Category Archives: Wacky and Weird

Poop makeup in California

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Never got the make-up thing: My partners always looked great without it.

CBS Sacramento reports, buyers beware! Sometimes when you spot a good makeup deal, it’s too good to be true.

The Los Angeles Police Department says it confiscated counterfeit makeup that tested positive for high levels of bacteria and animal waste.

The department seized $700,000 worth of bootleg cosmetics on Thursday after raiding 21 locations in Santee Alley, a Los Angeles fashion district, said LAPD Capt. Marc Reina.

“Those feces will just basically somehow get mixed into the product they’re manufacturing in their garage or in their bathroom — wherever they’re manufacturing this stuff,” Detective Rick Ishitani told CNN affiliate KABC.

One of the brands being knocked off was Kylie Jenner’s Kylie Cosmetics. Kim Kardashian West, Jenner’s sister, took to Twitter to respond to the raid:

“Counterfeit Kylie lip kits seized in LAPD raid test positive for feces. SO GROSS! Never buy counterfeit products!”

Other prominent makeup brands that were faked included Urban Decay, MAC and NARS.

The LAPD was tipped off by the brand-name companies, which received complaints from consumers who said they had rashes and bumps after using their products. The complainants had one thing in common: They bought the product in the Los Angeles fashion district.

The packaging of the bogus products looks like the real deal, but the prices are way too low.

Falconry as an option for pest control on farms

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I’m a fan of the creative approach to using falcons to control wild pests on farms; with the caveat of balancing tradeoffs.

Back when I was doing on farm food safety stuff in greenhouses in Ontario (that’s in Canada) I had many farmers tell me that cats controlled the mice. They often asked what what’s worse – cat poop and feline tracking pathogens on their feet, or rodents everywhere. I never really had a good answer (and suggested traps for the the rodents). Today I saw an article form New Food Economy on using falcons as pest control on ranches and farms, with the click-worthy headline of ‘Could falcons prevent the next salmonella outbreak?’

Not if it’s linked to chicken eggs.

Maybe there’s some merit to the controlling-the-wild-with-the-trained approach, but in the absence of falcon diapers (as Don Schaffner suggested on Twitter) what’s the risk benefit tradeoff related to adding falcon poop into the mix. Maybe vaccination is the key (but I don’t know).

Wildlife biologist Paula Rivadeneira knows feces can be funny. Informally known as Paula the Poop Doctor (@PaulaThePoopDr on Twitter), she’s no stranger to the poop-based pun. Her SCATT lab—that’s Super Cool Agricultural Testing and Teaching lab to you—is a mobile research center inside a bus-sized RV, one she uses in Arizona’s crop fields to makes scat (animal droppings) scat (go away). But she also knows when poop stops being funny: if it gets into the food supply.

A simple, everyday fence can help dispel rodents and ground-based mammals. But how do you keep wild birds away from the open, vast expanse of a crop field? Over the years, farmers have struggled to find workable, cost-effective methods. Netting is too expensive and cumbersome. Chemical repellants can have taste and human health implications. A range of options exist to frighten birds away, from old-fashioned scarecrows and taped distress calls to deafening noise cannons, “exploders,” and sirens, but none are consistently reliable.

Which is where Rivadeneira comes in. As a specialist for the University of Arizona’s cooperative extension, it’s her job to find new ways to keep crop fields safely poop-free. Recently, she’s been at the forefront of a surprising new food safety initiative, one that—somewhat counterintuitively—entails bringing more birds onto agricultural lands. Rather than barricade, poison, or blast interlopers away, she’s helping farmers police their fields with the aid of an unusual ally: trained falcons.

Disease outbreak at Texas cat café leads to kitty quarantine, investigation

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I was walking Ted the Wonder Dog the other morning — which I try to do every day but often fail because I’m human, dammit, and Ted would rather sleep beside me all day, and then party at 2 a.m. — and we passed the new cat café in Annerley, Brisbane.

