Health Law
Food Poison Blog 
Surveillance and analysis on food poison news and outbreaks.
Post Frequency: 2/day Last Entry: November 20, 2009 at 09:52:01 Recent Entries: 678
By Marler Clark
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Unique Food Safety Conference Tomorrow - Dr. David Kessler, William Marler Highlight Day-Long Conference
Posted on November 20, 2009November 20, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and American University Washington College of Law will sponsor a day-long conference focusing on problems with the current food safety system in America, and how to improve it. The conference, Empowering Employees to Protect Food Integrity, starts at 9:30 a...
Bankruptcy Claims Against Peanut Corporation of America Total 154 in Salmonella Outbreak
Posted on November 19, 2009AP reports today that the bankruptcy trustee says claims have been filed for 154 people who say they were sickened by a salmonella outbreak traced to a Virginia peanut company. Peanut Corp. of America filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy amid fallout from the outbreak, which left about 700 people sick and was linked to at least nine deaths...
E. coli O157:H7 Linked to Fairbury Steaks, Inc. - Ground Beef Recalled
Posted on November 17, 2009Fairbury Steaks, Inc. a Fairbury, Neb., establishment, is recalling approximately 90 pounds of fresh ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today...
Second Lawsuit Filed Against Fairbank Farms in E. coli Outbreak
Posted on November 17, 2009A Maine woman severely sickened in the recent E. coli outbreak tied to ground beef from Fairbank Farms has filed suit against the company. The lawsuit was filed in the Maine District Court by the plaintiff's attorneys, Bill Marler of foodborne illness law firm Marler Clark, and Peter Felmley of the Portland firm Drummond, Woodsum, & MacMahon...
Dairy Groups Urge Senators to Include Raw Milk Facilities in Food Safety Regulations
Posted on November 17, 2009Other Requests: Harmonize Regulations and Avoid Duplicate Fees Although unpasteurized, or raw, milk products pose a significant food safety hazard, facilities producing these products are not covered by any of the food safety regulations proposed so far this year by Congress...
FDA Stops Cargill Canola Oil From Canada Due to Salmonella
Posted on November 16, 2009The FDA refused 19 shipments of Canadian canola meal from Cargill in October after finding they contained the harmful bacteria salmonella, according to Reuters. According to the report: The shipments all come from Cargill's Clavet, Saskatchewan canola-crushing plant, according to reports posted on the FDA's website...
Ixtapa E. coli Lawsuit Filed in Washington
Posted on November 16, 2009Two customers of a Lake Stevens restaurant who were sickened in an E. coli outbreak last year have filed lawsuits against the business. E. coli infected at least 23 customers at the Ixtapa Family Mexican Restaurant in October 2008, the Snohomish Health District said...
WHO - Millions Die Needlessdly from Eating Food
Posted on November 14, 2009Millions of people die every year from both bugs and toxins that they consume, says a new World Health Organization survey that outlines how food-borne diseases are far worse than the U.N. agency thought. The study cites hazardous food causes about 2 million deaths annually in Southeast Asia and Africa, which is three times the amount that WHO had originally estimated...
Two Things That Keep The Meat Industry Awake At Night - Food Safety & Bill Marler
Posted on November 14, 2009Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Cattlenetwork.com and Agnetwork.com. About this food safety issue, I know you've read about it. It's been in all the papers, the New York Times, for instance...
New Polls, Reports Highlight The Need To Update The U.S. Food Safety System And To 'Make Our Food Safe For The Holidays'
Posted on November 13, 2009Over the next several weeks, the U. S. Senate has an historic opportunity to take a major step toward improving food safety for all Americans. That is why a coalition of public health professionals, consumer organizations and groups representing victims of foodborne illness is sending the message that it is time to "Make Our Food Safe for the Holidays!" Every year, millions of Americans are sickened from consuming contaminated food, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and thousands die...
Marler Clark Files Second E. coli Lawsuit against South Shore Meats Linked to 30 Illnesses at Camp Bournedale
Posted on November 13, 2009The family of an 11-year-old Rhode Island girl has filed a lawsuit against a Massachusetts meat company that supplied meat to a youth camp where she became ill. The lawsuit filed today in the Plymouth Superior Court claims that Lynn Santos of Lincoln, R...
Rep. DeLauro - E. Coli Ground Beef Sampling Plan is Insufficient
Posted on November 13, 2009Fairbank Farms recently recalled over 500,000 pounds of ground beef due to contamination with E. coli O157:H7. The contaminated beef led to 25 illnesses, including two deaths, in 10 states. In light of this Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D...
California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont report outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 Infections Associated with Beef from Fairbank Farms
Posted on November 10, 2009Several state health departments, CDC, and the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) are investigating a multi-state outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections. On October 31, 2009, FSIS issued a notice about a recall of approximately 545,699 pounds of ground beef products from Fairbank Farms that may be contaminated with E...
Fairbank Farms E. coli O157 Outbreak: how many are really ill?
Posted on November 10, 2009The CDC again amended its case-count in the Fairbank Farms ground beef E. coli O157:H7 outbreak. Secondary DNA tests (surely MLVA) have helped the CDC whittle the number of cases down from 28 in 12 states on November 2, to 26 in 11 states on November 3, to 25 in 10 states today...
Updated list of retail stores who received E. coli O157:H7 contaminated ground beef
Posted on November 04, 2009The CDC did not provide any updated statistics today about the number of people sickened in the ongoing E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks linked to ground beef (still 26 illness in 11 states, with 2 deaths and 3 HUS), but the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) did update the list of retail stores who may have received contaminated ground beef...
Lawsuits to be filed in E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks linked to ground beef
Posted on November 03, 2009Tuesday morning, we will be filing lawsuits on behalf of the families of two children sickened in the ongoing, likely developing, outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 linked to ground beef. The lawsuits will be filed in Plymouth County Superior Court for the Commonwealth of Massachussetts against Brockton, Mass...
Where is the recalled ground beef?
Posted on November 03, 2009The latest CDC summary on the ongoing E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to Fairbank Farms ground beef says that there are 28 confirmed cases in 12 states. The USDA-FSIS's latest outbreak summary, which is where you would expect to find information on the retailers who have received recalled product, seems a little slow on the uptake...
E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef . . . yet again
Posted on November 03, 2009Recently, certain sectors have argued that the incidence of E. coli O157:H7, and other shiga-toxin producing strains of E. coli, in ground beef has dropped precipitously, and that our food safety system is, as a result, working very well. At Marler Clark, over the last several years—in fact, beginning with the infamous Dole baby spinach outbreak in September 2006—fully 90% of the people we have represented have been victims of severe E...
Revised CDC statistics on ground beef E. coli O157:H7 outbreak
Posted on November 03, 2009The CDC reports today that there are currently only 26 illnesses in 11 states that are linked to the Fairbank Farms E. coli O157:H7 ground beef outbreak and recall. This represents a reduction in the number of cases attributed to the outbreak by two...
Ground beef E. coli outbreak stretches from coast to coast
Posted on November 02, 2009Earlier today, the CDC posted the following update on the E. coli O157:H7 ground beef outbreak and recall on its website: Several state health departments, CDC, and the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) are investigating a multi-state outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections...
Recalled ground beef distributed to Shaw's and Price Chopper stores in 8 states
Posted on November 02, 2009FSIS today released the identities of retail stores that may have received E. coli O157:H7-contaminated ground beef involved in the current recall by Fairbank Farm. All Shaw's stores in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachussets, and Vermont may have received contaminated meat; and all Price Chopper stores in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont may have received contaminated meat...
E. coli O157:H7 is the source of an estimated 73,000 illnesses, 2,000 hospitalizations, and 60 deaths in the United States every year
Posted on November 01, 2009The bacterium was first identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1975, but was not conclusively determined to be a cause of enteric disease until 1982, following outbreaks of foodborne illness that involved several cases of bloody diarrhea...
Recall of E. coli O157:H7 Tainted Ground Beef from Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia Linked to Fairbank Farms
Posted on October 31, 2009In part from Fairbank Farms and USDA Press Release: Fairbank Farms (USDA Establishment 492), a New York manufacturer of ground beef, has issued a voluntary recall for a specified line of fresh ground beef products sold in eight states. Approximately 545,699 pounds of fresh ground beef product produced between September 14 through September 16, 2009, may possibly be linked to E...
Trader Joe's, Price Chopper, Shaw's and BJ's Linked to Prior E. coli O157:H7 Outbreaks
Posted on October 31, 2009Trader Joe's, Price Chopper, Lancaster, Wild Harvest, Shaw's, BJ's, Ford Brothers, and Giant stores have been linked to the recent recall of E. coli O157:H7-tainted hamburger produced by Fairbank Farms. Trader Joe's, Price Chopper, Shaw's and BJ's have been linked to prior E...
Fairbank Farms linked to at least two prior hamburger recalls
Posted on October 31, 2009October 31, 2009 - Fairbank Farms, an Ashville, NY, establishment, is recalling approximately 545,699 pounds of fresh ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today...
Massachusetts E. coli Lawsuit Likely Linked to 546,000 Pounds of Hamburger
Posted on October 31, 2009Firm Recalls 546,000 pounds tied to E. coli Illnesses – Over 41,000,000 pounds recalled in last two years. The first lawsuit stemming from the E. coli outbreak in Massachusetts and likely Rhode Island, will be filed Monday in the Trial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Superior Court, against Crocetti-Oakdale Packing, doing business as South Shore Meats, Inc...
Produce Safety Project - States need more resources to track foodborne illnesses
Posted on October 30, 2009A survey of state health departments regarding their capacity to track produce-related foodborne illnesses found that the response and investigation of outbreaks varies greatly and can lead to delays in public-health response. The survey was commissioned by the Produce Safety Project (PSP), an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University, and conducted by Safe Tables Our Priority (S...
South Shore Meats Recalls Fresh Ground Beef Patties And Beef Steak Products Due To Possible E. coli O157:H7 Contamination
Posted on October 27, 2009Recall Release CLASS I RECALL FSIS-RC-057-2009 HEALTH RISK: HIGH Crocetti's Oakdale Packing Co., doing business as, South Shore Meats, Inc., a Brockton, Mass., establishment, is voluntarily recalling approximately 1,039 pounds of fresh ground beef patties derived from bench trim as well as mechanically tenderized beef cuts that may be contaminated with E...
San Link Inc. Issues an Alert on Uneviscerated Vacuum Pack Dried Krasnoperka (Fish).
Posted on October 27, 2009San Link Inc at 54B Marjorie Street Staten Island, NY 10309 is recalling Vacuum Pack Dried Krasnoperka (fish) because the product was found to be uneviscerated. The recalled Vacuum Pack dried Krasnoperka (fish) was distributed in New York State, New Jersey State and Connecticut State in vacuum pack containers...
Recall Announced in Mass./R.I. E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak
Posted on October 26, 2009New information on the cluster of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses among Rhode Island students sickened through consumption of ground beef at a camp in Massachusetts, as reported on by the Rhode Island Department of Health: The Rhode Island Department of Health (HEALTH) advises Rhode Islanders that the South Shore Meat packing plant in Brockton has initiated a voluntary recall on certain ground beef products based on confirmed laboratory evidence of the presence of E...
Raw Milk Editorial Leaves Questions Unanswered
Posted on October 26, 2009An editorial appearing on sheboyganpress.com fails to get at the heart of important issues surrounding the commercial sale of raw milk in the U.S. The article does take notice of some the risks associated with consuming raw milk: It has been linked to outbreaks of E-coli and salmonella-based illnesses, including at least 35 people in southern Wisconsin who became ill after drinking raw or unpasteurized milk in August...
Marler Clark Calls on USDA and Massachusetts Department of Agriculture to Recall Tainted Meat Linked to Camp Bournedale E. coli Illnesses
Posted on October 26, 2009The Massachusetts camp where food made Rhode Island middle school children ill has said that officials linked the illnesses to hamburger, but no recall has yet been issued for the tainted meat. Foodborne illness expert and attorney Bill Marler today called upon the USDA and Massachusetts Department of Agriculture to share their findings with consumers and ensure that all the contaminated meat is removed from the food supply...
Antibiotic Resistant Salmonella Isolated in Retail Meats in U.S.
Posted on October 24, 2009Ok, I admit that even the abstract from this article goes a bit over my head. What I can decipher is scary enough - "Our findings indicate a varied spectrum of co-resistance traits is present in [antibiotic resistant] Salmonella in the U...
Entire Oregon Coast now closed to mussel harvesting
Posted on October 24, 2009The Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announce the closure of the entire Oregon Coast to recreational mussel harvesting, from the mouth of the Columbia River to the California border, due to elevated levels of paralytic shellfish toxins (PST)...
CONSUMERS WARNED NOT TO EAT JIGONG CHAYOTE CANDY
Posted on October 23, 2009SACRAMENTO - Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), today warned consumers not to eat Jigong Chayote Candy imported from China after tests found unacceptable levels of lead. Recent analysis of this candy by CDPH determined that Jigong Chayote Candy contained as much as 0...
Report on Turtle Salmonella Outbreak Published in "Pediatrics"
Posted on October 23, 2009Earlier this week, we reported here on the multi-state outbreak of Salmonella linked to pet turtles. 107 people were sickened in the outbreak, primarily children. A report on the outbreak was published this week in the medical journal "Pediatrics...
Why Food Traceability Is so Important
Posted on October 22, 2009It's not much good to announce the recall of 4,000 pounds of ground beef for E. coli O157:H7 contamination when no one knows where the beef went. According to this report, state health officials in Texas are working with the owner of Culebra Meat Market No...
Rhode Island and Massachusetts Departments of Health Investigate E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak
Posted on October 21, 2009On October 19, the Rhode Island Department of Health (HEALTH) was notified several sixth grade students from Lincoln Middle School had diarrheal illness. The students had attended a field trip at a camp in Massachusetts from October 13 through October 16...
Intervention improves employees' food safety compliance rates
Posted on October 21, 2009Authors: Pilling, Valerie K., Brannon, Laura A., Shanklin, Carol W., Roberts, Kevin R., Barrett, Betsy B., Howells, Amber D. Publication Date: 2009; Journal: International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management; Volume: 21, Issue: 4, Starting Page: 459, Ending Page: 478 Abstract: Abstract: Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate the relative effectiveness of four-hour ServSafe® food safety training, a theory-based intervention targeting food service employees' perceived barriers to implementing food safety practices, and a combination of the two treatments...
Senator Gillibrand Proposes Anti - E. coli Legislation
Posted on October 20, 2009Senator Gillibrand of New York has unveiled new legislation, entitled the "E. coli Eradication Act" according to this report from the North Country Gazette. The legislation is aimed at eliminating E. coli O157:H7 from the U.S. food system...
Food Safety: Majority in U.S. feel food industry doesn't do enough
Posted on October 20, 2009On the heels of the largest product recall in U.S. history, an American Society for Quality survey reveals that although the majority of the food industry may be following safe production procedures, the majority of the public doesn't feel it does enough...
FDA releases 2007 monitoring data for antimicrobial resistance in retail meat
Posted on October 20, 2009The percentage of Salmonella isolates found in ground turkey that displayed resistance to nalidixic acid dropped from 8.1 percent in 2002 to 2.6 percent in 2007. Similarly, the percentage of isolates resistant to ceftiofur dropped from 8.1 percent to 5...
Salmonella Illnesses Linked to Pet Turtles
Posted on October 18, 2009According to the AP, 107 people in 34 states were part of an outbreak of Salmonella linked to pet turtles. The outbreak occurred in 2007-2008. Most of those sickened were children, and roughly one-third of those involved required hospitalization...
Pennsylvania Food Safety Director: "Think Hard" Before Selling Raw-Milk
Posted on October 15, 2009Some interesting quotes and figures from Bill Chirdon, director of Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Food Safety regarding the sale of raw milk, as reported in the American Agriculturalist. Chirdon warned potential sellers to closely examine the decision, addressing the sellers liability for sales of contaminated product: It's an enormous risk...
Hospital in Milan, Illinois to Help Pay for Hepatitis-A Shots
Posted on October 14, 2009WQAD reports that Trinity Regional Health System is making an $80,000 "contribution" toward the cost of Rock Island County's vaccination expenses arising out of this summer's Hepatitis-A outbreak. The outbreak, which sickened more than 30 people, was traced to an ill worker at the Milan, Illinois McDonald's...
925 Pounds of Ground Beef Products Recalled for Possible E. coli Contamination
Posted on October 13, 2009The United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has just announced a Class I recall for 925 pounds of San Diego Meat Company ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. The products subject to recall include: 15-pound cases of "SAN DIEGO MEAT, GROUND BEEF PATTIES 10-pound bags of "SAN DIEGO MEAT, BULK GROUND BEEF Each case and bag bears establishment number "EST...
Emotional and behavioral changes in parents of children affected by hemolytic-uremic syndrome associated with verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli: a qualitative analysis
Posted on October 11, 2009Psychosomatics. 2009 May-Jun;50(3):263-9. Pollock KG, Duncan E, Cowden JM. Health Protection Scotland, Clifton House, Clifton Place, Glasgow G37LN, Scotland. Kevin.Pollock@hps.scot.nhs.uk BACKGROUND: The long-term clinical outcome for children affected by hemolytic uremic syndrome associated with verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC-HUS) is well documented, but the parental experience is not...
Five Minutes With Bill Marler, Richard Raymond & The New Food Safety
Posted on October 10, 2009Chuck Jolley is a free lance writer, based in Kansas City, who covers a wide range of ag industry topics for Cattlenetwork.com and Agnetwork.com. On September 29 Richard Raymond used his Meatingplace blog to talk about an important but unnoticed anniversary...
Michael Pollan Lists His 20 Favorite Food Rules
Posted on October 09, 2009After issuing a request for readers of the New York Times to submit their favorite rules about eating well, author Michael Pollan, of The Omnivore's Dilemma fame, has posted twenty of his favorites. He starts with my personal favorite, "Don't eat egg salad from a vending machine...
CDC - Hamburger Handling in Restaurants is Risky
Posted on October 09, 2009CDC posted on its website recently - Ground Beef Handling Practices Study Objective: To evaluate ground beef handling practices and the use of irradiated ground beef in restaurants. Study Results: Interviews and observations in restaurants that handle raw ground beef revealed that risky ground beef handling practices were pervasive in restaurants...
Battle over timing of food safety legislation shaping up in the Senate
Posted on October 09, 2009Sitting on yet another airplane coming from yet another case where a US consumer – this one another child – was poisoned by yet another food - I missed Phil Brasher's call as he was preparing his story, 'D.C. lawmakers feel pressure to strengthen food safety rules...
Center for Science in the Public Interest urges US Senate to Pass Food Safety Modernisation Act
Posted on October 08, 2009Leafy greens, eggs, and tuna are on the top of a list of 10 riskiest foods regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration. Those and seven other foods account for nearly 40 per cent of all food-borne outbreaks linked to FDA - regulated food. "That's no reason to forego the occasional salad Niçoise," said the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI), which authored the report, "nor needs one pass up tomatoes, sprouts, and berries, even though those foods are also on the list...
The Ten Riskiest Foods in America
Posted on October 06, 2009LEAFY GREENS: 363 outbreaks involving 13,568 reported cases of illness EGGS: 352 outbreaks involving 11,163 reported cases of illness TUNA: 268 outbreaks involving 2341 reported cases of illness OYSTERS: 132 outbreaks involving 3409 reported cases of illness POTATOES: 108 outbreaks involving 3659 reported cases of illness CHEESE: 83 outbreaks involving 2761 reported cases of illness ICE CREAM: 74 outbreaks involving 2594 reported cases of illness TOMATOES: 31 outbreaks involving 3292 reported cases of illness SPROUTS: 31 outbreaks involving 2022 reported cases of illness BERRIES: 25 outbreaks involving 3397 reported cases of illness
When Others Are Walking the Halls of Congress for Food Safety, Ruby is There in Spirit
Posted on October 03, 2009Polly and Ken Costello of Bellevue Nebraska, daughter and son-in-law of, Ruby Trautz, who died after eating tainted Dole Spinach will travel to Washington on Tuesday to raise awareness of foodborne illness. Polly and Ken will help deliver a Center for the Science in the Public Interest report on the top ten "riskiest" foods to the U...
Botulism warning to duck hunters as season nears
Posted on October 02, 2009For those who spend any time at all thinking about botulism, it's probably with respect to foods, particularly canned and low-acid foods. But being, all at once, an avid bird hunter with two pointing dogs who also thinks about botulism a good bit of the time, I thought i'd simply issue this warning to any expensive hunting-dog-owning, bird-hunting folks out there about avoiding any of the many areas that have recently seen significant waterfowel die-off due to botulism poisoning...
Salmonella and Campylobacter Increase Chances of IBD
Posted on October 02, 2009A newly published report provides more evidence of the long-term risks associated with foodborne pathogens Salmonella and Campylobacter. Research by Dr. Lyn Sue Kahng was published in the journal "Gastroenterology" looking at the connection between these bacterial infections and Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD)...
$12 Million from Hartford Insurance to fund partial settlement for salmonella victims
Posted on October 01, 2009According to news reports, the U.S. bankruptcy judge said today he will sign an order establishing a $12 million fund to pay claims from people sickened by Salmonella poisoning connected to Lynchburg-based Peanut Corporation of America. The action by judge William E...
Pesticide-Tainted Salsa Made Kansas Restaurant Patrons Ill
Posted on October 01, 2009According to an article in today's Kansas City Star, Johnson County health officials in Lenexa, Kansas are looking to salsa served at Mi Ranchito restaurant as the likely case of a sudden and alarming outbreak of illness at the restaurant. The salsa was evidently tainted with a pesticide called methomyl...
Florida Woman Petitions Whole Foods to Continue Selling Raw Milk
Posted on September 30, 2009A Florida woman who runs an organization called Miami Real Food has petitioned Whole Foods, one of the nation's largest organic grocers, to continue selling raw milk. See the entire petition here. The petition states, in part, [R]aw milk from grass-fed cows is infinitely healthier than those that are kept in confinement dairies...
Bacteria in Leafy Greens - Following the Light?
Posted on September 30, 2009New research conducted in Israel suggests that the method that some bacteria, including Sallmonella, are enetering leafy greens is connected to light exposure, as reported today on an L.A. Times blog. The new study was published in the journal "Applied and Environmental Microbiology...
Kroger and Nebraska Beef E. coli O157:H7 Case Settled
Posted on September 29, 2009Bruce Cadwallader of the Columbus Dispatch wrote the following story: A former New Albany resident who sued the Kroger Co. for selling tainted beef has settled her lawsuit. Attorneys for Amanda J. Adam, 27, notified Franklin County Common Pleas Court officials on Sept...
Missouri Gov. Nixon (double) Speaks On E. coli, Lake of the Ozarks
Posted on September 29, 2009I guess it's hardly news when a politician doesn't give straight answers, but this is double-speak, or non-speak, at its best. Check some excerpts from this Kansas City Star interview with Gov. Nixon on the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' (DNR) delay in releasing E...
Criminal Charges May Be Filed Against Raw Milk Sellers in Wisconsin
Posted on September 29, 2009It is a crime to sell raw milk in the state of Wisconsin, and one farmer may be going jail for doing just that. According to an article in Walworth County Today, the Walworth County District Attorney's Office is evaluating whether to file charges against the owners of an Elkhorn farm shut down after more than two dozen people fell ill with Campylobacter infections after consuming the farm's raw milk...
UK Study: Rise in Clostridium Difficile Illnesses Attributable to . . . Evolution
Posted on September 28, 2009Clostridium difficile, colloquially known as "C Diff," is an increasing public health risk, particularly in hospital settings, but also as a foodborne pathogen. Researchers from the United Kingdom, who compared historical strains of C Diff to the strain involved in a large outbreak at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 2003, say that one of the reasons is that the bug is evolving, and becoming more dangerous...
Story of Listeria Survivors Highlights Food Safety Issues
Posted on September 28, 2009A well written piece in the Washington Post today by Jennifer LaRue Huget details the story of two twins, Luke and Chloe Bennett, who survived a listeria infection at birth. Listeria is the common name for the pathogenic or disease-causing bacterium known as Listeria monocytogenes...
Here Kitty Kitty, I Need My Morning Coffee
Posted on September 28, 2009You may be wondering what in the world cats and coffee have in common, and until this morning my answer would probably have been some witty quip (or a lame one, depending on your sense of humor). But it turns out that some cats, the Asian Palm Civet to be precise, can actually enhance the flavor of your morning cup o' joe...
Hot Interviews at Food Safety News - Dr. Nestle and Dr. Raymond
Posted on September 27, 2009The Washington DC Bureau and Denver Bureau caught up with two more Food Safety Leaders in the last week for some Q & A. More interviews are coming over the next several weeks as we take the temperature from people who know. Nestle on Food Safety Politics Marion Nestle is an authority on food politics and policy...
