Area schools receive word of beef recall. A nationwide recall of beef linked to a California meat packer that violated federal slaughtering laws has not put area students at risk, school officials in the region say. [News Source]

Districts take steps to remove recalled beef. Officials in the several Bucks County districts among those in the state to receive recalled beef said Wednesday they've since removed the meat from their menus, or held it in storage facilities. [News Source]

Conservation ‘halts cross-species plagues’. Wildlife-rich “biodiversity hotspots” in the developing world must be better protected to stop the rise of new infectious diseases that could have a deadly impact on mankind, scientists said yesterday. [News Source]

Britain is hotspot of new germs says new study. Novel infectious diseases such as HIV, SARS and Ebola are emerging more often to cause epidemics, according to a study that concludes that Britain has become a global hotspot of new germs. [News Source]

Danger zone UK as animal infections threaten the population. Animal diseases, like bird flu and Sars, are the biggest threat to human health in the future and Britain is a hot spot for new infections, leading scientists said yesterday. [News Source]

The heparin trail. The drug heparin highlights gaps in supply-chain documentation among Chinese drug makers. Because the medication's raw material often is made in small, loosely regulated factories, it can be difficult to trace problems back to their source. [News Source]

USDA: reinspection of downed cattle was key issue in beef recall. Last weekend's 143 million-pound beef recall -- the largest in U.S. history -- was initiated not simply because cattle that couldn't walk made it into the U.S. food supply, but because they weren't reinspected after becoming immobile. [News Source]

Where’s the Beef? (The Harvard Crimson) On Sunday evening, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the recall of 143 million pounds of beef due to fears of infection by E. coli, salmonella, and mad cow disease. It was the biggest meat recall in US history, four times larger than the previous record. [News Source]