NSW recorded its worst figures for salmonella poisonings for at least five years in 2016, with a record 4,445 cases of salmonellosis. A total of 1391 salmonellosis cases were reported in NSW last summer.
Statistics released in January showed 2016 was the worst year on record for diseases including legionnaires’ disease, salmonellosis, listeriosis, E. coli and dengue fever, which flourish in warmer conditions.
Salmonellosis was caused by the bacteria salmonella found in animal products.
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Another person has died as a result of the food-borne disease listeriosis‚ the Gauteng health department said on Monday.
Spokesperson Lesemang Matuka said a pregnant woman had died of the disease in Pretoria. Matuka said he would share more information once officials have received a report from the infection control team.
The national health department issued a warning of the listeriosis outbreak last week. At the time‚ Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said a total of 557 cases had been detected this year alone‚ with 36 deaths recorded in the last 11 months.
The country usually records 60-80 infections each year but it was not clear whether any of these had resulted in fatalities since the disease has not been deemed a notifiable disease before this year.
“Most cases (62%) have been reported from Gauteng province‚” Motsoaledi said‚ adding that the province had accounted for 345 of the cases reported.
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Pizza, meatloaf, pasta salad, deli sandwiches, rotisserie chicken, a full Chinese food buffet – and yes, even sushi are common fan favourites found in supermarket café’s and deli section for grocery shoppers wanting to dine in or pick up a quick and easy meal while grocery shopping. While this diversification in retail offerings opens the door to winning over cliental, the same door also opens supermarkets up to liabilities in the event of a food safety compromise or its prepared products.
According to Donna F. Schaffner, Associate Director in Food Safety, Quality Assurance and Training for Rutgers Food Innovation Center, using Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, better known as HACCP, is an effective way to reduce dangers.
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A multi-country outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes PCR serogroup IVb, MLST ST6 has been ongoing in the EU/EEA since at least 2015. Twenty-six cases from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom have been classified as a confirmed microbiological cluster on the basis of whole genome sequencing (WGS) analysis, including core genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based analysis, depending on the country. Four cases have died (case fatality 15.4%).
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Ten percent of all strong-evidence foodborne outbreaks in the European Union are caused by Salmonella related to eggs and egg products. UV light may be used to decontaminate egg surfaces and reduce the risk of human salmonellosis infections. The efficiency of continuous UV-C (254 nm) and pulsed UV light for reducing the viability of Salmonella Enteritidis, Listeria monocytogenes, and enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli on eggs was thoroughly compared. Bacterial cells were exposed to UV-C light at fluences from 0.05 to 3.0 J/cm2 (10 mW/cm2, for 5 to 300 s) and pulsed UV light at fluences from 1.25 to 18.0 J/cm2, resulting in reductions ranging from 1.6 to 3.8 log, depending on conditions used. Using UV-C light, it was possible to achieve higher reductions at lower fluences compared with pulsed UV light. When Salmonella was stacked on a small area or shielded in feces, the pulsed UV light seemed to have a higher penetration capacity and gave higher bacterial reductions. Microscopy imaging and attempts to contaminate the interior of the eggs with Salmonella through the eggshell demonstrated that the integrity of the eggshell was maintained after UV light treatments. Only minor sensory changes were reported by panelists when the highest UV doses were used. UV-C and pulsed UV light treatments appear to be useful decontamination technologies that can be implemented in continuous processing.
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Company spokesman Michel Nalet told AFP “nearly 7,000 tonnes” of production may have been contaminated, but the company is unable to say currently how much remains on the market, has been consumed or is in stock.
One of the world’s biggest producers of dairy products sells its baby milk in packets ranging from 350-950 grams which are marketed globally under a host of brand names.
The recall will affect consumers in countries as diverse as China, Pakistan, Britain and Sudan, underlining the reach of the company and the difficulty in trying to trace all the potentially at-risk powder.
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The holiday cruise season is steaming toward the New Year having logged less than one foodborne illness outbreak a month thus far in 2017 that met the CDC’s criteria for public posting.As of Dec. 8, there had been 10 such outbreaks involving nine ships from five cruise lines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentage of passengers sickened on the cruises ranges from 3.3 percent on a Holland America ship to 22.8 percent on a Lindbald Expeditions ship.
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CAPE TOWN – A person has died from a form of food poisoning in Port Elizabeth.
The provincial Health Department says that a farmer, who had been admitted to hospital in late September, died from listeriosis.
Lab results have only recently been released confirming the cause of death.
Thirty-six listeriosis deaths have been confirmed nationally with more 500 people being treated.
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A restaurant’s faulty drainage system—thought to harbor Salmonella bacteria in biofilms—was the likely source of a long and perplexing outbreak in England, with repeated lab testing of environmental samples and comparison with clinical samples playing a key role in solving the mystery.
A research team led by Public Health England (PHE) reported its findings today in the latest edition of Eurosurveillance.
PHE first learned of the outbreak in March 2015 when its office in East Midlands received a report from a local hospital lab about 21 patients who had been diagnosed as having Salmonella Typhimurium infections, 7 of them sick enough to be hospitalized, in the previous month.
Eventually, 82 cases among restaurant customers were linked to the outbreak, including 72 confirmed infections and 10 suspected Salmonella illnesses. Early in the outbreak, whole-genome sequencing pointed to a strong link between the cases and likely point-source contamination at the restaurant.
Interviews with patients revealed that several had eaten at the same restaurant before their symptoms began. The newly built full-service chain restaurant was popular and featured a salad bar and a self-service meat carvery buffet.
Despite several intensive steps to control the outbreak, new Salmonella infections continued to be reported until 2016.
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The owners of a Sylvania bakery at the centre of a Salmonella outbreak that affected more than 200 people in January 2016 have been fined a total of $122,000 and ordered to pay $7,199 professional costs after each was convicted of ten breaches of the Food Act 2003.
The owners of the Box Village Bakery, Thi Thu Ngo and Hung Son Le each pleaded guilty to five breaches of selling unsafe food, and five breaches of failing to meet food safety standards and were fined $61,000 each.
The NSW Food Authority commenced investigation into the bakery after it was notified of an outbreak where each of the affected people had eaten from the premises.
There were 203 documented cases of people who had presented to hospitals and other health care providers with symptoms of gastroenteritis including vomiting, diarrhea and fever after consuming bakery items such as chicken rolls and salads that were linked back to the bakery.
During its investigation the NSW Food Authority issued a Prohibition Order requiring the business to cease operations.
The business was only permitted to reopen and trade after it completed extensive work to ensure the bakery had been thoroughly cleaned and fully compliant with food safety laws.
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