Yoav Gonen of the New York Post reports restaurant customers have called in a record number of complaints to the city’s 311 hot line for the second year in a row.
Records show there were 10,373 complaints to the municipal call center in the most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30 — up from 8,653 the year before.
The top complaints were the discovery of rodents, insects or garbage inside an eatery — with 2,832 such calls, up from 2,213.
New York diners also complained of spoiled food (997), concerns about a restaurant’s letter grade (804) — such as no grade being posted — and bare hands coming in touch with their food (775).
An additional 676 grubsters said they found a foreign object — usually a piece of hair or plastic — in their meal, an 18 percent increase.
The surge came even as the city rated 92.7 percent of the city’s 24,000-plus eateries with a grade of “A” in fiscal 2016, according to the Mayor’s Management Report.
That was close to the 93 percent that got the top grade in fiscal 2015.
Health Department officials didn’t provide data requested by The Post for the number of violations issued to restaurants last year, making it impossible to know whether the complaints spurred a higher number of summonses.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reportson October 12, 2015, a county health department notified the Wyoming Department of Health of an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness among residents and staff members at a local correctional facility.
The majority of ill persons reported onset of symptoms within 1–3 hours after eating lunch served at the facility cafeteria at noon on October 11. Residents and staff members reported that tortilla chips served at the lunch tasted and smelled like chemicals. The Wyoming Department of Health and county health department personnel conducted case-control studies to identify the outbreak source.
Consuming lunch at the facility on October 11 was highly associated with illness; multivariate logistic regression analysis found that tortillachips were the only food item associated with illness. Hexanal and peroxide, markers for rancidity, were detected in tortilla chips and composite food samples from the lunch. No infectious agent was detected in human stool specimens or food samples. Extensive testing of lunch items did not identify any unusual chemical. Epidemiologic and laboratory evidence implicated rancid tortilla chips as the most likely source of illness.
This outbreak serves as a reminder to consider alternative food testing methods during outbreaks of unusual gastrointestinal illness when typical foodborne pathogens are not identified. For interpretation of alternative food testing results, samples of each type of food not suspected to be contaminated are needed to serve as controls.
Gastrointestinal illness associated with rancid tortilla chips at a correctional facility — Wyoming, 2015
After two days of deliberations at the courthouse in Trois-Rivières, Que., the 12-member jury delivered guilty verdicts against one of the ringleaders and two of his accomplices in the first case to come to trial following the brazen syrup theft.
Richard Vallières, 38, was found guilty of theft, fraud and traffic of stolen syrup. Étienne St-Pierre, 73, was convicted of fraud and trafficking, and Raymond Vallières, Richard’s 62-year-old father, was convicted of possession of stolen syrup. A fourth accused, Jean Lord, was acquitted on a possession charge.
The trial heard that over a 12-month period in 2011 and 2012, nearly 3,000 tonnes of syrup disappeared from a warehouse used by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. In dollar terms, it was “the largest theft investigated by the Sûreté du Québec in its history,” Crown prosecutor Julien Beauchamp-Laliberté said.
The theft and fraud were committed against the provincial federation, which acts as a marketing board. The stolen syrup was pumped into a black market that undermines the quotas and prices established by the federation, the prosecutor said.
During the fall of 2011, a tractor-trailer began appearing at a federation warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Que. and loading up barrels filled with syrup from that spring’s harvest. The barrels were transported to a sugar shack belonging to Raymond Vallières, where they were emptied and replaced with stream water. When the stream froze over, the syrup-transfer operation moved to a warehouse in Montreal in early 2012. Finally, the prosecutor said, the thieves drained the barrels directly at the federation warehouse. In total, 9,571 barrels were surreptitiously emptied, representing more than half the stockpile the federation keeps to maintain a stable price.
It wasn’t until August 2012 that federation staff grew suspicious when they noticed some barrels were dirty and rusty; when the containers were tapped, some sounded emptier than others.
The theft made international headlines, but the trial heard the valuable stockpile was protected with minimal security. The warehouse “wasn’t fortified. There were no security cameras or guards,” one of the co-owners testified.