Shocker: A Restaurant Owner Apologizes for Foodborne Illness Outbreak
Posted on September 25, 2009Although this story comes from across the Atlantic in England, a lesson can still be learned and applied here. According to the Guardian UK, Heston Blumenthal, the world-renowned chef of the Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berskshire, has offered a personal apology to the more than 500 people who took ill after dining at the restaurant in January and February, 2009...
Missouri DNR Spokewoman Testifies on E. coli Cover-up
Posted on September 24, 2009New information in a continuing story we have been following here: Susan Medley, the former spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) told Senate investigators that the delay in the release of information about high bacteria levels at Lake of the Ozarks "stemmed from a department failure to quickly gather information to put the contamination levels into a historical context" according to a Columbia Daily Tribune report...
Fresh Produce Suspected in Three State E. coli Outbreak
Posted on September 23, 2009A fresh produce may once again be responsible for a new outbreak of the dreaded E. coli O157:H7 bacteria in Utah, Colorado, and New York, the new Food Safety News is reporting today. According to FNS, there is an ongoing investigation is being led by public health agencies in Utah and Colorado; Colorado reportedly has the most cases...
The Uglier Side of Lettuce
Posted on September 23, 2009After a frightful two-year stretch in 2005 and 2006 that included two Dole spinach/lettuce outbreaks due to E. coli O157:H7 contamination, the resurgence of ground beef as a leading vector in E. coli cases must have caused lettuce to feel a little left out...
FoodTrack Confirms E. coli Investigation
Posted on September 23, 2009CDC and Three States Investigating E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak The FDA is aware of an outbreak involving E. coli O157:H7 in Utah, Colorado, and New York State. Health officials are conducting investigations with assistance from the CDC. A food vehicle has yet to be identified...
Food Safety News - Great Interviews of Food Safety Leaders
Posted on September 22, 2009Food safety News has some great interviews and more to come. Richard Raymond - Former Under Secretary For Food Safety Speaks Up Marion Nestle - Food Safety Politics Dave Theno - Food Safety Since Jack in the Box Outbreak
Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning shut mussel and clam harvesting in Oregon
Posted on September 22, 2009The State Department of Agriculture has closed the entire Oregon coast to recreational mussel and clam harvesting because of the risk of toxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning. Agency spokesman Bruce Pokarney said Monday that most of the north and central coast had already been closed to mussel harvesting and the state has banned razor clam harvesting since midsummer for conservation reasons...
Delays reported in securing recalled foods from our public schools
Posted on September 22, 2009The USA Today reported today that "Federal agencies that supply food for 31 million schoolchildren [Food and Nutrition Service] fail to ensure that tainted products are pulled quickly from cafeterias." The audit, which was conducted by Congress's Government Accountability Office, concluded that "The delays raise the risk of children being sickened by contaminated food," according to the USA Today...
Risk Posed by Non-O157 E. coli Greater Than Recognized
Posted on September 21, 2009According to the results of a study recently published by the CDC, the incidence of dangerous and under-reported non-O157 E. coli infection is on the rise. E. coli is the term given to a large family of bacteria. Within that family, E...
Survey reports food safety costs doubled for California leafy greens growers
Posted on September 21, 2009Seasonal food safety costs for California leafy greens growers more than doubled in the year after the September 2006 outbreak of E. coli in spinach, according to a survey by the University of California Small Farm Program. On a per-acre basis, these costs were lowest for the largest farms...
New Grant for Research on Treatment of Shigella and C. difficile
Posted on September 21, 2009The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a group of researchers $2.87 million for preclinical development of an oral drug to treat Shigella and C. difficile. Shigella is a bacterium that belongs to a small group of pathogens (including E. coli O157:H7 and Cryptosporidium) that can infect the gut after the ingestion of relatively few organisms, and can cause sudden and severe diarrhea (gastroenteritis) in humans...
ABA Journal Shines Spotlight On Food Safety Regulation
Posted on September 21, 2009As most readers of the Food Poison Journal are aware, change is afoot in Washington, D.C. over the future regulation of the US's food safety system. From President Obama's recently-formed Food Safety Working Group to Congress's proposed Food Safety Enhancement Act and FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, the issue of food safety has—after years of neglect—finally made its way to the head of the table...
Outbreak Tied To Raw Milk Serves As Cautionary Tale, Food Safety Official Says
Posted on September 18, 2009MADISON -- DNA test results and other evidence have now established that an outbreak of illness involving at least 35 people, the majority children and teens, was linked to drinking unpasteurized milk. Wisconsin food safety officials are cautioning consumers not to drink raw milk and farmers not to sell it to the public...
Another Petting Zoo in UK Closes as E. coli Fears Spread
Posted on September 18, 2009The "World of Animal Life" exhibit in Devon, England, has closed as health officials investigate links to three more people with E. coli O157:H7 infections. According to a BBC report: In a statement, the Health Protection Agency said: "East Devon District Council and the Health Protection Agency this afternoon advised the precautionary closure of the World of Country Life farm, Exmouth, acting on information that potentially linked the farm with three individuals with confirmed E...
The Ugly Side of Foodborne Illness
Posted on September 17, 2009I haven't been in half as many living rooms as the partners at Marler Clark have, but I've certainly seen a lot of suffering over the past six years, doing what we do. Kids on dialysis; adults suffering in the miserable comfort of a hospital bed after having big pieces of their intestines surgically removed; and the permanently reddened eyes of elderly widows who have lost their World War II hero husbands of 50 years...
Salmonella in Austraila Linked to "Pawpaw"
Posted on September 15, 2009They say you learn something new everyday, and even though its not lunchtime, I am ahead of that pace today. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that several Salmonella illnesses in Western Australia have been linked to "pawpaw.": West Australians have been warned to thoroughly wash pawpaw following several cases of food poisoning, including one in which a person required hospital treatment...
Marler Explains New News Site - Food Safety News
Posted on September 15, 2009Q & A with Bill Marler, managing partner of Marler Clark LLP: Q: What is Food Safety News? A: Food Safety News (FSN) is a daily online newspaper dedicated to covering food safety news--all the news that's fit to eat! FSN writers will be reporting on everything from foodborne illness outbreaks to food politics to international food safety policy...
2006 Spinach E. coli Outbreak Revisited
Posted on September 14, 2009The 2000 movie called 'The Perfect Storm' loosely chronicled the destruction of an Atlantic nor'easter that formed due to the random convergence of several destructive weather patterns. Twelve people died in the storm, including six sword fishermen aboard the Andrea Gail (captained by George Clooney's in the movie)...
Godstone Farm and Playbarn in Surrey England linked to E coli in 12 children
Posted on September 14, 2009So far, 12 children have been hospitalised in England after an outbreak of at the farm. The children, aged between 18 months and 10 years, E. coli O157:H7 contracted E. coli after visiting Godstone Farm near Redhill, Surrey, in southern England...
Future Economic and Physical Costs for Victims of Foodborne Illness
Posted on September 14, 2009The CDC estimates that foodborne pathogens cause 76 million cases of gastrointestinal illness every year. 325,000 of these illnesses require hospitalization, and about 5,000 people die annually. (See Paul S. Mead, et al., Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States, 5 Emerging Infect...
National Salmonella Typhimurium Outbreak Linked to Lettuce?
Posted on September 14, 2009Lynne Terry of The Oregonian reported this afternoon that Oregon health authorities have announced a suspected link between 124 Salmonella Typhimurium illnesses nationally and lettuce. The illnesses began appearing in mid-July and trailed off about a month later...
Welcome to Food Safety News - Marler Clark presents Food Safety News as a daily Web-based newspaper
Posted on September 14, 2009Here we have created one place that pulls it all together for the food safety community and fills a void in our food safety system. It is about using the Web to put as much available food safety information in one place as is possible. We provide timely reporting on food safety issues with contributed articles from food safety leaders and feeds from government, food industry, and other food safety authorities...
Food Safety Hazards Associated with Consumption of Raw Milk
Posted on September 12, 2009FOODBORNE PATHOGENS AND DISEASE Volume 6, Number 7, 2009 Review by Stephen P. Oliver, Kathryn J. Boor, Steven C. Murphy, and Shelton E. Murinda Abstract An increasing number of people are consuming raw unpasteurized milk. Enhanced nutritional qualities, taste, and health benefits have all been advocated as reasons for increased interest in raw milk consumption...
High Levels of E. coli in Lake of the Ozarks- This Time the Public is Warned
Posted on September 11, 2009Water samples taken from the Laurie Hollow area of the Lake of the Ozarks has tested positive for elevated levels of E. coli, according to the Kansas City Star. The star reports that: Fifty water samples were taken this week from the lake, and only the one from Laurie Hollow was high...
A question about the FDA's Reportable Food Registry
Posted on September 09, 2009On Tuesday, the FDA certainly took a step in the right direction by implementing the Reportable Food Registry, under federal regulations codified at 21 USC 350f. The FDA's action essentially requires any food producer who knows of a microbial risk (e...
FDA Opens the Reportable Food Registry Electronic Portal for Industry - Food facilities now required to report potentially dangerous products
Posted on September 08, 2009The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a new way to head off potential cases of foodborne illness – the Reportable Food Registry (RFR), where food industry officials must use to alert the FDA quickly, through an electronic portal when they find their products might sicken or kill people or animals...
Non-O157:H7 Shiga Toxin E. coli - Human Disease, Vectors and Outbreaks
Posted on September 08, 2009Non-O157 shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) are the causative agents of zoonotic emerging infectious diseases, often of bovine origin. Below is a general review of non-O157 STEC prevalence studies in humans, cattle, and beef products. Humans Non-O157 STEC infections are under-recognized and under-reported due to inadequate epidemiological and laboratory surveillance...
Verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli O26 in raw water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) milk products in Italy.
Posted on September 06, 2009Lorusso V, Dambrosio A, Quaglia NC, Parisi A, La Salandra G, Lucifora G, Mula G, Virgilio S, Carosielli L, Rella A, Dario M, Normanno G. J Food Prot. 2009 Aug;72(8):1705-8. Department of Health and Animal Welfare--Faculty of Veterinary Medicine Str. Prov...
Op-ed By William D. Marler JD - Real Health Care Reform Requires Safe Food
Posted on September 06, 2009Linda Rivera's excruciating case of food-poisoning (Washington Post, Sept. 1) should shine some light on a crucial reality that is missing from all or most health care reform plans: You can't fix America's health care unless you provide Americans with a safe food supply...
Potential E. coli Illness in Lab Worker at North Dakota State?
Posted on September 05, 2009A lab worker at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering at North Dakota State who works with E. coli has developed a gastrointestinal illness, according to "In Forum" out of Fargo, North Dakota. There has not been confirmation as to whether the illness is in fact an E...
Spinach E. coli O157:H7 Lawsuit filed against Dole, Natural Selection Foods, Mission Organics and Pick'n Save in Wisconsin
Posted on September 04, 2009Click above to download Summons and Complaint.
Produce in Public: Spinach, Safety and Public Policy
Posted on September 03, 2009By Doug Powell - Kansas State University. That's the title of a book chapter that's just been published and attempts to answer the question: what does it take for farmers, processors and retailers to pay attention to food safety risks – in the absence of an outbreak? Last week, trade magazine The Packer did a story about Earthbound Farms, the producer of E...
Wisconsin Woman Severely Sickened by E. coli in Spinach Forced to Sue Dole, Natural Selection Foods, Mission Organics and Pic-n-Save
Posted on September 03, 2009The 2006 outbreak of E. coli tied to spinach sickened more than 205 people nationwide, many gravely. More than 31 developed Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) and five lost their lives. One of the most critically ill was Jane Majeska of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, an 85-year old woman whose fight to stay alive in the months after she consumed the Dole E...
Washington Post Dares To Tell The Story Of Nestle Cookie Dough Victim Fighting For Her Life
Posted on September 02, 2009When food-borne illnesses result in critical life-threatening conditions, typically the victims do not get to tell the stories. Their pain and suffering are usually shared only by their closest friends and families, but the public usually turns away not wanting to hear about internal organs being removed or the loss of liver function or brain damage...
Will E. coli victim's illness cause meaningful change?
Posted on September 01, 2009Linda Rivera's E. coli O157 infection seems to have struck a nerve. Virtually every major news outlet, and many local ones, across the country has reported on her devastating illness. Foxnews.com reported this morning that "A 57-year-old woman clinging to life in a Las Vegas hospital serves as a warning as to how dangerous and potentially deadly foodborne illnesses can be...
Is China Leaping to the Forefront of Food Safety?
Posted on August 31, 2009The Chinese media is reporting today on sweeping changes announced for the nation's food safety standards. In a bold statement, a senior health official declared that the new system "is expected to guarantee people's health and be more compatible with international norms...
The True Cost of "Cheap" Food Is Higher Than You Think
Posted on August 31, 2009I have recently had some interesting, and heated, conversations with various folks about the current state of the US's food system. Everything from prolific foodborne pathogens, like E. coli and Salmonella, to widespread obesity and environmental degradation issues can be traced in some profound way to our highly industrialized food system...
Might Iowa Agriculture Like Having Harkin In Charge Of What Happens To Food Safety Bills In Senate?
Posted on August 30, 2009If Iowa agriculture had the choice, would it prefer that its most powerful Senator, Tom Harkin, remain as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee with its great sway over all farm bills or take to the late Edward M. Kennedy's powerful Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee? For not only does the HELP Committee, as it is known, have one whale of a job to do if President's Obama's health care reform is ever going to see the light of day, but Kennedy's old committee also control the future of food safety legislation that has already passed the House...
Recall Advice for ground Beef, cantaloupes . . . well any contaminated food
Posted on August 30, 2009In my last post regarding a recent recall of cantaloupes in the upper midwest due to Salmonella contamination, you can tell that I was struck by the sequence of events being reported. Melon Acres' recall notice went up on August 27; the FDA reported the Salmonella-positive test result on which the recall was based on August 21, a full six days before Melon Acres' recall notice; and the FDA's salmonella-positive test actually occurred on August 11...
Cantaloupe Recall due to Potential Salmonella Contamination
Posted on August 30, 2009A company called Melon Acres, which is located in Oaktown, Ind., recently recalled cantaloupes that it had shipped to three states in the Midwest due to Salmonella contamination. The bad, or potentially bad, melons made their way on August 13-14 to the Aldi's store in Greenwood Indiana, and Meijer stores in Lansing and Newport Michigan and Tipp City Ohio...
Green Onion Recall due to Potential Salmonella Contamination
Posted on August 29, 2009Ocean Mist Farms, a Castroville, California vegetable company, has issued a voluntary recall of iceless green onions due to potential contamination by Salmonella bacteria. The company decided to issue the recall after confirmation from federal regulators of a positive test for salmonella on green onions supplied by Circle Produce to several shippers, including Ocean Mist Farms...
Fish from 291 streams test positive for mercury in USGS survey
Posted on August 28, 2009In its recent publication, 'Data on Mercury in Water, Bed Sediment, and Fish from Streams Across the United States, 1998–2005,' (pdf) the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a division of the Department of the Interior (DOI), released information related to mercury contamination in 291 streams and rivers across the country...
Food Safety Regulators Voice Support for Animal ID System
Posted on August 27, 2009High-profile food safety regulators recently explained the need for a national animal identification system, according to this report on Drovers.com. The comments were made at the "ID Info Expo 2009" in Kansas City, Missouri. Proposals for such a tracking system often draw criticism from the livestock industry, centering around concerns over cost and bureaucracy...
E. coli and Food Recalls: Progress, Really?
Posted on August 26, 2009The Wisconsin State Journal recently published an excerpt from an interview on the increased number of food recalls we have seen in the last few years. In the interview, Dr. Kathleen Glass of the Food Research Institute at UW-Madison concluded, in part at least, "That the food-safety system is working, even though the number of recalls is rising...
E. Coli O157:H7 Illnesses Close Daycare in UK
Posted on August 26, 2009The majority of the E. coli O157:H7 cases we pursue involve the consumption of contaminated food or drink. It is possible though, for E. coli O157:H7 to be transmitted from person to person, through fecal-oral transmission. Such transmission is more likely in a day-care settings...
Campylobacter: the King of Foodborne Disease in the US
Posted on August 22, 2009It is a wonder that Campylobacter doesn't get more attention as a public health scourge. It has long ruled the international kingdom of diarrhea as the most prevalent foodborne disease worldwide--the United States too--yet the average person walking down the street has probably never heard of it...
E. coli outbreak at Welsh dance camp
Posted on August 21, 2009BBC has been following an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak among attendees of a dance camp held in Cresselly, Wales. At least thirteen people who attended the dance camp have reported symptoms consistent with E. coli infection since the camp's conclusion on August 9...
32 Hepatitis A Cases Now Linked to Milan McDonalds
Posted on August 19, 2009According to the Quad-City Times, the Rock Island County Health Department has reported its 18th case of hepatitis A stemming from an outbreak that began about a month ago. "This individual is a household contact to one of the cases reported the week of July 13," said Theresa Foes, a spokeswoman for the health department...
Botulism: Equal Parts Public Health Scourge and Cosmetic Miracle?
Posted on August 19, 2009It may surprise some people to learn that the often-lethal toxins produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria, which cause botulism illnesses, are a chief ingredient in certain cosmetic/medical products. In fact, the FDA recently updated its safety warnings about medical products that contain botulism toxins...
Op-ed - William D. Marler, Esquire - Speech Before the House of Lords - How one Peanut Company caused $1.5 Billion in Losses?
Posted on August 18, 2009The recall of Salmonella-tainted peanuts and peanut products processed and produced by the Peanut Corporation of America has caused one of the largest food recalls in US history; almost 4000 products made by hundreds of companies have been withdrawn, and the number is still growing...
Marler Clark has Tested Retail Hamburger for Non-O157:H7 Pathogenic Shiga Toxin Producing E. coli - Abstract Available
Posted on August 18, 2009We have completed a portion of the first year's tests and are in the process of compiling the data. We hope to publish the results in the next month. (See Abstract) Non-O157 STEC are capable of causing the same debilitating triad of diseases as E. coli O157:H7, including hemorrhagic colitis, hemolytic uremic syndrome, and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura...
Marler Op-ed - Open Letter to an Under Secretary for Food Safety - FSIS - The End of E. coli Conservatism
Posted on August 18, 2009In April 2007, Rick Perlstein penned a piece entitled 'E. coli Conservatism.' His bottom line was the 'Conservatism has been killing Americans. The recent food safety crisis is only one case study.' Perhaps he is in part right. However, whatever the political reasons for the 'food safety crisis,' it has been long in coming and the system needs to be fixed...
Seattle Voices with Bill Marler - Interview with Food Poisoning Lawyer
Posted on August 18, 2009Bill Marler is a national expert on foodborne illness. He has been deeply involved in issues related to food companies whose contaminated products have caused serious injury and death. His advocacy for better food regulation and his work as a lawyer has led to invitations to address local, national, and international gatherings on food safety, including recent testimony to the U...
Marcacci Meats Recalls 128 Pounds of E. coli O157:H7 Hamburger
Posted on August 18, 2009Pasha Halal Poultry, doing business as Marcacci Meats, a Vineland, N.J., establishment, is recalling approximately 128 pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today...
Antibiotic Resistant Salmonella and The Meat You Eat
Posted on August 14, 2009The presence of antibiotic resistant Salmonella at the slaughterhouse may be one thing, but its presence in retail meat (i.e. its final stop before consumption) is yet another. So how much retail meat (ground turkey, chicken, beef, and pork) is actually contaminated at the point of purchase? And with what? An article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported on a study that answers these specific questions...
Wrong but not Illegal? How Comforting.
Posted on August 14, 2009I wrote on this site previously about the decision of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources not to release information about dangerously high levels of E. coli in the Lake of the Ozarks until after a busy tourist weekend. Good reporting by the Kansas City Star brought the issue to light, and the Missouri Attorney General opened an investigation...
Canadian Health Officials Warn of Salmonella in Green Onions
Posted on August 14, 2009The Canadian Press is reporting that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued a salmonella warning about green onions sold at six stores in the Windsor-Essex area of southwestern Ontario. The report states: The agency is warning people not to eat the jumbo green onions imported by Vitale Produce of Windsor, because they could be contaminated with salmonella...
Is Salmonella Newport an adulterant?: I wonder what World Health would say?
Posted on August 13, 2009The recall of over 826,000 pounds of ground beef, produced by Beef Packers Inc (aka Cargill), due to Salmonella contamination has resounded loudly in the food biz . . . but unfortunately not because a recall linked to ground beef is such a rarity. It most certainly is not...
More Salmonella News: Green Onions Recalled
Posted on August 13, 2009California based NewStar Fresh Foods today recalled green onions due to possible Salmonella contamination. 772 cartons of iced jumbo green onions are subject to the recall, sold under the brand names Omo and Fu Choy, and distributed from three locations: R...
McDonald's Is Responsible for the Illinois Hepatitis-A Outbreak
Posted on August 13, 2009As the number of Hepatitis A illnesses in and around Milan, Illinois climbs, media coverage has been focusing on the alleged failure of a local hospital to report the initial case to the health department. That criticism may be well deserved. From both a legal and policy standpoint though, the McDonald's restaurant and those that operated it are responsible for the outbreak...
Modern Food Production Provides the Perfect Machanism For Mass Foodborne Illness Outbreaks
Posted on August 13, 2009The health staff writers over at the LA Times have written a great article, Eating With the Enemy, on the growing prevalence of widespread foodborne illnesses stemming from products as seemingly disparate as ground beef, romaine lettuce, cilantro, Anaheim peppers, granola nut clusters, alfalfa sprouts and of course, peanuts...
Peregrina Cheese Recalled due to Listeria Concerns
Posted on August 13, 2009A Brooklyn, New York, company called Peregrina Cheese Corporation announced a recall today of all products manufactured in its Brooklyn since March 17, 2009. The company announced the recall today due to fears that the recalled products may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, which is a devastating foodborne pathogen that is particularly dangerous to young children, the elderly, and others with weakened immune systems...
McDonald's Hepatits A Case Count Rises to 30
Posted on August 12, 2009The Quad City Times reports today that the number of Hepatitis-A cases related to the Milan, Illinois McDonald's has risen to 30 individuals. The article states: The Illinois Department of Public Health and the Rock Island County Health Department reported the total number of cases, saying they are all related to people who visited a McDonald's restaurant at 400 W...
McDonald's Hepatitis A Case Count Rises to 30
Posted on August 12, 2009The Quad City Times reports today that the number of Hepatitis-A cases related to the Milan, Illinois McDonald's has risen to 30 individuals. The article states: The Illinois Department of Public Health and the Rock Island County Health Department reported the total number of cases, saying they are all related to people who visited a McDonald's restaurant at 400 W...
Beef Packers Inc (Cargill) Cited in 2008 for Electrically Stunning and Then Dragging Cattle to Slaughter
Posted on August 11, 2009According to Garance Burke, super AP reporter, USDA records show that Beef Packers, Inc., that recalled tons of hamburger meat due to salmonella fears was slapped with humane handling violations in a government review of meatpacking plants last year...
Rock Island County Sheriff Slams Healthcare Providers for Dropping Ball on Hepatitis A
Posted on August 11, 2009The Rock Island County Sheriff's Department has released a report stating that Trinity Regional Health System failed to properly notify county health officials of the first of at least 26 Hepatitis A illnesses related to the outbreak at the Milan McDonald's...
So, why is E. coli O157:H7 considered an adulterant, but other shiga-toxin E. coli not? Why is Salmonella not considered an adulterant, even when the Salmonella is antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Newport?
Posted on August 10, 2009William D. Marler - Op-ed Personally, as I said to the Los Angeles Times a few days ago, 'I think that anything that can poison or kill a person should be listed as an adulterant' [in food]. According to the CDC, E. coli O157:H7 is the source of an estimated 73,000 illnesses, 2,000 hospitalizations, and 60 deaths in the United States every year...
So, Beef Packers Inc. (a.k.a. Cargill) Recalls Salmonella Newport Beef - Why Hasn't It Or FSIS Told Us Where It Was Sold?
Posted on August 10, 2009William D. Marler - Op-ed When we hear that there has been a recall of hamburger tainted with Salmonella Newport, how many of us would know which company slaughtered the cow and ground the meat? Would we know that the meat came from Beef Packers Inc...
Sample With Actual Strain Not Found, But CDC Wraps Bow Around Nestle With Epidemiological Study: Issues Final Web Report
Posted on August 10, 2009Web updates on outbreaks from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are like those old 'paint by numbers' sets. Sometimes it takes several passes, but eventually the picture is filled out pretty well. In its fifth and final update on the multi-state outbreak of E...
Cookie Dough E. coli Outbreak Remains Mystery
Posted on August 10, 2009According to a CDC update on the multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to Nestle cookie dough, the agency is working with public health officials in several states and collaborating with the FDA and FSIS to investigate the outbreak. Preliminary results of the investigation 'indicate a strong association with eating raw prepackaged cookie dough,' though the agency is still trying to figure out the exact cause of the contamination...
Devastation of E. coli O157:H7 "Across the Pond" as Well
Posted on August 09, 2009BBC news is reporting that a 32 year old woman who suffered an E. coli O157:H7 infection is "improving." Still, her current condition is testimony to the level of risk associated with the bacteria. The woman's mother provided this update: "They have lightened the sedation and are hoping to bring her off the ventilator...
