The Salmonella-infection multistate outbreak associated with contaminated sushi tuna has not abated. As of the first week of May, some 268 people in 24 states and the District of Columbia had been sickened, 32 of them sick enough to need hospitalization. Although many restaurants now have made a food safety training and certification  an employment…

A lawsuit has been filed against a Charlotte, North Carolina restaurant, Toast of Dilworth, which served Eggs Benedict that apparently sickened 10 customers with Salmonella enteritidis infection. The formal complaint was made by Seattle food-safety law firm Marler Clark on behalf of Bryan McWherter, a Charlotte resident. Because food safety depends to a large degree…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that the multistate outbreak linked to Salmonella-contaminated sushi tuna is expanding with more cases being reported every week. As of the last week of April, 190 cases of Salmonella bareilly infection (in 21 states) had been reported and 10 cases (in five states) had been…

A new light is being shone on testing for Salmonella. It’s called surface-enhanced Raman scattering or SERS, a testing method that uses laser light to identify the bacteria strain under scrutiny. The new method takes advantage of the fact that each variety of bacteria produces a unique spectral pattern called a “Raman spectral signature” when…

The U.S. has seen (and suffered) Salmonella infections climb 10 percent in recent years, accounting for about a million people across the country falling ill from the pathogen every year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Salmonella infections represent nearly half of the hospitalizations and deaths among the nine foodborne illnesses…

The federation of State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) is up in arms over federal plans to cut the Agriculture Department’s whole budget of $5 million for the Microbiological Data Program (MDG), effectively eliminating the nation’s largest produce testing program. According to PIRG, MDG is responsible for screening high-risk fresh produce for pathogens such as…

Safe food handling just got a boost with the release recently of Applied Biosystems TaqMan, a new Salmonella enteritidis (SE) detection kit used on eggs. The kit already enjoys an “interim” approval for environmental sampling from the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP), the U.S. Department of Agriculture arm that oversees safety standards at poultry houses….

To comply with the strict Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines on food safety, the FDA Food Code, North Carolina is expected to replace a dog-eared set of regulations it introduced almost a generation ago, in 1976. For the restaurant owner and workers the new, more stringent code means, for example, that restaurant employees who…

The final word is out on the raw clover sprouts in Jimmy John’s sandwiches, implicated in the multistate E. coli infection that ran from late December 2011 to early March of 2012. The early-quarter outbreak, downed 29 individuals who had eaten at one of the Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwich restaurants. Mindful of the prevalence of…

Ninety individuals in 19 states, plus the District of Columbia, have been sickened by what is suspected to be Salmonella Bareilly poisoning. The outbreak is being linked to sushi, say sources in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but more investigation is underway to isolate its origin. As of the first week of April,…

Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) is set to put a damper on traditional alcohol-fueled revelry on Texas beaches this spring break, but parents and the public in general aren’t complaining. The potential showstoppers (for college students, at least) are two apps being developed for the TABC: an app that will help alcohol-imbibing users to gauge…

Eating out means eating right. In the midst of food recalls and multi-state foodborne illness outbreaks, the injunction has never been truer—especially for pregnant moms, who must be particularly careful of what they eat because of their compromised immune systems. That’s not to say of course that moms should chuck all trips to Taco Bell…

Responding to nationwide concern over and criticism of the beef filler called “lean finely textured beef” (LFTB), aka pink slime, the second and third largest grocery chains in the U.S., Safeway and SuperValu respectively, have decided to stop carrying the product. Although the controversy over the beef filler has taken on the urgency of a…

Restaurant owners are protesting the new restaurant-inspection scheme being implemented in the city and county of Denver. The restaurateurs, who have long adopted the food-safety-conscious practice of requiring food safety certification or food protection courses as employment requisites, are upset. They claim that more fines now result from the inspections. The new fine schedule for…

Five outbreak investigation centers for foodborne illnesses, also called the Food Safety Integrated Centers of Excellence, are in danger of not seeing the light of day, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) reported this March. The creation of the five centers is mandated by the new Food Safety Modernization Act, but the…