.”
Ms Heather is now unable to digest most fruits and vegetables and survives on a strict low-fibre diet.
I don’t know why, but whenever me and my team gets cited once, twice, three times a day by another peer-reviewed publication, I get turned on.
Most of that stuff we wrote 20 years ago, but it still has relevance.
So here’s one that cited us and I wish they hadn’t.
Whoever wrote this abstract needs some communication training.
This report assesses peer‐reviewed and grey literature (WTF is grey literature?) on risk communication concepts and practices, as requested by the European Commission to support the implementation of a ‘General Plan for Risk Communication’, i.e. an integrated framework for EU food safety risk assessors and risk managers at Union and national level, as required by the revised EU General Food Law Regulation.
We conducted a scoping review of social research studies and official reports in relation to risk communication in the following areas: understanding and awareness of risk analysis roles and tasks, reducing misunderstanding of the different meaning of the terms ‘hazard’ and ‘risk’, tackling misinformation and disinformation, enhancing confidence in EU food safety, taking account of risk perceptions, key factors in trade‐offs about risks, audience segmentation and tools, channels and mechanisms for coordinated risk communications. We structured our findings as follows: i) definitions of key concepts, ii) audience analysis and information requirements, iii) risk profiling, models and mechanisms, iv) contributions to communication strategies.
We make several recommendations for consideration by the Commission, both in terms of actions to support the design and implementation of the general plan, and research needs that we consider crucial to further inform appropriate risk communication in the EU. EFSA carried out a targeted consultation of experts and a public consultation open to all interested parties including the general public, in preparing and finalising this report.
Technical assistance in the field of risk communication, April 29 2021
European Food Safety Authority
Laura Maxim, Mario Mazzocchi, Stephan Van den Broucke, Fabiana Zollo, Tobin Robinson, Claire Rogers, Domagoj Vrbos, Giorgia Zamariola, and Anthony Smith
doi: 10.2903/j.efsa.2021.6574
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8083185/
There is no such thing as zero risk when it comes to food safety, according to researchers.
Joe Whitworth of Food Safety News, writes researchers Marcel Zwietering, Alberto Garre, Martin Wiedmann and Robert Buchanan presented the study, published in Current Opinion in Food Science, at IAFP Europe.
They defined residual risk as what remains even after a fully compliant food safety system has been implemented. Every product has a residual risk but severity varies because it depends on a variety of factors such as the perspective or consequences.
Researchers gave the example of the risk of Salmonella in chocolate bars assuming contamination of one Salmonella enterica cell per 10,000 of 25,000 bars of 25-grams, and that the company produces 100,000 bars a day. Testing is limited to five samples per day, each sampling unit is a whole bar, and probability of a false negative or false positive is zero.
“The probability of detecting Salmonella in each sampling unit equals 0.01 percent, and the probability of detecting it in the product in a given day is 0.05 percent. In other words, we expect a single positive every 5.5 years. On the basis of this result, it could seem reasonable to conclude that the risk of salmonellosis is insignificant.
“However, a single cell of Salmonella enterica has a probability of causing illness that has been estimated to be 1 case per 400. Therefore, if we consider that 10 bars of the 100,000 daily production contain a single Salmonella enterica cell, the expected number of yearly cases of salmonellosis is 9.125, a value that is certainly not insignificant. Although sampling will rarely show a positive, there is clearly a residual risk.”
Bill Leiss and I wrote a book on this topic, Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk, published in 1997, explicitly stating there is no such thing as zero risk: it’s about maximizing the benefits and minimizing the risks in food safety stuff.
Between August and December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and multiple state and federal partners were involved in an outbreak investigation related to E. coli O157:H7 illnesses and the consumption of leafy greens. The outbreak, which caused 40 reported domestic illnesses, was linked via whole genome sequencing (WGS) and geography to outbreaks traced back to the California growing region associated with the consumption of leafy greens in 2019 and 2018. FDA, alongside state and federal partners, investigated the outbreak to identify potential contributing factors that may have led to leafy green contamination with E. coli O157:H7. The E. coli O157:H7 outbreak strain was identified in a cattle feces composite sample taken alongside a road approximately 1.3 miles upslope from a produce farm with multiple fields tied to the outbreaks by the traceback investigations. In addition, several potential contributing factors to the 2020 leafy greens outbreak were identified.
