Echoing the praise in my blog post yesterday, a Minnesota Star Tribune editorial is praising Minnesota health officials and calling for more foodborne illness surveilance. The editorial relates the story of one of the nine tragic and pointless deaths confirmed as resulting from the PCA Salmonella outbreak.
As with many of the deaths and illnesses in
According to an article in Candian Cattlemen, a Candadian firm, Bioniche Life Sciences, has developed a vaccine that reduces colonization of cows by E. coli O157 bacteria and reduces the amount of the bacteria shed in cattle manure. One would think that reductions of this nature would in turn lead to less human expsoure to the potentially
WESH.com reported that a Delta Airlines flight headed to Atlanta from Ecuador made an emergency stop in Orlando today after three passengers’ food poisoning symptoms became severe and they required medical attention. According to WESH, two of the three passengers were transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center for treatment for food poisoning, while the third
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar held a press conference today to announce new proposed leglisation to "promote a more rapid and effective national response to outbreaks of foodborne sickness."
According to Klobuchar, the new act would, among other things:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is out with a discussion draft of “the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.”
Given who’s signed on to this one, it’s probably the one to watch. Sponsors include Chair Emeritus John D. Dingell, Chairs Henry A. Waxman, Frank Pallone, and Bart Stupak, and Reps. Diana DeGette and Betty Sutton.
The new draft is based on the food reforms contained in H.R. 759, the Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009, introduced in January by Reps. Dingell, Stupak and Pallone. Favored bills get heard quickly, and this one gets its first hearing next week, on Wednesday, June 3rd.
"As evidenced by the recent widespread contaminations in our food supply, including E.coli in spinach, salmonella in peppers and the most recent outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter, it is clear that we must act now," said Rep. Pallone, Chair of the Health Subcommittee. "This draft builds on legislation introduced earlier this year and will empower the FDA with the resources and authorities it needs to ensure that our food is safe to eat. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues and the administration to move this crucial piece of legislation forward
"Our 10 food safety hearings in the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations have highlighted the need for an overhaul of our food safety laws," said Rep. Stupak, Chair of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. "The American people deserve a Food and Drug Administration that has both the funding and the regulatory authority needed to protect our food supply and hold the food industry accountable. President Obama and the new FDA leadership have expressed a commitment to food safety reform and I look forward to working with them to return FDA to the gold standard in protecting the public health."
A detailed summary of the draft follows below.
Continue Reading Bill Aims To Return FDA To “The Gold Standard” In Protecting Public Health
According to a news report on Seattletimes.com, the death of a local West Seattle Woman, Jill St. Onge, may have been caused by a microbial infection contracted through contaminated food consumed while on vacation in Thailand. At this point the precise source of the microbes is unknown, although contaminated seafood is suspected.
Preliminary lab
Most of the time when we’re writing about, reading about, or representing people for illnesses suffered in an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak related to produce, we’re looking at things retrospectively. An outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 happened, we know it was linked to lettuce, spinach, or some other type of fresh, raw produce, but we
In a "Perspective" piece published online by the New England Journal of Medicine Tuesday, May 26, the new Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., and Principal Deputy Commissioner of FDA, Joshua M. Sharfstein, M.D., wrote about their vision for the future of how the FDA will operate
The recent recall of nearly 96,000 pounds of ground beef by Valley Meats LLC got me thinking about hamburgers and E. coli O157:H7. Anytime I hear those words together (which, as an attorney at Marler Clark, is quite often), I think of John McDonald. John was a 5-year-old boy who we represented in a ground beef outbreak that occurred in 2007. Unfortunately, John’s illness was about as bad as an illness can get without causing a death. (it is unbelievable how many times I find myself saying that about our clients)
John was hospitalized at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital from October 4 through 12, then was transferred to the University of Tennessee Medical Center where he remained until October 29. During his hospitalization, John’s kidneys failed requiring extensive dialysis to cleanse his blood, and he became badly anemic requiring many blood transfusions.
But these conditions, though in and of themselves potentially lethal, were just the beginning. What truly separates John’s illness from most of the hemolytic uremic syndrome illnesses that we see was the extent of injury to his gastrointestinal tract.
Jim McDonald, John’s father, was present at the moment it became apparent just how severe John’s illness was. It occurred in the early morning hours of Thursday, October 11, 2007. He recalls:
As usual, I got up to help as much as possible when the nurses came in and woke us up. When we opened his diaper, I got excited since it looked like he had had dark brown diarrhea, which told me that his digestive system was finally starting to kick in again. Realizing how liquidy the diaper was, we turned on an extra light to help us while changing him.
I will never forget what I saw. To my dismay, the diaper was not full of a bowel movement like I had desperately hoped. It was full of blood. An entire bowel movement of blood. Maybe an entire cup of blood. I got light-headed and almost passed out. I immediately sat down and grasped my head, apologizing to the nurses and telling them that I could no longer help them treat my son. This was the first of five grossly bloody stools that day.
Continue Reading Ground Beef, Hamburgers, and E. coli: John McDonald’s illness
West Virginia has recently increased the amount of allowable mercury pollution in the states lakes, rivers, and waterways. West Virginia’s new regulations are even less stringent than the minimal national standard. As Seattle University School of Law Associate Professor Catherine O’Neill explains, this is a bad decision based on faulty logic.
Polluted waterways are a problem