Iowa State University’s a “collaborating partner” on a new food-safety initiative announced by the US Department of Agriculture. A five-Million-dollar grant will be shared by researchers on a multi-disciplinary team. USDA spokeswoman Suzan Holl. The Food Safety Research and Response Network will include a team of more than fifty researchers from 18 colleges and universities who’ll research some of the most prevalent food-related illnesses and the germs that cause them. Holl says we know dangerous and sometimes fatal bacteria are found in food. But the research team will backtrack to find out where they originate before they’re found lurking in the kitchen, and how they may have entered the food supply in the first place. Pathogens like e-coli and salmonella will be studied to find out where they are in the environment and how they infect herds. She praises the team for having a broad range of expertise to tackle the challenge. Acute gastro-enteritis or food poisoning is the second most common household illness in the United States and we see an estimated 76-Million cases of food-related illness a year. ISU, with its College of Veterinary Medicine, qualified to become one of the eighteen colleges and universities studying the field-to-food progress of the pathogens that cause it. The 17 other institutions in the project are: University of Minnesota, Cornell University, University of North Carolina, McMasters University, Mississippi State University, North Dakota State University, The Ohio State University, Tuskegee University, University of Arizona, University of California at Davis, University of California at Berkeley, University of Florida, University of Illinois, University of Kentucky, University of Montreal, Washington State University, and West Texas A&M University.
