Tag Archives: Aquaculture

Casey Wilkinson, guest barfblogger: Poop on your shoes…

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The Associated Press posted an article early this morning entitled, “Buffet worker stomps garlic with boots.” Visions of dog poop and day-old mud imbedded in the fine crevices of the soles of these boots flooded my mind and brought terror to my heart. Would someone actually do this? Could a fellow eater like myself be so distracted from the bacterial ramifications of using one’s shoes as a culinary instrument?
I clicked on the headline and waited for the story to appear.  I read in horror as each word confirmed my deepest fears: the entire story was absolutely true.
Apparently the worker at a Great China Buffet restaurant was using a very innovative technique to press garlic cloves: stomping them with his boots in a back alley.  A passerby had noted him there with a horror similar to my own and snapped a photo.
The Rockland County Health Department was notified and quickly came for an inspection. The worker was fired for his act, and the restaurant will be re-inspected soon.
I wish I could rest easy now, but I’m afraid there may be more out there just like him: full of ignorance and disregard for the safety of our food.
Don’t eat poop, people: Wash your hands. And don’t stomp the garlic.

The devil wears Prada?

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Food safety lawsuits continue to pile up, at home and abroad.

In Jordan, the family of a man who died after falling ill from eating a shawarma in a restaurant in Jordan has filed lawsuits against the restaurant’s owner and a hospital doctor who dealt with him before his death.

Bilal Jarwan, 23, was one of hundred of people struck down with salmonella poisoning after eating chicken shawarmas from a restaurant in the Baqaa refugee camp near Amman.

Father Abu Ramzi was quoted as telling newspaper The Jordan Times,

"The Jordanian judicial system is known for its integrity and we trust it will hold to account whoever was responsible for the death of my son."

Over two hundred cases of food poisoning were reported in the salmonella outbreak, leading the Jordanian government to ban shawarmas across the kingdom. The restaurant from where the outbreak originated, located around 27 kilometres northwest of Jordan’s capital, has now been closed and its owner and staff arrested. The owner is facing up to three years in prison and a fine.
Hospital response

In Chicago, Joel Parker is suing Pars Cove Persian Cuisine after his 16-year-old son ate hummus alleged to be contaminated with salmonella at the Taste of Chicago event.

According to the Chicago Health Department, as of last week, 790 people claimed they got salmonella after consuming food bought from the Pars Cove booth. Following laboratory testing, 182 of those cases were confirmed. In the latest news release from the health department, 38 people are known to have been hospitalized.

Love them or hate them, lawsuits seem to be a tool to hold food producers, marketers and retailers accountable, and keeps food safety stories in the news, perhaps raising the overall level of awareness and contributing to a culture that values microbiologically safe food.

Food miles are fashionable; where’s the safety?

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Trying to include considerations of microbial food safety — the things that make people barf — when encountering the dogma of fervent foodies is an occupational hazard. Over the years I’ve been slandered, threatened with lawsuits and harm to my person. Taking on the natural-organic-local cabal — including the Food Network which didn’t like our analysis of food safety errors on cooking shows — can be challenging.

So James E. McWilliams should be prepared for lively correspondence. McWilliams, the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America” and a contributing writer for The Texas Observer, writes in a N.Y. Times op-ed this morning that reducing food miles — how far food has traveled before you buy it — is not necessarily better for the environment.

"There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption."

"As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must … be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness."

Brilliant. But once again, the notion of microbiological safety is absent from the discussion. How about sourcing food from the place that can yield the fewest number of sick people?