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The investigation of a 2009 multistate outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), an important cause of bacterial gastrointestinal illness, led to a new culprit: ready-to-bake commercial prepackaged cookie dough. Published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online, a new report describing the outbreak offers recommendations for prevention, including a stronger message for consumers: Don't eat prepackaged cookie dough before it's baked. [snip] Dr. Neil and colleagues suspected that one of the ingredients used to produce the dough was contaminated...

-excerpt- ... the culprit of a 2009 multi-state E. coli outbreak was none other than the ready-to-bake prepackaged cookie dough found in most grocery stores. At the time of the outbreak, 77 people from 30 states became ill from the bad batter. About half of those people got so sick they had to be hospitalized. After a thorough investigation, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control still have yet to fully pinpoint the ingredient in the cookie dough that caused the outbreak, but CDC study author Dr. Karen Neil said researchers believe the problem was in the flour. Raw flour...

Plainville officials are considering buying out property owners on Robert Street extension that flooded last week and raised concerned about about E-coli exposure. Frank Iris can't return to his Robert Street extension home for safety reasons. "There's still water in my basement, still pouring in there. The floors are buckled, everything is just bad. Air quality in the house is real bad you can't breathe in that house," he said. Floodwaters didn't force neighbor John Corriveau out. He said though his basement floods every year, in part because of increased development and runoff, and he's looking for government relief. "Pay...

<p>German officials originally pointed their fingers at Spanish cucumbers, in a costly accusation that still has the Spanish agricultural sector up-in-arms.</p> <p>Now European investigators from the European Food Safety Authority are looking to Egyptian fenugreek seeds as a potential culprit in this month's E. coli pandemic, in what could be another costly allegation.</p>

Investigators have determined that German-grown vegetable sprouts are the cause of the E. coli outbreak that has killed 29 people and sickened nearly 3,000, the head of Germany's national disease control center said Friday. Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, said even though no tests of the sprouts from an organic farm in Lower Saxony had come back positive for the E. coli strain behind the outbreak, an investigation into the pattern of the outbreak had produced enough evidence to draw the conclusion. "In this way, it was possible to narrow down epidemiologically the cause of the outbreak...

EU offers farmers 210 mil. euros over food scare The European Union has offered to pay 210 million euros or about 300 million dollars in financial aid to farmers affected by the E. coli outbreak in Europe. EU farm commissioner Dacian Ciolos said in Brussels on Wednesday that the EU's compensation scheme will cover cucumbers, tomatoes and 3 other vegetables. He added that the proposed amount is equal to half the value of losses incurred by the farmers. The E. coli outbreak has claimed the lives of more than 20 people, mostly in Germany, leading to a sharp drop in...

Forensic evidence emerges of a hot-rodded superbug... Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply. This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics...

Study Proves Copper May Prevent E. Coli Spread Drug Discovery & Development - June 03, 2011 Laboratory science conducted at the University of Southampton indicates a role for copper in preventing the spread of E. coli. The World Health Organization suggests the E. coli outbreak in Germany, O104:H4, is a strain never seen before. “A study looking at copper’s efficacy against new strains of E. coli has just been completed. Although it did not specifically look at O104, all the strains investigated have died rapidly on copper,” Bill Keevil, head of the Microbiology Group and director of the Environmental Healthcare...

E. Coli Not Found in Initial Testing of Sprouts By JUDY DEMPSEY and JAMES KANTER Published: June 6, 2011 BERLIN — A day after German agricultural officials identified locally grown sprouts as a possible cause of the E.coli outbreak that has killed 22 people and sickened more than 2,200, the officials said Monday that initial tests had failed to show conclusively that the bacteria originated with the sprouts. Results from the first 23 of 40 tests on several varieties of sprouts came back negative, said officials from the agriculture ministry in the state of Lower Saxony. The ministry did not...

BERLIN (AP) -- In their second major retraction in a week, German officials said initial tests provided no evidence that sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany were the cause of the deadly E. coli outbreak. One U.S. expert called the German investigation "a disaster." The surprise U-turn came only a day after the same state agency, Lower Saxony's agriculture ministry, held a news conference to announce that sprouts from the organic Gaertnerhof farm in the northern village of Bienenbuettel were suspected to be the cause of the outbreak. The ministry shut down the farm, recalled all its produce...

