Easter has been on my 3-year-old’s radar since Christmas. Jack has succumbed to the eggs/bunnies/chicks hype at retail stores, and is now really interested in colored eggs (because he thinks they all contain chocolate). Jack, with his one-year-old brother in tow, even hid a bunch of plastic eggs in our neighbor’s yard earlier this week.
We’re always looking to entertain the dudes with crafts and this weekend’s traditional fun is to dye and decorate some eggs. We prefer using the hardboiled type (and not messing around with sticking pins in and blowing out the raw egg). We’ll hide the decorated eggs around the yard, but we’re not planning on eating them.
Here is the newest food safety infosheet detailing some risks and risk-reduction steps for Easter fun.
Three-year-old Sorenne is doing her best Jeremy Lin.
Started at 9:30 p.m. Brisbane time with explosive vomit involving volume and chunks of undigested and curdled stuff.
Then another.
She’s at about vomit number seven, lying beside me on the couch, sleeping for 15 minutes and then gasping before the next vomit. Little containers don’t work so well with little kids; I have a pail on the floor.
It’s classic foodborne illness, which means I’m wracked with guilt. I buy all the food; I prepare all the food; I make her lunch; I nag at the school about petting zoos and handwashing. Even the French professor chimed in with her diagnosis of norovirus.
That’s how food safety infects and inflects our lives.
Yesterday was the Easter celebration at school, so lots of chocolate was involved, but that’s not what’s involved here. Just a feeling of helplessness, self-doubt and concern. It happened with all my other kids growing up, it’ll probably happen again, but it sucks.
And then there’s the laundry.
Famed basketball star Jeremy Lin tried to run an online Facebook Q&A yesterday just hours after undergoing knee surgery.
Until he threw up.
As reported by Mashable, the numbers and demographics of the Facebook chat are pretty astounding. According to The Wall Street Journal, 90% of participants were Asian and 50% were evangelical Christian. The average age of the chatters was 15, with males and females equally represented. And the thousands of participants asked more than 8,000 questions — a rate of about two per second.
Lin answered a range of questions including his biggest pet peeves, the video games he plays, how he stays humble and plans for rehabilitation.
With the sheer volume of participants and the rate of participation, the session turned out to be a “tremendously disorienting experience,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
And it wasn’t just that way for the viewers. Lin, still reeling after his surgery, had to interrupt his own chat for some post-surgery puking — which he announced on Facebook as well:
“WOW just threw up in the middle of the Q&A lol. time to get some rest but before i go just wanna say much love to all you fans! thanks to you guys who make MSG the best arena and thanks to all the NY media/beat writers for all your hard work in getting information to the fans. goodnight!”
More than 43,000 people liked his vomiting update alone.
We’re not famous. Explosive diarrhea three just accompanied vomit eight.
I don’t like parsley. Can’t stand using it in cooking, hate it as a garnish and, like many herbs, is prone to microbial contamination.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is warning the public not to consume Boskovich brand fresh Parsley described below. The affected product may contain Cryptosporidium.
The affected product was sold only on March 19, 2012 from one store, Canada Safeway, 124 Primrose Dr., Lawson Heights Mall, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The product was sold in bunches enclosed with a band indicating the Boskovich brand and Product of USA.
There have been no reported illnesses associated with the consumption of this product.
As usual, CFIA provided no details about how the contaminated parsley was discovered, or why the advisory only applies to one day’s worth of product at one store.
Speaking of Saskatoon, I was rocking out to this a couple of days ago after my friend Roy sent along his latest rock and roll band photo and I commented he was channeling Randy Bachman.
A new report calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to export its regulatory knowhow to improve the safety of imports arriving in the U.S.
Almost 40 percent of the fruits and nuts and 85 percent of the seafood that Americans purchase come from aboard. More than 80 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients are imported, and 40 percent of medicines are imported as finished products.
The report from a committee of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies says many regulatory agencies abroad lack the legal framework, funding, training, and oversight that have helped to transform the FDA into one of the world’s top-notch regulatory agencies.
Instead, the IOM says the onus is on the FDA to help the exporting countries improve their own regulatory systems and supply chains, so that everyone can be more confident that what they’re producing is safe.
