Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a serotype of the bacterial species Escherichia coli and is one of the Shiga-like toxin–producing types of E. coli. It is a cause of disease, typically foodborne illness, through consumption of contaminated and raw food, including raw milk and undercooked ground beef. Infection with this type of pathogenic bacteria may lead to hemorrhagic diarrhea, and to kidney failure; these have been reported to cause the deaths of children younger than five years of age, of elderly patients, and of patients whose immune systems are otherwise compromised.
Foodborne illness is any illness resulting from the contamination of food by pathogenic bacteria, viruses, or parasites, as well as prions, and toxins such as aflatoxins in peanuts, poisonous mushrooms, and various species of beans that have not been boiled for at least 10 minutes.
Romaine or cos lettuce is a variety of lettuce that grows in a tall head of sturdy dark green leaves with firm ribs down their centers. Unlike most lettuces, it is tolerant of heat. In North America, romaine is often sold as whole heads or as "hearts" that have had the outer leaves removed and are often packaged together.
JBS USA Holdings, Inc. is a meat processing company and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian multinational JBS S.A. The subsidiary was created when JBS entered the U.S. market in 2007 with its purchase of Swift & Company.
The 2006 North American E. coli outbreak was an Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak from prepackaged spinach. The outbreak occurred in September 2006, and its origin was an Angus cattle ranch that had leased land to a spinach grower. At least 276 consumer illnesses and 3 deaths have been attributed as a result from the outbreak.
Food safety is used as a scientific method/discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. The occurrence of two or more cases of a similar illness resulting from the ingestion of a common food is known as a food-borne disease outbreak. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potential health hazards. In this way, food safety often overlaps with food defense to prevent harm to consumers. The tracks within this line of thought are safety between industry and the market and then between the market and the consumer. In considering industry-to-market practices, food safety considerations include the origins of food including the practices relating to food labeling, food hygiene, food additives and pesticide residues, as well as policies on biotechnology and food and guidelines for the management of governmental import and export inspection and certification systems for foods. In considering market-to-consumer practices, the usual thought is that food ought to be safe in the market and the concern is safe delivery and preparation of the food for the consumer. Food safety, nutrition and food security are closely related. Unhealthy food creates a cycle of disease and malnutrition that affects infants and adults as well.
Thomas Hugh Pennington, CBE, FRCPath, FRCP (Edin), FMedSci, FRSE is emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Outside academia, he is best known as the chair of the Pennington Group inquiry into the Scottish Escherichia coli outbreak of 1996 and as Chairman of the Public Inquiry into the 2005 Outbreak of E. coli O157 in South Wales.
Topps Meat Company was a privately owned family company founded in 1940 by Benjamin Sachs in Manhattan, New York. The company later relocated to Elizabeth, New Jersey. The company produced and distributed frozen ground beef patties and other meat products processed at its 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) plant in Elizabeth and posted about $8.8 million a year in sales, according to information reported by Dun & Bradstreet. In 2003, the company was purchased by Strategic Investment and Holdings, an investment firm based in Buffalo, New York and by 2007 it was "one of the country’s largest manufacturers of frozen hamburgers." In 2007 the company ceased operations following Escherichia coli O157:H7 contamination of products and the ensuing recall.
XL Foods Inc. is a Canadian meat packing company. The company is a subsidiary of Nilsson Brothers Inc. based in Edmonton, Alberta. From 2009 until 2013, XL Foods' Lakeside Packers Division was located just west of Brooks, Alberta, in Newell County. This facility was the second largest beef-processing operation in Canada. During this period the company was by far the largest employer in Brooks, employing more than 2,200 people in 2012.
Adulteration is a legal offense and when the food fails to meet the legal standards set by the government, it is said to have been Adulterated Food. One form of adulteration is the addition of another substance to a food item in order to increase the quantity of the food item in raw form or prepared form, which results in the loss of the actual quality of the food item. These substances may be either available food items or non-food items. Among meat and meat products some of the items used to adulterate are water or ice, carcasses, or carcasses of animals other than the animal meant to be consumed. In the case of seafood, adulteration may refer to species substitution (mislabeling), which replaces the species identified on the product label with another species, or undisclosed processing methods, in which treatments such as additives, excessive glazing, or short-weighting are not disclosed to the consumer.
Raw meat generally refers to any type of uncooked muscle tissue of an animal used for food. In the meat production industry, the term ‘meat’ refers specifically to mammalian flesh, while the words ‘poultry’ and ‘seafood’ are used to differentiate between the tissue of birds and aquatic creatures.
A novel strain of Escherichia coli O104:H4 bacteria caused a serious outbreak of foodborne illness focused in northern Germany in May through June 2011. The illness was characterized by bloody diarrhea, with a high frequency of serious complications, including hemolytic–uremic syndrome (HUS), a condition that requires urgent treatment. The outbreak was originally thought to have been caused by an enterohemorrhagic (EHEC) strain of E. coli, but it was later shown to have been caused by an enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) strain that had acquired the genes to produce Shiga toxins, present in organic fenugreek sprouts.
Escherichia coli is a gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms (endotherms). Most E. coli strains are harmless, but pathogenic varieties cause serious food poisoning, septic shock, meningitis, or urinary tract infections in humans. Unlike normal flora E. coli, the pathogenic varieties produce toxins and other virulence factors that enable them to reside in parts of the body normally not inhabited by E. coli, and to damage host cells. These pathogenic traits are encoded by virulence genes carried only by the pathogens.
In 2006, there were several outbreaks of foodborne illness from spinach and lettuce contaminated by E. coli O157:H7.
The 1992–1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak occurred when the Escherichia coli O157:H7 bacterium killed four children and infected 732 people across four US states. The outbreak involved 73 Jack in the Box restaurants in California, Idaho, Washington, and Nevada, and has been described as "far and away the most infamous food poison outbreak in contemporary history." The majority of the affected were under 10 years old. Four children died and 178 others were left with permanent injury including kidney and brain damage.
In 1964, there was an outbreak of typhoid in the city of Aberdeen, Scotland. The first two cases were identified on 20 May 1964; eventually over 400 cases were diagnosed and the patients were quarantined at the City Hospital in Urquhart Road, Woodend Hospital in Eday Road, and Tor-na-Dee Hospital in Milltimber which was used as an overflow hospital for typhoid cases. There were three deaths connected with the outbreak. Dr Ian MacQueen, the Medical Officer of Health for Aberdeen, became well known in the media for his twice-daily briefings.
Ground meat, called mince or minced meat outside North America, is meat finely chopped by a meat grinder or a chopping knife. A common type of ground meat is ground beef, but many other types of meats are prepared in a similar fashion, including pork, veal, lamb, goat meat, and poultry.
