Personal Injury Law

1 dead, 2 sick in Florida after drinking contaminated hotel water

Posted on December 14, 2009
A Miami hotel has been evacuated after 1 guest died and 2 more fell ill from drinking contaminated water. The hotel in question here is the Luxury Epic Hotel in downtown Miami, home to more than 300 guests at the time of the evacuation. On Sunday, all guests were relocated to surrounding hotels, following the discovery of the cluster of cases of people falling ill...

Bye-bye BITES-l

Posted on December 13, 2009
That's host Sammy Maudlin (right), as Dave Thomas' drink-loving Captain Kangaroo answers the phone during the 1978 Second City TV (SCTV) satire of TV telethons. Once a year, I ask for money to support the 2-3 X daily distribution of food safety news to tens of thousands, with consecutive posts dating back to 1994...

UK takeaway boss fined £7,000 for filthy premises

Posted on December 13, 2009
This Is South Wales reports that Hon Yip Hoh pleaded guilty to 14 counts of failing to meet regulations at Swansea Oriental, in Brynmor Road and was fined £7,000. Inspectors found his premises in a "filthy" and unhygienic state, including: • dirty and greasy cardboard and newspaper was used to line trays and to line shelves and also in the operating gas oven; • cooked chicken placed on top of raw chicken left to defrost at room temperature; • when asked, staff demonstrated they were not using cleaning materials with antibacterial properties; and, • no hot water and inadequate drainage facilities...

Meth doesn't make for safe burgers

Posted on December 13, 2009
During a drive to Kansas City, MO I remember Doug telling me about the abundance of methamphetamine labs in the Midwest, and to keep an eye out for stray bathtubs on the side of the highway – I guess that's where the meth is made. Bathtubs and fast food kitchens it turns out...

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Cheeseheads unite: Wisconsin tries to become first with official state microbe

Posted on December 13, 2009
State budgets are tight and getting tighter, but politicians in Wisconsin are determined to promote the Badger State in a slightly cheesy way: ??The state Assembly is considering a bill that would name the bacterium that converts milk into cheese as -- ready for it? -- the official state microbe...

34 years later, turtles are STILL not great children's pets (or Christmas gifts)

Posted on December 13, 2009
This Christmas, consider giving a Barbie to a little girl or some sort of Pokémon a little boy. I'm not really a fan of either (anymore), but they probably won't leave you infected with a zoonotic bacterium. One of the veterinary students at K-State sent out an email earlier this week telling us about her neighbors that rescued some turtle eggs from a construction site and were successful with having them hatch...

UK food plant shut down after filthy conditions discovered

Posted on December 12, 2009
The Evening Courier reports that a chick-pea canning plant at Marshall Hall Mills in Elland has been ordered closed after environmental health officers found a shocking catalogue of hazards and filthy conditions, including: • a plastic plant pot was used to sieve chickpeas and the conveyor, which turned out thousands of cans of pulses each day, had also been used to tin chilli hemp seeds for fish bait; • rat droppings and piles of waste were found near where ingredients were stored; • machinery was a year overdue for calibration and test strips to check products were more than three years out of date; • black mould and cobwebs were found on the ceiling near the production line; and, • handwash stations had no water and the only supply was in the grubby toilets where trousers were hung to be used in place of a towel...

Seaweed, straight from the drainage ditch, leads to citation for Hawaiian Chinatown store

Posted on December 12, 2009
Ogonori, also called ogo or sea moss, is a type of edible seaweed eaten along the coasts of Japan, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. Ogonori is typically eaten cold and, for the up-and-coming microbiologists in the crowd who have spent hours autoclaving, ogo is a source of the thickener agar...

New Food Safety Infosheet: 125 illnesses linked to church fundraiser

Posted on December 11, 2009
Community gatherings around food awaken nostalgic feelings of the rural past -- times when an entire town would get together monthly, eat, enjoy company and work together. And also, as Rob Tauxe says in an article about new trends in foodborne pathogens, have created some of the easily traced foodborne illness outbreaks: The traditional foodborne outbreak scenario often follows a church supper, family picnic, wedding reception, or other social event...

Pregnant Pam doesn't eat pate on The Office

Posted on December 11, 2009
I don't know if Jenna Fischer is pregnant in real life, but her character, Pam Beesley, on television's The Office, most certainly is. On last night's new episode, Pam was trying to set Oscar up with a dude from the warehouse. She introduced Oscar by saying he made the pate, and she can't get enough of Oscar's pate – although she wasn't shown eating the pate...

Handy Manny handwashing

Posted on December 11, 2009
My oldest daughter is 22. I put in a lot of hours watching Barney, Sharon, Lois and Bram (it's a Canadian thing), memorizing all the books of Guelph's own Robert Munsch (who can resist the sentimentalism of, Love You Forever), and renting bad Disney movies from the video store around the corner...

Health inspector charged with bribery

Posted on December 11, 2009
  The Toronto star writes: A City of Toronto health inspector charged with trying to extort $1,400 from a married couple running a bar will testify it was the husband who suggested a bribe, his lawyer says. "His evidence will be that it was (bar owner) Mr...

Costco and Wal-Mart - doing food safety right

Posted on December 11, 2009
Retired Jack-in-the-Box food safety guru David Theno, told hundreds of tree fruit growers at the 105th annual meeting of the Washington State Horticultural Association in Wenatchee on Monday, Dec. 7 that regarding food safety, "It doesn't necessarily cost more to do it right...

