"The unfolding story of how salmonella bacteria infected two giant egg operations in Iowa this summer is the latest chapter of a mysterious narrative about how a minor bacterial annoyance took off 35 years ago to become the second most common cause of food-borne illness in the United States.
Like the things that cause AIDS, Lyme disease, Legionnaire's disease and West Nile fever, the egg-loving germ (whose formal name is Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis) is a classic "emerging infectious agent." Sometimes called SE, it's a microbe that has been around a long time and has found a new or better way to reach its human victims.
For more than three decades, the strain of salmonella bacteria with a fondness for eggs has taken advantage of changes in this country's animal husbandry, food distribution and eating habits ... "
