- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Re-washing bagged greens may be making salads dirtier, according to a bevy of food safety experts, reported Deborah Schoch in the Los Angeles Times.
Even the cleanest kitchens can teem with harmful pathogens - on cutting boards and in salad spinners, on knives that just sliced raw chicken, on damp, well-used cloth towels.
"In brief, consumers don't wash up very well and may contaminate produce due to dirty hands and dirty sink," emailed Christine M. Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at UC Davis. That's especially a problem with salad greens, since they never get...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Soaring feed costs are forcing San Joaquin Valley poultry producers to cut costs, raise prices - and, in some cases, close their doors, reported Robert Rodriguez in the Fresno Bee this weekend. Feed prices have climbed as much as 50 percent since last year, fueled by the increasing demand for corn.
Director of the UC Agricultural Issues Center Daniel Sumner told the reporter that rising costs for poultry producers will boost the retail price, unless something else acts to keep prices down.
"So, bottom line," Sumner said, "we should see higher retail prices with these...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Even though scientists have been studying colony collapse disorder of honeybees for five years, the relentless bee mortality still has them mystified, according to a segment that aired on PBS' NewsHour yesterday.
"We really don't seem to have accomplished a whole lot, because we're still losing, on an average, approximately 30 percent or more of our colonies each year. And that's higher than it used to be," UC Cooperative Extension bee expert Eric Mussen told reporter Spencer Michels. "Only 25 percent of the beekeepers seem to have this CCD problem over and over and over. The...
- Posted By: Jeannette E. Warnert
- Written by: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology will be featured today (Thursday, July 28) on the PBS NewsHour, which is broadcasting a special program on colony collapse disorder (CCD) and the nation’s honey bees.
Correspondent/producer Spencer Michels recently interviewed Mussen at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis and toured the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven.
The same program will air at both 3 and 6 p.m. on the West Coast. The bee piece will air about “30 or 33 minutes into the show,” Michels said.
“This will feature a number of...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A swarm of Africanized honeybees attacked a 70-year-old man in Modesto last week in the first reported assault by so-called "killer bees" north of Tulare, the Modesto Bee reported. The man was stung more than 50 times, but survived the attack.
Laboratory tests determined the bees were "Africanized," or hybrids descended from swarms moving north from Brazil since scientists brought African bees to breed in the late 1950s.
A UC publication, Africanized Honey Bee Facts, says the insect's killer reputation has been exaggerated. The bees look and pollinate the same as common...
