ATLANTA -- Georgia Tech freshman Elise Woodall was met with a message scrawled on the bathroom mirror of her dorm when she moved in two weeks ago: "Wash your hands. Swine is not fine." Colleges across the country are seeing spikes in the number of students with suspected cases of swine flu as dorms fill up and classes begin for the fall semester.

Tahlia means "sent from heaven", and when their daughter overcame enormous odds to survive severe meningitis the Zougaibs knew they chose the right name. After a healthy pregnancy first-time parents Laura and Charlie were shocked to learn their newborn daughter was suffering an infection on her brain from the rare listeria bacteria passed from mother to baby by contaminated food.

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles city attorney has filed criminal charges against three local businesses for the alleged sale of dangerous, unpasteurized cheese from Mexico.

Apple grower-shippers in New York and Pennsylvania continue to invest heavily in food safety programs. Lee Showalter, owner of Five Forks Fruit, Waynesboro, Pa., is in his third year at his “second job”: director of food safety and grower services for Gardners, Pa.-based Rice Fruit Co.

Dodgy stallholders trying to cash in on the success of farmers' markets in Victoria are the target of a new accreditation system. Organisers hope the new system, which will include farm inspections, will rid markets of operators who resell produce bought from wholesale markets.

ATLANTA -- U.S. health authorities are turning to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in a bid to prepare people to be vaccinated against the pandemic H1N1 virus.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – According to the "hardwired for news" theory, people devote more attention to information that is deviant or threatening. To test the theory, University of Missouri researchers examined the physiological effects of reading threatening health news online.

Michelle Marcotte, an ex-pat Canadian and regulatory affairs consultant based in Glenn Dale, Maryland, who has worked in 40 countries, eaten well, but carefully, and never been sick, writes:

The Globe and Mail Gloria Galloway http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/listeria-outbreak-just-a-matter-of-time/article1266087/ OTTAWA -- Liberals and Conservatives are accusing each other of playing politics over the listeriosis outbreak one year ago that resulted in 22 deaths.