The country's food watchdog issued a warning not to consume fresh cilantro sold at Wal-Mart due to a risk of salmonella contamination.

Nature's Reward fresh cilantro was sold in Ontario Wal-Mart stores January 17 to 27, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a release Friday.

No illnesses have been reported.

The importer, Toronto's Fresh Taste Produce Ltd., has voluntarily recalled the products.

The cilantro is wrapped with twist ties bearing the following codes: PLU 4889 and UPC 0 33383 80104 9.

Protect yourself from Salmonella, E.coli, Listera and other food borne pathogens by washing your vegetables with CitroBio Fresh Food Wash.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Washington, Feb 7 (IANS) Scientists have found out how the microbe salmonella infects millions with food poisoning and typhoid fever.

Yale University researchers tracked how salmonella is able to make proteins line up in just the right sequence to invade host cells.

'These mechanisms present us with novel targets that might form the basis for the development of an entirely new class of anti-microbials,' said Jorge Galan, senior study author and professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale, reports the journal Science Express.

Galan's lab has been in the forefront of investigating the intricate mechanisms that microbes such as salmonella use to infect foreign cells, according to a Yale statement.

Galan and colleagues identified what they call a bacterial sorting platform, which attracts needed proteins and lines them up in a specific order.

If the proteins do not line up properly, salmonella, as well as many other bacterial pathogens, cannot 'inject' them into host cells to commandeer host cell functions, the lab has found.

Understanding how this mechanism works raises the possibility that new therapies can be developed which disable this protein delivery machine and counteract the bug.

Salmonella sickens at least 40,000 people annually in the US and kills about 400 people, according to the Centre for Disease Control.

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Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Four brands of fresh cilantro sold at certain Walmart stores have been recalled because they may be contaminated with salmonella, the nation's biggest retailer said.

Walmart posted a recall alert -- which it does only when a product has been sold at a Walmart or Sam's Club store or their websites. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Sabor Farms of Salinas, Calif. recalled the cilantro after sample tests detected salmonella.

So far, no one has reported getting sick from eating the cilantro. Salmonella can cause a potentially severe illness in young children and those with weakened immune systems, with symptoms including fever, stomach cramps and diarrhea.

Included in the recall are cilantro bunches packaged under the Nature's Reward, Ocean Mist, Tanimura & Antle and Queen Victoria brand labels. The cilantro was harvested on Jan. 13 and 14 and the FDA lists the label numbers affected. The cilantro would have been sold at stores between Jan. 14 and Jan. 28.

Sabor Farms' special counsel Brad Sullivan said most of the cilantro went to Walmart stores in California and cases were also shipped to Toronto and Maryland. Some cilantro also went to food services in California. Sabor Farms said it confirmed with the four companies that got the product that none of the recalled cilantro is still available for sale.

Sabor Farms President William Quinlan said in a statement "the safety of our consumers is always our top priority. Period. Even though it is unlikely this would pose a health concern, we believe the prudent and proper course of action is to pull the product back. Using product and shipping codes, we are working closely with health officials as well as our distributors and wholesalers to quickly and efficiently locate and dispose of the cilantro. If there is any question about the source of cilantro you should discard it, and any items prepared with it."

California Department of Public Health's Food Safety Section will continue to investigate the cilantro distribution, said the agency's section chief, Patrick Kennelly in a statement sent to Consumer Ally. "While we do not believe that any of the affected product remains in the marketplace, consumers may still have some of the effected cilantro or may have used it to make other products such as fresh salsa."

Contact Sabor Farms at (831) 970-9754. In December, Little Bear brand cilantro and curly parsley was recalled in 14 states and Canada over salmonella fears. Upscale grocer Trader Joe's in November recalled several products because they contained cilantro that may have been contaminated with salmonella. Fresh cilantro also was recalled at Walmart stores in 2009.

UPDATE: The recalled cilantro also went to Safeway and other groceries in California as well as restaurants including several Marie Callender locations, according to a distribution list posted by the state's Department of Health.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Scientists have developed a new two-in-one test that detects both E. coli O157 bacteria and the toxins it produces.

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is looking for new members for its biological safety committee.

The Advisory Committee on Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF) has four vacancies and is interesting in applications from a food microbiologist, a virologist, an epidemiologist and a food retailer.

The committee is independent and advises the FSA on the microbiological safety of food.

Positions are not salaried but members receive a meetings attendance fee reimbursement of reasonable expenses, said the agency.

The closing date for applications is 25 February. Candidates should contact Sarah Butler at sarah.butler@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

An innovative technique that employs a unique combination of already established instrumentation can significantly reduce the time taken to detect E.coli 0157:H7 in ground beef, said a new study.

The US group, lead by Lisa Mauer, said the method uses infrared spectroscopy to cut the time to identify E.coli to just hours instead of days as with current testing methods.

The associate professor of food science from Purdue University, told FoodProductionDaily.com the breakthrough technique had the potential to become an industry standard and her team was already working on adapting it to detect other pathogens such as Salmonella.

Spectroscopy

Using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy FT-IR, Mauer said E.coli had been detected in ground beef in one hour compared to the 48 hours needed by conventional plating technology carried out in laboratories. She added the same labs could use the compact spectroscopy equipment to get results in a fraction of this time.

The technique is also able to differentiate between strains of E. coli 0157:H7, meaning outbreaks could be tracked more effectively and quickly. Current tests are multi-step and take almost one week to get results.

"Even with all the other bacteria present in ground beef, we could still detect E. coli and recognize different strains," said Mauer.

The study – Detection of E.coli 0157:H7 from Ground Beef Using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and Chemometrics – was published in the Journal of Food Science.

