Tag Archives: Risk Comparison

E. coli no biggie; driving a car is worse says so-called Canadian expert

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This is why risk comparisons are risky: you sound like an asshole.

“This factory was slaughtering and processing upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 cattle per day so this is a massive operation and yet only [11] people got sick,” said William Navarre of the University of Toronto. “Six people die every day in Canada in car accidents and we don’t freak out about cars so much.”

I’m sure it’s a great comfort to the people sick with E. coli O157 from a federal plant teeming with inspectors who were ridiculously slow to go public with warnings to be told they are merely statistical anomalies.

My 17-year-old daughter has been tweeting the heartbreak of her recent breakup. I could say, there’s lots of other fish in the sea, get over it, which would make me factually correct, but still an asshole.

Instead, I told her I would hug her if she was in Australia. And how Susie B broke my heart in high school (or maybe I broke her heart).

I’ve never heard of this food safety expert but the video is at http://www.globalnews.ca/researcher+says+canadians+should+not+overreact+to+ecoli+outbreak/6442730148/story.html.

Mon dieu: There’s a mouse in my pizza

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France Info reports that a Parisian Pizza Hut, where a consumer had found a dead mouse on his pizza last May, was closed by the Prefecture yesterday due to persistent hygiene problems.

A local union representative said there was an “ongoing problem with mice for several years” in this store on the Ledru-Rollin avenue in 7th district of Paris. Management denies the accusations and claims “an act of malice.”
 

Finding the right words

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Valentine’s Day isn’t so much about the chocolate or the candlelight or the bling; it’s a reminder of the kind words that should be shared between lovers all the other days of the year.

I didn’t get that off a greeting card.

Finding the right words can be rewarding. As Jimmy Buffett sings,

“But the right word at the right time
May get me a little hug
That’s the difference between lightening
And a harmless lightening bug.”

Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, said many more children will die from being hit by lightning than tainted peanut butter, which has so far killed nine and sickened 636 people.

"Are you going to prohibit your child from going outside every time it rains? If you’re rational, what you’ll do is, if there’s lightning outside, you’ll keep them in, and when that’s done, you let them go out safely and go to school in the rain. I think this is the same thing. It’s very reasonable to take peanut butter off the menu until we knew what was going on, but then it’s not anymore."

Risk comparisons are risky. I’m not sure how lightening compares to the deliberate, criminal, douchebaggery of knowingly sending out product laced with Salmonella.

Associate Professor Mark Kantor with the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Maryland blamed the current outbreak on former U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1980-1988).

"The current problem of salmonella in peanuts can be traced back to the Reagan presidency when a nationwide climate of deregulation began.”

If someone like Stewart Parnell, CEO of Peanut Corporation of America, wants to break the law, it will get broken, regardless of who is President.

Others have exploited the survey route for instant news coverage.

On Thursday, a couple of PR firms released an online survey showed that 23 percent of consumers questioned said the most recent food scare would change their long-term buying habits.

“Almost all of the 501 consumers surveyed (93 percent) said they had recently read about or heard of food safety issues and recalls.”

This is not news. It’s an Internet survey to apparently draw attention to “Burson-Marsteller’s expertise in food communications and product recalls.”

These are the same people who brag, Burson Helps Old Navy Celebrate the "First Official Day of Flip-Flops"

In Seabrook, Texas, Dayna Steele is more worried that her 9-year-old son will become sick if he doesn’t eat peanut butter. After years of trying to get him to eat other foods, his pediatrician said, "He’s fine. Let him eat all the peanut butter he wants. When he meets a girl, he’ll start eating something else."

Feel the Valentine’s Day love.