June 10, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH 9Comment

After blaming cucumbers, backpedaling on the cucumbers and blaming bean sprouts, then backpedaling on the sprouts, German authorities have now concluded that bean sprouts are, in fact, to blame for the spread of E. coli O104:H4, which has sickened more than 3,000 people and killed 31. Patients with the most severe cases have suffered kidney […]

April 7, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH 4Comment

Today is World Health Day, and the World Health Organization is using the occasion to draw attention to a serious global health problem: the rapid spread of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The development and widespread use of antibiotics counts as a public health triumph, as infections that once routinely killed large numbers of people became […]

March 11, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

Earlier this week, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food released a report stating that agroecology – basically, sustainable agriculture – can double global food production over the next decade. Specifically, agroecology can raise production in the poor, food-deficit countries that most need additional crops. The techniques, which include using plants and beneficial […]

February 24, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH 2Comment

We’re hearing a lot of rhetoric about the need to slash government spending, so it’s a good time to remind everyone that there’s no such thing as a free lunch – and if you think you’re getting a free lunch, it might be loaded with pathogens. Maryn McKenna, writing at Superbug about a New England […]

February 9, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH 5Comment

Last week, Mark Bittman published the New York Times column “A Food Manifesto for the Future,” in which he proposed ways to “make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring.” Among his suggestions was outlawing concentrated animal feeding operations, so it wasn’t surprising to see a […]

February 2, 2011 Liz Borkowski, MPH

Some villages in Pakistan’s Sindh province are still underwater following August’s floods, and a new UNICEF survey has found that nearly one-fourth of the children under five there are malnourished. The deputy head of UNICEF Pakistan, Karen Allen, calls conditions “shockingly bad” and compares them to “the worst of the famine in Ethiopia, Darfur, and […]