The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has assembled a new network of epidemiologists and other public health experts in hopes of responding more quickly and effectively to outbreaks of foodborne illness.
The CORE network is a multi-disciplinary team of epidemiologists, veterinarians, microbiologists and other specialists who will work full time on outbreak prevention and response, the agency said.
"The CORE Network builds on the best practices FDA has already implemented in its outbreak response efforts," said Mike Taylor, FDA deputy commissioner of foods. "And, in keeping with the reforms of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, CORE activities will learn from outbreaks to develop preventive systems in an effort to reduce them.
The fulltime staff will be better equipped to respond to outbreaks, Karas said. "And we can concentrate more on lessons learned, to try and prevent incidents in the future."
Veterinarian to receive National Medal of Science for the first time
Ralph Brinster, a prominent veterinary scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, is to receive the National Medal of Science for his work on transgenic lab animals - research that helped lay the foundation for much of modern biomedicine.
Brinster, 79, a professor of reproductive physiology at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, is among seven recipients of the science medal this year. They are to be honored at a ceremony this year, along with five inventors who are receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
In the early 1980s, Brinster and colleagues made some of the first mice with foreign genes, a powerful technique for drug development because such mice can be tailored to have a particular disease. The scientists created these mice by injecting the genes into mouse eggs and then implanting them in a female mouse.
Untold numbers of mouse "disease models" are still made this way in nearly every university lab in the world.
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