Campylobacter Blog - Surveillance & analysis on Campylobacter news & outbreaks

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food said Monday bacteria that cause campylobacter were not found in milk samples tested last week.

Utah County health officials issued a warning against raw milk consumption last week after several cases of a severe food-borne illness were linked to products from the same dairy -- Woolsey's Dairy in Payson.

The department tested samples taken directly from a cow and a goat, the production line and from consumers.

The samples were not part of the original milking associated with the illnesses, the department said.

"We can't test milk consumed three weeks ago," spokesman Larry Lewis said.

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The owner of a Utah County dairy that's being inspected by health officials says he doesn't know if raw milk from his dairy is what made seven people sick.

Lars Woolsey of Woolsey's Dairy in Payson says he does not think the milk is what caused the food-borne illness. Woolsey says he sent off samples to be tested earlier this week and the county health inspectors were at the dairy Wednesday.

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Science Daily — A University of Arkansas-led research team has found that an effective way to get rid of pathogenic Campylobcter bacteria in turkeys is to use proteins produced naturally by other bacteria. The proteins are called bacteriocins. The researchers found that these proteins can eliminate the detectable Campylobacter and that they can also change conditions in the gut so that the pathogen has fewer places to hide and develop.

“If we can eliminate Campylobacter, we don’t have to worry about antibiotic resistance,” said Dan Donoghue, a UA Division of Agriculture poultry science researcher who led the project funded by the Food Safety Consortium. The UA group worked with USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists led by Annie Donoghue in Fayetteville, Ark., and Norm Stern in Athens, Ga., along with several Russian government microbiologists.

WASHINGTON, March 3 (UPI) — U.S. regulators are expected to approve the use of a powerful antibiotic in cattle despite warnings it would speed the appearance of resistant microbes.

InterVet Inc., a Delaware company, has applied to the Food and Drug Administration to market Cefquinome for treatment of a pneumonia-like disease, the Washington Post reported. Its application is likely to be granted because of a change in FDA rules, unless a demonstrated direct danger to humans can be shown.

Critics like Edward Belongia, an epidemiologist at the Wisconsin-based Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, point to the approval of two powerful drugs in the 1990s for use in poultry. Doctors soon encountered a drug-resistant strain of campylobacter.

The industry says that 'until you show us a direct link to human mortality from the use of these drugs in animals, we don't think you should preclude their use,' Belongia told the Post. But do we really want to drive more resistance genes into the human population? It's easy to open the barn door, but it's hard to close the door once it's open.