Listeria Hysteria: Amy’s Kitchen Pulls Products

Amy’s Kitchen recall
Amy’s Kitchen, Inc. has voluntarily recalled close to 74,000 cases of a variety of its frozen products, including lasagna, enchiladas, veggie bowls and tofu scrambles, from store shelves in the United States and Canada. The recall is based on information from one of its organic spinach suppliers concerning the possible presence of listeria bacteria in its spinach. Listeria can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children and people with compromised immune systems, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The California-based company says it hasn’t received any reports of illness, and made the move out of an abundance of caution. Here’s a full list of products included in the recall.

Make that sandwich a double-decker
A new study published in the journal BMC Medicine has found that consuming high levels of cereal grains, which are found in the bran part of whole grains, led to lower mortality rates in the people studied. The study involved more than 376,000 U.S. adults between ages 50 and 71 over a 14-year period. Researchers found that the group who ate the highest levels of cereal fibers were 19 percent less likely to die over the study period as compared with the individuals who ate the least amount of cereal fiber. The benefits included a lower risk of death from diabetes, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer for the people who ate the most cereal fibers compared with those who ate the least, Live Science reports.

Star power trumps pig farm
Tracy Somerset, who starred in the 1980s British television detective series “C.A.T.S. Eyes,” and who is now the Marchioness of Worcester, has been campaigning for the last four years to prevent one of the country’s first factory pig farms from becoming a reality. Midland Pig Producers, the company behind the proposal, has withdrawn its application because of objections by neighbors in Foston, Derbyshire, over the potential smell of 25,000 pigs in an indoor facility, says The Daily Mail. Somerset, 56, is an animal rights activist who supports sustainable, high-welfare farming practices. One of her high-profile supporters has been the actor Dominic West, best known for his role on HBO’s “The Wire.”

Antibiotic use in ag to skyrocket
In the next 15 years, the use of antibiotics in livestock is expected to jump by close to 70 percent due to an increase in factory farms worldwide, driven by demand for meat and dairy products, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study examined the use of antibiotics in agriculture in more than 200 countries and found that in places like China, Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa, the rate of use of these drugs is likely to more than double over the next 15 years, Healthline reports. In 2010 alone, the world used 63,151 tons of antibiotics on farms. The result of the increase in agricultural antibiotic use means more resistant pathogens, according to researchers. “Antimicrobials are used in livestock production to maintain health and productivity. These practices contribute to the spread of drug-resistant pathogens in both livestock and humans, posing a significant public health threat,” the report states.