“The conditional licensing of this vaccine is an important step toward our goal of improving food safety in this country,” he says.
E. coli O157:H7 can cause severe illness and death in humans who consume food tainted with the pathogen. A common path for the pathogen to enter the food supply is when muscle tissue becomes contaminated with E. coli from the intestinal tract of cattle during the slaughtering process. Vaccines to reduce the prevalence and shedding of E. coli pathogens in cattle are one component of a wide-range of options to enhance food-safety controls. The department will continue to explore solutions with all stakeholders to better control E. coli O157:H7 and other foodborne pathogens to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness.