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A San Diego meat company has recalled 925 pounds of E. coli contaminated ground beef over serious California food poisoning concerns. According to a 10News report, the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service officials said that no illnesses have been reported so far as a result of products sold by the San Diego Meat Co. This food recall involves 15-pound cases of ground beef patties and 10-pound bags of bulk ground beef produced between October 7 and October 12. This contaminated meat was apparently sold to San Diego County area caterers and restaurants. The owners of the San Diego Meat Co. have said that they have notified their customers about the E. coli contamination and that all the tainted products will be destroyed.
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I was reading about the story of Linda Rivera, a teacher's aide who went into septic shock and suffered kidney failure after severe food poisoning linked to E. Coli-contaminated cookie dough.I According to a news report in the Los Angeles Times, Rivera's plight began in May after she ate several spoonfuls of Nestle Toll House cookie dough. Federal health officials say Rivera was one of 10 food poisoning victims in the United States who developed a life-threatening complication from the E. Coli infection known as "hemolytic uremic syndrome."
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Kyle Lawrence, a 17-year-old senior at Bandon High school was seriously injured in an Oregon car accident Friday morning and is currently in a medically induced coma. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has confirmed the presence of a deadly strain of E. coli bacteria in samples of Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough, which has caused food poisoning, sickening 69 consumers in 29 states including California. According to a news report in Consumeraffairs.com, the E. coli-contaminated cookie dough originated in Nestlé's Danville, Virginia plant. Nestlé recalled 30,000 cases of its hugely popular cookie dough products last month. FDA officials said the bacteria were not found inside the plant or on the equipment, but only in a tub of chocolate cookie dough made at the plant in February. The dough had a June 10, 2009 expiration date.

The FDA initially warned consumers on June 19, 2009 not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough because of the risk of E. coli food poisoning. So far, 34 people have been hospitalized as a result of this E. coli outbreak. Nine food poisoning victims have developed a severe complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). This is a serious condition that can cause life-threatening kidney failure. Most of these cases apparently develop after several days of diarrhea – often bloody – due to infection with a specific strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli). Both children and adults may develop HUS after E. coli infections. Read the rest of this entry »

The JBS Swift Beef Company of Colorado has expanded its beef recall to include 380,000 pounds of assorted beef products for E. coli contamination, according to an article on Consumer Reports' Web site. This expanded recall comes apparently as a result of an ongoing investigation into 24 food poisoning cases in multiple states including California. Eighteen of these incidents appear to be meat-related, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

The recalled beef products were produced on April 21 and April 22. They were distributed to retail establishments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin. The names of retailers where this meat was sold has not yet been released. Read the rest of this entry »

Salmonella infections and E. coli infections are among the most common food-borne illnesses we come across in the news. At least, they are the most publicized forms of food poisoning. However, a news report in Consumer Reports' Safety Blog says that salmonella is only the second most common cause of food poisoning in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has released information that the leading cause of cases reported to them by a wide margin was "norovirus." This is basically a group of viruses that cause the stomach flu. The norovirus accounted for more than half of the reported outbreaks in 2006.

According to the CDC report, there were 1,270 reported food-borne illness outbreaks in 2006, which resulted in 27,634 illnesses and 11 deaths. Among these 1,270 outbreaks, 621 had a confirmed single cause and that cause was most often norovirus – about 54 percent of the outbreaks. CDC officials say that a vast majority of food-borne illnesses and outbreaks go unreported. They estimate that there are 76 million cases of food-borne illness annually in the United States, leading to 5,000 deaths. Read the rest of this entry »