BERLIN (AP) -- Official test results Monday are likely to show that sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany caused the E. coli outbreak that has killed 22 people, sickened more than 2,200 and left Europeans across the continent uneasy about eating raw vegetables. If sprouts from the farm in the village of Bienenbuettel, between Hamburg and Hannover, are confirmed as the only source of the highly aggressive, "super-toxic" strain of bacteria, it could solve a mystery that has puzzled authorities for weeks. Suspicion for the cause of the deadliest known E. coli outbreak had fallen on lettuce, tomatoes...

Indonesia goes on alert against E. coli strain from Europe English.news.cn 2011-06-06 12:25:02 FeedbackPrintRSS JAKARTA, June 6 (Xinhua)-- In response to the outbreak of a highly toxic strain of E. coli that has killed more than a dozen people in Europe, Indonesia's Health Ministry on Sunday ordered all international airports and seaports to be on alert for sick passengers, the Jakarta Globe daily quoted an official as saying on Monday. "It's still too early to be overly scared of this food bug in Europe and the United States, but there's nothing wrong with a little extra precaution," said Tjandra Yoga...

German Organic Farm 'Behind E.coli Outbreak' 4:13am UK, Monday June 06, 2011 The E.coli outbreak could have been caused by vegetable sprouts grown on an organic farm in Germany, an official has said. German beansprouts are said to be behind the E.coli outbreak Preliminary tests found that bean sprouts and other sprout varieties from the farm in the Uelzen area, between the northern cities of Hamburg and Hannover, could be traced to infections in five German states, Lower Saxony Agriculture Minister Gert Lindemann said. "There were more and more indications in the last few hours that put the focus on...

HAMBURG, Germany – Lower Saxony's agriculture minister says initial tests have confirmed that locally grown beansprouts are the likely cause for Germany's E. coli outbreak that has killed 22 people and sickened hundreds.

Food chain at risk of being poisoned by terrorist groups Food and drink sold in Britain is under a growing threat from terrorist groups which might try to poison supplies, the Government’s security advisers have warned. By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent 9:44PM BST 04 Jun 2011 Manufacturers and retailers have been told that their sector is vulnerable to attacks by ideologically and politically motivated groups that may seek to cause widespread casualties and disruption by poisoning food supplies. The warning from the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure [CPNI], which operates as part of the Security Service, comes as...

BERLIN — Germany has not yet identified the source of a deadly E.coli outbreak and still recommends not eating raw salad vegetables like cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes in northern Germany, a health ministry spokesman said on Friday. Racing to curb the spread of the killer food bug, the German government set up a national task force on Friday to hunt down the source of a highly toxic strain of E.coli that has killed 17 people and sounded alarms around the world. Nearly 200 new cases of E. coli infection were reported in Germany in the first two days of June,...

BERLIN/LONDON (Reuters) – Racing to curb the spread of a killer food bug, Germany set up a national task force on Friday to hunt down the source of a highly toxic strain of E.coli that killed 17 people and sounded alarms around the world. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, engaged in a trade row with the European Union after Moscow banned imports of raw fruit and vegetables from the bloc, heightened the drama, saying he would not "poison" Russians by lifting the embargo. Repeating warnings to Germans not eat salad vegetables -- rattling farmers and stores just as they hit...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Health officials said Thursday three people in the United States are suspected to have fallen ill from e-coli bacteria after traveling to Germany where the mystery outbreak has killed 17. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was awaiting blood samples before any confirmation could be made, spokesman Tom Skinner told AFP. The suspected cases were not fatal. Earlier, Britain said seven people there had been infected with the bacteria, including three British nationals who had recently traveled to Germany and four German nationals. A total of 18 people in Europe have died from the outbreak, all...

Just from the high number of deaths and severe cases, scientists and public health experts battling Germany's massive E. coli outbreak knew they were up against something unusual. Now, early results from sequencing projects of the enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) strain appear to confirm that a never-before-seen hybrid, combining the worst of several bacterial strains, is causing the havoc. The Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), in Shenzhen, China—which today announced that it has sequenced the microbe's entire 5.2-million-base-pair genome—says that its acquisition of several virulence genes make this EHEC strain "supertoxic." The outbreak, which has caused mayhem in European trade relations,...

LONDON – Scientists on Thursday blamed Europe's worst recorded food-poisoning outbreak on a "super-toxic" strain of E. coli bacteria that may be brand new. But while suspicion has fallen on raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce as the source of the germs, researchers have been unable to pinpoint the food responsible for the frightening illness, which has killed at least 18 people, sickened more than 1,600 and spread to least 10 European countries. An alarmingly large number of victims — about 500 — have developed kidney complications that can be deadly. Chinese and German scientists analyzed the DNA of the E....

