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Editor's note: This story was updated from its original form to include additional details about the FDA guidelines and comments from a pharmaceutical industry representative.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a guide to help the drug industry assess the risk that antimicrobial drugs intended for use in food animals will spawn resistant bacteria that could ultimately harm human health.

Environmental tests showed no signs of ricin contamination at an airport mail facility in Greenville, S.C., where an envelope containing the poison was found last week, according to the US Postal Service (USPS).

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers who met in Geneva this week agreed that any clusters of severe SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases would probably be detected quickly but that isolated cases might not be, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Some Wisconsin farm workers who had West Nile virus (WNV) infection might have caught the virus from turkeys rather from mosquitoes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – A new document from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lays out a long list of recommendations for providing the rigorous surveillance and containment that are seen as the keys to controlling SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), should the disease reappear.

(CIDRAP News) – A painstaking analysis of the risk of Listeria infections associated with ready-to-eat (RTE) foods shows that proper refrigeration and limiting storage time could reduce the risk by more than 50%, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – In a new report on the epidemiology of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), the World Health Organization (WHO) affirms that the disease is spread by respiratory droplets, not by airborne particles.

The 35-page report, issued Oct 17, also says the risk of transmission to others peaks when a person has been sick for about 10 days and that children are rarely affected by SARS.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says the prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes in tested samples of ready-to-eat (RTE) meat and poultry products is down 25% for the first 9 months of this year compared with last year.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration today announced the release of a report to Congress on its progress toward developing faster tests to detect food contamination.

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese investigators have found that animal traders in Guangdong Province were more likely to carry an antibody to the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus than other local groups were, supporting the belief that the virus might have come from animals.

(CIDRAP News) – The recent finding of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a 23-month-old bull in Japan suggests that Japan may have more cases of the disease than previously suspected, according to a University of Minnesota expert on the disease.

(CIDRAP News) – Mexico closed its border to livestock from the United States last week because of concern that a herd of US cattle bound for Mexico had foot-and-mouth disease, but the border was quickly reopened when the disease was found to be a relatively harmless look-alike.

(CIDRAP News) – Some of the world's leading experts on biological weapons and public health will meet in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct 21 and 22 for an international conference on the threat of a bioterrorist attack involving smallpox.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent cluster of Yersinia enterocolitica infections in Chicago infants illustrates the risks associated with preparing and eating chitterlings (pork intestines), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – Air monitoring devices in Houston recently picked up fragments of the bacteria that cause tularemia, but no human cases of the disease have been found, Houston health officials reported yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The National Research Council (NRC) this week proposed a plan to expand and formalize the system for screening research proposals in order to keep biotechnology from playing into the hands of terrorists.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced final rules designed to make the nation's food supply more secure by requiring food companies to register with the FDA and to give advance notice of imported food shipments.

(CIDRAP News) – Preparations for the possible return of SARS should include establishment of a national stockpile of equipment to protect healthcare workers from the disease, a Minnesota official said at a Senate field hearing today.

(CIDRAP News) – Brucellosis was detected in a Texas cattle herd recently, ending a 13-month stretch with no new Texas cases and postponing the day when the state can be declared free of the once widespread disease, according to the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC).

(CIDRAP News) – A study of 25 children who were hospitalized in Toronto for possible SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) suggests that the disease is generally milder in children than in teens and adults.