Increasing demand in the U.S. for year-round access to all foods means more foreign food in grocery stores and that means more foodborne illness outbreaks from imported food.
Writing for the March edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, four researchers take a deep dive into outbreak…
Escherichia coli O157:H7 caused more outbreaks in the United States from 2003 through 2012 than during the previous 20 years, according to authors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Writing in the August edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC’s Katherine E. Heiman, Rajal K. Mody, Shacara D. Johnson, Patricia M. Griffin,…
During the three years from 2007 to 2009, 30 foodborne illness outbreaks in the U.S. were connected to raw milk consumption. Yet, in the next three years, from 2010 to 2012, that number rose to 51, according to a new study published in the January issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, a peer-reviewed monthly journal published…
Infections from a lesser-known foodborne pathogen most commonly associated with infants may be more common in elderly populations — and even adults and adolescents — than previously thought, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, set to be published in the September issue of…
A study from the Emerging Infections Program at Yale School of Public Health found that, in adults, campylobacteriosis is more common among those of higher socioeconomic status, but, for children younger than 10, more cases occurred among those of lower socioeconomic status. Researchers Kelley Bemis, Ruthanne Marcus and James Hadler grouped cases of campylobacteriosis reported…
A developing threat to the effectiveness of antibiotics are carbapenemases — enzymes that allow bacteria to break down carbapenem-class antibiotics, thereby developing resistance. What’s most troubling about carbapenemase-producing organisms is that they are resistant to most other classes of antibiotics as well. Carbapenems are used as a last resort. Infections from these bacteria are commonly…
In Southeast Asia, swamp eels are a common source of human gnathostomiasis, a foodborne zoonosis caused by parasitic Gnathostoma larvae. If the infected eels are eaten undercooked or raw, the parasite can cause mild to serious consequences in humans, including blindness, paralysis or even death. So researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey wanted to…
After analyzing four of the five types of Listeria implicated in last year’s deadly cantaloupe outbreak, scientists have discovered that a new outbreak strain was among those that contributed to the nearly 150 illnesses and 33 deaths caused by contaminated melons. The researchers, an international team of government and university scientists, also compared the strains…
Nancy Donley, an avid and educated food safety advocate with STOP Foodborne Illness (previously Safe Tables Our Priority), has often said, and I can only paraphrase here, that if you go back far enough in any E. coli outbreak investigation, you will eventually bump into a cow.
I assume she was referring to O157:H7, …
The leading Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are asking their Republican counterparts to hold a hearing on the public health threat posed by the rare and extremely virulent strain of E. coli responsible for the ongoing foodborne illness outbreak in Germany.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Ranking Member of the committee, Rep. …
In this editorial, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal (January 2011), the journal’s associate editor Dr. J. Glenn Morris discusses the new estimates of foodborne illness incidence in the United States and what they mean for food safety:
By J. Glenn Morris, Jr.
How safe …
