Researchers Need to Distinguish Between Salmonella Strains

With so many different strains of salmonella infections, it makes sense to continue refining the methods used to distinguish them. According to the article below, the CDC uses a method of DNA fingerprinting track the strain that caused the outbreak, but it doesn't work so well with Salmonella Enteritidis, so they're are developing a new and more accurate method of acquiring the bacteria's identity.
   . . . June


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Researchers developing way to distinguish between salmonella strains:
Penn State Live  Tuesday, September 21, 2010

University Park, Pa. — As scientists with the federal government search for the source of the salmonella that made thousands of people sick this summer and trace how it spread, researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences are developing a new and more accurate method of acquiring the bacteria's identity.

The outbreak began last May. By August, at least 1,000 more people than usual around the country had gotten sick with salmonella poisoning. Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration discovered that two large enterprises in Iowa supplied eggs that carried a common type of salmonella, Salmonella Enteritidis, frequently associated with eggs. More than 500 million eggs from those farms were recalled, and investigators are piecing together how the outbreak occurred.

Hospitals reported the cases to state health authorities, who took a kind of genetic fingerprint of the bacteria and passed that information along to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. But in this case, the genetic fingerprint wasn't very helpful for tracing the bacteria because it was the most common fingerprint for Salmonella Enteritidis in CDC’s database.

As a result, "Investigators couldn't tell if all those people really got sick from the same thing," said Stephen Knabel, professor of food science, who has been working with faculty colleague Edward Dudley for the past year to develop a new and more accurate method for DNA fingerprinting the top 10 types of salmonella bacteria.

"The problem is that different strains of Salmonella Enteritidis are highly related and very difficult to distinguish between," Knabel said. "The CDC uses a method of DNA fingerprinting called PFGE to track the strain that caused the outbreak, but it doesn't work so well with Salmonella Enteritidis."

Read More . . .

Are Antibiotics In Livestock Feed Partly to Blame For Drug-resistant Bacteria?

 The article below brings out a very valid point. They say that the practice of lacing animals' feed with low-dose antibiotics to accelerate their growth is spreading drug-resistant bacteria to humans and rendering common antibiotics useless to treat illness. After all, isn't that why our doctors are being so careful not to treat every minor infection we have with antibiotics? 
     . . . June


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Doctors sound alarm over antibiotics in livestock feed
The Green Man:

The Canadian Medical Association is pressuring the federal government to investigate the human health impacts of feeding antibiotics to healthy beef cattle, poultry and hogs.

Doctors and scientists say the practice of lacing animals' feed with low-dose antibiotics to accelerate their growth is spreading drug-resistant bacteria to humans and rendering common antibiotics useless to treat illness.

A food chain contaminated by drug-resistant bacteria bodes ill for both public health and the cost of health care, and as drug resistance in microbes increases, the number of effective antibiotics in the doctors' arsenal has dropped.

"As doctors we are seeing that people have infections that were easily treated years ago, when all the basic antibiotics took care of most of the infections that people had," said Vancouver physician Dr. Bill Mackie, chairman of the environmental health committee of the B.C. Medical Association. "Of late there has been increasing [drug] resistance; when you put someone on an antibiotic that you expect to do its job, it doesn't work."

When a course of antibiotic treatment fails, people stay sick longer and doctors must resort to more exotic and often more expensive drugs, Mackie said.

The BC Centre for Disease Control has tracked a rise in the number of courses of antibiotics required to treat common bacterial illnesses, such as bladder infections.

Medical authorities are also grappling with a rise in multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which mainly affects hospital patients but is also found in hogs and cattle, where it can be passed to humans, according to a 2009 report by the European Food Safety Authority.

Read on . . .

Thousands Sickened as Senate Stalls on Food Safety

 Food recalls are becoming so prevalent that we tend to ignore them most of the time unless it's directly related to us. An article like the one below really opens our eyes. It's not just the major recalls that are publicized but the thousands of others which weren't quite severe enough to immediately threaten our lives. We're dodging bullets here.
    . . . June


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Tons of Foods Recalled and Thousands Sickened as Senate Stalls on Food Safety:
September 11, 2010 18:49 Source: Center for Science in the Public Interest

As the nation reels from the impact of a massive egg recall that has sickened well over 1,500 people, survivors of foodborne illness and consumer advocates say that antiquated laws and poor enforcement are to blame.

According to a new report, the massive egg recall is only the latest—but largest—of 85 recalls that companies made while food safety reform legislation has been pending in the Senate, and since similar legislation passed the House in July of 2009. All told, at least 1,850 people have been sickened from foods subject to a recall, according to a report issued today by three consumer groups. And since foodborne illness is dramatically underreported, the actual toll of illness is almost certainly in the tens of thousands.