Isolates within this cluster of illnesses are part of a reoccurring strain of concern and are associated with outbreaks that have occurred in leafy greens each fall since 2017. The two most recent outbreaks associated with this strain were an outbreak in 2018 (linked to romaine lettuce from the Santa Maria growing region of California) and an outbreak in 2019 (linked to romaine lettuce from the Salinas growing region of California). Clinical isolates from cases in this 2020 outbreak appear more closely related to those from the 2019 outbreak than the 2018 outbreak. In addition, several specific food and environmental isolates that appear to be highly related to this 2020 outbreak include a fecal-soil composite sample collected by FDA in February 2020 from the Salinas growing region and two leafy green samples collected in 2019 by state partners as a part of the 2019 investigation that traced back to the Salinas growing region.
As part of this investigation, tracebacks of leafy greens consumed by ten ill individuals from eleven points of service were conducted. Although that traceback investigation was based on a relatively small number of the total cases, it was based on those cases which presented the strongest evidence via purchase card information, invoices, bills of lading, and electronic data. The traceback investigation identified the Salinas growing region of California as a geographical region of interest.
In light of this most recent finding, combined with previous outbreak investigation findings in the region, FDA has identified key trends regarding the issues of a reoccurring strain, a reoccurring region, and reoccurring issues around adjacent and nearby land use of primary importance in understanding the contamination of leafy greens by E. coli O157:H7 that occurred in 2020 and previous years.
FDA also recognizes the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment when it comes to public health outcomes. As such, we strongly encourage collaboration among various groups in the broader agricultural community (i.e. livestock owners; leafy greens growers, state and federal government agencies, and academia) to address this issue. With this collaboration, the agricultural community, alongside academic and government partners, can work to identify and implement measures to prevent contamination of leafy greens. FDA recommends that these parties participate in efforts to understand and address the challenge of successful coexistence of various types of agricultural industries to ensure food safety and protect consumers against foodborne illnesses.
Frank Yiannas, Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response – Food and Drug Administration said in a release that as part of our ongoing efforts to combat foodborne illness, today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a report on the investigation into the Fall 2020 outbreak of Shiga Toxin-Producing E. coli (STEC) O157:H7 illnesses linked to the consumption of leafy greens grown in the California Central Coast. The report describes findings from the investigation, as well as trends that are key to understanding leafy green outbreaks that are linked to the California Central Coast growing region, specifically encompassing the Salinas Valley and Santa Maria growing areas every fall since 2017.
We released our preliminary findings earlier this year that noted this investigation found the outbreak strain in a sample of cattle feces collected on a roadside about a mile upslope from a produce farm. This finding drew our attention once again to the role that cattle grazing on agricultural lands near leafy greens fields could have on increasing the risk of produce contamination, where contamination could be spread by water, wind or other means. In fact, the findings of foodborne illness outbreak investigations since 2013 suggest that a likely contributing factor for contamination of leafy greens has been the proximity of cattle. Cattle have been repeatedly demonstrated to be a persistent source of pathogenic E. coli, including E. coli O157:H7.
Considering this, we recommend that all growers be aware of and consider adjacent land use practices, especially as it relates to the presence of livestock, and the interface between farmland, rangeland and other agricultural areas, and conduct appropriate risk assessments and implement risk mitigation strategies, where appropriate. Increasing awareness around adjacent land use is one of the specific goals of the Leafy Greens Action Plan we released last March, which we’re also announcing is being updated today to include new activities for 2021.
During our analysis of outbreaks that have occurred each fall since 2017, we have determined there are three key trends in the contamination of leafy greens by E. coli O157:H7 in recent years: a reoccurring strain, reoccurring region and reoccurring issues with activities on adjacent land. The 2020 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak associated with leafy greens represents the latest in a repeated series of outbreaks associated with leafy greens that originated in the Central Coast of California (encompassing Salinas Valley and Santa Maria) growing region (that’s me and Frank and the woman who wants to divorce me in our Kansas kitchen, 10 years ago)
In the investigation, the FDA recommends that growers of leafy greens in the California Central Coast Growing Region consider this reoccurring E. coli strain a reasonably foreseeable hazard, and specifically of concern in the South Monterey County area of the Salinas Valley. It is important to note that farms covered by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule are required to implement science and risk-based preventive measures in the rule, which includes practices that prevent the introduction of known or reasonably foreseeable hazards into or onto produce.
