Tag Archives: grape

Everyone has a camera Pakistan grape edition: Fruit seller is filmed spray painting green grapes red days after Brit aunt became seriously ill eating them

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Jay Akbar of The Sun, writes this is the moment a fruit seller was caught spray painting green grapes red just days after a British tourist fell sick eating his wares.

Layla Khan, 23, filmed the dodgy vendor in the village of Afzalpur, Pakistan, after her aunt ate his grapes and contracted diarrhea.

She was shocked to find the merchant crouched behind a stall using a can of Win spray paint to dye the fruit.

The middle-aged man smirked when he noticed the camera, before placing the grapes in a pile of painted fruit on the ground.

The seller, who had red paint on his hands, did not react when questioned in the video by Layla, a carer from Birmingham.

She said: “Tourists need to keep their eyes open and be very careful in street markets like this.

“You can easily be exploited and it is very dangerous for your health. This man does not care that he is feeding people poison and it left my aunt very ill.

“When we confronted him he said ‘Everyone is doing it’ – and smirked. I saw many British people walking around – it’s a spot that is popular with tourists and a busy area.

“My aunt had fallen ill for two days with diarrhea and sickness but had only eaten grapes from a man on the street.

“My cousin and I were shopping and we decided to visit – there were street vendors selling all sorts of food like kebabs, samosas, fruit and coconuts.

“Tourists need to open their eyes and see what they are buying – you’d have to be blind to miss him spraying them in the street.

“Go to a supermarket to buy food to be safe – the grapes cost more but it’s worth it.”

Layla said she reported the incident to the local police force who have been approached for comment.

 

Raw is risky: Grapes pressed with infected mice caused tularemia outbreak at German winery

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The consumption of grape must from fruit that had been accidentally pressed with infected mice appeared to be the cause of a small 2016 outbreak of oropharyngeal tularemia at a winery in Germany, investigators reported in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Animals — primarily hares, rabbits and rodents — often die in large numbers during outbreaks of tularemia, according to the CDC. Humans can become infected several ways, including through tick and deer fly bites, skin contact with infected animals or drinking contaminated water.

Six grape harvesters at a Rhineland-Palatinate winery were likely infected when they drank contaminated grape must, a juice containing seeds, stems and the skin of grapes, investigators said.

According to the report, the harvesters — two women and four men — suffered from symptoms of tularemia, including swollen cervical lymph nodes, fever, chills, difficulty swallowing and diarrhea. They tested positive for Francisellatularensis, the bacterium that causes tularemia.

The investigators discovered that wine made at another winery from grapes harvested by the same mechanical harvester used at the winery involved in the outbreak also tested positive, “a finding that suggests that the harvester was the source of cross-contamination,” the investigators wrote. They said vintners confirmed that mice were occasionally collected by the harvesters, along with grapes.

“This outbreak suggests that mechanical harvesting can be a risk factor for the transmission of zoonoses such as tularemia and that raw food stuffs should be treated before consumption,” they wrote. “All contaminated products were confiscated and their sale prohibited by public health and other local authorities.”

Salmonella in grape tomatoes: lotsa drama, not much data, third-party audits still don’t mean much

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Canada has to make the simplest things mindnumbingly confusing and bureaucratic. Who has four federal elections in seven years?

On April 29, 2011, Six L’s of Immokalee, Fla. voluntarily recalled a single lot of grape tomatoes, because they had the potential to be contaminated with salmonella. The contamination was detected through a random sample obtained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at a distributor in New York. The product is from a farm in Estero, Fla. that has since ceased production of that commodity.

The specific lot was packed on April 11 and was comprised of grape tomatoes that can be identified by Cherry Berry lot code DW-H in either in clam shells or 20 lbs. cardboard containers. The product was distributed to North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Georgia and Canada, and reached consumers through retail stores and restaurant distribution.

No one was sick, USDA tested and found something, at least someone was awake.

But that recall grew. It grew and it grew and it grew until Canada decided it had to do something (apologies to Bob Munsch).

On May 2, 2011, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency took time off from voting in the latest federal election to proclaim that Mastronardi Produce of Kingsville, (that’s near Leamington, in Ontario in Canada) was voluntarily recalling grape tomatoes because they may contain Salmonella anatum.

Mastronardi Produce is taking this action after they were notified by a supplier about one lot of tomatoes that was later determined to be contaminated with Salmonella anatum. The supplier was Six L Packing Company from Immokalee, Florida.

Was Mastronardi, a well-known greenhouse vegetable grower, repacking grape tomatoes from Florida? No, just redistributing.

That’s what Richard Lee, operations manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, told me this afternoon. He also said Mastronardi was “helping out” CFIA types, but that people are “poorly educated” about the difference between greenhouse and field grown tomatoes, so OGVG put out its own press release today.

“OGVG would like the public to be aware that this product is NOT of Canadian origin and NOT Greenhouse grown. The original supplier of these tomatoes was Six L Packing Company from Immokalee, Florida.”

(People who write in all caps are yelling; why are you yelling at me?)

“Retailers and consumers can continue to feel confident when purchasing Ontario greenhouse tomatoes,” said OGVG General Manager, George Gilvesy. “All Ontario greenhouse tomato, cucumber and pepper growers are required to pass an annual third party food safety audit as part of OGVG’s licensing regulations. This helps to ensure that all greenhouse vegetable growers are following important food safety standards.”

How often is water quality tested? How about pathogen testing? Are growers and packers notified before the auditor shows up? Are those results public? The program we designed 13 years ago for the greenhouse veggie growers had all those elements, along with round-the-clock food safety assistance and at least decent communications with buyers and consumers. But third-party auditors became the preference of the industry – the folks that enabled salmonella in peanut paste, E. coli in produce, salmonella in eggs, and virtually every other outbreak over the past decade.

At some point, people will realize that proclaiming a third-party audit in the absence of any meaningful data is groveling to the lowest common denominator.

Sorta like the way the Liberals and Bloc were annihilated in the federal election yesterday. Some Canadians woke up.