The research showed two methods for separating bacteria from ground beef for testing. An antibody-capture method, which binds bacteria to antibodies attached to magnetic beads, gave results in four hours, while a filtration method achieved results in about an hour.

Infrared spectroscopy could detect just one E. coli cell if the bacteria were cultured for six hours. Conventional plating techniques used for E. coli detection require culturing cells for 48 hours. The faster feedback is achieved as the FT-IR is able to read the E.coli’s specific infrared spectrum by interpreting the combination of energy that has been absorbed and energy that has been reflected back when infrared light is scanned over a sample.

"Energy is only absorbed by certain components of a sample," Mauer said. "If that component or bacteria isn't there, the energy is reflected back."

The testing methods can also distinguish between living and dead E. coli cells, something current testing methods cannot. While dead cells are not harmful, their presence could indicate something about the quality of the product, said the study.

Industry opportunity

“The FT-IR technology has been used since the 1990s for pure samples,” explained Mauer. “We have moved this forward by capturing bacteria from meat samples and analysing them. We have demonstrated the general principle works and that there is an opportunity for more rapid detection using instrumentation that is already available.”

Using samples from products, companies could build up a spectral library of micro-organisms and create a database. Subsequent tests would then be compared against the reference material to see if a micro-organism was present in the product, with the FT-IR being used as a micro fingerprint detection device, said Mauer.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

US researchers claim to have taken a “major step towards” teaching computers to detect and classify foodborne pathogens such as Listeria, E.coli and salmonella in real time.

The scientists from Purdue University, Indianapolis, said the novel statistical method, which uses a laser scanner to analyse the optical characteristics of the bacteria, could be deployed in a network of labs and serve as a national bio-warning system to prevent foodborne illnesses. The method is outlined in the journal Statistical Analysis and Data Mining.

The team said the development of technologies for the rapid detection of bacterial pathogens was “crucial for securing the food supply

Statistical model

The investigators have designed an advance statistical model that boosts the ability of computers to detect the presence of bacterial contamination in tested samples. These formulas drive machine-learning, making possible the identification of known and unknown classes of food pathogens.

"The sheer number of existing bacterial pathogens and their high mutation rate makes it extremely difficult to automate their detection," said study leader M. Murat Dundar, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science in the university’s School of Science. "There are thousands of different bacteria subtypes and you can't collect enough subsets to add to a computer's memory so it can identify them when it sees them in the future. Unless we enable our equipment to modify detection and identification based on what it has already seen, we may miss discovering isolated or even major outbreaks."

Combination

The team used a prototype laser scanner to spot and classify colonies of pathogens such as listeria, staphylococcus, salmonella, vibrio and E. coli based on the optical properties of their colonies. The success of the system rests on the combination of the new laser and the enhanced machine learning approach.

“Without the new enhanced machine-learning approach, the light-scattering sensor used for classification of bacteria is unable to detect classes of pathogens not explicitly programmed into the system's identification procedure”, said a statement from the Purdue scientists.

"We are very excited because this new machine-learning approach is a major step towards a fully automated identification of known and emerging pathogens in real time, hopefully circumventing full-blown, food-borne illness outbreaks in the near future,” said Dundar. “Ultimately we would like to see this deployed to tens of centres as part of a national bio-warning system.”

The team said its work was not based on any particular property of light scattering detection and therefore it could potentially be applied to other label-free techniques for classification of pathogenic bacteria, such as various forms of vibrational spectroscopy.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Scientists have identified a way of using a virus to control levels of the Clostridium tyrobutyricum bacteria in cheese to prevent spoilage and minimise product waste.

Originating from the silage that cows eat, C. tyrobutyricum is a significant problem for cheese makers, especially manufacturers of hard or semi-hard cheeses. Even small amounts can produce butyric acid, which gives off a rancid taste, and result in an excess build-up of carbon dioxide causing cracks to emerge.

Writing in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, scientists from the Institute for Food Research (IFR) claim to have identified and characterised a microorganism that specifically attacks the contaminant.

They concentrated their work on a bacteriophage (a type of virus that infects bacteria) called ΦCTP1. This produces a protein, called an endolysin, which recognises C. tyrobutyricum and breaks open its cells from the inside.

By sequencing the genome of endolysin, identifying the gene encoding it and then expressing this gene in E. coli, IFR research leader Arjan Narbad told DairyReporter.com that the team was able to produce endolysin and introduce it to break down C. tyrobutyricum from the outside.

Highly specific

In laboratory trials and in milk, Narbad said endolysin proved to be effective in reducing levels of C. tyrobutyricum and importantly their research suggests that it is highly specific. This means that using endolysin to control the bacteria may not interfere with the bacteria that ferment the cheese.

To develop the technology further, Narbad said there are two potential possibilities. Firstly, endolysin can be made in the lab and then added in the cheese making process in place of lysozume, which is often used to control C. tyrobutyricum contamination but with some concerns about resistance.

Secondly, endolysin could be expressed in Lactococcus lactis, the bacterium involved in the cheese fermentation process. This would ensure that the endolysin can be produced in situ during cheese production but would make the resulting cheese a GM products.

In any case the next step is to test the endolysin technology in the cheese manufacturing process. To do this Narbad said the IFR team plans to complete trials with Dr Margarita Medina at Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) in Spain.

Be sure to wash your meats, wash your poultry, wash your fruits and wash your vegetables with Citro Bio Fresh Food Wash to stop e.coli, stop salmonella and other stop food borne pathogens.

Food processor Orval Kent Food Company has agreed to pay US$390,000 (€282,000) over allegations that industrial wastewater from one of its US plants overloaded a municipal treatment system, polluting a large stretch of a nearby river.