St. Louis-based Ralcorp Holdings has filed a federal lawsuit against a soy products supplier, alleging soy it purchased from Thumb Oilseed Producers Cooperative was contaminated with salmonella. Ralcorp is seeking $7 million in damages.

CHENGDU -- Health authorities said Monday they had found a huge amount of nitrite in food samples taken from a hotel in southwest China's Sichuan Province where food poisoning killed one diner and sickened 42 others Friday.

Biotin is an essential enzyme cofactor that acts as a CO2 carrier in carboxylation and decarboxylation reactions. The E.coli genome encodes a biosynthetic pathway that produces biotin from pimeloyl-CoA in four enzymatic steps. The final step, insertion of sulfur into desthiobiotin to form biotin, is catalyzed by the biotin synthase, BioB.

Los Angeles County is, according to the N.Y. Times, moving to submit its flock of 9,500 food trucks and carts to the same health department rules as restaurants — including requiring them to prominently post a letter grade based on food inspections — in what may be the ultimate sign that this faddiest of food fads is going mainstream.

Try harder. Because when communicating about science with the public, the U.K. Food Standards Agency really sucks. So when some FSA-type (right, not exactly as shown) writes,

Newsham Choice Genetics, a US based company in swine genetics technology, has completed the first phase of a comprehensive study to discover and map genes associated with health traits in pigs.

Abstract

In Feb. 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture shut down a meat processing company after concluding workers committed egregious acts of animal cruelty, about a week after the Humane Society of the United States released video showing employees of the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. of Chino, Calif., tormenting cows that were too injured or weak to stand.

Surveying toilets is valid social and academic exercise. People can say, dude, wash your hands, in as many clever, hilarious and gross ways, but proper handwashing requires proper access to proper tools.