Tag Archives: Airplane

Nose stretcher alert: Whole Foods explains why it stopped selling raw milk in Florida

Posted on by
2

Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods, and their own CEO says they sell a bunch of junk.

Whole Foods in Florida has officially dropped raw milk from its shelves. Until Thursday, Whole Foods market sold raw milk with a pet food label. Human drinkers bought it for their personal consumption.

During an interview published yesterday by the Miami New Times, Russ Benblatt, Whole Foods regional marketing director for Florida, said,

“This was a decision that was made here at the regional level. I can’t get into too many details, but it was purely a business decision to stop selling the raw milk, and I can’t get into the specifics of it. … We made a decision to stop selling it as a pet food. We’ve never sold it for human consumption. … We’re a grocery store we try not to get involved in politics. … If we’re involved in politics then I’m not aware of it. We’re not involved in any lobbying or political action committees in the state of Florida.”

Just a grocery store. Uh-huh. There isn’t a foodie cause Whole Foods wouldn’t embrace to peddle a few more dollars worth of crap.
 

India: 400 pilots out with food poisoning on same day (not); 20,000 passengers stranded

Posted on by
Reply

If the president of the newly formed Jet Airways pilots’ union is to be believed, the reason for some 400 of its members falling "sick" Tuesday, perhaps, was food poisoning.

"We are not on strike. This is an individual decision by each pilot," said Girish Kaushik, president of the National Aviators Guild, after member pilots reported sick and inconvenienced some 20,

Asked if it was not too much of a coincidence that so many pilots reported sick at the same time, Kaushik told IANS,

"We could all have had food poisoning. That’s why we all could have become ill."

The civil aviation ministry has taken strong exception to what it calls a "wildcat" strike.

VP Biden says dumb things about swine flu

Posted on by
3

While on the road for several hours yesterday after visiting family, I finally settled on National Public Radio. I hear lots of good stuff on NPR when I’m in the mood for it. Just a few miles from home, I heard a story about some bad risk communication from an uninformed political figure. That’s always fun in my line of work…

According to the NPR story aired yesterday (heard by clicking Listen Now), when asked about the outbreak of swine flu on the Today show, U.S. vice president Joe Biden said he has told his family,

“I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now. It’s not that you’re going to Mexico – it’s that you’re in a confined aircraft and when one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft.”

Dr. Mark Gendreau, whose research has focused on flying and the spread of diseases, was quoted as saying that a sneeze would only travel about 3 feet. Only people two seats in front or two seats behind a sneezer on an airplane were in danger of contacting infected droplets.

Dr. Gendreau recommended washing hands often and using alcohol-based hand sanitizers to limit the spread of infection.

Biden also told the Today show that, if they had another form of transportation, he does not suggest that his family ride the subway.

In response, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who often rides the subway to work, said,

“I feel perfectly safe on the subway and taking the subway does not present any more risks than anything else.”

The text version of the NPR story now available online states that,

“[T]he vice president’s office [later] issued a statement translating Biden-speak into bureaucratese: Biden was merely restating the same advice the Obama administration is giving everyone, to avoid unnecessary travel. The statement also reiterated the now-familiar admonition to cover your face when you cough.”

That’s not what I heard.
 

Vomiting plane passenger causes LAX excitment

Posted on by
Reply

About six years ago I was flying from Toronto to Ottawa and after a particularly turbulent morning ride, I was looking a little green. Although the plane was preparing to land, the steward said, ‘you gotta go, you gotta go,’ so I experienced landing while kneeling at the airplane’s plastic throne.

No one figured I was contagious.

Not so in Los Angeles this morning.

United Airlines flight 890 arriving from Japan informed ground crews shortly before touching down at 8:30 a.m. that a 28-year-old man aboard the aircraft of more than 300 passengers was sick and might have some sort of virus.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Cecil Manresa said,

Los Angeles city paramedics and personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention boarded the Boeing 747 after it landed. It took about 20 minutes to determine that the passenger was not contagious, Manresa said.


"He had some kind of stomach ailment or food poising issue, and it was not a virus [or] an infectious disease," he said.

Manresa said that city paramedics, and not the CDC, generally respond when airline passengers complain of illness. But the unidentified man must have told the airplane’s crew something to make them think that his condition was more severe, he said.

All I said was, leave me alone.

Possible food poisoning outbreak at Florida State sorority

Posted on by
Reply

Looks like I picked the wrong week to visit Florida.

Thirty years before Stephen Colbert used the picture of himself in a picture in a picture, Lloyd Bridges was doing it in the movie, Airplane (right).

And tonight, according to WCTV in Tallahassee, rumors are circulating that more than 70 girls in the Phi Mu house at Florida State University have become very ill and some maybe even hospitalized in a possible outbreak of foodborne illness.

“Some members of the Greek community say it is possible that this outbreak is affecting more than one house and the rumors have many other sororities taking precautions to protect their members.”

Kara Beth Yancey, a FSU sorority member, says her house is going to take more precautions to prevent a similar situation.

"We’re not going to stop ordering in but we are going to be a little more cautious on what kind of food we’re ordering in."

I wonder what kind of food they’re going to limit the ordering in of? Amy, Courtlynn and me, we’re in Venice, Florida, so maybe we can avoid some of that ordered in food.

Bathroom horrors in the friendly skies

Posted on by
Reply

Flying just isn’t that fun anymore. Everyone’s grumpy, things are crowded and, with airlines now charging for pillows and blankets, will they soon start charging for toilets?

And how to go under the door if you don’t have a quarter?

A frequent flying food safety friend and barfblog reader sends along her latest observations from the friendly skies:

• No offense against your species, but about 90 per cent of the men did not shut the door upon exit; reached over and closed it a couple times, but became hopeless over time.

• Repeatedly, folks of both species came out with toilet paper on their shoes that scraped off on the carpet next to my seat or just in front/behind it.  The stewardess did discrete rounds and picked the paper scraps up in a swift arc from the floor to a plastic bag attached (also discretely) next to the lavatory door.  Handwashing didn’t appear to be part of the toilet paper pick-up protocol – so far as I could tell.

• People are way bigger slobs and poop a lot more on planes than I ever imagined, pew.

More snakes on a plane

Posted on by
Reply

The Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has fined a man $800 for flying dead snakes and birds inside his luggage from South Korea to Atlanta.

Last month, security officers at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport found 30 snakes, a dead bird and pieces of several other birds in his luggage.

Darwin Huggins, Fish and Wildlife agent in charge of Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, said,

"They’re typically used in traditional Chinese or Asian medicine,” said. ”Some of the snakes had scorpions in their mouths. And they were preserved in wine. It’s a medicinal type wine that certain cultures drink."

Where’s Samuel L. Jackson when you need him.

Snake on a plane

Posted on by
Reply

Associated Press is reporting that physician Dr. Ed Carruth, flying himself across Mississippi in a one-seat plane, discovered a stowaway gray rat snake when it began ”licking” his arm Thursday.

”I’ve been flying planes for 50 years and over 14,000 hours, and this is the most unusual in-flight emergency I’ve encountered. I guess it wasn’t exactly an emergency, but I did almost hurt myself when I saw it. … Idid some aerobatics. And once he got oriented, he went to the back of the plane."

The story says that when Carruth arrived at Brookhaven Municipal Airport after his flight from Meridian, officials called snake expert Joey Pradillo to remove the reptile and released it into the wild.