The Food Defect Action Levels

The Food Defect Action Levels

The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans is a publication of the United States Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition detailing acceptable levels of food contamination from sources such as maggots, thrips, insect fragments, "foreign matter", mold, rodent hairs, and insect and mammalian feces.

The publication details the acceptable amounts of contaminants on a per food basis, listing both the defect source (pre-harvest infection, processing infestation, processing contamination, etc.) and significance (aesthetic, potential health hazard, mouth/tooth injury, etc.). For example, the limit of insect contaminants allowed in canned or frozen peaches is specified as: "In 12 1-pound cans or equivalent, one or more larvae and/or larval fragments whose aggregate length exceeds 5 mm."

The Food Defect Action Levels was first published in 1995. A printed version of the publication may be obtained by written request to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Read more about The Food Defect Action Levels:  Health Hazards, Additional Examples, See Also

Famous quotes containing the words food, defect, action and/or levels:

    To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.
    Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)

    Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be “too clever by half.” The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.
    John Major (b. 1943)

    When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    The only inequalities that matter begin in the mind. It is not income levels but differences in mental equipment that keep people apart, breed feelings of inferiority.
    Jacquetta Hawkes (b. 1910)