A week after softball fundraisers served up jambalaya in a Louisiana town of about 400, state health officials reported a food poisoning victim count of 158, with 40 hospitalized.
One person who ate the jambalaya has died, but it is not yet known whether a foodborne pathogen was the cause of death. Health officials ordered …
A second pathogen is in play in a northeast Louisiana outbreak thought to be caused by jambalaya served at a softball fundraising event Monday.
By Friday afternoon, 125 people were confirmed sick and investigators found some of them are positive for the bacterium Clostridium perfringens. Thursday state health officials said they had confirmed Salmonella in…
A bill to allow the sales of raw milk by a farmer to a consumer, which passed the Louisiana Senate on a 23-to-12 vote, has died in a House committee. The Committee on Agriculture, Forestry, Aquaculture and Rural Development killed the bill on a 8-7 vote. It is the third consecutive legislative session that lawmakers…
Office building owners on Poydras Street in New Orleans are worried about losing tenants and lease payments over Louisiana’s worst state budget crisis in 30 years. Like nearby Mississippi, where some state restaurant inspectors have already lost their offices and are working from their personal cars and homes, state government in Louisiana is way short…
When an exclusive private school suddenly extends its Easter break, it might be a good time to check with social media to see if, in fact, an outbreak of foodborne illness has occurred. That appears to be what has happened with Louisiana’s Silliman Institute, where the original schedule for the term shows Easter break not…
State legislatures remain in session from Alabama to Wyoming, with food safety mostly getting only a light touch from lawmakers who seem largely focused on budgets and education in this non-election year. In Alabama, where a new cottage food bill took effect last June 1, Extension services are getting more money for training people…
A House-passed bill to permit the sale or distribution of raw milk by the farmer directly to a consumer is dead in the Louisiana Senate. 
The lower chamber of the Louisiana Legislature easily approved House Bill 1279 on May 7 in a 78-19 vote. The favorable House floor vote came after the raw milk bill…
Debate on a Louisiana bill to allow on-the-farm raw milk sales by dairy farmers directly to consumers took a strange twist down the “what if” road last week. Under the bill, consumers would replace state inspectors for making sure the raw milk is safe for human consumption. That provision led to an eye-opening exchange between…
Two Democratic state lawmakers representing mostly rural parishes are getting a legislative hearing today on a raw milk bill. If that does not sound like much, consider that Baton Rouge political watchers say it’s been more than a decade since raw milk has come up for discussion in the Louisiana Legislature. 
The Committee on Agriculture,…
A left-right libertarian coalition led by U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is sponsoring two bills in Congress to permit the interstate sales of raw milk. Massie says the bills are but the first in a series of “food freedom” measures he plans to introduce. One would overturn the interstate ban on raw milk, while the…
