Jimmy McCloskey of Metro UK reported in July a shoplifter was caught thanks to a distinctive t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase ‘I pooped today’ he wore on his stealing expeditions.
We had fun with our Don’t Eat Poop T-shirts after the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach and sales, which went to support our food safety news gathering and distribution activities, went on for years. Extremely popular with public health inspectors.
John Hunt admitted shoplifting from a Walmart in Wichita Falls, Texas, after police posted surveillance grabs of him stealing, with the vulgar t-shirt prompting one cop to recognize Hunt.
Hunt wore the memorable shirt and chatted to store workers while his alleged accomplice Kevin LaPointe began to steal. Afterwards, staff flagged up the distinctive item of clothing to police, with one cop immediately recognizing it on seeing images from another shop that Hunt had targeted.
Hunt was jailed for nine months Friday for stealing twice from a Walmart store – with his booty including two home security systems worth $600 – as well as theft of electricity from a meter. His guilty plea saw two further shoplifting charges against him dismissed. He has a lengthy list of previous arrests spanning back to 2014 for charges including assault, theft and driving without a seat belt.
Chacour Koop of the Star Telegram reports a woman who pooped in cop car to create a hiding spot for her drugs is going to prison, officials say.
Two years ago, Shannen Martin, 34, was arrested during a theft investigation at an H-E-B grocery store in Corsicana, Texas, police said. She was handcuffed and put in the patrol vehicle after resisting the cops, police said.
On her way to jail, Martin “intentionally defecated” in the car and hid 2.3 grams of crack cocaine, a crack pipe and a Valentine’s Day card in the poop, police said.
An officer had to dig through the poop to find the evidence, police said.
Martin pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance and tampering with evidence. She also pleaded guilty to injury to a disabled person for macing a relative during an argument, according to the Navarro County District Attorney’s Office.
Last year, Martin was sentenced to probation instead of prison.
As part of her sentencing, she also was required to write a letter of apology to the officer who had to dig through her poop, court records show.
However, Martin’s probation was revoked in September after she violated terms of her agreement multiple times, prosecutors said. Last week, she was sentenced to three years in prison.
Prisons are not pleasant places, neither are psych wards.
They’re really just boring, and involve dealing with controlling types – police, prison guards, parole officers, customs officials, psych-types – who expend major effort in defending the small piece of turf they control.
In prison, we’d have road apples at every meal – huge plums or something the size of horse testicles (road apples refers to the frozen version of horse turds, popular for pond hockey).
Jessica Fu of New Food Economy reports that two executives of a now-defunct meatpacking company pleaded guilty to selling more than $1 million worth of adulterated and uninspected beef to the federal prison system, the Department of Justice announced this week.
Jeffrey Neal Smith and Derrick Martinez, president and operations manager of West Texas Provisions, respectively, admitted to contaminating and mislabeling approximately 775,000 pounds of meat that were then distributed to 32 prisons in 18 states. Specifically, Smith and Martinez sold products that they falsely claimed had been inspected by the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) between October 2016 and August 2017. They also cut ground beef with whole cow hearts, thereby violating USDA food standards.
Though this is one individual case, it falls within a broad spectrum of issues relating to food safety in the prison system.
Smith and Martinez apparently went to great and, sometimes, bizarre lengths to obscure their scheme. Federal law requires all slaughterhouses to undergo FSIS inspection. To that end, after meatpacking facilities report their hours of operation to the agency, they are prohibited from working outside those hours.
According to former employees, Smith and Martinez ordered workers to come in on nights and weekends and process meat without inspectors present. To avoid arousing suspicion, workers were instructed to park off-site and work with the lights off, according to court documents. They were also discouraged from leaving the building to take meal breaks, in order to keep activity around the facility to a minimum. Additionally, Smith and Martinez admitted to hiding uninspected meat in freezers, and distracting inspectors from noticing said meat.
Though this is one individual case, it falls within a broad spectrum of issues relating to food safety in the prison system. In 2014, another Texas meat processor paid nearly $392,000 as part of a settlement with the USDA for mislabeling beef meant for pet food, which was then sold to the Bureau of Prisons. In Arizona, former inmates say they were served chicken from boxes labeled “not for human consumption.” Last year, The New Food Economy reported on the hidden public health crisis in America’s prisons—where incarcerated people were more than six times as likely to get a foodborne illness than the general population.
There are often economic incentives for food service providers to turn a blind eye to quality, such as the right to pocket any money leftover after fulfilling a contract. Infamously, an Alabama prison sheriff bought a beach house partially using “excess” funds meant to feed inmates. Smith and Martinez were also likely financially motivated to shirk federal beef standards.
