Concerns Over Superbugs In Our Food Supply

About two years ago, dozens of workers at a large chicken hatchery in Arkansas began experiencing mysterious skin rashes, with painful lumps scattered over their hands, arms, and legs.

“They hurt real bad,” says Joyce Long, 48, a 32-year veteran of the hatchery, where until recently, workers handled eggs and chicks with bare hands. “When we went and got cultured, doctors told us we had a superbug.”

Its name, she learned, was MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This form of staph bacteria developed a mutation that resists antibiotics (including methicillin), making it hard to treat, even lethal. According to the CDC, certain types of MRSA infections kill 18,000 Americans a year — more than die from AIDS.

via Concerns over superbugs in our food supply – Food safety- msnbc.com.

MRSA ‘Superbug’ Found On West Coast Public Beaches

Public beaches may be one source of the surging prevalence of the superbug known as multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, researchers here said Saturday.

A study by researchers at the University of Washington has for the first time identified methicillin-resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) in marine water and beach sand from seven public beaches on the Puget Sound.

The researchers identified Staph bacteria on nine of 10 public beaches that they tested. Seven of 13 Staph aureus samples, found on five beaches, were multidrug resistant, says lead investigator Marilyn Roberts.

“Our results suggest that public beaches may be a reservoir for possible transmission of MRSA,” she told the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy here, the leading international conference on new and resurgent diseases.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been around for almost as long as there have been antibiotics. Until recently, researchers have been able to outwit them by developing new antibiotics. Now, however, the pipeline of new antibiotics has slowed, and germs are coming perilously close to winning the race.

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Locust Swarms Destroying Crops Across Ethiopia

Locusts are destroying crops in seven regions of Ethiopia, where people rely on subsistence agriculture.

What causes these Biblical-sounding events? Why a swarm? Scientists discovered a few years back that at low densities, the insects were unorganized and went their separate ways. But when the group’s density increased, the bugs fell into an orderly line and began to follow the same direction.

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Swarms Of Locusts Spread Across Australia

Swarms of locusts are sweeping parts of Australia right now measuring about four miles long and 170 meters wide. Locusts feed mainly on vegetation and since this is the time for farmers to harvest their crops the government has about nine planes on standby to treat the swarms if they get any larger.

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Deadly Dozen Diseases Could Have Dire Consequences

It listed the ‘deadly dozen’ as avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera, ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, Read more

Mystery Fever ‘Virus’ Kills 210 In India

The reports of 35 more patients falling to the mystery fever in Kanpur Dehat villages on Tuesday put the administration on tenterhooks.

While senior officials miserably failed to confirm the toll as teams of state health department and experts of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, who were rushed to Kanpur by the Centre to collect samples, too failed to shed light on the disease.

The deadly virus has, so far, claimed 210 lives across 350 villages of Akbarpur, Rasoolabad, Bhognipur and Sikandara tehsils of Kanpur Dehat, leaving villagers panicky. While they have helplessly watched their near ones dying, health experts have no idea about how to check spread of the killer virus.

After making its presence felt in about 350 villages of Kanpur Dehat within a couple of weeks, the virus is now spreading its tentacles into bordering districts of Mainpuri, Etawah, Farrukhabad and Kannauj.

“We are actually at a loss as how to tackle it,”said a paediatrician at the District Hospital. The hospital is already struggling to cope with the heavy influx of patients suffering from fever and viral infection.

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