Food Poison Journal - Food poisoning outbreaks and litigation: surveillance and analysis

A staff at the Sarlahi district hospital at Malangawa told Nepalnews over phone that forty-seven people, most of them children, were discharged from the hospital this morning after undergoing treatment at the hospital overnight.

He said their conditions had improved and they returned to their village on a tractor.

Dozens of others, who fell sick, visited bordering town of India for treatment, according to reports.

Nearly 150 people had fallen sick after consuming contaminated food prepared on the occasion of 'Naag Panchami'--a Hindu festival--on Sunday.

The non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has hit out against the possibility of new food legislation being put in place.

More than 220 state and local food safety and labeling laws - including restaurant hygiene codes, milk pasteurization requirements, and even some states' warnings to pregnant women about drinking alcohol - would be killed if a controversial bill before the Senate becomes law, the CSPI said in a recent statement.

More than 5.4 million Australians are affected by food poisoning each year.

The most common source of potentially fatal food poisoning is bacteria, or the toxins they produce, but it can also be caused by some viruses or fungi.

High risk foods include cooked rice and pasta, meat, seafood, poultry , dairy products, and smallgoods such as salami and hams.

NSW Health's director of communicable diseases, Dr Jeremy McAnulty, said the illness can last from a few hours to days.

"It can be hard to pinpoint particular foods as a cause, but if it's piping hot not much will survive in it," he said.

Symptoms include a sudden onset of nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhoea, which can lead to severe dehydration.

Although many people blame the food they ate immediately before they got ill, experience indicates that its onset is often more than 24 hours later.

The Bellingham Herald reports that high levels of bacteria in raw oysters from south Puget Sound and Hood Canal have been making people ill across Washington and in other states.

About 50 people in Washington and dozens elsewhere have become sick, said Donn Moyer, media relations manager for the state Department of Health. At least two people have become sick enough to be hospitalized.

The bacteria, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, are present in Northwest marine waters all year, but levels are higher during warmer weather. Eating raw shellfish that contain high levels of the bacteria can cause explosive diarrhea and stomach cramps in humans.

Scientists from around the world have been meeting in Germany this week to set research priorities on a broad range of zoonoses -- food borne diseases that are transmissible from animals to humans.

Globalisation and integrated markets are rapidly changing the way food borne pathogens travel from country to country. Driven by a raft of legislation processors are increasingly looking for ways to cut down on zoonotic contamination of their products.