Ottawa, July 9, 2019 – Fresh Taste Produce Ltd. is recalling certain 794 G (28 OZ) Eat Smart brand Sweet Kale Vegetable Salad Bag Kits from the marketplace due to possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. Consumers should not consume the recalled product described below.
| Brand Name | Common Name | Size | Code(s) on Product | UPC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eat Smart | Sweet Kale Vegetable Salad Bag Kit | 794 G (28 OZ) | JUL 17 2019 2019 JL 17 2 00 183 |
7 09351 89140 3 |
According to new research from the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Pharmacy the drug tamoxifen may help fight the lethality of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) bacteria. That drug is already approved by the FDA for treatment of diseases such as breast cancer.
Cavi papayas from Agroson’s LLC are now linked to the Salmonella Uganda outbreak that was just announced by the CDC. Now 71 people in 8 states are sick. Twenty-seven people have been hospitalized because they are so ill.
Of 45 people who have provided information to investigators, 60% have been hospitalized. This is three times the hospitalization rate in a typical Salmonella outbreak. This particular strain of Salmonella Uganda is resistant to several antibiotics, which may explain the hospitalizations.
The Sarasota County Health Department (CHD) has identified a case of Hepatitis A in a food service worker in Sarasota. Following laboratory confirmation on July 3, Sarasota CHD immediately began conducting an epidemiological investigation and today determined that the individual worked at Piccolo Italian Market & Deli located at 6518 Gateway Avenue while infectious.
Police in East Texas say they have spoken with the suspect in a viral video seen licking a tub of Blue Bell ice cream before putting it back in the store’s freezer and have identified her as a juvenile.
In the video, which was uploaded to Twitter and has since been watched over 10 million times, the girl was seen licking an already opened tub of Blue Bell’s Tin Roof flavor ice cream, and then re-seal the ice cream and return it to a store’s freezer. All tubs of the flavor shown in the video were pulled from that store’s shelves.
Lufkin police dubbed her the “Blue Bell licker.” And while it might have been a comedic moniker, police took the investigation seriously. And the potential punishment is no laughing matter.
Lufkin police identified her earlier this week after officers found surveillance video of a female seen leaving the store, who matched the description of the suspect. She could face up to 20 years in prison if she’s charged with the second-degree felony.
It does make you think about proportionality in the criminal justice system. 20 years for licking ice cream? And, nothing – so far – for what happened to Blue Bell in 2015 when a total of 10 people infected with several strains of Listeria were reported from 4 states: Arizona (1), Kansas (5), Oklahoma (1), and Texas (3). Illness onset dates ranged from January 2010 through January 2015. The people with illness onsets during 2010–2014 were identified through a retrospective review of the PulseNet database for DNA fingerprints matching isolates collected from Blue Bell ice cream samples. All 10 (100%) people were hospitalized. Three deaths were reported from Kansas.
Two more probable E. coli cases have been linked to the San Diego County Fair, bringing the total of sick children to seven, according to the County of San Diego Health and Human Services. Those seven cases include four confirmed and three probable. A two-year-old boy sadly died on June 24, 2019 after visiting the fair.
All of the children had visited animal exhibits at the fair before they got sick. The two new cases are a 2-year-old who was at the fair on June 22, 2019, got sick on June 26, and was not hospitalized, and a 4-year-old who visited the fair on June 21, got sick on June 29, and is currently hospitalized.
This study was focused on determining survival and growth characteristics of Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus on conventional (16.7 mg of sodium/g) and low‐sodium (10.7 mg of sodium/g) bacon. The two types of bacon were inoculated with the either L. monocytogenes or S. aureus stored at 4, 12, or 25°C for up to 7 days. Populations of L. monocytogenes and S. aureus did not change significantly on bacon stored at 4 and 12°C, regardless of sodium content. L. monocytogenes remained at 1.0–1.5 log cfu/g of conventional bacon stored at 25°C for 7 days but increased to 3.5 log cfu/g on low‐sodium bacon stored for 4 days. Within 1 and 3 days at 25°C, S. aureus increased, respectively, to 4.5 log cfu/g and 7.3 log cfu/g of low‐sodium bacon. Within 7 days at 25°C, populations increased to 8.1 log cfu/g of low‐sodium bacon and 3.7 log cfu/g of conventional bacon. This study shows that L. monocytogenes can grow on low‐sodium bacon stored at 25°C. S. aureus can grow on bacon stored at 25°C, regardless of sodium content, but the presence of 16.7 mg of sodium/g, compared to 10.7 mg/g, retards the rate of growth.
At 25°C, L. monocytogenes and S. aureus grew more rapidly on low‐sodium bacon than on conventional bacon. Low‐sodium bacons increase concern for microbiological safety.
Image CDC
A team of investigators has made a key discovery that could make a vaccine for the norovirus a reality.
A study published in the journal Immunity describes how a research team discovered an antibody that is capable of broadly inhibiting several strains of pandemic norovirus.
“In order to design an effective vaccine for norovirus, scientists needed to identify a neutralizing antibody that could work against many strains of the virus, as well as strains that will circulate in the future,” Ralph Baric, PhD, an author on the study, said in a press release. “This information can now be used to build better human vaccines.”
Human noroviruses are the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis and account for nearly 1 in 5 cases of diarrhea and vomiting. Estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that noroviruses cause approximately 200,000 deaths per year, which mostly occur in infants, children, and the elderly.
Although there are more than 30 genotypes of human norovirus, approximately 60% of outbreaks are caused by GII.4 genotype strains, which have caused periodic human pandemics.
The study team comprised investigators from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of Texas at Austin, and the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center. The team says that the most important discovery of their research is that a human antibody can bind to a conserved region of the virus that is common in the various strains, potentially neutralizing all GII.4 strains of norovirus that exist in nature.
After a young boy was infected with Vibrio, a type of flesh-eating bacteria recently near Ocean City, health officials say this case is rare and local waterways are still safe to swim in.
The boy’s mother, Brittany Carey, described what happened to her son in a June 29 Facebook post. According to Carey, her son was swimming in the Sinepuxent Bay just north of the Harry Kelley Memorial Bridge between West Ocean City and downtown.
FoodWorld 