Updated 8/6/2006
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
John Langlois feels so strongly about the benefits of unpasteurized goat milk that he pays $19 a gallon to have it shipped from a South Carolina dairy to his home in Estillfork, Ala. He credits it with giving him more energy, curing his grandson’s chronic diarrhea when he was an infant and keeping the boy “steady” rather than “bouncing off the walls” now that he’s 5.
Elizabeth Benner of Rochester, N.Y., drives 45 minutes each way to a dairy to get a week’s worth of raw cow’s milk for nine families in the milk club she organized. She says she was “really struggling” on a low-fat, vegan diet but regained her strength when she added whole raw milk and cream to her diet.
Christina Trecaso of Copley, Ohio, is in a herd share program. She and 150 other families pay boarding costs for “their” cows and take their profits in milk, butter and cream. For her, it’s about “buying food that is minimally processed, food that is procured in a 100-mile radius. … It’s about relationships and shaking the hand that feeds you.”Continue Reading Raw milk: Fit for human consumption?

Are happy chickens safe chickens? One researcher believes so, outlining a possible role of bird stress on the number of campylobacter positive flocks.
Speaking at the recent 2006 World Poultry Science Association meeting in York, Tom Humphrey of the University of Bristol revealed new results that show the incidence of campylobacter had fallen from 76%

By DAN RAHN University of Georgia
You pack your child’s lunch for school early in the morning, but she doesn’t eat it until lunchtime. Is it still safe then? Foodborne illnesses can be serious, even deadly, for young children especially. But lunch doesn’t have to be risky.
“It’s not hard to keep packed lunches safe,” said Connie Crawley, a Cooperative Extension nutrition and health specialist with the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “But it takes some thought and preparation.”
In a packed school lunch, Crawley said, food safety depends on what you pack and how you pack it.
Choosing the food is a big step. Many of your child’s favorites are perfectly safe at room temperature.Continue Reading Don’t let danger sneak into your child’s lunchbox; it’s not hard to keep food safe

21.jul.06
Massey University Press Release
A ban on the sale of fresh chicken meat is the not answer to preventing outbreaks of campylobacteriosis says food microbiologist Associate Professor John Brooks.
He says the media focus on the comparatively high incidence of campylobacteria outbreak in New Zealand has been triggered by incomplete information.
“No clear mode of transmission has been established between chicken meat and humans. Campylobacter is also found in cattle and sheep, ducks and domestic pets, and water and dairy farm effluent have also been found frequently to be contaminated.”Continue Reading Combating campylobacter with common sense

Illness linked to unpasteurized cheese curds: People advised not to eat raw milk products
06.jul.06
Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection
State of Wisconsin
MADISON – State health officials are advising individuals to avoid eating unpasteurized cheese curds produced by Wesley Lindquist of Highbridge, Wisconsin. More than 40 people have exhibited symptoms of nausea, diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever and occasionally vomiting after eating the white cheese curds produced by Lindquist.
People began getting sick between Ma 24 – June 2, 2006. Stool samples from six of the ill individuals were tested at the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene and the presence of Campylobacter jejuni was confirmed in all six specimens.Continue Reading Campylobacter illness linked to unpasteurized cheese curds: People advised not to eat raw milk products

03 Jul 2006
Health and food safety experts say they are at a loss to explain a big rise in the number of cases of the food poisoning bug, campylobacter.
More commonly found in rural parts of the country, campylobacter now seems to be affecting larger numbers of city residents.
Donald Campbell, the principal public

Monday, 3 July 2006
Press Release: New Zealand Food Safety Authority
The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) is concerned about the continuing increase in cases of human campylobacter infection, highlighted in the latest monthly surveillance report from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research.
Campylobacter is a bacterium commonly found in animals and the environment. Since being made a notifiable disease in 1980, New Zealand’s reported cases of campylobacteriosis have risen steadily and health professionals acknowledge it as a major public health concern.
The source or sources of the latest rise in numbers are not clear and are the subject of investigations being undertaken by ESR. However, any increase in cases of the disease also increases the potential for contamination of food to occur from infected individuals, particularly in the home.Continue Reading Concern at increase in campylobacter infection

Unlicensed cheese-maker ordered to halt operations
By RICK OLIVO Staff Writer
The Daily Press
Monday, June 26th, 2006
Cheese curds infected with the Campylobacter bacteria are now being blamed for over 100 suspected cases of illness in places as far away as Oregon.
The contaminated cheese curds were manufactured by an unlicensed Highbridge cheese-maker using unpasteurized milk, says the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services.
Wesley Lindquist was ordered to cease the production of curds and any other dairy products following the outbreak, which apparently began shortly after Memorial Day when a number of visitors were in the Ashland area for graduations and other events. Over 40 confirmed cases of illness have been identified as coming from the tainted curds, and many others from different areas of the state and even other states have also become ill.Continue Reading Bad cheese curds now responsible for over 100 illnesses

BY JOHN SCHMELTZER
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO – Antibiotic-free foods are not necessarily safer, according to an Institute of Food Technologists study to be released Monday.
The study, conducted by a panel of food scientists and microbiologists, aims for the heart of the marketing campaigns in the last decade by organic food advocates who have suggested there is an overuse of antibiotics and that antibiotic-free foods are better for human consumption.
One such group is the Organic Trade Association, based in Greenfield, Mass., which represents many of the nation’s organic food producers. The association cites 10 studies from 2000 and 2001 of antibiotic use in farming to support its stand that antibiotics have been abused by American farmers.Continue Reading Antibiotic-free food not necessarily safer for people, study says