Outbreaks and Alerts: July 27, 2010

A daily digest of international outbreaks, alerts and food safety news

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United States

• Anchorage, AK. July 26: The Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services reports an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis associated with consumption of undercooked fiddlehead ferns that were harvested in Canada. Fiddleheads contain a natural toxin that is inactivated by boiling for 10–15 minutes or steaming for 10–12 minutes.
• Baton Rouge, LA. July 26: Three hundred and twenty-four oil spill exposure-related cases have been reported to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to date, according to its eighth surveillance report released today. Two hundred and forty-one of those cases involved workers on oil rigs or workers involved in the oil spill clean-up efforts, while 83 were reported by the general public.
• Pennsylvania. July 27: A Pennsylvania dairy farm has agreed to abide by federal regulations that protect meat from illegal drug residues caused by the unapproved medication of cattle before slaughter, as part of a consent decree of permanent injunction obtained by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The dairy farm sold animals through local livestock auctions to slaughterhouses that ship beef products to customers in New Jersey, New York, Maine, and Michigan.

Canada

• Ottawa, ON. July 27: Health Canada is informing Canadians about the potential dangers of buying prescription drugs online from www.globalpharmacycanada.com. The company responsible for the website recently removed Canadian access to it, but Canadians may have purchased from this website in the past.

Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands

• Ankara, Turkey. July 25: Food-safety control tests conducted last year by the Agriculture Ministry in line with EU food regulations shows 5.28 percent of the analyzed comestibles yielded 'unsatisfactory' results and 4.42 percent turned out to contain pesticide residues. The overall rate of unsatisfactory test results was 5 percent, lower than that of 2008.
• Nairobi, Kenya. July 26: Poisonous moonshine has killed at least 17 people and blinded a dozen more in the Nairobi slum of Kibera. The home-distilled drink may have contained traces of methanol.
• Rajasthan, India. July 26: At least 20 girls today fell sick, with 14 of them hospitalised, after consuming food, served by a non-governmental organization (NGO), during lunch break in a government school.
• New Delhi, India. July 28: In a bid to make them look garden fresh and ensure that they grow faster to reach markets, farmers are using chemicals such as the hormone oxytocin on their produce. Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone, which also acts as a neurotransmitter in brain. The hormone is used clinically to help begin or to continue labour, to control bleeding after delivery and to stimulate the secretion of breast milk. The hormone is being administered by injection into vegetables such as pumpkins, watermelons and cucumbers.

Australia and New Zealand

• New Zealand. July 28: The New Zealand Food Safety Authority reports that it has found residue of endosulfan – a banned chemical acutely toxic to humans at high levels – in cucumbers and bok choy. In addition, 10 of 23 samples contained levels of the fungicide chlorothalonil or the insecticide thiamethoxam over the allowable limit.