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(CIDRAP News) – Thailand, home of the world's fourth-largest poultry industry, has confirmed that the recent re-emergence of avian influenza has spread to 21 provinces, three more than just yesterday. Meanwhile, Vietnam's state media yesterday reported that the disease there now affects Bac Ninh province in the northern part of the country in addition to the 11 southern provinces already affected.

(CIDRAP News) – Food irradiation advocates must step up to the chalkboard and start teaching the merits of the process before the market can achieve its sales potential, according to the results of a recent cattle industry association survey.

(CIDRAP News) – Experts in Vietnam confirmed today that avian influenza has spread to an 11th province, the southern Mekong Delta province of Long An, a major poultry breeding area, according to news service reports.

Any discussion of the next influenza pandemic inevitably leads to "guesstimates" of severity.

Jul 22, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has contracted with the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) to conduct a thorough inventory of steps food processors can take to prevent intentional food contamination.

(CIDRAP News) – Tomatoes are the likely source of contamination in a Salmonella outbreak that now involves 289 cases in five states, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today.

The investigation "is focusing on certain pre-sliced tomatoes as the likely source of Salmonellosis in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia," the FDA stated in a news release.

(CIDRAP News) – Two children in Thailand are being tested for possible avian influenza infections, which could be the first human cases since the disease resurged in recent weeks, according to news service reports today.

The cases involve a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl, both in the northern province of Nong Khai near the Laotian border, according to a Reuters report.

(CIDRAP News) – The investigation of an outbreak of Salmonella infections apparently linked with the Sheetz Gas Station chain in Pennsylvania and neighboring states has grown to include at least 180 cases, but the food source of contamination remained a mystery today.

(CIDRAP News) – A second possible case of transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) via blood transfusion has been reported in the United Kingdom, triggering new restrictions on who can give blood.

(CIDRAP News) – Rift Valley fever (RVF), a mosquito-borne disease that can kill humans and animals, is starting to grab the attention of American scientists because it could cause devastating outbreaks in the United States.

(CIDRAP News) – President Bush today signed the bill establishing Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion program to speed the development of drugs and vaccines to combat the effects of biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological agents.

(CIDRAP News) – A woman in Thailand, where avian influenza has resurfaced in the past month, may have the first human case of the illness since the outbreaks earlier in the year, a Bangkok newspaper reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Salmonella was found in Roma tomatoes from a convenience store chain suspected as the source of an outbreak of salmonellosis in three states, Pennsylvania health officials announced today.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported Jul 16 that 57 cases of salmonellosis may be linked with food bought at deli counters in Sheetz Gas Station stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia between Jul 2 and Jul 9.

(CIDRAP News) – The US House this week overwhelmingly approved the "BioShield" bill to guarantee a market for antidotes to biological and chemical weapons, thereby sending the legislation to President Bush for his promised signature.

Editor's note: This story was revised Jul 19, 2004, to include additional information about the percentage of West Nile virus infections that result in illness.

(CIDRAP News) – Now that West Nile virus (WNV) is in North America to stay, mosquito control is becoming an important task of the public health system, West Nile experts said at a public health convention in St. Paul today.

(CIDRAP News) – A draft report by the inspector general of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says the department's expanded surveillance program for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has several flaws that could lead to unreliable estimates of the prevalence of BSE in American cattle.

(CIDRAP News) – The Canadian government has announced it will ban high-risk cattle parts from all animal feeds, including pet food, as a further step to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Canada announced the decision Jul 9, the same day the US government said it had tentatively decided to take the same step but wanted to gather public comments on the move first.

(CIDRAP News) – H5N1 avian influenza viruses circulating in ducks in China gradually increased their ability to infect mammals between 1999 and 2002, but just how that happened remains unclear, according to a recent study by Chinese researchers.

(CIDRAP News) – Highly pathogenic avian influenza has popped up in two provinces in northern Thailand, bringing the number of recently affected provinces to four.

Avian flu has struck farms in Sukhothai and Uttaradit, the Bangkok Post reported yesterday. Last week officials reported the disease on one farm in each of two central provinces, Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani.