Latest Foodborne illness Stories

Discovery could play role in treatments for food and prep areas Researchers at Washington State University have found that a compound in garlic is 100 times more effective than two popular antibiotics at fighting the Campylobacter bacterium, one of the most common causes of intestinal illness. Their work was recently published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. The discovery opens the door to new treatments for raw and processed meats and food preparation surfaces. "This...

LANSING, Mich., April 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Neogen Corporation (Nasdaq: NEOG) has developed the quickest and easiest test system to definitively detect pathogen DNA in food and environmental samples. Neogen's revolutionary ANSR(TM) for Salmonella is the first pathogen test available for the system, and will provide results after only 10 minutes of reaction time. Other commercially available molecular amplification tests require up to 3 hours of reaction time. Unlike the older...

UC Santa Barbara researchers have discovered Salmonella bacteria that are up to 100 times more capable of causing disease. Their findings may help prevent food poisoning outbreaks that continue to plague public health and the food industry. These "hypervirulent" bugs can override vaccines and pose a risk to food safety –– and mitigation efforts are currently under way. Previous strategies to find the more dangerous bugs were unsuccessful since they behave like a "Trojan Horse"...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A recent discovery of "hypervirulent" Salmonella bacteria has given UC Santa Barbara researchers Michael Mahan and Douglas Heithoff a means to potentially prevent food poisoning outbreaks from these particularly powerful strains. Their findings, in a paper titled "Intraspecies Variation in the Emergence of Hyperinfectious Bacterial Strains in Nature," have been published in the journal PLoS Pathogens. Salmonella is the most common cause of infection,...

CARLSBAD, Calif., April 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has extended its recent method equivalency finding of the Applied Biosystems TaqMan® Salmonella Enteritidis Detection Kit to test poultry eggs for additional use on environmental samples at production houses where the breakfast staple is handled and packaged. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110216/MM49339LOGO) The kit...

The Center for Disease control (CDC) is reporting that 90 people in 19 states, including the District of Columbia, have become ill in a new Salmonella outbreak. As investigators look for the source of the Salmonella outbreak, consumers have not yet been advised to avoid a particular food or restaurant chain. The CDC has yet to officially announce which states have been affected by this outbreak of an unusual bacteria strain known as Salmonella Bareilly. According to reports, the first...

BALTIMORE, April 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- InstantLabs Medical Diagnostics Corporation (InstantLabs®), developer of the portable Hunter Accelerated Real-Time PCR® system, today announced that its Salmonella Species Food Safety Kit has been certified as Performance-Tested Methods(SM)( )(PTM) No. 031202 by the AOAC Research Institute (AOAC-RI). The award follows independent laboratory studies conducted by Food Safety Net Services (FSNS). The PTM certification mark is widely...

OTTAWA, April 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - With Easter upon us, Health Canada would like to remind Canadians of the importance of proper handling and preparation of eggs to prevent foodborne illness. Although Salmonella is not very common in Canadian eggs, some people are more susceptible to it, particularly young children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems. Therefore, it is recommended that eggs be cooked thoroughly when serving them to people in...

Take an ounce of lettuce, test it for 17 hours, and the results show whether that mainstay ingredient in green salads is contaminated with Salmonella, the food poisoning bacteria that sickens millions of people each year. Another traditional test takes 72 hours to complete. How about a test that identifies Salmonella in five minutes, so that shipments of lettuce can be confiscated before they reach the table? Scientists today described development and successful testing of just such a test...

A vaccine could be developed to prevent Campylobacter being carried in chickens. This approach could drastically cut the number of cases of food poisoning, saving the UK economy millions each year, says an American scientist presenting his work at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Dublin. Food-borne illness costs the UK an estimated £2 billion each year. Campylobacter is the leading cause of food-borne illness and is responsible for about 30% of cases in the UK....