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Salmonella sickens more than 1 million Americans every year, with about 200,000 illnesses caused by contaminated poultry. Some strains of salmonella are becoming antibiotic resistant, making them more severe and difficult to treat. Key Findings of ‘The Trouble with Chicken’ investigation: Twenty years after the major E. coli 0157 outbreak from Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers highlighted the …

Continue reading “Salmonella still leading source of foodborne illness”

People may think that the chicken and turkey they buy at the grocery store is bacteria-free, but the government actually allows some salmonella in the raw poultry that’s sold to the public. Consumer advocates have been calling for zero tolerance of dangerous types of salmonella in poultry in order to cut down on the number …

Continue reading “Can we get to zero salmonella in poultry?”

While in the U.S. debate continues over whether there’s a connection between antibiotic resistance and the use of the drugs in food animals, in Europe, concern about the potential risk to human health has sparked legislative action dating back more than 20 years. It’s not that Europeans have different — or much clearer — science …

Continue reading “Europeans took action 20 years ago”

Today’s debate over the use of antibiotics in food animals is hardly new. Nearly 40 years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tried — and failed — to restrict the use of these drugs in animal feeds on the farm. That battle of 1977 is critical to understanding why the agency has taken …

Continue reading “The men who knew”

New data from the Food and Drug Administration shows that the sale of antibiotics for farm animals is on the rise, amid concerns that their use is contributing to increasing drug-resistant infections in humans. The FDA reported earlier this month that sales of antibiotics for agriculture climbed 16 percent in the United States between 2009 …

Continue reading “Sharp increase in sales of antibiotics for farm animals”

iFOIA acts as a cloud service in which journalists can store all of their records requests online, sorted by project. Federal agencies are required to respond to FOIA requests within 20 business days.

The latest data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. shows that the nation’s banks continue to recover from the financial crisis, reporting stronger earnings and increasing loan volume. But an analysis by the Investigative Reporting Workshop shows that for the vast majority of banks — those with less than $1 billion in assets — profits …

Continue reading “Smaller banks rebound more slowly”

Five years ago last week Bear Stearns, then one of the nation’s largest brokerage houses, told the Federal Reserve it was out of money. Despite a $12.9 billion emergency loan from the Fed, within two days Bear Stearns was forced to merge with JP Morgan Chase — a deal facilitated with a $29 billion loan …

Continue reading “Reshaped banking industry emerges from crisis”

Compared with Sept. 30, 2011, an analysis of quarterly banking results by the Investigative Reporting Workshop shows: Loans increased to $7.44 trillion, up 3.9 percent from $7.16 trillion. However, total lending remains below the peak of $7.85 trillion in the second quarter of 2008. Troubled assets (a combination of nonperforming loans and the value of …

Continue reading “More money, fewer banks”

The nation’s banks continued to recover in the second quarter, as the volume of troubled assets on their books dropped to the lowest level in three years, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Banks earned $34.5 billion, below the $35.3 billion reported for the first quarter of this year but above the …

Continue reading “Fewer problem banks, lending up as industry recovery continues”