I never had indoor cats until the townhouse rules in Brisbane forced us so. Same with the tiny dog. Now we have our own inner city million-dollar property (in Monopoly money) the cats go in and out, and the dog won’t shut-up.

Cuteness overload was supposed to be the number one item on the menu at San Antonio’s first cat cafe, but now the owner is facing an investigation from local authorities.

City of San Antonio Animal Care Services seized two cats last week and ordered the remaining 54 cats in the 1,000-square-foot San Antonio Cat Cafe to be quarantined from the public on Monday, according to WOAI.

“You are not going to get the sick cats better in that environment and unfortunately you are likely to spread those ailments to the other animals that are currently healthy,” Shannon Sims, the assistant director of Animal Care Services, told the station.

The ailments that he’s talking about allegedly include ringworm and FIP, a viral disease that tends to attack the cells of the intestinal wall and is usually fatal in domestic cats, according to WebMD. Animal Care Services spokeswoman Lisa Norwood told KENS that the investigation thus far had revealed that up to three dozen cats that did not have rabies shots and that sick cats were often mixed with healthy cats.

Leah Taylor, a former cafe employee, who is studying to become a veterinary technician, told KENS she filed a complaint against owner Casey Steuart with Animal Care Services after witnessing four cats die there during her four months on the job.

“A lot of the cat care wasn’t maintained,” Taylor told KENS. “There were animals that should have been on medicine. There were animals that needed to see a vet for medical attention that weren’t tended to. There was a lot of ringworm and upper respiratory, which is very contagious not only to people but also to other animals.”

Cas Moskwa, another former Cat Cafe employee, posted a series of photos on Facebook Sunday, detailing what she called “the reality of the cafe and the poor state it currently is in.” She claimed that Steuart waited for weeks at a time before taking sick cats there to a veterinarian and left at least one sick and dying cat, named Decoy, out in the public lounge during his last agonizing days.

Her post includes photos of cats with crusted eyes and allegations that Steuart brought in a cat infected with ringworm into the facility’s kitten coop, resulting in three different litters becoming infected. She said in a separate post that a cat she took home from the cafe was one of them that had been infected.

According to KSAT, though, Steuart disputes the reports from Moskwa and other former employees, blaming “a lack of communication and misinterpretations.” She specifically disputed the reports of ringworm, a skin infection that can be transmitted to humans, in the cafe.

She also told the San Antonio Express News that three cats did die at the cafe, but none from neglect. One, she said, was 17 years old.

My super-smart partner and I meet: Prion disease in Algerian camels

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Amy says I shouldn’t cut-and-paste so much and that I’m better when I just write my own stuff.

Howard Stern’s wife said that to him, at least according to the movie version in Private Parts, 1997, but I counter with I only cut-and-paste the really interesting stuff.

Algeria, French and prions, we’re in a zone.

Everyone else is recall.net, where the copy is provided by 100K-a-year hacks who write and vomit press releases.

Journalism used to be a viable activity.

No worries, story-telling about the Tom-Wolfe-styled-vanities of the food safety privileged retain currency. And those stories are what I have been working on,

I’ll go with a Paul Giamatti,-style, who I am enjoying in Billions and was great in John Adams, Cinderella Man, American Splendor, and so on.

Everyone needs a Paul.

Or an Amy.

Her accomplishments over the seven years since we moved to Australia, including caretaking me and Sorenne, have been extraordinary.

Much love.

Prion disease in Dromedary camels, Algeria

6 June 2018

Emerging Infectious Diseases Vol 24, no 6

Baaissa Babelhadj, Michele Angelo Di Bari, Laura Pirisinu, Barbara Chiappini, Semir Bechir Suheil Gaouar, Geraldina Riccardi, Stefano Marcon, Umberto Agrimi, Romolo Nonno, and Gabriele Vaccari

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/24/6/17-2007_article

Prions cause fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, scrapie in small ruminants, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

After the BSE epidemic, and the associated human infections, began in 1996 in the United Kingdom, general concerns have been raised about animal prions.

