January 2007

National Public Radio’s All Things Considered aired a story on lettuce production near Yuma, Arizona, the region where leafy greens are grown during the off-season in California’s Salinas Valley.

America gets much of its winter lettuce from the fields of Yuma, Ariz. But unlike the country’s other big lettuce region — California’s Salinas Valley —

The Bakersfield Californian reports that California State Senator Dean Florez will introduce controversial food safety legislation in the California legislature tomorrow. The legislation, which is being proposed in three separate bills, would:

  1. Allow the Department of Health Services to assess fees on all growers of leafy green vegetables.
  2. Require the Department of Health Services to

With absolute certainty, another E. coli outbreak will explode, a visiting lecturer said Thursday.

John Besser, a clinical laboratory manager for the Minnesota Department of Health, was recently the guest lecturer a the University of Iowa. The MDH investigated an E. coli outbreak that had been traced to lettuce served at Taco John’s restaurants in

USAToday reports that one of the more controversial proposals in the food safety debate would require that farmers plow under a buffer zone between fields and "undisturbed, open, non-farmed land with evidence of wildlife," as well as ponds, rivers, wetlands and creeks. But many point out that the overwhelming evidence is that cattle manure, not

The Moose Jaw Times Herald reports that fair organizers are increasingly addressing issues related to human-animal interaction.

The Western Fair that year had 61 cases of E. coli traced back to fair barns with seven confirmed cases, one leading to severe kidney illness. Since 2004, at least seven U.S. fairs have been sued over E.

The News-Leader, a newspaper out of Springfield, Missouri, posted questions and answers about E. coli on its Web site recently:

Q. What is E. coli?
A.
E. coli is a bacteria. It is found in things with which we come into contact daily, including water and food. E. coli develops in the system when animals

See www.about-ecoli.com

E. coli O157:H7 was identified for the first time at the CDC in 1975, but it was not until seven years later, in 1982, that E. coli O157:H7 was conclusively determined to be a cause of enteric disease. Following outbreaks of foodborne illness that involved several cases of bloody diarrhea, E. coli O157:H7