A total of 93 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Bareilly have been reported from 19 states and the District of Columbia.
The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Alabama (2), Arkansas (1), Connecticut (4), District of Columbia (2), Georgia (4), Illinois (8), Louisiana (2), Maryland (8), Massachusetts (4), Mississippi (1), Missouri (1), New Jersey (6), New York (23), North Carolina (2), Pennsylvania (2), Rhode Island (4), South Carolina (3), Texas (3), Virginia (5), and Wisconsin (8).
10 ill persons have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.
Among 93 persons for whom information is available, illness onset dates range from January 28 to March 23, 2012. Ill persons range in age from 4 to 78 years, with a median age of 31. Forty-six percent of patients are female.
Among 51 ill persons for whom information is available, 35 (69%) reported consuming sushi, sashimi, or similar foods in the week before illness onset. This percentage is higher than expected compared with results from a survey of healthy persons in which 5% of persons reported consuming sushi, sashimi, or ceviche made with raw fish or shellfish in the 7 days before they were interviewed. The investigation into specific types of sushi is ongoing.
The investigation has not conclusively identified a food source.
The investigation is ongoing into individual food items and their sources.
CDC and FDA are working together on the investigation and will provide updates as soon as they are available.
If a specific food source is identified for this outbreak, public health officials will alert the public and take further steps to prevent additional illnesses.
Gourmet products manufacturer Olivia may describe its production facility as a pastoral-sounding "wooden house with a chimney" emitting the aroma of "a true kitchen," but it’s a kitchen that is characterized by unhygienic conditions, ranging from mold in its dried-tomato storage containers to filth and creepy-crawlies on the floor.
The Marker reports that founded in 1990 by Yoel Benesh, Tnuva completed its buyout in 2002. Olivia sells its upmarket sauces and spreads in Israel, the United States, France and England. It also manufactures products for the Israeli foods companies Strauss, Maadanot and Sunfrost, and for American burgers giant McDonald’s. In Israel its products command 8% of the market for sauces, 5% of the market for salad dressing, 2% of the soy sauce market and 2% of the market for margarine.
The "house" of Olivia is actually a 4,000-square-meter plant in Rehovot with 26 employees, which the company says produces healthy, quality gourmet products. But The Marker has obtained pictures showing that inside, the conditions have apparently been unsanitary for years.
Early one morning last October, worms were documented on the plant’s floor (the company later said they were caterpillars ). Workers related that for a long time, the sewage system had been backing up and often flooded the floor by the production line. In the room where bottles and jars are filled, the sewage trap was open and a pump installed inside transferred the filth to a channel passing inside the containers room.
A second food technician The Marker consulted says the sewage channel shouldn’t be open, and that it suggested that the system is constantly clogged.
The company stated that in September 2010, the plant’s sewage line broke down.
In October 2011, the production line shut down for three days after a worker complained about the unhygienic conditions to Tnuva, action he took, he claimed, after he was ignored by the Olivia management. A tape The Marker obtained features Tnuva executive Yigal Gali saying, "I’m in shock. Yesterday I heard [Tnuva internal auditor] Margalit [Shperber], who saw worms on the floor with her own eyes. When I went downstairs, I saw a production line working with glass shards on the floor."
Yoel Benesh, present at that conversation, said on the tape that he’d been struggling with the hygiene issue for four years. "Not long ago I went downstairs and saw the Universal machine [which makes sauces] filthy."
Tnuva’s quality manager, Michal Amsterdam, commented during the exchange that the problem with hygiene had been around a long time: "What’s missing is resources to clean."
Benesh summed up: "What’s needed here is a root canal, like they did at Maadanot. First of all clean, then work. It hasn’t happened here for 1,001 reasons."
After that meeting, Gali convened the plant’s workers and ordered them to undertake a cleaning blitz, and vowed to change sanitary standards at the plant.
The tape ends with one worker joking, "This place looks like a garage. All it needs is a calendar with naked women."
An Oregon City man who told a government hotline last summer his mother had been harmed by bottled water has pleaded guilty to making a false report of consumer product tampering, a federal crime that carries a potential five-year prison term.
He may have been stoned.