Milford, Massachusetts Under Boil Order, Tap Water Positive for E. coli
Posted on August 09, 2009Residents of Milford, Massachusetts are under a boil order after two tests of tap water showed high levels of fecal matter, with one of the tests returning positive for E. coli. E. coli is the term for a family of fecal bacteria that includes E...
Colorado at the Epicenter of Ground Beef Salmonella Outbreak
Posted on August 09, 2009Whether its just extremely competent public health officials, or that this particular state just got more of the bad meat than everybody else, Colorado is currently at the epicenter of a national outbreak of antibiotic resistant Salmonella Newport linked to ground beef...
Antibiotic Resistant Salmonella Newport Hamburger Recalled After 28 Reported Ill in Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Illinois, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming and Texas
Posted on August 08, 2009Health officials in three Western states said Friday at least 40 people have reported illnesses tied to recalled ground beef that may be tainted with salmonella. On Thursday, Fresno-based Beef Packers Inc. (a.k.a. Cargill) recalled nearly 826,000 pounds (over 400 tons) of ground beef produced from June 5-23...
Strict Liability and Food Safety
Posted on August 08, 2009Dr. Douglas Powell, associate food safety professor at Kansas State University, posted yesterday on www.barfblog.com about the recent announcement by the Dept of Ag and the FDA regarding their plans to increase testing of beef trim for E. coli O157:H7 (why are other shiga-toxin producing strains of E...
Salmonella Newport in Ground Beef: It's not the first time
Posted on August 08, 2009In 1999, several states reported clusters of Salmonella Newport, an antibiotic resistant strain of the bug, with an indistinguishable PFGE pattern and the same anti-microbial resistance pattern. The states reported to PulseNet, the national database for foodborne disease surveillance, which prompted an investigation into the cause of the outbreak...
Huge Ground Beef Recall Returns Attention To USDA's Role In Food Safety
Posted on August 07, 2009Beef Packers Inc.'s recall of 825,769 pounds of ground beef possibly contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Newport draws attention to the United States Department of Agriculture's role in the federal food safety system after last week's legislative battle over Food and Drug Administration's reforms...
Salmonella Everywhere in 2009
Posted on August 07, 2009Safeway today announced a nine state recall of ground beef (825,769 pounds) due to fears that the meat may be contaminated with Salmonella Newport. The recalled product was produced by Beef Packers Inc. (aka "Cargill"). This is just another outbreak/recall in what has turned into a year dominated by Salmonella woes...
An Unforgettable Salmonella Illness
Posted on August 07, 2009This post is about a brutal illness caused by Salmonella. It happened to one of our clients several years ago. Don't stop reading just because you think you've seen, or heard about, every varient of a Salmonella illness. I assure you that you've never seen one quite like this before...
Foodpoisoning Cases: the good and the ugly
Posted on August 06, 2009Over the past decade, Marler Clark has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for people grievously injured, or even killed, as a result of foodpoisoning. And not a penny of what these people--the worst of the worst illnesses--recovered was undeserved...
Law School 101: the wireless paper chase
Posted on August 06, 2009I was trying to find a parking spot in our overcrowded garage yesterday when I got an abject lesson in what certain folks think us lawyers do. I was behind an elderly lady who was going far too slow for my tastes. Nevertheless, rounding a corner in the garage, this woman broke suddenly to allow a roughly 30-year-old woman, who was walking, to get out of the middle of the driving lane...
Two Million Pounds Of Bad Beef Recalled So Far In 2009: More For Salmonella Than E Coli
Posted on August 06, 2009More than two million pounds of ground beef has been recalled since spring and unlike past years the major cause is not the deadly E. coli 0157:H7. Instead it is two drug resistant strains of Salmonella that are said to be responsible for almost 1.3 million of the total of 2...
Salmonella Newport Illnesses in Colorado Linked Beef Packers in California
Posted on August 06, 2009Beef Packers, Inc., a Fresno, Calif., establishment, is recalling approximately 825,769 pounds of ground beef products that may be linked to an outbreak of salmonellosis, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today...
BPI Ground Beef Salmonella Recall: Will the Meat Industry Sue, and Who Will the USDA stand up for?
Posted on August 06, 2009Today the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced a recall of ground beef products due to possible Salmonella contamination. According to the press release, 'Beef Packers, Inc. [BPI]…is recalling approximately 825,769 pounds of ground beef products that may be linked to an outbreak of salmonellosis...
Increased Short and Long-Term Risk of Inflammatory Bowel Disease After Salmonella or Campylobacter Gastroenteritis
Posted on August 06, 2009Kim O. Gradel, Hans L. Nielsen, Henrik C. Schønheyder, Tove Ejlertsen, Brian Kristensen, Henrik Nielsen, Received 12 December 2008; accepted 2 April 2009. published online 09 April 2009. Gastroenterology August 2009 (Vol. 137, Issue 2, Pages 415-418) Background Various commensal enteric and potentially pathogenic bacteria may be involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD)...
Ohio Officials Investigating Possible Link Between Day-Care Center and Shigella Illnesses
Posted on August 05, 2009Two children in Zanesville, Ohio that both attend the same daycare have tested positive for Shigella. The Zanesville Times Recorder reports: Health officials are investigating a shigella outbreak after two children who attend Rufus Putnam Daycare tested positive for the infectious disease...
More Products Involved in Plainview Milk Products Recall
Posted on August 05, 2009United Food Group announced several days ago that a number of its products contained instant non-fat dried milk subject to the already massive recall of food products made with instnat non-fat dried milk from Plainview Milk Products Cooperative...
More antibiotic-resistant Salmonella cases reported in Colorado
Posted on August 04, 2009The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) issued an updated Salmonella outbreak alert on Juy 31. In it, CDPHE announced that 21 cases of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Newport have been reported in Colorado. Most ill individuals sick with Salmonella Newport reported experiencing symptoms of Salmonella infection beginning in late June or early July, and while CDPHE did not announce that a second ground beef recall had been issued, the agency did warn consumers about the possibility that ground beef they have in their freezers could be contaminated with antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella...
Milan McDonalds Hepatitis A Outbreak: where will the numbers go?
Posted on August 03, 2009Unfortunately, those who dined at the Milan, Illinois McDonalds restaurant located at 400 West 1st Street during the month of July, and maybe even June, and are still not yet sick are not yet out of the woods. Hepatitis A has an incubation period--i...
Foodborne Hepatitis and Catastrophic Liver Failure
Posted on August 02, 2009The recent hepatitis A outbreak at a McDonalds in Milan, Illinois, has claimed at least 26 victims, and has caused the local health departments to innoculate 5,366 people, hopefully catching these folks in the modest window of time to prevent an infected person from becoming ill...
Pork Skins recalled from Salinas manufacturer
Posted on August 02, 2009Much has been said, and some would say done, about the problem of contaminated food, primarily lettuce and other leafy greens, coming out of the Salinas Valley, CA. It is estimated that the 2006 spinach outbreak cost the leafy greens industry over 175 million, to say nothing of the hundreds sickened, and five dead, as a result of the outbreak...
Colorado Health Officials Identify Wal-Mart as One Retailer of Recalled Cilantro
Posted on August 02, 2009The FDA announced several days ago that Frontera Produce of Texas was recalling cilantro due to potential contamination with Salmonella. Neither the FDA nor Frontera, however, provided the identities of the retailers where the cilantro in question had been sold...
Op-ed William D. Marler - Job Wanted - Food Poisoning Lawyer Looking for Work
Posted on July 31, 2009Today, after a bit of drama yesterday, HR 2749 - The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 - passed overwhelmingly and with serious bi-partisan support. It is now headed to the Senate with a likely stop over at a Conference Committee before it lands on the President's desk...
Statement by the President on House Passage of the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009
Posted on July 31, 2009From the Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release "Today the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, legislation that will raise food safety standards, allow the FDA to issue mandatory recalls of harmful products,and enhance our oversight of imported food...
The Congressional Master John Dingell Will Get Food Safety Bill Adopted--You Can Count On It!
Posted on July 30, 2009Congress today knocked H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, off the fast track. It fell six votes short of achieving the two-thirds necessary to pass without amendments under a suspension of House rules. In the next couple of days, it will come up under regular order, meaning it can be adopted with a simple majority after being subjected to amendments on the floor...
U.S. House Again Takes Up H.B. 2749 On The Floor; Later Afternoon Vote Scheduled
Posted on July 30, 2009The U.S. House of Representatives at 2:41 p.m. EDT began debating the rule under which H.B. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 will be considered later today. Debate on the rule is scheduled to take one hour and debate on the bill is scheduled for another hour...
House Ready To Resume Consideration of H.R. 2749, The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009
Posted on July 30, 2009Here is what is going to happen today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to get H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, passed: After the House gets through with the Defense Appropriations Act of 2010, it will turn to House Resolution 691, the rule for consideration of H...
Frontera Produce Recalls Cilantro Due to Possible Salmonella Contamination
Posted on July 30, 2009Frontera Produce, of Texas, is recalling a lot of cilantro that may be contaminated with Salmonella, according to The Packer. Frontera is not, however, releasing to the public the names of the retailers that received the recalled lot...
Food Safety Enhancement Act HR 2749 Passes on Second Try, Consumer Advocates Relieved
Posted on July 30, 2009Consumer advocates breathed a sigh of relief today as the House took a major step towards FDA reform by passing H.R. 2749, The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. After the provision fell just short of the supermajority needed under a suspension of the rules yesterday, the bill passed easily (283-142) under a closed rule...
Salmonella Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Memphis Father and Son Sickened by Food from Local BBQ
Posted on July 30, 2009An outbreak of Salmonella in Memphis Tennessee linked to a local bar-be-que restaurant has resulted in legal action. A lawsuit was filed today in the Circuit Court for Shelby County, Tennessee against A&R Bar-be-que, LLC. The lawsuit was filed by Seattle foodborne illness law firm Marler Clark and by John Day of the Tennessee firm Day & Blair on behalf of a Memphis father and son...
US House Passes Food Safety Enhancement Act Of 2009 With Large Bipartisan Majority
Posted on July 30, 2009Republicans did not like how the Democrats did it, but they provided enough votes Thursday to see the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 pass the U.S. House of Representatives with a strong bipartisan vote of 283-to-142. Just before passing the biggest food safety reform since 1938, the House Democrats had to turn back a 'last stand' attempt led by mostly rural Republicans to send the bill back to committee "with instructions...
Dingell Makes Move To Get H.R. 2749 Vote On House Floor
Posted on July 29, 2009The U.S. House of Representatives is now on the floor debating H.R. 2749 "to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to improve the safety of food in the global market, and for other purposes." Forty minutes of debate will be followed by a vote to suspend the rules and allow voting on final passage...
"Cook until juices run clear" is bad food safety advice
Posted on July 29, 2009Today's Boston Globe features a recipe for grilled chicken salad with pecans and cranberries. I make variations of this recipe frequently, and was excited to see whether the Boston Globe recipe included any new ingredients that I could add to my mix...
Fireside Coffee Co. Recalls Tea Products Over Salmonella Fears
Posted on July 29, 2009The FDA announced today that a Michigan company is recalling several flavors of tea due to possible contamination with Salmonella. The report states: Fireside Coffee Co., which is based in Swartz Creek [Michigan], is recalling vanilla, decaf vanilla, chocolate and spiced chai, because their ingredients include dry milk produced by Plainview Milk Products after June 2007, the U...
Consumer Advocates Frustrated by Defeat of HR 2749, Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009
Posted on July 29, 2009Today's failed attempt at comprehensive food safety reform left consumer advocates deeply disappointed, but ready to resume the fight. Many in the food safety community expected to have the votes to pass HR 2749, a bipartisan measure that unanimously passed out of committee in June, but the measure fell just short of the supermajority required under a suspension of the rules...
H.R. 2749 Killed (For Now) On Floor of U.S. Congress
Posted on July 29, 2009John Dingell came up six or seven votes short today, and failed to get food safety reform legislation passed through Congress. Dingell, the once powerful Michigan Democrat who lost his chairmanship of the Energy & Commerce Committee before the start of the 111th Congress, fell just short of getting the necessary two-thirds majority vote to suspend the rules and adopt H...
Kidney Trafficking Case Highlights Difficulties Facing HUS Survivors
Posted on July 28, 2009The news media has been full of reports concerning the arrests of more than 40 people folllowing a corruption investigation in New Jersey. Among the more startling aspects of the story are the allegations that those arrested were involved in the trafficking of human kidneys...
Mississippi Baptists Sue Over Their January Illnesses: But Actual Cause Remains A Mystery
Posted on July 28, 2009Last January 18th, a group from the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church of Itta Bena dined at Greenwood Pizza Hut in northern Mississippi. Afterwards 19 people were taken to the hospital with symptoms of vomiting and nausea. The Mississippi Health Department investigated but could not find the source of the illnesses...
Craft brewers concerned about proposed water treatment in Portland
Posted on July 27, 2009In a July 23, 2009 editorial titled, 'The potential end of Beervana as we know it,' The Oregonian's editorial board discusses the Portland City Council's impending decision on whether to approve a $385 million proposal to begin filtering water from the Bull Run watershed, the source of Portland's municipal water...
Hepatitis A linked to Milan McDonalds tops 25 and that number may likely grow - over 5,000 people received IG or Hepatitis A vaccines
Posted on July 25, 2009Hepatitis A is a communicable (or contagious) disease. The virus is transmitted by the 'fecal – oral route,' (human feces gets into your mouth) generally from person-to-person, or via contaminated food or water. Outbreaks, like the one at the Milan, Illinois McDonalds, associated with food have been increasingly implicated as a significant source of Hepatitis A infection...
Hepatitis A report "fell through cracks"
Posted on July 24, 2009WQAD reported today on a Rock Island County Sheriffs Department investigation into the hepatitis A outbreak in the Quad-Cities area. The outbreak has thus far resulted in at least 25 confirmed hepatitis A cases since June, most allegedly linked to the consumption of food and beverages served at the Milan McDonald's restaurant, where 'patient zero' worked while infectious...
Ground beef contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Salmonella recalled
Posted on July 23, 2009The United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced that King Soopers, Inc. of Denver, Colorado, was recalling 466,236 pounds of ground beef products due to potential Salmonella Typhimurim DT104 contamination yesterday...
Missouri DNR Hides Evidence of High E. coli Levels in Lake of the Ozarks
Posted on July 23, 2009Scott Dye, program director for The National Sierra Club Water Sentinels Program was spot on today when he said 'DNR stands for Do Not Release.' The State of Missouri's Department of Natural Resources decided not to release evidence of excessive E...
Was The Communicable Disease Reporting System Broke Or Just Ignorred In Rock Island County Hepatitis A Outbreak?
Posted on July 22, 2009In the final analysis, the Milan McDonald's Hepatitis A outbreak is not simply about who is lying or who is inept in this single instance. It is about whether the public health system for reporting and managing communicable diseases really works...
Lettuce recalled for Salmonella contamination
Posted on July 22, 2009Tanimura & Antle, Inc. recalled one lot of romaine lettuce for Salmonella contamination yesterday after a Wisconsin Department of Agriculture test came back positive for the bacterium. According to a press release on the Tanimura & Antle website: Within hours of being notified yesterday, Tanimura & Antle, Inc...
Class Action Hepatitis A Lawsuit Against McDonald's - Ten Thousand People May Have Been Exposed to Hepatitis A at Milan Restaurant
Posted on July 21, 2009A class action lawsuit was filed today in the Circuit Court of the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit of Rock Island County against McDonald's Inc., and Kevin Murphy, the owner of the McDonald's restaurant at 400 West First Street in Milan, Illinois. Marler Clark, the Seattle-based foodborne illness law firm, and the Illinois firm of Foote, Meyers, Mielke & Flowers LLC, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the named plaintiff, Cody Patterson, and all others who were forced to receive Immune globulin (IG) shots after being exposed to the hepatitis A virus (HAV) at the Milan McDonald's...
FDA Announces Recall of Infant "Teethers" Due to Bacteria
Posted on July 21, 2009The FDA announced today that Luv N' Care Ltd. of Monroe, Louisiana is voluntarily recalling gel-filled "teethers" nationwide due to concerns that the gel may be contaminated with bacteria. According to the FDA, the gel was found to contain "bacillus subtilis and Bacillus circulans bacteria...
Opinion - Roy Costa - McDonald's Hepatitis A Scandal May Involve Health Department
Posted on July 20, 2009Roy E Costa, R.S., M.S./M.B.A. In yet another blatant case of disregard for public health and safety by the food industry we have a report that the McDonald's in Rock Island, Illinois at the center of a hepatitis outbreak lied about their knowledge of an infected employee...
KWQC TV6 Drops a Bombshell - Former Milan Illinois Hepatitis A McDonald's Employee was Ill in June and Told Employer
Posted on July 19, 2009TV6 once again digs for the truth in what is quickly turning into both a PR nightmare for McDonalds and the Rock Island Health Department, as well as a growing public health disaster. Those now counted ill are at least 20 with 11 so far hospitalized...
Illinois Health Department Closes Milan Illinois McDonald's Due to Hepatitis A - Immune Globulin (IG) Shot to be Given to Customers
Posted on July 18, 2009Deirdre Cox Baker (Ms. Hepatitis of the Quad-Cities) reports this evening that the Rock Island County Health Department is investigating a connection between a Hepatitis A outbreak and a McDonald's restaurant in Milan, Illinois. In fact, the Health Department has ordered the McDonalds closed...
Marler Opinion - McDonald's Hepatitis A Problem - How Many Times Does Lightening Need to Strike Before You Wake the Hell Up?
Posted on July 17, 2009I was 'struck' how easy it is to spend a few moments on Google to see what a problem McDonalds seems to have with Hepatitis A infected employees. I really do not get it? Why risk it? The Hepatitis A vaccine is a 2 dose series with the 2 doses given at least 6 months apart for lasting protection against infection by the Hepatitis A virus...
E. sakazakii infection from powdered infant formula: Know the risks
Posted on July 16, 2009In early May of 2007, the Center for Acute Disease Epidemiology (CADE) of the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) was notified that a two-week-old premature infant had been diagnosed with Enterobacter sakazakii (E. sakazakii) infection. The child, a twin, was born at a low birth weight, and was fed a mixture of powdered infant formula and breast milk while in the NICU...
19 Hepatitis A cases Linked to Milan, Illinois McDonald's was preventable says Food Safety Advocate and Attorney William Marler
Posted on July 16, 2009As of Thursday afternoon, there were 19 confirmed cases of Hepatitis A. 13 are in Rock Island County, and six more are being reported in Henry, Mercer, Warren and Woodford Counties. John David reporter for WQAD has reported that: 'Lunch customers coming to the Milan McDonalds on Thursday found the doors locked...
Marler Clark Files Second E. coli Lawsuit against JBS Swift Washington State Toddler Gravely Ill due to E. coli-Contaminated Beef
Posted on July 16, 2009A second lawsuit stemming from the current Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli) recall by JBS Swift Beef Company was filed today in the US District Court, Eastern District of Washington. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the family of a young Selah-area child who fell ill with an E...
First Responders In Foodborne Disease Outbreaks Now Have Common Guidelines To Work With
Posted on July 16, 2009The last time anybody counted, there were 2,864 local health departments operating in every state except Rhode Island. Some are units of state governments, cities and counties operate many, and others are a state-local hybrid. To think that the so-called 'first responders' on the frontlines of food-borne illness outbreaks would ever be on the 'same page' might be expecting too much...
William Marler Op-ed: Dave Theno had it right - Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius should pay attention
Posted on July 15, 2009Lauren Beth Rudolph died on December 28, 1992 in her mother's arms due to complications of an E. coli O157:H7 infection - Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. She was only 6 years, 10 months, and 10 days old when she died. Her death, the deaths of three other children, and the sicknesses of 600 others, were eventually linked to E...
The Next Foodborne Threat? MRSA infections from contaminated meat
Posted on July 15, 2009In an interesting article published online today, the author discusses the growing threat to the public health posed by the presence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in our food supply. See Stephanie Woodard, Concerns Over Superbugs in our Food Supply, available at www...
Is the Convenience of Bagged Spinach and Lettuce Worth the E. coli Bacteria Risk and Damage to the Environment?
Posted on July 14, 2009A battle for the soul of agriculture is being waged in California in a new sort of green revolution -- and counter-revolution. Jackson West "If we want to have bagged spinach and lettuce available 24/7, 12 months of the year, it comes with costs," lawyer Bill Marler told the San Francisco Chronicle...
Consent Degree Reached Between Peregrina Cheese Inc. & FDA; Brooklyn Factory To Remain Open; Recalls Everything Since March 17, 2009
Posted on July 14, 2009Brooklyn's Peregrina Cheese Inc. and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York have entered into a 16-page Consent Degree with many requirements---including the recall of all food products the food company has distributed since March 17, 2009...
Antibiotic use in food animals addressed by House committee
Posted on July 14, 2009The New York Times reports on yesterday's House Committee on Rules hearing on "H.R. 1549 - Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009." In today's article, titled, 'Administration Seeks to Restrict Antibiotics in Livestock,' the Times refers to testimony by FDA Deputy Commissioner, Joshua M...
FDA Reports New Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough E. coli O157:H7 Numbers - 76 Sickened in 31 States, 11 with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome
Posted on July 14, 2009According to the FDA, as of July 10, the CDC reports that 76 persons from 31 states have been infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7. Thirty-five persons have been hospitalized, 11 with a severe complication called Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome.
Consent Degree Reached Between Listeria Plagued Peregrina Cheese Inc. & FDA; Brooklyn Factory To Remain Open; Now Recalls Everything Since March 17, 2009
Posted on July 14, 2009Brooklyn's Listeria plagued Peregrina Cheese Inc. and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York have entered into a 16-page Consent Degree with many requirements---including the recall of all food products the food company has distributed since March 17, 2009...
Campylobacter levels in poultry increase after transport
Posted on July 13, 2009Researchers at Bristol University recently presented new findings regarding Campylobacter contamination in poultry populations. Professor Tom Humphrey from the University's Department of Clinical Veterinary Science, led a new study showing that Campylobacter levels increase in the gut of chickens and other farm animals when they are transported...
More Doubletalk from USDA on E. coli and Swift Meat Recall
Posted on July 13, 2009Blatantly (and self-servingly) rewriting history, in Friday's Wall Street Journal, the USDA is reported as stating the following: The USDA has been considering for more than a year a policy change that would allow whole beef cuts to be considered "adulterated" -- and thus subject to recall -- even if they aren't "intended for use in ground beef," according to Daniel Engeljohn, a deputy assistant administrator for USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, or FSIS...
Ground Beef Recall Announced by E. S. Miller Packing Co
Posted on July 13, 2009E. S. Miller Packing Co., a Montgomery, Ill., establishment is recalling approximately 219 pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today...
FDA Inspection of Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough Plant finds Plant Design and Workmanship does not allow for "appropriate sanitary conditions" and "proper cleaning."
Posted on July 11, 2009After inspecting the Danville Plant on 06/18/2009, 06/19/2009, 06/22/2009, 06/23/2009, 06/24/2009, 06/25/2009, 06/26/2009, 07/07/2009, 07/08/2009, and 07/09/2009, the FDA posted the following observations. The full report can be found by clicking on image to left...
Sprout Recall Due to Possible Salmonella Contamination
Posted on July 10, 2009The FDA announced recently another recall of sprouts. Here is the release: Kowalke Family Sprouts of Los Angeles CA is recalling all Kowalke Family Sprouts Brand Alfalfa Products with sell-by dates from June 18 through June 30 because they may be contaminated with Salmonella, which can cause serious illness...
Georgia Peppers Recalled in Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts
Posted on July 10, 2009Georgia's agricultural problems continue as Anaheim peppers are recalled from distribution in Ohio and two other states. WTTE and the Associated Press report that Herring Produce is recalling half-bushel boxes of the peppers due to Salmonella contamination...
CDC to Update Nestle Cookie Dough E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak
Posted on July 10, 2009We have learned that the CDC will update the Nestle Cookie Dough E. coli O157:H7 outbreak shortly. The new numbers will be as follows: 74 cases from 32 states - all match by PFGE testing Onset ranges from March 16 to June 11 72% female, age range 2-65 years (median age 15) 34 Hospitalizations 10 with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS)
Department of Justice Closes Cheese Plant
Posted on July 09, 2009In a press release issued July 7, 2009, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had filed a complaint seeking an injunction against Peregrina Cheese, Inc, of Brooklyn, NY, and two of its officers. If granted by the Court, the injunction would temporarily stop the company from manufacturing and distributing food...
General Mills Recalls "Nut Clusters" on Salmonella Fears
Posted on July 09, 2009Another day, another product pulled over Salmonella fears. Minnpost.com is reporting that General Mills has recalled "some" of its Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters products due to concerns over potentially contaminated pecans. The recall includes products with the following "best if used by dates": 07MAR2010, 08MAR2010, 09MAR2010, 10MAR2010, 11MAR2010...
