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An eight hour listeria test is what DuPont Qualicon has just annouced.

The new test is genetic-based and allows food companies to detect Listeria on environmental surfaces in only eight hours.

A spokes person for DuPont Qualicon says the new assay “is the first commercial application of Reverse-Transcriptase PCR for bacterial testing in food.” It is part of a suite of BAX(R) system products.

“This flexible test can give food companies clear, precise results at the end of a shift,” said Kevin Huttman, president of DuPont Qualicon. “With fast, accurate detection of Listeria, even at low concentrations, food processors get the information they need to take action sooner and release product faster.”

Listeria is found in many kinds of foods and us usually killed with proper cooking. Ready-to-eat products, such as hot dogs and deli meat, can become contaminated between cooking and packaging, however. The infection Listeriosis is caused by eating food contaminated with pathogenic Listeria monocytogenes. This illness is especially risky for pregnant women and immuno-compromised individuals. DuPont Qualicon said.

Applications

The BAX® system detects all species of Listeria, even at very low concentrations (101 cfu/mL).

With reverse-transcriptase PCR, samples do not require the usual 24-48 hour enrichment in nutrient brotoh. Instead, Listeria cells are resuscitated by heating in the collection buffer solution for four hours, providing a jump-start to the process.

Validation studies on stainless steel using both the classic and Q7 models have shown that the BAX® system detected more positive results on spiked samples than the reference USDA FSIS culture method. In a panel of 58 strains across 7 species of Listeria and 52 strains of non-Listeria, the assay demonstrated 100% inclusivity/exclusivity.

Approvals

The BAX® system 8-hour Listeria assay will be submitted to AOAC-RI for Performance Tested Method approval.

Source

The EU and US positions at a Codex meeting to set international standards on food safety foreshadow future legislation that would affect hygiene control measures in manufacturing plants, and the manufacture of powdered formulae, ready-to-eat foods, and pasteurised liquid eggs.

In the six day meeting which ended on the 4 November in New Delhi, India, national representatives to Codex’s food hygiene committee also decided to start work on drafting safety guidelines setting standards to control Campylobacter and Salmonella specie in broiler chicken meat.

At the New Delhi meeting they discussed various positions, including those relating to proposed standards for pasteurized liquid whole eggs, hygienic practice for processing powdered formulae for infants and children, pathogen control measures for Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods & guidelines for evaluating manufacturing control measures.

Codex is a multilateral body set up to develop food safety and other standards that would apply to all member countries.

It operates under the aegis of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health Organisation.

The standards are recognised as international benchmarks by one of the multilateral agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and aim to eliminate many of what the UN calls “unjustified technical barriers” to food imports set up by some countries.

The standards also serve to harmonise food safety laws globally, aiding multinational processors in following the law no matter where they trade.

The standards on each particular topic and food type can undergo a huge revision process at various levels of Codex decision making bodies, over a number of years. Member countries must then transcribe the standards into their national laws.

The proposed standard setting what pathogen controls for Listeria monocytogenes ready-to-eat food processors must put in place is based in the main on US risk assessments, according to Codex documents.

Based on the risk assessments, a working group led by Germany concluded that a zero tolerance standard for L. monocytogenes have a proportional reduction in the rates of illness from foods contaminated with the pathogen.

A study commissioned by the food hygiene committee showed that the application of microbiological criteria at a given point of the production chain is only one of the measures that need to be applied, to bring down contamination rates.

The committee proposes to exclude from the criteria foods that are processing in such a way to ensure the killing of L. monocytogenes and for which recontamination is not possible.

The foods must also be processed and handled under systems adhering to good hygienic practice (GHP), a separate international standard.

Such foods include those given a listericidal treatment in the package and those that are produced through aseptic processing and packaging.

The group includes dehydrated products such as powdered milk, dehydrated soup mixes, herbs and spices, fresh, uncut and unprocessed vegetables and fruits, soft drinks, beer and spirits.

At the meeting the EU delegation also proposed that the standard should specifically include ready-to-eat foods for infants and those with medical conditions.

The EU supports a 100 colony forming units per gram (cfu/g) limit on the pathogen for ready-to-eat foods, if the food manufacturer is able to demonstrate the maximum would not be exceeded throughout the shelf-life.

The EU delegation also noted that setting a zero tolerance standard, where a negative reading is set at 25g = 0.04 colony forming units per gram (cfu/g) “might cause misunderstandings”.

