In the wake of Europe’s horse meat scandal, the U.S. is increasing so-called “species testing” on imported meats to screen for any signs of fraudulent products, agriculture officials said.

Inspectors have been ordered to boosts species tests of meat products imported from Iceland, Ireland, Poland, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, according to a new U.S. Department of Agriculture directive issued this week.

In addition, inspectors will increase tests of all imported raw ground beef or veal, including products that already are being tested for certain Shiga toxin-producing E. coli bacteria that can cause serious illness.

“We are confident that the inspection system at ports of entry ensures the safety of products that come into our country every day,” said Catherine Cochran, a spokeswoman for the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. “However, in response to recent events and consumer concerns, we are increasing species testing to enhance current safeguards and prevent fraudulently labeled products from entering the country.”

The U.S. action follows the scandal that erupted earlier this year after testing in Ireland revealed that some beef products contained traces of horse meat. More than a dozen European countries and several prominent international brands have been caught up in the controversy.

None of the European countries implicated in the scandal imports beef to the U.S., but USDA officials said the increased scrutiny recognizes that those countries are part of the global food supply chain.

The new directive, signed by Rachel Edelstein, an FSIS acting assistant administrator, doesn’t include a specific schedule for species testing. Previously, USDA officials acknowledged that species testing for meat imported into the U.S. has been performed typically only when there’s a reason to question a shipment.

Concerns about horse meat hidden in beef have been two-fold. First, meats taken from store shelves in Britain and Germany had traces of a powerful equine painkiller, phenylbutazone, or “bute,” which can cause serious problems in humans.

The larger issue, however, has been one of trust. While diners in some European countries routinely eat horse meat, the idea makes most U.S. consumers shudder.

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Don't look for testing of the anthrax vaccine to begin in children any time soon. 

Controversy arose last year as experts debated whether such studies should be done to learn how to treat children in case of a bioterror attack.

But a presidential commission says the government would have to take multiple steps — including more safety research in young adults — before it would be ethical to consider tests in children.

"The safety of our children is paramount, and we have to get this precisely right," said Dr. Amy Gutmann, who chairs the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, which released its report Tuesday.

More than a decade after the anthrax attacks, the government has a multibillion-dollar stockpile of drugs and vaccines to fight an array of threats. There's no information on whether those so-called countermeasures would work in children like they're expected to help their parents, or even what dose to use. Yet if a large attack were to occur, children undoubtedly would receive those untested products.

Worried about how to handle an emergency, a government advisory group recommended studying the anthrax vaccine in children if independent ethics experts agreed it could be done appropriately. The Obama administration put that question to the panel.

Tuesday's answer: Children don't gain any benefit from pre-attack research with the anthrax vaccine or other countermeasures. So the panel said such studies would be ethical only if they presented no more than minimal risk to participants — like the risk from a routine medical check-up. Determining that would require, among other things, more testing in adults, the panel added. Something that proved safe in 18-year-olds, for example, might be a candidate to study next in 16- and 17-year-olds.

However, the government should plan now for how it would study children who receive those treatments in the event of an attack, the panel said.

The Health and Human Services Department, which requested the advice, said it would review the findings.

Related story: 

• Bioethicist: No chance of anthrax vaccine trials in kids

By Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press

There's a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don't know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don't think they're at risk, because they could be.

"It allows you to say, 'This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We're not singling you out in any way,'" said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor's office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration's health care law. Under the task force's previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you're having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today's rapid tests can cost less than $20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that's selling for about $40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday's proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It's not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

"We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC's HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

"It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test," Mermin said — the reason that making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren't tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that "a tragedy. It's a missed opportunity."

Barring any last-minute delays, U.S. food safety inspectors will begin testing Monday for six new strains of potentially deadly E. coli bacteria to be banned from certain cuts of raw beef.

The move implements long-delayed federal regulations aimed at a group of E. coli bacteria collectively known as “the Big Six,” bugs capable of causing severe infection and death.

Under the new rules, the six additional strains of E. coli will be classified as adulterants on par with the better-known E. coli O157:H7, which is often linked to serious illnesses tied to hamburger. The new strains include E. coli O26, O111, O103, O121, O45 and O145.

Meat producers such as Cargill Inc., who have long opposed expanded testing, said they are ready to begin.

“We are prepared for USDA to collect whatever samples they wish to collect for non-O157 STEC sampling at our beef harvesting (slaughter) facilities starting June 4,” Cargill spokesman Michael Martin wrote in an email to msnbc.com.

Beginning Monday, it will be illegal to sell raw beef trimmings and non-intact beef products, such as tenderized steaks, if they’re contaminated with any of the six new strains of E. coli, according to documents from the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The agency indicated it plans in the future to expand routine testing for those strains to additional raw beef products, including ground beef.

Like E. coli O157:H7, the six new strains are capable of producing bloody diarrheal illness that can lead to kidney failure and death. In 2010, for the first time, the non-O157 strains of what are known as Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, or STECs, were responsible for more infections in the U.S. than E. coli O157:H7, according to federal health officials.

The non-O157 STECs caused 451 confirmed infections that year, including 69 people who were hospitalized and one death. E. coli O157:H7 caused 442 infections, 184 hospitalizations and two deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many illnesses are never reported, however, and the agency estimates that non-O157 E. coli strains cause an estimated 113,000 illnesses and 300 hospitalizations a year.

The new rules were announced last September by Dr. Elisabeth Hagen, the USDA’s undersecretary for food safety. Testing originally was set to begin in March. The most recent delay was only the latest in a saga that started in 2007, when food safety advocates and federal officials first began discussing whether the lesser-known strains of E. coli should be regarded as adulterants, too.

Meat industry officials vehemently opposed the move, saying that current efforts to identify E. coli O157 were adequate to screen for the other strains as well.

“The science tells us that the food safety protocols and interventions we have in place for E. coli O157:H7 also mitigate the other six STECs,” Martin wrote.

Beef importers from outside the U.S. also objected, saying the new regulations would impede trade. 

Some in the meat industry already were testing for the non-O157 STECs. Costco already tests for the pathogens. Also, Beef Products Inc., the South Dakota firm at the center of the "pink slime" scandal, has long tested its lean finely textured beef products for the presence of the additional strains of E. coli in addition to O157:H7. Spokesman Craig Letch said that practice continues, even after the company shuttered three of its four plants.

The new testing requirement is a victory for Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety lawyer who petitioned FSIS to have the “Big Six” strains declared adulterants and then threatened to sue the USDA when the agency didn’t respond promptly.

He pointed to the 1994 classification of E. coli O157:H7 as an adulterant as a turning point for food safety in U.S. and said the new rules would have a similar effect.

“(It) dramatically changed the landscape of how safe our meat supply is for the better,” he said. “This is another step in getting this done correctly.”

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