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Another year is ending, and food safety still has many challenges. The FDA reported 6 Listeria outbreaks, 5 Salmonella outbreaks and 3 E. coli outbreaks. A major food safety recall was due to Cronobacter in powdered infant formula. The FDA received complaints about 4 cases of illness or death in infants who consumed powdered infant formula from Abbott factory in Michigan. The closing of the Abbott factory in Michigan caused a nationwide shortage of infant formula. Consumer complaints of gastrointestinal illness and abnormal liver function were attributable to eating Daily Harvest French Lentil & Leek Crumbles frozen product. It caused...

Listeriosis is a severe, foodborne infection linked with high case fatality and hospitalization. The CDC estimated 1,600 people get listeriosis yearly, and about 260 die. The infection is most likely to sicken susceptible populations. Quantitative risk assessment is a practical method to assess the risks associated with microbial contamination of foods. The risk analysis models are developed by combing Monte Carlo probabilistic simulation with probability distributions inserted into the model. A quantitative risk assessment model was developed to estimate the probability of infection with Listeria monocytogenes in various RTE foods at various levels of contamination. Removing lots with counts higher...

The CDC issued a on its investigation of multistate outbreaks between 2017-2020 caused by Salmonella, STEC, and Listeria monocytogenes. The analysis includes 470 possible multistate outbreaks. The investigation showed that 250 (53%) of these were multistate outbreaks, and the investigation solved 199 (80%) of the outbreaks. There was enough information to confirm the source for 134 (67%) outbreaks as solved. The increase in investigated outbreaks, especially between 2018 and 2019, probably resulted from the implementation of whole genome sequencing in PulseNet. The number of investigated outbreaks fell in 2020, probably due to the COVID-19. The 250 multistate outbreaks investigated included...

In 2017, the WHO identified a list of bacteria that present a significant threat to human health and require new antibiotics. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a critical global public health threat, killing at least 1.27 million people worldwide and associated with nearly 5 million deaths in 2019. In the US, more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year. According to the CDC’s report, more than 35,000 people die as a result. WHO concludes that one of the biggest threats to global health is the lack of new antibiotics. Developing new drugs involves lots of time, effort, scientific research,...