Don’t eat dead snakes or food in containers that held dead snakes

The Hindustan Times reports at least 50 people from Odisha’s coastal Kendrapara district, most of them women and children, were taken ill after they consumed food from a container that had a dead snake in it, said an official on Thursday.

The incident happened during a community feast at Maa Shankatatarini temple in Chandan Nagar Deuli village under Pattamundai block of Kendrapara district where 30 families were having their meal. Many of the people were hospitalised after they started to vomit, said the official.

“They showed signs of food poisoning. However, many of them were discharged after administration of intravenous fluid,” said the medical officer of Pattamundai Sub Divisional Hospital, Chandra Sekhar Das. The community feast was organised by a women self help group of the area.

The presence of the dead snake was detected during the washing of the utensils.

And this is the only U2 song I can tolerate, largely because it’s rooted in a Tom Robbins novel. Otherwise, U2 is bloated and overrated.

Tom Robbins, Apple, and family (NSFW)

I was just sitting here editing and writing, with some tunes on the background –the daughter went back to school after 4 weeks away, and I am surrounded by euphoric emerson.mar.16parents every morning – when a shitty U2 song came on from that free album that no one wanted.

U2 is a terribly overrated band, I never liked them, except for that 1991 song, Mysterious Ways, but only because it sounds like it was based on a Tom Robbins novel.

Which got me thinking about encryption, Apple, and the future of my grandsons (#2 at 10 months, left, exactly as shown).

Which quickly went to food safety information. Anything can be hacked, anything is open for public disclosure, get it out there, and if you’re any good at food safety, brag about it.

Just don’t release it free on an iPhone.

No one wanted that free U2 album.

Top 5 Records presents: Top 5 food safety trends of decade

In the 1995 book, High Fidelity, written by Nick Hornby and adapted into the outstanding 2000 film of the same name, protagonist Rob is forever making top 5 lists. The one I most closely identify with is, Rob Gordon’s Top Five Bands or Musicians Who Will Have To Be Shot Come the Musical Revolution:

1. Simple Minds
2. Michael Bolton
3. U2
4. Bryan Adams
5. Genesis

Even though the Canadian government has apologized many times for Bryan Adams, he, and the others, all make my list of music that sucks.

This is the kind of meaningless, fun, Top 5 list that proliferate during end-of-year reflections.

When the folks at Kansas State University asked me for the Top 5 food safety events of the decade, I may have groaned or fell asleep. Eventually, I informally polled a dozen food safety friends around the world, and put together a list that will not be made into a movie.

My favorite response was from the expert-type who said something like, “it’s too bad they didn’t ask you to do this about the 1990s. The 2000s were sorta boring.”

Highlights from the past 10 years in food safety include fresh produce outbreaks and the creation of a food safety culture, said Douglas Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University.

"Those ‘Employees Must Wash Hands’ signs don’t really work," Powell said. "But access to the right tools coupled with compelling messages have been shown to work. Most cases of foodborne illness are not acts of God; they’re rooted in human behavior."

Powell offers a look at five significant events and trends involving food safety from the past decade:

* Growing a food safety culture. Forget legislation, policy and training. The creation and establishment of a strong food safety culture within any farm, processor, retailer, restaurant and home is going to most effectively reduce the millions of Americans who get sick each year.

* Power to the people. Public disclosure of food safety information — restaurant inspection reports, in-plant video, public posting of test results — has increased throughout the decade and will continue.

* Fresh produce can make people sick. It’s not just meat. Hundreds of outbreaks related to fresh fruits and vegetables reached its peak with the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in fresh spinach that killed four people. Such outbreaks finally kick-started serious efforts to manage pathogens on produce.

* Forensic microbiology. The use of DNA technology and tools continues to deepen the understanding of foodborne illness and the array of foods involved in outbreaks such as pet food, pot pies, pizza, produce, pepper, cookie dough and many others.

• There are problems; there are solutions. The array of food safety solutions rolled out over the past decade demonstrates that when a problem is identified — E. coli in beef, salmonella in eggs, listeria in cold cuts — solutions are created and implemented. Food defense has been a significant priority since 9/11, and the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, NBAF, in Manhattan, along with K-State faculty, staff and students, will continue to provide a proud legacy of food safety solutions.

Come out swinging and have some evidence to back your amendments to the Top 5 food safety thingies of the decade. Although, like bad music, it’s just opinion.

Did I mention that U2 sucks?
 

Auckland’s worst eateries score E for eeewww

One of Auckland’s most famous nightclubs (that’s in New Zealand), a party spot for the rich and famous, has been given the city’s worst food hygiene grade – ‘E’ for eeeww.

The Crow Bar on Wyndham St – where Bono from U2 hung out after one concert – is one of just 13 eateries to be awarded the worst possible grade.

The New Zealand Herald reports all of the new Supercity’s 8000 restaurants, cafes, bars, dairies and bakeries – anywhere you can buy food to eat – have a rating between A and E. Any worse, and the council bans them from trading.

Council inspectors have discovered huge cockroaches, liquid from raw meat dripping into salads, the stench of rats and mice, and more, at some city eateries.
Only a few of the worst-rated eateries were willing and available to explain why their ratings were so bad.

Council environmental health inspectors said in other cases, hygiene levels were so bad they had no option but to close down outlets.

On one occasion, as an operator was explaining to health inspectors that there were no hygiene issues, a huge cockroach walked on to the bench.

Another noted "the smell of rotting produce hit when opening the car door on arrival to inspect the premises."

And in some eateries, fridges have been so overloaded the food cannot be stored properly; raw meat is left on a higher shelf where it drips into other food such as salad, likely to cause food poisoning.

I’m not a fan of the E grade, because it might be interpreted as excellent, and prefer A, B, C, F (for fail). U2 is hopelessly overrated, apparently like places where Bono hangs out.