November 2006

More than 50,000 people got sick or died from something they ate in a hidden epidemic that went undiagnosed by the nation’s public health departments during a five-year period, according to Thomas Hargrove of the Scripps Howard News Service.

Scripps studied 6,374 food-related disease outbreaks reported by every state to the federal Centers for Disease

Nicols Fox, author of Spoiled: Why our food is making us sick and It Was Probably Something You Ate, was asked to review Eric Schlosser’s book, Fast Food Nation, for the Washington Post in 2001 because of her work on the subject of foodborne pathogens.

When a “massive production of hamburger is

A type of salmonella found in eggs is turning up more often in chicken meat and needs to be reduced, according to the Agriculture Department. From 2000 through 2005, there was a fourfold increase in positive test results for salmonella enteritidis on chicken carcasses.

Salmonella sickens at least 40,000 people and kills about 600 every

Rio Vista, Ltd., of Rio Rico, Arizona, is voluntarily recalling its Llano and Nature’s Partner brand cantaloupes, because they have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.

No illnesses have been reported to date.

Approximately, 62,640 cartons of cantaloupes were distributed in the U.S. and a small quantity went to Canada from October 31 to

Health officials have determined that soy lecithin in some Hershey products tested positive for salmonella, but they still are unsure how the soy was contaminated.

Fears of salmonella contamination at the company’s factory in Smith Falls, Ontario prompted a recall last weekend of a variety of chocolate bars and candies. Hershey now says soy lecithin

Timco Worldwide Inc. of Woodland, California, is voluntarily recalling its Sundia brand cantaloupe, because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.

504 cartons of cantaloupe were distributed in Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Florida between October 30th and November 6th, 2006. The cantaloupe was distributed for sale in bulk in cardboard cartons, numbering

Fears of salmonella contamination has driven chocolate-maker Hershey to recall a wide variety of its chocolate bars and candies made at its Smiths Falls, Ontario plant.

However, a company spokesperson said the risk to consumers is low, since “most of the product in question is either already in our control or is currently being retrieved

Health authorities in the Australian Capital Territory are continuing to investigate a salmonella outbreak, which is linked to rockmelons.

It was revealed last month that people in the ACT, Queensland and New South Wales had contracted salmonella from north Queensland rockmelons. There were initially four confirmed cases but ACT Health says that has now risen

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today that at least 183 people in 18 states had been confirmed ill with Salmonellosis as part of a nation-wide outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium infections that has been traced to contaminated tomatoes.

Twenty-two people were hospitalized during the outbreak, which peaked in September and is now over