The Fat Duck sickened 529 customers with norovirus, adopted a ridiculous PR strategy, and continues to blame others even though employees were working sick. The local council decided not to prosecute. The Llay Fish Bar, thought to be the source of an E. coli O157 outbreak that sickened four including a new mother left in a coma, will be prosecuted by the Wrexham Council.

A food safety conference has been told vacuum packaging may be helping dangerous bacteria thrive in fresh meat and other products. Listeria can cause fever, stomach upsets and even blood poisoning and brain infections. Ken MacKenzie, from Queensland's Food Industries Association, says listeria loves low oxygen, refrigerated environments.

A new Government scheme to allow independent experts to review food safety management systems will cut red tape and costs for food businesses while maintaining food safety standards. Suitably qualified, skilled and accredited independent auditors can now apply to the Food Authority for registration as eligible third-party auditors. 

MAF Biosecurity New Zealand (MAFBNZ) and the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) today confirmed that a series of New Zealand and European laboratory tests on a single New Zealand sheep brain have detected the condition atypical scrapie (also known as Nor 98).

http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/2009/10/articles/yuck-factor/poland-we-want-to-live-in-a-country-that-doesnt-stink/ Public toilets in Polish railway and bus stations, on trains and in camp grounds need a major make-over for the UEFA Euro 2012 championships Poland will co-host with Ukraine, experts said Tuesday.

Several letters to the editor in response to, “Experts Worry About Feeding the World as Its Population Grows” (news article, Oct. 22):

In the waning days of fall, prairie flaxseed farmers should be hopping onto their tractors and harvesting their crops of the trendy health food, but instead they're in the midst of a major whodunit, with echoes of a long-forgotten movie thriller.

The petting farm at the centre of an E.coli outbreak that left several children seriously ill and more than 90 people reporting symptoms of the infection, has reopened despite a storm of criticism from parents.

ROCK ISLAND -- Three new lawsuits have been filed against the Milan McDonalds in connection with last summer's Hepatitis A outbreak. For the first time, the suits also name Trinity Health Systems and Metro Lab as ''respondents in discovery''. That means lawyers want to hear what the medical facilities knew and when, and could file suit at a later date.