Bittman Opines on Livestock Antibiotics and the FDA

Kudos to Mark Bittman for addressing the recent FDA withdrawal from plans to regulate the use of antibiotics in livestock feed.  The excerpt below is from the New York Times:

A study earlier this year by a nonprofit research center in Phoenix analyzed 80 brands of beef, pork, chicken and turkey from five cities and found that 47 percent contained staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that can cause anything from minor skin infections to pneumonia and sepsis, more technically called systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), and commonly known as blood poisoning — but no matter what you call it, plenty scary. Of those bacteria, 52 percent were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. So when you go to the supermarket to buy one of these brands of pre-ground meat products, there’s a roughly 25 percent chance you’ll consume a potentially fatal bacteria that doesn’t respond to commonly prescribed drugs.

Click here for Bittman's full column
Want more? Click here for Food Safety News: FDA Backs off Withdrawing Certain Antibiotoics from Livestock Use

Thank you for visiting Food Safety Solutions and Happy New Year!

Safe Food Greetings

May you find Happiness, Peace, and Safe Food

during this Holiday Season 

and through the Coming Year!

Love, Miss Phage

Intralytix and Lego

Calls started coming in from all across the country. Team leaders representing groups of industrious and clever young scientists had been studying food safety issues and working on designing solutions. Each team of 10 (primary and middle school students) had selected a food safety problem to solve, researched it and put their findings to the test with a robot of their own design.

In their research, they had learned about phages and wanted to use them in their projects to eradicate Listeria, E.coli and Salmonella. Their ideas were impressive - creative and carefully thought out.

The theme of the 2011 First Lego League challenge was to improve the quality of food by finding ways to to prevent food contamination. The FLL is a partnership between FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and The LEGO Group, to inspire future scientists and engineers.

Congratulations to all the FLL Food Factor challenge teams! Keep up the great thinking, the food industry needs you. 

      

  

 

Inside the Slaughterhouse and Spending a Few Pennies for Safer Meat

 

 

Today, Miss Phage is thinking about: Meat - two recent articles are excerpted below

The Case for Peeking Inside the Slaughterhouse

A new report from the National Research Council (an arm of the National Academy of Sciences) argues that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) should routinely release much of the data that it collects in these plants.
  Currently, the FSIS releases summary data that shows, for instance, how often it finds salmonella contamination in all meat-packing plants. But the NRC says it should go much further, and post online the results of tests at each specific factory. Such data, according to the report, "could yield valuable insights" that would promote safer, healthier practices in the industry.

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Who Should Pay to Make Ground Beef Safe from E. coli?

 What if it were possible to almost entirely do away with E. coli in ground beef and it would cost only about a penny a burger?

Researchers at Harvard University estimate that American beef consumers are willing to pay 1 cent to 2 cents a pound to reduce the risk of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses. "Common sense plus our paper and many others suggest consumers will pay more for safer food," says James Hammitt, who co-wrote a paper on consumer willingness to pay for food safety in the September edition of the journal Risk Analysis.

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