A recent surge in reports of illnesses due to the parasite Cyclospora has prompted DSHS to investigate the infections in hopes of determining a common source. DSHS has received reports of 90 Cyclosporiasis cases from around Texas this year, including 78 in the last two weeks.
DSHS recommends thoroughly washing fresh produce, but that may not entirely eliminate the risk because Cyclospora can be difficult to wash off. Cooking will kill the parasite.
But what about cross-contamination?
The Texas Department of State Health Services alerted health care providers this week to be on the lookout for cyclospora. The state’s count is at 54 cases.
The alert says reports of the illness have been high in Texas each of the past three summers. But state health department spokeswoman Carrie Williams says a surge like the one over the last week is unusual.
Williams says there are no known hospitalizations or deaths related to the illness.
For a Texas town of barely 8,000 people, 64 sick from Salmonella linked to the same restaurant is a lot.
Officials say 12 additional cases came from the X10 In Texas Restaurant in Dalhart after it voluntarily closed when the bacteria was first discovered.
As a result state health officials conducted another full inspection, and the restaurant made some additional changes.
As of right now the state says the X10 In Texas Restaurant has passed the inspection and is open for business.
KFDA – NewsChannel 10 / Amarillo News, Weather, Sports
For all those public health and industry types who are reluctant to go public in the absence of definitive data, Dalhart, Texas, says, you suck.
People are entitled to information that can affect their health. And with the growth of social media, word is going to get out anyway.
My High Plains reports that Coon Memorial Hospital tells us three cases of salmonella in Dalhart were reported to the state last week.
At this point, how those people contracted the illness is unknown, and the cases are under investigation.
We spoke with nurses from the high school, junior high and elementary school in Dalhart, and they tell us they’ve seen no cases of salmonella at their schools.
We also heard from the state health department and a nurse from Coon Memorial Hospital who tells us cases of salmonella are fairly common.
ER Manager at Coon Memorial Kelly Galloway says, “it’s just like anything else. It comes in cycles, just like the flu or RSV, sometimes we’ll see it once a year, sometimes we won’t see it for a couple of years. It’s cyclic. “
We eat a lot of cilantro in my house; whether in fresh salsa, guacamole or as an ingredient in tacos it’s a favorite.
I’m rethinking my love of the herb as it’s entering the raw sprouts realm.
After notable recalls in 2009, 2011 and a 2013 Cyclospora outbreak where the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that fresh cilantro grown in Puebla, Mexico was the source, cilantro is at it again.
According to NBCDFW a current outbreak of Cyclospora has been linked yet again to the fresh herb.
The Texas Department of State Health Services said Thursday the its investigation has linked the cases in four restaurants clusters to fresh cilantro from Puebla, Mexico.
Texas DSHS says a total of 21 people got sick and all of them reported eating food containing cilantro within two weeks of becoming ill.
The FDA and DSHS traced the cilantro from all four restaurants to Puebla, Mexico. While investigators could not find cilantro contaminated with cyclospora they say there’s a strong enough “epidemiological link” between the illnesses and the cilantro to draw the conclusion.
In October 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also linked a cyclospora outbreak to cilantro from Puebla, Mexico.
The Texas DSHS reported a total of 166 confirmed cyclospora cases in the state, but only 126 cases were considered part of the outbreak.
Dallas County reported the majority of this year’s cases with 38, 19 cases were confirmed in Tarrant County and 12 in Collin County.
Tarrant County Public Health issued a warning Monday about an outbreak of Cyclosporiasis.
Prior to this month, there were just eight cases reported in the State of Texas, and Tarrant County had seen just one.
But there are now 69 Cyclosporiasis cases in Texas, nine of them in Tarrant County.
So far, health officials have not found the source of the outbreak. They are asking health care providers to test patients who have intestinal issues lasting more than a few days.
Tarrant County Public Health says past outbreaks in the U.S. have been linked to imported fresh produce, including fresh cilantro, pre-packaged salad mix, raspberries, basil, snow peas, and mesclun lettuce.
Laboratory tests have confirmed a diagnosis of variant CJD (a fatal brain disorder) in a patient who recently died in Texas. The confirmation was made when laboratory results from an autopsy of the patient’s brain tested positive for variant CJD.
First described in 1996 in the United Kingdom, variant CJD is a rare, degenerative, fatal brain disorder in humans. It is believed to be caused by consumption of products from cows with the disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease).
Worldwide, more than 220 variant CJD patients have been reported, with a majority of them in the United Kingdom (177 cases) and France (27 cases). This case is the fourth to be reported in the United States. In each of the three previous cases, infection likely occurred outside the United States, including the United Kingdom (2 cases) and Saudi Arabia (1 case). The history of this fourth patient, including extensive travel to Europe and the Middle East, supports the likelihood that infection occurred outside the United States.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control assisted the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS)’s investigation of this case and will continue to help confirm further details of the patient’s history, including the potential source of infection.
A classic form of CJD, which is not caused by the BSE agent, occurs worldwide, including in the United States. Annually, for every 1 million people in the United States, 1 to 2 develops classic CJD.
