Rachel Jury, 30, is determined to show how users can still live life to the full despite the two stoma bags she is forced to wear after food poisoning from cooked chicken nine years ago triggered a long-term health condition.
Tara Russell of the Daily Echo reports Jury’s rare condition, autonomic neuropathy, has left her bowel and bladder both failing and she has endured years of ill health including frequent bouts of sepsis and even cardiac arrest as a result.
However she is grateful to the two bags for saving her life – a urostomy bag for diverting urine from the body and an ileostomy bag for faeces nicknamed Squirt and Bob. Now she has launched a social media campaign calling on others to share pictures proudly flaunting their bags to reduce taboos and stigma.
Rachel, from Boscombe, who has created a poster of the pictures, said: “We have bravely bared all to raise awareness and knowledge of stoma bags but especially urostomies because there is a lack of awareness and knowledge among the general public and medical professions about them. We are often the forgotten group of the stoma family.
“We want to show you can still live a life and love your body. I want to help others celebrate their bodies no matter what they look like.
“We are beautiful, we are brave, we are warriors, we are survivors of our diseases.”
The former radiotherapy student believes a bad case of food poisoning may have triggered her condition nine years ago.
She explained: “I contracted campylobacteriosis from already cooked chicken purchased in a well-known supermarket chain.
“Little did I know then that this moment would be the catalyst that triggered a chain reaction of multiple organ systems failing. From that day onwards my life would never be the same again.
“Having a stoma bag can cause huge struggles with body image and they can be a taboo. I used to hide under dark baggy clothes but I realised they are something to be proud of, not ashamed of. They are part of us though and we wouldn’t be here without our bags.
“I feel like I’ve been through a lot but I feel I want to turn the negative into something positive.
“I am proud of the body that has kept me alive and I want to urge others to not be ashamed.
“I live one day at a time. I don’t know how long I have but I will live each day to the maximum and if I help one person I will have done my job.”
Two diners suffered food poisoning and others suffered symptoms after eating a dish containing the meat at the restaurant.
Luscombe was fined £4,434, ordered to pay £5,284 costs and a victim surcharge of £120.
Luscombe admitted serving food on the premises that was unsafe as it had been inadequately cooked and failing to implement and maintain legally required food safety procedures, including those for the safe cooking of high risk foods.
Magistrates heard South Oxfordshire District Council, the environmental health authority, was asked to investigate after a member of the public suffered campylobacter food poisoning after eating at the restaurant.
Environmental health officers carried out an immediate unannounced inspection and found that the diners had been offered a set menu including calves’ liver for the main course.
They found the calves’ liver had been cooked at too low a temperature.
The restaurant was found to have no protocol to ensure high risk items, such as liver, were cooked according to recommendations from the Food Standards Agency.
It also failed to complete required monitoring records for almost three months, meaning it was failing to meet its legal requirements for food safety.
On Sunday, May 21, 2000, at 1:30 p.m., the Bruce Grey Owen Sound Health Unit in Ontario (that’s in Canada) posted a notice to hospitals and physicians on their web site to make them aware of a boil water advisory for Walkerton, and that a suspected agent in the increase of diarrheal cases was E. coli O157:H7.
Walkerton Water Tower
Not a lot of people were using RSS feeds, and I don’t know if the health unit web site had must-visit status in 2000. But Walkerton, a town of 5,000, was already rife with rumors that something was making residents sick, and many suspected
the water supply. The first public announcement was also the Sunday of the Victoria Day or May 24 long weekend and received scant media coverage.
It wasn’t until Monday evening that local television and radio began reporting illnesses, stating that at least 300 people in Walkerton were ill.
At 11:00 a.m., on Tuesday May 23, the Walkerton hospital jointly held a media conference with the health unit to inform the public of outbreak, make the public aware of the potential complications of the E. coli O157:H7 infection, and to tell the public to take necessary precautions. This generated a print report in the local paper the next day, which was picked up by the national wire service Tuesday evening, and subsequently appeared in papers across Canada on May 24.
The E. coli was thought to originate on a farm owned by a veterinarian and his family at the edge of town, a cow-calf operation that was the poster farm for Environmental Farm Plans. Heavy rains washed cattle manure into a long discarded well-head which was apparently still connected to the municipal system. The brothers in charge of the municipal water system for Walkerton were found to add chlorine based on smell rather than something like test strips, and were criminally convicted.
