The Sacramento Bee reports that food safety is serious business, as the recent E. coli outbreak has shown. But a food toxicologist from the University of California-Davis is using a light blend of music and parody to get important food-safety messages across to the public.
As director of the university’s FoodSafe Program, Carl K. Winter
KRLD News Radio reports that a Dallas resident has died after eating raw oysters. Jamie Nicolay with the Collin County Health Department says the victim ate the oysters at a restaurant in Plano. Oysters can be contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio vulnificus.
The bacterium is naturally present in marine environments and does not alter the
The Saginaw News (Michigan) reports that Saginaw County’s lead health official has confirmed that a gastrointestinal illness that struck a group of people in Frankenmuth stemmed from a baby shower at the Frankenmuth Credit Union.
Dr. Neill Varner, Department of Public Health medical director and acting health officer, disclosed the information today, but only after
The Associated Press reports that California health officials said Thursday they still hope to find the source of the contaminated spinach that’s sickened at least 189 people, but called on farmers to be more diligent about applying food safety measures to prevent future E. coli outbreaks.
The recent nationwide outbreak, at least the 10th traced to produce from California’s Salinas Valley during the last decade, shows that growers have not done all they could to safeguard their crops and the public’s health, said Dr. Kevin Reilly, deputy director of the prevention services branch of the California health department.
Meanwhile, the produce processing company at the center of the current E. coli outbreak announced Thursday that it would test a sample from each lot of greens its packages for illness-causing bacteria.
Natural Selection Foods CEO Charles Sweat said the new system is modeled after sampling procedures that helped reduce the number of human E. coli infections caused by beef. Natural Selection Foods LLC is a privately held company.Continue Reading Calif.: Farms need better food safety
While packaged spinach has been removed from store shelves nationwide following an E. coli outbreak that has been linked to at least one death and a number of illnesses, how safe is that prepackaged salad mix or fresh produce, such as lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, strawberries, etc., you just purchased?
According to a Kansas State University food microbiologist, you may be getting more than you bargained for. Daniel Y.C. Fung, a K-State professor of animal sciences and industry and of food science, said although the recent spinach incident is an isolated case and should not be an indication of the safety of all fresh produce in the United States, consumers should take precautions before eating any produce — prepackaged or not.
"Once consumers buy these packages, often they just open them up and eat them," Fung said. "With hamburger, we can tell people to cook to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and it will be sure to kill salmonella or E. Coli, but with salads, we have no idea. You go to supermarket, buy the bagged produce, dump out and eat. You don’t know if it has E. coli."Continue Reading K-State food microbiologist recommends washing produce
The Examiner reports that authorities have traced the contaminated spinach that has killed as many as three people and sickened at least 173 to a few counties in California’s Salinas Valley, but let’s not stop the investigative work too soon.
There’s a lesson to be learned here, an important one about the dangers of superstitious, leftist twaddle and the threat it poses to human life.
So let’s zero in on the anti-corporate, conspiracy-minded, Nader-formed group, Public Citizen, which never quits yelping about the public good while simultaneously betraying it, and let’s focus on its opposition to irradiation, which is an extraordinary means of saving literally tens of thousands of lives lost to food-borne illness over the years.Continue Reading Group’s opposition to food irradiation is a threat to life
USA Today reports that industry, consumer and patient groups and the last three secretaries of the Health and Human Services department are joining forces to lobby for more money for the Food and Drug Administration.
Former HHS secretary Tommy Thompson and Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer group, are to announce the creation of the Coalition for a Stronger FDA at a news conference today.
The FDA is part of HHS, and "former secretaries probably understand the problem better than anybody else," Thompson, HHS secretary in President Bush’s first term, said Sunday.Continue Reading New coalition urges more money for FDA
The Associated Press reports that a second tainted bag of spinach, found in Utah over the weekend, has helped health officials pinpoint E. coli contamination in one specific batch of fresh spinach in a California processing plant.
California health officials said the Utah bag of Dole baby spinach and another of the same brand found
The Saint Paul Pioneer Press reports that a 10-year-old girl has died after eating poisonous mushrooms a relative picked at St. Paul’s Keller-Phalen Regional Park.
Salena Thao was among seven people from two Hmong families who were hospitalized after eating the mushrooms Sept. 9. The mushrooms looked similar to the edible ones that grow in
Joseph Ryan of The Daily Herald reports that as the tables rapidly filled for lunch at Yanni’s Greek Restaurant in Arlington Heights, TV reports were warning consumers not to eat the veggie — if it was bought in bags.
Yet, no one was telling Liakouras that his spinach, purchased from a distributor, wasn’t safe. He didn’t know what to do. The manager called his spinach providers to see what they thought, but eventually he figured, “Why even take the risk?”
By late afternoon, he pulled spinach from eight classic dishes. A week later, the manager remains in the dark. “No one has actually told us not to serve spinach,” he says.Continue Reading Can I eat this?