Big Boy to lay off 88 in wake of Listeria fears

Posted on December 11, 2009
Big Boy Restaurants International will lay off 88 workers and close its ready-to-eat-meals subsidiary in Warren, Michigan, after the government ordered a recall of its product due to fears of Listeria contamination. The company notified the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth of the pending layoffs today, as required by law...

UK moms stricken with E. coli O157 after Benidorm holiday

Posted on December 11, 2009
Mum-of-two Nina McLaren and her best friend Jodie Davies, both from Flint, became seriously ill after spending four days in the Spanish  resort of Benidorm last month. In total, 14 holidaymakers contracted E.coli O157 after  stays in Benidorm during November...

Food traceability program sucks: US government

Posted on December 11, 2009
Federal auditors found that nearly half the food manufacturers they surveyed that are supposed to register with the Food and Drug Administration failed to give the agency accurate contact information, according to a report to be released Friday by the U...

If you raise chickens, maybe you shouldn't cater food, especially after the court order to stop because you made people barf

Posted on December 10, 2009
The Bismarck Tribune of North Dakota reports that more than 150 people became ill after Aggie Jennings of rural Washburn catered  three separate events — a family reunion and two weddings in June — and the illnesses were confirmed as salmonella poisoning...

Careful with that potting soil, Eugene; Legionnaires' death in New Zealand

Posted on December 10, 2009
One person is dead and four others have fallen ill in a recent spate of cases of Legionnaires' Disease, with health authorities pointing the finger of blame at a humble gardening product. The person who died is believed to have contracted the illness overseas, while four others in Canterbury are thought to have become infected since September through contact with potting mix...

Shurley some mistake: FSA wins clear communicator award

Posted on December 10, 2009
From the there's-an-award-for everything category, the U.K. Food Standards Agency has apparently copped a statue for clear communication about listeria. 'The Agency has been given an award by the Plain English Campaign for a leaflet advising the over 60s about food safety and the food poisoning bug listeria...

Sorenne's first Hepatitis A vaccination

Posted on December 10, 2009
Sorenne's first birthday was fun but her 1-year doctor's visit was not. She got 5 shots and a blood draw which left her in tears and a bit leery of nurses for future visits. All I could think about was how thankful I am that she is not a sick child and that this kind of torture is preventative and not curative treatment...

Salmonella in pet treats - again

Posted on December 10, 2009
Phebus and I ain't making this stuff up. Pet treats and food are routinely contaminated with Salmonella and there are certain inherent risks. My 1-year-old heads for the dog food when she's in the kitchen and I religiously scrub her hands. Worse is the risk of cross-contamination...

Number 1 most idiotic food story of the year; Prevention magazine

Posted on December 10, 2009
I've been interviewed and quoted by Prevention magazine a few times about food safety stuff. They didn't seem any worse or better than anyone else and I always took the time to explain things from my world of microbial food safety and what makes people barf...

Krusty Krab klosed for health violations; Sponge Bob needs food safety

Posted on December 10, 2009
Bikini Bottoms – Health officials today closed the popular eatery 'The Krusty Krab,' after finding several violations. A foodworker, Spongebob Squarepants, who has worked preparing the restaurant's signature dish, The Krabby Patty, for nearly 10 years was found to be in violation of handwashing code...

Failblog: Do not use; someone pooped in this microwave

Posted on December 09, 2009
Gross.

Campbell, KFC won't buy spent hens, but US school lunch program will

Posted on December 09, 2009
Colonel Sanders and KFC won't buy them. Campbell Soup stopped using them more than a decade ago because of "quality considerations." Yet as reported in today's USA Today, the U.S. National School Lunch Program is an awesome outlet for egg producers struggling to find a market for 100 million egg-laying hens culled each year...

Food safety standards for fast-food far better than for school lunches

Posted on December 09, 2009
Every semester I give a couple of lectures in an introductory food science class at Kansas State University and every semester I ask the same question: what is safe food, and what retailers come to mind when thinking about safe food? Safe food is food that doesn't make you barf; food that doesn't make you barf is based on food safety programs validated with microbiological testing...

Food safety needs new messages, new media; bites and barfblog need you

Posted on December 08, 2009
New messages, new media. That's become sortof our mantra here at bites.ksu.edu because, as the Washington Post reiterated this morning, 'Between 1998 and 2004, illnesses reported by CDC that were caused by E. Coli, listeria, campylobacter and a few other bacteria decreased by 25 to 30 percent, perhaps because of improvements in the handling of meat and eggs...

Eating raw chicken, handling turtles, and kissing frogs - all can lead to Salmonellosis

Posted on December 07, 2009
Gonzalo Erdozain of Kansas State University writes: As a pre-veterinary student working for a food safety professor, I've heard of Salmonella. When I arrived at the vet clinic where I also work on Saturday morning, I encountered a pink plastic container filled with a clear solution, which looked like water...

Washington Post: A reasonable and rational discussion of microbial food safety

Posted on December 07, 2009
Tomorrow's Washington Post has a food safety feature with some relevant history and reminders that get lost in the vitriol of activist politics. Excerpts (some will say cherry picking, go read the article yourself) below. Arthur Allen, a Washington writer and the author of "Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato" (March 2010, Counterpoint), writes that whatever our politics, we increasingly eat from a communal kitchen...

Wild Boar population explodes in Germany: Plenty of bacon to go around

Posted on December 07, 2009
The New York Times reports 'the wild boar is multiplying and less lovable.' I'm pretty sure the closest boars got to lovable was in the Lion King, and even then: not so lovable (and not a terrific singer either). Germany has its hands full with the wild boar population...

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