Food Safety NewsDan Flynn is a Denver-based writer and editor with more than ten years of food safety experience. As a public affairs professional, he worked with government and regulatory agencies at the local, state, and federal levels. His career as a journalist included working for newspapers throughout the West, from the Black Hills to Seattle. His on-scene reporting on the collapse of the Idaho’s Teton Dam and the suicide bombing at Washington State University’s Perham Hall was carried by newspapers around the world and was recognized both times regionally by the Associated Press for Best Reporting on a Deadline. Most of the disasters he attends these days involve food illnesses.
A botulism diagnosis usually does not come from a county sheriff and cookies are usually not potential sources of the deadly disease.But late Wednesday, two West Virginia television stations reported that Barbour County Sheriff JW Harkins was investigating a botulism case linked to eating a package of frosted animal crackers.The sheriff said the case was reported to his office and...
The deadly pathogen known as E. coli O104:H4, which devastated northern Europe last year, can itself be killed, San Francisco-based AvidBiotics Corporation announced Wednesday.Dean Scholl, who leads a team of scientists from AvidBiotics and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said the group has created a highly targeted bactericidal protein to kill the life-threatening foodborne E. coli O104 strain. Genome sequencing...
Three of 19 children with laboratory-confirmed Salmonella infections are being treated in Ottawa hospitals in an outbreak that has also sickened four adults.Health officials in Canada's capital city investigating the outbreak have focused on a catering company called The Lunch Lady, which serves meals to 55 schools and day care facilities.Among the 16 lab-confirmed cases are children ranging in age...
The Hoosier Legislature is over, but it left behind an assignment for the Indiana State Board of Animal Health -- study whether farmers should sell unpasteurized milk to consumers and publish a report by Dec. 1.Those instructions are contained in House Bill (HB) 1129, a largely technical bill dealing with powers of the state chemist. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is...
Growing concern about the potential risk of Internet and vending machine sales of unpasteurized milk has the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency (FSA) thinking about revising the rules.The FSA Board, according to a news release, will decide March 20 whether the agency should review its current rules governing the sales and marketing of unpasteurized milk and cream. Although there has...
More than eight years ago, an adult Holstein cow on a cattle ranch near the edge of Washington state's Yakima Valley became the first-ever diagnosed with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) on U.S. soil.BSE, or Mad Cow Disease, was an international issue long before that diseased Holstein turned up. Yet, U.S. import regulations still are not in line with international standards.Now,...
Believe it or not, this week I was planning on writing one of those "dog that did not bark" stories about the fact that in no state has re-starting horse slaughter come up as a legislative issue.Sorry, I was the guy waiting in the harbor for a ship to come in while the party I was meeting arrived by train.Instead...
As Beef Products Inc. was being "slimed" this week -- from the blogosphere to network television -- David M. Theno was feeling unusually helpless watching from Tampa where he was keynoting the 2012 Annual Beef Industry Safety Summit, along with Food Safety News publisher Bill Marler.Theno, the guru who was brought in to save Jack in the Box after the...
Texas food columnist Bettina Siegel, author of "The Lunch Tray" about school lunches, is now taking on ammoniated beef -- the product dubbed "pink slime" made by the food safety leader Beef Products Inc.Siegel, who writes for the Houston Chronicle and the online Huffington Post, has decided to get involved in the ammoniated beef debate after The Daily, the iPad friendly...
For the former law professor who came up with the idea, it just moves around some pieces on the board in the name of fighting childhood obesity. But for California's fledgling food truck industry, it's going to pack the punch of an earthquake.And everyone agrees, it's new territory.Food trucks have had to carve out space in many local ordinances that...
Mayor Michael Bloomberg produced some fairly instant analysis earlier this week, crediting New York City's restaurant-inspection letter grades for both lower rates of Salmonella illnesses and greater restaurant revenues in the Big Apple.Based on just nine months of data, the mayor, Health Commissioner Thomas Farley and Health and Human Services head Linda Gibbs went so far as to suggest that...
In an election year when only 39 state legislative bodies are meeting in regular sessions, with most of those entering their second halves and no special sessions currently underway, there will likely be few changes involving raw milk regulation.In New Hampshire today, the "homestead food" bill -- which would allow the direct sale of raw milk products without requiring a...
Like something baked in a home kitchen, Colorado's cottage foods bill has ended up far more puffed up than when it started.The cottage foods bill now awaiting Gov. John Hickenlooper's signature gathered some amendments as it went through the legislative process at the Colorado statehouse. It ended up doing several things, including:- Exempting from licensing anyone selling fewer than 3,000 eggs...
Ignite a fire at a mountain-top restaurant, blow up a commercial radio tower, steal or turn livestock loose--even those mean little minks--and I am all for hunting down the perpetrators, arresting, charging and convicting them with multiple crimes already on the books.State and federal laws already adequately cover property crimes like those committed by the few extremists that the law...
Monsanto was not on mailing list used by U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter to ask food businesses about their policies on antibiotics in food, presumably because the St. Louis company does not have anything to do with antibiotic use in meat and poultry.But out of sheer curiosity, Food Safety News decided to pull Monsanto's lobbying disclosure forms.From an upper floor of...
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