2008 Ontario Harvey’s E. coli outbreak sickened 235; first court date set for Oct. 2010

In the fall of 2008, 235 people got sick dining at a Harvey’s fast-food restaurant at a major thoroughfare in North Bay, Ontario, about four hours north of Toronto.

A report by the North Bay and District Health Unit concluded the outbreak was probably caused by raw Spanish onions and poor cleaning of onion slicing machines.

The North Bay Nugget reported Monday that a motion has been scheduled for October for a judge to decide whether a civil lawsuit against Harvey’s Restaurant will be certified as a class action.

The story says a judge decides if a lawsuit can proceed as a class action on behalf of a group of people in situations where the case would be too expensive or too complex for one person to sue on his own.
 

I am a golden god: Wisconsin boy pets snake, gets Salmonella

If I owned a fake zoo store, like a pet store, I’d probably call it Serpent Safari. Reminds me of the scene in the 2003 movie, Almost Famous, when the lead guitar player goes off to meet real people, in of all places Topeka, Kansas, just down the road, and after doing some acid, a basement-dwelling dude asks the guitar player if he wants to watch him feed a mouse to his pet snake.

Yes.

Topeka. Real people.

A lawsuit has been filed in Lake County circuit court claiming that a 2-year-old boy contracted salmonella after touching an albino Burmese python.

A lawsuit seeking $50,000 in damages has been lodged against a reptile store and zoo in Gurnee Mills after a 2-year-old boy purportedly contracted salmonella after petting a snake there in December 2007.

Serpent Safari Inc. violated state laws by not providing liquid sanitizer for patrons or having a sign warning of infection risk to children younger than 5 who touch or handle reptiles, according to the complaint, filed Dec. 11 in Lake County circuit court.

Lawyer Michael Maher, who didn’t return telephone messages Tuesday, filed the suit on behalf of Sara Wirtz and her son, Trevor, and Judith Penoyer, all of McHenry County. Without providing specifics, the suit alleges Penoyer also contracted salmonella.

Serpent Safari owner Lou Daddono countered that he’s confident the albino Burmese python that Trevor would have petted did not pass on salmonella. The snake lives at the store and is not for sale.

Daddono, who also denied the negligence claims, estimated more than 400,000 visitors have touched the python without a problem in his 11 years in business. He questioned why it took two years for the salmonella suit to be filed.

Serpent Safari’s lack of sanitizer or signs noting the need for hand-washing after coming in contact with reptiles amounted to negligence, the complaint alleges. More than $50,000 in damages are sought from the business.

Penoyer suffered "severe and permanent illness and/or injuries, externally and internally," says the suit. The complaint states Trevor’s hospital expenses and other medical care will require his mother to pay large sums of money.
 

Most Australian restaurants serve ‘crap:’ critic

Matthew Evans is a food critic for The Sydney Morning Herald.

In September 2003, the paper published a review by Evans
of the now defunct restaurant Coco Roco at Sydney’s King Street Wharf, in which Evans said the dishes were "unpalatable" and that the restaurant’s overall value was "a shocker," scoring it 9/20 – in the "stay home" category.

The restaurant went under in March 2004, and is suing both the paper and Evans for defamation and damages.

Under cross-examination, Evans, a former chef, said while he believed a bad review could have some impact on a restaurant, it was not enough to cause its demise, and was asked if he still held the opinion he wrote in his 2007 book which said "most restaurants in this country still serve crap food."

Evans stood by that opinion, adding that he was "not too happy" with most food he was served in restaurants.

Me neither. I had an artsy friend do this recreation of a New Yorker cartoon some 25 years ago (right); still hangs in our kitchen.

The lawyer defending Coco Roco referred Evans to a December 2003 review of Coco Roco by Ray Chesterton, who "thought everything was great."

"He says he never met a meal he didn’t like," the barrister also noted.

Justice Ian Hamilton then quipped: "That emerges from the photograph."

Hearty guffaws all around.

1,500 UK holidaymakers hit by food bug at six First Choice resorts

From the things-not-to-say-when-1,500-customers-have-barfed file:

"Holiday Villages are all large properties and the reported level of illness is very low considering the large population."

The Mirror reports this morning that families staying at six of the most popular First Choice Holiday Villages have been hit by a deluge of gastric illnesses over the last three years.

Claims are being processed from people who stayed at the Spanish bases in the Costa del Sol and Majorca and also in Turkey, Egypt, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. At Sarigerme in Turkey more than 700 were taken ill this summer.

Yesterday First Choice told the Mirror that it is axing its Holiday Village resorts in Mexico and the Dominican Republic from next month. The three bugs mainly to blame are salmonella, often caused by food not being cooked or stored properly; campylobacter, from contamination and cryptosporidium, often the result of feces in water.
 

Warning: This sandwich may contain a gold earring

A Chicago man is suing McDonald’s for injuries he sustained when he swallowed a gold earring that was in his sandwich.

The complaint asserts, among other things, that the sandwich "lacked any warning of the fact that it contained the gold earring" and that McDonald’s "failed to prevent foreign objects not fit for human consumption, including but not limited to earrings, from being offered to the general public in the food being served."
 