We detected a prion disease in dromedary camels (Camelus dromedarius) in Algeria. Symptoms suggesting prion disease occurred in 3.1% of dromedaries brought for slaughter to Ouargla abattoir in 2015–2016. We confirmed diagnosis by detecting pathognomonic neurodegeneration and disease-specific prion protein (PrPSc) in brain tissues from 3 symptomatic animals.

Prion detection in lymphoid tissues is suggestive of the infectious nature of the disease. PrPSc biochemical characterization showed differences with BSE and scrapie.

Our identification of this prion disease in a geographically widespread livestock species requires urgent enforcement of surveillance and assessment of the potential risks to human and animal health.

 

 

Australian man experiences thunderclap headaches after eating world’s hottest pepper

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I grew up with hot peppers, love them, only thing is I can’t tolerate them. I remember going to these massive Italian weddings when I was younger and my dad used to bring his own hot dried peppers from home, stuff them in his pocket and when the pasta came out so did the heat. The heat on these peppers was nothing like the one an Australian man ate at a hot eating pepper competition.

James Gorman of the The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

If you eat a really hot chilli pepper, you expect pain. A lot of pain.
In addition to the feeling that you have just put a live coal in your mouth, you may weep, vomit and wonder where in your life you took a wrong turn.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
You don’t expect a headache so intense and immediate that it sends you to the emergency room. But that’s what happened to a 34-year-old man who turned up at a New York hospital with what clinicians call a thunderclap headache.
His problems began when he ate a whole Carolina Reaper — the hottest chilli pepper in the world, according to Guinness World Records — while participating in hot-pepper-eating competition.
He immediately started experiencing dry heaves — not unknown in the hot-pepper-eating world. But then a pain in his neck and head came on like … a thunderclap.
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It passed, but over the next few days he experienced more thunderclap headaches — that is the clinical term — so he sought medical attention.
Scans of his head and neck showed the kind of constriction in some arteries that can cause intense headaches, doctors reported in BMJ Case Reports. The scientific term for this temporary narrowing of arteries is reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome.
Dr Kulothungan Gunasekaran, one of the report’s authors, now at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, said that for some reason the man must have been particularly sensitive to capsaicin, the heat-producing ingredient in peppers. The Carolina Reaper is a popular pepper, and many people eat them and experience nothing worse than the desire to cut out their own tongues.
“I was discussing the case with a nurse who had eaten three Carolina Reapers,” Dr Gunasekaran said.
The Reaper has been measured at more than 2 million Scoville heat units, the accepted scale for how hot peppers are. Measurements vary, but a really hot habanero might come in at 500,000 Scoville units.
The patient was fine, with no lingering damage, but thunderclap headaches are not to be dismissed. For one thing, there is the pain, which seems to surpass even the normal effect of the peppers.
Dr Lawrence C. Newman, a neurologist and director of the headache division at NYU Langone Health, said: “On a 1 to 10 scale, it’s off the charts.” And it can indicate the kind of stroke that results from bleeding in the brain.
It happens instantaneously. If that kind of headache hits you, it makes sense to seek medical attention “whether you’ve bitten into a pepper or not,” Dr Newman said.
The new study does suggest that capsaicin, being investigated for its role in alleviating pain and lowering blood pressure, can have unexpected effects on certain people.
Cayenne pepper pills and a capsaicin patch, sold in China and Turkey, have been blamed in medical reports for two non-fatal heart attacks in young men, the result of spasms in arteries.
But “we are not advising anything against the Carolina Reaper,” Dr Gunasekaran said.
The Reaper was bred to reach record levels of heat. Reached by telephone at the PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, South Carolina, the Reaper’s creator, Ed Currie, offered mixed advice on pepper consumption.
On the one hand, he said, “people who eat whole Reapers are just being stupid”. But “Smokin’ Ed”, as he calls himself, also gave the impression that was not such a bad thing. “We eat them all the time,” he said, with no ill consequences beyond pain.
Mr Currie indulges in other competitions of suffering. For instance, he said, he had recently taken the Death Nut Challenge, which involves eating insanely hot peanuts. He has a partnership with a company that produces them.
“I knew beforehand I shouldn’t do it,” Mr Currie said. “I was in pain for two hours.”
For the average person interested in spice, not suffering, he advised using small amounts of any really hot pepper in food preparation, as they were intended.
So if you happen to go beyond your limits — having, say, entered a hot-pepper-eating competition?
“Citric acid seems to work the best to alleviate the pain,” he said. “Don’t chug milk because you’ll just throw it up.”

