Foodborne Disease

(CIDRAP News) – A recent survey of more than 10,000 people in seven states found no connection between people's risk factors for foodborne illness, such as risky food-handling habits, and their willingness to buy irradiated meat and poultry, according to a report in the December Journal of Food Protection.

(CIDRAP News) – Salmonella standards for meat and poultry will be among several topics on the table when the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) meets Jan 22 to 25 in Washington, DC.

(CIDRAP News) – Dozens of people in California and neighboring states contracted Salmonella infections from eating raw alfalfa sprouts last year in an episode that has prompted the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to renew its warning that people with weak immune systems should not eat sprouts.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent analysis of ground pork in grocery stores in five states showed that 4% of the samples contained enterococci with high-level resistance to gentamicin, an antibiotic used to treat enterococcal infections in humans. In addition, most Enterococcus faecium isolates were resistant to quinupristin-dalfopristin (Synercid), a streptogramin antibiotic used to treat infections caused by vancomycin-resistant E faecium.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released two sets of guidelines designed to help food-related businesses of all kinds prevent food contamination and tampering by criminals or terrorists.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will continue to test meat for Salmonella to confirm that meat processors' food safety systems are adequate, despite a court ruling that Salmonella tests can't be used to shut down a plant, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced this week.

(CIDRAP News) – A federal appeals court has ruled that the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Salmonella performance standard for meat packers is illegal, depriving USDA of authority to shut down packing plants for producing meat with Salmonella levels exceeding the standard.

(CIDRAP News) – A new study commissioned by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) indicates that the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) occurring in the United States is extremely low, but USDA officials who released the study said they are considering taking steps to lower the risk further.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent study conducted in a hospital emergency department in London suggests that in the realm of food safety, there's no place like home. In the 6-month study, patients who were treated for a food-related illness were significantly more likely to have eaten away from home shortly before their illness than were patients treated for other conditions, according to a research letter published in The Lancet.

(CIDRAP News) – Contaminated alfalfa and clover sprouts caused 600 confirmed cases of illness and probably triggered thousands of unreported cases in California and neighboring states from 1996 through 1998, according to a recent report in Annals of Internal Medicine. In view of their findings, the authors say sprouts at present are an “inherently dangerous food.”