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.

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.

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.

(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.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials announced today that three environmental samples taken from a Pennsylvania poultry processing plant contained a Listeria strain matching that of patients in the current listeriosis outbreak in the Northeast. The announcement came 3 days after the company expanded its recall of turkey and chicken products from the original 295,000 pounds to a record-setting 27.4 million pounds.

(CIDRAP News) Ð A Pennsylvania company is recalling 295,000 pounds of ready-to-eat turkey and chicken because of possible Listeria contamination, but the recalled products have not been linked to the recent rash of listeriosis cases in the Northeast, federal health officials announced yesterday.