Death by Chocolate - How Chocolate Chips Might Get Contaminated
Posted on July 09, 2009The media is reporting the tragic death of Vincent Smith. As Mr. Smith was emptying pieces of solid chocolate into the melting vat at Cocoa Services, he slipped from a platform into the eight-foot deep mixing unit. A spokesman for the local prosecutor's office said Mr...
Three strains of E. coli O157:H7 found in cookie plant
Posted on July 09, 2009ABC News reported today that three separate strains of E. coli O157:H7 have been found in a Nestle USA cookie dough processing plant. ABC's Briant Hartman writes about the E. coli testing: Those tests, according to sources familiar with the investigation and confirmed by the FDA, determined the genetic fingerprint of the E...
Two "Health" Products Recalled Over Salmonella Fears
Posted on July 08, 2009This is no way to get healthy, and certainly much too dangerous of a way to lose weight. The number of recalls related to Salmonella grew again today with the addition of two new products - "Stealth" brand powdered dietary supplement and "Weigh Down" chocolate flavor nutrition drink...
Back to the Future: Obama Recycling Clinton-Era Food Safety Initiatives as New
Posted on July 07, 2009At 10:30 AM today, Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, HHS Secretary Sebelius, and Vice-President Biden will issue 'key finding,' according to an email from Nick Shapiro, Office of the Press Secretary, in The White House, that was sent to several media outlets...
An Iowa Child hospitalized with HUS: Is JBS to Blame?
Posted on July 07, 2009KSFY in Sioux Falls, Iowa, reports that a one-year-old boy from Sioux Center is currently hospitalized with hemolytic uremic syndrome at a Sioux Falls area hospital. There are no reported "confirmed" cases in the JBS outbreak from Iowa ...
First E. coli Lawsuit Filed agaist JBS Swift
Posted on July 06, 2009The first lawsuit stemming from the current E. coli O157:H7 (E. coli) recall by JBS Swift Beef Company of Greeley, Colorado that has been linked to 23 E. coli illnesses in California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Wisconsin was filed today on behalf of an Albuquerque-area child who was infected with E...
Consumer Trust in Food Safety in the U.S. Plummets Because of Rise in Recalls
Posted on July 06, 2009A little over two weeks ago, IBM released the results of a survey that it had conducted among adult grocery shoppers in the ten largest cities in the United States (100 in each city). The survey was intended to gather opinions about food safety issues, and what it found is as disappointing as it is not surprising...
Michigan Health Department Links E. coli O157:H7 Cases to JBS Swift Beef
Posted on July 06, 2009According to UPI reports quoting the CDC, At least twenty-three people infected with a strain of E. coli O157:H7 with a particular "DNA fingerprint" have been reported from nine states. The illnesses appear to be associated with products subject to the recalls of 41,280 pounds of beef products from JBS Swift Beef Co...
First E. coli Lawsuit Filed against JBS Swift
Posted on July 06, 2009The first lawsuit stemming from the current E. coli O157:H7 (E. coli) recall by JBS Swift Beef Company of Greeley, Colorado that has been linked to 23 E. coli illnesses in California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Wisconsin was filed today on behalf of an Albuquerque-area child who was infected with E...
Cuyahoga County Ohio has at Least Five E. coli O157:H7 cases, Two in Olmsted Falls and One from Strongsville
Posted on July 04, 2009The Cuyahoga County Board of Health confirms that three children have contracted E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. Two more cases are under investigation. The three children with confirmed cases also developed Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS). "Five cases is very unusual for us to have," says Terry Allan, the health commissioner in Cuyahoga County...
North Dakota Salmonella Outrbeak Traced to Unlicensed Caterer
Posted on July 04, 2009According to the Jamestown Sun, health officials in Maclean County, North Dakota have linked an outbreak of Salmonella illnesses to an unlicensed caterer. Aggie Jennings, who ran the catering company, has been ordered by health department officials to cease operations...
Raw Milk Can Contain Human Pathogens
Posted on July 04, 2009In a July 1 letter that appeared in the Stillwater News Press titled, "Know the Facts," Director of the Food Safety Division for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, Stan Stromberg, explained the milk pasteurization process: In the High Temperature/Short Time process, which is typically used in milk pasteurization, the milk is forced between metal plates or through pipes heated on the outside by hot water, and is heated to 161 degrees F for 15 to 20 seconds, followed by quick cooling to about 39 degrees...
President's Choice E. coli O157:H7 Beef Recalled (JBS Swift Beef)- So, What Is President Obama Grilling For the 4th of July?
Posted on July 04, 2009News yesterday from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), which is warning the public not to consume certain beef products described below because they may have been contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. This recall of beef products in Canada is related to the expanded recall of beef products in the USA by JBS Swift Beef Company, Greeley, Colorado due to possible E...
FSIS Releases Names of More Grocery Stores That Received E. coli O157:H7 Tainted JBS Swift Meat
Posted on July 03, 2009It really is a bit hard to imagine what today was like for JBS Swift and the FSIS - checking the list of retailers that might have received the 420,000 pounds of E. coli O157:H7 meat. This morning a few names trickled out - this evening a torrent, tomorrow a flood? Here is the most recent list: Price Chopper Hannaford Stop & Shop Food 4 Less Fry's Smith's Costco Sams Club Kroger SAV a Lot Knight Super Foods #4 Weldon's Meat Market Jasper Mercantile Keeney's Food Mart Sweetbay All DAY AM PM MART Hobby's Hoagies Produce SHRTN HTL Produce Giant Here is the most recent list (sure to expand in the coming days).
Nonfat Dry Milk Is Third Ingredient Recall Of Year: Follows Model FDA Used With Peanuts And Pistachios
Posted on July 03, 2009For the third time this year, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is carefully orchestrating a 'voluntary recall' of all products containing a certain ingredient. This time it is products with nonfat dry milk produced by the Minnesota-based Plainview Milk Products Cooperative that are the main targets of the recall...
Picnic risks extend beyond food poisoning
Posted on July 03, 2009Over the 4th of July holiday, many Americans will get together for picnics, barbeques, and other gatherings. For many, food will take center stage, and hopefully proper food safety practices will ensure that in the days following these gatherings people will not be doubled-over in pain, running to and from the bathroom because of something they ate...
Wegmans Salmonella Anaheim Peppers Recalled - No Illnesses Yet Reported
Posted on July 03, 2009Batch/UPC Code: Anaheim peppers sold since June 11, 2009. Reason for Recall: Wegmans has removed fresh Anaheim peppers from its Produce departments due to the possibility of salmonella contamination. The FDA is currently investigating the situation...
Wegmans, Peppers, Salmonella?
Posted on July 03, 2009Wegman's grocery chain (73 stores in five states--MD, PA, NJ, NY, and VA) issued a recall yesterday for all fresh Anaheim peppers sold in its produce departments due to concerns of possible Salmonella contamination. The recall involves all Anaheim peppers sold at Wegman's since June 11, 2009...
Dunkin Doughnuts' Salmonella Worries
Posted on July 03, 2009I'm no longer surprised when we get word of an outbreak associated with some new, seemingly innocuous food item. Cookie dough for Christ's sake. Elissa Elan reported this week that Dunkin Doughnuts learned that its supplier of instant non-fat dried milk and whey protein (Plainview Milk Products Cooperative of Plainview, Minn) had detected Salmonella on some of its equipment used to produce the products...
Six Michigan Victims in JBS Swift E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak
Posted on July 02, 2009Michigan is no stranger to outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 . . . particularly over the course of the last year. The CDC reports six culture-confirmed, PFGE matched cases in the JBS Swift outbreak and recall. Michigan also counted many of its residents as victims in the E...
95 People Stricken by E. coli-tainted Cookies and Meat - Nestle and JBS Swift - Time to Take Care of Your Customers
Posted on July 02, 2009In the last several weeks Nestle and JBS Swift customers have been hospitalized (some still are) with medical bills in the millions of dollars. Those that developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), face a life-time of kidney and bowel complications that will cost families tens of millions of dollars...
FSIS and JBS Swift reveal partial distribution of E. coli Tainted Meat
Posted on July 02, 2009More than a week after JBS Swift initiated a nationwide recall of E. coli-tainted meat, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and JBS Swift have taken the necessary steps of alerting consumers as to which retail outlets received the beef...
An E. coli free 4th of July
Posted on July 02, 2009There are a few key elements to having a good 4th of July. First, don't shoot off your fireworks by hand. Second, illegal fireworks are fun, but they're illegal for a reason, so see #1 if you're planning to light any M 1000's. Third, watch the Seattle fireworks from our offices, where you can simultaneously see the shows at the Space Needle, Lake Union, and maybe even Bill's house (Marler, not Gates, though Gates has been known to put on quite a show too) Finally, and far more importantly than the size or amount of fireworks you light, grill safely...
CDC Announces Link Between JBS Swift and 17 E. coli O157:H7 Illnesses in California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Wisconsin
Posted on July 01, 2009Several state health departments, CDC, and the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) are investigating a multi-state outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections. On June 24, FSIS issued a notice about a recall of 41,280 pounds of beef products from JBS Swift Beef Company that may be contaminated with E...
Food Democracy Now Weighs in on Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Leader
Posted on July 01, 2009Dave Murphy - Food Safety First - Help Send Bill Marler Packin' to DC! It's time to get serious about food safety. The USDA has yet to appoint the Under Secretary for Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) – and it's time that we had a real reformer at the USDA...
PR Lessons from a Multi-Billion Dollar Corporation - Nestle Goes Part of the Way in Dealing with its E. coli O157:H7 Problem
Posted on June 30, 2009From a Nestle press release from yesterday afternoon: Nestle USA's Baking Division was informed today by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it has found and confirmed evidence of E. coli 0 (sic – its a O) 157:H7 in a retained production sample of 16...
E. Coli Outbreak Investigation Tries To Solve Mystery By Turning Focus To Nestle Flour Supplier
Posted on June 30, 2009Nestle USA's flour supplier for its Danville, VA cookie dough plant is now the focus of a joint investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The name of the flour supplier was not made available...
How to Safely Cook a Burger (NOT according to the USDA)
Posted on June 30, 2009Yesterday, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service issued a largely useless, but still widely published, news release entitled 'Independence Day: Drills for the Grill.' See News Release, www.fsis.usda.gov/News_&_Events/NR_062909_01/index...
CDC Reports 72 E. coli O157:H7 Illnesses in 30 States Linked to Nestle Cookie Dough
Posted on June 30, 2009As of Tuesday, June 30, 2009, 72 persons infected with a strain of E. coli O157:H7 with a particular DNA fingerprint have been reported from 30 states. Of these, 51 have been confirmed by an advanced DNA test as having the outbreak strain; these confirmatory test results are pending on the others...
July 4th BBQ? Don't Cook to Color, Use A Thermometer for All Ground Beef
Posted on June 30, 2009As we head into the holiday weekend, we are In the midst of another outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 related to ground beef. Remarkably, despite the prevalence of outbreaks and the severity of the risks involved, the proper messages on handling and preparing ground beef can still prove elusive...
Minnesota Company Recalls Milk Products Over Salmonella Fears
Posted on June 29, 2009The FDA announced a recall of milk products on its website yesterday: Plainview Milk Products Cooperative, Plainview, Minn., is voluntarily recalling instant nonfat dried milk, whey protein, fruit stabilizers, and gums (thickening agents) that it has manufactured over the past two years, because they might be contaminated with Salmonella...
The "Guess Who Inspects It Game": Nestle E. coli Cookie Dough Edition
Posted on June 29, 2009The recent (and still unfolding) E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to contaminated Toll House cookie dough manufactured by Nestle has no shortage of lessons to teach, including the reminder that this deadly pathogen can find its way into nearly any food product if sufficient care is not taken during its manufacture...
How do you teach your friends about food safety?
Posted on June 29, 2009This Saturday, I met three friends for lunch. As the conversation got underway, one of them asked me how working at Marler Clark had changed my eating habits. It's a question I hear all the time, and one I have a ready answer for. I don't eat sprouts...
ABC Brian Hartman Reports - "Smoking Gun" Found in Nestle Cookie Dough E. coli Scare
Posted on June 29, 2009E. coli O157:H7 was found today at the Danville, Virginia plant Nestle makes Toll House Cookie Dough. According to Brian Hartman of ABC News and the Associated Press, According to an FDA official, the bacteria was found at the plant in an unopened package of raw chocolate chip cookie dough...
CDC - 24 Illnesses in Multiple States Appear Linked - JBS Swift Beef Company Expands Recall of Beef Products to over 420,000 Pounds Due To E. coli O157:H7 Contamination
Posted on June 28, 2009It appears that E. coli season is now upon us with what now appears to be the 8th recall of the year. On June 24 JBS Swift Beef Company (former ConAgra Plant famous for 2002 E. coli Outbreak) recalled approximately 41,280 pounds of beef products contaminated with E...
JBS Swift E. coli Recalls Linked to Illnesses in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin? And Canada?
Posted on June 28, 2009Sometime in the early hours of June 28, JBS Swift Beef Company expanded the approximately 40,000 pounds of 'assorted beef primals' recalled on June 24 to include another approximately 380,000 pounds of 'assorted beef primals" due to E. coli O157:H7 contamination...
Marler Clark Calls for JBS Swift and FSIS to Reveal Retail Distribution of E. coli-Tainted Beef - Contaminated Meat Has Sickened at Least Eighteen to Twenty-four People
Posted on June 28, 2009In the early morning hours of Sunday, June 28, the JBS Swift Beef Company expanded the earlier recall of 41,280 pounds of beef contaminated with the highly toxic pathogen E. coli O157:H7 to include an additional 380,000 pounds. The beef recalls are FSIS Class I, meaning the 'use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death...
"Where's The (Recalled) Beef? Massive Expansion of JBS Beef Linked To Multi-State E. Coli O157:H7 Outbreak And Still No List of Retailers From FSIS
Posted on June 28, 2009At least when Nestle USA announced that it was recalling all its Toll House cookie products, the public pretty much knew which retailers were involved. Every retail grocery in the country provides generous space for Nestle products. Nestle is currently at the center of the largest E...
William Marler Opinion - Sellers of E. coli - Stop Blaming the Victims
Posted on June 27, 2009'It was not the failure of the cookie dough manufacturer for not keeping cattle feces (E. coli) out of cookie dough that sickened the child, it is the fault of the parent who allowed the child to eat the dough.' I have received several calls and emails like the above over the last few days as the country has been ensnared once again in a nationwide recall – this time cookie dough – that has sickened at least 69 in 30 States – mostly people (girls) under the age of 18...
William Marler Opinion - Who Poisoned Our Cookies With E. coli?
Posted on June 27, 2009What if the cookie dough E. coli outbreak actually happened this way? At 10:00 PM last night between yet another story about Michael Jackson's death, a foreign Network begin airing a video taken inside a manufacturing facility showing someone treating a batch of cookie dough with an unknown liquid...
William Marler Opinion - E. coli O157:H7 is a deadly bacterium - How to Fight Back!
Posted on June 27, 2009You cannot see it, taste it, or smell it. 250,000 E. coli O157:H7 (E. coli) bacteria will fit on the head of a pin. Ten to 50 will kill your child or your grandmother. More likely due the expertise of Children's Hospitals, and other top medical centers around the country, deaths at times are avoided, however, just last week – on Father's Day – I met with yet another family grieving over the loss of a child to Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS)...
69 Ill in 29 States with E. coli O157:H7 Linked to Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough - 34 Hospitalized - 9 with Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome
Posted on June 26, 200969 persons infected with a strain of E. coli O157:H7 with a particular DNA fingerprint have been reported from 29 states. Of these, 46 have been confirmed by an advanced DNA test as having the outbreak strain; these confirmatory test results are pending on the others...
Oregon Department of Agriculture Issues Mussel Warning
Posted on June 26, 2009The Oregon Department of Agriculture announced today that beaches from the south jetty of the Columbia River to Neptune State Park, south of Yachats, have been closed to recreational mussel harvesting due to the presence of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins in those areas...
Genetic Fingerprinting - PFGE and MLVA - Scientists Expand Testing Methodology to Distinguish Cookie Dough E. coli Illness Cases
Posted on June 26, 2009The CDC has confirmed that 69 people, ages 2 to 67, are linked to an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to the consumption of refrigerated Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough. The links are both the food histories as well as the discovery of the outbreak strain of the E...
Looking at Leftovers - Lack of Contaminated Product is Not an Alibi
Posted on June 26, 2009We are in the midst of another sprouts recall. Sprouts from Kowalke Organics from Culver City, California are being pulled from shelves over potential contamination with Salmonella. According to the LA Times: "Mike Matthews, Kowalke's owner, told the Associated Press that only one package -- with the sell-by date of June 21 -- tested positive for salmonella, so far...
Nestle Plant Refused Full Cooperation with FDA
Posted on June 26, 2009Two reports of past inspections were made public today. The most notable inspection occurred in September 2006 at the Nestle plant in Danville, Virginia where it manufactures cookie dough products, as well as stuffed pastas and pasta sauces. A number of deficiencies were noted as part of the inspection...
Food Safety Still Getting A "D" In Obama Era, Despite Early Moves To Enter 21st Century
Posted on June 25, 2009Consumer Confidence Has Crumbled Regarding Food Safety, Thanks to Massive Product Recalls...And That "D" Grade Is For Dangerous. By Eddie Gehman Kohan, Editor in Chef of Obama Foodorama A new study from IBM finds that sixty percent of eaters surveyed are worried that the food they consume may well be poisoned...
Another Opportunity to Talk Sprouts
Posted on June 25, 2009In the midst of yet another sprouts recall (see Bill's recent blog-post), I received an email from a concerned sprout grower. I will freely admit that I feel for the people, and the businesses, involved in the manfacture or sale of food products (intrinsically risky or not) who are not the immediate source of a recalled or contaminated product...
Another Recall of Beef Products for E. coli O157:H7 Courtesy of Greeley, Colorado
Posted on June 25, 2009According to a USDA Press Release issued on June 24, 2009, "JBS Swift Beef Company, a Greeley, Colo., establishment is recalling approximately 41,280 pounds of beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7." The USDA Press Release can be found here: www...
A Big Reason Outbreaks involving meat are so big: Mega-Meat Plants
Posted on June 25, 2009In 1992 and 1993 when the Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak occurred, and I got my introduction as an attorney to outbreak-related litigation, the meat industry looked very different than it does so today. The company that manufactured the hamburger patties for Jack in the Box—Vons Companies, Inc...
Vaccine prevents hepatitis A
Posted on June 25, 2009Hepatitis A (HAV) is a foodborne illness that is relatively uncommon in nations with developed sanitation systems. Despite this, approximately one-third of the United States population has at some point become infected with the hepatitis A virus, which causes an illness that ranges in severity from a mild illness lasting only a few weeks to a severe illness lasting several months...
Dear Mr. President and Secretary Vilsack - Calling for Real Food Safety Reform: Bill Marler for FSIS
Posted on June 25, 2009June 24th, 2009 By David Murphy Just when America thought it was safe to go back into the grocery store, another food outbreak wakes us up to the fact that there is something seriously wrong with our food safety system. This time it's Nestle Toll House cookie dough with E...
The Failures of Third-Party Food Safety Audits
Posted on June 25, 2009If everyone who takes a test is getting an A, how hard can the test be? This is the question that occurred to me yesterday watching a fine presentation by Dr. Paul A. Hall, Ph.D. Dr. Hall was the speaker who presented immediately before I did at the Almond Board of California's 13th Annual Food Quality and Safety Symposium...
4th of July Recess Gives Opponents To HR 2749, The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 Time To Mount Grassroots Lobbying Campaign
Posted on June 25, 2009Small farmers, organic growers, raw milk drinkers and many others are organizing themselves on the Internet to kill HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. And if there is not a vote on the floor of the U.S. House before the ten-day 4th of July break, opponents will have more time to rally others to their cause...
Orca Distribution May Have Repacked Recalled Pistachios
Posted on June 24, 2009The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned consumers not to eat two brands of pistachios repacked by Orca Distribution West Inc. of Anaheim, California. The brands are: * California Prime Produce * Orange County Orchards The pistachios may be contaminated with Salmonella, an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems...
Colorado Child Sickened by E. coli Cookie Dough Files Lawsuit
Posted on June 24, 2009An E. coli lawsuit was filed yesterday on behalf of a Denver-area child who became gravely ill with E. coli O157:H7 after eating refrigerated Nestle Toll House cookie dough. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the family of Madison Sedbrook by her attorneys, William Marler of the Seattle-based foodborne illness law firm Marler Clark and Kara Knowles of the Denver firm Montgomery, Little, Soran, & Murray...
Consumer Warning: Don't Eat Sprouts!
Posted on June 24, 2009For any of you out there audacious enough to still consume raw sprouts (click here for a recent discussion of the problem), today's announcement from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) provides yet another example of why eating raw sprouts is simply not worth the risk...
Madison Sedbrook: Nestle cookie dough victim
Posted on June 24, 2009We filed suit yesterday in Federal Court for the District of Colorado on behalf of Madison Sedbrook, who is six years old, and her parents Tristan and Cindy. Madison ate cookie dough on multiple occasions in April 2009 and developed a severe gastrointestinal illness...
Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) and E. coli O157:H7
Posted on June 23, 2009We have already heard from several families whose children have developed hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) after contracting E. coli O157:H7 from Nestle cookie dough. Most often, though we certainly see cases where the pathalogic process described below affects other organs, HUS affects the kidneys...
You Want a Glass of Milk with that E. coli Cookie?
Posted on June 22, 2009Although not really a good defense in the arenas of law or common sense, I was struck by how quickly Nestle suggested that the consumers sickened by eating their contaminated cookie dough were themselves at fault for ignoring the recommendation on the label that the cookies be 'bake before consuming...
First Lawsuit in E. coli Cookie Dough Outbreak Filed by Marler Clark
Posted on June 22, 2009A young woman who was hospitalized for seven days after eating raw cookie dough made by Nestle USA filed suit today against the company in California Superior Court, San Mateo County. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 18-year-old Jillian Collins by her attorneys, William Marler of the Seattle-based foodborne illness law firm Marler Clark and Terry O' Reilly of the San Mateo firm Reilly Collins...
North Dakota Salmonella outbreak may be linked to caterer
Posted on June 22, 2009According to an article in the Bismarck Tribune, the North Dakota Department of Health is investigating a Salmonella outbreak among McLean County residents. The apparent outbreak occurred last week, and sickened members of two groups who ate foods catered by the same unlicensed caterer...
Mom, Judy Akers, unknowingly buys daughter, Melissa Kitchens Nestles Toll House Cookie Dough Contaminated with E. coli O157:H7
Posted on June 21, 2009Lynne Terry from The Oregonian reports on a parent's worst nightmare – buying food that sickens your child and husband. Here is part of the story: One day while shopping, a Gresham mom, who had long shunned sweets to keep her family's diet healthy, gave in to her daughter's pleas for a special treat...
Nestle Toll House Raw Cookie Dough Linked to E. coli Outbreak in 28 States
Posted on June 19, 2009The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) issued a press release on June 18 about an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 which has been under investigation by several state health departments and the CDC. The CDPHE release revealed that 66 people in 28 states have been sickened, and that epidemiological evidence is strong that the vehicle is Nestle Toll House uncooked cookie dough...
Nestle Blames Victims for E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak
Posted on June 19, 2009With reports of 66 cases of E. coli O157:H7 across 28 states, Nestle has announced a recall of its Cookie Dough Products. The illnesses include 25 hospitalizations, and 7 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). HUS is a life-threatening complication of E...
Potentially E. coli-contaminated cookie dough still being sold
Posted on June 19, 2009I am now in possession of potentially E. coli-contaminated Nestle Toll House cookie dough. In an attempt to learn more about the warning labels Nestle prints on its cookie dough packaging, I set out for the supermarket closest to my house. That store happens to be a Fred Meyer...
Nestle Cookie Dough E. coli Outbreak Update: 5 Illnesses in Washington
Posted on June 19, 2009According to local news channel Komo 4, the Washington State Department of Health announced this morning that five people in Washington state are believed to have been sickened by the E. coli O157:H7-contaminated Nestle cookie dough. Two of those sickened were hospitalized...
Cookies and E. coli: Here's an E. coli story we will never forget
Posted on June 19, 2009Today's recall of Nestle cookie dough got me thinking about other E. coli O157:H7 cases that we've recently handled. John McDonald was a 5-year-old boy who we represented in a ground beef outbreak that occurred in 2007. Unfortunately, John's illness was about as bad as an illness can get without causing a death...
Nestle Cookie Dough E. coli Outbreak Update: Further Details On 5 WA Cases
Posted on June 19, 2009The Washington State Department of Health has just released further details on the five confirmed Washington E. coli O157:H7 cases connected to the emerging nationwide Nestle cookie dough outbreak: -- May 6, Grays Harbor County woman, -- May 12, Thurston County teenage girl, hospitalized, -- May 15, Pierce County girl, -- May 20, King County boy, -- May 21, King County girl, hospitalized...
