EMERGING FOOD PATHOGENS: A CASE STUDY OF E. Coli 0104:H4

Food is essential for the survival of man and animals in the planet but this necessity sometimes becomes the means of destruction from the planet. Most infections that man get are either from food or water. In the last 20 years there have been several cases of food borne pathogens causing deleterious infections in man and animals. Some of these pathogens are just newly emerging and not much has been studied on them until recent times. The bulk of pathogens of food are of bacterial origin. In this review we looked at current trends in emerging food pathogens globally as it concerns the health of the almost 7 billion people on earth today and the billions of animals which are pivotal to the survival of man on the planet. We took special interest in the recent outbreak of E. coli 0104:H4 that started from Germany and spread to some other parts of Europe and the United States of America. This outbreak was attributed to infected cucumbers, bean sprouts, lettuce and tomatoes whose origin seems difficult to determine with certainty. Some suggestions are offered on the way forward when confronted with pandemic infections in an increasingly global village that the world has become