Dunn’s Dairy of Beacon View Farm, Devon, has recalled all date codes of its milk and cream products because of possible cross contamination of milk and insufficient heat processing. If you have bought any dairy products that have come from this farm, please do not drink or eat them. The Agency has issued a Product Information Recall Notice.
Health authorities are launching an investigation into food poisoning case in which 19 people fell ill after eating coral reef fish at a Lamma Island eatery on Saturday.
Fourteen men and five women, aged 23 to 71, had eaten fish at the seafood restaurant, and had fallen ill with symptoms of the potentially lethal ciguatera poisoning three to 19 hours later, the Centre for Health Protection said.
The restaurant in question was the Wai Kee Sea Food Restaurant in Sok Kwu Wan.
Symptoms can include numbness of the mouth and limbs, heart palpitations fatigue, vomiting, diarrhoea and flushes. Excessive consumption can also affect the circulatory and nervous systems.
Six of the diners had sought medical help and at least one person was admitted to hospital. All are in now in stable condition, the CHP said.
Pendle Ham and Bacon has recalled Cooked Corned Beef from their deli store in
Pendle Hill, NSW due to Listeria monocytogenes contamination. Food
products contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may cause illness in
pregnant women and their babies, the elderly and people with low immune systems.
Consumers should not eat this product. Any consumers concerned about their
health should seek medical advice.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Sunsprout Natural Foods are warning the public not to consume the Sunsprout and SproutsAlive brand alfalfa sprouts described below because they may be contaminated with Salmonella.
There have been no reported illnesses associated with the consumption of these products.
The manufacturer, Sunsprout Natural Foods, Brantford, Ontario, is voluntarily recalling the affected products from the marketplace. The CFIA is monitoring the effectiveness of the recall.
As part of an EU-wide baseline study, the BfR has investigated the presence of Listeria monocytogenes in smoked and gravad fish, soft and semi-soft cheese and also in heat-treated meat products. These foods are known to be potential carriers of elevated quantities of listeria. Overall, study results show that the prescribed microbiological criteria for Listeria monocytogenes are not always strictly adhered to in ready-to-eat foods. When limits are exceeded there is a risk of consumers contracting a Listeria monocytogenes infection. It is therefore imperative for food producers to ensure that the regulations are consistently met.
Many germs can be spread through food. Some, like Listeria, can be deadly. Listeria strikes hard at pregnant women and their newborns, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems. Listeria can cause miscarriage and meningitis. Most people found to have Listeria infection require hospital care and about 1 in 5 people with the infection die. Outbreak investigations tell us what foods make people sick and what needs to change to make food safer and save lives. We have made some progress against Listeria, which is the third leading cause of death from food poisoning. However, we can do more to protect people at higher risk for food poisoning and make food safer for everyone.
If you, or someone you make food for, are pregnant, 65 or older, or have a weakened immune system, you must be especially careful when selecting, preparing, and storing foods.
New CDC Vital Signs: Listeria Food Poisoning Striking Hard at Nation’s Most Vulnerable
Posted in Bacteria, CDC, Food Hygiene, Food Illness, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology, Food Poisoning, Food Safety, Food Safety Alert, Food Testing, Foodborne Illness, Hygiene, Illness, Laboratory, Listeria, Listeria monocytogenes, Microbiology, outbreak, Pathogen, Research
Tagged climate, cook chill, environment, health, listeria, outbreak investigations, science, vital signs, weakened immune system, weakened immune systems
Bay Cuisine, a New Zealand food company, will face charges in the Napier District Court for a Listeria outbreak last year that killed one woman and contributed to the death of another, the Dominion Post reports.
Bay Cuisine was the sole supplier of ready-to-eat meats to Hawke’s Bay Hospital, where the two victims were patients. The outbreak strain of Listeria was isolated from the meats and found at Bay Cuisine’s facilities.
The outbreak sickened four. A 60 year-old woman died as a direct result of her infection, while the bacteria contributed to the death of an 81 year-old woman.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new report finding that Listeria monocytogenes killed roughly one in five Americans infected in recent years.
The hepatitis A outbreak linked to a frozen berry mix sold at Costco and Harris Teeter stores has now sickened 79 people, 30 of whom were hospitalized, federal health officials reported Friday.
Cases have been reported in eight western states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Washington, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The illnesses have been linked to an organic mix of frozen berries and pomegranate seeds distributed by Oregon’s Townsend Farms. The berry blend was sold at Costco under the Townsend Farms brand and at Harris Teeter under the Harris Teeter brand.
To date, no cases have been reported on the East Coast, where Harris Teeter stores are located. CDC confirms that no cases have been linked to berries bought at Harris Teeter.
The hepatitis A outbreak associated with Townsend Farms berries sold at Costco has sickened at least 37 people in six states and raised a lot of questions. One of them is how does food become contaminated with hepatitis A?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated the Hepatitis A outbreak associated with Townsend Farms Organic Anti-Oxdant Blend frozen berry and pomegranate mix. Now 49 people are sick with acute Hepatitis A in seven states. And eleven people have been hospitalized. The numbers are most likely going to change every day.
Harris Teeter is recalling frozen mixed berries that may be contaminated with hepatitis A. The Matthews, NC-based grocery chain said Tuesday that it is removing Harris Teeter Organics Antioxidant Berry Blend from its stores out of an abundance of caution because its berry supplier is Townsend Farms Inc. which has been associated with an outbreak of hepatitis A that has sickened 37 people in six states. That product contained mixed berrie and pomegranate seeds.
Posted in CDC, Food Hygiene, Food Illness, Food Inspections, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology, Food Poisoning, Food Safety, Food Safety Alert, Food Testing, Food Virus, Foodborne Illness, Hepatitis A, Laboratory, Microbiology, Pathogen, Poisoning, Recall
Tagged environment, food, health, medicine, restaurants, science
A new approach may be able to reduce by more than half the time it takes health officials to identify Salmonella strains, according to researchers in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
The finding may significantly speed up the response to many outbreaks of foodborne illness, allowing epidemiological investigators to identify the exact strains of Salmonella that make people sick and to more quickly find — and eliminate — the source of the disease.
Working in collaboration with Carol Sandt, a scientist with the Bureau of Laboratories, Division of Clinical Microbiology in the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Eija Trees, a microbiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Shariat used Salmonella samples supplied by the state health department. Results of the study were published online in May in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
“Compared to the current method being used nationally and internationally to subtype Salmonella, our approach is faster,” Shariat said. “The significance of that is you need to trace the source of an outbreak as quickly as you can before you start insisting on restaurant and farm closures. It is important to pinpoint the source of the bacteria — the quicker you do that the quicker you can respond to the disease outbreak.”
This document describes the development of a tool to manage the risk of the transportation of cold food without temperature control. The tool uses predictions from ComBase predictor and builds on the 2009 U.S. Food and Drug Administration Model Food Code and supporting scientific data in the Food Code annex. I selected Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes as the organisms for risk management. Salmonella spp. were selected because they are associated with a wide variety of foods and grow rapidly at temperatures >17°C. L. monocytogenes was selected because it is frequently present in the food processing environment, it was used in the original analysis contained in the Food Code Annex, and it grows relatively rapidly at temperatures <17°C. The suitability of a variety of growth models under changing temperature conditions is largely supported by the published literature. The ComBase predictions under static temperature conditions were validated using 148 ComBase database observations for Salmonella spp. and L. monocytogenes in real foods. The times and temperature changes encompassed by ComBase Predictor models for Salmonella spp. and L. monocytogenes are consistent with published data on consumer food transport to the home from the grocery store and on representative foods from a wholesale cash and carry food service supplier collected as part of this project. The resulting model-based tool will be a useful aid to risk managers and customers of wholesale cash and carry food service suppliers, as well as to anyone interested in assessing and managing the risks posed by holding cold foods out of temperature control in supermarkets, delis, restaurants, cafeterias, and homes.
Posted in Bacteria, Food Hygiene, Food Micro Blog, Food Microbiology, Food Safety, Food Technology, Food Testing, Laboratory, Listeria, Listeria monocytogenes, Methods, Microbiology, Pathogen, Research, Salmonella
Tagged climate, environment, journal of clinical microbiology, model food code, salmonella spp, science
FoodWorld 