News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Close to 400 people in Ontario have gotten sick in a Salmonella outbreak blamed on contaminated mung bean sprouts, according to Canadian news reports.

Toronto's health department ordered Toronto Sun Wah Trading on Nov 25 to stop distributing mung bean sprouts because of possible contamination with Salmonella, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care announced the same day.

(CIDRAP News) – About 250 wild swans died of an H5 avian flu virus infection on the Volga River delta in southern Russia, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report yesterday that cited Russian news agencies. Tests to determine if the strain was H5N1 had not been completed.

As a result of the swan die-off, a quarantine was being enforced in an area near the city of Astrakhan, AFP reported.

(CIDRAP News) – Canadian officials said yesterday they would destroy all the poultry on a British Columbia farm where a duck was found to be carrying a low-pathogenic H5 avian influenza virus.

That announcement came 2 days after the Canadian government reported the identification of a low-pathogenic strain of H5N1 virus in wild birds in Manitoba and other flu viruses in wild birds in British Columbia and Quebec.

(CIDRAP News) – The head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said this week the agency will soon align its rules on animal feed more closely with those in Canada and Europe, signaling a likelihood of new restrictions to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.

(CIDRAP News) – The Pacific Northwest could have a higher risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) than the rest of the country because of past cattle imports from western Canada, where all four BSE cases in North America originated, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported recently.

(CIDRAP News) – A federal judge in Montana this week delayed a plan to reopen the US border to Canadian cattle for the first time since bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in Canada.

(CIDRAP News) – The investigation of Canada's third case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, suggests that the cow ate feed contaminated with banned materials, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

(CIDRAP News) – Canada's investigation of its second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) recently concluded with a finding that at least 110 cattle in the infected cow's birth group died or were slaughtered before that case came to light.

(CIDRAP News) – Canada today reported its third confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), just 9 days after confirming its second case.

The case was in an Alberta beef cow just under 7 years old, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said. "No part of the animal has entered the human food or animal feed systems," the agency said.

(CIDRAP News) – Investigators of Canada's second case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) have determined that 38 cattle might have been exposed to the same feed as the infected cow and that one of those was exported to the United States.