<p>London – The World Health Organization said Thursday that the E. coli bacteria responsible for a deadly outbreak that has left 18 dead and sickened hundreds in Europe is a new strain that has never been seen before.</p> <p>Preliminary genetic sequencing suggests the strain is a mutant form of two different E. coli bacteria, with lethal genes that could explain why the Europe-wide outbreak appears to be so massive and dangerous, the agency said.</p>

06/02/2011 Mutant Bacteria E. Coli Outbreak Linked to Aggressive New Strain As the E. coli outbreak continues to ravage Germany and other parts of Europe, the World Health Organization said Thursday that the aggressive intestinal bacteria is a new strain never seen before. Meanwhile fears of the illness prompted Russia to ban imports of vegetables from the EU. Info Researchers are still desperately searching for the origin of the E. coli bacteria that has left 18 dead and infected hundreds of others in Germany and Europe. The number of cases within Germany continues to rise, with up to 2,000 reported...

European Food Outbreak Soars; Mystery Deepens David Rising And Maria Cheng Associated PressJune 1, 2011 BERLIN – The number of people hit by a massive European outbreak of foodborne bacterial infections is one third higher than previously known and a stunningly high number of patients suffer from a potentially deadly complication than can shut down their kidneys, officials said Wednesday. The death toll rose to 17, with German authorities reporting that an 84-year-old woman with the complication had died on Sunday. Medical authorities appeared no closer to discovering either the source of the infection or the mystery at the heart...

The number of E. coli cases has risen dramatically in northern Germany, authorities announced Wednesday, with at least 180 new cases emerging in the past 24 hours in Hamburg and Lower Saxony alone. The new figures came as doctors in Schleswig-Holstein reported that the bacterial illness was also causing unusual neurological effects including epilepsy. Seventeen people – one in Sweden and the rest in Germany – have now died from the virulent form of enterohamorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), which can cause bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure known as haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS). In the past day, the number of cases...

Spanish cucumbers not to blame for German E.Coli outbreak BREAKING NEWS: German scientists have revealed that the bacteria found in Spanish cucumbers did not cause the E.Coli outbreak in Northern Germany. This was revealed by Hamburg Health Minister Cornelia Prufer-Storcks. The Spanish government did not rule out a call for compensation from Germany for the “tremendous damage” that “speculations” had inflicted on Spain’s agriculture and food sector. Laboratory tests in Germany last week pinpointed the cucumbers as the focus of infection, although the Spanish health authorities claimed that the vegetables could have been contaminated in transit or on arrival. Almeria...

'Killer cucumbers' row between Spain and Germany Spain has accused Germany of "spreading alarm" and needlessly damaging trade after blaming a deadly E.coli outbreak on "killer cucumbers" imported from Spain. By Fiona Govan, Madrid 5:33PM BST 30 May 2011 Spain's authorities went on the defensive as countries across Europe cleared their shelves of the offending vegetables insisting that there was no proof the deadly outbreak had been caused by Spanish vegetables. Leire Pajin, the Spanish Health Minister, noting that no Spanish cases have been reported, urged Germany to speed up its probe and establish proof of what has caused the...

Three people in Britain have been diagnosed with a lethal strain of E.Coli that has already killed five people in Germany. Almost 300 people in northern Germany are in hospital and around 500 more are being tested for the infection. Organic cucumbers from Spain are thought to be the source of the bacteria, but travellers to Germany are also being advised to avoid eating raw tomatoes and lettuce. The Robert Koch Institute, Germany's national disease centre, said 60 cases had been reported in the last 24 hours alone, and infections have also been confirmed in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.

f First Lady Michelle Obama has her way, every public school cafeteria across this great nation will have a salad bar full of lettuce, carrots, and communism. The First Lady's Let's Move Salad Bars To Schools program aims to put 6,000 kid-sized salad bars in schools. Each salad bar costs $2,500, and the whole program costs $15 million. So on top of promoting a vegetable-y socialist agenda, they're also expensive! (Schools are being encouraged to raise part of the money themselves.) Big government run amock! The goal of course is to hoodwink children into eating their vegetables. >>> The goal...

