Keith Nunes of MeatPoultry.com reports that some commercial poultry processors have begun using a bacterial culture developed at the University of Arkansas (U.A.) that may reduce the levels of pathogenic Salmonella and Campylobacter in live poultry. The probiotic is helping processors increase the safety of food products and poultry science researcher Billy Hargis believes his research team can do more.
“We have not bothered to patent this specific culture because we don’t think this is the best we can do,” said Mr. Hargis, who is working on the Food Safety Consortium project in the U.A. Division of Agriculture. “We think we can find better cultures. This is just the best we have found so far. We think we can make it more effective.”
The culture is unique because unlike previous cultures that have been tested, this is a “defined culture” — entirely derived from a single defined group of bacteria.
“They’re known organisms, specific isolates that are well characterized,” Mr. Hargis said.Continue Reading University of Arkansas promoting probiotic research
Lab helps ensure safety of food supply
The Anchorage Daily News reports that cardboard box was rushed to Anchorage’s new Environmental Health Laboratory on Thursday. It’s urgent cargo: nine geoducks.
Divers on Wednesday had plunged 40 feet down near Sitka to harvest the giant clams with bulging brown bodies. They packaged the mollusks, refrigerated them and shipped them by air to Anchorage. Here, a team of lab technicians went to work to determine if they were contaminated by the toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning in humans. People who eat tainted shellfish can develop dizziness, numbness, breathing problems, nausea and vomiting.Continue Reading Lab helps ensure safety of food supply
UCSD team unmasks family of immune system invaders
Debra Kain of University of California – San Diego reports that like a family of petty criminals gone wrong, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) were surprised to find that bacterial pathogens found in a number of troublesome diseases are actually related. Not only that, their wrong-doing is carried out by disguising themselves, then hijacking their hosts.
Jack E. Dixon, Ph.D., Dean for Scientific Affairs and Professor of Pharmacology and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine; Neal M. Alto, Ph.D., UCSD postdoctoral fellow and lead author, and their colleagues have identified a 24-member family of bacterial proteins. Called effector proteins, they are found in bacteria, including Salmonella, Shigella and pathogenic E. coli, that cause gastrointestinal diseases. The researchers’ findings will be published in the January 13, 2006 edition of the journal Cell.
These proteins help bacteria do their job of infecting the host by warding off the body’s immune system. The UCSD researchers discovered how the effector proteins are able to “hijack” the body’s communication network, findings that could lead novel ways to fight bacterial disease.Continue Reading UCSD team unmasks family of immune system invaders
UW scientists use technology to tackle food-borne illnesses
University of Wisconsin-Madison reports that on its journey to your dinner plate, food is vulnerable to contamination along the way. Usually, it arrives at its final destination without picking up dangerous microbial hitchhikers-but not always.
According to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food-borne pathogens account for 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. As the food industry continues to globalize, food safety is expected to remain a significant public health issue.Continue Reading UW scientists use technology to tackle food-borne illnesses