Foodborne Disease

(CIDRAP News) – An outbreak of Escherichia coli infections in people who ate at 11 Taco Bell restaurants in New York and New Jersey has sickened more than 3 dozen people in 3 states and prompted the company to remove green onions from its outlets nationwide.

Editor's note: The Salmonella serotype involved in this outbreak was incorrectly listed as Norfolk in this story when first published.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials are investigating a second Salmonella outbreak linked to restaurant tomatoes that occurred over the summer and early fall, sickening 106 people in 19 states.

(CIDRAP News) – Restaurants that have a certified kitchen manager (CKM) seem to have a lower risk of serving food that triggers infectious illnesses, according to a study comparing restaurants that were involved in disease outbreaks with those that were not.

(CIDRAP News) – Sampling by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) over the last 5 years has shown a fourfold increase in the number of broiler chicken carcasses contaminated with Salmonella enterica serotype enteritidis, a strain previously associated mainly with eggs.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials said today they have zeroed in on restaurant tomatoes as the cause of a recent nationwide Salmonella outbreak.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal investigators have turned up few solid leads in a Salmonella outbreak that has sickened 171 people in 19 states, but some food safety experts are suggesting that contaminated tomatoes and infected food service workers might have played a role.

(CIDRAP News) – Six more samples of the Escherichia coli O157:H7 strain that killed 3 people and sickened more than 200 who ate raw spinach have been found on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley area, state and federal officials announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Investigators seeking the contamination source in a nationwide Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak have genetically matched an E coli strain found in manure from a California cattle ranch near spinach fields with the strain isolated from sick patients and their leftover spinach.

(CIDRAP News) – To speed emergency responses to avian influenza and other animal and plant diseases, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) inaugurated a new crisis management center (CMC) at its Rome headquarters today.

(CIDRAP News) – Two botulism cases in Toronto have been linked to carrot juice from a California company, raising the number of people sickened by the juice to six, according to Canadian news reports.