June 2006

Saturday marks the two-year anniversary of the outbreak, which was traced to salmonella-tainted Roma tomatoes. Ordinarily, that would also represent the statute of limitations for some suits, but attorneys for Sheetz, its customers and various insurance companies have agreed to push that back to July 21.

Federal investigators traced the tomatoes to a Florida

A study disclosed on Thursday in Berlin showed that salmonella bacteria were present in 30 percent of Germany’s large-scale egg-production farms, whereas the infection rate in Scandinavian nations was below one percent.

Some of the 2 000 known salmonella varieties can trigger life-threatening gastro-intestinal illness in children and old people.

The bacteria, which are found

Thirty-one people have been infected with a strain of salmonella Montevideo since March, with three hospitalized, the Health Protection Agency has said. Those taken to hospital were one baby, one child and one adult, reports BBC News.

The HPA is probing a rate of salmonella Montevideo cases almost four times above normal between March and

29.jun.06
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Volume 55 Number 25
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5525a3.htm
During 2004–2005, contact with Salmonella-contaminated pet treats of beef and seafood origin resulted in nine culture-confirmed human Salmonella Thompson infections in western Canada and the state of Washington. This is the third published report (1,2) of an outbreak of human illness associated with pet treats in North America and the first to describe such an outbreak in the United States. This report highlights the investigation of the outbreak by U.S. and Canadian public health officials and provides recommendations for reducing the risk that Salmonella-contaminated pet treats pose to humans. Public health practitioners should consider pet treats a potential source for Salmonella transmission.
Case Reports
Case 1. In February 2005, a man aged 26 years in Alberta, Canada, sought medical care because of diarrheal illness. Stool culture yielded S. Thompson. The patient reportedly had fed his dog beef pet treats a few days before the onset of his illness. The dog was asymptomatic. A package of the same brand of pet treats fed to the dog was purchased and submitted for testing. The treats yielded S. Thompson, S. Cerro, and S. Meleagridis. The S. Thompson isolates from the patient and the treats were indistinguishable (i.e., defined as the outbreak strain) by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) using Xba1. The treats were packaged and distributed by a British Columbia (BC) manufacturing plant, but plant records were inadequate to determine where the treats had been produced.Continue Reading Human Salmonellosis associated with Animal-Derived Pet Treats — United States and Canada, 2005

The presence of salmonella in samples of most raw meat and poultry products tested by federal inspectors decreased slightly in the first quarter of 2006. The only increase was seen in ground beef, where a slight increase in salmonella rates increased.

With outbreaks of food borne diseases featuring more prominently in the media, the processing

Pets always welcome treats, but their owners may be putting themselves at risk of developing salmonella infection by handling beef or seafood snacks contaminated with the bacteria – so warned the authors of a report issued by the CDC.

The CDC study outlined nine cases of pet owners becoming sick with a specific type of

Marshall High School near Tysons Corner is one of 32 aging Fairfax County schools that lack warm or hot water in all or most of the student bathrooms, according to Fairfax County Public School records.

At least three Fairfax County schools — Edison High in Alexandria and Woodson High in Fairfax and Sandburg Middle in