It identified several failings by the Hastings District Council, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and drinking water assessors.
The outbreak in August last year made some 5500 of the town’s 14,000 residents ill with campylobacteriosis. It put 45 in hospital and was linked to three deaths.
The contamination was later found to have entered the town’s drinking water bores. Panel chair Lyn Stevens QC said the outbreak “shook public confidence” in this fundamental service of providing safe drinking water and it raised “serious questions” about the safety and security of New Zealand’s drinking water.
Knowledge and awareness of aquifer and contamination risks near Brookvale Rd fell below “required standards” and it failed to take effective steps to assess the risk, including the management of the many uncapped or disused bores in the vicinity, and the monitoring of the district council’s resource consent to take the water.
Walkerton redux.
The district council “failed to embrace or implement the high standard of care required of a public drinking-water supplier,” particularly in light of a similar outbreak in the district in 1998, from which it appeared to have learned nothing.
The council’s mid-level managers especially failed, Stevens said. They delegated tasks but did not adequately supervise or ensure implementation of requirements. This led to unacceptable delays in developing the council’s water safety plan which would have been “fundamental in addressing the risks of the outbreak.”
That’s a polite way of saying, people care more about their retirement than others, and often fuck up.
Drinking Water Assessors were also at fault, with Stevens finding they were “too hands off” in applying the drinking water standards.
Sounds like food safety auditors.
They should have been stricter in requiring the district council to comply with responsibilities with its water safety plan, he said.
“They failed to address the [council] sufficiently about the lack of risk assessment and the link between the bores and the nearby pond.”
Nicki Harper of Hawkes Bay Today wrote a high number of positive E. coli readings in the Havelock North and Hastings water supplies over the years, dating back to a 1998 water contamination event similar to last year’s Havelock North campylobacter outbreak, caused bureau-types to do, nothing.
It was confirmed yesterday that the most likely source of the contamination was sheep feces that ran off a paddock following heavy rain on August 5 and 6 into the Mangateretere pond near Brookvale Bore 1.
Water from the pond then entered into the aquifer and flowed across to Bore 1 where it was pumped into the reticulation, Mr Stevens said.
The son of an elderly woman who died shortly after contracting Campylobacter during the Havelock North gastro crisis says she had “good innings” despite her death.
Jean Sparksman, 89, was one of three elderly people whose deaths were linked to the outbreak and had been living in the Mary Doyle retirement village at the time of the crisis.
Speaking from the Whangaparaoa Peninsula in Auckland yesterday, Mrs Sparksman’s son, Keith, said her death shouldn’t have happened the way it did.
“She contracted this bug but there were no steps taken to help. That’s probably why she died in the first place.”
The failures are all too familiar: space shuttle Challenger, Bhopal, BP in the Gulf, Listeria in Maple Leaf cold cuts, Walkerton: the tests said things were not good. But a human condition kicked in: Nothing bad happened yesterday so there is a greater chance of nothing bad happening today.
All these people fucked up, and others got sick.
Yet government, industry and academia will trod along, piling up retirement savings, until the next shitfest comes along.
So just watch this stupid Stones video with Keith out of his mind.
A retrospective cohort study using a web-based questionnaire was performed among the participants (n = 30) of the farm visit. A total of 24 of the 30 (80%) cohort members completed the questionnaire. Eleven cases were identified, and Campylobacter jejuni was isolated from eight of them. Seven of the cases were 2- to 7-year-old children. We found the highest attack rates among those who usually drink milk (45%) and those who consumed unpasteurized milk during the farm visit (42%). No cases were unexposed (risk ratio incalculable).
As result of the farm investigation, Campylobacter was isolated from cattle on the farm. Genotyping with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and whole genome sequencing confirmed that human and cattle isolates of C. jejuni belonged to one cluster.
Thus, cattle on the farm are considered the source of infection, and the most likely vehicle of transmission was contaminated unpasteurized milk. We recommend consumption of heat-treated milk only and increased awareness of the risk of consuming unpasteurized milk.
Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, March 2017, Lahti Elina, Rehn Moa, Ockborn Gunilla, Hansson Ingrid, Ågren Joakim, Engvall Eva Olsson, and Jernberg Cecilia, ahead of print. doi:10.1089/fpd.2016.2257.
Educational events encouraging human–animal interaction include the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. It is estimated that 14% of all disease in the US caused by Campylobacter spp., Cryptosporidium spp., Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157, non-O157 STECs, Listeria monocytogenes, nontyphoidal Salmonella enterica and Yersinia enterocolitica were attributable to animal contact. This article reviews best practices for organizing events where human–animal interactions are encouraged, with the objective of lowering the risk of zoonotic disease transmission.
South Lakeland Council said it had launched a joint investigation with the Food Standards Agency (FSA).
The farm said it was co-operating with the inquiry and had suspended sales of raw milk from a vending machine.
Public Health England (PHE) also asked anyone who had bought raw milk from the farm or visited its tearoom in the past two months to complete an online questionnaire.
The farm, which began offering unpasteurised milk from its vending machine in March, sells about 70 litres a day.
In August the farm won a National Trust fine farm produce award for its unpasteurised milk.
The number of infections usually peaks during the late summer months then drops off, but this year has yet to see a notable downward curve, Sweden’s Public Health Agency (Folkhälsomyndigheten) warns.
The growth coincides with an increase in campylobacter among flocks of chicken in Sweden, and fresh chicken is therefore thought to be a culprit.
“The explanation we have right now is that we eat a lot of chicken. We eat a lot of fresh chicken, and campylobacter can be found in the fresh chicken to a certain extent,” Folkhälsomyndigheten spokesperson Britta Björkholm noted.
“If you’re not careful with your hygiene you risk coming down with it,” she added.
Between August and November 2016 twice as many cases were reported as normal, and that pattern has continued into the last month of the year.
About 100 cases are usually reported in December, but in December 2016 the number was almost 300 by the middle of the month.
“People are not being sufficiently careful about separating raw chicken from utensils and work surfaces,” Björkholm insisted.
Listeriosis affected about 2,200 people in 2015, causing 270 deaths – the highest number ever reported in the EU. The proportion of cases in the over 64 age group steadily increased from 56% in 2008 to 64% in 2015. Additionally, in this period, the number of reported cases and their proportion has almost doubled in those over 84 years.
“It is concerning that there continues to be an increasing trend of Listeria cases which mostly occur in the elderly population. ECDC is working together with Member States to enhance surveillance for food- and waterborne diseases, starting with Listeria, as earlier detection of relevant clusters and outbreaks can help prevent further cases,” said Mike Catchpole, Chief Scientist at ECDC. “This is a public health threat that can and needs to be addressed”, he added.
Dr. Marta Hugas, Head of Biological Hazards and Contaminants at EFSA, said: “Listeria seldom exceeded the legal safety limits in ready-to-eat foods, the most common foodborne source of human infections. However, it is important that consumers follow manufacturers’ storage instructions and the guidelines given by national authorities on the consumption of foods.”
In 2015, there were 229,213 reported cases of campylobacteriosis. This disease remains the most commonly reported foodborne disease in the EU, showing an upward trend since 2008. Campylobacter is mostly found in chickens and chicken meat.
The number of cases of salmonellosis, the second most commonly reported foodborne disease in the EU, increased slightly – from 92,007 in 2014 to 94,625 in 2015. The increase observed in the past two years is partly due to improvements in surveillance and better diagnostic methods. However, the long-term trend is still declining and most Member States met their Salmonella reduction targets for poultry populations.
Salmonella is mainly found in meat (poultry) intended to be cooked before consumption.
Not only does the use of real candles on Christmas trees lead to a rise in call-outs for the fire brigade, but apparently eating a traditional Swiss Christmas dish can be dangerous too.
Chinese fondue – a fondue of raw meat cooked in a pot of hot broth, instead of bread dipped in cheese – is often chosen as the main meal by many Swiss at Christmas.
But according to the Swiss food hygiene office (BLV) this leads to a rise in the number of cases of diarrhea each festive season, caused by the presence of the bacteria Campylobacter in the meat.
Up to 8,000 people are affected by Campylobacter infections every year in Switzerland, costing the country around 10 million francs, the BLV said in a statement.
