Dr. Oz says people can eat steak tartare but tells Margaret not to eat raw meat straight out of the package, Joy on the Foodtard Network is more concerned about creating grill marks on steaks than 
safety, especially cross-contamination, and Heston is a hero to most but norovirus-boy still don’t mean much to me.
Dr. Oz did a show a couple of years ago, would your home pass a restaurant inspection?, that was broadcast the other day in Australia (Days of Our Lives is at least two years behind; it’s all background).
Forget the flaws in the methodology, the risk amplification inherent in feeding a family and feeding 1,000 people a day, the television nonsense: Dr. Oz willingly lets his cat on the kitchen food prep counter.
And Heston-norovirus-Blumenthal has great food prep tips, but still don’t know food safety. For his latest show (which may also be two years behind) he “takes off his chef whites and steps into a domestic kitchen 
to show viewers how to inject some Heston-style magic into homemade cooking.”
What I briefly saw was a Mitt Romney-styled I’m one of the boys segments, as a local rugby team arrived by boat at his country home and they all took a turn grinding beef for burgers on the barbie; outside on a table. Cross-contamination everywhere.
After making 529 people sick in a March 2009 outbreak of norovirus at his Fat Duck restaurant, Heston Blumenthal says he has stopped serving raw oysters.
At least that’s what he told the New Zealand Herald yesterday.
"I’ve not served an oyster in here, in the Crown, in the Duck or in London since that happened. I don’t know if I’ll ever change."
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised consumers, restaurant operators, commercial shippers and processors of shellfish not to eat, serve, .jpg)
purchase, sell or ship oysters from Area 1642 in Apalachicola Bay, Fla. because the oysters may be contaminated with toxigenic Vibrio cholerae serogroup O75.
• Nine persons have been reported with illness. For eight, the illness was confirmed as caused by toxigenic Vibrio cholerae O75; laboratory confirmation is pending in the other person. No one was hospitalized or died.
• All ill persons reported consumption of raw or lightly steamed oysters.
• Traceback indicates that oysters harvested from Area 1642 in Apalachicola Bay, Fla., between March 21 and April 6, 2011, are associated with illness.
My friend Roy, who knows a lot more about food safety than I do, lamented on a mailing list for food safety nerds today that food safety doesn’t resonate in Washington, D.C., and doesn’t resonate in the public health community, falling somewhere in importance between “cross-gendered health, and sleep disorders.”
He’s right. Food safety stuff is completely overwhelmed by food porn – like this puff piece in today’s N.Y. Times, which gushes,
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“Heston Blumenthal is one of the most forward-thinking chefs in the world.”
So forward thinking that he managed to sicken 529 diners at his flagship Fat Duck restaurant in the U.K., in part by letting sick workers work, spreading things around. And he still hasn’t accepted responsibility.
“For Christmas at home, Blumenthal — no stranger to creating a life-size gingerbread house with praline rose marshmallow bricks and white chocolate mortar — usually cooks goose or a Bresse capon. But for the last two years the family has gone skiing in Courmayeur, Italy. ‘There’s a restaurant near the top of the mountain, where we’ll have a Tuscan roast stuffed turkey dish, spaghetti with white truffle and a bottle of Guado al Tasso — and ski in the afternoon. Just fantastic.’”
That’s nice, but Heston will always be noro-boy to me.
A year after 529 diners were sickened by norovirus at the swanky Fat Duck restaurant in the U.K., after the chef, Heston Blumenthal, blamed his decision to buy and serve raw oysters grown in human sewage on 
others, and months after a government report slammed the restaurant for letting sick workers work, Blumenthal has received £200,000 compensation for lost business related to the incident while sick diners have yet to receive a penny.
The Mail Online repots the payout news has angered scores of customers still fighting the restaurant for compensation.
Deborah Darke, 53, a deputy headteacher from Ilfracombe, Devon, who was one of the diners who became ill, said,
“I’m incensed the restaurant has received this payout when so many are still waiting for compensation. I understand that if he was supplied with contaminated food it is not his fault, but the report said there were hygiene issues. I won’t be returning.”