E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak Illnesses Linked to Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough Confirmed in Colorado, Texas, Washington and Minnesota
Posted on June 19, 2009State health departments have taken the lead in releasing news about the E. coli outbreak tied to Nestle Toll House raw cookie dough. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) put out the first official information about the outbreak late on June 18...
Food Safety Enhancement Act Passes Committee
Posted on June 18, 2009The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 passed out of Committee in the House today, without opposition. The full House is expected to vote on the bill before the July 4th recess. According to an article in The Packer, the bill is receiving some lukewarm support -or at least, something less than all out resistance - from food industry lobbyists...
E. coli and . . . Cookies??? Wouldn't be the first contaminated confection
Posted on June 18, 2009We have been investigating several seemingly unrelated E. coli O157:H7 illnesses that may not be so unrelated. There are 63 confirmed illnesses possibly linked to Nestle's Toll House Cookies. Before you say, "No way, cookies can't be contaminated" or "E...
Food Safety Advocate William Marler to Address Trial Lawyers
Posted on June 17, 2009MINNEAPOLIS (June 16, 2009) William Marler, food safety advocate and expert in foodborne illness litigation, will speak at the American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL) conference in Minneapolis this week. Mr. Marler's presentation on Contaminated Food Litigation will be 11:00 a...
Pasteurized eggs keep home-made ice cream safe
Posted on June 17, 2009Martha Stewart appeared as a guest on the Today Show this morning, and taught viewers how to make home-made ice cream. Martha's recipe calls for 8 eggs to be made into a custard before being added to the ice cream maker. Because custard is cooked, eggs in this recipe should reach a proper temperature to kill foodborne pathogens like Salmonella and Campylobacter that may be present in the eggs in a raw state...
Mad Cows and Farm Fish
Posted on June 16, 2009University of Louisville neurologist Robert P. Friedland, M.D., questions the safety of eating farmed fish in the June issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, adding a new worry to concerns about the nation's food supply. Friedland and his co-authors suggest farmed fish could transmit Creutzfeldt Jakob disease--commonly known as mad cow disease--if they are fed byproducts rendered from cows...
Fees Lowered as Food Safety Enhancement Act Moves Through House
Posted on June 16, 2009As the "Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009" was passed out of the House subcommittee last week, the fees associated with production facility inspection were decreased. According to a story in the Packer: The bill approved June 10 was revised from an earlier draft version, dropping user fees for inspections from $1,000 to $500 per facility and the overall cap limit per company to $175,000...
Food Safety Enforcement: How the Brits Do It.
Posted on June 15, 2009This last Thursday, June 11, 2009, I had the pleasure (and honor) of presenting at the 2009 Conference on Law of Food and Drink, sponsored by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. The program of presentations was interesting and, for me, quite informative...
Pork Producers Fight Against New Food Safety Bill
Posted on June 15, 2009The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) is waging a fight against food saftey refoms in the pending "Food Safety and Enhancement Act of 2009" according to Wisconsin Ag Connection. The bill was recently approved by in subcommittee and will head next to a full comittee in the House...
Food Poisoning is an International Problem
Posted on June 15, 2009The World Health Organization estimates that Food and waterborne diarrhoeal diseases are leading causes of illness and death in less developed countries, killing approximately 2.2 million people annually, 1.9 million of whom are children. Here are just a few reports around the world of foodborne illness outbreaks reported in the last twenty-four hours...
Michigan Company Announces Recall of Cheese Due to Listeria Contamination
Posted on June 15, 2009The FDA announced on June 13 that Torres Hillsdale Country Cheese of Reading, Michigan has recalled all lots of various types of soft Mexican-style cheeses due to potential Listeria contamination. According to the FDA: Consumption of food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes can cause Listeriosis, an uncommon but potentially fatal disease...
Valley Meats recalled hamburger due to E. coli O157:H7 contamination AFTER illnesses were found in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois - Why are we not all "Testing and Holding?"
Posted on June 14, 2009Valley Meats LLC, a Coal Valley, Illinois grinding plant recalled approximately 95,898 pounds of ground beef that might have been contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced in late May...
Bar Date Extended to October 31, 2009 for Filing of Salmonella Personal Injury Claims Against Peanut Corporation of America
Posted on June 14, 2009CDC Releases Report on Cryptosporidium Outbreak at Splash Park
Posted on June 12, 2009This week's MMWR includes a report by the CDC on an outbreak of cryptosporidiosis at a "splash park" in Idaho in 2007. Cryptosporidiosis is the illness caused by the bacteria cryptosporidium. According to the CDC: Symptoms of cryptosporidiosis generally begin 2 to 10 days (average 7 days) after becoming infected with the parasite...
Food Poison Blog Takes on New Name
Posted on June 10, 2009As readers of this blog know, a number of new authors have recently joined our contributor list. With all the new posts, Food Poison Blog began to look less like a blog, and more like a journal of news and notes on Food Poisoning. With that in mind, we have changed the title to Food Poison Journal...
Health Subcommittee Sends Food Safety Reform Bill To Full Committee: Vote Next Week
Posted on June 10, 2009After years of just listening those injured and the survivors of those killed by outbreaks of food-borne illnesses in the United States, the House Health Subcommittee finally took some action today. On the back of deal that halves the amount of a new registration fee for food producing facilities, the Subcommittee was able to send its food safety reform bill to the full House Energy & Commerce Committee on a unanimous bipartisan voice vote...
Baltimore Police Seize Turtles Linked to Salmonella Risk
Posted on June 10, 2009They may seem harmless and look cute, but juvenile turtles carry the risk of Salmonella transmission. Recently, police in Baltimore seized dozens of tiny turtles from vendors who were selling the animals illegally. The sale of turtles with shells under 4 inches in length has been illegal since 1975...
Meat and Poultry Product Recalled
Posted on June 09, 2009FSIS has announced a Class I recall of 79,312 pounds of various fully cooked, ready-to-eat meat and poultry products because the products may contain under-processed ham components after contacting surfaces of equipment. Consuming undercooked pork products, or foods that have come into contact with those products, has been associated with a variety of serious illnesses, such as Cysticercosis, Trichinosis, and Salmonella...
Changes on the horizon for food recall procedures?
Posted on June 09, 2009The June issue of Food Protection Report contains an article titled, 'Seeking Ways around Information Roadblocks,' which provides an analysis of different issues that impact the flow of information regarding recalled food products. The current recall system prohibits the distribution of vital recall information from federal to state public health agencies, preventing state health officers from receiving word regarding the distribution of recalled products such as hamburger that may be contaminated with E...
Russia Bans Tyson Pork Over E. coli Concerns
Posted on June 08, 2009The Des Moines Register is reporting that Russia has banned the import of pork from two plants. According to the report, "Russian meat plant oversight group Rossel-khoznadzor said Thursday that E. coli bacteria was found in some meat from the plants...
Film addresses food safety issues
Posted on June 08, 2009"Food, Inc." debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in September of 2008, and has since received rave reviews. The film is about to be released at theaters nationwide, and is featured this week on PBS's "NOW, with David Brancaccio"...
Another Voice Calling for Strengthening and Funding of FDA
Posted on June 08, 2009Count the editorial board of the San Jose Mercury News as another vote in support of reform for the FDA. This editorial outlines the fight against the bill being put up by the food industry and their Republican supporters. As I discussed here last week, food industry lobbyists and Republicans are now balking at several desperately needed portions of the bill...
Listeria Recalls: Dark Chocolate Spread and Smoked Salmon
Posted on June 07, 2009Chocolate Le Pain Quotidien is recalling a limited number of 14.15-ounce jars of Le Pain Quotidien's Noir Belgian Dark Chocolate Spread because it might contain milk not declared on the packaging. Those who have an allergy to milk run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they eat the product...
USDA's Top Food Safety Post Remains Vacant; Is Vilsack Working Off A Candidate List Approved By Meat Industry? Bloggers Want To Know!
Posted on June 06, 2009Somebody has finally noticed. In this case, the somebody is Tom Laskawy, a food and environment specialist, and what he has noticed is that President Obama has NOT yet nominated anybody as U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety to run the Food Safety & Inspection Service (FSIS), the key federal agency for the integrity of meat, poultry and eggs produced by U...
Food Safety Fight Returns to Partisanship - Senator Barton Returns to Supporting Special Interests
Posted on June 05, 2009On the heels of massive foodborne illness outbreaks linked to spinach, peppers, and peanut butter (twice), there appeared to be bi-partisan support for an overhaul of food safety regulation in the U.S. According to an article in the New York Times, "In March, Representative Joe L...
Proper canning steps ensure food safety, prevent botulism
Posted on June 04, 2009I moved to Seattle in 2002 and have never experienced a heat wave in late May and early June like the one we are enjoying now. There are few places I'd rather be than Seattle in the summertime, and to our benefit this year, everyone in the Seattle area who planted their garden around Mother's Day is enjoying watching their tomatoes bloom, mint grow full, and and snow peas sprout...
Two Kindergarten Students Hospitalized From Salmonella
Posted on June 04, 2009We at Food Poison Blog have been highlighting recently that food poisoning can be, and often is, much more than "just a little diarrhea." This is especially true for the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems...
Captain Crunch Cereal Class Action Dismissed (And Not for Being Salmonella-free)
Posted on June 04, 2009In a Order issued on May 21, 2009, a federal district court judge dismissed a class action lawsuit that, among other things, alleged that consumers had been defrauded by the makers of Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries because the "berries" were in fact brightly-colored cereal balls, and not actually fruit...
Hamburger E. coli season is underway
Posted on June 03, 2009Valley Meats LLC recently recalled nearly 96,000 pounds of ground beef due to potential contamination by E. coli O157:H7. Now, SP Provisions of Portland, Oregon has recalled almost 40,000 pounds of ground beef due to positive sampling of its ground beef during production...
Baby Steps: USDA Implements Increase in E. coli O157:H7 Testing.
Posted on June 03, 2009As I noted in an earlier post on a different blog about the USDA's decision to, in a matter of speaking, take its head out of the sand and recognize that E. coli O157:H7 is a problem that starts (and someday will hopefully end) with the slaughter and dressing process, the agency is finally appearing to take a more reality-based (which is to say, less industry-biased) approach to ensuring food safety...
Two Kingergarten Students Hospitalized From Salmonella
Posted on June 03, 2009We at Food Poison Blog have been highlighting recently that food poisoning can be, and often is, much more than "just a little diarrhea." This is especially true for the very young, the very old, and those with compromised immune systems...
Committee Holding Public Hearing On "The Food Safety Enhancement Act Of 2009"
Posted on June 03, 2009The House Energy and Commerce Committee today is conducting a public hearing on the 'discussion draft' of sweeping new food safety legislation. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colorado, praised he 'discussion draft' for including key elements of a bill she previously introduced; namely 'traceability ' and mandatory recall authority...
Food Poisoning Triples Risk of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Posted on June 02, 2009We sometimes hear food poisoning dismissed (usually by those who are being blamed with causing it, not those suffering from it) as "just a little diarrhea." Here is yet more evidence that such a characterization has no basis in reality...
Use a thermometer to ensure proper temperatures are reached to prevent foodborne illness
Posted on June 02, 2009I was pleasantly surprised when a friend of mine used a digital, tip-sensitive food thermometer to measure the temperature of the chicken he was preparing for our Memorial Day BBQ. He even cooked the chicken to an internal temperature of 180°F, which exceeds the recommended 165 degree cooking temperature for chicken...
Carrot Producer Sues Sheep Farmer Over E. coli Concerns
Posted on June 01, 2009Grimmway Enterprises, Inc., a carrot producer in Bakersfield, California is suing a neighboring sheep farmer afer the sheep entered Grimmway's property. The sheep grazed on Grimmway crops, but more importantly, they did what sheep do - they defecated...
An E.coli O157:H7 Vaccine for Cattle - What's the Hold Up?
Posted on May 29, 2009According to an article in Candian Cattlemen, a Candadian firm, Bioniche Life Sciences, has developed a vaccine that reduces colonization of cows by E. coli O157 bacteria and reduces the amount of the bacteria shed in cattle manure. One would think that reductions of this nature would in turn lead to less human expsoure to the potentially fatal pathogen...
Food poisoning causes plane to make emergency landing
Posted on May 29, 2009WESH.com reported that a Delta Airlines flight headed to Atlanta from Ecuador made an emergency stop in Orlando today after three passengers' food poisoning symptoms became severe and they required medical attention. According to WESH, two of the three passengers were transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center for treatment for food poisoning, while the third passenger declined treatment...
Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Highlights Need For Increased Foodborne Illness Surveilance
Posted on May 29, 2009Echoing the praise in my blog post yesterday, a Minnesota Star Tribune editorial is praising Minnesota health officials and calling for more foodborne illness surveilance. The editorial relates the story of one of the nine tragic and pointless deaths confirmed as resulting from the PCA Salmonella outbreak...
Bill Aims To Return FDA To "The Gold Standard" In Protecting Public Health
Posted on May 28, 2009The House Energy and Commerce Committee is out with a discussion draft of 'the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.' Given who's signed on to this one, it's probably the one to watch. Sponsors include Chair Emeritus John D. Dingell, Chairs Henry A...
Local Seattle Woman Dies in Thailand from Possible Foodborne Illness
Posted on May 28, 2009According to a news report on Seattletimes.com, the death of a local West Seattle Woman, Jill St. Onge, may have been caused by a microbial infection contracted through contaminated food consumed while on vacation in Thailand. At this point the precise source of the microbes is unknown, although contaminated seafood is suspected...
Produce E. coli Problems of a Different Variety
Posted on May 28, 2009Most of the time when we're writing about, reading about, or representing people for illnesses suffered in an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak related to produce, we're looking at things retrospectively. An outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 happened, we know it was linked to lettuce, spinach, or some other type of fresh, raw produce, but we are sometimes left digging for answers as to how the E...
FDA Perspective: More collaboration needed to promote food safety
Posted on May 28, 2009In a "Perspective" piece published online by the New England Journal of Medicine Tuesday, May 26, the new Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., and Principal Deputy Commissioner of FDA, Joshua M. Sharfstein, M...
Senator Klobuchar's Push for New Food Safety Legislation Highlights the Work of Minnesota Health Officials
Posted on May 28, 2009Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar held a press conference today to announce new proposed leglisation to "promote a more rapid and effective national response to outbreaks of foodborne sickness." According to Klobuchar, the new act would, among other things: Enhance the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) foodborne disease surveillance system...
Ground Beef, Hamburgers, and E. coli: John McDonald's illness
Posted on May 27, 2009The recent recall of nearly 96,000 pounds of ground beef by Valley Meats LLC got me thinking about hamburgers and E. coli O157:H7. Anytime I hear those words together (which, as an attorney at Marler Clark, is quite often), I think of John McDonald...
Cat food recalled for incorrect levels of zinc and potassium
Posted on May 26, 2009The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced May 21 that Nutro Products was recalling its NUTRO® NATURAL CHOICE® COMPLETE CARE® Dry Cat Foods and NUTRO® MAX® Cat Dry Foods with 'Best If Used By Dates' between May 12, 2010 and August 22, 2010...
Foodborne Illness is Just a Few Days of Diarrhea Right?
Posted on May 26, 2009It never ceases to amaze me, particularly after the last few years and all the high-profile outbreaks that have occurred, that people still pass off "foodpoisoning" as a couple of days of diarrhea--i.e. that the victim is no worse for the wear...
Spinach E. coli Outbreak Revisited: The Story of Regan Erickson
Posted on May 25, 2009The spinach E. coli outbreak in September 2006 was perhaps the most devastating outbreak of foodborne disease since the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in 1993. Over two hundred people suffered confirmed illnesses in the spinach outbreak, with 102 hospitalizations, and at least four deaths...
Are Our Food Safety Habits Slipping?
Posted on May 25, 2009The International Food Information Council is reporting that Americans' food safety habits are getting worse, not better, despite a slew of recent high-profile illness outbreaks. The deterioration in food safety habits appears to be across the board. According tot he IFIC study, fewer Americans are washing hands with soap and water; washing cutting boards with soap and water or bleach; cooking foods to the proper temperature; and storing raw meat and poultry separately from ready to eat products...
Four Counties Monitoring Rise in Shigella Infections
Posted on May 25, 2009As summer approaches health officials in at least four counties are monitoring unusually high levels of reported Shigella infections. In Sedgwick County, Kansas, 52 cases of Shigella this year, an increase of 32 over last years total for the year...
E. coli in Lettuce or Hamburgers: Sadly, the Results are Often the Same
Posted on May 24, 2009Bill Marler and the other attorneys at Marler Clark have been litigating E. coli O157:H7 cases for sixteen years. I have done it now for six. Collectively, we have seen E. coli illnesses ranging from a few days of diarrhea to some of the most agonizing deaths imaginable ...
E. coli O157:H7 Outbreaks Linked to Produce
Posted on May 24, 2009E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks associated with lettuce or spinach, specifically 'pre-washed' and 'ready-to-eat' varieties, are by no means a new phenomenon. By way of illustration: ? in October 2003, thirteen residents of a California retirement home were sickened, and two people died, after eating E...
Restaurant Injury Cases of a Different Breed: The Story of Jacob Aggas
Posted on May 23, 2009I have never become accustomed to the profound nature of many of the injuries and illnesses we see at Marler Clark. I often find myself saying to the mother, husband, or grandson of somebody who has suffered life-altering injuries that "I wish we never had to meet" ...
Was Valley Meats (or at least the plant) Linked to THREE Prior E. coli O157:H7 Outbreaks and Recalls?
Posted on May 22, 2009Yesterday the FSIS announced that Valley Meats LLC, a Coal Valley, Illinois meat establishment (USDA EST. 5712) recalled approximately 100,000 pounds of ground beef products that are likely contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 after illnesses linked to the hamburger were reported in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois...
Nearly 100,000 pounds of ground beef recalled for E. coli O157:H7 contamination
Posted on May 22, 2009Approximately 96,000 pounds of ground beef products are being recalled by Valley Meats, a company operating out of Coal Valley, Ill., for E. coli O157:H7 contamination. It appears this recall did not come soon enough for one unfortunate person. The Department of Health in Cleveland, Ohio has announced that a 6 or 7 year old girl has died, apparently from consuming some of the recalled ground beef...
Food Poisoning and Other Surveillance in the Internet Age
Posted on May 22, 2009The May 21, 2009 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine contained a Perspective piece that focused on how public health professionals can harness the Internet for surveillance purposes. The article's authors, John S. Brownstein, Ph.D., Clark C. Freifeld, B...
FDA Inspectors Found Numerous Violations at Setton Pistachio Plant Linked to Salmonella Recall
Posted on May 22, 2009In a 483 Inspection Report released today, FDA inspectors identified multiple food-safety shortcomings at the Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella California that was linked to a Salmonella outbreak earlier this year: 1. The company detected the bacteria in roasted pistachios in October but did not change its processing procedures until March 2...
The Darker Side of Foodborne Illnesses
Posted on May 22, 2009Please don't let the title mislead you. I am certainly not implying there is a lighter side to any individual's foodborne illness--as anyone who has ever experienced an E. coli infection or the like can tell you--but it is much less common for someone's illness to be brought about by a nefarious act...
Prison Anyone?
Posted on May 21, 2009Where is Dave Thomas when you need him? Jacob Zachariah, owner of a Wendy's franchise restaurant in Ukiah, California, could use a dose of the late Mr. Thomas's intelligence and simple charm. Zachariah's Ukiah Wendy's restaurant was recently shut down, not by the health department, but by the Wendy's corporation for failure to adhere to acceptable standards of conduct in food safety and other things...
New Obama Policy Allows States to Be Tougher on Food Safety
Posted on May 21, 2009During the Bush administration, and its do-anything-help-big-business approach, agencies were required to insert "preemption" language into all regulations, rules, and policies that the agencies promulgated. This was intended as an attempt to "protect" corporations from state laws and regulations that had the effect of imposing stricter requirements, especially with regard to product safety...
Death by Shopping Bag?
Posted on May 21, 2009I received this article today from Steve Whybrew, the father of a college-age girl we represent who became infected with E. coli O157:H7 in a lettuce outbreak last year. Steve's daughter, Heather, was hospitalized for 3 weeks. She was also interviewed recently in an article for the New York Times about food safety...
FDA Admits Failure to Conduct Required Audits
Posted on May 20, 2009A frankly distubring article today by Mary Clare Jalonik at the Associated Press. According to the article, FDA "conducted only about half the state food safety audits it promised in the two years before the recent peanut salmonella outbreak...
A Point Well Taken
Posted on May 20, 2009Once again, the Perishable Pundit has managed to give, and get, some excellent commentary on sprouts and other food safety issues. I particularly enjoyed the statement by Devon Zagory, Ph.D, an industry leader in produce safety science, discussing the proper role of FDA regulations...
Months Later, Recalled Peanut Butter Products Still on Shelves
Posted on May 20, 2009The list of recalled foods linked to the PCA Salmonella typhimurium outbreak continues to expand. Months after the recall, a Washington State dairy is adding its ice cream product to the list. According to a story in the Bellingham (WA) Herald, Edaleen Dairy is recalling two ice creams because both contain peanut products possibly contaminated with salmonella...
Cantaloupe recalled for possible Salmonella contamination
Posted on May 19, 2009We learned over the weekend that L&M Companies was recalling whole cantaloupes sold between May 10 and May 15 in Wal-Mart Supercenter stores in North Carolina, South Carolina and South Hill, Virginia, because a cantaloupe at a farm in Mexico where L&M sources cantaloupe had tested positive for Salmonella...
E. coli Victim Speaks in Washington DC in Support of Food Safety Legislation
Posted on May 19, 2009Lindsey Jennings (middle), our client, was a "perfectly healthy" twenty-one year old girl. Actually, better than that, Lindsey was an avid athlete, in training for a marathon, running over 40 miles a week, all while completing her pre-med courses during her senior year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, when she was unfortunate enough to eat contaminated lettuce...
Food Poisoning Is Not a Laughing Matter...
Posted on May 18, 2009....unless you are the Simpsons. Last night's season finale for the Simpsons was right off the front pages of Marlerblog. The episode set up? "Ogdenville's economy takes a stumble after tainted barley is discovered in Krusty's veggie burgers...
Before Food Was Fast: Some Looks Back to a Time when Food was Local, Slow, and Safe
Posted on May 18, 2009In addition to being a lawyer, I am a longtime foodie. So my attention was definitely grabbed this morning when I was listening to NPR and there were segments on two food-related books that I defintely will be reading soon. The first is Watching What We Eat, by Kathleen Collins...
FDA Takes Step One: Admits It Has A Problem
Posted on May 18, 2009In a bit of news that is less surprising than it should be, the AP today reports that the FDA has for the last several years failed to perform a large percentage of required audits for inspections being conducted (under contract) by the States. According to today's report (based on documents recently released to Congress: The Food and Drug Administration conducted only about half the state food safety audits it promised in the two years before the recent peanut salmonella outbreak, according to new documents the agency sent to Congress...
Raw Milk Dairy In Vermont Has Cow With Rabies That Threatens 21 With Painful Shots
Posted on May 17, 2009Twenty-one people in Vermont who may have consumed raw milk from a cow infected with rabies may be looking at those painful shots in their future. The raw milk drinkers are being advised by the Vermont Health Department to see their doctors about rabies shots...
Chorizo Recalled in Texas
Posted on May 17, 2009The Texas Department of State Health Services announced a recall of dried Chorizo manufactured by Houston meat company, Los Corrales, covering product produced since January 2009. The reason? Los Corrales has not been documenting that the Chorizo was properly cooked...
Giving New Meaning to the Term "Kill Step"
Posted on May 15, 2009Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting, as well as disturbing, article on the continuing dangers of ConAgra frozen pot pies. Specifically, despite the 2007 outbreak and all the serious illnesses it caused, the safety of the pot pies still depend on the customer cooking them correctly...
New York City's Health Commissioner Takes Over At CDC
Posted on May 15, 2009We now know who will be running the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention. The President has announced his pick to lead CDC is New York City's Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden. Dr. Rich Besser, who has been acting director since the new Administration took office, will return to his role as head of the CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response...
Getting Word of Recalls to Consumers
Posted on May 15, 2009A tip of the meat-thermometer to Herb Weisbaum for an excellent column on how stores could to a better job of notifying customers about recalled products. Mr. Weisbaum points out that stores are the last line of defense in our food safety system...
Peanuts and Pistachios & The New Team In Charge Of FDA
Posted on May 14, 2009Few would have predicted that when history is written on the first term of the Obama Administration that peanuts and pistachios would play such prominent roles. Those unlikely products, however, will be used by historians to demonstrate the bad old ways versus the new U...
Allergies to the rescue!
Posted on May 14, 2009A person working in an AT&T building in San Jose, California, decided to clean out an office refrigerator that had apparently been unplugged for some time on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the combination of smells from rotten food and disinfectant was overpowering, and another building employee called 911 after smelling the fumes...
Sprouts: 235 victims . . . and counting???
