Items Tagged with 'parasites'

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently published a series of background documents on different viruses, bacteria, and parasites to inform the revision of drinking water quality guidelines and guidelines on sanitation and health.

FAO has put out a call for experts and data to inform an upcoming series of FAO/WHO Joint Expert Meeting on Microbiological Risk Assessment (JEMRA) sessions, with the goal of generating updated advice about microbiological risk assessment for parasites in food.

The UK Government is proposing the addition of several foodborne and waterborne viruses, bacteria, and parasites to the list of notifiable causative agents under the Health Protection Notification Regulations, for which laboratories testing human samples are required to report positive test results.

Following a survey of 3.2 million pigs raised under the U.S. Pork Quality Assurance Plus (PQA+) program, USDA has announced a total absence of Trichinella infections in the national pork supply—a parasite that was once a major food safety risk, but is now controlled.

According to a recent evaluation conducted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), many of the most commonly farmed and consumed fish in the EU are free of parasites that can infect humans, but at the same time, parasites were found in some farmed species and more data is needed to determine prevalence.

Parasites are reported in all manner of foodstuffs across the entire food supply, and they are challenging to detect and control. For risk assessment purposes, food safety personnel must be cognizant of the occurrence and significance of these foodborne organisms.
 

The World Health Organization (WHO) is updating its estimate of the global burden of foodborne illness for 2025, and researchers are calling for the inclusion of Chagas disease, which has not been considered in past estimates.

Non-cultivable foodborne pathogens, such as enteric viruses and protozoan parasites like Cyclospora, present unique challenges in our food system due to significant limitations in sampling and detection. This article covers the methodological drawbacks of current methods related to interpretation of results and public health risk, while offering alternative food safety management principles to address the prevalence of these pathogens in food.

Two ongoing studies funded by the Center for Produce Safety (CPS) are looking to improve detection and control methods for Cyclospora cayetanensis.

According to Health Canada, approximately four in ten people living in Northern Canada have been infected by the foodborne parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which is a much higher rate than is seen in Southern Canada.