I went to bed last night after watching Cosmos and woke up this morning to find that the Mars rover Opportunity completed a 21-month long journey to Victoria Crater. With everything going on on our world, it's easy to forget that Spirit and Opportunity are still out there, diligently exploring another for us. In fact, January 2007 will mark the three-year anniversary of the rovers' first view of Mars! Safely landing two mobile robots on a distant planet is an achievement that cannot be overstated. It's a testament to the ingenuity and dedication of the scientists, engineers, and mission specialists that made it happen, and NASA has extended their mission for yet another year. Carl Sagan would be ecstatic. It's unfortunate that he's not here to share his exuberance with us.

The FDA has now approved a virus (of a type known as a bacteriophage) bred to kill listeria bacteria. Meat, especially ready-to-eat meats, would be sprayed with this virus before it hits the market. More information can be found here.

Listeria typically doesn't get as much press as E. coli or salmonella, but it causes listeriosis, a leading--and potentially deadly--food-borne illnesses. You can get listeriosis from raw meats, pre-cooked meats (lunch meats, hot dogs), and sometimes vegetables. In fact, the CDC recommends that if you're in the "high risk" group (pregnant, seriously ill, weakened immune system, elderly, etc.), that you cook your cold cuts!

So, this new listeria-eater sounds like a great idea, right? Kill the suckers before they kill me? Reduce the overall number of listeriosis outbreaks?

It does sound cool, but the concern is that it would be used as a band-aid to mask a major problem, rather than tackle its causes head-on. We should encourage and enforce livestock-raising practices that reduce the spread of disease, and discourage the over-use of antibiotics in livestock. Slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants should be kept as clean as possible. Spraying something on the meat after it comes out of a filthy or unsafe plant isn't the solution.

I have seen conflicting reports on whether or not meats treated with the bacteriophage will be required to say so on their labels. Hopefully they will, as you should always have a choice in what you eat. As for myself, I'm going to wait and see before I enjoy a hot dog soaked in this stuff.

(Just to be clear, this virus doesn't actually eat the bacteria, even though "phage" derives from the Greek word for eat. It basically injects its DNA into the bacteria, where it reproduces using the hosts machinery. Eventually, the copies of itself are released, rupturing the host and killing it.)