- Author: Trina Wood
For home gardeners, spring is a busy time of year and there’s never a tomato with more flavor than one grown to full ripeness on the vine. But there are also many safety precautions to follow to prevent contamination of fruits and vegetables with pathogens that cause serious food-borne illnesses.
Michele Jay-Russell, a veterinarian and research microbiologist at the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security (WIFSS) and program manager of the Western Center for Food Safety (WCFS), recently co-authored a study that highlights the need to be aware of...
- Author: Marissa Palin
Some of us spent our weekend in the garden or at the farmers market, obsessing over our fresh produce that will get us through the week. Some of us went to bed last night dreaming about a Frostie from Wendy’s and fries from McDonald’s. Still, others of us spent the weekend trying to make ends meet and scraping together barely enough food to feed our families. Bottom line – food is something we all have in common. It’s a universal language. Whether we pride ourselves on eating local and organic, constantly find ourselves in the fast food lines, or stress about how to feed our families each day, food joins us all together.
All 6, almost 7, billion of us.
But what happens when there are 8 billion of...
- Author: Cynthia Kintigh
We're used to hearing news about food safety issues in the commercial food supply; from spinach to cantaloupes, consumers keep a watchful eye to make sure that the food they bring home from the market is safe for their families. But how much thought do you give to the safety of the fruits and vegetables from your backyard?
Many home gardeners assume that just because the food came from their own backyard it is safe. But that's not always the case.
The free UC ANR publication Food Safety in Your Home Vegetable Garden is a terrific guide to reducing the risk of contaminating the food grown in...
- Author: Janet Byron
The news this past week that nearly three tons of Trader Joe’s prepared barbeque chicken salad were recalled due to possible contamination by Listeria moncytogenes had me wondering anew about this mysterious foodborne pathogen. And today, seven tons of Garden Fresh prepared salads were also recalled.
I’ve spent precious minutes worrying about E. coli (ubiquitous, especially in poop) and Salmonella (the reason we must take care with raw eggs), but why doesn’t...
- Contributor: Ann King Filmer
- Author: Pat Bailey
An ambitious effort to sequence the genomes of 100,000 infectious microorganisms and speed diagnosis of foodborne illnesses has been launched by the University of California, Davis, Agilent Technologies, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Bart Weimer, professor in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, serves as director of the 100K Genome Project and co-director of the recently established BGI@UC Davis facility, where the sequencing will be done. Other collaborators include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S....