The FDA also recommends that the agricultural community in the California Central Coast growing region work to identify where this reoccurring strain of pathogenic E. coli is persisting and the likely routes of leafy green contamination with STEC. Specifically, we have outlined specific recommendations in our investigation report for growers in the California Central Coast leafy greens region. Those recommendations include participation in the California Longitudinal Study and the California Agricultural Neighbors workgroup. When pathogens are identified through microbiological surveys, pre-harvest or post-harvest testing, we recommend growers implement industry-led root cause analyses to determine how the contamination likely occurred and then implement appropriate prevention and verification measures.
In response, Tim York wrote in The Packer that on April 16 the California LGMA Board took decisive action to endorse pre-harvest testing guidance. The guidance recommends pre-harvest testing specifically when leafy greens are being farmed in proximity to animal operations.
It’s the intention of the board to include pre-harvest testing as part of the LGMA audit checklist so the government can verify that all LGMA members are in compliance.
This is the first time an entire commodity group will be required to conduct pre-harvest testing.
This is a big deal, but a necessary response to the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration report on outbreaks associated with lettuce in 2020. The findings and regulatory language used by FDA in this report were nothing short of a warning shot that calls on our industry to do more to stop outbreaks.
And so, we must do more.
Updating LGMA’s required food safety practices is an involved process that seeks input from scientists, food safety experts and the public. No other entity is capable of making such widespread change as quickly as we can.<
Some weeks ago, in the first piece I wrote for The Packer as CEO of the California LGMA, I stressed the need for collaboration with the retail and foodservice buying community, noting that we must lean on each other to make needed improvements together. And now, I am asking for your help.
Updating LGMA’s required food safety practices is an involved process that seeks input from scientists, food safety experts and the public. No other entity is capable of making such widespread change as quickly as we can.
From planting to distribution, fresh produce can be contaminated by humans, water, animals, soil, equipment, and the environment. Produce growers play an essential role in managing and minimizing on-farm food safety risks. Because of an increase in public awareness about produce safety, farmer food safety education has become an important research and extension topic. This review article summarizes findings by researchers who have evaluated produce growers’ food safety knowledge and attitudes and the effectiveness of food safety educational programs for growers.
A search of on-line databases, journal archives, conference abstracts, and reference lists of relevant studies was conducted to locate peer-reviewed articles on produce growers’ food safety knowledge and behavioral changes. Study selection criteria included publications in English, publication between 2000 and 2019, and a focus on one of six topics: handling of agricultural water, soil amendments, domesticated animal and wildlife management, worker health and hygiene, food safety plans and record-keeping, and cleaning and sanitation. Forty-three published articles were included in the analysis. Handling of agricultural water and soil amendments were the two topics least understood by growers, whereas worker health and hygiene were the best understood. Food safety educational interventions were evaluated in 13 studies, and most studies used in-person workshops and self-reported pre- and postintervention knowledge assessments. Most reported increased knowledge, some reported improved attitudes and perceived behavioral control, and only four reported behavioral changes. Because of small sample sizes, many studies did not include a statistical analysis of the differences between pre- and postintervention survey results. This review article provides insights and guidance for the development of food safety education for produce growers.
Produce growers’ on-farm food safety education: A review
Journal of Food Protection
HAN CHEN ; AMANDA J. KINCHLA ; NICOLE RICHARD ; ANGELA SHAW ; YAOHUA FENG
The BBC reports 19 people have been treated in hospital, according to Denmark’s SSI health agency. Those involved in the outbreak are aged between two and 92.
All those affected ate Husk brand psyllium husk capsules from batches recalled by manufacturer Orkla Care.
Authorities found traces of salmonella in the products at patients’ homes.
The herbal products are generally used as a laxative. Luise Müller of Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut said it was the first time the agency had found a herbal medicine to be the cause of a salmonella outbreak.
It is not clear which ingredient could have caused the poisoning.
