Just another biosafety breach

An outbreak investigation of a Maine poultry vaccine facility concluded last week that a spill infected about a third of the facility's 74 employees with salmonella poisoning, according to a linkurl:notice;http://www.promedmail.org/pls/promed/f?p=2400:1001:10722522844908593057::NO::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_PUB_MAIL_ID:1000,39119 on ProMED-mail, an information service of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. The notice, also linkurl:published;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5634a1.htm in the CDC's Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, said that the state's Department of Health and Human Services started an investigation after two cases of salmonellosis were reported within two weeks last November and were easily traced back to an overflow of about 1.5 liters of liquid containing S. enteritidis in the plant's fermentation room. An employee cleaned up the spill with 5 percent bleach and a disinfectant, then brought the mop to another room to be autoclaved and thrown away. Investigators noted that working in this second room correlated strongly with getting ill. They also noted that facility had no established...