First lawsuit filed in E. coli O157 outbreak linked to UK petting zoo

Solicitor Jill Greenfield said she was instructed by relatives of the "seriously ill" youngster to pursue a negligence claim against Godstone Farm in Surrey.

But she would not disclose her clients’ names or the age of the child involved.

"We need to establish what went wrong and who if anyone is at fault. I would hope that the farm representatives and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) will agree to meet with me as soon as possible in order that I can establish the facts as quickly as possible.
"I have contacted both the farm and the HPA today suggesting a meeting this week and I wait to hear."

The HPA said eight children remained in hospital and 67 cases of E.coli have been linked to Godstone farm.
 

Poisoned diners start lawsuit against ‘unapologetic’ celebrity chef Blumenthal; response called ‘pathetic’

The UK Health Protection Agency report into an outbreak of norovirus that felled 529 diners at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant on Sept. 10, 2009, clearly identified poor reporting and employees working while sick as contributing factors to the outbreak.

Blumenthal decided to ignore this and take to the Interwebs with his own revisionist version of what went wrong earlier this year.

This has upset some of the victims, who are now taking Blumenthal to court.

This morning, London’s Daily Mail online reports many are furious that Mr Blumenthal has refused to pay a penny in compensation, and at least two legal firms have initiated legal action.

Television presenter Jim Rosenthal, who was sickened, called Blumenthal’s response, “pathetic.”

“He has basically attempted to re-write the HPA report and its conclusions in his favour. It is pathetic and a complete PR disaster. There isn’t even a hint of apology.

“At first I was extremely sympathetic to Heston Blumenthal, but the way this has been mishandled beggars belief. I could not believe what I was reading in this email – it was like we had been sent different reports. I am taking them to court and a lot of other people are too. A simple apology might have ended all this a long time ago.”

Mr Blumenthal’s spokesman said:

“We are reviewing the report, which we only received on September 10, and won’t comment until we have completed that review.”

But they did comment, on Sept. 10. Clueless.

17 per cent of students used hand sanitizer during norovirus outbreak; NZ study reports same result

“It looks pretty sweet. It looks awesome. That suit, it’s incredible.”

One of the best lines from the movie, Napolean Dynamite, and one that came to mind when I read about a New Zealand study that found 18 per cent of people at a hospital used a hand sanitizer.

We found 17 per cent of students during a norovirus outbreak at the University of Guelph used a prominently displayed hand sanitizer back in 2006.

Maybe that’s just the rate of people paying attention to handwashing. Who knows about these things? Our study was written up in the Chronicle of Higher Education today, with Ben making lots of pithy quotes.

The 2009 New Zealand study appeared in Eurosurveillance this morning and the abstract is below.

The hand hygiene behaviours of the public in response to the current H1N1 influenza pandemic 2009 (or other pandemics) have not previously been described. An observational study was undertaken to examine hand hygiene behaviours by people passing a hand sanitiser station in the foyer of a public hospital in New Zealand in August 2009. Of the 2,941 subjects observed, 449 (18.0%, 95% confidence interval: 16.6, 19.6) used the hand sanitiser. This is a far from optimal result in response to the health promotion initiatives in the setting of a pandemic. These findings suggest the need for more effective health promotion of hand hygiene and also provide baseline measurements for future evaluation of hygiene practices.
 

Food lawsuit: Can a fly in salad cause illness? Can an e-mailer be sued for defamation?

A guy goes into a restaurant in Aurora, Ill., and says, “Waiter, there’s a fly in my salad.”

The guy has a burger instead and the restaurant, Walter Payton’ Roundhouse, picks up the bill.

The guy then goes home and sends an e-mail to some 300 people, stating,

“Health Warning:  The Kane County Health Department will be conducting an on-site inspection of Walter Payton’s Roundhouse after several complaints about flies within meals. Please stay away until the Kane County Health Department issues their official findings.”

The Health Department apparently investigated the incident and found a small number of fruit flies around the bar.

Last week, America’s Brewing Co., which owns the restaurant, sued the guy for defamation, seeking more than $100,000.

Wolfgang Puck sued for crappy bathroom

Celebrity blog TMZ reports that celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck is being sued over a restaurant bathroom.

A woman claims she just wanted to take care of some toilet business during a lunch at Puck’s most famous Beverly Hills restaurant, Spago back in 2007. But according to the lawsuit, filed in L.A. County Superior Court, the bathroom floor was covered in "standing pools of urine and feces" — and the only usable toilet didn’t have a lock on the door.

The woman also claims she had to use one of her hands to hold the door closed while she took care of business on the throne. But mid-squat, with her hand stuck firmly on the handle, another woman allegedly yanked the door open causing Linden to fall "face-first onto the tile floor."

Reps for Spago claim the woman is completely full of crap when it comes to the cleanliness of their bathrooms — "In our 27 years of business we’ve never had an issue close to this … that portion of the claim is totally without merit."

Wolfgang had some hepatitis A problems back in 2007.