The EU also wants clarification on foods not covered by the testing standard, pointing out that previous discussions had also discussed products for which Listeria monocytogenes is “very unlikely” to be detected.

Clarification is also needed about the proposed exclusion of foods for which there is less than ‘1 log’ growth during 1.3 times the expected shelf life, the EU stated in its submission. Various definitions of ’shelf-life’ might confuse the issue.

At the meeting the Codex committee also set its priorities for proposed standards, with those for egg products topping the list.

Other priorities in order are standards for infant and children foods; combining two codes of practice for various nuts into one; setting a single hygienic code for fruits, vegetable and products made from them; quick frozen foods, spices and aromatic plants; low-acid and acidified low-acid canned foods and aseptically processed and packaged low-acid canned foods, natural mineral waters, frog legs, catering, and street-vended foods.

The WTO’s Codex Alimentarius Commission is the body set up to harmonise food safety and other export requirements around the world.

Member countries’ representatives meet regularly to debate a common position or standard on every aspect of such requirements, from the holding temperatures in frozen meat should be kept at, to processing requirements for specific types of cheeses.

Agreements forged at Codex meetings could eventually affect the way processors operate worldwide as they become incorporated into national laws in various countries around the world.

Source

According to Itar-Tass (Moscow), a total of 444 construction workers has been infected with food poisoning and remains in hospitals within the Moscow region.

A total of 444 workers employed at Sheremetyevo (3 terminal in Moscow), the IKEA - Khimki Business Park construction sites had been hospitalized since June 20 with symptoms of food poisoning, a representative of the Ministry for Emergency Situations said.

The workers - citizens of Russia, the CIS and Turkey, lived at the Iskorka and Morozovka recreation compounds in the village of Myshetskoye of the Solnechnogorsk district. Poor quality food was is a presumed cause of food poisoning, a source of the infection is being established, the same source said.

Managers of the ENKA Company have been questioned within the framework of an investigation into mass food poisoning of construction workers employed at Terminal 3 at Sheremetyevo airport.

Almost all of the workers arrived in Russia from Turkey, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to work on construction sites in Moscow. They lived on the premises of Ozero Krugloye recreation center in the Solnechnogorsk district.

According to preliminary data, all the victims have been infected with the salmonella bacteria and the source of the food for the workers were brought from Moscow.

The ENKA company might be stripped of the right to employ foreign workforce, the regional branch of the Federal Migration Service told Tass. “Since the company failed to fulfill its guarantees to the workers, which entailed grave consequences - mass food poisoning, and failed to ensure proper living conditions for the workers we are raising the issue of recalling the company’s license for the use of foreign workforce,” the Federal Migration Service said.

An operational headquarters for prevention of emergency situations in the Moscow region that is working round the clock has been following the situation. Healthcare Minister of the Moscow region Vladimir Semyonov said the workers’ condition was assessed as “medium seriousness”. Luckily, none of the sick people is in serious condition now, Semyonov said.

Deputy chairman of the government of the Moscow region Sergei Koshman said that the workers lived under conditions that did not meet the norm. Having obtained the license to accommodate 500 people, the employers invited 800 instead, Koshman said.

Source

Streptococcus throat has become harder to fight using penicillin or amoxicillin, but that’s not because the Streptococci have developed a resistance to those drugs. Instead, more than 50 percent of children have bacteria in their throats that protect strep germs.

New versions of antibiotics called cephalosporins are targeting the other bacteria, improving the odds of successful treatment fivefold.

Strep throat is the second-most-common reason children get antibiotics. But the gold standard antibiotics they get don’t always clear up the infection.

Pediatric infectious disease specialist Michael Pichichero, of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, says, says the standard strep drugs — amoxicillin and penicillin — fail in about 25 percent of kids.

“Strep is not actually resistant to penicillin or amoxicillin so, that cannot explain the failures that we’re seeing,” he says.

Instead, other bacteria are the problem. More than half of kids have bacteria in their throats that protect strep germs.

Dr. Pichichero says, “This is very much different from 20 or 30 years ago where almost all children treated with penicillin and amoxicillin would be cured.”

But his research shows newer drugs can kill strep. One in four kids fails treatment with penicillin. One in six fails newer drugs called cephalosporins. Only one in 20 fail the newer versions of those drugs. The newer antibiotics only need to be taken for four to five days, rather than the 10-day course of the older drugs.

