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(CIDRAP News) – The French-basedpharmaceutical company Aventis Pasteur has a previously unreported cache of 70million to 90 million doses of frozen smallpox vaccine, the Washington Post reported today. If made available to the federal government,the supply would vastly expand the current US stockpile of 15.4 million doses.

(CIDRAP News) – It is 13 days since the emergence of a hypothetical smallpox epidemic caused by the release of virus in three US shopping malls. Some 16,000 cases have been reported, 1,000 people have died, and the nation is running out of vaccine. Hospitals are overflowing, and federal and state officials are at odds over how to contain the epidemic.

(CIDRAP News) – The 2002 farm bill now before a House-Senate conference committee could change the marketing landscape for irradiated foods by allowing food processors to take the term "irradiation" off labels and replace it with "pasteurization."

(CIDRAP News) – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has released a 68-page report on its plan for expanding research on "Category A" bioterrorism agents: anthrax, smallpox, plague, tularemia, viral hemorrhagic fevers, and botulism.

(CIDRAP News) – Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, yesterday introduced a bill to restore the US Department of Agriculture's powerto shut down meatpacking plants whose products exceed the federal Salmonella standard.

(CIDRAP News) – Data on more than 300,000 proteins that may have potential as treatments for anthrax—the fruits of a project in which thousands of personal computers were used to analyze billions of molecules—have been turned over to the US and United Kingdom governments.

A Texas laboratory worker who was analyzing environmental samples collected during last fall's anthrax outbreak has been treated for cutaneous anthrax, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Science article says more than twice as many cases of inhalational anthrax could have occurred last fall if workers had not been given prophylactic antibiotics.

(CIDRAP News) – Tularemia, one of the six diseases considered most likely to be spread by bioterrorists, remains uncommon in the United States, with 1,368 cases reported between 1990 and 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – A committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has concluded after 17 months of study that the existing anthrax vaccine is effective and "acceptably safe," but a new vaccine that requires fewer doses and that causes fewer reactions is needed.

Note: This story was updated Mar 6, 2002, with the addition of information about comments from a group that opposes the proposed legislation.

(CIDRAP News) — To slow the growth of bacterial resistance to drugs, Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has introduced a bill to ban the use of eight types of antibiotics in healthy food animals and halt all use of fluoroquinolones in poultry.

An NEJM article reports that an outbreak of eosinophilic meningitis in a group of Americans who dined at a Jamaican restaurant marked the first known outbreak of infection with the rat lungworm in the Western Hemisphere.

Note: This story was updated March 1, 2002, to include additional information about recent federal actions to prevent mad cow disease.

(CIDRAP News) – There is no complete fix for the problem of foodborne illness, but a comprehensive, farm-to-table approach with specific targets for limiting pathogenic contamination would improve food safety, according to a new report by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT).

(CIDRAP News) – Nearly a year and a half after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first proposed to stop the use of enrofloxacin (Baytril, a fluoroquinolone antibiotic) in poultry because of safety concerns, the agency says it plans to hold a public hearing on the proposal. The date of the hearing will be set at a prehearing conference on April 8.