• FDA opens offices in China

    As food — and food ingredients — imports from China grow, and as China’s lax health and safety standards become more apparent, the FDA is trying to spot problems at the source by opening three offices in China

  • Biosafety Lab-Level 4 dedicated in Galveston, Texas

    The $174 million, 186,267-square-foot lab will employ 300 people; the lab is one of two approved in 2003 by NIH (the second is being built in Boston); critics question placing a BSL-4 lab on a barrier island vulnerable to hurricanes

  • China has a history of tainted milk

    The recent crisis of melamine-laced milk in China is but the latest in problem-plagued dairy industry; China’s small-scale dairy farmers — and there many of them — are hard to police, and relatively few have the capital and know-how to adhere to good dairy-farming practices

  • Briefly noted

    Global CCTV market analysis 2008-12… U.S. intelligence agencies spend $47.5 billion in 2008… Changing role for DHS in cyber security… Auditors: Private security in Iraq cost over $6 billion… China begins investigation of tainted eggs

  • CBP adds food specialists to inspect imports

    Worries about imported food, and about animal disease and the invasion of lakes and rivers by foreign species, increase; Border Protection adds food specialists for better point-of-entry inspection

  • Briefly noted

    Online “passports” to make Chinese foods safer… Top U.K. prosecutor warns against growing state power… France may buy Reaper UAVs

  • U Kentucky researchers demonstrate milk transportation safety system

    Wildcats researchers develop a milk tracking system which will dramatically improve the safety of bulk milk transport

  • EU bans baby food with Chinese milk

    Twenty-two Chinese dairies used industrial additive melamine in their products; 54,000 Chinese babies were sickened, 4 died, and more than 10,000 are still hospitalized; 27-nation EU bans baby food with Chinese milk

  • Briefly noted

    Debating whether DHS should have cybersecurity responsibilities… FDA revisits refused foods issue… DoD tests contractors’ ID cards

  • China milk poisoning cases rise

    The number of Chinese children sickened by milk powder contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine reaches 53,000; 13,000 children remain hospitalized; 22 Chinese companies implicated

  • Chinese dairies add organic base found in plastics and resins to products

    Lab tests in Hong Kong find that Chinese company’s dairy offerings, including milk, ice cream, and yogurt, were contaminated with melamine — an organic base usually found in plastics and resins, and banned in food

  • New York officials want Plum Island to remain a Level-3 BioLab

    DHS is considering upgrading the Plum Island BioLab from Level-3 to Level-4 so it could conduct research into the deadliest diseases; the department argues that Plum Island’s relative isolation would make an accidental pathogen release less costly relatively to such release from a mainland-based lab; New York officials strongly disagree

  • Scientists: Canada's disease-detection system performed well

    Canadian officials say that the detection of and response to the listeriosis outbreak show that the country disease detection system works

  • Scientists use bacteria to pinpoint chloride toxins

    Chloride toxins are carcinogens and dangerous to the environment; they may contaminate food, or used to poison people intentionally (as was the case with Ukrainian president Viktor Yuschenko in 2004; the Russian secret service is suspected of trying to kill him); scientists are using the sensor with which bacteria detect chloride compounds to devise an early detection system

  • New detection method for food toxins found

    Japanese researchers develop new technique to detect toxins in food; the method involves artificially produced human enzymes that act as sensors for toxins in food samples