And each festive season the number of cases is considerably higher than average, mainly because Chinese fondue is traditionally eaten around this time of year, it said.
Now it has issued guidelines, including a handy video, on how to prepare the meat hygienically in order to cut down the risk of Campylobacter and thus avoid spending the rest of Christmas on the toilet.
Different plates and utensils should be used for raw meat, cooked meat and other raw accompaniments such as sauces and salads, it says.
Hands should be washed thoroughly before and after handling raw meat.
Meat should be well cooked, particularly poultry, which should be completely cooked through.
It was decent work, but what surprised me most was the actions taken by various social actors in the aftermath of the outbreak: protect themselves, public health be damned.
The number of higher-ups who wanted to meet with me to express why they did what they did, in a private chat, had absolutely no influence on my conclusions, and was sorta repulsive.
Maybe I was naïve.
Still am (I’m the full professor from Kansas State University who got fired for bad attendance with — nothing, except my family, and that makes a good Hollywood tale).
The inquiry into the Hastings District Council’s request to re-activate a Brookvale Road bore to augment Havelock North’s peak summer water supply retired today with a set of draft recommendations.
Before wrapping up proceedings, inquiry panel chair Lyn Stevens QC thanked the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council (HBRC) and Hastings District Council (HDC) for the efforts they made that resulted in the regional council dropping its prosecution of the Hastings council.
This agreement came after the first day of hearings on Monday, when pressure was applied by the panel to re-consider the charges.
After extensive questioning on Monday, the regional council agreed to withdraw the charges relating to breaches of the Hastings District Council’s resource consent conditions for taking water from Brookvale bores 1 and 2 – opting to instead consider issuing infringement notices.
Mr Stevens said, “The panel has noted a level of defensiveness in some of the evidence filed to date.
“I’m not being critical of any organisation or witness but wish to emphasise the overriding interest with this inquiry is the public interest, while we look to fulfil the terms of reference to determine the possible causes of contamination.”
A set of 16 draft recommendations were issued and Mr Stevens said the joint working group would be an important conduit to implement them.
The aim was to have the bore re-opened at the end of January before Havelock North water use reached peak demand in February.
Among the recommendations was a directive that the working group – comprising representation from HDC, HBRC, the DHB and drinking water assessors – meet regularly and share information of any potential drinking water safety risk.
For at least 12 months from December 12, the bore would receive cartridge filtration, UV and chlorine treatment, and a regime of regular montioring be implemented.
It was also recommended that the HDC draft an Emergency Response Plan before Bore 3 was brought on line.
Meeting government standards is about the worst thing any group can say when it comes to trust.
Almost all food purchases are an act of faith-based food safety.
The Pinto, an American car that had a tendency to explode when hit from behind, also met all government standards.
More than half the supermarket chickens in a Consumer NZ study carried Campylobacter, but the poultry association says the test was much stricter than official requirements.
The study of 40 chickens found 65 per cent (26 chickens) tested positive for Campylobacter, Consumer NZ said.
Fourty chickens don’t mean statistical shit, especially if they were from the same grower.
But already, the industry and the government are defending NZ poultry, without a lot of data.
More posturing.
Like blowing up real good.
Poultry Industry Association director Michael Brooks said chicken only accounted for 40 per cent of New Zealand’s campylobacter cases.
Some might consider that a lot.
Radio New Zealand reported that Brooks said, “The important thing is to remember that cooking kills campylobacter, and that it’s important to have good hygiene practices when handling a raw product. Safe storage practices and cooking it thoroughly will prevent the risk of illness.”
It’s about lowering loads. All that Campy into a kitchen means cross-contamination is rife.
In a statement, MPI director of systems audit, assurance and monitoring Allan Kinsella said the ministry had considered a retail testing programme but decided it was unnecessary.
Mandatory testing for broiler chicken carcasses was introduced in 2006, she said, and had been so successful it had led to a more than 50 percent reduction in foodborne campylobacter cases between 2007 and 2015.
The posturing on either side is a scam.
When will someone step forward and credibly say, in NZ, we should have fewer people barfing?
Tara Russell of the Daily Echo reports Jury’s rare condition, autonomic neuropathy, has left her bowel and bladder both failing and she has endured years of ill health including frequent bouts of sepsis and even cardiac arrest as a result.
