GoKawiil
Tech News
A coordinated cyberattack struck refrigeration and freezer systems at supermarkets across Europe overnight on Monday, according to reports. The breach disrupted temperature controls in affected stores, leading to spoiled food and product losses.
Refrigeration control systems at supermarkets across at least six European countries were remotely tampered with, causing freezer units to heat to roughly 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The incident marks another in a series of cyberattacks targeting retail cooling infrastructure in the region.
Carrefour reported that hackers affected refrigeration units in 80 of its roughly 6,000 stores. Monoprix said about 5% of its more than 400 stores were hit, and affected food was pulled from shelves where its safe condition could not be confirmed.
Attackers remotely triggered automatic defrosting functions in Danfoss refrigeration controllers overnight, raising fridge temperatures at an estimated 250 to 350 stores across chains including Intermarché, Coopérative U, Carrefour Market, Monoprix, Leclerc and Super U. Coopérative U president Dominique Schelcher confirmed the incident, saying teams were working with refrigeration specialists to resolve it, while the Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation into food losses and reported fires linked to the attack.
The FDA has proposed expanding its 'threshold of regulation' exemption, which currently applies only to food-contact materials like packaging, to allow chemicals to be added directly to food as flavorings, preservatives, emulsifiers and other additives without safety review, provided they fall below 0.5 parts per billion. The expansion was included in a Federal Register filing tied to the agency's recent move to close the separate 'generally regarded as safe' loophole, which Robert F Kennedy Jr and the FDA publicly touted as a win for food safety.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service has recalled approximately 168,000 pounds of pork, beef, and goat products after discovering they carried false federal inspection marks. The agency has classified the recall as Class I, its most serious category, indicating the products could pose a risk of serious health consequences or death if consumed.
Chipotle has built a 'food safety risk platform' running on Palantir's Foundry software that combines health department scores, pest incidents, and employee illness reports to generate a risk score for each restaurant location. A Chipotle spokesperson confirmed the project but offered no details on its rollout or timeline, and Palantir has not commented.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service issued a recall alert for more than 1,500 pounds of ready-to-eat pork product manufactured in Italy. The product was brought into the U.S. by two importing companies and shipped to retail stores and food service outlets across eight states before concerns emerged about possible bacterial contamination.
The FSIS's century-old 'poke and sniff' meat inspection system, born from the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection Act, proved unable to detect microscopic pathogens like E. coli as beef consumption soared. The 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, which sickened over 700 people and killed four children, forced federal regulators to speed up adoption of a science-based safety approach originally developed by NASA for feeding astronauts.
The FDA has tracked over 12,800 illnesses linked to foodborne outbreaks in 2026, dwarfing the 895 cases recorded in all of 2025. Recent outbreaks include salmonella tied to jalapeños, eggs, and dog food, plus a combined E. coli and salmonella outbreak from alfalfa sprouts, following what experts call an unprecedented cyclospora outbreak from tainted lettuce that ranks as the largest since the 1990s.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service recalled nearly 25,000 pounds of frozen Buffalo chicken rangoon and Benedetto's Buffalo chicken mozzarella sticks made by Boston-based Shanghai Ravioli Corporation. The products were flagged for carrying false inspection marks and were distributed to foodservice businesses in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service has recalled nearly 30,000 pounds of raw beef imported from Argentina after discovering it skipped required import re-inspections. Despite no contaminant being identified, the agency labeled the beef a Class I hazard, its most severe risk category, and it remains unclear which retailers received the product.