The crime occurred amid a long-running dispute between the federation and rogue syrup producers and buyers who don’t want to be constrained by the quota system. Sébastien Jutras, a trucker who served eight months in prison after pleading guilty to his involvement in the plot, testified that after one syrup delivery, Raymond Vallières offered his opinion of the federation and the syrup being drained from its reserves: “Stealing from thieves is not stealing,” he said.
In a 2014 police interview played for the jurors, Richard Vallières said he had been buying and selling on Quebec’s maple syrup black market for 10 years and had previous run-ins with the federation. “They were after me because I buy a lot. . . . They want more control over the syrup,” he said.
The trial heard that as much as $200,000 in cash changed hands for a single syrup transaction, and the players used burner phones to avoid detection.
Richard Vallières’ defence was that he committed the theft under duress. He testified that when he realized the syrup he was buying came from the federation warehouse, he tried to back out. But the seller, who cannot be identified because he faces a jury trial in January, threatened him at gunpoint. Vallières said his wife and young daughter were also threatened.
But other evidence suggested Vallières was not too troubled by the theft. The jury heard of friendly text messages between him and the supposedly menacing seller. When the theft was uncovered and splashed across the news, Vallières’ response was, “The party’s over,” the jury heard.
A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 27.
Inspectors of the Food and Veterinary Service have found Shiga-toxin producing E. coli in sausages made by Lithuanian meatpacking company Biovela UAB Mesos Perdirbimo Pagalynos (Biovela), reports LETA.
Ilze Meistere, a spokeswoman for the Food and Veterinary Service, told LETA that the bacteria can cause severe diarrhea and hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS).
The Food and Veterinary Service has issued a warning to consumers, advising not to eat Majas Desa sausages made by Biovela. The expiry date of these sausages is January 22, 2017 and the barcode is 4770118401377.
Biovela has promised to recall all the contaminated sausages from stores by the end of this day.
Saturday is World Toilet Day, a serious effort by the United Nations focusing on the fact that one-third of the world’s population — or 2.4 billion people — have no toilet at home. A third of those people are children. They are vulnerable to disease, malnutrition and other major problems because there is no clean way of going to the bathroom where they live.
Marylou Tousignant of The Washington Post writes the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other organizations want everyone in the world to have proper toilets and safe drinking water by 2030.
People living in present-day Scotland and Pakistan built the first indoor toilets about 4,500 years ago. Pipes carried the waste outdoors. Knossos palace, built 3,700 years ago on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean, had some of the first flush toilets. They used rainwater and water from nearby springs. A wooden seat kept users dry.
Medieval castles had toilets built high on an outside wall. There was a stone seat at the top, and gravity took care of the rest. Often the waste dropped into the castle moat. People living in towns, meanwhile, collected their waste in what were called chamber pots, and they emptied them by heaving the contents out a window. Public lavatories, which were not common at the time, were often just several toilet holes in a row built over a river.
In 1596, England’s Sir John Harington designed a flush toilet with a handle and a raised water tank. He said using it would leave rooms smelling sweet. He gave one to his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, who didn’t like it. Instead, she used a pot in a box covered in velvet and trimmed with lace. The idea of an indoor flush toilet didn’t catch on until 200 years later.
The word “toilet” comes from the French “toile,” meaning “cloth.” It referred to the covering on a lady’s dressing table and, over time, to the dressing room itself and the primping that went on there. (Wealthy people in the 17th and 18th centuries often had rooms at home just for getting dressed.) In the 19th century, “toilet” got its modern meanings: the place where bathing and other private acts occur and the bowl into which human waste is deposited.
Over time, chamber pots and toilet bowls got fancier and fancier. One such pot, sold during the American Revolution, had an image of Britain’s King George III at the bottom of the bowl.
Thomas Jefferson, who used flush toilets while he was the U.S. ambassador to France in the 1780s, had three small rooms for toilets built at Monticello, his home in Virginia. But there is no proof that they were true flush toilets. And because most American homes did not have running water until a century later, the widespread use of flush toilets came later as well.
“We registered our company in 2002 and obtained approval from the trademark office in Beijing,” said Zhong, referring to Shenzhen Trump Industrial Company Limited, which mostly manufactures high-tech toilet seats.
