In this issue...
Update on the Clearinghouse
The Food Safety Risk Analysis Clearinghouse (FSRAC) is a website designed to assist those professionals involved with the many aspects of risk analysis as it pertains to the safety of our food. We collect and catalogue available data and methodology on food safety risk analysis offered by the private sector, trade associations, federal and state agencies, and international sources. We are the exclusive online host to several databases, tools, historic Federal Register documents, presentations, and reports, and we also serve as a portal to authoritative information and data on the Internet that supports the work of food safety risk analysis professionals. In addition to providing resources for professionals, we also provide consumer-oriented links. While initial emphasis was on microbial pathogens and their toxins, we are expanding our scope to encompass chemical hazards, nutrition and weight management, food defense, functional foods, and other related topics. The FSRAC is the responsibility of the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, a collaboration between the University of Maryland and the Food and Drug Administration.
New Clearinghouse Pages
New Clearinghouse Exclusives
Cost of Reformulating Foods and Cosmetics
Foods and cosmetics are examples of regulated products which are sometimes reformulated in response to changes in the marketplace or regulatory environment. RTI and the Economics Team at the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) produced this model to help estimate the costs incurred in reformulation due to changes in regulations. The report provides information on the process of reformulation and a description of the underlying assumptions and calculations used in developing the model. Instructions for using the model are in Section 4 of the report.
Selected Upcoming Events
Highlights of New Links
Introduction to Staff Members
We are pleased to introduce the following new and existing staff members of the Clearinghouse:
José Galdamez
IT Programmer / Graphic Designer / Webmaster
José has been working as a graphic designer, ColdFusion programmer and IT support assistant since June 2003. Every day José examines the site for ways in which it can be improved to better serve the food safety risk analysis community. He has investigated and begun implementing changes to give all sites a safe yet contemporary feel, while making sure all of the original ColdFusion development has remained intact. He has made new web content available in a number of formats to best serve a variety of users, and he has done countless troubleshooting for various other site improvements. José is currently a senior at the University of Maryland University College. His programming experience includes HTML, VBScript, ColdFusion, Javascript and C++.
Jennifer Hinton
Clearinghouse Librarian
Jennifer has been with the Clearinghouse since April 2002. She is responsible for selecting, cataloguing, and indexing new items on the Clearinghouse site, improving the structure and organization of information on the site, and maintaining the site's controlled vocabulary. Jennifer received both her Bachelor of Science and Master of Library Science degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Rex Robison
Assistant Librarian
Rex Robison is the newest addition to our team. Rex earned a PhD in biopsychology at Stanford University and then spent several years consulting on scientific and medical issues in product liability lawsuits. Now he selects new content for the Clearinghouse and revises outdated information in the database. His latest project is building a new page devoted to functional foods.
Hieu Nguyen
Student Programmer
Hieu has been working as a student programmer with the Clearinghouse since September of 2004. His responsibility includes website maintenance, page breakdowns, creating new pages and creating new backend applications for the Clearinghouse. Hieu is currently a senior at the University of Maryland at College Park, and expects to receive his bachelor degree in Computer Science at the end of this year.
Rajat Ahuja
Student Programmer
Rajat has been working with the Clearinghouse since October 2004, mostly on day-to-day IT infrastructure setup and backend tasks. His most notable responsibility was working with EIS for the recent ColdFusion server upgrade. Apart from his responsibilities at the Clearinghouse, Rajat is a full-time graduate student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Rajat holds his bachelors degree in EE from IIT Roorkee, and has worked as an IT Systems Integrator for one year with Intel Corp. at their Bangalore (India) based operations.
Keiry Carroll
Student Assistant
Keiry (pronounced "Katie") has been involved in gathering Clearinghouse user statistics and converting 58 FR 2066-2786 to both Word and PDF formats. She is currently in her last year at the University of Maryland at College Park working on completing her criminal justice major.
Update Your Information in the Online Researcher Database
The Food Safety Risk Analysis Clearinghouse maintains a database of researchers involved in the field of food safety risk analysis. If you are receiving this newsletter via email, most probably you are listed in this database. To view and update your contact information visit our page.
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