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After a couple of weeks when every day new companies recalled their products due to vegetable included in their products that were potentially contaminated with Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes, the FDA finally revealed the source of contamination. FDA announces McCain as the Source On October 19, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally alerted the public to the source of the recalled vegetable products contaminated with Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenesthat caused numerous recalls of products. The FDA announced that several vegetable products from McCain Foods USA, Inc. had been possibly contaminated with Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes and that their recall led to numerous recalls of products including salads and wraps that...

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced in five separate notices the recall of ready-to-eat salad products containing steak or chicken due to the corn present in the products that might be contaminated with both Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes. Mary’s Harvest Fresh Foods, Inc recalled ~ 916 pounds of ready-to-eat wrap and salad products  that contain a corn ingredient that may be contaminated with Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes. The ready-to-eat salad and wrap products were produced from Oct. 5 through Oct. 13, 2018. These items were shipped to retail locations in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The problem was discovered on Oct. 15, 2018, when the company...

In an attention-grabbing article published at NPR it is suggested to use bacteria-eating bacteria as a new mean to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In a study funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Brad Ringeisen deputy director of the Biological Technologies Office at the DARPA claims that microbe-eating microbes are found in almost every ecosystem on Earth. The study funded by DARPA showed that predatory bacteria will attack many disease-causing bacteria that have developed resistance to antibiotics. The main organism they worked with is Bdellovibrio (a small (0.3 to 0.4 micrometers wide, and 0.8-1.2 micrometers long), highly motile (with a single polar flagellum), vibrio shaped,...

Walmart and Sam’s Club sent a letter to their suppliers of fresh leafy greens requiring that they trace their products all the way to the farm, utilizing Walmart-IBM Food Trust network, using blockchain technology software by September of 2019. This decision to require the use of blockchain was triggered by the recent romaine lettuce outbreak linked to E.  coli O157:H7. The outbreak resulted in 210 confirmed cases, caused 96 hospitalizations, and tragically 5 deaths. While the FDA and the health authorities were able to quickly determine that the romaine lettuce came from Yuma AZ, the exact affected lots could not be identified until...