Columns::Newsmakers

since 12/15/98

Columns::February 11, 2002

Black History Month observance commemorates ‘The Birth of African-American Culture’
Poet Nikki Giovanni will lecture, give reading
Governor taps two faculty for new commission to promote historical tourism
Mending (historic) fences
UGA expands its academic program at Gwinnett University Center
Willie Cole visits campus as part of artist series
Risky business
Peach State Poll finds most Georgians believe immigrants are not taking their jobs away
China’s Cultural Revolution put professor on ‘radical’ career path
A world of difference
Administrative changes
The British were here

Campus News

Newsmakers

Further cause for worry
In a report on the possibility of bioterrorism directed at agricultural production, the Chronicle of Higher Education quoted Corrie C. Brown, professor of pathology at the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine. “There’s a tremendous problem among United States veterinarians now in that many of them would not be able to recognize some of these diseases,” said Brown. “I would say less than 1 percent of all veterinarians in the United States have ever seen a case of foot-and-mouth disease.”
Brown was among the animal-disease experts interviewed in an extensive report on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She was also quoted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the ease with which a biological agent could be introduced into U.S. farm products. Mass contamination of crops or animals could be accomplished “with chilling ease,” she said. It could be as easy as walking through a barn with a pair of shoes tainted with foot-and-mouth disease.

Treating mail like hamburgers?
The Houston Chronicle and the Associated Press interviewed food safety expert Michael Doyle about the possible effectiveness of electron-beam machines for sanitizing contaminated mail. Such technology is used to kill germs in the food industry, but Doyle pointed out that it could take 10 times as much radiation to kill anthrax spores in an envelope as it does to remove the kind of germs that typically infect hamburgers. “The spores of bacillus anthracis are much heartier than E. coli or salmonella,” Doyle said. “It makes them very tolerant to environmental stresses.”

Old-fashioned Georgia?
Banishing criminals from their home communities has been a part of crime and punishment since the beginnings of written law. Now legalized exile is largely considered an anachronism. Still, it persists in Georgia. “Nationwide, banishment, which used to be a very popular punishment, has pretty much vanished from the scene,” said UGA law professor Donald E. Wilkes in an Associated Press story. “Probably there’s more of this in Georgia than any other state.”

Cleaning up at the fair
For the first time in the Wyandot County Fair’s 150-year history, reports the Toledo Blade, organizers placed hand-sanitizing stations outside each barn to encourage visitors to disinfect their hands after petting farm animals. Michael Doyle, director of UGA’s Center for Food Safety, told the paper that the problem remains a basic one. “The main thing is to wash your hands after handling the animals,” he said. “Even the hand railings can be contaminated by manure. A lot of people don’t wash their hands.”

Feeding home-grown tomatoes
HealthScoutNews reports that tomatoes can become contaminated by salmonella even when the exposure occurs before the plant starts to bear fruit, according to research at UGA. “Tomato stems and flowers are possible sites at which salmonella may attach and remain viable during fruit development, thus serving as routes or reservoirs for contaminating ripened fruit,” said Larry Beuchat, professor of food biology. To avoid the danger, Beuchat advises using untreated manure as fertilizer only when land is fallow--not after planting seeds or before harvest.

Kim Osborne of the UGA News Service monitors coverage of UGA in local, state and national media. Contact her for information about these or other stories in the news. Newsmakers appears in every other issue of Columns.

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