Personal Injury Law

Tweens banned from kissing cardboad Robert Pattinson

Posted on December 06, 2009
The second movie in the Twilight series, New Moon, hit theatres last month and though ashamed to admit it, I went to see it. A friend asked me to go to the midnight screening, so I entered the tween-packed theatre (2 hours past my bedtime) and begrudgingly watched the hyped film into the wee hours of the morning...

Champagne and cupcakes, Trailer Park Boys, and hand sanitizers in massage practices

Posted on December 06, 2009
Holidays are all about tradition. And nothing says tradition more than the Canadian TV show, Trailer Park Boys. Amy and I have a polar bear that guards the compound during the long winter nights; we have champagne and cupcakes for birthday parties, and every Christmas Day, we gather round the hearth with whoever's left in town, and watch the Trailer Park Boys Christmas Special...

bites and barfblog: we help the next generation ask the right questions, and teach some writing basics

Posted on December 04, 2009
barfblogger and second-year Kansas State veterinary student Michelle Mazur stars in a Dec. 3/09 story from the American Veterinary Medical Association which calls 'barfblog.com one of the sickest (and funniest) sites about food safety.' Mazur said she stumbled into her job after a food microbiology class she took as an undergrad at Kansas State...

Communicators bungle the crisis: Tiger Woods, Maple Leaf, it's not about the talk, it's the actions

Posted on December 03, 2009
The Wall Street Journal and every armchair analyst out there is saying that Tiger Woods is blowing the communications thing; he's losing credibility, and fast. Tiger Woods's handling of the scandal is a textbook case in poor crisis management, say crisis managers...

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Danger: This email contains barf, poop and foodborne pathogens, fund bites.ksu.edu

Posted on December 03, 2009
What we have discovered at bites.ksu.edu is that it's best to be obvious and when possible, humorous. Food safety information can be boring, leading to complacency. We make important food safety information accessible and interesting to everyone, because everyone eats...

Listeria lessons from Gossip Girl Blair Waldorf

Posted on December 03, 2009
Last night while watching the Thanksgiving episode of Gossip Girl, queen of the Upper East Side Blair Waldorf was up to another one of her schemes. In an attempt to prove her mother is pregnant, Blair offers her food and drink pregnant women should avoid: champagne and soft cheeses...

Report: Illinois hepatitis A outbreak would have been prevented with proper handwashing (and vaccination)

Posted on December 02, 2009
The Illinois Health Department has concluded its investigation into this summer's hepatitis A outbreak and found that most of the cases originated at the Milan McDonald's and most of the cases 'would have been prevented' if only that one employee had properly washed hands...

3 stricken with E. coli O157 in Washington State from raw milk; is that food safety hysteria?

Posted on December 02, 2009
Chapman wasn't feeling particularly hysterical as he kept crapping himself while he was in Manhattan (Kansas) a couple of weeks ago and was then confirmed to be suffering from campylobacter. I didn't feel hysterical with my own case of the green apple splatters over the weekend while sitting in the backseat with Sorenne, as Amy drove the five hours to Lebannon, Missouri, for a Thanksgiving dinner with her father and family...

Mice droppings found in Belfast food shop

Posted on December 02, 2009
Food safety inspectors have confirmed mice droppings and bread for sale, which had been gnawed by rodents, were both found at an Iceland store in west Belfast. Belfast City Council staff carried out an inspection of the premises on 19 September, 2008 which uncovered "a number of serious breaches of food hygiene legislation...

Up to 160 sick after holiday party at Melbourne's Crown Casino

Posted on December 02, 2009
That's me and Melbourne Milton, having a chat along Southbank one morning last year when we visited Australia. The Crown Casino is tucked in behind us. We spent a couple of nights in the hotel – it was great. But it wasn't so great for 160 employees of superannuation fund Unisuper, who decided on a Christmas party at the casino and are now dealing with what appears to be food poisoning...

US school lunch program needs more food safety accountability

Posted on December 02, 2009
Today's USA Today has a feature story today about meat served in the U.S. school lunch program and asks why certain batches of meat were excluded from a Salmonella-related recall and outbreak last year. What stands out is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture initially refused to match suppliers with positive test results as part of an analysis of 146,000 tests for bacteria including salmonella and E...

The cursed 3 compartment sink method

Posted on December 01, 2009
  I have finally decided to give my body a break and cut down on the amount of caffeine I consume daily. The problem is that I am not a morning kinda' guy and when restaurant operators decide to tell me just how much they like me when I visit, I look like Christopher Walken ready to snap...

Can reindeer poop be considered a Gem for holiday ornaments?

Posted on December 01, 2009
Yup, that's Sorenne, attempting to pet a deer at Amy's dad's place in Missouri on Saturday (he raises deer). Amy says she made sure Sorenne didn't touch her hands to her mouth and washed them thoroughly. I was in bed, bemoaning the state of my insides, but that's another story...

Top 20 secrets your waiter will never tell you, condensed version

Posted on December 01, 2009
Or the 7 I thought most relevant. This, from msnbc.com. Who knows if it's true. 1. We're not allowed to tell our customers we don't like a dish. So if you ask your server how something is and she says, 'It's one of our most popular dishes,' chances are she doesn't like it...

Spanish eggs eyed as possible source of UK Salmonella outbreaks; 2 dead, 5 hospitalized, hundreds sick in 14 outbreak clusters since August

Posted on November 30, 2009
U.K. health types are investigating two deaths linked to a surge in cases of Salmonella Enteritidis phage type (PT) 14b since mid-August. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said a total of 14 clusters in England and Wales have been linked to a number of different catering establishments and one care home...