The Oregonian reports Curtis A. Purdy, 34 (right, exactly as shown), acknowledged in court papers that he lied last summer to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Consumer Complaint Line about how his mother came to be injured after drinking a bottle of Crystal Geyser water.
Purdy reported to the FDA hotline on Sept. 1 that the water, purchased from an Albertson’s grocery, had caused burns to his mom’s mouth, throat and stomach and that she had vomited and suffered diarrhea, according to a criminal complaint affidavit.
He later told investigators that he had put in the bottle some rubbing alcohol, which he kept around to clean his marijuana pipes. His memory of the incident was hazy, according to the complaint, because he was undergoing opiate withdrawal.
Sorenne’s school is doing the hatching-chicks-thing in anticipation of Easter (which is a surprisingly big deal in Australia) and I’ve been doing my best Dougie-Downer about handwashing, Salmonella, pestilence and death.
In the northern Hemisphere, this is apparently the start of the petting farm season (didn’t have that one penciled in), so the UK Health Protection Agency is reminding people, especially those with responsibility for young children, to enjoy their farm visits safely by ensuring good hand hygiene after touching farm animals or their surroundings.
Outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness associated with contact with farm animals peak in the spring and summer as this coincides with schools holidays when visits to petting farms tend to be more popular, although outbreaks can occur at other times.
The route of transmission in these illnesses, which include the infections E. coli O157 and Cryptosporidium, is direct contact with animals in petting and feeding areas as well as contact with the droppings of animals on contaminated surfaces around farms.
Dr Bob Adak, head of the gastrointestinal diseases department at the HPA, said, “… hand gels or wipes have their uses in areas that are generally clean, such as offices or hospitals, but they are not effective in completely removing from soiled hands bugs such as E. coli or Cryptosporidium that are commonly found in animal droppings and on contaminated surfaces around farms. This is why washing the hands thoroughly with soap and water is so important – it is the only way to effectively remove the bacteria and reduce the risk of becoming unwell.”
Figures from the HPA’s national surveillance system show that there were 61 outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness associated with farms visits between 1992 and 2011. Twenty two of these outbreaks (36 per cent) occurred in the last three years (2009-11).
Around half were caused by E. coli O157 and around half were caused by Cryptosporidium. A handful were caused by Salmonella. Overall 1,238 people were affected in these outbreaks – 1,003 people with Cryptosporidium and 235 with E. coli O157.
The latest entry to our food-related 911 Hall of Shame is Donna Marie Nichols of Rockwood, Tennessee (right, exactly as shown) who called 911 twice to complain about a substandard fast food hamburger.
In one call, obtained by the website The Smoking Gun, Ms Nichols, 50, tells the 911 dispatcher that the burger is "no good" and "nasty."
When deputies arrived at her home, she said that she had called the restaurant before she called 911 and the manager had offered her a refund for her food, according to WCRB.
She was arrested on abuse of 911 charges and booked into the Roane County Jail. She was released Monday night.
Previously, customers have been popped for calling 911 to register dismay about Burger King lemonade, McDonald’s McNuggets, and pizza.
Selfridges, the British concern that makes raw milk available from public vending machines, has decided to stop that, after the Food Standards Agency launched an investigation into whether the practice is legal.
The London Standard reports that shops in England and Wales are not allowed to stock raw milk due to the threat of salmonella, E. coli and campylobacter — but since December, Selfridges has got around the ban by allowing Longleys Farm in Hailsham, East Sussex, to sell the product from dispensers in its food hall.
Selfridges said customers should have the choice, but it would honor any “newly clarified rules.”
professor chimed in with her diagnosis of norovirus..jpg)
the FDA into one of the world’s top-notch regulatory agencies.
(1), Missouri (1), New Jersey (6), New York (23), North Carolina (2), Pennsylvania (2), Rhode Island (4), South Carolina (3), Texas (3), Virginia (5), and Wisconsin (8).
McDonald’s. In Israel its products command 8% of the market for sauces, 5% of the market for salad dressing, 2% of the soy sauce market and 2% of the market for margarine.
mother came to be injured after drinking a bottle of Crystal Geyser water..jpg)
although outbreaks can occur at other times.
the manager had offered her a refund for her food, according to WCRB.
by allowing Longleys Farm in Hailsham, East Sussex, to sell the product from dispensers in its food hall.