The CDC reports that between 1998 and 2008, freshly prepared salsa and guacamole have accounted for nearly one out of every 25 cases of deli and restaurant foodborne illness outbreaks. The most common microbe found in the mishandled condiments – which were often refrigerated improperly — was norovirus, which can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain. The director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety, Michael Doyle, offered advice on how to prevent contamination:

ACSH has received a number of responses to our coverage of CNN s Dr. Sanjay Gupta s claims that the food additives used in McDonald s Chicken McNuggets in China pose serious health threats.
For instance, ACSH trustee, Hoover Institution fellow, and former FDA official Dr. Henry Miller reminded us that Dr. Gupta was the Obama administration s first nominee for surgeon general, despite his talent for popularizing such pseudoscience claims.

A new House appropriations bill proposed by Democrats aims to prevent teacher layoffs by cutting $2 billion from bioterrorism and pandemic flu reserve funds. Experts on bioterrorism are critical of the move and believe biological attacks could kill 400,000 Americans and devastate the economy. Despite the potential budget decrease, the U.S.

After hearing mixed evidence that Avandia may increase patient's risk of heart attack, an FDA advisory panel voted yesterday to keep the diabetes drug on the market but with new warning labels.

ACSH's Jeff Stier heads to Gaithersburg, Md., to attend the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) meeting on the potential ban of menthol from cigarettes. Stay tuned for his updates from the two-day conference on Thursday and Friday.

For postmenopausal women diagnosed with estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer, the American Society of Clinical Oncology now recommends the use of aromatase inhibitors hormone-based breast cancer drugs immediately following surgery or after two to three years of the drug tamoxifen.

In its first update in 26 years, the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association proposes new diagnostic criteria for earlier detection of all three stages of Alzheimer’s disease — pre-clinical, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s dementia — based on genetic risk factors and biomarkers.

Yesterday, ACSH reported on the recent accusations against McDonald’s by China’s Scientific Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), which alleges that the fast-food giant uses harmful additives in their Chicken McNuggets. ACSH staffers knew the claims were baseless, yet we were still curious as to who was responsible for spurring the Chinese health agency into initiating this investigation.

Yesterday marked the inception of a two-day meeting of scientific advisors to the FDA who were delegated the task of assessing the safety of Avandia, a diabetes drug linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular problems.

In his Sunday column in the Montreal Gazette, McGill University chemistry professor Dr. Joseph Schwarcz wrote a commonsense article that effectively debunked the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) myth that the sunscreen additive retinyl palmitate causes cancer.