Poultry | featured news

Chinese scientists have for the first time found strong evidence of how humans got infected with a new strain of bird flu: from chickens at a live market. In a small study of four patients who caught the new H7N9 virus, Chinese scientists compared swabs from birds at live markets in eastern China to virus samples from patients. The scientists found the virus from one patient was nearly identical to one found in a chicken. The research was published online Thursday in the journal Lancet.

More than 50 percent of patients infected with a new type of bird flu in China had no contact with poultry, the World Health Organization said on Friday, further raising questions about whether the virus was transmitted between humans.

With confirmation that a sixth person has died from a mysterious avian-borne virus, Chinese officials escalated their response on Friday, advising people to avoid live poultry, dispatching virologists to chicken farms across the country and slaughtering more than 20,000 birds at a wholesale market in Shanghai where the virus, known as H7N9, was detected in a pigeon.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered what percentage of retail meat has foodborne pathogens, and of those, which pathogens are antibiotic resistant. Well, you’re in luck. The Food and Drug Administration’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System puts out a yearly report looking at the rates of antibiotic resistance of foodborne pathogens in retail meat and poultry samples. A thorough examination, the Retail Meat Report is hefty chunk of research to wade through. Because of this, it’s not easy to make conclusions on the prevalence of antibiotic resistance in the meat case just by reading through the report’s 80-plus pages.

Leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach and kale accounted for the most food-borne illnesses nationwide from 1998 through 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Dairy products accounted for the most hospitalizations. The most deaths were linked to poultry.

Germany halted sales of poultry, pork and eggs from more than 4,700 farms Friday after animal feed was found to be contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. As German authorities sought the source of the tainted feed, other nations rushed to figure out if any other food was contaminated.

Cooking chicken on the grill this summer? Be careful. Poultry is still the leading culprit in food poisoning outbreaks, health officials said ...

China defended its curbs on exports of industrial raw materials against unfair-trade complaints by the United States and Europe and announced Wednesday it has filed its own challenge to a U.S. ban on imports of Chinese poultry.

After poultry, leafy vegetables and fruits and nuts were the most commonly identified source of food poisoning in the United States in 2006.