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Times Live

More than 70 pupils from Kei Road Primary School were rushed to Philani Clinic on Monday following yet another case of suspected food poisoning.

The Eastern Cape Department of Health said the pupils fell sick after eating sheep liver with pap at the school.

This comes as the Eastern Cape departments of health and education struggle to gain control of the diarrhoea outbreak in King William’s Town schools. More than a thousand pupils from 11 schools in the region were treated at three provincial hospitals last week.

DNA 

Three children of a family died in Junnar district due to suspected food poisoning, police said on Tuesday.

The incident took place last night after five children, including two girls, in the family started vomiting following which their parents took them to a nearby private hospital. The three minor victims were identified as Rahul (8), Sairaj (6) and Dhanraj (4).

Medical News Bulletin

Canadian researchers have discovered that exposure to food-borne pathogens that produce acute infectious gastroenteritis, more often known as food poisoning, may enhance the growth of the bacterium adherent-invasive E. coli, which has been associated with Crohn’s disease.

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease characterized by chronic inflammation of the intestines. Patients with the disease experience several symptoms, including cramping, diarrhea, abdominal pain, vomiting, weight loss and fatigue, and have an increased risk of premature death and an increased risk of colorectal cancer. The rate of Crohn’s disease in Canada is 1 in every 150 people, and ranks in the highest globally.

VNExpress 

Dozens of workers at the company also fell sick in a similar case five months ago.

Health officials in Ho Chi Minh City are taking food samples from a Chinese-owned garment company to investigate a mass poisoning case that happened on Saturday.

The officials said 109 workers at Worldon Company in Cu Chi District had had to be rushed to hospital after having a lunch of ground fish braised with shrimp, stir-fried vegetables and cabbage soup.

Seven of the workers had to stay in hospital overnight, and doctors said they were suffering from food poisoning.

Dozens of workers at the company also fell sick after lunch in May.

Worldon Vietnam is owned by Shenzhou International, a Chinese clothing manufacturer based in Zhejiang Province in eastern China. The company employs more than 6,000 workers.

Food poisoning has been on the rise in Ho Chi Minh City over the past five years, mostly involving school and factory meals.

Food Poisoning Bulletin

A study published in the Journal of Food Protection has found that while consumers think that organic foods are “safer” than conventionally grown or produced foods, the standards applied to those products do not directly address microbial or chemical safety issues. Researchers looked at the CDC’s Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System in this study. They found that there have been 18 food poisoning outbreaks linked to organic foods from 1992 to 2014.

FSIS USDA

This guidance document provides specific actions that retailers can take in the delicatessen (deli) area to decrease the potential for Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) growth or cross-contamination. In particular, the guidance covers:

•Actions identified by the Interagency Retail Lm Risk Assessment (see page 3) that can decrease the predicted risk of listeriosis from deli products;

•Information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Code, scientific literature, other guidance documents, and lessons learned from meat and poultry establishments that retailers can use to control Lm;

•Steps retailers can take to help ensure that deli products are maintained under sanitary conditions that do not allow Lm adulteration of the product; and

•A self-assessment tool that retailers can use to determine what practices they are currently using and what new practices to adopt to control Lm.

Results Update

FSANZ

Date notified to FSANZ

Food type

Product name

Package description and size

Date marking

Country of origin

Reason for recall

Distribution

Consumer advice

Contact

HPS

HPS

Mary Ann Liebert

Italy is one of the main producers and exporters of cheese made from unpasteurized sheep milk. Since raw milk and its derived products are known sources of human infections, cheese produced from raw sheep milk could pose a microbiological threat to public health. Hence, the objectives of the study were: to characterize the potential risk of the presence of pathogens Escherichia coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella in raw ovine milk destined for cheese production obtained from all the sheep farms (n = 24) in the Marches region (Central Italy) that directly transform raw milk into cheeses and to evaluate the equivalence between the analytical methods applied. A three-step molecular method (simultaneous culture enrichment, species-specific DNA magnetic isolation, and multiplex real-time polymerase chain reaction) was used for milk (n = 143) and cheese (n = 5) analysis over a 3-year period. L. monocytogenes was not detected on any of the farms, while E. coli O157 was found on three farms, although only using the molecular method. Four farms tested positive for Salmonella spp., and Salmonella enterica subsp. diarizonae serovar 61:k:1,5,7 was isolated in one of those cases. This information highlights the need to develop preventative measures to guarantee a high level of consumer safety for this specific product line, and the molecular method could be a time-saving and sensitive tool to be used in routine diagnosis.

Wiley Online Library

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