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CDC now suspects Salsa, jalapeño peppers, green onions, cilantro.
USA TODAY
Federal investigators retraced their steps Monday as suspicions mount that fresh unprocessed tomatoes aren’t necessarily causing the salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds across the USA. Three weeks after the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers to avoid certain types of tomatoes linked to the salmonella outbreak, people are still falling ill, says Robert Tauxe with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The latest numbers as of Monday afternoon were 851 cases, some of whom fell ill as recently as June 20, says Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC’s division of foodborne diseases.

The CDC launched a new round of interviews over the weekend. “We’re broadening the investigation to be sure it encompasses food items that are commonly consumed with tomatoes,” Tauxe says. If another food is found to be the culprit after tomatoes were recalled nationwide and the produce industry sustained losses of hundreds of millions of dollars, food safety experts say the public’s trust in the government’s ability to track foodborne illnesses will be shattered. More

The FDA may never find the source because the salmonella may have its origins from “the first genetically modified organism (GMO), an E coli bug containing a salmonella gene…created in 1973. They introduced the GM technology to make herbicide resistance crops. “A wide range of plants have been modified, including cotton, oilseed rape and tobacco….Researchers are currently developing GM bananas that would include a dose of hepatitis B vaccine….”

WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) — The head of U.S. food safety efforts says it’s possible the government will never track down the source of the recent tomato salmonella outbreak.

David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration’s “food safety czar,” says that’s because fresh produce like tomatoes aren’t consistently labeled as to origin, and also because the outbreak, which sickened 277 people and hospitalized 43, is so widespread, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.

Acheson said that definitively pinning down where the bacteria originated may be impossible because, unlike jars of peanut butter, which were also subjects of a salmonella scare, individual tomatoes typically don’t have information about their origins. More

The Poultry Site
The animal rights group says that in the midst of avian flu outbreak in Darjeeling, they released undercover video footage of crowded and filthy conditions on chicken and egg factory farms, which leading health experts believe causes the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The findings were sent to the West Bengal government last year, and the government was warned about how unsanitary conditions on factory farms could lead to an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus. Because of the conditions that many chickens raised for meat and eggs are forced to endure, disease is rampant. On its website, the Environmental Defense Fund explains that “[a]ntibiotics are routinely fed to healthy livestock and poultry to make them gain weight faster and to compensate for unsanitary living conditions”, reports PETA.

According to researcher Malati Puranik, who conducted a study of chickens sold in Mumbai, “[W]e realised that poultry sold under such unhygienic conditions is a serious health hazard. Pathogens such as campylobacter and salmonella proliferate, causing severe bacterial contamination”. During the evisceration process, chicken carcasses easily become contaminated with faecal material when the intestines are cut or torn and the contents leak out during extraction. Read more

Fox News
CDC officials said dry dog food may be an under-recognized source of illness in humans, and they are unsure how the bacteria got into the dog food. Usually, Salmonella comes from undercooked meats and eggs. “They are a number of possible ways that that could happen,” said Dr. Casey Barton Behravesh, a CDC epidemiologist, who co-authored a report on the finding. “That’s something we are still trying to figure out.”

Humans became infected with Salmonella in 2006 and 2007 from dry dog food produced by Mars Petcare in Pennsylvania. Dogs were not affected, according to the May 16 issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, but a number of those affected were infants. Siegel said the strain of salmonella found in the dry dog found, S. Schwarzengrund, is of particular concern because the CDC has found it to be resistant to some antibiotics including Cipro. Read more

Photo Raychel

SEOUL, May 6 (Yonhap) — The bird flu outbreak that has swept South Korea reached the capital Seoul on Tuesday, prompting quarantine officials to decontaminate and limit access to a nearby children’s park and open air market. The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said tests conducted on four birds that started dying off from late April showed they were contaminated with the H5 avian influenza virus.
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