The Hysteria about Listeria: Thoughts on Food in the Built Environment

About a month ago, listeria found in Sabra Hummus caused a massive food safety recall across the US. So I got to thinking — how common are pathogens in the food we eat and how is this addressed on industrial scales? Food is processed, transported, and eaten in our built environments multiple times a day, …

Synthetic Cheese and the Microbiome

Counter Culture Labs is a company that stemmed from an MIT iGEM team that made synthetic cheese. Their goal is to make vegan cheese that tastes just like the real thing with the single important difference being it is not derived from a cow, but rather a lab bench. Synthetic food is starting to trend. …

Transfer and resuspension — its not all bologna

There was a recent flash in the news about the ‘5-second rule’ when a group of microbiologists at Aston University in the UK released results from a study (that, from what I can tell, is unpublished). The summary reads, “The study…monitored the transfer of the common bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus from …

High levels of Staphylococcus contamination in US meat & poultry #microBEnet

Many news sources are reporting on a new study regarding levels of Staphylococcus in meat: (e.g., see Bacteria seen in nearly half of U.S. meat – CNN.com,  Study Warns of Tainted Meat, and Almost half of meat in stores may have drug-resistant bacteria). The study, by Lance Price, Paul Keim, and colleagues from TGen reports that …