Porca Food

An ongoing E. coli outbreak affecting 16 people in 12 states has been linked to cake mix.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), public health and regulatory officials in several states, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are investigating the multistate outbreak of E. coli O121 infections from cake mix.

All those sick are female and illness dates range from Feb. 26 to June 21.

Sick people range in age from 2 to 73 years old, with a median of 13. Seventy-five percent are children under the age of 18. Children are more likely to have a severe E. coli infection.

Of 16 people with information available, seven have been hospitalized. One person has developed a type of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) but no deaths have been reported.

Searching for source
Of the eight people interviewed, six reported tasting or eating raw batter … Read more

Health officials in Ireland are investigating an E. coli O26 outbreak at a childcare facility.

Officials with the Department of Public Health Mid-West of the Health Service Executive (HSE) said the agency is managing the outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and highlighted the importance of effective hand hygiene and well water treatment.

The agency added that there are fewer than five patients at the childcare facility in Limerick and the incident is under control.

STEC, also known as Verotoxigenic E. coli (VTEC), can cause serious illness in children under 5 and the elderly. The serious outcomes of illness shows the importance of hand hygiene before and after preparing food and after contact with farm animals and their environment, said officials.

Seasonal E. coli rise
Ireland has one of the highest rates of STEC in Europe, and the Midwest region has one of the top rates in the country. … Read more

McCormick & Company, Inc. is recalling McCormick Perfect Pinch Italian Seasoning, McCormick Culinary Italian Seasoning and Frank’s RedHot Buffalo Ranch Seasoning because of possible Salmonella contamination.

The recalled product was shipped to 32 states: Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

The product was also shipped internationally to Bermuda and Canada.

The potential risk was brought to McCormick’s attention by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during routine testing.

Recall products:

• McCormick Perfect Pinch Italian Seasoning 1.31 oz bottle

UPC NUMBER:  052100049731

MCCORMICK ITEM NUMBER:  901582629

AFFECTED DATE CODES:  BEST BY MAY 26 24 K, BEST BY MAY 27 24 K, BEST BY JUN 04 24 K, BEST BY JUN 05 24 K

• McCormick Perfect Pinch Italian Seasoning 2.25 oz

The Milwakee-based Food Industry Council, LLC has launched its “FIC Recall Reporter.”   The new, free business tool is a searchable database of all FDA and USDA published Class I, Class II, and Class III food and beverage recalls since 2000.

The Food Industry Council says its FIC Recall Reporter is the only single database in the world that contains this information.

FIC Recall Reporter is updated regularly, allowing users to easily search the growing number of food recalls using a variety of user-friendly parameters.

For example, within seconds, a user can learn whether a food product has been recalled, how many times a particular food has been recalled, and how regulators classified those recalls; or, how many times a food product was recalled for the same reason. Prior to FIC Recall Reporter, accessing this information required tedious and time-consuming multiple year-specific searches in separate FDA and USDA databases.

“For … Read more

Researchers have highlighted the prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes in cheese in Ecuador.

In Ecuador, the impact of listeriosis on public health is unknown because it is not a reportable disease. Soft cheese is consumed in most urban households in the country.

A total of 260 artisanal cheese samples were collected from March to September 2018 in street markets of 18 of 24 provinces of Ecuador. Cheeses didn’t have a sanitary registration certificate issued by the national authority.

Of the 260 food isolates, 37 were positive for Listeria monocytogenes.

“The presence of Listeria monocytogenes in our samples suggests the need to demand thermal treatments in cheese processing as well as better epidemiological surveillance of the pathogen and the disease in our country,” said researchers.

Scientists also compared serogroups isolated from cheeses with clinical isolates from June 2015 to July 2018 provided by the Laboratory for Antibiotic Resistance of the National Institute … Read more