News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Publicly posting the federal testing and enforcement data on meat, poultry, and egg product facilities could have important public health benefits, as long as the information is accurate, is easy to understand, and protects companies' proprietary information, according to a report today from the National Research Council (NRC).

(CIDRAP News) – Outbreaks linked to both recreational water and drinking water have increased substantially, according to two reports from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which said that Cryptosporidium contamination and groundwater problems pose special challenges.

(CIDRAP News) – A public health policy group today urged the government to put one person in charge of all food safety efforts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a first step toward preventing the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that have plagued the nation in recent years.

(CIDRAP News) – US public health spending is very uneven from state to state and is eroding in the face of the economic recession, the nonprofit group Trust for America's Health (TFAH) said in a report released today.

(CIDRAP News) – After a 2-year study of the effects of large-scale farm animal production, a panel of experts has called for phasing out the nontherapeutic use of antimicrobials in farm animals in order to maintain the effectiveness of antibiotics in humans.

(CIDRAP News) – Calling the US food safety system antiquated and disjointed, a public health advocacy group today urged a major overhaul to make the system stronger, more coherent, and better attuned to today's major threats.

(CIDRAP News) – Samples taken from the Alamosa, Colo., water system before it was treated for Salmonella contamination also showed that the water was tainted with two parasites, Giardia and Cryptosporidium.

(CIDRAP News) – Tests of fish and shellfish collected from waters affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita suggest that seafood from the region is safe to eat, federal officials said last week.

Tests of hundreds of samples "showed no reason for concern around consuming seafood from the Gulf region due to the hurricanes," the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in a Dec 9 news release.