FDA Ties Chicken Feed to Salmonella in Egg Recall

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eggs-salmonella-vaccineBacteria found in chicken feed used at two Iowa farms has been linked to a salmonella outbreak that prompted the recall of more than a half billion contaminated eggs, U.S. regulators said today.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would keep investigating to determine whether the bacteria originated in the chicken feed or arrived there from another source.

“We do not know at this point how, when or where this feed may have been contaminated,” said Jeff Farrar, U.S. Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner for food protection. “That’s part of our ongoing investigation and we’ll work very hard to try and determine that.”

The contaminated feed was produced at a feed mill that is part of Wright County Egg operation and also went out to the second farm linked to the outbreak, Hillandale Farms of Iowa, FDA said.

The FDA collected around 600 samples from 24 possible sources of contamination on the two Iowa farms, said Sherri McGarry, foodborne outbreak coordinator.

Several Wright County Egg samples tested positive for salmonella, including feed, manure swabs and environmental swabs from a barn.

“The sense that the investigators have is that there’s evidence of contamination of the farm. While they have found it in the feed, they are not concluding any type of cause-and-effect relationship,” said FDA principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein.

The DNA in Wright County Egg farm samples matched the DNA of the bacteria in the outbreak, but feed ingredients may not have been the originating point for the salmonella outbreak.

“This may well just be that the birds got in and contaminated or there’s just contamination in the facility overall,” said Joshua Sharfstein, FDA principal deputy commissioner. “So we’ll obviously be taking a look at everything, all the pieces of the puzzle as it comes together.”

The massive egg recalls came weeks after a new FDA rule took effect that tightened safety rules at large producers and required testing in poultry houses for salmonella bacteria.

The egg rule did not specifically address testing feed for contamination, FDA officials said.

The outbreak, largest since the 1970s, may be linked to almost 2,400 cases of salmonella-related illnesses around the country since May 1, although at least 930 such cases are reported during this time frame on an average year.

The recalled eggs were sold under the brand names Sunny Farms, Hillandale Farms, Sunny Meadow, Wholesome Farms and West Creek, Lucerne, Albertson, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Boomsma’s, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms, Kemps, James Farms, Glenview, Pacific Coast, Alta Dena Dairy, Driftwood Dairy, Hidden Villa Ranch, Challenge Dairy, and Country Eggs.


1 COMMENT

  1. On Tuesday, it was also widely reported in the media (and here at http://matzav.com/salmonella-vaccine-might-have-prevented-egg-recall) that there is available a vaccine for salmonella. Therefore, blame for this salmonella outbreak was placed on lapses in using this vaccine.

    The following remarks about this gravely serious situation are not going to be what we have been accustomed to hear; nevertheless, they are what very urgently needs to be said.

    B’Ezras HaShem, let us begin.

    We need to realize that what we think of as “a farm,” of a pretty little white house, with some chickens running around in front, next to a cute little red barn with the delicious smell of fresh hay — the image we remember from the drawings in the story books we read as children — is long, long gone.

    Instead, almost all of the food production in America has now been taken over by and is under the ownership of a grand total of five mega-corporations. These gigantic super companies tightly control the contemporary agriculture industry — sarcastically called the “agribusiness” industry — to ensure and strengthen their virtual monopoly. In this new world of massive cut throat economics, virtually the only consideration is what new high-tech mechanism will bring in the most monetary profit; very little regard is given to what is good for food purity, workers’ safety, or consumers’ health.

    Specifically, this is the modern method of chicken production. From the moment they hatch out of their eggs, thousands of chickens are tightly packed together on gigantic long trays, which are placed inside large barns. These barns are completely closed up with no outside sunlight allowed in. The chickens themselves are given heavy amounts of drugs and hormones which make their bodies grow abnormally quick and abnormally fat. Their legs though, remain the same and are thus unable to support their heavy oversized bodies.

    Just a few weeks ago, in a special documentary film (see http://www.pbs.org/pov/foodinc/ about this film, which describes in detail what I am relating here), I actually saw a scene of these chemically induced deformed chickens attempting to walk but constantly collapsing down as their legs could not hold themselves up.

    Furthermore, as they are so tightly packed in together on the trays, there is anyway almost no room for them to walk around. When they need to evacuate, they thus do so right where they are. An almost identical setup is employed with growing animals. The waste remains right there with the birds and animals standing right in it. When the birds and animals are latter killed and processed, they are, of course, washed, but it is inevitable that some small bits of the waste do not get fully cleaned off AND THUS GET MIXED INTO THE POULTRY AND MEAT PRODUCTS.

    Along with this, it goes without saying that animals and birds that are left to stand and sit in their sewage are going to contract harmful germs and dangerous diseases.

    Furthermore, in order to further make them grow abnormally fat and to provide special flavor in the resulting meat, fowl and livestock are fed feed made from animal by-products and thick grains, mostly corn. This is outright wrong, for the main food that they are supposed to eat — the way that HaShem constructs their bodies — is for them to eat grass! So when they are instead force fed this modern heavy feed, serious stomach malfunctions occur. Such digestive breakdowns cause, I repeat, such digestive breakdowns ACTUALLY CAUSE the growth of these E-Coli and Salmonella bacteria!

    If for even just a week, there could be a tiny “vacation” from all this abuse, these deadly E-Coli & Co. epidemics would already be greatly reduced!

    Of course though, the modern agribusiness community would never do that; I mean THAT would be “K’fira B’Ikar” – that would be outright apostasy – against the holy, holy tenants of the holy, holy, holy, holy gods of modern science and modern medicine!

    So instead, they respond to this toxic created problem with dumping in even more toxins: “washing” the meat with lethal poisons like ammonia, and drugging the fowl and livestock with heavier vaccines and antibiotics.

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