 

Eel smuggling ring busted in Spain

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Who smuggles eels?

Baby eels, a traditional Spanish tapas. Gulas al ajillo

Maybe by friend Steve (right, not exactly as shown), but no one else I would know.

Chris Chase of Seafood Source reports that Europol and the Spanish Guardia Civil, in collaboration with Portuguese authorities, seized 350 kilograms of elvers that were about to be smuggled out of Spain during “Operation Elvers,” the three agencies announced on 6 April.  

Ten suspects were arrested – Spanish, Chinese, and Moroccan nationals – in connection with smuggling the eels. Authorities estimate the group has managed to smuggle a value of EUR 37 million (USD 45.5 million) worth of eels over the course of their operation. 

The European eel is subject to multiple EU regulations, including a blanket ban on all imports and exports and a global restriction on trade. In 2009, the species was listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora. Once it became clear that those measures weren’t enough, a ‘zero quota’ ban on all shipments to third countries was put into place.

A video released by the Spanish Guardia Civil shows authorities busting down doors in a raid on the elver smuggling facilities. Rows of tanks filled with make-shift aquaculture equipment, EUR 40,000 (USD 49,000) in cash, and stacks of travel bags used to smuggle the elvers out of the country were all found inside. According to Europol,  a total of 364 travel bags were being prepared to be sent to China, and could have been able to carry more than five tons of eels. 

The video also shows the 350 kilograms of live elvers, being released back into their natural habitat.

It’s all about poop: Argument over dog feces leads to stabbing, three arrests in Connecticut

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Further to the dog poop storyline, an argument over dog feces turned violent Saturday morning and led to the arrests of three Bridgeport men.

According to a shift end report from Bridgeport police, officers responded at about 8:30 a.m. to the 1100 block of Park Avenue for “a large fight.”

When they arrived, officers found two men and a dog with minor stab wounds.

According to the report, Kirk Brown got into an altercation with Christian Rodriguez when Rodriguez allowed his dog to go to the bathroom near Brown’s residence. At some point, officers reported a third man, Ryan Bray, who was friends with Rodriguez, also joined the fight.

During the altercation, police said Brown brandished a “small knife” and stabbed Rodriguez and Bray. The dog was also stabbed, police said.

All three men were taken into custody.

Spring thaw leaves Canadian crusaders steaming over poop

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A seasonal scourge prompts dog groomer Anne Dopson to tackle the neighbourhoods of Terrace, B.C. with a shovel at the first signs of melting snow.

In anticipation of this year’s thaw, Dopson adopted a strict anti-excrement regimen, plastering posters around town and even handing out scoops and garbage bags to her fellow canine lovers. 

But nothing seems to rid Terrace of the smelly brown mess revealed each spring.

“It’s right on the road, the side of the road,” sighed Dopson. 

“It’s almost like people just park there, open their doors and let their dogs out to do their business, and then they come back in. It gets on dogs’ paws, on people’s footwear, and they track that home.”

Persistent piles of poop aren’t just an assault on the senses, says Erin Fraser, a public health veterinarian with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

“E. coli is often prevalent in dog feces,” which thrives alongside salmonella and assorted parasites, she told CBC Radio’s Carolina de Ryk.

