IFS Food is applied to:

- processing and working and/or
- handling of loose products and/or
- activities undertaken during the primary packaging. 

The British Retail Consortium is the lead trade association representing the whole range of retailers, from the large multiples and department stores through to independents, selling a wide selection of products through centre of town, out of town, rural and virtual stores.

http://www.brc.org.uk/

Circolare Ministero della Salute 05.11.2009

Igiene Imballaggi

Decreto N. 176 del 27.10.2008 Ministero della Salute

By Maria Cheng

Associated Press

Call it pork in a petri dish - a technique to turn pig stem cells into strips of meat that scientists say could one day offer a green alternative to raising livestock, help alleviate world hunger, and save some pigs their bacon.

Dutch scientists have been growing pork in the laboratory since 2006, and while they admit they haven’t gotten the texture quite right (the lab-grown meat has the consistency and feel of scallop), they say the technology promises to have widespread implications for our food supply.

“If we took the stem cells from one pig and multiplied it by a factor of a million, we would need one million fewer pigs to get the same amount of meat,” said Mark Post, a biologist at Maastricht University involved in the In-vitro Meat Consortium, a network of publicly funded Dutch research institutions that is carrying out the experiments.

Several other groups in the U.S., Scandinavia and Japan are also researching ways to make meat in the laboratory, but the Dutch project is the most advanced, said Jason Matheny, who has studied alternatives to conventional meat at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and is not involved in the Dutch research.

In the U.S., similar research was funded by NASA, which hoped astronauts would be able to grow their own meat in space. But after growing disappointingly thin sheets of tissue, NASA gave up and decided it would be better for its astronauts to simply eat vegetarian.

To make pork in the lab, Post and colleagues isolate stem cells from pigs’ muscle cells. They then put those cells into a nutrient-based soup that helps the cells replicate to the desired number.

So far the scientists have only succeeded in creating strips of meat about 1 centimetre (a half inch) long; to make a small pork chop, Post estimates it would take about 30 days of cell replication in the lab.

There are tantalizing health possibilities in the technology.

Fish stem cells could be used to produce healthy omega 3 fatty acids, which could be mixed with the lab-produced pork instead of the usual artery-clogging fats found in livestock meat.

“You could possibly design a hamburger that prevents heart attacks instead of causing them,” Matheny said.

Post said the strips they’ve made so far could be used as processed meat in sausages or hamburgers. Their main problem is reproducing the protein content in regular meat: In livestock meat, protein makes up about 99 per cent of the product; the lab meat is only about 80 per cent protein, giving it the softer, flimsier consistency of a scallop. The rest is mostly water and nucleic acids.

None of the researchers have actually eaten the lab-made meat yet, but Post said the lower protein content means it probably wouldn’t taste anything like pork.

The Dutch researchers started working with pork stem cells because they had the most experience with pigs, but said the technology should be transferable to other meats, like chicken, beef and lamb.

Some experts warn lab-made meats might have potential dangers for human health.

“With any new technology, there could be subtle impacts that need to be monitored,” said Emma Hockridge, policy manager at Soil Association, Britain’s leading organic organization.

As with genetically modified foods, Hockridge said it might take some time to prove the new technology doesn’t harm humans. She also said organic farming relies on crop and livestock rotation, and that taking animals out of the equation could damage the ecosystem.

Some experts doubted lab-produced meat could ever match the taste of real meat.

“What meat tastes like depends not just on the genetics, but what you feed the animals at particular times,” said Peter Ellis, a biochemistry expert at King’s College London. “Part of our enjoyment of eating meat depends on the very complicated muscle and fat structure…whether that can be replicated is still a question.”

If it proves possible, experts say growing meat in laboratories instead of raising animals on farmland would do wonders for the environment.

Hanna Tuomisto, who studies the environmental impact of food production at Oxford University said that switching to lab-produced meat could theoretically lower greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95 per cent. Both land and water use would also drop by about 95 per cent, she said.

“In theory, if all the meat was replaced by cultured meat, it would be huge for the environment,” she said. “One animal could produce many thousands of kilograms of meat.” In addition, lab meat can be nurtured with relatively few nutrients like amino acids, fats and natural sugars, whereas livestock must be fed huge amounts of traditional crops.

Tuomisto said the technology could potentially increase the world’s meat supply and help fight global hunger, but that would depend on how many factories there are producing the lab-made meat.

Post and colleagues haven’t worked out how much the meat would cost to produce commercially, but because there would be much less land, water and energy required, he guessed that once production reached an industrial level, the cost would be equivalent to or lower than that of conventionally produced meat.

One of the biggest obstacles will be scaling up laboratory meat production to satisfy skyrocketing global demand. By 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization predicts meat consumption will double from current levels as growing middle classes in developing nations eat more meat.

“To produce meat at an industrial scale, we will need very large bioreactors, like those used to make vaccines or pasteurized milk,” said Matheny. He thought lab-produced meat might be on the market within the next few years, while Post said it could take about a decade.

For the moment, the only types of meat they are proposing to make this way are processed meats like minced meat, hamburgers or hot dogs.

“As long as it’s cheap enough and has been proven to be scientifically valid, I can’t see any reason people wouldn’t eat it,” said Stig Omholt, a genetics expert at the University of Life Sciences in Norway. “If you look at the sausages and other things people are willing to eat these days, this should not be a big problem.”

