Showing posts with label Lab tests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lab tests. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Egg Products Recalled Due to Falsified Lab Tests for Salmonella

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is issuing a public health alert because Nutriom LLC, a Lacey, Wash. establishment, declined to expand its Feb. 15, 2014 recall to include an additional 118,541 pounds of processed egg products for which there is reason to conclude that they are unfit for human consumption.
The request for expansion was based on evidence collected during an ongoing investigation conducted by FSIS at this establishment. The company has refused to recall the additional processed egg products. As a consequence, FSIS intends to take appropriate action to remove the products from commerce.
FSIS issued the original recall because the company allegedly recorded false laboratory results. The company allegedly produced negative laboratory results for Salmonella when the results were actually positive, or reported that sampling had occurred when, in fact, no microbial testing was performed. FSIS requested the company to include additional products, but it declined. Because the product was not produced in accordance with FSIS requirements, it is unfit for human consumption
.The following Products have been recalled
  • 1.75-lb. packs of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with the Julian dates “0374,” “0384,” “2683” and “2693”
  • 66-gram spray bottles of “Bak-Klene Egg Wash” with the lot code “L1013A”
  • 1.17-lb. packs of “OvaEasy UGRA, Reduced Cholesterol” with the Julian dates “3129,” “3228,” “3229,” “3230,” “3231,” “3281,” “3282,” “3283,” “3284,” “3337,” “3338,” “3339” and “3340”
  • 4.5-oz. cans of “OvaEasy Whole Plain Egg” with the Julian date “2883”
  • 571-gram packs of “Vitovo Low Fat” with the Julian date “3193”
  • 1.1-lb. bags of “OvaEasy Boil-in-Bag UGR, Heat & Serve (HS)” with the Julian dates “3161,” “3162,” “3182,” “3183,” “3188,” “3201,” “3202,” “3203,” “3204,” “3205,” “3208,” “3209,” “3210,” “3211,” “3212,” “3213,” “3220,” “3221” and “3222”
  • 2-oz. packs of “OvaEasy Plain Whole Egg” with the Julian dates “0074,” “0084,” “0094,” “0354,” “0364,” “0374,” “2243,” “2253,” “2953,” “2963,” “3463,” “3473” and “3483”
  • 66-gram spray bottles of “Panera Egg Wash” with the Julian dates “0104,” “0154,” “0164,” “0174,” “0214,” “0224,” “0234,” “0244,” “0284,” “0294,” “0304” and “0314”
  • 2-oz. pack of “Wise Company, Wise Blend” with the Julian date “0943”
On Feb. 15, 2014, the company recalled 226,710 pounds of processed egg products. To read the recall release, click here.
The dried egg products were produced from May 2013 through January 2014, and bear the establishment number “INSPECTED EGG PRODUCTS PLANT 21493G” inside the USDA Mark of Inspection. These products were shipped nationwide and to U.S. military installations in the United States and abroad, and to Mexico.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

2/18/14 Health News Mom Pleads~ DON’T FEED CHILDREN RAW MILK - Stem Cell Lines Not Fit for Clinic- New Antibiotic for TB - Testing Your Breath To Diagnose Disease

A MOM AND A DAIRYMAN PLEAD: DON’T FEED
Two years ago, when Oregon parents Jill Brown and Jason Young met Brad and Tricia Salyers, the families had no idea that they would eventually be sharing in a tragedy that sickened four of the Salyers’ children and left Brown and Young’s youngest child, Kylee – 23 months old at the time – with such... Continue Reading
Diagnosis Just a Breath Away With New Laser

University of Adelaide physics researchers have developed a new type of laser that will enable exciting new advances in areas as diverse as breath analysis for disease diagnosis and remote sensing of critical greenhouse gases. They have been able to produce 25 times more light emission than other lasers operating at a similar wavelength - opening the way for detection of very low concentrations of gases. Research has shown that with various diseases, minute amounts of gases not normally exhaled can be detected in the breath; for example, acetone can be detected in the breath when someone has diabetes..Continue Reading
A Faster Way to Flag Bacteria-Tainted Food — and Prevent Illness
On the horizon is a new approach for pathogen screening that is far faster than current commercial methods. Scientists are reporting the technique in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry. Sibani Lisa Biswal and colleagues note that Salmonella is one of the pathogens most commonly associated with foodborne illness, which can cause fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. They used an array of tiny “nanomechanical cantilevers,” anchored at one end, kind of like little diving boards. The cantilevers have peptides attached to them that bind to Salmonella. When the bacteria bind to the peptides, the cantilever arm bends, creating a signal. The screening system rapidly distinguished Salmonella from other types of bacteria in a sample. One of the peptides was even more specific than an antibody, Continue Reading
Stem Cell Lines Not Fit for Clinic
Most stem cell lines registered with the NIH don’t comply with the FDA’s guidelines for human use, according to a new report. Many of the stem cell lines used by academics and registered with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) would not be eligible for commercialization because they don’t pass muster with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agencies’ standards throws up a potential roadblock on the path from the laboratory to the clinic. “The main concern . How do we move this technology [to the clinic]? How do we translate it?”.Continue Reading

Promising Class of Antibiotics Discovered for Treatment of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have discovered a promising new class of antibiotics that could aid efforts to overcome drug-resistance in tuberculosis (TB), a global killer. The drugs increased survival of mice infected with TB and were effective against drug-resistant strains of TB. St. Jude led the international research effort, The antibiotics, called spectinamides, were created by changing the chemical structure of an existing antibiotic, spectinomycin, which does not work against TB. In multiple trials of mice with both active and chronic TB infections, researchers report that one version of the new drug—an analog known as 1599—was as good as or better than current TB drugs at reducing levels of the bacteria in the lungs of mice. In addition, 1599 caused no serious side effects.Continue Reading

Thursday, October 3, 2013

10/3/2013 Weekly Health News: E. coli, Parasites, Cancer, West Nile, Child Birth

Choosing  Lab Tests Wisely
The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) has released its third list of commonly prescribed tests and procedures that may not be necessary. The evidence-based recommendations, part of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation Choosing Wisely campaign, were released on September 24 and are:
"Evidence shows that much of the care delivered in America could be duplicative or unnecessary. In fact, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine, up to 30% of healthcare may be duplicative or unnecessary

PSA Screening Does More Harm Than Good,
To the ongoing debate over whether routine screening for prostate cancer reduces prostate cancer mortality comes a new analysis that suggests that it does more harm than good

New Method Detects E. coli in Water
A research team from the Univ. of Alberta has made a public health breakthrough by developing a device that detects E. coli bacteria in water much faster than previous methods. Mechanical engineering professor Sushanta Mitra’s team developed a sensor capable of detecting the potentially deadly bacteria in minutes — clearly improving on existing technology, which takes 24 to 48 hours to do the same job.

A Farewell to Parasites
Despite a fierce civil war, scientists led a 14-year grassroots campaign that has eradicated a parasitic disease from northern Sudan.
In 2002, they said it was impossible. At an international conference held in Atlanta, 64 experts on public health, human rights, and finance concluded that ridding Africa of river blindness—a parasitic disease more formally known as onchocerciasis—was unachievable.

New Technology Presented at OSA's Frontiers in Optics Meeting Will Help Fight Cancer
Scientists seeking new ways to fight cancer often try to understand the subtle, often invisible, changes to DNA, proteins, cells, and tissue that alter the body's normal biology and cause disease. Now, to aid in that fight, a team of researchers has developed a sophisticated new optical imaging tool that enables scientists to look deep within tumors and uncover their inner workings.

Removing One Protein from Adult Cells Enables Them to Turn Back the Clock to a Stem-cell-like State
Embryonic stem cells have the enormous potential to treat and cure many medical problems. That is why the discovery that induced embryonic-like stem cells can be created from skin cells (iPS cells) was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in 2012. But the process has remained frustratingly slow and inefficient, and the resulting stem cells are not yet ready for medical use. Research in the lab of the Weizmann Institute's Dr. Yaqub Hanna, which appears in Nature, dramatically changes that: He and his group revealed the "brake" that holds back the production of stem cells, and found that releasing this brake can both synchronize the process and increase its efficiency from around 1% or less today to 100%.

Severe Blood Infections During Childbirth on Rise
Sepsis-related deaths also increased sharply over decade, researchers say.
In a disturbing trend, rates of severe sepsis and deaths from sepsis during childbirth rose sharply in the United States over a 10-year period, a new study reveals. Severe sepsis—which can lead to multiple organ failure—occurred in about one in 11,000 women.

West Nile Virus Infections Top 1000 in US This Year
Cases of West Nile virus have been steadily developing across the country this year, continuing even as fall approaches. This mosquito-spread disease has now caused infections in nearly every US state during 2013.

Antibiotic Resistance: A Final Warning
On Sept 16, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its report Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013—their first ever report on this subject. From the outset the tone is clear: in his foreword, Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, states that “antimicrobial resistance is one of our most serious health threats. Infections from resistant bacteria are now too common”.





Food safety group demands probe in tainted alfalfa