Gretchen is a Seattle-based reporter covering issues ranging from child nutrition to local agriculture to foodborne illness outbreaks and global food safety issues. In June of 2011 she reported from Hamburg on the European E. coli outbreak. Gretchen graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in English and French before moving to the pacific northwest to trade snow for rain and plains for mountains. Gretchen delved into the world of food safety last year, after being a lifelong foodie, to find out what issues compromise the security of her favorite pastime – eating, and what can be done about them. Gretchen is excited to be part of the diverse and passionate Food Safety News team.
A study published today in MiBio lends further weight to the growing theory that using animal antibiotics in livestock contributes to drug resistance among human bacteria.Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a strain of Staph that's resistant to methicillin - the drug most commonly used to treat Staph infections. Using a detailed DNA mapping technique, researchers at the Translational Genomics...
In the wake of the devastating European E. coli outbreak linked to sprouts that killed at least 50 people and sickened more than 4,000, experts from the European Union and the United States are calling for new research on how to combat toxic strains of E. coli.In November of 2011, 4 months after the outbreak ended, an international group of...
In an ideal world, perhaps all of our food would be screened for pathogens before we consume it. But in reality, such testing is expensive and time-consuming for companies. Most producers do not have the capacity to test for pathogens themselves and must send samples out to a lab. Results can take 2 or more days to process. For companies...
One more victim of the nationwide outbreak of Listeria infection linked to Colorado cantaloupes died this week, bringing the death toll up to 32. When the epidemic was declared over in December of last year, it was already the deadliest foodborne illness outbreak in the U.S. in nearly 100 years, having killed 30 of the 146 people sickened, and caused a...
The field is narrowing in the search for the mysterious "Restaurant Chain A," implicated by public health officials as the source of a Salmonella outbreak that sickened 68 people in 10 states in October and November last year. Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the outbreak two weeks ago, no federal or state agency yet has...
The trucking industry is gearing up to invest in new technologies and tighten shipping procedures in order to meet the Obama Administration's new food safety regulations.In December of 2010, Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which mandated improvements across the food safety system. For the transportation industry, these changes include a requirement that the Department of Health and...
A group of French tourists returned home from Turkey last fall with diarrheal illnesses, and two of them developed a life-threatening kidney disease linked to the foodborne pathogen E. coli.Now French health officials have completed an investigation into this illness cluster and say the two women were infected with a strain of E. coli similar to the rarely seen bacteria...
A controversial animal drug, fed to a majority of pigs raised in the United States, has become the focus of a long-running trade dispute centered on meat exports. Ractopamine hydrochloride - used to keep swine lean and boost their growth in the last weeks before slaughter - is administered to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs raised in...
In an effort to lower childhood obesity rates - which have been climbing rapidly over the past 3 decades - the Obama Administration is raising the bar on school nutrition. With the help of First Lady Michelle Obama, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Wednesday revealed a new set of regulations for school meals, marking the first overhaul of these standards...
Federal regulators plan to trim the fat on poultry inspection costs in the U.S. by concentrating on measures proven to boost food safety and cutting out excessive steps, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday.In a proposed rule, the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) said it will be shifting its focus at chicken and turkey slaughter plants from supervising processing...
While dogs may indeed be man's best friend, it turns out that they also have the ability to harbor one of man's most common enemies - norovirus.A study out of Finland has shown that pet dogs can carry human strains of norovirus and pass them on to people in the household.Researchers at the University of Helinski's Department of Food Hygiene...
The top left corner of the menu at Jimmy John's restaurants jokingly tells customers that the store was established "to add to students GPA and general dating ability."But an investigation into the cause of a foodborne illness outbreak in Northwest Indiana shows that the sub shop may have been responsible for making 60 area residents un-datable, at least for a...
Nearly three months after E. coli O157:H7 sickened 25 people who attended the North Carolina State Fair, investigators know little more about what caused the outbreak, other than it originated in a livestock building on the fairgrounds. Field notes published Thursday, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, confirmed that the...
The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it will be restricting the use of cephalosporin - a type of antibiotic - in food animals in order to prevent the growth of antibiotic-resistant strains of human diseases.The cephalosporin class of drugs is used to treat a variety of serious conditions, including skin infections, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, abdominal infections, bone...
Few parents make a habit of feeding their kids Twinkies for breakfast. But children who eat some of the leading brands of cereal are getting just as much or more sugar as is in one of those dessert snacks, according to a new study.The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reviewed 84 brands of children's breakfast cereals and found that two thirds...
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