Every week hundreds of Utahns carry their groceries home in reusable grocery bags. They do it to help the health of the environment, but it may be at the risk of their own health. KSL 5 News pulled out the gloves, the swabs and the culture dishes for a Staying Safe investigation that reveals - you may be carrying more in your bag than you bought. Studies done in other states found some reusable bags have contained samples of e.coli and salmonella. But our tests were negative: no e.coli, no salmonella. The coliforms were another story. Of the 89 bags...

Genetically modified bacteria that munch on sugar to produce refinable fuels could bring down the cost of switching to cleaner energy. Once the technology is fully developed, the company expects the alkane to cost around $50 per barrel, says del Cardayre. "We have a one-step process to make alkane" in an industrial process, says Schirmer. "Basically, in goes the feedstock – sugar – and out comes the vehicle-ready fuel. The bacteria can be grown on any sugar, including those produced from second-generation cellulose-based sources such as grasses and plant waste, which do not compete for land with food crops.

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts. Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk. "I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles...

Bags for life could have E.coli Tests on shoppers’ bags revealed half contained traces of E.coli, a lethal toxin which killed 26 people in Scotland in 1996 in one of the worlds worst food poisoning outbreaks. Scientists also found many were contaminated with salmonella. Reusable plastic shopping bags have become increasingly popular in Britain [and the US; insertion mine] thanks to supermarkets and other retailers giving out millions of free ones to shoppers in the last three years. It is estimated that there are "hundreds of millions" of bags for life in use in Britain, according to sources within Wrap,...

Plastic grocery bags are everywhere and more and more people are using the convenient commodity in an effort to be greener and recycle and reuse; however, The Washington Post has issued a reminder to wash the bags after they’ve been emptied if you plan on using them again. A study at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University found that just about every bag tested came back with large amounts of dangerous pathogens such as coliform and E. coli, said The Washington Post. Raw meat or uncooked food contaminants—pointing to coliform bacteria—were in about half of the bags while...

For nearly two decades, Public Enemy No. 1 for the food industry and its government regulators has been a virulent strain of E. coli bacteria that has killed hundreds of people, sickened thousands and prompted the recall of millions of pounds of hamburger, spinach and other foods. But as everyone focused on controlling that particular bacterium, known as E. coli O157:H7, the six rarer strains of toxic E. coli were largely ignored. Collectively, those other strains are now emerging as a serious threat to food safety. In April, romaine lettuce tainted with one of them sickened at least 26 people...

Romaine lettuce sold in 23 states and the District of Columbia may be contaminated with dangerous E. coli O145 bacteria and has been recalled. So far, 19 cases of E. coli O145 illness have been reported in Michigan, Ohio, and New York. Twelve people have been hospitalized, including three with life-threatening hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) caused by the bacterium. Several lines of evidence -- including detection of bacteria in an unopened package of Freshway Foods shredded Romaine lettuce -- point to Freshway Foods wholesale Romaine lettuce products. Freshway Foods has recalled all products containing Romaine lettuce with a use-by date...

Water main break means 38 communities must boil their water to drink.

The news media loves to report on sensational stories, and the more drastic the news the higher ratings are estimated to be for any type of story. Health care news is top of the table coverage for media outlets especially now. On occasion, you will see reporters talk about outbreaks of E. Coli in the nation's food supply. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Escherichia Coli (abbreviated as E. coli) are a large and diverse group of bacteria. Although most strains of E. coli are harmless, others can make you sick. Some kinds of E. coli can cause...

New analysis, interactive online map highlight the need to modernize the nation's food-safety systemWASHINGTON, D.C. – A new study by a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) economist estimates the total economic impact of foodborne illness across the nation to be a combined $152 billion annually. The Produce Safety Project, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University, published the report, Health-Related Costs from Foodborne Illness in the United States. In addition, an interactive online map that graphically represents this cost information for every state in the nation is available at www.MakeOurFoodSafe.org/cost_map. The report ranks states according...

Sir Elton John has been forced to cancel a string of concerts after contracting E.coli and an aggressive bout of influenza. The 62-year-old had already pulled out of a series of concerts in Dublin, London, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield citing ill-health. But gigs in the U.S. cities of Seattle, Washington and and Portland, Oregon were yesterday shelved after the singer was admitted to hospital. Yesterday, a spokesman for Sir Elton was keen to play down reports of his condition, saying: 'He is recovering from a case of serious influenza with minor complications. We are confident he will be back on...

