food safety

There’s going to be a lot — a lot — of coverage today on the federal shutdown, what it means and how long it might go on. I thought it might be worth quickly highlighting how it affects the parts of the government that readers here care most about: public health, global health, food safety and the spread of scary diseases. Read More »

The Animal Health Institute (AHI) issued the following statement in response to the Food and Drug Administration’s publication of the final Guidance 213 and proposed VFD rule implementing the policy of extending veterinary oversight and eliminating  the subtherapeutic use of medical important antibiotics in animal agriculture. Read More »

In the long back and forth between science and agriculture over the source of antibiotic resistance in humans — Due to antibiotic overuse on farms, or in human medicine? — one question has been stubbornly hard to answer. If antibiotic-resistant bacteria do arise on farms, do they leave the farm and circulate in the wider world? And if they do, how much damage do they do? Read More »

The next time you’re contemplating flushing your prescription medication down the toilet, you may want to consider the “bacterial monsters” they have the potential to spawn. Read More »

The story of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in farm animals is not a simple one. But here’s the pitch version: Yet another study has reinforced the idea that keeping animals in confinement and feeding them antibiotics prophylactically breeds varieties of bacteria that cause disease in humans, disease that may not readily be treated by antibiotics... Read More »

An outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg has spread to 18 states and has sickened nearly 300, prompting the return of some 30 CDC staffers furloughed during the government shutdown to work on the case. Read More »

For all those Americans crossing fingers that no communicable disease, influenza or foodborne illness outbreaks would happen during the government shutdown, exactly that has occurred. Read More »