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The San Antonio Metropolitan Health District reported that 255 people got ill and 12 have been hospitalized due to Salmonella outbreak, at Pasha Mediterranean Grill. Laboratory results show evidence Of Salmonella in 14 people tested to date. The director of Metro Health, Dr. Colleen Bridger, said the agency knows that salmonella is the cause, “We don’t know where it came from, food handlers, or whether it came from the food that was being served or both.” The officials found that the restaurant’s refrigeration wasn’t cold enough and the staff wasn’t handling food properly among a number of other health violations. The restaurant’s managers admitted that at least two of their employees ended up getting sick with salmonellosis. They had also returned to work without the proper doctor’s release to do so. The health agency believes the case numbers will only grow. @ https://amp.ksat.com/news/60_-people-reported-sick-following-foodborne-illness-outbreak-at-pasha

Contaminated tomatoes served at a church dinner in Highland, Kansas caused almost 70 people to become sick with a gastrointestinal illness, and several people were hospitalized. Theresa Freed, deputy secretary of public affairs for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said that all food except tomatoes was ruled out as the source. “Testing of food that was served at the dinner has been completed and all tested negative for salmonella except for a sample of tomatoes that tested positive for the same strain of Salmonella Newport,” Freed said. The source of the tomatoes is still unknown because various residents brought the tomatoes from different locations. Freed said a grand total of 115 persons completed the Department of Health survey, and 69 reported they had become sick after attending the taco dinner. Fourteen victims have clinically tested positive for Salmonella Newport. @ https://www.kpvi.com/officials-say-tomatoes-cause-of-salmonella-illness/article_52609a71-c843-50e0-b277-b2c943589e64.html

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had updated the investigation related to Salmonella outbreak linked to Honey Smacks cereal. CDC advises consumers and retailers not to eat, serve, or sell any Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal, which is linked to a Salmonella outbreak and continues to make people sick. Although Kellogg recalled the cereal on June 14, 2018, the cereal continues to make people sick. The FDA reports that the recalled Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal is still being sold in some locations, despite the recall earlier this summer. Since the last update on July 12, 2018, 30 more illnesses have been reported due to outbreak strain of Salmonella Mbandaka, bringing the total to 130 cases from 36 states with 34 people hospitalized. Since the cereal has a shelf-life of one year it still might be in many houses pantries. People who recently became ill report eating Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal that they had in their homes. In interviews, 61 (77%) of 79 people specifically reported eating Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal. Ill people in this outbreak reported this cereal more often than any other cereals or food items. After the initial recall, the Kellogg Co. reported it distributed the implicated cereal to foreign countries of Netherlands Antilles also known as Aruba/Curaçao/Saint Maarten; the Bahamas; Barbados; Tortola also known as British Virgin Islands; Costa Rica; Guatemala; Haiti; Mexico, Panama; and Tahiti also known as French Polynesia. Neither government officials nor the Kellogg Co. has released the name of the contractor that produced the recalled cereal for Kellogg. @ https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/s0904-salmonella-outbreak-honey-smacks.html

A team of scientists from Argentina tested the effect of a cocktail of six lytic phages on pathogenic E. coli in meat and milk. The cocktail was found effective against pathogenic E. coli strains in milk and meat especially at room and abusive temperatures. The phage cocktail remained viable at high numbers after challenges in food matrices. The cocktail was effective against DH5α, an enteropathogenic (EPEC) and two Shiga-toxigenic (STEC) E. coli strains. At 4 °C, cell counts were significantly lower (2.2–2.8 log10 CFU/mL) when E. coli strains (∼109 CFU/mL) were challenged against the phage cocktail (∼109 PFU/mL) in Hershey-Mg broth after 24 h. The reductions were higher (3.2–3.4 log10 CFU/mL) after a 48 h exposure for all the strains tested. In milk, the cocktail was highly effective since bacterial counts were below the detection limit (<101 CFU/mL) at 4 °C, while the reductions ranged from 2 to 4 log10 CFU/mL at 24 °C after a 24 h exposure. At 37 °C, DH5α was eliminated within 2 h, and an average cell decrease of 4 log10 CFU/mL was observed for the three pathogenic strains tested. When the assays were performed in meat, the count reduction ranged from 0.5 to 1.0 log10 CFU/mL after 48 h at 4 °C, while a higher cell inactivation was achieved at 24 °C (2.6–4.0 log10 CFU/mL) and 37 °C (3.0–3.8 log10 CFU/mL). @ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074000201731184X?dgcid=rss_sd_all