Attorneys for the executives did not respond to requests for comment. Both defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on February 13, 2020.
Mia De Graaf of the Daily Mail writes a 78-year-old Texas man died after an agonizing two-week battling against flesh-eating bacteria he contracted on a fishing trip last month.
Jerry Sebek, of San Marcos, did not get in the water, did not have any open wounds, and did not have any health issues that would weaken his immune system.
And yet, hours after returning from Turtle Bay on June 13, he became delirious, vomiting, and struggling to breathe.
His daughter Kim took him to a clinic, where doctors said it looked like heat stroke.
But the next morning, he was taken to hospital, where he tested positive for vibrio, an aggressive type of bacteria that eats away at muscle and tissue.
His right arm, where the infection started, was ‘skinned like a deer,’ Kim told SanAntonio.com.
Despite amputating his arm and leg, and putting him in a medically-induced coma, doctors could not defeat the infection.
‘I’m still a little shocked and in disbelief,’ Kim told the site.
‘Dad was a wonderful family man who loved to hunt and fish and do things out in the water.’
She added: ‘We’ve been coming here [to Turtle Bay] for years and this is just an unfortunate thing that happened.’
The alleged drug-smuggling operation was discovered at the cargo facility at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in southern Texas on Feb. 16, a release says. Officers found 906 pounds of the drug concealed in a trailer, CBP says.
A 42-year-old man who is a Mexican citizen was arrested in connection with the seizure, according to the release.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, 87 percent of methamphetamine seized along the border in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year was caught trying to be smuggled in at legal crossing points.
Lucila Marquez of Healio reports that 50 staff members — but no patients — suffered acute gastrointestinal symptoms after eating a meal that included pork sausage, pulled pork, brisket, chicken and yogurt, at Texas Children’s Hospital, and colleagues.
Experts warned that flooding caused by Harvey could put storm victims at a higher risk for infection, but Marquez and colleagues said exposure to flood water was not associated with illness in the patients involved in the outbreak. They noted that S. aureus is one of 31 known causes of foodborne illness and outbreaks.
According to their report, on Sept. 1, 2017, a catered meal was donated and served to staff of the unnamed hospital. After infection control staff were notified of several cases of gastrointestinal illness among staff who ate the meal, the Harris County Department of Health was notified about the suspected outbreak, leftover food was secured and samples were taken from the pork sausage, pulled pork, brisket and chicken for testing.
Staff at hospital in Houston were sickened in an outbreak of Staphylococcus aureus linked to a donated catered meal.
Of the 191 staff who were working when the catered meal was delivered, 48% (n = 92) reported eating some of the meal, according to Marquez and colleagues. Within 14 hours, 54% (n = 50) of those who consumed the meal reported acute onset of gastrointestinal symptoms. All recovered within 24 hours.
Leftovers were tested for S. aureus, shigatoxin-producing Escherichia coli, and Bacillus cereus —pathogens with a short incubation period, Marquez and colleagues noted. Brisket and chicken tested negative for any pathogen, but portions of pulled pork and pork sausage tested positive for S. aureus. Based on a questionnaire completed by staff members, Marquez and colleagues calculated a 1.47 relative risk for illness from eating pork sausage (95% CI, 1.06-2.04) and a 1.45 relative risk for illness from eating yogurt (95% CI, 1.05-2.01), although no yogurt samples were available for testing.
They said the disruption in public health services in the wake of the storm prevented the health department from immediately investigating the catering business that delivered the meal.
Texas Natural Meats, a Lott, Texas establishment, is recalling approximately 489 pounds of frozen raw, ground beef products that may be contaminated with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) O103, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.
The frozen raw, ground beef items were produced on Aug. 8, 2017. The following products are subject to recall: [View Label (PDF only)] 1.00-lb. bags of “Green Field Farms Rogers Texas Ground Beef.” The bags display the “PRODUCTION DATE 08.08.2017” and also display the “EXPIRATION DATE 08.08.2020.” The bags are labeled “COOK USE ONLY” with the instruction “DO NOT refreeze after defrosting.” The products subject to recall bear establishment number “EST. 34449” inside the USDA mark of inspection. These items were shipped to a retailer who sold the product at a farmer’s market in Roger, Texas. The problem was discovered on June 19, 2018 by FSIS during routine inspection activities. The product was tested by the establishment and found to be positive for STEC O103 under their sampling program. …
The only way to confirm that ground beef is cooked to a temperature high enough to kill harmful bacteria is to use a food thermometer that measures internal temperature, http://1.usa.gov/1cDxcDQ.