Brazos County, Texas is back in the food safety news again. A year after the famed taco-eating press conference (“Since everybody, I’m sure, would want to know the name of the restaurant, I went by there right before I came. I got a beef taco, so here it is.”) the Brazos County Health Department has connected 30 cases of Salmonella Typhimurium Ohio to a Fuego’s Tortilla Grill. According to WTAW, a specific food source has yet to be identified but multiple food samples tested positive for the outbreak strain. 
Through the course of the food borne outbreak investigation, Fuego’s Tortilla Grill Restaurant became of statistical significance. Environmental samples were obtained from the restaurant 05/13/2014.
Today, the DSHS Laboratory reported that 4 of the 36 samples obtained from the restaurant tested positive for Ohio strain. A specific exposure source, such as food handling procedures, food supply or an infected employee has not been specifically identified, but is currently under investigation.
BCHD is working very closely with Fuego’s Restaurant to find the source of bacteria, and how to prevent this type of event from recurring. Fuego’s Restaurant’s management has been cooperative during this investigation, and has closed voluntarily today, when they received the news about the lab samples.
The Eagle, a College Station newspaper, also reported that Fuego’s Tortilla Grill had reopened following a through scrubbing.
“We’re owning up to this,” owner Paul Moler said following a news conference by the Brazos County Health Department. “We’re not a victim here.”
“All we can do is move forward, but I guarantee you Fuego will open its doors the best it’s ever been, and we will continue to give fresh, quality value at a great price. We’re not going to compromise. We’re not going to cut corners.”
On Friday, upon learning the results of the samples taken on May 13, Fuego voluntarily closed its doors for the day in order to clean and implement changes in food handling, as required by county health officials. Those requirements included a thorough cleaning of the premises by employees followed by an outside cleaning crew, the disposal of all open and prepared foods, as well as all cutting boards — some of which had tested positive for the bacteria.
“This happens,” Sullivan said, noting that Salmonella is a common bacteria found in most kitchens. “This happens with well-intentioned restaurants doing the best they can, so we work together … to come up with best practices and to learn from these types of things.”
Salmonella may be common in kitchens (especially on incoming ingredients and poorly washed hands of staff) but good restaurants have food safety management strategies to keep it off the plates of their patrons.
In May 2013, public health buffoon Dr. Eric Wilke of the Brazos County Health Department in College Station, Texas, declared to a press conference that an E. coli O157 outbreak that landed two brothers in hospital was “a fluke” as he chowed down on a beef taco from the implicated Coco Loco Mexican restaurant.
A year later, KBTX.com reports Jack and Noah Melton were hospitalized for weeks at Texas Children’s Hospital and they haven’t fully recovered from what happened last April 16th when the family went for a meal at Coco Loco Mexican Restaurant on George Bush Drive in College Station.
“We had several touch and go moments,” said Alissa Melton, the boys’ mother.
“Potential life and death situations,” said their dad Greg Melton.
“There were times we weren’t sure they were going to make it the next hour you know. And when you have your 18-month-old staring at you lifeless, pale and white and doctors are rushing in there’s nothing more terrifying. And they were sick you know just from eating a taco,” said Alissa Melton.
The Meltons are grateful for all the prayers, encouragement and help from the community as they reflect on this Good Friday.
“I think if we learned anything it’s that we’re not in control and that we can’t control every aspect of our lives and that you know that we can trust God with our lives and with our kids’s lives,” said Alissa Melton.
The U.S. can do better than faith-based food safety.
The likelihood that a crop of leafy greens will be contaminated by E. coli, an indicator of fecal contamination, before harvest is strongly influenced by both farm management and environmental factors, according to a study spotlighted on the cover of the new issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
The work, led by Dr. Renata Ivanek and her lab in the Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences (VIBS) at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & 
Biomedical Sciences (CVM), was a collaborative effort between researchers at Texas A&M University, Colorado State University, Texas Tech University, and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
In this study, the research team cross-referenced environmental data with information from participating farms in multiple test areas. Then, the team determined how three groups of factors—farm management, location, and weather—affect spinach contamination with E. coli. The team studied spinach samples from 12 farms in Colorado and Texas and compared variables including the local temperature, precipitation, wind speed, soil characteristics, proximity to roads and water bodies, and such farm management practices as the farm workers’ hygiene and manure application practices.
Overall, the study found that farm management, location, and weather factors should be considered jointly in developing agricultural methods and interventions that reduce the threat of E. coli contamination at the pre-harvest level. The odds of spinach contamination decreased to approximately 1 in 17 with implementation of good hygiene practices for farm workers, but they increased to approximately 4 in 1 for every millimeter increase in the average amount of rain in the month before harvest. Furthermore, applying manure fertilizer on the field increased the odds of contamination to approximately 52 in 1.
“Hygiene practices and fertilizers used are relatively easy to change,” Ivanek said. “The challenge, however, will be to use the information about how rainfall affects produce safety into an intervention, or plan, that growers could implement on a daily basis.”