Source: Associated Press

Nocciole, pistacchi e mandorle saranno un po’ meno sicure. L’Unione Europea ha dato l’ok all’aumento della soglia minima delle aflatossine nella frutta secca. Si tratta di sostanze potenzialmente molto pericolose per l’uomo. Anche più delle sostanze cancerogene. L’asticella europea si è alzata di molto: dai 4 microgrammi per chilo in vigore fino ad oggi ai 10 microgrammi per chilo. L’Italia è l’unico paese ad aver votato contro questa misura, che è comunque stata approvata e adesso aspetta solo il via libera del Parlamento nei prossimi tre mesi.

Cosa si rischia. Le aflatossine sono delle muffe che si formano soprattutto nei climi caldi e umidi. Gli alimenti dove si sviluppano di più sono proprio la frutta secca, i cereali e le spezie. Secondo Carlo Brera, che all’Istituto Superiore di Sanità svolge il ruolo di primo ricercatore nel dipartimento sicurezza alimentare (reparto OGM micotossine), “le aflatossine non sono “semplicemente” cancerogene, ma anche genotossiche. Ciò significa che in queste sostanze è sufficiente una sola molecola per alterare la struttura del Dna e, quindi, provocare neoplasie”. In una sostanza cancerogena, invece, il rischio c’è solo a partire da una certa soglia. Oltretutto, la pericolosità delle aflatossine rimane immutata anche dopo la cottura.

La decisione di aumentare la soglia di aflatossine è il frutto del parere positivo di un ente molto autorevole: l’Efsa (Autorità Europea per la Sicurezza Alimentare). Secondo l’Efsa, il limite di 10 microgrammi per chilo non comporterà alcun aumento del rischio per la salute dei cittadini europei. L’Istituto Superiore di Sanità ha un parere molto diverso: “La frutta secca è notoriamente uno dei prodotti più a rischio per le aflatossine – continua Brera – e questo l’Efsa lo sa perfettamente. Il fatto è che i loro esperti hanno dato un’interpretazione più “aperta” della nostra”. Del resto, sul sito stesso dell’Efsa si legge che “poiché le aflatossine sono note per le loro proprietà genotossiche e cancerogene, l’esposizione attraverso gli alimenti deve essere il più possibile limitata”.

Cosa fare? Significa che non dovremo più mangiare pistacchi, nocciole e mandorle? “Assolutamente no. La frutta secca continua ad essere un alimento sicuro e nei paesi della comunità i controlli sono molto rigorosi. Non arriveranno da fuori Europa partite di cibo avariato o letale. Solo che, da quest’anno, potranno entrare pistacchi e nocciole che fino ad oggi sarebbero rimaste fuori”.

Insomma, mangiare due-tre noci o una manciata di pistacchi al giorno non comporterà alcun rischio. Oltretutto si tratta di alimenti consigliati dai nutrizionisti, soprattutto per le proprietà antiossidanti. Alcune statistiche, però, dicono che – con la nuova soglia – in un consumatore incallito di questi alimenti il rischio da esposizione è molto più elevato.

Reazioni. Molte associazioni di consumatori e di produttori agricoli hanno già stroncato la decisione. C’è chi avanza il sospetto che la scelta sia stata dettata da logiche commerciali più che sanitarie: favorire le importazioni da paesi extra-Ue, tra i quali la Turchia, uno dei massimi produttori di frutta secca.

Secondo Coldiretti l’innalzamento dei limiti danneggerà i produttori italiani, che soffriranno una concorrenza sleale da parte di paesi meno attenti alla qualità del prodotto. L’associazione Codici arriva a fare un appello: “Qualora la proposta della Comunità Europea dovesse essere accolta anche dal Parlamento, consigliamo ai consumatori di limitare il consumo di frutta secca”.

(18 Gennaio 2010)

Con il termine di quarta gamma vengono indicate preparazioni di vegetali freschi, mondati delle parti non utilizzabili, tagliati, lavati, asciugati, imballati in buste o vaschette di plastica e venduti in banco refrigerato. La denominazione, di origine francese (IV gamme), indica indirettamente il tipo di trasformazione, in termini di comparsa commerciale rispetto ad altre categorie di prodotti agroalimentari: grezzi (prima), conserve pastorizzate (seconda), surgelati (terza). In ambito anglosassone sono usati i termini fresh-cut e, più in generale, minimally processed, che indicano direttamente il tipo di trasformazione. Una denominazione italiana frequente è ‘freschi pronti al consumo’ o ‘freschi-pronti’.

- Indicazione geografica protetta (IGP)

- Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC)

- Denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG)

- Indicazione geografica tipica (IGT)

- Prodotti tradizionali.

Lombardia verde. Dossier. Bontà di Lombardia. Pagina 21.

www.agricoltura.regione.lombardia.it

Red meat presents “strong mechanistic evidence” of a carcinogenic effect in humans – and there’s even limited evidence the meats themselves start the development of cancer, according to the study, published by the journal Lancet Oncology.

Processed meats were listed as carcinogens outright, due to their observed effects in colorectal cancer, according to the WHO working group, made up of 22 experts from 10 countries affiliated with the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

“These findings further support current public health recommendations to limit intake of meat,” said Christopher Wild, the director of the IARC. “At the same time, red meat has nutritional value. Therefore, these results are important in enabling governments and international regulatory agencies to conduct risk assessments, in order to balance the risks and benefits of eating red meat and processed meat and to provide the best possible dietary recommendations.”

Red meats include muscle meat of mammals, including beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, horse and goat. Processed meats that were considered include hot dogs, ham, sausages, corned beef, beef jerky, canned meat and meat-based sauces.

The group did a meta-analysis of 800 previous studies. Red meat was consistently linked with colorectal cancer most strongly, but was also connected to pancreatic cancer and prostate cancer, the scientists concluded.

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