“If (U.S. President-elect Donald) Trump thinks our trademark violates his rights and interests, he can use legal methods because our company observes China’s laws,” CEO Zhong told NBC News, adding that he is prepared to defend his company’s legal rights to the Trump brand name.
In Chinese, the company name means “innovate universally.”
Vicky Hallett of NPR reports that poetry may be one way of getting people to discuss diarrhea.
That’s the idea behind Poo Haiku, a competition created by Defeat DD, a campaign dedicated to the eradication of diarrheal disease.
Although everybody’s had the runs, it’s not something most folks talk about, says Hope Randall, digital communications officer for PATH’s Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access, which created DefeatDD to bring together resources on vaccines, nutrition, oral rehydration therapy, sanitation and more.
Kat Kelley of the Global Health Technologies Coalition, which references a recent study published in The Lancet:
Just six pathogens
But eighty percent of kids’
Diarrheal deaths.
Randall herself penned an entry:
A vicious cycle,
Gut damage, malnutrition
We can halt the churn.
And from Doug Powell:
Take a dump on Trump
I won’t change my toilet’s name
Is your poo orange too.
(Depends whether the word orange is one syllable or two.)
Thanksgiving has always been our favorite holiday, a celebration of the feast, but there’s no damn turkeys in Brisbane for Canadian Thanksgiving, and it’s too damn hot to be cooking for American Thanksgiving at the end of November.
There are also practical considerations.
Whole turkeys have started showing up in Coles and Woolies – the Australian duopoly — in the past two weeks at about $10/kg; in North America they’re about $2.00/kg, but I may be aging myself.
Five years ago, I specially sourced a whole turkey for Canadian Thanksgiving in early Oct., in Brisbane, and it was about $20/kg. Never again.
Thanksgiving (French: Action de grâce), or Thanksgiving Day (Jour de l’action de grâce) is an annual Canadian holiday, occurring on the second Monday in October, which celebrates the harvest and other blessings of the past year.
Thanksgiving has been officially celebrated as an annual holiday in Canada since November 6, 1879, when parliament passed a law designating a national day of thanksgiving, although the first Canadian Thanksgiving is thought by some to have occurred on Baffin Island in 1578 while some English dudes were looking for the Northwest Passage.
According to wikii, tthe event that Americans commonly call First Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621.[4] This feast lasted three days, and—as accounted by attendee Edward Winslow[5]—it was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims.[6]
On Sat. Nov. 19 – it was the best date to fit around hockey schedules while accommodating the Canadian feast and the 6-week American orgy of food and shopping that begins this coming Thurs – we gathered 40 of our Australian friends at a local park on the river, and had a feast.
The two 10kg turkeys were purchased on Tues., Nov.15.
They sat on the counter for 12 hours and then 3-4 days in the fridge.
Amy made butter tarts, a carrot salad and a citrus-based turkey the day before.
Saturday, I was on the ice at 6.am. and then came home (sore) to make my bird, a traditional Alton-Brown-based variety (I like his science).
I took Amy to the park at 11ish a.m., to stake out BBQ and table space. (Brisbane has fabulous parks, especially along the river, because they have a 500-year-flood every 50 years, so parks better than houses. These parks have the best bathrooms, sanitation and free BBQs than in any other city I’ve been in.)
By our 1 p.m. start time, I had two turkeys, a gluten-free and a regular dressing (because it wasn’t inside the bird), and the best gravy I’ve ever made.
When I delivered to the park, people had started assembling, kids were running around, the river breezes were cool as Brisbane moves into summer,
As I had written to our guests in the invite, “Think of it as a giant pot-luck, but you better practice decent food safety – no raw egg dishes, including homemade mayo, aioli or sauces – or your dish is consigned to the bin and covered in bleach (because that’s how health inspectors roll).
“The deal is, we’ve invited a bunch of people, and we’ll do it at Tennyson Park so the kids can run around.
Amy and I along with the capable assistance of chef Alex will bring the tip-sensitive digital thermometer-verified safe turkey (and gravy, you can’t overcook a turkey, that’s what the gravy’s for). Two kinds of stuffing – one gluten-free, one regular, which will be cooked outside of the bird (food safety 101).
I mangled the turkey Amy cooked Friday night, and once I had started carving into the one I cooked Saturday a.m., a hockey parent who knows his why around a bird kindly asked, ”Would you like me to take over?
