It’s been a bizarre day, answering questions about the U.S. moving ahead with approvals for irradiation on some leafy greens, and Canada moving backwards – really backwards – into political grandstanding while people suffer in an expanding listeria outbreak.
The latest news is that five deaths are now being investigated and dozens of illnesses. If you watch some of the media clips you’ll see that undeserved Canadian smugness shining through – ‘we figured this listeria thing out really fast, it took the Americans six months to figure out salmonella in jalapenos’(Maureen Taylor of CBC pokes some big holes in that theory).
My message was the same: Listeria is a dangerous bug, this is a serious outbreak, there were some serious shortcomings in informing the public and six-months pregnant Amy wouldn’t touch a cold-cut or other refrigerated ready-to-eat food whether it was inspected by government or industry or me.
No one was really interested in the sick people or potential risk.
I did a live interview with CBC Newsworld, the 24 hour news channel that is sometimes referred to as Wallyworld. The producer called to do a pre-interview and asked,
“What are your impressions of this listeria outbreak in Canada.”
I said,
“I’m sorry, I don’t do impressions.”
When it came time to do the CBC National News interview, I was chatting with the reporter, and she said I was in Kansas City, and I said,
“Manhattan. Kansas. Kansas State University.”
“Oh, right.”
“Not University of Kansas. Kansas State. People care about that shit down here. I’m from Ontario, I don’t’ get it, but they really care .”
“And they should. Yeah. Kansas State.”
On CBC National News, it said, ‘Doug Powell, University of Kansas.’
Sigh. …
This is a serious outbreak; there is going to be more dead and sick people, and it’s sorta gross that all the social actors quoted by the media seem to care about is advancing their political agendas. And kissing industry ass and providing pregnant Canadian women with lousy advice about listeria.
Most compassionate award of the day goes to Quiznos spokesman Kyle Holmes in Toronto who said,
"At the end of the day, it (this recall) could happen to anybody and fortunately, it didn’t happen to us. Recently, we had a tomato recall and our tomatoes were not affected at all but it was still bad publicity. People are hypochondriacs.”