And the feces itself is everywhere this time of year, Fraser adds. “The volume of dog waste can be staggering, and communities all over Canada struggle with how best to address this issue.”

Food porn excess: Woman uses $400 hair dryer to make roasted chicken

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Helen Rosner, a food writer for The New Yorker, uploaded a photo of herself using a $400 Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer to blow dry a whole chicken.

“Happy snow day, I am using an astonishingly expensive hair dryer to remove all moisture from a chicken to maximize skin crispiness when I roast it,” Rosner writes in the post, which has earned over 1,600 likes and 100 comments.

Rosner went on to share the recipe for her roasted chicken, but fans were most interested in the first stage of her process – the hair dryer.

“For crisp skin, whether you’re cooking a chicken or a duck or a fish, you want there to be as little water moisture as possible, which is sped up by a fan. And that’s all a hair-dryer really is — a hand-held fan that you can pretty easily bring into the kitchen,” she said to Allure, likening the process to Food Network star Alton Brown using a box fan to make beef jerky.

 

We play but agree, cause many of us do hockey

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After Chapman posted about the Humboldt Broncos’ terrible bus crash, I thanked him because, I didn’t know what else to say.

I’ve been playing, coaching and even sometimes administering local hockey for 51 years, and this stuff strikes deep into any parent who has swerved on a snow-covered Canadian road only to listen to the kid (me) complaining, ‘we need to get there.’

Chapman wrote, “I often tell people that all I really know is hockey, food safety and family; everything and everyone important to me falls in one of those buckets. …

“All I could think of is all the teams I have been part of, back to when I was just a kid until now. Those experiences have meant so much more than competition and sport.

“It’s exactly why I got into coaching.”

No. Chapman got into coaching because I was his graduate supervisor, and his responsibilities included helping to coach a 6-9-year-old girls rep hockey team from Guelph, and bailing me out of jail upon request.

(He will say he was coaching before, but it probably wasn’t as much fun).

In 2005, Chapman and I came up with barfblog.com, and the first post was about hockey and barfing.

The worst was when I was 10 or 11. I was playing AAA hockey in my hometown of Brantford Ont., and we were off to an out-of-town game. My parents (bless them) usually drove, but obligations meant I had to get a ride with a friend on the team. About half-way to the arena, I started feeling nauseous. I tried to ask the driving dad to pull over, but it came on so fast, I had to grab the closest item in the backseat, an empty lunchbox. 
I filled it.

And more.

Back in the 1970s, the coach’s main concern was that we win. I was the starting goaltender almost every game, while the backup sat on the bench. We had something to prove because we were from Brantford, the city that had produced Wayne Gretzky just a couple of years earlier and everyone was gunning for us. 

I tried to get myself together to play. No luck. We got to the arena and I promptly hurled. 

And again.

I couldn’t play, and, unfortunately, couldn’t go home. So the rest of the team went out for the game, as I lay on a wooden bench in a sweat-stenched dressing room, vomiting about every 15 minutes. 

Such tales are not unique.

Whenever I spark up a conversation with a stranger, and they discover I work in food safety, the first response is: “You wouldn’t believe this one time. I was so sick” or some other variation on the line from American Pie, “This one time, at band camp …”

But the stories of vomit and flatulence are deadly serious. In 1995, a 5-year-old died in Wales as part of an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that has sickened some 170 schoolchildren. Four people in the Toronto region were sickened with the same E. coli several weeks ago after drinking unpasteurized apple cider. Over 20 people are sick with the same bug from lettuce in the Minnesota area. And so it goes.

How did my game end? I could hear the various cheers but was lost in dizziness and nausea and sweat, wondering when this would end. 
The trip home was uneventful; I was drained — figuratively and literally.
We lost.

Thanks to all the Australians I hung out with today and asked me about the Humboldt Broncos’ and hopefully I provided some insight into the role of (ice) hockey in the small and large communities throughout Canada.