The number of U.S. food products recalled — and the costs associated with those recalls — have nearly doubled since 2002, according to a report by reinsurance company Swiss Re. In more than half of those recalls, the process of recalling the food cost the affected company more than $10 million. Some companies lost…
As Online Sales of Breast Milk Rise, Experts Warn of Dangers
With information abounding on the health benefits of breast milk for infants, a growing number of under-producing mothers are eschewing formula and instead turning to online marketplaces to buy breast milk directly from other moms. In the past year, somewhere around 55,000 women sold their excess breast milk online, up from 13,000 in 2011. Business…
Raw Milk: A Mother’s Story
My interest in health and nutrition began some 30 years ago. At 19 I quit smoking and for the first time in my life put on some extra pounds. (I’m sure it had something to do with the Hershey chocolate bars I consumed to ward off each and every cigarette craving.) Anyway, these extra pounds…
Gulf Seafood Not So Safe for Pregnant Women, Children?
If people living on the Gulf Coast trusted the federal government all that much, they might be in trouble right now.
In the first peer-reviewed challenge to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) safe levels for cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a new study says they were overestimated in Gulf seafood following the …
Drips Could Ruin Shredded Lettuce, Says FDA
Zuccaro’s Produce Co. in Minneapolis received a May 9 warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about drip or condensate in its building.
“Your plant and facilities must be constructed in such a way that drip or condensate from fixtures, ducts, and pipes does not contaminate food, food-contact surfaces, or food-packaging materials, to …
Refillable Soap Dispensers May Pose Risk
Liquid soap in bulk, refillable dispensers can become contaminated and actually increase the number of disease-causing microbes when people wash their hands with it, according to research published in the May issue of the journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Refillable dispensers are common in public restrooms, the researchers said, and outbreaks linked to contaminated …
Seattle Lab Finds Tainted Grocery Store Chickens
A Seattle microbiologist reports that he found the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus on nearly half, and Campylobacter on more than half, of 100 raw chicken samples collected from area grocery stores.
The contaminated poultry included organic as well as conventionally grown chickens.
Mansour Samadpour, the nationally known food scientist who runs the Institute for Environmental Health …
Researchers Unlock One E. coli Mystery
By following a “guiding light,” USDA researchers were able to unlock one piece of the baffling puzzle about how the potentially fatal E. coli O157:H7 can contaminate spinach and other salad greens.
The good news coming from the research is that while spinach roots can take in E. coli from contaminated soil or irrigation …
Has China Learned from Melamine Scandal?
Whether it was Great Leap Forward turning out to be a reversal or the Cultural Revolution ending up in chaos, it was years before China’s top political bodies felt secure enough to talk about any lessons learned from those experiences.
But that was when the People’s Republic of China was all red, not like now …
Floodwaters Increase Cholera Deaths in Haiti
A Cholera outbreak continues to spread in earthquak-ravaged Haiti. Late last week, the Pan American Health Organization announced that the death toll in the outbreak has risen from 442 three days ago to 501, while the number of people admitted to hospital for the waterborne illness has gone from 6,742 to 7,359.
Authorities were very …