News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) heard various suggestions for improving its product recall procedures at a recent meeting, but there was no great push to give the USDA authority to order recalls of contaminated foods, according to a Minnesota official who attended.

(CIDRAP News) – Contrary to some reports, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will continue to take comments indefinitely on how it should implement a congressional directive to allow the purchase of irradiated food for the federal school lunch program, according to a department official.

(CIDRAP News) Ð Despite several recentoutbreaks of intestinal illness on cruise ships, federal health officials sayit is safe to go on cruises and that the number of illnesses relative to thenumber of passengers may actually be lower this year than in past years.

By Craig W. Hedberg, PhDUniversity of Minnesota

Editor's Note: This commentary is a follow-up to "Commentary: Blame the public health system for prolonging listeriosis outbreak," published Oct 9, 2002.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture says it wants to hear from the public about how to implement a congressional directive to allow the purchase of irradiated foods for the federal school lunch program and other commodity programs.

Editor's note: This story was revised Nov 22 with additional information from federal agriculture and health officials.

(CIDRAP News) – A New Jersey company that recalled 200,000 pounds of poultry products Nov 2 has expanded the recall to 4.2 million pounds because a product sample collected Nov 14 was contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this week.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced yesterday that it will begin testing environmental surfaces for Listeria in processing plants that produce deli meats and hot dogs unless the plants do their own tests and share the results with the USDA.

Editor's note: This story was updated Nov 15 to include additional information from Food and Drug Administration officials.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials have announced plans to expand research on whether chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer and elk poses a threat to humans and other species.

(CIDRAP News) – Recent meat recalls associated with a prolonged listeriosis outbreak show that the current federal program for keeping Listeria out of meatis falling short, Elsa Murano, the US Department of Agriculture's undersecretary for food safety, said in remarks prepared for a speech yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) Ð A second poultry processing plant has been linked by DNA fingerprinting to the multistate listeriosis outbreak in the Northeast, and two other plants are being investigated in connection with the outbreak, according to federal health officials.