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Joe Whitworth is a food and beverage trade journalist. Prior to reporting for Food Safety News, he worked for William Reed Business Media since 2012 as Editor of Food Quality News before becoming food safety editor for Food Navigator. Whitworth has moderated sessions at Food Ingredients Europe in 2015 and The Ingredients Show in 2018. Before joining William Reed, he worked on newspapers run by Fairfax Media in Australia. Whitworth graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).

Researchers have detailed the first E. coli O103 outbreak in England traced to raw milk cheese.

In June 2022, routine microbiological surveillance at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) identified 12 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) O103:H2 cases.

People fell ill between May and June 2022. Seven cases were female

Continue Reading Rare English E. coli O103 outbreak linked to raw milk cheese

Beetroot salad contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus was the likely source of illness onboard two flights from Nepal.

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health in Hong Kong said 43 passengers, 22 men and 21 women, on two flights from Kathmandu earlier this month were affected.

They

Continue Reading Beetroot salad suspected in flight-related outbreaks; 43 passengers sickened

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) is to develop guidance for sellers of food on social media after a survey found buying products in this way was more common than predicted.

Research focused on ready-to-eat (RTE) food sold on Facebook Marketplace in Scotland. A total of 476 advertisements were included in the

Continue Reading Food Standards Scotland looks into food sold on Facebook, other social media

Norway has reported its largest foodborne outbreak in almost 50 years with 230 people sick.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) said 105 people are infected with Salmonella Newport and 120 with Salmonella Typhimurium. The remaining five are infected with other types of Salmonella.

Patients became ill from mid-October

Continue Reading Norway reports largest outbreak in decades with 230 sick; sprouts blamed

Investigations into E. coli outbreaks often fail to find the outbreak strain in food or environmental samples, according to a review.

Scientists used Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) as a model pathogen to investigate the success of outbreak strain isolation from food or environmental samples during investigations.

The main reasons

Continue Reading Outbreak strain often not found in E. coli investigations