K-State graduate student helping New Zealand with development of national restaurant inspection disclosure system -- review paper published

Posted on November 30, 2009
This international research stuff can be challenging to co-ordinate. Not the supervision or the actual research, more getting all the various agencies, living arrangements and insurance lined up. And I have to be more sensitive – I wanted to call this blog post, The shocking, untold, no-holds barred story of how Katie Filion went from Sault St...

Don't slaughter goats in restaurant kitchens and don't store 148 goat carcasses in a van

Posted on November 30, 2009
Courthouse News Service reports today: A Texas state trooper found 148 goat carcasses stacked inside Halal Import Food Market's unrefrigerated van and ordered it to Halal's warehouse to be inspected, where health inspectors found that 102 dead goats and boxes of organs had mysteriously disappeared in transit, the state says...

Summer means melons

Posted on November 29, 2009
In my current neck of the woods summer is approaching. I've decided only the oldies station will play in my pimpin' ride, and I've been purchasing strawberries and watermelon on every trip to the grocery store. Nothing says summer like fresh melon(s)...

Fish freezer containing corpse in Ireland 'passed 20 inspections'

Posted on November 27, 2009
All those people doing the Potomac two-step in Washington, wanting more food safety inspections, ignoring the advice of former Food and Drug Administration food safety czar Davis Acheson, who said earlier this week, 'there is a lot more to ensuring a food supply than writing laws,' and that 'food safety is cultural,' may be interested to know that health inspectors and Department of Marine officials in Ireland carried out up to 20 routine inspections of a large fish shop freezer but failed to notice a man's body hidden there for five years (that's actor Frank Sivero, right, as Frank Carbone after he's been iced in the 1990 movie, Goodfellas)...

Feeding birds on Thanksgiving

Posted on November 27, 2009
I enjoyed a nice thanksgiving with my family in Wichita this year. After an enjoyable Thanksgiving lunch, complete with turkey, potatoes, green been casserole, and all the holiday staples, we decided to walk off our turkey coma by visiting the park...

Food safety, news, and the slow death of journalism

Posted on November 27, 2009
I've been doing food safety news for 16 years – aggregating, analyzing, and everything else. Archives are available online going back to Jan. 1, 1996. I believe in  the 4 Rs of food safety communications -- rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant...

14 Brits stricken with E. coli O157 after returning from resort in Spain

Posted on November 27, 2009
The U.K. Health Protection Agency is investigating a number of cases of the gastrointestinal infection E. coli O157 associated with travellers returning from the resort of Benidorm in Spain. So far the HPA has been made aware of 14 confirmed cases of E...

I'm bona fide. I'm the paterfamilias. I have a residency card and can leave the U.S. and get back in

Posted on October 27, 2009
Or something like that from George Clooney in the 2000 movie and Courtlynn favorite, O Brother Where Art Thou. As far as the U.S. government is concerned, I am indeed somewhat more bona fide, having received my permanent residency (below), so let the food safety world tour begin...

Better food poisoning awareness amongst docs after E. coli O157 inquiry in Wales

Posted on October 27, 2009
Looks like the E. coli O157 death of 5-year-old Mason Jones, the illnesses of 160 other Welsh schoolchildren and the subsequent inquiry headed by Prof. Hugh Pennington were not entirely in vain. The South Wales Echo is reporting today that the number of reported foodborne illnesses increased to 631 in June, compared to 234 in January...

Another A for Curb Your Enthusiasm

Posted on October 27, 2009
Rather than wait a week, Amy and I watched Sunday's Curb Your Enthusiasm last night. And there it was – another Los Angeles restaurant inspection disclosure A on the front of a pizza shop. I'm starting to think the L.A. County health department is paying for A placements in the scripts...

How much am I paying that person to poop? Workpoop.com

Posted on October 27, 2009
How much time do you spend on the toilet? With foodborne illness, it could be hours and hours and hours. Inventorspot reports on workpoop.com, an online calculator that helps answer a pressing question of every employer: how much am I paying that person to poop?  

NYC restaurant: A mouse in the display case doesn't mean a failed inspection

Posted on October 26, 2009
Being the typical older sibling, growing up middle-sister Lisa and I used to pick on youngest-sister Julie. Whenever we watched Disney movies we would assign Julie the nicknames of the odd Disney characters, like Gus-Gus. Gus-Gus, as some may recall, is one of the mice from Cinderella...

Photoshop isn't just for people - turkey breasts enhanced for magazine covers

Posted on October 26, 2009
The turkey has done what a supermodel never could: land the cover of dozens of magazines in a single month. The November covers of American food magazines are a turkey delight, with the burnished bird stuffed, garnished and splayed every which way. Dana Cowin, the editor in chief of Food & Wine, said, 'I know it seems like, hey, what could be simpler than roasting a bird? But the perfect roast bird is a challenge...

Fat Duck won't face charges - 'I'll never set foot in there again' says food poisoning victim

Posted on October 26, 2009
The Telegraph reports this morning that Heston Blumenthal and the Fat Duck restaurant – home to 529 cases of norovirus earlier this year – will not face criminal charges despite failures in reporting illness and what appears to be an overall lack of food safety awareness...

Compelling and disgusting messages might work better

Posted on October 26, 2009
As outbreaks of H1N1 continue to strike campuses across North America, our paper 'University Students' Hand Hygiene Practice During a Gastrointestinal Outbreak in Residence: What They Say They Do and What They Actually Do,', keeps getting a bit of run...

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