I’ve seen a lot of people barf on a golf course, whether during my early morning caddying rounds at the local private club 45-years-ago (Caddyshack is one of the most historically accurate films ever made) to annual golfing trips to Virginia 15-20-years-ago.
It was almost always from over-indulgence the night before.
The cause is yet to be determined, but the illness could be foodborne based on the symptoms.
While the investigation continues, the number of people reported sick could increase. The cause of the illness will be difficult to determine as the people ate at different locations.
A rare tickborne disease commonly associated with sleeping in rustic mountain cabins has shown up in caves around Austin, Texas, potentially placing cave workers and the public at risk for infection.
According to researchers, three people working in caves in the Austin area were diagnosed with tickborne relapsing fever (TBRF) last year, and two more tested positive for antibodies against the Borrelia bacteria that cause the disease.
The infections were identified by Austin Public Health (APH) and occurred mostly in people who had given guided cave tours, according to Stephanie B. Campbell, DVM, MPH, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, and colleagues.
Campbell summarized an investigation into the infections during a presentation at the annual EIS conference in Atlanta. She told Infectious Disease News that TBRF has been documented before in Texas caves, though it is unclear whether it has ever been reported in Austin-area caves.
The disease is rare, generally occurring in people who are bitten during the night by Ornithodoros ticks while sleeping in rodent-infested cabins or other rustic buildings where rodents have built nests, according to the CDC. The soft-bodied ticks — different from hard-body ticks like the ones that cause Lyme disease — live among rodents, feeding on them as they sleep. Tick and animal species were not collected as part of the investigation, so the report by Campbell and colleagues did not include which ticks may have been involved and what animals they were feeding on. But Campbell said O. parkeri ticks are found in Texas.
Campbell SB, et al. Evaluating the risk of tickborne relapsing fever among occupational cavers — Austin, TX, 2017. Presented at: Epidemic Intelligence Service conference; April 16-19, 2018; Atlanta.
I was walking Ted the Wonder Dog the other morning — which I try to do every day but often fail because I’m human, dammit, and Ted would rather sleep beside me all day, and then party at 2 a.m. — and we passed the new cat café in Annerley, Brisbane.
I never had indoor cats until the townhouse rules in Brisbane forced us so. Same with the tiny dog. Now we have our own inner city million-dollar property (in Monopoly money) the cats go in and out, and the dog won’t shut-up.
“You are not going to get the sick cats better in that environment and unfortunately you are likely to spread those ailments to the other animals that are currently healthy,” Shannon Sims, the assistant director of Animal Care Services, told the station.
The ailments that he’s talking about allegedly include ringworm and FIP, a viral disease that tends to attack the cells of the intestinal wall and is usually fatal in domestic cats, according to WebMD. Animal Care Services spokeswoman Lisa Norwood told KENS that the investigation thus far had revealed that up to three dozen cats that did not have rabies shots and that sick cats were often mixed with healthy cats.
Leah Taylor, a former cafe employee, who is studying to become a veterinary technician, told KENS she filed a complaint against owner Casey Steuart with Animal Care Services after witnessing four cats die there during her four months on the job.
“A lot of the cat care wasn’t maintained,” Taylor told KENS. “There were animals that should have been on medicine. There were animals that needed to see a vet for medical attention that weren’t tended to. There was a lot of ringworm and upper respiratory, which is very contagious not only to people but also to other animals.”
Cas Moskwa, another former Cat Cafe employee, posted a series of photos on Facebook Sunday, detailing what she called “the reality of the cafe and the poor state it currently is in.” She claimed that Steuart waited for weeks at a time before taking sick cats there to a veterinarian and left at least one sick and dying cat, named Decoy, out in the public lounge during his last agonizing days.
Her post includes photos of cats with crusted eyes and allegations that Steuart brought in a cat infected with ringworm into the facility’s kitten coop, resulting in three different litters becoming infected. She said in a separate post that a cat she took home from the cafe was one of them that had been infected.
According to KSAT, though, Steuart disputes the reports from Moskwa and other former employees, blaming “a lack of communication and misinterpretations.” She specifically disputed the reports of ringworm, a skin infection that can be transmitted to humans, in the cafe.
She also told the San Antonio Express News that three cats did die at the cafe, but none from neglect. One, she said, was 17 years old.
We had fun with our Don’t Eat Poop T-shirts after the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach and sales, which went to support our food safety news gathering and distribution activities, went on for years. Extremely popular with public health inspectors.
Hunt wore the memorable shirt and chatted to store workers while his alleged accomplice Kevin LaPointe began to steal. Afterwards, staff flagged up the distinctive item of clothing to police, with one cop immediately recognizing it on seeing images from another shop that Hunt had targeted. 
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