BACKGROUND:
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that a short treatment of a newer class of antibiotics is more effective than the traditional 10-day dose of older antibiotics like penicillin and amoxicillin to treat strep throat. The Rochester scientists reviewed over 47 studies over the past 35 years involving more than 11,000 children and found that 25 percent of children treated for strep throat with penicillin ended up back in the doctor’s office within three weeks.

HOW ANTIBIOTICS WORK:
Infections are caused by single-celled organisms called bacteria, which can sometimes evade the body’s immune system and begin reproducing.

Antibiotics kill those harmful bacteria in various ways, such as preventing a bacterium from turning glucose into energy, or preventing it from construct a cell wall. The bacteria die instead of reproducing. Antibiotics are like selective poisons, because they target bacteria and not the body’s own cells.

They are not effective against viruses, however. Unlike bacteria, a virus isn’t a living, reproducing lifeform, just a piece of DBA or RNA. A virus injects its DNA into a living cell and the cell itself reproduces more of the viral DNA. There is nothing to “kill,” so antibiotics don’t work on viruses.

ABOUT STREP THROAT:
Most sore throats are caused by viruses and generally clear up without medical treatment.

Strep throat is an infection caused by a type of bacteria, and thus needs treatment with antibiotics. Symptoms include fever, stomach pain and red swollen tonsils. The bacteria can be transferred to others by sneezing, coughing or shaking hands.

A doctor will usually take a throat culture to test for strep throat. Lack of treatment can lead to other health problems, such as rheumatic fever (which can damage the heart), scarlet fever, blood infections or kidney disease.

DRUG RESISTANCE:
Bacteria are highly adaptive, and over time they naturally develop resistance, protecting them from incoming germs (and antibiotics) and making them harder to kill.

Repeated exposure to penicillin and amoxicillin can result in a throat full of bacteria that can shield strep germs from the older drugs.

The surviving bacteria then reproduce more and become more dominant. Sometimes parents discontinue antibiotic medication prematurely when their children begin to feel better, so the strep germ isn’t entirely killed off, leading to much more severe infections requiring the use of even stronger drugs later on.

did you know that red wine is known to have multiple health benefits. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have found that red wine may also protect humans from common food-borne diseases.

Researchers Azlin Mustapha, associate professor of food science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, and Atreyee Das, a doctoral student in the food science program, are conducting on-going studies examining the inhibitory effects of numerous types of red wines, as well as grape juice, against pathogens and probiotic bacteria, which naturally reside in the intestinal tract and can be beneficial in combating, among other things, high cholesterol and tumors.

They found that red wines – Cabernet, Zinfandel and Merlot in particular – have anti-microbial properties that defend against food-borne pathogens and don’t harm naturally useful bacteria like probiotic bacteria.

E. coli, Salmonella Typhimurium, Listeria monocytogenes and H. pylori were among the pathogens examined. E. coli and Listeria can be fatal. Mustapha said the most promising results involved Helicobacter pylori, which can be transmitted via food and water and is the main cause of stomach ulcers.

“Our study is a little different than those previously reported in the media. Those studies promote moderate red wine consumption for cardiovascular diseases,” she said. “We went a step farther and asked: If red wine is already good for cardiovascular diseases, what about food-borne pathogens? If you get a food-borne illness and drink red wine, will that help decrease the symptoms a little bit? This study showed that the four probiotics tested weren’t inhibited by red wines; the pathogens were.”

In lab tests, Mustapha and Das focused on ethanol, pH levels and reseveratrol, which is a phytochemical found in grape vines and the skin of grapes. It also is responsible for the red coloring in red wines. They found that in addition to ethanol, pH and reseveratrol also may inhibit food-borne pathogens.

Numerous white wines also were tested, but yielded no positive results, the researchers said.

“It’s not just ethanol in the red wine that is inhibitory toward food-borne pathogens, but other factors which include the pH of the wine – because wines are a little acidic, and possibly the phytochemicals may have an effect,” said Mustapha, noting that grape juice produces similar results.

“We hypothesize that these phytochemicals, reseveratrol being the main one, also play a role not just as antioxidants but also may have some inhibitions against food-borne pathogens. Now, we’re concentrating mainly on the reseveratrol effects on these pathogens.”

The findings were recently presented at the Institute of Food Technologists annual conference in Chicago. http://munews.missouri.edu