Beware of the blob—this time, it's for real. As sea temperatures have risen in recent decades, enormous sheets of a mucus-like material have begun forming more often, oozing into new regions, and lasting longer, a new Mediterranean Sea study says. Up to 124 miles (200 kilometers) long, the mucilages appear naturally, usually near Mediterranean coasts in summer. The season's warm weather makes seawater more stable, which facilitates the bonding of the organic matter that makes up the blobs. Now, due to warmer temperatures, the mucilages are forming in winter too—and lasting for months. Until now, the light-brown "mucus" was seen...

Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes. Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed. Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that...

Bethea said federal officials tested the river and found the E. coli bacteria level was 42 times greater than the highest safe level. “There is no way you want to get in or even touch water [this dirty],” Bethea said. “I’ve never seen the water so filthy. It was just filthy, and it didn’t smell very good in some places.” The river tour also found massive shoreline damage, including collapsed banks and fallen trees. --snip-- The U.S. Park Service on Wednesday shut down use of portions of the Chattahoochee, citing the dumping of raw sewage from broken sewage lines in...

Food poisoning is a common, usually mild, but sometimes deadly illness according to eMedicineHealth. Typical symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, and diarrhea that occur suddenly (within 48 hours) after consuming a contaminated food or drink. Depending on the contaminant, fever and chills, bloody stools, dehydration, and nervous system damage may follow. These symptoms may affect one person or a group of people who ate the same thing (called an outbreak). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in the United States, food poisoning causes about 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and up to 5,000 deaths each...

A Nestle plant linked to an outbreak of illness has been shut temporarily, and the company said Monday that it expects to lay off more than 200 workers as a result. Preliminary results "indicate a strong association with eating raw prepackaged cookie dough," the CDC says. "It's likely that we're going to have some temporary layoffs at that facility," Nestle spokeswoman Roz O'Hearn said of the Danville, Virginia, facility that was churning out refrigerated cookie-dough products until Thursday. About 550 people work at the factory, but only about half of them work on cookie dough, she said. The rest work...

(There's a toll to eating raw cookie dough.) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told consumers today not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough because the products could be contaminated with a potentially deadly form of E. coli. Since March, at least 66 people from 28 states have gotten sick after eating the dough. Of those, 25 people were hospitalized and seven developed a severe complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which leads to kidney damage and lifetime health issues and is often responsible for E. coli...

LONDON (AP) - An unemployed chemist was jailed Tuesday for spraying a mix of urine and feces on food, wine and children's books in several British stores. Sahnoun Daifallah was sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty of four counts of contaminating goods. The 42-year-old Algerian carried a mix of his waste in a container of weed killer concealed in a laptop bag, a court found.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota company has won federal approval to become the first in the U.S. to market an E. coli vaccine for cattle, a new weapon against a foodborne disease that can cause serious illness in people and even death. Epitopix LLC was given a conditional license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell its vaccine. Nayyera Haq, a USDA spokeswoman, called it "an important step toward improving food safety in this country," and a major beef group agreed. "It really is a major milestone for our industry," Michelle Rossman, director of beef safety research for the...

E.coli can have a bad reputation. But a hippy scientist and an unemployed banker harnessed the benefits of this bacterium - and launched the biotechnology revolution, says Harold Evans. We have to change the adage - man's best friend may not have four legs and bark. In fact, the creature I have in mind is only a ten-thousandth of an inch long and answers to the name E.coli. If you're one of the zillions of hypochondriacs on our planet, you will know that this is not Mr Edward Coli of Twickenham, but the bacterium Escherichia coli - E.coli for short...

Evolution as Efficiency Expert Feb 06, 2009 — Who would have thought that a lowly bacterium is a “master of industrial efficiency”? That’s what a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science called it. E. coli, the best-studied microbe, “can be thought of as a factory with just one product: itself,” a press release said. “It exists to make copies of itself, and its business plan is to make them at the lowest possible cost, with the greatest possible efficiency.” Dr. Tsvi Tlusty at Weizmann marveled at the efficiency of the machinery in the factory: RNA polymerase, which transcribes DNA...

ST. CLOUD, Minn. -- A St. Cloud man, and self-proclaimed John McCain hater, was arrested Wednesday for putting bags of dog poop in the bed of a pickup truck with McCain-Palin stickers. SNIP The owner of the truck said he put McCain-Palin campaign stickers on his truck about two weeks ago. Shortly after, he started finding small bags of dog poop in the back of the truck. Wednesday morning, the owner’s mother saw a neighbor putting bags of poop in the truck and called police. David Vandelinden, 45, of St. Cloud was identified as the suspect, and admitted to placing...