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(CIDRAP News) – Leaders of the US beef industry last week released sets of recommended "best practices" for eliminating Escherichia coli O157:H7 contamination at slaughter plants and in grinding operations.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration has advised the public to consider avoiding raw or lightly cooked green onions (scallions) in the light of evidence linking them to recent hepatitis A outbreaks.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released a 15-page set of guidelines for the public on food safety and security.

Titled "Food Safety and Food Security: What Consumers Need to Know," the booklet covers topics ranging from safe cooking temperatures and product recalls to spotting and reporting possible food tampering.

(CIDRAP News) – A study from the Netherlands confirms that food-handling practices play an important role in the spread of noroviruses (Norwalk viruses), which have been blamed for many outbreaks of intestinal illness on cruise ships and in institutions in recent years.

(CIDRAP News) – Scientists funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) created a functioning copy of a virus in the record-breaking time of 2 weeks, DOE officials announced yesterday.

The virus is a phage—a type that infects bacteria—and is harmless to humans, officials said. It was created as part of a research program to develop microbes that can help solve energy and environmental problems.

(CIDRAP News) – Recent figures from the US Department of Defense (DoD) indicate a higher rate of myopericarditis (heart inflammation) cases among military personnel following smallpox vaccination than previously reported, though the complication remains relatively rare.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government has moved to allow individuals and groups to continue working with certain hazardous biological agents beyond the Nov 12 deadline for complying with new registration rules while the government completes background checks on those groups.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Postal Service (USPS) reopened post offices in the Washington, DC, area last week after further tests dismissed a preliminary finding of anthrax at a Navy mail-handling facility in Washington.

(CIDRAP News) – In an effort to ensure that sick cattle are kept out of the food supply, the Senate last week approved a measure to bar the Department of Agriculture (USDA) from approving the use of "downed" animals for human consumption.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Postal Service (USPS) closed 11 post offices and facilities in the Washington, DC, area yesterday after routine air sampling indicated possible anthrax at a mail handling facility at the Anacostia Naval Station in Washington.

"Out of an abundance of caution, the Postal Service has decided to close and test facilities for biohazard contamination," USPS spokesman Azeezaly Jaffer said in a statement yesterday evening.

(CIDRAP News) – The British biotechnology company Acambis announced yesterday that it has launched the first clinical trial of its vaccine for West Nile virus, called ChimeriVax-West Nile.

The phase 1 trial will involve 60 adult volunteers in Lenexa, Kan., the company said in a news release. The volunteers will receive one of three doses of the West Nile vaccine or a licensed yellow fever vaccine that is being used as a control.

(CIDRAP News) – A team of researchers in St. Louis has retooled a mousepox virus so it can defeat a vaccine that normally protects mice—but has also found ways to beat the customized virus, according to the group's leader.

(CIDRAP News) – It will probably take between 2 and 5 years to develop a SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) vaccine, depending on the scale of future SARS outbreaks, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted today.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials have tightened restrictions on trafficking in prairie dogs and African rodents to prevent the spread of monkeypox.

An outbreak of human monkeypox in the United States last May and June was traced to a shipment of imported African rodents. The disease apparently spread from the rodents to pet prairie dogs and on to people, leading to 37 confirmed, 12 probable, and 22 suspected human cases.

(CIDRAP News) – Saying the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Canadian cattle is minimal, the US Department of Agriculture has proposed to reopen the US border to live Canadian cattle for the first time since BSE was discovered in one Alberta cow last May.

(CIDRAP News) – Cattle that were vaccinated against Escherichia coli O157:H7 in trials the past 2 years showed significant reductions in prevalence of the pathogen, according to a Canadian company that hopes to market the vaccine as a food safety measure.

(CIDRAP News) – State health departments have more than doubled their corps of epidemiologists working on infectious diseases and terrorism preparedness in the past 2 years, but the number is still too low, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – House cats and ferrets can be infected with the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus and can pass it to other cats and ferrets, raising the possibility that they could also spread the virus to people, according to researchers from the Netherlands and Hong Kong.

(CIDRAP News) – To bring coherence to a poorly coordinated national effort, the United States should focus its current bioterrorism preparedness program on four specific threat scenarios involving anthrax, smallpox, botulinum toxin, and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), according to a report by defense consultant and former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) plans to hold a meeting Nov 13 to get the public's thoughts on how it analyzes risk.