January 2005

Nearly every day I hear about another case of E. coli, Salmonella or Lysteria tied to some food product. However, I have never seen a situation where the same product injures different people who ate at the same restaurant chain one year apart — usually a company learns from past mistakes.
According to reports by…

BJ’s Wholesale Club, Inc. and a meat supplier last week agreed to pay a multi-million dollar settlement to the family of a New York girl who became ill after eating contaminated hamburgers.
Marler Clark client Katelyn Koesterer, who suffered life-threatening injuries including hemolytic ueremic syndrome, sued the store for selling adulterated meat that was found…

Fjeld had a 5 percent chance of survival
by Natalie J. Ostgaard, City Editor
Seeing her family Christmas picture, one could never tell that two months ago, BreAnne Fjeld, a normally energetic, physically fit, healthy 22-year-old, lay in a Santa Barbara, Calif. hospital, hooked up to machines, severely bloated, weighing nearly 200 pounds. And as she found out shortly before leaving her home of nearly three weeks, she had only a 5 percent chance of survival.
She was suffering from E. coli 0157:H7, the most severe strain of the bacterial infection.
Fjeld spoke about her ordeal to Mrs. Henneberg’s seventh-grade family consumer science students at Highland School this week to help kick off their food unit, which began with food safety procedures. As her mother Belinda, vocal instructor for Crookston Schools, tearfully recalled the experience while joining BreAnne for some classes, it became apparent the talk involved much more than food safety.Continue Reading E. coli survivor beats the odds

Breaking News on Food & Beverage Development
Stopping the distribution of contaminated foods from the farm to the fork is a ceaseless challenge for the food industry that relies heavily on technology to identify any anomalies.
A constant threat to the food chain, in the US alone foodborne illness annually costs the country $5.79 billion. And as global food production, processing and distribution rises, so grows in parallel demand for food safety research to ensure the food supply remains secure. The food industry needs cost-effective analytical methods that are safe, accurate and minimise waste to develop methods to screen, detect, and confirm multiple chemical residues and harmful bacteria, including their toxins, in foodstuffs.Continue Reading Scientists firm up kits to detect food pathogens

Although E. coli has been often in the news as a foodborne pathogen, the vast majority of E. coli strains are harmless, including those commonly used by scientists in genetics laboratories. E. coli is found in the family of bacteria named Enterobacteriaceae, which is informally referred to as the enteric bacteria. Other enteric bacteria are…