March 2005

March 31, 2005
Katie Pollack
Sun Contributor
In an effort to limit acute gastroenteritis, or food poisoning, the second most prevalent household illness, Cornell professors from the department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences have joined a research team which aims to identify the origin and transmission of pathogens that cause food-related illnesses.
Earlier this month, the United States Department of Agriculture formally announced the formation of the Food Safety Research and Response Network (FSRRN), funded by a $5 million grant from the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service. The research team is comprised of over 50 experts from 18 different campuses across the country.Continue Reading Cornell Researchers Fight Food Poisoning

Dairyman pushing bill to allow consumers to choose unpasteurized product
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
By Theo Stein
Denver Post Staff Writer
Loveland – As Colorado’s chief advocate for raw milk, David Lynch has been spending time lately at the state Capitol in pursuit of a small victory on the long road to legitimacy in Colorado.
He is pushing a bill that would make it legal for investors in a dairy herd to obtain raw milk from their cows. The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, survived a state House committee vote after passing the Senate last month.
“This is such a compelling right-to-choose issue,” Lynch said. “We need to provide people a way to access foods that they determine are best for their health.”Continue Reading Got raw milk?

Campylobacter jejuni (Pronounced “camp-e-low-back-ter j-june-eye”) was not recognized as a cause of human foodborne illness prior to 1975. Now, the bacterial organism is known to be the most common cause of foodborne illness in the U.S.1 (Salmonella is the second most common cause).
Most cases Campylobacter infection occur as isolated, sporadic events, not as a

Mar 27, 2005
Fifteen people in Florida who visited agricultural fairs recently have developed a life-threatening kidney disease or are infected with bacteria that can cause it, Florida health officials said yesterday.
Eleven of those affected are children, and petting zoos at the two fairs are suspected, but Florida’s secretary of health said it was “too early to point to one single element, such as a petting zoo.”
Epidemiologists are “trying to triangulate the 15 cases and see if they can be associated with a single point source,” the secretary, Dr. John O. Agwunobi, said.
Officials at various Florida hospitals told The Associated Press that they knew of nine children with hemolytic uremic syndrome who had visited petting zoos at the Central Florida Fair in Orlando or the Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City. One Florida television reporter described the death of a child who had visited a petting zoo, but it was unclear if there was any connection.Continue Reading Florida Officials Seek a Link in 15 Cases of a Kidney Illness

By Judith Blake
Seattle Times staff reporter
March 23, 2005
The calls run the food-safety gamut:
ï A Seattle-area woman said she’d found walnuts in a packaged, pre-cut salad mix, though nuts were not listed in the ingredients. Her young son, who was severely allergic to walnuts, did not eat any of the nuts, but the woman worried that someone else might have an allergic reaction to the mislabeled product.
ï A man discovered mold on the meat-filled breakfast burrito he’d purchased at a convenience store.
ï A woman was dismayed to find larvae in an energy snack bar.
These are among the calls consumers have made to the new toll-free Food Safety Consumer Complaint Hotline (1-800-843-7890) launched in January by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.
Goal: to reduce the risk of food-borne illness by making it easier for consumers to lodge complaints and for officials to address them.Continue Reading New hotline handles food-safety complaints

BALTIMORE, MD, Mar. 21 (UPI) — The presence of drug-resistant bacteria on uncooked poultry varies by commercial brand and probably is related to use of antibiotics, a U.S. study found.
The study, published online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to compare directly bacterial contamination of poultry sold in U.S. supermarkets from food producers who use antibiotics and from those who say they do not.
The study focused on antibiotic resistance, specifically, fluoroquinolone-resistance in Campylobacter, a pathogen responsible for 2.4 million cases of food-borne illness per year in the United States.Continue Reading Poultry bacterial contamination compared

21/03/2005 – The US government is investing a further $2 million to enhance research on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and $5 million to establish a Food Safety Research and Response Network.
“In a rapidly changing world marketplace, science is the universal language that must guide our rules and policies, rather than subjectivity or politics,” said agriculture secretary Mike Johanns.
“Expanding our research efforts to improve the understanding of BSE and other food-related illness pathogens will strengthen the security of our nation’s food supply. These projects will help improve food safety by enhancing our research partnerships with the academic community and establish another tool to aid our response to food-related disease outbreaks.”Continue Reading US ups BSE funding in battle to open markets

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Sunday, March 20, 2005 – WASHINGTON – Two California universities will be part of a project to study food safety.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it had awarded $5million to 18 colleges and universities to set up a Food Safety Research and Response Network. Headed by North Carolina State University,

March 16, 2005
LOS ANGELES (AP) – County health officials said a study shows food-borne diseases have been reduced 13.1 percent because of the restaurant inspection and letter grading system imposed in 1998.
Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county’s public health director and an author of the study, said it was the first scientific proof that

Washington: State Penitentiary campylobacter litigation
More than 100 inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington, were infected with campylobacter jejuni blamed on poor food-handling in the prison kitchen. Health officials traced the infection to a leaky drain pipe contaminated with pigeon feces and leaking into the salad preparation area.