Personal Injury Law

Food Safety Naughty and Nice List at Food Safety News

By Bill Marler

Well, it is that time of the year again, but this year I turned over the responsibility of putting together Santa's list to my friends over at Food Safety News.  Apparently, the list became so long that it is being divided into two lists - one naughty and one nice.  The naughty one will run Wednesday and the nice one will run Thursday.  Tune in at www.foodsafetynews.com.  By the way, here was my list from 2008:

Naughty

- Nebraska Beef – For suing a church and once again allowing meat tainted with E. coli O157:H7 into the marketplace, causing an outbreak and recalls in over 7 states.

- Organic Pastures – For selling raw milk across state lines, against the law.

- Chinese Government – For their handling of the melamine crisis. Reports of illnesses only began to surface after the Olympics, when many were ill before.

- Aunt Mid's Produce, for refusing to reveal the supplier of E. coli-tainted lettuce, which Aunt Mid's distributed.

- USDA/FSIS – For not closing the intact meat loophole in E. coli regulation and for not posting open meat inspection records.

- Westland/Hallmark - For slaughtering and selling downer cows.

- FDA – For the stealth reversals on animal antibiotics and mercury in fish.

- Senator Dean Florez - For sponsoring SB201, the 'dirty' raw milk bill, that would have left a large and dangerous loophole in raw milk regulation.

Nice

- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – For vetoing SB 201

- Minnesota Health Department – Team Diarrhea helped solve the salmonella/tomato/pepper mystery as well as the raw frozen chicken entrees making people sick.

- Fresh Express - For a clean outbreak record, donating a healthy sum to research, and sponsoring a technical conference on E. coli in leafy greens.

- Bioniche - For the Development of an E. coli vaccine. We hope it works!

- Food Safety agencies for using social media to get the word out – we're glad to see you on twitter.

- ConAgra - For inviting me to Omaha to talk to its Food Safety Committee.

- The members of the press who write about food safety – here are a few: Stephen Hedges of the Chicago Tribune, Annys Shin of the Washington Post, Andrew Martin of the New York Times, Elizabeth Weise and Julie Schmit of USA Today, Kent Garber of US News and World report, Phil Brasher of the Des Moines Register. And, the food bloggers: The Ethicurian, Haphazard Gourmet Girls, Efoodalert, foodconsumer.org, barfblog, and foodsnark.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on December 22, 2009 (boomark / email).