Phyllis and Arly,

Thank you for clarifying your questions.  I thought I was clear in my
response to Arly that I was speculating on the source of contamination of Portagen
powdered infant formula.  I do believe that I am not alone in speculating about
the source.  In a letter written to the editor of the CDC Emerging Infectious
Diseases in October 2003, researchers Hamilton et al, state: "We report the
isolation of E. sakazakii from the guts of larvae of the stable fly, Stomoxys
calcitrans, demonstrating an environmental reservoir for E. sakazakii and
raising the possibility that environmental contamination by insects may be important
in the spread of this opportunistic organism." and later in their letter they
state, "The high mortality rate and severity of this infection in infants,
coupled with lack of ecologic information about this organism, have fueled much
debate." see:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no10/03-0218.htm

I gather from this very recent letter that there is still much scientific
debate on this issue.  This letter also states:  "More recently E.Sakazakii has
been detected in ultra-heat-treated milk, spoiled tofu, lettuce, and
traditional fermented bread (khamir) and in beer mugs rinsed mechanically or in open
vats.  Although more vehicles for transmission are being identified, the
environmental reservoir has remained elusive."

E. Sakazakii has a high tolerance to heat.  They state that the overall risk
from this foodborn pathogen is dependent on the number of bacteria present,
handling, and patient characteristics.

Arly asks how this infant formula became so contaminated with E. sakazakii.
I have not seen any document that discusses this. Contamination of infant
formula with this organism has occurred since the late 80's.

Genetic engineering of consumer foods and consumer clearners (detergents,
cleaning supplies, etc) has not been questioned.  I think these questions need to
be asked.  The high levels of iodine in milk products is caused by the use of
iodine washes on the teats of milking cows.  Thus any cleaning products that
milk has contact with may contaminate this food.  If those products are made
by our new "novel" techniques, should we believe that science really knows how
to totally disable the virulence of the vectors used?  Lots of questions and I
don't think they are being asked because there has been a heavy investment in
biotechnology with no long-term risk assessments.

If you go into PubMed there is a paper on the "Transformation of Stomoxys
calcitrans with a Hermes gene vector."  by O'Brochta et al. in Insect Mol Biol.
2000 Oct;9(5):531-8.  So we are also genetically engineering the stable
fly--let's hope they don't get out of the laboratory......
Valerie W. McClain, IBCLC

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html