News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Contaminated alfalfa and clover sprouts caused 600 confirmed cases of illness and probably triggered thousands of unreported cases in California and neighboring states from 1996 through 1998, according to a recent report in Annals of Internal Medicine. In view of their findings, the authors say sprouts at present are an “inherently dangerous food.”

(CIDRAP News) – A federal appeals court has ruled that the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Salmonella performance standard for meat packers is illegal, depriving USDA of authority to shut down packing plants for producing meat with Salmonella levels exceeding the standard.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will continue to test meat for Salmonella to confirm that meat processors' food safety systems are adequate, despite a court ruling that Salmonella tests can't be used to shut down a plant, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced this week.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent analysis of ground pork in grocery stores in five states showed that 4% of the samples contained enterococci with high-level resistance to gentamicin, an antibiotic used to treat enterococcal infections in humans. In addition, most Enterococcus faecium isolates were resistant to quinupristin-dalfopristin (Synercid), a streptogramin antibiotic used to treat infections caused by vancomycin-resistant E faecium.

(CIDRAP News) – Dozens of people in California and neighboring states contracted Salmonella infections from eating raw alfalfa sprouts last year in an episode that has prompted the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to renew its warning that people with weak immune systems should not eat sprouts.

(CIDRAP News) – Salmonella standards for meat and poultry will be among several topics on the table when the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) meets Jan 22 to 25 in Washington, DC.

(CIDRAP News) – Food safety regulators and specialists from around the world will meet in Marrakech, Morocco, Jan 28 through 30 in what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls the first global meeting dealing with methods to ensure food safety.

(CIDRAP News) – A study from Taiwan shows a rapid increase in fluoroquinolone resistance in Salmonella enterica serotype choleraesuis in humans over the past 2 years and suggests that the resistant strain spread from pigs. The findings prompted the researchers to urge a ban on fluoroquinoline use in food animals.

Note: This story was updated Mar 6, 2002, with the addition of information about comments from a group that opposes the proposed legislation.

(CIDRAP News) — To slow the growth of bacterial resistance to drugs, Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has introduced a bill to ban the use of eight types of antibiotics in healthy food animals and halt all use of fluoroquinolones in poultry.

(CIDRAP News) – Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, yesterday introduced a bill to restore the US Department of Agriculture's powerto shut down meatpacking plants whose products exceed the federal Salmonella standard.