Is the PB&J doomed to be renamed the Salmonella Sandwich? For the second time in two years, peanut butter has been determined as the culprit in a salmonella outbreak.

People began getting ill with the most current outbreak in early October. Last weekend, when certain peanut butters were suspected, both King Nut and Parnell's Pride peanut butter with the lot code "8" were recalled. Lab tests on those peanut butters revealed that they were the source. Two years ago, Peter Pan brand peanut butter was recalled for the same reason.

So do you need to worry about the peanut butter sitting in your pantry? Only if it is part of the current recall.

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Anyone who was scared off greens after the massive spinach recall two years ago might find themselves eating a big spinach salad soon. The FDA is allowing spinach and lettuce manufacturers to irradiate their products before they hit grocery store shelves. Irradiation, which is the process of exposing an object to radiation, kills dangerous bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and listeria.

Irradiation won't sterilize the greens, but the FDA is hoping it will drastically reduce the risk of outbreaks like the one that killed four people in 2006. But critics wonder if irradiation is the answer. I worry that steps like this one will lull consumers into believing that the problems with our food safety have been fixed, and that it takes the focus away from farming and manufacturing processes that put us at risk in the first place.

It's not clear from the article whether irradiated spinach and greens will be labeled. Some people worry about the long-term health effects of eating irradiated foods, but the FDA assures consumers that there is no radiation left behind, nor does the process affect taste, texture, or nutritional value. What do you think?

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Surely, you know by now that tomatoes are a no-go. Well, some of them, anyway. I admit I was in the dark at first and didn't know of the whole tomato salmonella outbreak until I tried to order a salad at a restaurant and was told there was not a single tomato in the establishment. Bummer for me -- I rely on juicy items like tomatoes to take the place of dressing on my salads. Forgetting about the trouble with tomatoes, I tried to order them again today on my kid's chicken burrito. Nope. No tomatoes. No salsa. Nothing of the sort.

So, what's up with the trusty tomato lately? According to this washingtonpost.com post, here's the deal: On June 8, the FDA issued a broad warning, telling consumers not to eat raw Roma, red plum, or red round tomatoes. Don't eat products containing these types of raw red tomatoes either, unless the tomatoes are from California, Georgia, Hawaii, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, Netherlands, and Puerto Rico. Also safe: Cherry, grape, and tomatoes sold with the vine still attached.

For an updated list of safe tomato sources and other important and ever-changing information, keep checking back here. And until tomatoes are clearly in the clear, please eat safely.

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Four people in the Milwaukee area are confirmed to have contracted measles. A 37-year-old man and three children under 2 years old have been infected and are currently contained to minimize the spread of the disease. Measles is a highly infectious disease that's spread through respiration.

Symptoms include a cough, fever, runny nose, and red eyes. While the symptoms themselves aren't necessarily serious, the rapid spread of the disease to those who aren't protected is a cause for concern. In the US the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) is administered before 18 months of age. But in recent years, parents have voiced concerns over a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The CDC maintains that the MMR vaccine is safe.

One of the Milwaukee measles patients had contact with up to 150 people prior to being contained, so area officials are concerned about a possible outbreak. As a precaution, city officials offered free vaccinations to citizens. A Milwaukee health department representative said that one immunization shot is 95% effective.

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The state of Indiana has issued an outbreak alert due to E. coli due to the sickening of about 10 people in an Indiana elementary school (seven schoolchildren included), although school cafeteria food has now been ruled out as a possible cause.

With the Topps meat recall still fresh on the minds of millions after this past week's E.coli situation, Indiana officials made an adamant statement that its recall did not originate in the suspect school's cafeteria.

So far, at least three of the cases appear to have been caused from exposure to a sick family member -- but what about the others? This may be a case of spreading through human contact (direct or indirect) instead of food contamination.

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As was reported a few weeks ago, a waterborne parasite with a funny name continues to show up in Idaho. Not only have infants and young kids been banned from public swimming pools around that state, but the infections are no happening along the Rocky Mountain West area.

229 cases of the parasite have been reported in Idaho this year, up from an annual number of about 23. While 229 cases is not huge, the rise itself is. In Utah, more than 1,600 illnesses have been attributed to cryptosporidium this year.

Officials still are not sure what caused (and is causing) the outbreak. All it takes is a public place that furnishes the environment for disease spreading, and there you go. So far, water parks and the like have been suspected of being top culprits.

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I haven't read much about the upcoming 2008 Olympics, and although it's good that they're preparing for the worst, I was surprised that some of the first of news I came across was about how Beijing is setting aside thousands of hospitals beds in case of an infectious disease outbreak. Not about swimmers or track runners, but the fear of a pandemic.

But this is a particularly big deal because China has a negative history surrounding the handling of infectious outbreaks in the past (i.e. SARS), so the fact that Beijing has made such an effort and reduced the reporting time for an outbreak from what used to be a week to as little as 10 hours is a good thing. China has also been making some positive moves in the fight against bird flu as well.

So, fun or not, positive moves like this should get press too.

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Maybe I'm just being naive (it wouldn't be the first time), but I never really thought about the fact that if a bird flu pandemic hit then the grocery stores and the availability of food would be affected. It's not like a natural disaster where the physical ability of trucks to deliver goods is interrupted, but more the idea that if as many as 40% or more of workers are out sick at any given time there just won't be the manpower needed to keep grocery store shelves stocked. They are doing their best to prepare, but I guess the funding they need just isn't there.

I'm not one to panic, but it wouldn't hurt to keep things well stocked at home -- just in case.

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In the wake of all the flu warnings we've been hearing for the last several months, federal health officials have released a new system for ranking the severity of the flu outbreak each flu season. Developed by the CDC and called the "pandemic severity index," it's designed to both weigh the risks of an expected outbreak and also give advice to local officials on how to handle it (i.e. school closings, quarantines, etc).

The new system would rank flu outbreak severity on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most mild and 5 being the most severe. The hope is that if there ever is a true flu epidemic, this system can help government and health officials react in the best and most efficient way. I know the flu is a real threat, and the need for a system like this is no surprise, but still -- it's a little scary.

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Vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and headaches. Welcome to 2007! Thanks to some particularly nasty noroviruses, the United States has seen nearly two to three times more cases of the stomach flu this year than in years past.

The stomach bug, and other infections caused by noroviruses, generally only last two or three days. But don't let that fool you: being sick sucks. According to Marc-Alain Widdowson, a norovirus expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "People (can) vomit 20 times a day." Gross.

Doctors have no explanations for the especially high number of cases this year.

While these infections can happen year-round, it's more prevalent in the winter months -- so, thankfully, there will be an end to the outbreak...eventually.

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2005 saw 66 measles cases in the US -- nearly double that of 2004. Health officials can now trace 33 of those cases back to a 17 year-old from Indiana.

The girl had recently traveled to Romania without getting vaccinated, and unknowingly carried the disease back to the United States. The subsequent outbreak put three people in the hospital, including one health-care working who was treated in intensive care.

Out of the 34 people that contracted the disease, only two had been vaccinated. Despite assertions from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the measles-containing vaccine is safe, many parents still chose not to vaccinate their children due to safety concerns.

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