Items Tagged with 'CDC'

Following mass layoffs that swept regulatory agencies, including those responsible for food safety and foodborne illness response, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has walked back its orders to dismiss probationary employees. The change was prompted by a court decision that deemed OPM’s orders to dismiss staffers as unlawful.

Since the inauguration of President Trump, there has been an avalanche of changes at federal regulatory agencies responsible for U.S. food safety and foodborne illness response (FDA, USDA, and CDC), including mass layoffs, the resignation and new appointments of top officials, a communications freeze, and more. 

Changes are coming to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with the recent confirmation of President Trump's nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) as Secretary, amid talks of major workforce reductions at HHS agencies including FDA and CDC.

A recent report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted the complex and fragmented oversight of the U.S. food supply, concluding that a national food safety strategy could help ensure federal agencies are working together to more successfully reduce foodborne illnesses.

The Trump Administration has ordered U.S. public health agencies, such as CDC and FDA, to temporarily pause external communications, including scientific reports and health advisories, until further notice. Any messaging leaving an HHS agency must be approved by a presidential appointee. 

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we are joined by milk and dairy safety experts from FDA, CDC, and NCIMS to mark 100 years since the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) was adopted. We discuss the requirements and public health impact of PMO, the increasing consumer interest in raw milk and dairy, and the regulatory futures of milk and dairy safety and the PMO.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released new foodborne illness incidence data that show a lack of progress toward disease reduction goals—but that may be attributed to an increased use of culture-independent diagnostic tests (CIDTs), which allows for the diagnosis of infections that previously would have gone undetected.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently launched a new toolkit for identifying the root causes of foodborne illness outbreaks on its Restaurant Food Safety webpage.

Ice cream has historically been associated with human cases of infection by various foodborne pathogens. Pathogen introduction into ice cream can occur at various points throughout the production process for a range of reasons, which can be addressed through proper food safety controls. 

To investigate the potential impact of more widespread adoption of food irradiation, CDC analyzed a decade (2009–2020) of U.S. foodborne illness outbreak data for four significant foodborne pathogens, and found 155 outbreaks linked to irradiation-eligible foods that had not been irradiated.