Posted on May 14, 2009A new study finds that only 60 percent of Americans search their homes for recalled foods when a recall happens. Reuters carried an interesting article on the study recently, and it got me thinking . . . about the current sprouts situation, as usual...
A Connection Between a Strain of E. coli and Colon Cancer?
Posted on May 13, 2009A team of scientists at the University of Edinburgh are reporting on the possibility of a connection between a strain of E. coli and colon cancer. The implicated bacteria is enteropathogenic E. coli or EPEC. EPEC is a group of bacteria that cause gastroenteritis in humans, but lacks the shiga-toxins associated with shiga toxin producing E...
State-by-State Food Safety Regulation?
Posted on May 12, 2009As reported by the Wall Street Journal's Jane Zhang, states frustrated by the slow pace of national food safety reform have begun to take matters into their own hands. Georgia was hit hard by the recent outbreak of Salmonella in peanut butter and peanut products; as the leading producer of peanuts in the US, the 25% drop in demand has hurt farmers and businesses all the way up the production chain...
More from Mr. Orwig and Caudill Seed
Posted on May 12, 2009I know you're dying for more. I posed a question to Caudill Seed yesterday about why they haven't recalled their product. Jim Prevor, the Perishable Pundit, had the same question apparently. Pundit: FDA says Caudill made the decision to voluntarily withdraw from the market all the alfalfa seeds bearing six digit lot numbers that start with 032...
Interview with Lyle Orwig, Spokesman for Caudill Seed
Posted on May 12, 2009Good Lord, where do I start? Well, to begin with, thank you to Mr. Orwig (picture left), Caudill Seed, and Jim Prevor, aka "the Perishable Pundit" (the latter thank you being entirely without my tongue in my cheek--I really do enjoy Jim's weekly emails) for a wealth of extremely valuable information...
Update on Sprouts Salmonella Outbreak: 235 confirmed illnesses
Posted on May 12, 2009The CDC has updated its numbers with respect to the alfalfa sprouts outbreak. See the full report here, which gives a good summary of the epidemiological evidence that establishes that Caudill Seed was the source of this outbreak. My homework assignment for Lyle Orwig is to read this report before doing anymore interviews...
Bob's Food City Recalls E. coli O157:H7 Contaminated Ground Beef
Posted on May 12, 2009The summer is fast approaching and that means--you guessed it--E. coli-contaminated meat recalls! Bob's Food City, a Hot Springs, Ark., retailer is recalling approximately 375 pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U...
States Tell the Feds: If You Don't Fix It, We Will
Posted on May 12, 2009State legislators around the US, fed up with the perceived slow response of the federal government to enact stronger food safety laws, have begun sending a clear message to Washington: if you won't protect our citizens from increasing foodborne illness outbreaks, then we will...
3 Sickened With Crytposporidium Near Philadelphia
Posted on May 12, 2009Officals in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania have anounced that 3 individuals have been confirmed with cryptosporidium. While public swimming pools are common source of cryptosporidium outbreaks, there is reportedly no evidence of such a connection here...
Sprout advice from a Sprouter
Posted on May 11, 2009I recently received this comment to a recent post that I called ...: "You need to buy your seeds organically grown. This will almost ensure that there will be a lesser chance of bacterial problems. Before you begin sprouting you should rinse your seeds very well with a mixture of hydrogen peroxide...
Recalls Found to be Even Less Effective Than Expected
Posted on May 11, 2009There has for a long time been valid criticism of food recalls, both with regard to how agencies like the FDA implement them, and whether recalls really work to prevent foodborne illness. In my view, most recalls are best described as closing the barn-doors after the horses have escaped...
Sprout Outbreak Update: this may get messy
Posted on May 11, 2009Here is a copy of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC addressing the recent sprout outbreak. We have been reporting on this for weeks now (maybe months), since cases were first report in Nebraska in February. Please take a look at this report; it provides a good summary of the anatomy of an outbreak, especially when sprouts are the vehicle...
Legal Lessons From the Country Cottage E. coli O111 Outbreak
Posted on May 11, 2009In April, The Oklahoma State Health Department (OHD) published its final report on a massive outbreak of E. coli 0111 linked to the Country Cottage restaurant in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. E. coli O111, one of the family of E. coli bacteria, is classified as an STEC, a shiga toxin producing escherichia coli...
Heather Whybrew's E. coli O157:H7 Illness
Posted on May 11, 2009Andrew Martin of the New York Times wrote a nice article this morning on the safety of our food supply. We represent all three individuals profiled in his article: Heather Whybrew, Carl Ours, and Mary Tardiff. All suffered devastating illnesses in separate outbreaks and from different pathogens...
A Question for Caudill Seed
Posted on May 11, 2009I'm doing my best to find any reference to a recall of the seeds implicated by the FDA and CDC in the recent Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak, which is now responsible for at least 228 illnesses in 13 states. I can't find any action by Caudill Seed taken to actually recall the product...
Towns in Texas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin Reacting to Fears of E. coli in Public Water
Posted on May 11, 2009Towns in Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin are taking steps to prevent illness in residnents using public water after positive tests for E. coli. Officials in Hollis, Oklahoma were distributing bottled water after positive tests in the public water system...
European Union Has Food Safety Problems Too?
Posted on May 10, 2009I am heading to London Today for a series of lectures on food safety (with a side trip to Paris) and just in time the EU put out its report on foodborne diseases for 2007. Full report - Here. In total, 5,609 food-borne outbreaks were reported by MSs in 2007 that is a slight decrease of 2...
"Gross-Out" Food Stories - Cases We Do Not Take, But They Sure Catch Your Eye
Posted on May 09, 2009The Internet has a bit of everything - many things you just would rather not know about when it comes to your food. * French Fried Condom - It was a sad day for a 7-year-old girl in Switzerland. She got more than a little prize in her McDonald's Happy Meal—she allegedly found a condom in her French fries...
Marler Clark Clients Pitch Food Safety in Washington D.C.
Posted on May 08, 2009Last June, Brian Grubbs, of Colorado, suffered a Salmonella Saintpaul infection after consuming contaminated jalapeno peppers. His illness was one of more than 1,200 in a nationwide outbreak. The Grubbs purchased the peppers at their local WalMart...
Bacteria on the menu?
Posted on May 08, 2009Michelle Bridgestock, a student at Abilene's Holland Medical High School, recently released the results of a medical research project she conducted as part of an independent study course. Ms. Bridgestock tested menus at 12 local Abilene restaurants for the presence of bacteria...
Sprouts: Honestly, Does it get any Riskier???
Posted on May 08, 2009There can only be two reasons why anybody in the country would be eating alfalfa sprouts right now: one, they have not seen any of the hundreds of news reports, blog posts, or FDA/CDC reports on the several large outbreaks or recalls that have happened already in 2009; or two, they just don't care about the risk...
FDA Gets 19 Percent Increase In Obama's First Budget
Posted on May 07, 2009With nearly equal increases on both the food and drug side of its business, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is getting a 19 percent increase in its budget in 2010. That at least is President Obama's recommendation to Congress, which controls the federal purse strings...
Sarsaparilla, Spearmint, and Sassafras Siezed as Suspect
Posted on May 07, 2009It looks like a potential foodborne illness disaster just waiting happen was averted by swift action from our federal government. The FDA announced today that due to extensive rodent and insect infestation throughout a warehouse for the American Mercantile Corporation of Memphis, Tennessee, a warrant was issued and executed by the US Marshalls, resulting in the seizure of more than $1...
WHO Sees Possibility of Contracting H1N1 Flu Through Food Exposure
Posted on May 07, 2009Striking a more cautious chord than previous health agencies, the World Health Organizaiton (WHO) announced today that meat from pigs infected with H1N1 flu (the so-called "Swine Flu") should not be used for human consumption. The WHO also stated that it was preparing guidelines designed for workers handling the pigs...
Georgia Senators Calling for More Regulation of the Food Industry
Posted on May 07, 2009You know the landscape has changed when two senators are calling for more regulation of their home state's big business. Georgia's two senators, Isakson and Chambliss, are calling for an overhaul of the FDA in the wake of two massive Salmonella outbreaks linked to peanut products from their home state, in 2007 and 2009...
FDA Traces Salmonella Outbreak to Sprout Seeds
Posted on May 06, 2009According to this story in he Packer, the FDA has traced the recent salmonella oubreak in alfalfa sprouts to imported seeds. Caudill Seed Co, of Kentucky, has recalled batches of seeds imported from Italy. The recent sprout outbreak has sickened 35 persons in 7 states.
Honor National BBQ Month By NOT Getting Sick
Posted on May 06, 2009In honor of National BBQ Month, now is the perfect time to post a reminder about safe food handling and cooking practices that can significantly reduce your risk of becoming ill from a foodborne pathogen like E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Campylobacter, or Norovirus, just to name a few...
Contaminated Sprouts- The Importance of Knowing the Source
Posted on May 06, 2009There is a report today that produce supplier Los Angeles Calco is recalling its own sprout products over fears of Salmonella contamination. There is no apparent connection between these sprouts and previously implicated sprout seeds from Caudill Seed Co...
Not exactly the Italian vacation I had planned . . .
Posted on May 05, 2009Our work at Marler Clark requires lots of travel . . . sometimes even overseas. Looks like it might be time to up my intake of spaghetti carbonnara and red wine so that I'm ready to roll when it comes time to take a closer look at the Italian company selling the sprout seeds that are now responsible for a major Salmonella outbreak in the US associated with alfalfa sprouts...
USDA Sees the Light on E. coli O157:H7 and Meat
Posted on May 05, 2009For years, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has allowed meat plants to divert meat that has tested positive for E. coli O157:H7 (or some other pathogen) to a further-processing facility where it is cooked for a time and at a temperature sufficient to kill the pathogens...
Continued Proliferation of Organic Farms in U.S.
Posted on May 05, 2009In this last Sunday's New York Times, there was a fascinating set of maps that showed the geographic location of organic farms across the United States. The article noted that organic vegetables now account fro five percent of all vegetables sales...
Food Safety on Wheels
Posted on May 04, 2009The latest food safety-themed article from the incomparable USA Today reporter, Elizabeth Weise, has just been posted, this one highlighting the FDA's mobile food safety labs. These $3 million high-tech labs on wheels allow the FDA to set up testing facilities wherever they are needed, including at the Mexico-USA border where about three and a half billion pounds of fruits and vegetables are imported during the winter season...
I Ate Contaminated Sprouts . . . What Should I do?
Posted on May 04, 2009There is plenty of information out there on (1) what sprout and seed companies should be doing to reduce or eliminate the risk that they sell contaminated food to customers, and (2) what sprout sellers should be doing now, in the context of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak linked to sprouts/sprout seeds...
The FDA Goes High Tech
Posted on May 04, 2009The USA Today is reporting on the depolyment of one of FDA's "mobile food-safety labs." The lab and its inspectors spent a week in Nogales, Arizona, at the Mexican border, testing imported food. The good news is two-fold...
Study Reveals Most People Can't Distinguish Pa?te? from Dog Food
Posted on May 04, 2009As someone who regularly feeds his dog food that costs more than two-bucks a can, while regularly noticing that store-brand chili at my local grocery store is often on sale for less than a dollar, I was not entirely surprised when I heard of this interesting study that found most people can't tell the difference between gourmet pa?te? from dog food...
Interesting, Upcoming Food Safety Conference
Posted on May 04, 2009Last fall I got the opportunity to give a guest lecture at the University of Wisconsin Law School, which is where I went to law school. It was for an innovative class called Transnational Regulation: Increasing the Safety of Globally-Sourced Products...
Salmonella Illness: Just a little diarrhea, right?
Posted on May 04, 2009I guess you've got to be in this business to get frustrated when people think of foodborne disease as being akin to "an upset stomach" or what everybody calls "the flu." That, or you've got to be unlucky enough to have known or loved somebody who developed hemolytic uremic syndrome or some other horrible manifestation of foodborne disease...
If Inspections of Food Processors Are To Be Increased, Who Will Pay For It?
Posted on May 02, 2009I was privileged this morning to speak at the Northwest Food Processors Association Executive Business Summitt. I was on a panel discussing pending food safety legislation. It was a lively discussion amongst a group of industry executives that were plainly committed to food safety...
More Produce Recalled on Salmonella Fears
Posted on May 01, 2009There have not been any reported illnesses, but Kleen-Pak Foods is recalling packages of spinach due to possible contamination with Salmonella. The recall reportedly impacts stores in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Chicago area.
If The Kids Go To A Petting Zoo - Make Sure They Wash Their Hands, WELL.
Posted on April 30, 2009This months MMWR contains a report on an outbreak of shiga-toxin producing E. coli O157 at a petting zoo in Florida in 2007. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. The "editorial note" states that between 1991-2005, the CDC received reports of 32 outbreaks of E...
Pistactachio Salmonella Outbreak Confusion
Posted on April 29, 2009Setton International Foods, Inc., has just announced another expansion of its previously announced recall for Salmonella contaminated pistachios. This announcement is a clarification to their earlier clarification issued on April 20, 2009 which specified that a small amount of the 2007 pistachio crop that was packaged alongside the 2008 pistachio crop was included in their expanded voluntary recall announced on April 6, 2009 due to potential contamination with the Salmonella organism...
The Scope of the Recent Salmonella Sprouts Outbreak
Posted on April 29, 2009Press accounts, as well as those from the CDC, addressing the number of sick people in the ongoing Salmonella sprouts outbreak are a little misleading if you don't know what is actually being said. The reality of these outbreaks (whether E. coli O157, Salmonella, or anything else) is that the number of people who are actually ill, as opposed to the number who have a stool sample that tests positive, is much bigger than the reports would indicate...
E.coli Found in Indiana Creek
Posted on April 29, 2009Yesterday, there was a report of E. coli contamination in the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. Today a report of a positive test from the Greenwood Creek in Greenwood, Indiana. The creek is apparently a popular swimming spot in the summer...
Senator Gregg Talks Food Safety Legislation
Posted on April 29, 2009As part of Marler Clark's work with Outbreak, Inc. I will be speaking at the Northwest Food Processors Association Executive Summit in Bend, Oregon on Saturday. I will be a member of a panel discussing the numerous pending food safety bills, and their potential impact...
Nevada Hospitalization linked to Salmonella in Spices
Posted on April 28, 2009According to this Mercury News story, a 77 year old woman from Dayton, Nevada was among those sickened with Salmonella. An outbreak of illness has led to the recall of white and black pepper distributed by Union International Food Co.and CJ United Corp...
Interview an E. coli Lawyer (not a vampire)
Posted on April 28, 2009Brandy Baltzell is a freshman at Millersville University. She is going to major in biochemistry, and will soon, I think, be doing great work with E. coli O157:H7 and other nasty little foodborne pathogens. I was happy to play what role I could in the recent research paper that she wrote, discussing the characteristics of E...
Guide for Sprout Growers to avoid Salmonella and E. coli Lawsuits
Posted on April 28, 2009ATTENTION SPROUT GROWERS: If you haven't seen it already, read the FDA's industry guidance on "Reducing Microbial Food Safety Hazards on Sprouted Seeds." If you have seen it, then see it again. But don't stop there: make your employees see it, and then meet with your staff to determine the best ways to implement anything contained in the FDA guide that you haven't already...
Peanut Industry Welcoming Regulation?
Posted on April 27, 2009An article from the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California explains that members of the peanut industry are recognizing that new legislation is necessary in light of two massive Salmonella outbreaks in the past three years. A lobbyist for the Western Peanut Growers Association says the industry wants to be part of fixing the problem...
Sprouts and Salmonella: A reason to get Twittered
Posted on April 27, 2009Sprouts have gotten a bad rap recently, and I suspect that the sprout market will have that much-maligned feeling for many months to come. In this day and age, with all the channels of communication available to health departments (federal and state) around the country, and all the detective work that we do here at Marler Clark, outbreaks simply do not go unnoticed...
Sprouts, Sprouts, and more . . . Salmonella
Posted on April 27, 2009The Salmonella-sprouts outbreak that we formerly reported was linked to illnesses in Michigan has grown. Health officials from multiple states (Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia) report at least 31 confirmed illnesses, which means that the number of actual illnesses in the outbreak is probably over one hundred...
E. coli in the Merrimack River?
Posted on April 27, 2009The Daily News in North Andover, Massachusetts is reporting on water quality issues in the Merrimack River. According to the story, the Merrrimack River Watershed Council states that E. coli has been found in the river. Apparently, it was not an isolated incident...
RAW ALFALFA SPROUTS LINKED TO SALMONELLA CONTAMINATION
Posted on April 26, 2009The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today recommended that consumers not eat raw alfalfa sprouts, including sprout blends containing alfalfa sprouts, until further notice because the product has been linked to Salmonella serotype Saintpaul contamination...
Sproutman Gets it Right . . . Somewhat Right Anyway
Posted on April 25, 2009Steve Meyerowitz is, apparently, the Sproutman. Although I disagree with his analysis of the numbers--i.e. Sprouts have caused a hell of a lot more foodborne illnesses than 2,000 in the last 40 years--it's good to see an industry man who recognizes the risks associated with his product, and who cares enough about consumer health to advocate that his fellow sprout devotees do all they can, by way of researching and developing new pasteurization methods, to reduce risks...
Salmonella Sickens 31 in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia - Who Produced Them? Where Were They Sold? FDA is Silent - So Far
Posted on April 25, 2009FDA held a call Saturday, April 25 to inform industry (but not consumers) of a forthcoming FDA press release (today or tomorrow?) related to an outbreak of Salmonella SaintPaul linked to alfalfa sprouts - AGAIN. The multi-state outbreak began mid-March and is ongoing...
Ranking the Riskiest Foods
Posted on April 24, 2009An administrator with the FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection) branch of the USDA is calling for a ranking of the "riskiest" foods, in order to better structure regulation of our entire food system. Cetainly an idea that makes some sense...
Worries About Cuts to Food Safety Programs
Posted on April 23, 2009The Arizona Republic is reporting that produce industry members in Arizona are concerned that the budget for a program for leafy green food safety may be reduced or elminated. No doubt times are tough, and budgets everywhere are stressed. How many times does the lesson have to be learned though, that it's this "ounce of prevention" that is saving money in the long run?
Sprouts and Salmonella . . . Again
Posted on April 23, 2009Sprouts have done it again. This time in Michigan. The Michigan Department of Community Health is telling people to avoid consuming alfalfa sprouts due to potential contamination by Salmonella bacteria. To date, as best as I can tell, there are at least 16 illnesses, including two hospitalizations, in Wayne, Macomb, Oakland Counties and the City of Detroit...
Who Pushed The Pause Button on Foodborne Illness Prevention?
Posted on April 23, 2009The CDC has just released a 10-state study, Preliminary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of Infection with Pathogens Transmitted Commonly Through Food --- 10 States, 2008, the conclusions of which I have suspected for some time (and our busy law practice at Marler Clark has confirmed)--illnesses related to foodborne pathogens is NOT decreasing...
Salmonella and Sprouts--I'm not making this up
Posted on April 23, 2009By the end of this year, I hope to have more devoted readers than there are sprout outbreaks and recalls. As I sit here today, it's pretty much neck and neck, and I'll be honest, my competition is relentless. See my earlier post (TODAY!!!) on the ongoing Salmonella outbreak in Michigan ...
Arkansas E. coli: Is Hamburger E coli Season Underway?
Posted on April 23, 2009We are currently investigating multiple E. coli O157:H7 and HUS illnesses in the east-Texas, west-Arkansas area. We do not yet know what, if anything, links the illnesses together. The reason for this post is simply that this is the first day of the new year (2009) (maybe it's the sun finally shining through my office window in Seattle, or the Mariners taking batting practice at the stadium in the distance) where I've had the distinct sense that hamburger e...
New Hampshire Schoolchildren sickened by Salmonella
Posted on April 22, 2009The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services is investigating a large Salmonella outbreak that occurred among students of Woodbury Middle School in Salem. Director of Public Health Dr. Jose Montero was quoted as saying, "it's a high probability it was related to food...
A familiar theme: the decisions of a few affect the lives of many
Posted on April 22, 2009Those who think that the much maligned former head man at Peanut Corporation of America is a victim because of the bad press he's gotten lately need a dose of reality. The obvious victims are those who were sickened, or died as a result of their illnesses...
E. coli O157:H7 at Petting Zoos and Animal Exhibits
Posted on April 19, 2009The vast majority of our E. coli O157:H7 cases are foodborne. Our clients have been sickened by, among other things, ground beef, tri-tip, spinach, lettuce, and apple juice. Another vector for the transmission for E. coli O157:H7 is human/animal contact at petting zoos and other animal exhibits...
NW Delights Deluxe Mixed Nuts Recalled Due to Salmonella
Posted on April 18, 2009The following recall has been announced because the products may be contaminated with salmonella, an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections, especially in young children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems: Nature's World LLC is recalling 88 cases of NW Delights Deluxe Mixed Nuts distributed to retail stores and sold in retail store bulk bins...
Salmonella Found in Raw Milk in Upstate New York
Posted on April 17, 2009It's a bit of a moving target. We hear a lot of different things from the raw milk advocates about why pasteurization is unnecessary. One of the arguments we are told is that some property in raw milk inhibits or prohibits the growth of "bad bacteria...
How Viruses Turn "Harmless" E. coli Pathogenic
Posted on April 17, 2009This article on www.physorg.com explains in fairly understandable terms the manner in which viruses are involved in turning a strain of E. coli pathogenic. Most strains of E. coli are not pathogenic to humans. Some, including E...
Diarrhea and Hollywood
Posted on April 17, 2009Relax, this is not a first account of Lindsay Lohan, um, "losing control" during another jail stint. It's far less irrelevant than that. What Upton Sinclair started with his brief, though sordid descriptions of Chicago's stockyards in The Jungle, Hollywood has finally chosen to finish with an expose on the often-ugly underbelly of our country's food supply...
Salmonella and sprouts--CW Sprouts outbreak
Posted on April 16, 2009We have filed two lawsuits on behalf of two victims of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak linked to sprouts manufactured by CW Sprouts, a Nebraska Company. For information about the outbreak, click here. Keep in mind, studies have shown that the actual number of victims in any given outbreak is many times more than the number of culture-confirmed "cases"--i...
Sprouts and Foodborne Illness: The how and the why
Posted on April 16, 2009It never ceases to amaze many clients of ours at Marler Clark how foods that seem so healthy can pose so much risk of foodborne disease. Lettuce and E. coli O157:H7??? Many victims were shocked, not to mention badly injured, when baby spinach was the cause of yet another outbreak of E...
Who's Job is it Anyway?
Posted on April 15, 2009Interesting survey, given the lethal risks that the food-consuming public faces. Kidney failure due to HUS, reactive arthritis, post-infectious IBS (pdf), sometimes even death . . . all outcomes that we at Marler Clark have seen way too many times in recent years due to foodpoisoning—something that is all-too-often passed off as a couple of days of diarrhea...
Salmonella in Unpastuerized Orange Juice, 2005
Posted on April 14, 2009I can't proclaim to be a regular reader of the University of Chicago Journal "Clinical Infectious Diseases." An article in its April issue, however, was pointed out to me. That article concerned the investigation of the 2006 Dole Spinach E...
UK Food Poisoning Terrorist Sentenced To Nine Years in Prison
Posted on April 14, 2009After reading today's BBC News article about convicted Gloucester, England chemist, Sahnoun Daifallah, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for spraying a disgusting and dangerous concoction of urine and feces on various food items in Gloucestershire supermarkets, I began to wonder...
Report on 2006 Spinach E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak in Wisconsin, the Counted and the Not-Counted
Posted on April 13, 2009This month's issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases has an excellent article recounting the State of Wisconsin's investigation into the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to Dole spinach. You can see the article here. For reasons that are still not entirely clear, Wisconsin was something of a "ground zero" for the outbreak with 49 of the 204 cases reported nationwide...
The CDC's Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) Shows Increase from 2007 to 2008
Posted on April 12, 2009Surveillance Results In 2007, a total of 17,883 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection in FoodNet surveillance areas were identified. The number of cases and incidence per 100,000 population were reported as follows: Salmonella (6,790; 14.92), Campylobacter (5,818; 12...
Update on Pistachio Salmonella Product Recall
Posted on April 10, 2009The FDA and the California Department of Public Health continue to investigate Salmonella contamination in pistachios and pistachio products. Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., Terra Bella, Calif., is voluntarily expanding its recall of roasted pistachios to include all lots of roasted in-shell pistachios and roasted shelled pistachios that were produced from nuts harvested in 2008...
CDC to call for Overhaul of U.S. Food Safety System
Posted on April 10, 2009From Bloomberg News: Food safety in the U.S. is no longer improving, highlighting a need to re-evaluate the way an American meal makes its way from farm to table, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Rates of salmonella have shown the least improvement of several food-borne illnesses the agency tracks, according to its annual report released today...
Peanut Corporation of America Salmonella Recall update
Posted on April 08, 2009FDA Product Recall List FDA Peanut Product Recall Widget. Flash Player 9 is required. Visit http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm to search for peanut product recalls or call CDC-INFO at 1-800-232-4636 for more information...