“Recalls and outbreaks are the most public consequence of our ‘horse and buggy’ food safety system,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. “Consumers are sometimes sickened and everyone up and down the chain has to check for, remove, and destroy the contaminated products. Only Congress can fix the underlying problems by passing legislation that has been languishing in the Senate for over a year.

In the 13-month period since the House passed H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act, researchers from CSPI, Consumer Federation of America, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group identified 85 separate recalls linked to at least 1,850 illnesses. 36 of those recalls were due to Salmonella contamination of lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, green onions, and ground pepper. Hydrolyzed vegetable protein contaminated with Salmonella spurred the recall of a wide variety of soup and dip mixes, dressings, and seasonings. 32 recalls, mostly from contaminated cheeses, were due to dangerous Listeria bacteria. E. coli bacteria on shredded romaine lettuce sickened at least 26 people in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Read on . . .

Are 'Egg Factories" Breeding Ground For Salmonella?

 This article from The Atlantic is really an eye-opener. It lays out the case that the huge "egg factories" housing millions of caged hens which never see the light of day, surrounded by manure, rodents and flies may well be the breeding ground for these diseases.
   . . . June


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Where the Salmonella Really Came From

Food - The Atlantic:Sep 8 2010, 9:09 AM ET


It's been nearly one month since the nationwide recall of 550 million eggs, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still hasn't figured out where the salmonella that sickened 1,470 people originated.

Well, I know where it originated, and I am about to reveal it here, both to save the FDA further trouble and to warn the public that the food safety bill currently before the Senate (which may be fast-tracked as election-wary lawmakers return from their break) might not prevent future food contamination epidemics. In fact, it could even cause serious harm to conscientious farmers whose meat, poultry, and produce has never sickened anybody.

Put simply, the cause of the current salmonella outbreak is industrial-scale factory farming, which has also been the cause of virtually every instance of bacterial food contamination the country has experienced in recent years. Huge farms and processors that ship their products across the nation have given us E. coli in ground beef and spinach, Salmonella in peanut butter and fresh salsa, and Listeria in processed chicken. Scanning this list of food-borne illness outbreaks in the United States in the last 15 years, I can find only one instance, Listeria-tainted milk from Whitter Farms in Massachusetts, where a small, local operation sickened its customers.

FDA officials who examined the farms behind the current rash of egg-induced sicknesses were shocked to discover evidence of manure—along with rodents, flies, cats, and birds—in the facilities, which housed 7.7 million caged hens. I, too, maintain a flock of laying hens, although mine is only a dozen strong. My chickens sleep in an abandoned horse stable and spend their days running loose, pecking and scratching around the property. They are no strangers to manure, flies, cats, birds, and the occasional rodent. But my eggs have never sickened anyone. Hens have been living in proximity to insects, mice, and other wildlife for millennia. What is new are the huge facilities containing millions of caged birds that never see the light of day.

Read on . . .

Did Federal Inspectors Ignore Complaints about Conditions At The Egg Farm?

 Did the 2 egg farms comply with regulations or were there some irregularities which should have been addressed. According to the article below, two former workers from one of those egg farms said that federal inspectors ignored complaints about conditions at the farm. Could this outbreak have been discovered before it infected so many?
   . . . June

Former Egg Farm Employees Say Their Complaints Were Ignored: Report: "Two former workers at one of the two Iowa egg farms implicated in the massive recall of salmonella-contaminated eggs said federal inspectors who worked at the two farms ignored complaints about conditions at one of the sites, the Associated Press reported Friday.

The two workers, employed at Wright County Egg facilities, said they reported problems such as leaking manure and dead chickens to U.S. Department of Agriculture employees, but nothing was done, the news service reported.

A spokesman for the Agriculture Department, Caleb Weaver, said the federal employees' main duties were "grading" the eggs and they weren't primarily responsible for looking for health problems. Weaver also said the USDA employee who oversaw grading at the facility did not recall anyone raising concerns, the AP said.

On Monday, U.S. health investigators detailed a slew of violations that included the presence of manure pits, rodents and dead flies at the two Iowa farms implicated in the recent egg recall due to salmonella infection.

"These are significant deviations from what should be happening," Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said during an afternoon news conference at which the agency released the results of what is known as a "483" inspection report.

The "observations" are a clear violation of the new egg rule put into place in July, added David Elder, director of the FDA's Office of Regional Operations.

Both Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms "failed to fully implement and follow procedures in its salmonella and derivatives prevention plan," Elder said.

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