USDA

The fast-moving pathogen, which has already invaded Europe, was found in East Coast ducks. The last outbreak that tore through the US killed 50 million birds.

African swine fever killed half the pigs in China. There is no vaccine and no treatment. Now it’s in the Caribbean and on the doorstep of the US.

The things Americans eat have a huge impact on climate change, and new nutrition guidelines don't help.

The United States' GMO rules never worked well, and new, precise gene-editing techniques are stretching them to the breaking point.

Every year, California's smokejumpers parachute into the jaws of massive conflagrations.

A new report from the CDC and Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network shows that incidents of food-related bacterial illness are increasing in the U.S. Even worse, it's getting harder to identify exactly which strain is causing more and more of these infections.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture funds research and education in every state. But you've probably never heard of it.

Federal shutdown puts the kibosh on a stink-bug monitoring program. Here are some handy tips for controlling these stinky insects, from Wired Science blogger Gwen Pearson.

Late-breaking news, and I’ll update as I find out more: While the government is shut down, with food-safety personnel and disease detectives sent home and forbidden to work, a major foodborne-illness outbreak has begun. This evening, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture announced that “an estimated 278 illnesses … reported in 18 states” have been caused by chicken contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg and possibly produced by the firm Foster Farms.

The problem with science–and in particular science involving living ecosystems–is that you can’t just unplug everything and go home.

Much of the U.S. government is shut down today. What are the potential health consequences of the Centers for Disease Control being offline? The FDA? The USDA? Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna describes some possible implications.

Catching up to this news, which dropped quietly just before the holiday weekend: In a first, the US Department of Agriculture has given permission for chicken products processed in the People’s Republic of China to be sold in the United States without labeling that would indicate where the chicken products came from. The news was […]

The CDC puts the annual incidence of foodborne illness at almost 48 million cases, with almost 128,000 hospitalizations and more than 3,000 deaths. And though no public health agency assigns any percentage of those cases to big Thanksgiving meals featuring lots of food sitting around for hours, it’s clear they’re worried about it: The CDC, FDA and USDA all publish lengthy food-handling advice this time of year. Here is some advice on how to avoid getting sick this holiday.

A new Consumer Reports poll shows that 86 percent of shoppers in a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults said they wanted meat raised without antibiotics to be available in their local supermarkets. Superbug blogger Maryn McKenna reports.

Kathleen Hobson was eight years old when her mother unknowingly dosed her with poisonous cough syrup. She’d only taken a couple spoonfuls but when investigators came round, they still found nothing left to test. After the little girl died, her mother had set the bottle on fire and then thrown it into the trash. Charlene […]

A new report on antibiotic resistance in animals, retail meat and people bears no good news: Strains of drug-resistant microorganisms are on the rise. Superbug blogger Maryn McKenna reports.

Back in September, I wrote an, um, slightly cranky post about Dr. Mehmet Oz’s self-proclaimed expose of arsenic levels in commercially produced apple juice in the United States. It was but one of many notes in a then ongoing chorus of crankiness. Most of the criticism focused on the point that his test results didn’t […]

Two new studies confirm, once again, that drug-resistant staph or MRSA -- normally thought of as a problem in hospitals -- is showing up in animals and in the meat those animals become. Superbug blogger Maryn McKenna weighs in.

I grew up on a dead-end street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where remnants of swampy forest surrounded the old wood-frame homes. Live oaks lined the streets. Spanish moss dripped from their branches. Snakes coiled under the ancient azaleas that edged the yards. It was, in fact, the perfect setting for a haunted Halloween night. And […]

Let me get this out of the way first: I don’t watch Dr. Mehmet Oz on television. I did see a show the year before last while I was keeping an older relative company. I can’t tell you what it was about, though, because we weren’t that long into it before my relative suggested that […]

Good news, but not excellent news, today from the US Department of Agriculture: It has agreed that, starting in March 2012, six more strains of E. coli will be considered “adulterants,” putting them in the same regulatory category as the much-feared E. coli O157:H7. It is a big step, to do this. Those six bacterial […]

If I were to pick an element that just about everyone recognizes as a poison, it would be arsenic (As). As a crumbly compound called “white” arsenic or arsensic trioxide (AsO3) it became so popular as a 19th century homicidal weapon – think Mary Ann Cotton and her 20 or so victims – that it […]

So if we wanted to reduce the danger of pathogens passing to people via food — not just drug-resistant bacteria, which are an increasingly significant problem, but all disease-causing ones — where to start? Formulating a strategy is more difficult than it seems. In the US, policing food safety is divided among several federal agencies: […]