Chinese fish ball factory crawling with centipedes, cockroaches ordered shut

I live in Brisbane, so when I eat fish it’s golden snapper, scallops or big fat prawns. All from our local shores.

It ain’t cheap, but damn it’s good.

In China, they have something called fish balls which sounds as gross as I imagine they are. Penang Health Department inspectors ordered the closure of a 50-year-old fish ball factory after vermin were found contaminating products at its premises.

Food Safety and Quality Division (BKMM) environmental health officer, Mohd Wazir Khalid, said the factory has 14 days to improve cleanliness after flies, cockroaches and centipedes were discovered on the food and in storage containers; while rat droppings were found in the storeroom.

“Although it is not a halal product, we still have a responsibility to protect the non-Muslim community,” he said of the Ops Tegar that was conducted yesterday.

He told reporters that the product was found on the floor, covered in flies and cockroaches, which could cause food poisoning.

He said they also found a fish ball product mixed with a pork-based product that was not labelled in Malay, violating Regulation 10 of the Food Act 1983, which could cause consumer confusion because it is sold at wet markets around Penang.

Mohd Wazir said the factory was raided twice last year and given a verbal warning for the same violations.

He said BKMM also issued three compound notices under Regulation 32 of the Food Act 1983 because employees were not wearing aprons or shoes, and many had not been immunised against typhoid.

Barefoot in fish balls is food I don’t want to think about.  I had the privilege of seeing Dutch live in small Canadian clubs several times over the years. Great entertainer.

Tim, this one’s for you: Earthing Gwyneth Paltrow offers ridiculous depression cure

My friend Tim in Edmonton wrote a best-seller, Why Gwyneth Paltrow is Wrong About Everything.

If he’s working on a second edition, here’s a fairytale to add.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s infamous new-age lifestyle site GOOP has delivered the goods once more, offering subscribers some rather unusual advice on how to combat depression.

A new post on the Paltrow-helmed website introduces readers to the concept of “earthing” — that’s going barefoot, in layman’s terms.

Walking around barefoot outside isn’t a sure-fire way to step on something sharp — it’s actually an incredibly powerful healer for mental and physical woes including depression.

“Earthing therapy rests on the intuitive assumption that connecting to the energy of the planet is healthy for our souls and bodies,” says the post, which insists there is a “scientific angle” to the theory, and that ‘GP’ (Gwyneth Paltrow herself) swears by the practice.

There is one caveat: You must do your ‘earthing’ outside. Walking around barefoot in your own home just won’t cut it.

“Walking barefoot in your home, where minimally conductive or nonconductive materials like concrete foundations and hardwood floors insulate us from the earth’s electric potential, will not have the same effect,” GOOP quotes an earthing expert as saying.

Is this GOOP’s weirdest advice to date? Honestly, how do you even quantify that anymore? This is a website that, this year alone, has advised women to stick jade eggs into their vaginas to balance their menstrual cycles, and told anyone dealing with a breakup to immediately burn all their underpants in a bonfire.

In the past, Paltrow’s blog has even claimed underwire bras could cause breast cancer. The American Cancer Society disproved that myth.

There is the problem of worms.