News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Safety inspectors still write their reports by hand, food processing plants are inspected once every 10 years at best, only two people work full-time on pet-food safety, and critical information is locked up in piles of warehoused paper documents.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says it is returning its inspections and testing of Canadian meat and poultry products to normal levels after finding no problems during expanded monitoring over the past 2½ weeks.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has modified its program of increased testing and inspection of Canadian meat, after finding no problems in the first week or so, a USDA official said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Starting tomorrow, US inspection and testing of imported Canadian meat and poultry products will roughly double and will include a category of beef products that has not previously been subject to testing, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – In the wake of evidence that Canadian beef contributed to recent Escherichia coli cases in the United States, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced plans to increase testing of Canadian meat and poultry products before they can cross the border.

(CIDRAP News) – General Mills recalled about 414,000 cases of frozen pizza today after health officials said it could be linked to an Escherichia coli outbreak that has sickened 21 people in 10 states.

(CIDRAP News) – The source of Escherichia coli O157:H7 that recently spurred a massive recall of ground beef by Topps Meat Co. probably was contaminated beef trim from a Canadian firm, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced.

(CIDRAP News) – Officials from the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) today unveiled a host of actions that the agency hopes will blunt a recent spike in Escherichia coli outbreaks involving ground beef.

(CIDRAP News) – An Illinois company has recalled about 173,500 pounds of frozen ground beef products because of a possible connection with Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections, as the number of cases in other recent foodborne illness outbreaks continued to mount.

(CIDRAP News) – A Wisconsin meat producer recently recalled about 845,000 pounds of frozen ground beef because of possible contamination with Escherichia coli O157:H7, only a day after the Topps Meat Co., a leading producer of frozen hamburgers, announced it was going out of business because it couldn't bear the cost of a recent massive recall.