Retail grocery folks often share that customers sometimes leave physical food safety hazards behind while they shop. A decade ago, a retailer told us that the physical hazards they dealt with the most was finding false fingernails in the bulk bread bins.
I wonder how often rings are left in the Walmart lettuce bins.
The below is a classified ad (they still exist?) from today’s Raleigh News and Observer.
An ice cream parlour has been landed with a £12,000 fine after a boy sliced his tongue on a shard of glass hidden inside a chocolate sundae.
The 11-year-old was tucking into the dessert at Scoops Gelato, in Elm Grove, Southsea, during a trip with his mum when he was left in agony and bleeding from the mouth.
The boy needed stitches at Queen Alexandra Hospital, in Cosham, Portsmouth, as a result of the ordeal.
Portsmouth City Council’s trading standards team, prosecuting Scoops Gelato at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court yesterday, revealed an error made by staff resulted in the accident.
A worker preparing the dessert tapped the glass with a scoop to pour in the ice cream, unwittingly causing part of it to break and fall in.
Victoria Putnam, council prosecutor, said the cut in the boy’s mouth was ‘severe’ and ‘deep’ – and blamed the firm’s failure to adopt the basic safety procedures of a normal food business for the accident, which happened on June 21 this year.
‘Had the businesses put steps in place – which it has put in place since that incident – it would never have happened,’ she said.
JoNel Aleccia, now of The Seattle Times, writes that an Auburn man is suing a local Domino’s Pizza outlet over claims he swallowed wire bristles from a cleaning brush left behind in his takeout order, which pierced his intestines and required emergency surgery.
Mike Norman, 50, a Boeing product manager, said he took one bite of a Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza Sept. 19, only to feel a “sharp tearing” in his throat. He washed the pizza down with juice and bread, but said he later felt a “dull pain” in his gut.
Doctors eventually removed two 1 ½-inch fine-gauge wire bristles from his stomach, according to a complaint filed this week in Pierce County Superior Court. One of the wires had pierced Norman’s small bowel, doctors told his wife, Diane Norman, 48, a preschool teacher and day-care operator.
“It could have been lethal,” she said. Mike Norman’s abdomen now sports a 5-inch scar, photos show.
Kenra Keller, vice president of Carpe Diem Pizza Inc., which does business as Domino’s Pizza 7047, in Milton, Pierce County, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Tim McIntyre, a spokesman for Domino’s Pizza corporate offices, said by email that he couldn’t comment on a lawsuit filed against an independently owned franchise, but he added that such businesses are required to follow local, state and federal health regulations.
The Normans, who are represented by Seattle food-safety lawyer Bill Marler, are seeking damages for injuries and loss of income. But they said they’d also like to send a wider warning to food-service employees — and consumers — about the rare but risky danger posed by using wire-bristle brushes to scour grills and ovens.