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(CIDRAP News) – The US Postal Service (USPS) is poised to test anthrax detection systems at 14 mail-processing centers around the country once first responders in the local communities feel ready to deal with an anthrax alarm, according to a Postal Service spokesman.

(CIDRAP News) – Wisconsin health officials confirmed today that they are investigating two possible cases of person-to-person transmission of monkeypox, but said the cases seem unlikely to be confirmed.

(CIDRAP News) – Donald A. Henderson, MD, MPH, the man who did more than anyone else to eradicate smallpox, sees powerful reasons for both concern and hope in humanity's ancient battle against infectious diseases.

On one hand, with globalization and the threat of bioterrorism, the world now confronts a more dangerous microbial landscape than ever before, Henderson said this week in a lecture at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

(CIDRAP News) – As expected, federal and state authorities have lifted poultry and bird quarantines in five counties in western Texas and southern New Mexico after concluding that exotic Newcastle disease (END) has been stamped out in the area.

(CIDRAP News) – To contain the emerging monkeypox outbreak, federal health authorities today recommended smallpox vaccination for people potentially exposed to the disease and acted to freeze the movement of pets that may carry it.

(CIDRAP News) – The hunt for additional cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Canada is winding down after uncovering no evidence of the disease in about 2,700 cattle, Canadian officials announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Thirty-three illness cases are under investigation in North America's first outbreak of monkeypox, 14 more than reported 2 days ago, with four cases confirmed so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced today.

(CIDRAP News) – Nineteen human cases of probable monkeypox have appeared in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, marking the first outbreak of the disease in the Americas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Saturday, Jun 7.

(CIDRAP News) – Five bulls having possible links to the Canadian cow that had mad cow disease were shipped into the United States, but it is unlikely that any of the bulls were infected with the disease, US officials said this week.

June 6, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – Starting next fall, meat companies will have to step up their efforts to keep Listeria monocytogenes out of deli meats and hot dogs, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced yesterday.

June 4, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – A quarantine on poultry and pet birds in the El Paso, Tex., area is expected to be lifted in the wake of a recent finding that exotic Newcastle disease (END) did not spread beyond the backyard flock where it turned up in April, according to Texas and New Mexico officials.

The quarantine was imposed on five counties in Texas and neighboring New Mexico Apr 10 after the disease was discovered in a flock in El Paso.

(CIDRAP News) – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says the recent detection of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a Canadian cow shows that active surveillance programs for BSE are working.

"The identification of a single case of BSE is not a cause for panic," Andrew Speedy of the FAO's Animal Production and Health Division said in a news release from the agency's Rome headquarters.

(CIDRAP News) – Available diagnostic tests for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) are not sensitive enough to reliably detect the SARS virus in the first few days of illness, a limitation that makes the disease harder to control, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – The debut of irradiated ground beef in school cafeterias grew more likely yesterday with the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) announcement that it will make the product available to schools starting next January.

(CIDRAP News) – The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has again recommended a pause for evaluation of the federal smallpox vaccination program before it is expanded to more health workers and to emergency responders.

(CIDRAP News) – A federally funded pilot project to inform people in three Minnesota school districts about food irradiation is moving toward completion despite a few rough spots, including the withdrawal of one district and outspoken opposition from some parents in another.

(CIDRAP News) – Initial testing of more than 370 cattle from several herds in Alberta's investigation into bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) detected no cases beyond the single case revealed May 20, according to Canadian agriculture officials.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today lifted its recommendation against travel to Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province, signaling that the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak is declining in its original strongholds.

Both places have fewer than 60 patients who are still infectious, and the average number of new cases per day has hovered at less than five in recent days, WHO officials said in a news release.

(CIDRAP News) – A hospital laundry worker in Taiwan who was sick for 6 days before he was recognized as having SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) may have exposed more than 10,000 people to the disease and helped derail Taiwan's previously effective containment effort, according to US health officials.

(CIDRAP News) – A 38-year-old man who had a seizure a few weeks after receiving a smallpox shot may have the first case of postvaccinial encephalitis in the current civilian smallpox vaccination program, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).