Good morning! It’s Tuesday, March 18th, 2025. Another day, another round of food safety updates—let’s get into it.

OPINION — By Food Safety Thought Leaders

The Department of Government Efficiency has cut staff at the Food and Drug Administration, including employees in food safety roles.

Following the cuts, Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones resigned his post citing the cuts as indiscriminate and endangering the lives of the American public.

Today we hear from food safety thought leaders about the impact of the FDA layoffs.

What to know: The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is looking into the potential of using artificial intelligence (AI) to help detect and investigate foodborne illness outbreaks.

UKHSA experts assessed different types of AI for their ability to detect and classify text in online restaurant reviews, which could be used to identify and potentially target investigations into outbreaks.

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OPINION — By Steve Gibb

“Frustrated by liars? Tired of how much misinformation spreads from podcaster bros, influencers and dubious sources? Wondering what you can do about it?”

“A recent University of Maryland conference found that misinformation is mistaken data and disinformation is intentionally misleading. Unfortunately, both call for pushback or poor decisions result.”

The Food and Drug Administration uses import alerts to enforce U.S. food safety regulations for food from foreign countries. The agency updates and modifies the alerts as needed.

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Affected Product: Del Monte Foods, Inc. of Walnut Creek, CA, is recalling 8,242 cases—totaling 197,808 cans—of Good & Gather Cut Green Beans because of potential contamination with a foreign object.

The recalled green beans were distributed to Target stores across 21 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.