“Yes.”
The other families bring something: rolls, mashed potatoes, salad, cooked carrots, green beans, apple pie, beverages, cutlery, whatever, as long as it is microbiologically safe. And wash your damn hands before everyone gets hepatitis A (we’re vaccinated, the rest are on your own; for a pre-meal vindication, I can explain how hep A is spread amongst humans).
Oh, and I’ve got a face for radio and a voice for print. But it was fun.
However, in the videobelow, I was trying to say, “You may know me because I coach your kid in hockey,” not “hit your kid in hockey.”
Editing.
We are thankful to have so many and great friends in Brisbane.
Food Safety Talk, a bi-weekly podcast for food safety nerds, by food safety nerds. The podcast is hosted by Ben Chapman and barfblog contributor Don Schaffner, Extension Specialist in Food Science and Professor at Rutgers University. Every two weeks or so, Ben and Don get together virtually and talk for about an hour.
They talk about what’s on their minds or in the news regarding food safety, and popular culture. They strive to be relevant, funny and informative — sometimes they succeed. You can download the audio recordings right from the website, or subscribe using iTunes.
This birthday themed episode features wide-ranging topics, many based on listener feedback. We briefly touch on election results, and then move (almost) right into food safety. Thanks to everyone for listening and for your feedback.
Eight months on from a rescue helicopter dash to Starship children’s hospital, two-year-old Grace Dheda is enjoying being back on her family’s farm – even though it nearly killed her.
In March, Grace and her family were savouring rural life in Wellsford.
Mum Megan and Dad Kirin were planning their up-coming wedding.
That all came to a sudden halt when their daughter began to show signs of illness.
After two days of vomiting and diarrhea, a doctor diagnosed a tummy bug.
Grace was sent home and prescribed plenty of fluids, Megan says.
At home Grace played on the deck like her normal self, but collapsed at bedtime.
Grace was rushed back to the doctors.
“They put her on oxygen straight away. She’d been unconscious for about 45 minutes and they were starting to worry about potential brain damage.”
Given the severity of the situation and the closest ambulance an hour away, the Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter was called.
Grace and Megan were ferried to a helipad and arrived to see the chopper landing.
“It was such a relief to see the helicopter,” Megan says.
Megan recalls, “At first nobody knew what was wrong with her and why she was having these seizures. It wasn’t until a few days before we left the hospital that we found out she had contracted E. coli and HUS (Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome).”
HUS is a severe complication of the E. coli infection that can lead to kidney failure.
At first it was thought that Grace had contracted the bacterial infection through the water supply, however this was later tested and found to be normal.
It is now believed that she contracted it via the farm animals.
Megan says, “We’ve got cows here on the farm and I don’t like Grace going anywhere near them. The doctor told me I have ‘parental anxiety.’ ‘I love the farm life, but I’m a bit paranoid now and have about 20 bottles of sanitiser around the place.”
The Helicopter Trust is actively fundraising at present in order to purchase three new ventilators for use on their helicopters and in their Rapid Response Vehicle.
Breken Terry of ABC WAAY TV reports the Alabama Department of Public Health is investigating a foodborne outbreak in the Shoals.
Officials say they have been investigating the outbreak since Monday. So far 6 people have been hospitalized and about 40 people have gone to the hospital or their primary doctors for this illness. ADPH expects that number to grow.
ADPH officials say the private event happened over the weekend in Colbert County. They say about 150 people attended the event.
Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones was recoded at Muscle Shoals Sound studio in Dec. 1969.
AHS Public Health is aware of the illness, Kerry Williamson said in an emailed statement. “It has not been confirmed as norovirus,” he added.
A Suncor spokesperson said about 80 people at Fort Hills have reported symptoms.
No flights to or from the camps have been cancelled, Suncor said. But workers showing symptoms are being asked not to board flights but to remain in their rooms.
Williamson said outbreaks of this type are not unusual at this time of year, particularly at sites where people are living and working in close quarters.
He said inspectors visited the site Monday, and AHS Public Health provided information over the weekend, to help limit the spread of the illness.
Records show there were 10,373 complaints to the municipal call center in the most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30 — up from 8,653 the year before.
