News

Happy Birthday, TAFS forum!

The TAFS forum was founded on March 22, 2002 - 10 years ago. A reason to celebrate, maybe to be a little bit proud of what we have achieved, but most of all to say thank you. Thank you, founders of TAFS, for your vision and courage. Thank you, members, for your commitment, scientific advice, financial support, and friendship. And, last but not least, thank you all for your interest and encouragement.

We have great plans for the future. Learn more about our 'New Vision for TAFS' from our website or contact us directly.

Best wishes,

the TAFS team.

After a recent report about a 'probable variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease' case, the EUROCJD group replies in a public letter why it considers the diagnosis 'unlikely'. The group states that 'the diagnosis of vCJD cannot be regarded as correct unless there is neuropathological verification of this diagnosis'.

Fish and spices the most common sources

Read full article here.

A new synopsis in EID by Saunders et al. summarizes 'Occurrence, Transmission, and Zoonotic Potential of Chronic Wasting Disease'.

The former domain name of TAFS, tseandfoodsafety.org, had been in parallel use with our current domain tafsforum.org for a while, but has now been put out of service. Please make sure that your bookmarks and address books are in sync.

In the course of changing email servers, there is a small chance that any emails you wrote between Friday (February 3) and Saturday night to tafsforum.org - what else would you do on a Friday night? - might be lost. Please check if any mails bounced back to you and resend if needed.

We can now be reached again at ulrich.sperling@tafsforum.org or info@tafsforum.org.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Lamont et al. report observing MaP cultures going into a 'spore-like morphotype' under stress conditions. This has important implications for strategies to control MaP.

Long awaited, a key reference in our 'Recommended Risk Management Plan for Paratuberculosis' has finally become available online. You can find the paper 'Assessment of Sources of Exposure for Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis in Food and Water' by Mihajlovic et al. in Int. food risk anal. j., 2011, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1-22, here. The paper represents another compilation of studies on MAP in food and water.

Pribylova et al. report finding MaP bacteria in intestine (used for sausage casings), masseter (chewing muscle) and diaphragm of dairy cattle. They state that "due to the changing behaviour of consumers, both of these muscles have started to be widely used in cuisine" and suggest that "processing of cows with paratuberculosis in abattoirs without any precautions (restrictions) and the usage of meat for human consumption should be rethought."