E. coli O157:H7 Season is Nearly Upon Us - Will it be 2005 and 2006 or 2007 and 2008?
Posted on April 04, 2009The presence of E. coli O157:H7 in hamburger was defined as an adulterant under the Federal Meat Inspection Act in 1994. However, recalls of E. coli O157:H7 contaminated meat and related illnesses continued over the next decade to grow, as did my law firm...
Sprouts and Salmonella do not Mix - Very Well Anyway
Posted on April 01, 2009Sprouts are the germinating form of seeds and beans. Sprouts, including mung beans and alfalfa sprouts, have become a common food item in grocery stores, salad bars and Asian dishes. As the popularity of sprouts increases, however, so does the potential for sprout-related illnesses...
Pistachios, Peanuts and Almonds, and Salmonella
Posted on April 01, 2009Nuts have been associated with Salmonella outbreaks in the US and Canada several times over the last ten years. Almonds were responsible for the first outbreaks, in 2001 and then again in 2004, when contamination with Salmonella Enterica triggered a recall of 13 million pounds of California almonds...
Camillus, N.Y. Applebees Sickens 100 with Shigella
Posted on March 29, 2009Onondaga County Health officials have confirmed seven cases of Shigellosis among people who ate at an Applebee's restaurant in a Syracuse suburb earlier this month; about 100 more have reported getting sick. Shigella, a bacterial infection, causes gastrointestinal illness...
'Lion How' Salmonella Spices Linked to 33 Illnesses
Posted on March 28, 2009The California Department of Public Health traced the tainted spice to Union International Food Company, a Union City firm that distributes most of its pepper to Asian restaurants. Most of the 33 sick people found in this state were in northern and central California, although nine additional cases were found in other states...
Put Another Brick Of E. coli On The Fire Campers!
Posted on March 25, 2009Meat contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 was the likely cause of the last summer's outbreak at a 4,000 acre youth camp in the Shenandoah Valley, the Virginia Department of Health says in a final report of its investigative findings. Fifty-four campers who visited the area between July 20-26, 2008 were part of the E...
Do Not Eat Raw Oysters
Posted on March 20, 2009The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department recommends that consumers avoid raw oyster consumption. Recent illnesses associated with raw oyster consumption included 9 ill individuals who ate at a Hamilton County restaurant, the Boathouse Rotisserie and Raw Bar, between March 5 and March 8, 2009...
Midwest Salmonella Outbreak Due To Sprouts Becoming All Too Common
Posted on March 19, 2009The outbreak that's sickened people in four Midwest states has been tied to SunSprout Enterprises' sprouts that were distributed to grocery stores and restaurants. The Omaha company "voluntarily" recalled its products. Nebraska health officials say 84 cases of Salmonella saintpaul have been confirmed near Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney...
USDA Okays First E Coli 0157:H7 Vaccine In United States
Posted on March 13, 2009A Brave New World is upon us. A vaccine for E. coli 0157:H7 is now available for use in cattle in the United States. At least two other companies, including one with product already available in Canada, are also seeking approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell their vaccines...
Stephanie Smith remains in a wheelchair, fighting to walk -- and dance -- once again - She ate an E. coli - tainted hamburger
Posted on March 11, 2009From the Saint Cloud Times - Stephanie Smith of Cold Spring was a 20-year-old dance instructor when she contracted E. coli after eating a hamburger at a family barbecue in 2007. She also developed HUS and spent nine months in the hospital, including two months in a medically induced coma to prevent seizures...
Metallica lead singer James Hetfield was treated for food poisoning
Posted on March 11, 2009Metallica lead singer James Hetfield was treated at Karolinksa Hospital in Stockholm for a suspected case of food poisoning, The Local said Monday. Hetfield reportedly fell ill after eating a takeout Indian meal during the weekend. He was hospitalized Sunday, but released several hours later...
Salmonella Sprouts Linked to Dozens Ill in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Kansas
Posted on March 06, 2009Today, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) confirmed five cases of salmonella that might be linked to sprouts from a Nebraska company. KDHE said it had identified a possible link to sprouts from SunSprout Enterprises, Inc. of Omaha, Neb...
Salmonella Outbreak in Douglas County Nebraska Not Linked to Peanut Butter
Posted on February 28, 2009Other Kellogg Salmonella Peanut Butter Victims Speak Out - Billie, Shannon and Payton Rector
Posted on February 28, 2009666 persons infected with Salmonella Typhimurium Peanut Butter have been reported from 45 states
Posted on February 25, 2009CDC now report that 666 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium have been reported from 45 states (added Montana). The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Alabama (2), Arizona (13), Arkansas (6), California (76), Colorado (17), Connecticut (10), Florida (1), Georgia (6), Hawaii (6), Idaho (17), Illinois (10), Indiana (10), Iowa (3), Kansas (2), Kentucky (3), Maine (5), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (48), Michigan (36), Minnesota (42), Missouri (15), Mississippi (7), Montana (2), Nebraska (1), New Hampshire (13), New Jersey (23), New York (30), Nevada (6), North Carolina (6), North Dakota (17), Ohio (94), Oklahoma (4), Oregon (12), Pennsylvania (19), Rhode Island (5), South Dakota (4), Tennessee (14), Texas (10), Utah (6), Vermont (4), Virginia (21), Washington (21), West Virginia (2), Wisconsin (5), and Wyoming (2)...
70 Ill After Eating Steriod Tainted Pork In China
Posted on February 23, 2009State media in China is reporting that at least 70 people have fallen ill after eating pork treated with the steroid clenbuterol, which is used to prevent animals from gaining fat, BBC News reported. The China Daily said on Monday that the people involved suffered from stomach pains and diarrhea after eating the tainted pork in southern China's Guangdong province over the past few days, with three victims still in hospital...
China Takes Food Poisoning Too Seriously?
Posted on February 23, 2009Authorities in China say two men have been sentenced to death in a food-poisoning case that killed two diners and sickened 61 others in Shenzhen City. Ke Bizhi and Wang Ying were convicted of adding poison to food at a snack bar last February, Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, reported Monday...
Huge Peanut Butter Recall Expansion--All PCA-Produced Product From January 2007 Forward
Posted on January 28, 2009Well, it's official. This peanut butter Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak is out of control. I can barely keep up with the fast and furious announcements coming from the various state and national health agencies, and the recalls from food product manufacturers whose products were made with the implicated peanut butter...
Girl Scout Cookies Safe! "Sweet Success Peanut Butter Cookie Dough?"...Not So Much
Posted on January 20, 2009Hey. Did you just hear that? It was the collective sigh of relief from all the cookie fiends out there like me who are addicted to those delicious, sweet morsels of goodness known as Do-si-dos and Tagalongs Girl Scout Cookies...
FDA Announcement to the Public: Don't Eat Peanut Butter
Posted on January 17, 2009In a stunning and far-reaching announcement today regarding the ongoing investigation into a nationwide Salmonella outbreak, the FDA urged the public to avoid eating ANY products containing peanut butter. In its own words, "because identification of products subject to recall is continuing, the FDA urges consumers to postpone eating peanut butter-containing products until further information becomes available about which products may be affected...
The CDC and FDA Updates on the Nationwide Salmonella Outbreak Linked to Peanut Corp of America
Posted on January 16, 2009Today the CDC and FDA updated their websites to reflect new information on the continuing (and widening) Salmonella outbreak that has thus far caused a confirmed 453 Salmonella Typhimurium infections in citizens of 43 states, and has led to at least five deaths...
Conneticut Dept of Health Confirms Salmonella Found in UNOPENED Jar of King Nut Peanut Butter
Posted on January 16, 2009Food inspectors conducting recall effectiveness checks in the state this week in response to the nationwide salmonella outbreak linked to King Nut peanut butter have confirmed the presence of salmonella bacteria in an unopened five-pound tub of peanut butter found at a Connecticut food distributor, Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell, Jr...
Nationwide Salmonella Outbreak Source Expanding?
Posted on January 15, 2009As Federal, State, and Local health agencies continue their investigations into the nationwide Salmonella outbreak recently linked to King Nut brand peanut butter, other products containing the implicated peanut butter may also be linked to the outbreak...
Salmonella to do list - one down, eight to go
Posted on January 14, 2009As of a few moments ago, 15 more cases of salmonella poisoning in the now nationwide outbreak have been reported, bringing the total to 425 in 43 state with 3 deaths. Nearly 18% of the victims have been hospitalized. Praise to Peanut Corporation Corporation for the Recall...
Minnesota DOH Confirms: King Nut Peanut Butter Salmonella Is A Genetic Match to National Salmonella Outbreak
Posted on January 12, 2009The Minnesota Departments of Agriculture and Health today announced that laboratory analyses have confirmed a genetic match between the strains of Salmonella bacteria found in a container of King Nut brand creamy peanut butter and the strains of bacteria associated with 30 illnesses in Minnesota and nearly 400 illnesses around the country...
People get Salmonella Typhimurium from eating Peanut Butter, Minnesota points the finger at King Nut, who points the finger at Peanut Corporation of America, so what is next?
Posted on January 12, 2009Minnesota Department of Health announces late Friday that the have linked thirty illnesses ( and a death) to the consumption of King Nut Peanut Butter (and Parnell's Pride?). There is nothing on the CDC website or other State Health Department sites naming names - yet...
Salmonella Typhimurium Outbreak Source - King Nut Peanut Butter
Posted on January 09, 2009Here we go again! Peanut butter is once again being implicated as the source of a major samlonella outbreak in the US (Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter were the implicated sources in the previous outbreak). The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) today issued a product advisory after MDA’s preliminary laboratory testing indicated the presence of Salmonella bacteria in a 5-pound container of King Nut brand creamy peanut butter...
Important Announcement Expected on the Salmonella Typhimurium Oubtreak
Posted on January 09, 2009As I'm sure many of you are aware who follow food poisoning in the news, there is a huge nationwide Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak currently being investigated by the CDC and many state and local health departments. To date there has been no identification of the source of this outbreak, but I have just learned that an announcement is expected shortly...
Melamine Found In More Baby Formula
Posted on January 08, 2009In an article published by AP writer, Martha Mendoza, she reports that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found melamine and a byproduct, cyanuric acid, in four of 89 containers of infant formula made in the United States, doubling previously reported positive results...
Top Ten Food Safety Challenges for 2009 - Bill Marler Style
Posted on December 30, 2008As we're all getting ready to ring in the New Year, our thoughts usually turn to the resolutions for change we'd like to see in 2009. And since this is a blog about food safety, what better way to do that than by highlighting Bill Marler's Top 10 excellent food safety challenges for us to meet head on in 2009...
Tis The Season For Food Poisoning - Even Health Department's Are Not Immune
Posted on December 29, 2008It turns out none of us are invulnerable from food poisoning illnesses, not even health department employees. That's the hard lesson learned by the folks at the Lawrence County Health Department in Illinois following their holiday party this month...
Melamine-Tainted Foods Still On US Shelves!
Posted on December 23, 2008Winter has certainly come to the Northwest! Here in Seattle we have over a foot of snow and the temperature has yet to crack freezing level in the past week and a half. Wherever you are, now is the time of year to bundle up, take a walk, and sip on a nice cup of steaming hot cocoa...
Musical Tribute to Food Safety
Posted on December 18, 2008pa href="http://foodsafe.ucdavis.edu/html/bio.html"Carl Winters/a and the other great folks at UCnbsp;Davis's Food Science and Technology Department have put together an educational, and hilarious, musical tribute to food safety.nbsp; So head on over to their a href="http://foodsafe...
Foodborne Bacteria Suicide
Posted on December 16, 2008As an initial matter, I'm a lawyer, not a scientist. This recent article from Science Daily.com is therefore a bit - OK, a lot - over my head, but the short version is researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have found a way to fool a bacteria’s evolutionary machinery into programming its own death...
Is There a MRSA and E. coli O157:H7 Connection?
Posted on December 16, 2008Dr. Michael Millar, an infectious disease expert in the United Kingdom, certainly seems to think so. According to a recent article published on Legal-Medical.com, Dr. Millar believes that by putting an increased focus on eradicating infections such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile (C...
The Future Of Foodborne Pathogen Testing Is Now
Posted on December 16, 2008I have seen the future of foodborne pathogen monitoring technology! According to a new article published by the US Department of Agriculture's Quality and Safety Assessment Research Unit, Salmonella detection (with other possible pathogens to follow) may be possible at a level not previously seen in food pathogen testing systems...
FDA Warning - Botulism in Ungutted, Salt-Cured Alewives (Gaspereaux) Fish
Posted on December 12, 2008I'm not sure how many of you out there are avid consumers of ungutted, salt-cured Alewives fish (mmm, sounds delicious, doesn't it?), but for those of you who are you need to heed the FDA's just-announced consumer warning! Retailers and food service operators are being instructed not to offer for sale ungutted, salt-cured alewives (also called gaspereaux fish) from Michel & Charles LeBlanc Fisheries Ltd...
Food Safety Still Has A Long Way To Go
Posted on December 10, 2008It looks like Congress is about to throw Detroit a bone by infusing some taxpayer money into the cash-starved Big Three. But the area Congress should really be focusing its attention is on the US's preparedness (or lack thereof) for health emegencies...
10 Tips To Avoid Foodborne Illness At Restaurants
Posted on December 06, 2008How many times have gone to a restaurant and ordered the night's special meal? Or gone to the bathroom and noticed it was in less than prime condition? Niall Harbison, regular contributor at iFoods.tv, says those are just the kind of things we should be on alert for when heading out to a restaurant for a meal...
Outbreak Alert! 2008: Foodborne Illness Trends
Posted on December 06, 2008The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has released a report entitled Outbreak Alert! 2008 that has some fascinating, and disquieting, information regarding current trends in foodborne outbreak incidents. After compiling data for outbreaks of illnesses linked to specific foods occurring between 1990 and 2006, the results are: • Seafood: 1,140 outbreaks involving 11,809 cases of illness • Produce: 768 outbreaks involving 35,060 cases of illness • Poultry: 620 outbreaks involving 18,906 cases of illness • Beef: 518 outbreaks involving 14,191 cases of illness • Eggs: 351 outbreaks involving 11,143 cases of illness The authors also have made some excellent recommendations for CDC and Congress based on their findings, including: 1...
China now says 294,000 children fell ill from melamine tainted milk
Posted on December 05, 2008China said Monday that a total of 294,000 children had fallen ill from consuming dairy products tainted with the industrial chemical melamine, with 154 of them still in serious condition. In a statement on its website, the health ministry also indicated the number of dead may rise from the four previously announced, saying that six deaths since September 10 may be linked to the consumption of melamine-laced milk...
Food Poisoning On The Brain...Literally
Posted on November 27, 2008It turns out that feces contaminated food can lead not only to the usual array of foodborne illnesses, like E. coli or salmonella, but also to something much more unexpected. Rosemary Alvarez found that out first hand when a surgeon operating on her brain for what was initially believed to be a tumor instead found...
WHO's Foodborne Disease Counting and Tracking System
Posted on November 26, 2008I wanted to follow-up to my previous post regarding the World Health Organization's (WHO) recent announcement that much more research is needed into foodborne pathogens and their overall impact on humans. Today I received some additional information from James R...
Foodborne disease research needed
Posted on November 21, 2008As you know, we have repeatedly made calls for more research into the public health risk known as foodborne pathogens. Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) unequivocally agreed (although the question of funding still remains)...
Muskrat feces: Salmonella fighter?
Posted on November 19, 2008You can file this entry under the "DO NOT TRY AT HOME" category. According to a new report out of South Korea, scientists have found that the excrement of muskrats - the semi-aquatic rodents prized for their musk - contains an antibiotic that can treat food poisoning...
Turkey + Holidays = Foodborne Illness
Posted on November 17, 2008While most of my postings here on the food poison blog tend to be less than joyous (but necessary given the serious nature of our business), I thought I'd take a moment and post a somewhat lighter article. The next month and a half will bring many folks together to celebrate the holidays with family and friends...
China's Melamine Poisoning Problem - The Gift That Keeps Giving
Posted on November 15, 2008As if the poisoning of tens of thousands of China's babies was not enough, now the problem of how to get rid of the nasty, toxic chemical is causing further headache. Disposal techniques so far have ranged from having it burned, buried and mixed into coal...
What's the Best Way to Deal with the Next E. coli or Salmonella Outbreak?
Posted on November 11, 2008Not have an outbreak in the first place! That was the theme at the recent Fresh Summit 2008 conference, "Food Safety: Keeping Your Business Healthy," where attendees heard from panelists about the latest in regulations and safety initiatives as well as how to consider food safety investments in a return-on-investment perspective...
Investigation Into Melamine Contamination of China's Food Supply
Posted on November 09, 2008As I was sitting at my desk enjoying a berry protein smoothy this morning, I logged into the Seattle Times and discovered a new article, "How toxic chemical melamine got into China's food supply," by Maureen Fan and Ariana Eunjung Cha...
Rise of Recent E. coli O157:H7 Infections Tied to Biofuel?
Posted on November 08, 2008Last year we saw a huge rise in the number of beef recalls due to E. coli O157:H7 contamination. While there were eight beef recalls in the US in 2006, the number jumped to an astounding 21 beef recalls in 2007, including the second largest beef recall in US history from Tops Meat Company...
New Cattle Vaccine May Reduce E. coli O157:H7 Infections
Posted on October 29, 2008On Monday, a Canadian biopharmaceutical company, Bioniche Life Sciences, Inc., announced it has received full licensing approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)—an analogue to the USDA—for the world’s first cattle vaccine designed to reduce the shedding of E...
Country Cottage E. coli Outbreak - Are Criminal Charges on the Horizon?
Posted on October 19, 2008The FBI is on the hunt for…E. coli O111? In the latest development related to the Country Cottage outbreak, the Oklahoman reported today that FBI officials contacted the Oklahoma health department after the outbreak out of concern that it “might be a criminal situation ...
Salmonella Pot Pies - The Truth Is Out There
Posted on October 13, 2008What if I told you the above images were recently released by the US government to confirm that, in fact, UFOs do exist? Would you be shocked? Well, sorry to disappoint but they are not UFOs. What they actually are, however, is just as shocking. The above images are thermal shots of the same product being cooked in six different microwave ovens with hugely varying (and inconsistent) uniformity of heating...
China Wants Lawyers Out While Number of Melamine Victims Doubles
Posted on October 08, 2008Whatever China may have bought in world respect by hosting the spectacular summer Olympics may now be lost by the way the People's Republic is handing its adulteration of milk with the industrial chemical melamine. Item One: According to Reuters: The government has not updated figures issued on September 21, when it said that 12,892 infants were in hospital, 104 with serious illness, and close to 40,000 others were affected but did not need major treatment...
Best Efforts Of Nation's Vet's Cannot Keep Avoidance Databank From Closing
Posted on October 02, 2008Bryan Salvage at Meat & Poultry, the business journal for meat and poultry processors, today reports on the demise of the Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank. It was used by veterinarians, livestock producers and state and federal regulatory and extension specialists to ensure that drug, environmental and pesticide contaminants do not end up in meat, milk, and eggs...
New Superhero Goes Where FDA Fears To Go: All Hail "Eddie, the Haphazard Gourmet Girl!"
Posted on October 02, 2008Melamine-tainted milk powder has contaminated products world-wide, from infant formula, cookies, tea, and candies. The contamination has been blamed for the deaths of four children and kidney ailments among 54,000 others. More than 13,000 children have been hospitalized, over 1,400 with kidney failure...
Schwarzenegger's Veto Message For California's Raw Milk Bill
Posted on October 01, 2008To the Members of the California State Senate: I am returning Senate Bill 201 without my signature. This bill weakens food safety standards in California, something I cannot support. Last year I signed AB 1735, which passed the Legislature unanimously and put into law food safety standards for raw milk...
The Michigan E coli Outbreak Caused By Aunt Mid's Bagged Lettuce Brings History Lesson From William D. Marler!
Posted on September 27, 2008This is a press release being distributed by Marler Clark: Seattle--- “E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks associated with lettuce or spinach, specifically the "pre-washed" and "ready-to-eat" varieties sold under various brand and trade names, are by no means a new phenomenon,” according to food-safety attorney, William D...
Jail Inmate & State University Student E Coli Victims In Michigan May Blame "Aunt Mid's"
Posted on September 26, 2008The Michigan Department of Community Health is issuing a public health alert after dozens of cases of E. coli surfaced. It now appears the E. coli outbreak is linked to iceberg lettuce that came from a wholesale distributor. As a precautionary measure, the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) is issuing a public health alert due to illnesses from the 26 cases of E...
FDA Has Not Found Melamine In Imports Yet Warns Consumers Not To Drink Mr. Brown Coffee Or Milk Tea Nor White Rabbit Candy
Posted on September 26, 2008China's melamine scandal hasn't exactly reached the United States yet, but you can now see it from here. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration this morning issued a warning about "Mr. Brown" instant coffee and milk tea products made in the PRC...
Xiang And Marler Comment On Melamine Scandal From Beijing
Posted on September 24, 2008Xiang Yuzhang, China's chief quality inspector, says the melamine in the baby food problem was "more or less" under control, ABC News is reporting. However, America's top attorney for victims of food-borne illnesses, says many questions remain about the harm that's been done...
FDA On Hunt For Melamine Contaminated Infant Formula
Posted on September 21, 2008The tainted baby formula that has been blamed for killing four infants and sickening 6,200 in China since the scandal broke last week. About 1,300 babies, mostly newborns, are in hospitals and 158 of them are suffering from acute kidney failure...
One Federal Judge Is Not Sour On Raw Milk Farmers
Posted on September 10, 2008We really cannot explain this one. We do know that federal Magistrate Judge Karen Stromborn went the the University of Wisconsin Law School, so maybe she still gets weak knees around dairy farmers. Whatever, the reason, Judge Stromborn took the old term "slap on the wrist" to a new, much lower level in sentencing Woodland raw milk pushers Anita and Mike Puckett to--get this--$25 in court fees after both plead guilty to federal Class A misdemeanors for spreading the raw milk that made 18 people sick in 2005...
Check Out This Look At Food Radiation
Posted on September 05, 2008U.S. News & World Report just issued a "fair and balanced" article looking into irradiation of food. It's found under the headline: The Basics on the Foodfight Over Irradiation: Should you look for the "radura" symbol? Check it out here and do not forget to read the comments...
Food Micro 2008 Conference Going On This Week
Posted on September 02, 2008Britain's best known food safety expert, Professor Hugh Pennington, will be speaking to almost 850 delegates from 50 countries - including many leading scientists - attending Food Micro 2008 which is exploring a huge range of microbiological issues surrounding the safety and quality of food...
Are Technical Fixes Just PR Stunts By FDA?
Posted on August 25, 2008Stephen J. Hedges of the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau weighs in with a story questioning whether the new ruling by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to allow irradiation of some fresh produce is a public relations stunt. Hedges writes: The FDA's irradiation decision is the latest attempt to find a technical fix to what has become a near-epidemic food safety problem...
FDA Final Rule Favors Radiation Of Fresh Lettuce & Spinach
Posted on August 22, 2008Someone we learned much from about government taught us that, for better or for worse, there are certain periods of time when things happen in near silence. At the end of every year, from Thanksgiving through New Year's, many decisions without much notice or attention...
Attorney Denis W. Stearns Questions USDA Policies
Posted on August 18, 2008Guest Blog by Denis W. Stearns: On October 3, 2002 I submitted a petition to the USDA in which I asked the agency to explicitly clarify whether a USDA policy that appeared to allow the deadly pathogen E. coli O157:H7 on so-called “intact meat” applied to meat sold to retail outlets like grocery stores and restaurants...
Adnan Sami Victim of Food-borne Illness: Making Recovery
Posted on August 16, 2008We always try and note when famous people become victims of food-borne illnesses. Bollywood News and Gossip is reporting that singer, composer, pianist Adnan Sami is recovering from severe food poisoning after being rushed to a hospital. According to Bollywood: Bubbly singer-cum-composer-cum-pianist Adnan Sami was recently rushed to the hospital as he suffered from severe food poisoning...
FDA Warns Consumers Not to Eat Certain Mussel Products from Bantry Bay Seafood
Posted on August 16, 2008The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers against eating certain frozen cooked mussel products made by Bantry Bay Seafoods, imported from Ireland, because they may be contaminated with azaspiracid toxins, a group of naturally occurring marine toxins known to cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach cramps...
William Marler: American Food Safety System a "Train Wreck"
Posted on August 07, 2008SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In just a year and a half, the American meat industry has experienced a whiplash of beef recalls. 40 million pounds of meat tainted with highly toxic E. coli O157:H7 has been publicly recalled, up by a staggering factor of two hundred from the 2006 amount of only 181,900 pounds...
Bipartisan Group of Senators Led By Harkin Floats Food Safety Reform Bill
Posted on August 03, 2008Congress is taking its usual summer recess and there is precious little real legislative time left before they leave town for good to campaign to get their jobs back. Nevertheless, it is not unusual to have the concepts and support for legislation to come together now and become spring-loaded for advancing through the new Congress that will convene in January...
