By Carol McCracken (Post # 561)

The culprit in the recent recall of eggs from two major egg farms in Iowa may be contaminated chicken feed. The contaminated chicken feed is most likely responsible for a salmonella outbreak that has already sickened some 1,700 people, said federal health officials.

This news just received from a report in todays “Sustainable Food News”, quoted Jeff Farrar, the associate commissioner for food protection at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as saying: “We don’t know if the feeding ingredients came to the facility containimated or if the feed got contaminated at the facility.” Farrar went on to say that the questionable chicken feed only went to two Iowa farms – Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms – and has not been distributed elsewhere in the country.

Such a contamination can come through numerous routes – including rodents, shared equipment, workers, so the FDA is looking into all possibilities. Health experts say salmonella is most often spread by the consumption of food contaminated by animal fecal matter.

The “News” went on to say that: “An estimated 400,000 people are infected with food-borne salmonella each year in the US….can be deadly to vulnerable populations such as the young, elderly or those with compromised immune systems.” In recent years, there have been “massive food recalls in the US – amid criticism that America’s food regulation regime is under-staffed.”

For more information on “Sustainable Food News,” the largest daily on-line news service to the sustainable food industry, please call Dan McGovern, Publisher at 207 – 749-5249. McGovern is a resident of the Hill.