Research Publications (Food Safety)

Abstract Aims Enteric pathogens with a livestock reservoir pose a unique risk to people in occupations with regular contact with animals. However, public health surveillance of occupational exposures is inadequate, with surveillance for occupation typically focusing on the risk of transmission and the need for worker exclusion, rather than workplace exposures.

To investigate the prevalence of Blastocystis and Dientamoeba fragilis in diarrhea patients and healthy individuals in Corum, Türkiye, fecal samples from 92 diarrhea patients and 50 healthy individuals were collected and evaluated using direct microscopy and molecular methods to screen for bacteria, protozoa, and viruses. The prevalence of Blastocystis was 24.6% in total and more frequent in the healthy group (30.0%).

Vegetables, especially those eaten raw, have been implicated in several foodborne disease outbreaks. Since multiple vegetable matrices and hazards are involved, risk managers have to prioritize those with the greatest impact on public health to design control strategies. In this study, a scientific-based risk ranking of foodborne pathogens transmitted by leafy green vegetables in Argentina was performed.

Introduction. The identification of enteropathogens is critical for the clinical management of patients with suspected gastrointestinal infection. The FLOW multiplex PCR system (FMPS) is a semi-automated platform (FLOW System, Roche) for multiplex real-time PCR analysis.

This study focuses on foodborne outbreaks of microbial infection associated with fresh produce in Europe and North America from this millennium. A total of 277 outbreaks with 44,524 individual cases were identified. Foodborne pathogens associated with the most outbreak frequency include Cryptosporidium (20.5%) in Europe and Salmonella (52.2%) in North America although Norovirus (54.3%) and Salmonella (61.3%) were associated with the number of cases in Europe and North America respectively.

The Florida Complaint and Outbreak Reporting System (FL-CORS) database is used by the Florida Department of Health’s Food and Waterborne Disease Program (FWDP) as one of the tools to detect foodborne disease outbreaks. We present a descriptive and spatial network analysis of the FL-CORS data collected during 2015-2018.

To identify the free‐living amoeba (FLA) and amoeba resistant bacteria (ARB) accumulated in zebra mussels and in the water in which they are found, mussels were collected at two locations in the Ebro river basin (North East Spain). Free‐living amoebas and bacteria were isolated from mussel extracts and from natural water.

Author(s): Erfaneh Amoueyan, Sajjad Ahmad, Joseph N.S. Eisenberg, Daniel Gerrity