Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have demonstrated that mineral levels in new varieties of broccoli are the same as they were in 1975. Their findings were published today in Crop Science, the journal of the Crop Science Society of America. Researchers at the USDA and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), in Houston, analysed 14 varieties of broccoli grown at the same time in the same environment in South Carolina. Essential minerals including calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorous,... ...Read more »

After 10 years of negotiations, U.S. cherries can now be exported to Western Australia, making cherries the first U.S. fresh fruit to gain access to that market. U.S. cherries from California have been common in the eastern states of Australia since the late 1990s as the states of Washington and Oregon have been permitted to export to the eastern Australian states since 2001. Since that time, negotiations have been ongoing between Biosecurity Australia and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to... ...Read more »

The US Department of Agriculture has proposed a new “test and hold” procedure for meat and poultry products that aims to reduce the amount of “unsafe food” reaching the shelves. Under the proposal, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) would be able to hold products from commerce until test results for harmful substances are received. Currently, when FSIS collects a sample for testing, the sampled products are requested but not required to be held until... ...Read more »

Food safety could receive a boost if regulators created a list to rank the riskiest products, a leading United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) official has suggested. America has been battered by a series of high profile food safety scares, with salmonella contamination of jalapeno peppers, peanut butter and pistachios in the past year. President Barack Obama has since moved to strengthen the powers of the food regulator (FDA), with a White House panel looking into ways to enhance food safety... ...Read more »

The US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service has discovered that the use of nutritional labels by American consumers has fallen since the mid nineties. The only increase in interest by consumers came with regard to fibre. Packaged and processed foods sold in the United States began carrying standardized nutrition labels in 1994. A standardized ‘Nutrition Facts’ panel, standardized serving sizes and limits on the content and format of health and nutrition claims on the... ...Read more »

The United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Mars, Incorporated, and IBM are combining their scientific resources to sequence and analyze the entire cocoa genome. Sequencing the cocoa genome is viewed by the organizations as a significant scientific step that may allow more directed breeding of cocoa plants and potentially enhance the quality of cocoa – the key ingredient in chocolate. The collaboration hopes to enable farmers to plant better... ...Read more »