Do Not Eat Tomalley In Maine Lobsters, Warns FDA
Posted on July 30, 2008Just in time to ruin your summer vacation to Bar Harbor and other locations on the beautiful Maine coast comes this warning from our friends at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA): Avoid eating tomalley in American Lobster (Maine Lobster), regardless of where the lobster was harvested, because of potential contamination with dangerous levels of the toxins that cause Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP)...
Food Safety in the United States - A Letter to Congress
Posted on July 26, 2008Here is a letter that I sent to all members of the US Senate and House Agriculture CommitteesRE: Food Safety in the United StatesDear U.S. Congress Member:I am writing to you because the American people are losing confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to keep our food supply safe...
E. coli O157:H7 is a powerful and deadly bacterium
Posted on July 21, 2008You cannot see it, taste it, or smell it. 250,000 E. coli O157:H7 (E. coli) bacteria will fit on the head of a pin. Ten to 50 will kill your child or your grandmother. More likely due the expertise of Children’s Hospitals, and other top medical centers around the country, deaths at times are avoided, however, often not before Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (HUS) nearly kills...
Why Late Friday Aftenoon Treatment For Great Policy Change By Secretary Schafer?
Posted on July 13, 2008Every once in a while, we do have to wonder what the folks who run the public affairs section at the United States Department of Agriculture are thinking. The latest example of where they poorly served both the public and their boss, US Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, came late Friday when a real improvement in recall policy was announced too late to get much attention...
FDA & CDC Now Hot After Hot Peppers As Outbreak Investigation Mounts New Charge
Posted on July 09, 2008The U.S. Food & Drug Administration(FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) held a joint media conference call this afternoon. It came shortly after CDC posted new numbers of culture confirmed cases of Salmonella Saintpaul...
Tomatoes, Jalapeños and Cilantro on Suspect List for Salmonella Saintpaul
Posted on July 08, 2008The CDC reports this evening that "fresh tomatoes, fresh hot chili peppers such as jalapeños, and fresh cilantro are the lead hypotheses. However, at this point in the investigation, we can neither directly implicate one of these ingredients as the single source, nor discard any as a possible source"...
Tomatoes, Cilantro, Jalapeño Peppers, Serrano Peppers, Scallions and Bulb Onions Now Being Investigation in Salmonella Saintpaul Outbreak - nearly 38,000 sickened
Posted on July 05, 2008Really? According to the CDC, for every one person who is a stool-culture positive victim of salmonella in the United States, there a multiple of 38.5 who are also sick, but remain uncounted. (See, AC Voetsch, “FoodNet estimate of the burden of illness caused by nontyphoidal Salmonella infections in the United States, ”Clinical Infectious Diseases 2004;38 (Suppl 3):S127-34)...
Be Careful Out There! Eating on 4th Could Be More Dangerous Than Fireworks!
Posted on July 02, 2008As Americans go into the 4th of July weekend, they will not be getting a break. Fear the hamburger. Pass on the tomatoes. Fireworks, but better skip the salsa. We are experiencing another year just like the last one, awash in food-borne illness...
Nevada Added To List Of States With Salmonella Saintpaul Cases
Posted on June 25, 2008The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention today added Nevada to the list of states with confirmed cases of Salmonella Saintpaul. It is the 34th state to be included in the tomato-related outbreak, which also includes the District of Columbia...
CDC Updates Confirmed Cases of Salmonella Saintpaul
Posted on June 24, 2008Information updated as of 5 pm June 23, 2008 Massachusetts Latest State Since April, 613 persons infected with Salmonella Saintpaul with the same genetic fingerprint have been identified in 33 states and the District of Columbia. These were identified because clinical laboratories in all states send Salmonella strains from ill persons to their State public health laboratory for characterization...
HHS Secretary Leavitt Wants To Move FDA South of Border Full-Time
Posted on June 23, 2008We are not sure if he is suited up and ready for some lab work, but Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is in Mexico with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) team that is looking for the source of the tomatoes carrying Salmonella Saintpaul...
Salmonella Tomatoes Strike Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee, Vermont, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin
Posted on June 12, 2008According to the CDC, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee and Vermont with 61 ill persons were added to the prior list of Arizona (12 persons), California (2), Colorado (1), Connecticut (1), Idaho (2), Illinois (27), Indiana (7), Kansas (5), Michigan (2), New Mexico (39), Oklahoma (3), Oregon (3), Texas (56), Utah (1), Virginia (2), Washington (1), and Wisconsin (3) - bringing the number of ill persons to 228 and affected states to 23...
Raw Milk Isn't Cheap, That's For Certain
Posted on June 10, 2008Got Raw Milk? It ran on American Public Media. Pointed out one thing we didn't know. Raw milk sells for $12 a gallon! Check it out here. It is fair and balanced.
MRSA Found In Pigs & Farmworkers By University of Iowa
Posted on June 09, 2008Andrew Schneider, Senior Correspondent for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, ruined many a breakfast this morning---that’s if any of his Emerald City readers still eat bacon with their eggs. You see Schneider put in his newspaper today what had already been on his Seattle P-I's "Secret Ingredients" blog: that Tara Smith, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa Department of Epidemiology, and her graduate researchers found MRSA in more than 70 percent of the pigs they tested on farms in Iowa and Illinois...
Salmonella Saint Paul Tainted Tomatoes in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Posted on June 08, 2008The Food and Drug Administration has expanded its warning to consumers nationwide that a salmonellosis outbreak has been linked to consumption of certain raw, red tomatoes. At this time, FDA is advising consumers to limit their consumption of tomatoes to the following types of tomatoes...
Deadly Form of Tuberculosis Linked To Raw Cheese
Posted on June 06, 2008Raw Milk's first cousin Raw Cheese is bringing death to San Diego in the form of a disease most Americans think no longer exists in the United States. Doug Irving, writing in the Orange County Register, yesterday reported: Researchers have found a potentially deadly strain of tuberculosis infection spreading through Latino communities in Southern California and suspect the disease is being imported from Mexico in unpasteurized cheese...
South Dakota Recalls Unpasteurized Milk
Posted on June 04, 2008South Dakota is recalling milk for a potential health risk due to improper pasteurization. We are wondering if the "dirty dairy" bill passes in California if states that discover unpasteurized milk could in the future just send it to the Golden State where it could be mixed into the "bacteria cocktails" for sale by retailers like Whole Foods...
"Dirty Dairy" Bill Introduced In California Senate
Posted on June 02, 2008Let’s call it what it is: the “dirty dairy” bill. California has always been silly about its organic movement. Yet, it’s usually been serious about food safety and public health. Raw milk is NOT pasteurized. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, more than 1,000 people got sick from raw milk and raw cheese between 1998 and 2005...
Pennsylvania Department of Health Views Raw Milk As "Inherently Unsafe"
Posted on May 31, 2008We've been wondering if we'd ever hear anything from the public health side of Pennsylvania government. The state or more specifically its Ag department issues licenses to dairy farms that want to sell raw milk. Pennsylvania tests raw milk and when those tests show the raw milk has gone bad, it does issue warnings and recalls...
Food Labs Asked To Provide Info To House On Import Tests
Posted on May 27, 2008Food labs responsible for testing imports for safety are being put under suspicion by the U.S. House Committee on Energy & Commerce. The Committee's Oversight and Investigations subcommittee has sent out letters to ten food labs, suggesting they had been encouraged by importers to keep testing until the product was found to be safe...
Lifeway Pushes Back Against FDA Order To Shutdown Its Cheese & Seafood
Posted on May 17, 2008This is interesting. Lifeway Foods, Inc. and its subsidiary, LFI Enterprises, Inc., both Illinois companies, are pushing back against the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). The federal government last Thursday (5/15/08) ordered Lifeway to shutdown its cream cheese and seafood operations...
FDA Tells Hope Food Supply to Shut Down
Posted on May 16, 2008We've been watching the Houston area media today for reports on the Hope Food Supply, which has been shutdown on the order of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). But, we ain't seen much.There's been no comment out of Hope Food Supply, which has also been ordered to recall all its dried smoked catfish steaks and any other seafoods it has ever produced...
More Stool Cultures Needed to Catch More Food Poisoning Cases
Posted on May 04, 2008The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 76 million foodborne illness cases occur in the United States every year. This amounts to one in four Americans becoming ill after eating foods contaminated with such pathogens as E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Hepatitis A, Campylobacter, Shigella, Norovirus, and Listeria...
FDA Has Blocked (for a while) 2,964 Farm Fish Shipments From People's Republic Of China
Posted on April 28, 2008Something called the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission last week held a hearing on “Chinese Seafood: Safety and Trade Issues.” The big talker was Don Kraemer from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition...
Two-Day Food Labeling Workshop Being Held In Lansing In July
Posted on April 21, 2008The Institute for Food Laws & Regulations (IFLR) at Michigan State University will present a Food Labeling Workshop on July 23-24, 2008, at The James B. Henry Center for Executive Development adjacent to the MSU campus. This workshop is designed for food industry personnel and regulatory officials who are responsible for reviewing food labels and labeling for compliance with state and U...
Common Misspellings of Food Poison - food poision, food poison, food poisin, food poisons, food poisen
Posted on April 18, 2008The CDC estimates that 76 million foodborne illness, or food poisoning, cases occur in the United States every year, which means that one in four Americans contracts a foodborne illness annually after eating foods contaminated with such pathogens as E...
Food Safety In Canada Put In Danger By Daffy Decision
Posted on April 16, 2008The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that there is no evidence of: the relationship between food contamination and hand-washing; nor is there any risk to the public if a restaurant employee's hand-washing is limited (or non-existent) and no reason for concern about other employees being adversely affected...
FoodNet Data For 2007 Shows No Progress Against Food-borne Illness
Posted on April 10, 2008The Centers on Disease Control & Prevention today (4/10/08) held a telephone press conference to mark the release of "Preliminary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of Infection with Pathogens Transmitted Commonly Through Food - 10 States, United States, 2007" which is also being published in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report...
Colorado's El Paso County Admits It Cannot Keep Up with Inspections
Posted on April 08, 2008The top health official for Colorado's El Paso County, home of the U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Northern Command, and the Northern American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), just acknowledged local restaurants could be unsafe. "We've got a large increase in the number of complaints that are coming to us, we really ought to be out there finding these things before they end up to be a complaint," says El Paso County Public Health Administrator Rosemary Bakes-Martin...
Butter Is Poison And We Should Tax It, Says Professor
Posted on April 06, 2008Every year the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association and Pennsylvania Diary Promotion Program sponsor the "butter sculpture" at the Harrisburg Farm Show. This year, the buttery likenesses of Benjamin Franklin and the Liberty Bell were big hits...
Bad Ham, Staph Infections, Toxins Add Up To Lot's of Sick People
Posted on March 28, 2008Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, KY proves again that sometimes its the really popular places that can be the most dangerous for eating and drinking.After making more than 100 people god-awfully sick with Staphylococcus bacteria on Easter Sunday, the southern landmark is going to re-open for weekend business, beginning tonight with the lounge...
An Important Story We Missed Last Sunday
Posted on March 27, 2008The decline of the print media gets much attention. So much so, that one sign of life for the print media goes un-noticed. That is the rise of the number of Sunday newspapers. We are a weekend people in this 21st Century, and newspaper publishers while often stupid are usually are not fools...
Typhoid Fever Strikes Long Island Pizzeria
Posted on March 23, 2008The Centers For Disease Control & Prevention says we do not need get a vaccine for Typhoid Fever unless we travel to Third World countries or work in a laboratory with Salmonella Typhi bacteria. Oh, and if you happen to come into contact with anyone who is a typhoid carrier...
Website Names Most Dangerous States For Eating Out
Posted on March 17, 2008The quickest way to get ink in newspapers is to do some place-based rankings. Name the states where you are most at risk while eating out, and you are certain to get some play. That's what the website www.healthinspections.com found out last Friday when it named "the five most dangerous states for eating out...
Chairman Dingell Lists What Congress Has Learned
Posted on March 13, 2008Before the witnesses got to testify in yesterday's hearing of the House Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, Chairman John D. Dingell had a few things to say, including:Those who heard the testimony at our first food safety hearing of the parents of the children who became very sick or seriously injured from contaminated food understand how important these efforts are...
Texas Child Dies From Shiga Toxin
Posted on March 10, 2008KVUE-TV News in Austin, Texas is reporting that one child has died and five other people are ill all due to a shiga toxin. Since an initial report on the illnesses issued late last week by the Texas Department of Health Services, concern about the shiga toxin has become very serious...
Seattle Food Safety Conference
Posted on March 04, 2008Few subjects draw more immediate attention or concern than the safety of the food we eat. Recent years have seen a plethora of food warnings and recalls, raising new questions about the quality and integrity of our existing system for assuring food safety...
Got Food Borne Illness? Make Online Report!
Posted on March 04, 2008We deal with many victims of food borne illness, often while they or family members are still being treated at hospitals and clinics. Many of them use the Internet in those moments of crisis to find an attorney. So, we cannot rule out the possibility that victims of food borne illness will also go on-line and fill out a lengthy questionnaire that ultimately will be shared with their local or regional health department...
Marler Gives Congress Specific Food Safety Reforms
Posted on February 26, 2008As we promised, Bill Marler was making news today on Capitol Hill. Along with a bench full of food industry executives, Marler testified before the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Michigan's John D. Dingell.We go to Andrew Schneider's blog at the Seattle P-I for a quick summary of Bill's major points:Seattle lawyer William Marler gave the lawmaker an up close and personal view of many victims of food poisoning that he had encountered...
Hallmark/Westland Was One of USDA's Elite 10
Posted on February 25, 2008This week, you are going to hear a lot about what the federal government should be doing to clean up its act when it comes to making sure our food supply is safe. John D. Dingell, powerful chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, is holding a public hearing on Tuesday that will hear from lots of experts, including our own Bill Marler...
Clark Says Fruits And Vegetables Not Subject To "Kill Step"
Posted on February 12, 2008New and troubling questions are raised in a story today by the Gannett News Service about the home grown problems that threaten food safety in the United States. The story by Amanda Gardner quotes Marler Clark partner Bruce Clark about the lack of a "kill step" when it comes to the increasingly tainted fruits and vegetables...
New Era Recalls Still More Products Due To Botulism
Posted on February 07, 2008We thought New Era's production of botulism was probably over in mid January when it expanded its recall to include all of the beans and garbanzo beans produced by the Michigan processing plant in the last five years.We were wrong.Today, New Era Canning Company announced it was further expanding its recall to include all "vegetable products in #10 cans (large cans containing between 6 and 7 pounds) on the list below because they may have been processed under conditions which could have led to contamination by Clostridium botulinum bacterium spores, which can cause life-threatening illness or death...
FDA Warns Seafood Processors About North Gulf Fish
Posted on February 05, 2008Seafood processors were warned today about grouper, amberjack, and related predatory reef species captured in the northern Gulf of Mexico due to recent outbreaks of ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP) that have been traced to fish from an area in the United States where ciguatera was previously extremely rare...
Dip recalled for possible contamination with Clostridium botulinum
Posted on February 01, 2008The California Department of Public Health announced today that Olivier brand Parmesan & Asiago Dip with Garlic & Basil was being recalled by Olivier Olive Oil Products, Inc. of Saint Helena, California, due to potential contamination with Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that causes botulism...
New look for food poisoning informational Web sites
Posted on February 01, 2008The Marler Clark network of food poisoning informational Web sites, which first appeared online in 1998, recently received a makeover. The sites, which were originally put online to provide Internet users with basic information about the illnesses caused by such foodborne pathogens as E...
Warning issued for raw milk cheeses in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio
Posted on January 31, 2008The Indiana State Board of Animal Health's Dairy Division warned consumers not to consume cheeses made from raw milk at the Grassy Meadows Dairy of Howe, Indiana, after testing conducted on the cheeses revealed high levels of staphylococcus aureus (staph) contamination in several samples of the cheeses that were produced before Wednesday...
Foods recalled for botulism, listeria contamination
Posted on January 30, 2008Seoul Shik Poom, a Hillside, New Jersey, company, recalled frozen, salted, and dried yellow croaker products for potential contamination with clostridium botulinum, the pathogen that causes botulism poisoning, late last week. Products recalled include: BG1103 Salted Yellow Croaker (bag) 2...
Hepatitis A Scare at California Restaurant
Posted on January 23, 2008Customers who ate at Chuy's Mesquite Broiler on the Rosedale Highway in Bakersfield, California, between January 4 and January 10 are being warned that they may have been exposed to the hepatitis A virus. The Kern County Health Department issued a press release stating that customers who ate at the restaurant between those dates should receive an inoculation to prevent against hepatitis A infection...
Long Term Impacts of Food Illness Prompts STOP To Start National Register
Posted on January 21, 2008Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP), the nation's advocacy group for victims of food-borne illness, this month is beginning the first national registry of food-poisoning survivors with long-term health problems — people willing to share their medical histories with scientists in hopes of boosting much-needed research...
Botulism Forces New Era To Call Back All It Produced In Last 5 Years
Posted on January 18, 2008Michigan's troubled New Era Canning Company was forced on Friday night to expand its botulism recall to all canned green beans and garbanzo beans distributed by the company nationwide over the last five years. That could be a great deal of product. According to the company's website: New Era Canning now processes over 100 million pounds of produce annually for the private label industry...
Ground beef source of E. coli
Posted on January 18, 2008This week's food safety infosheet (pdf) from the International Food Safety Network focuses on what we learned this week - that ground beef is once again the source of a multi-state E. coli outbreak. At least five people in Wisconsin and one California resident became ill with E...
Listeria found in 16 of 100 samples taken from dairy
Posted on January 17, 2008The outbreak investigation into the Listeria outbreak traced to the consumption of Whittier Farms milk products revealed contamination in several areas of the milk plant, according to reports from the Boston Herald and the Metro West Daily News. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced today: More than 100 environmental and milk samples were taken from the processing plant as part of the investigation...
US Food Safety Profiled, Part III
Posted on January 16, 2008In the third of its three-part series on US food safety, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published Health Day's shopping list of US food safety solutions. This last part focuses on what's to come for food safety -- changes are needed in our food safety net, but what changes are needed, and how drastic do those changes need to be? Some have proposed a federal "superagency" that would take on the food safety responsibilities currently housed within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)...
US Food Safety Profiled, Part II
Posted on January 15, 2008The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and HealthDay continued their coverage on the US food supply today. This time, though, the focus wasn't on foods produced in the US - it was on foods imported from countries such as China, Mexico, and Costa Rica...
South Dakota Salmonella outbreak linked to illness in other states
Posted on January 15, 2008Public health officials in South Dakota have confirmed 22 cases of Salmonella Newport that is similar to a strain of Salmonella Newport that has been identified as causing illness among residents of four other states. An outbreak investigation is under way to determine whether victims of the outbreak ate the same food, but so far investigators have not been able to pinpoint the source of the outbreak...
FDA Says Clones Can Go On The Menu
Posted on January 15, 2008This just in from the United States Food and Drug Administration:After years of detailed study and analysis, the Food and Drug Administration has concluded that meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals...
Campylobacter outbreak traced to raw milk in Washington
Posted on January 15, 2008The Bellingham Herald reported today on a Campylobacter jejuni outbreak that has been traced to the consumption of raw milk purchased from a Whatcom County, Washington, dairy. In December, the Whatcom County Health Department issued a warning to consumers that Campylobacter had been isolated from a sample of milk produced at the Pleasant Valley Dairy in Ferndale...
US Food Safety Profiled
Posted on January 14, 2008The US food safety system was profiled today in an article published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The article, which is the first in a three-part series, focused on what we know about our food safety system: Fresh produce is more and more popular, and has become the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks...
"Honey, Would You Please Take Out the Botulism?!!
Posted on January 11, 2008Anyone stuck with cans of "GFS Fancy Blue Lake Cut Green Beans" from the New Era Canning Company in New Era, Michigan better be careful. They may carry deadly Botulism inside.So the U.S. Food & Drug Administration is recalling them and telling consumer to throw them away---very carefully...
More beans recalled in possible botulism scare
Posted on January 10, 2008The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that Michigan-based New Era Canning Company was recalling several cases of canned beans because they were not adequately cooked during processing. Under-cooking of canned beans can lead to the growth of clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that causes botulism...
Norovirus
Posted on January 09, 2008Natalie Angier, wrote about noroviruses in yesterday's New York Times. Her family had a run-in with a norovirus after New Year's Eve, and she did some research into norovuiruses. Part of what she found is this: Its sour suite of symptoms is often referred to as “stomach flu,” but norovirus infection is distinct from the flu, which is caused by the influenza virus and targets not the gut but the lungs...
Third man dead after drinking Listeria-tainted milk
Posted on January 08, 2008The Boston Globe reported today on the death of an 87-year-old man who passed away after suffering a Listeria infection he contracted from drinking milk supplied by the Whittier Farms Dairy. Stephen Smith, the story's author, wrote about this most recent death and about the illness of a pregnant woman and her baby: The 87-year-old man fell ill in November and died Thursday, said Donna Rheaume, spokeswoman for the state department of public health...
Pennsylvania woman hospitalized with botulism
Posted on January 08, 2008Schumacher's Inn in Pennsylvania recalled its canned soups earlier this month after botulism spores were identified in a sample of the soup tested by public health officials, and a woman became ill with botulism poisoning. The woman was hospitalized on December 19; health officials have not issued an update on her condition...
"Three Real Threats. But Don't Worry. (Be Happy!)
Posted on January 07, 2008Read the '' New York Times'' if you want. They get lucky sometimes. You may remember those words from "Men in Black." Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) was showing Agent J (Will Smith) that it is always wise to check "the hot sheets" when you want to know what's really going on out there...
E. coli recall in Michigan, Salmonella outbreaks in Pennsylvania, Montana
Posted on January 07, 2008On January 5, Mark's Quality Meats, Inc. of Detroit, Michigan, recalled over 13,000 pounds of ground beef and steak products that were produced in late December after E. coli contamination was identified through lab testing. In announcing the recall, the Food Safety and Inspection Service stated that no illnesses have been reported in connection with the recall...
Pennsylvania: Botulism found in canned soup
Posted on January 03, 2008The Pennsylvania Department of Health issued a warning to consumers who purchased canned soup and other products from Schumacher's Inn, located in Austin, Pennsylvania, to throw the product out after one of the cans tested positive for Clostridium Botulinum, the bacterium that causes botulism poisoning...
Milk confirmed as source of Massachusetts Listeria outbreak
Posted on January 03, 2008Public health officials in Massachusetts have confirmed that a listeriosis outbreak was caused by the consumption of milk purchased from Whittier Farms. They used Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE) to obtain the "genetic fingerprint" of the strain of Listeria that was isolated from case-patients and milk provided by the dairy for testing...
California: Raw Milk Legislation Contested
Posted on December 28, 2007Two California raw milk dairies filed a lawsuit yesterday against the state of California Department of Agriculture in an effort to stop AB1735 from going into effect. The law, which was passed by the California legislature, will require raw milk producers to reduce the number of coliform bacteria in bottled raw milk to 10 per milliliter...
Ground beef recalled for E. coli contamination in Texas
Posted on December 28, 2007The US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced yesterday that Texas American Food Service Corporation of Fort Worth, Texas, was recalling 14,800 pounds of ground beef products for possible E. coli contamination. The products were sold under American Fresh Foods labels (right)...
Massachusetts: Milk recalled after 2 deaths
Posted on December 27, 2007The Milford Daily News reported that two people died after drinking milk produced by Whittier Farms in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. According to the story, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health issued a warning to consumers not to drink milk produced by the dairy because it might be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes...
Ground beef recalled for Listeria contamination
Posted on December 27, 2007The USDA announced Tuesday that ground beef patties distributed to schools had been recalled for contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. According to the USDA recall announcement: The Maramont Corporation, a Brooklyn, N.Y, firm, is voluntarily recalling approximately 88 pounds of a beef patty product that may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, the U...
Botulism found in green beans
Posted on December 27, 2007The discovery that 1,026 cans of green beens were possibly contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that causes botulism, resulted in a recall of the product last week. The Food and Drug Administration issued a notice to consumers, which was subsequently distributed through the media...
A look back on 2007's E. coli problems
Posted on December 21, 2007Annys Shin wrote in today's Washington Post: After three relatively quiet years, the 20 recalls this year have raised new doubts about whether the beef industry's attempts to keep the pathogen out of ground beef, and the government's oversight of those efforts, are working...
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How do i go bout geting a free laywer to sue the durham police department for drug raids and nothing is found?they have been in my house 4 or 5 times seems like every 4 months or so and breaking down my door tearing up m
They need a warrant to get into your house...if they never showed you one...you ...
Do I have a case against my former employer?
Yes you have a case against them. Walmart just lost a case for several million d...
Is it libel to write blog posts and/or online reviews about a local business that defames one's reputation?
Libel is the form of defamation expressed in fixed-- usually written form. Sland...
What pet food brands have been recalled?
Wet foods-- those that include soft food and gravy, typically packaged in cans--...
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