The owners of Colorado's Jensen Farms, source of contaminated cantaloupes blamed for a widespread Listeria outbreak in 2011, have been arrested on misdemeanor charges of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce, according to an Associated Press (AP) story yesterday.
Ten new polio cases have been confirmed in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, bringing to 25 the number of cases reported this year, Pakistan Today reported today.
Officials at the second International Conference on Mass Gathering Medicine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, called for "intensive global investigation" of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) to help determine how it spreads and other factors, according to an Arab News report today.
The effectiveness of the influenza vaccine dropped from 52% at 3.5 months after vaccination to 22% more than 4 months after vaccination during the 2011-12 season, according to a study out of Spain today in BMC Infectious Diseases whose power was limited by a small sample size.
The nation's Cyclospora outbreak total has risen to 675, based on an update today from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plus additional cases in the latest update from Texas, the state reporting the most cases.
Martin County, Florida, today confirmed 3 more dengue infections to bring the county's total to 18, The Global Dispatch reported, as a blood center suspended collections in Martin County and neighboring St. Lucie County.
Using reverse genetics, Spanish researchers have created a full-length DNA clone of the MERS-CoV virus that could be used as a vaccine candidate and to study characteristics of the virus, the team reported today in mBio, published by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
Alfred Almanza, head of the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), took issue with a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report this week that was critical of some aspects of an FSIS poultry inspection plan, saying the GAO omitted key details.
The GAO report asserted that the USDA took some shortcuts in assessing the plan, called the HACCP-Based Inspection Models Project (HIMP).
Newly installed used cleaning equipment likely played a significant role in the 2011 outbreak of listeriosis linked to Colorado cantaloupe that sickened 147 (see CDC map below) and killed 33, according to a report in today's New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Government watchdog group says agency cut corners in assessing pilot inspection projects.
