Food safety criminals: throw them in jail or ship them off to the colonies

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Douglas Powell

"Right now you can sicken and kill your customers, and [companies] have no consequences other than embarrassment in the marketplace."

That’s what I told My Health News Daily. Jail time may help – it’s that embarrassment thing – but, "The biggest thing that can be done is that anyone producing or selling food needs to adopt a culture of food safety that puts not making your customers sick as your first priority. If your customers are dead or dying, it’s not easy to make money.

"It’s not up to government to produce safe food. It’s up to producers to know how to produce safe food," Powell said.

Fifteen years ago this month, an outbreak of E. coli from unpasteurized apple juice sickened 60 to 70 people, killed a 16-month-old girl from Denver and caused 14 children to develop a serious kidney condition that can require lifelong dialysis treatments.

The federal case brought against juice maker Odwalla resulted in the first criminal conviction for foodborne illness, although no one in the company served time in jail. The company was fined $1.5 million for distributing contaminated juice — the largest fine ever issued in the United States for food poisoning.

James Dickson, a food safety expert and professor at Iowa State University said, "Food isn’t sterile. The only way you would ever get away from foodborne disease outbreaks is if you refused to allow the sale of any raw product in the marketplace.”

E. coli mum’s call for justice

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Douglas Powell

The mother of E. coli victim Mason Jones, along with other affected families, has spoken of their anger at the lack of justice for their children more than five years after the outbreak which sickened 157.

The families, including Mason’s mum, Sharon Mills, claim butcher William Tudor effectively “got away” with causing the world’s sixth largest E.coli outbreak.

Their outrage comes after another rogue food trader was jailed this week for breaching food safety regulations.

Ramazan Aslan, who owned the Llay Fish Bar, near Wrexham, was sentenced to eight months in prison by Mold Crown Court.

In sharp contrast, Tudor, who caused the 2005 South Wales outbreak, served just 12 weeks in jail after being sentenced to a year in September 2007.

He had pleaded guilty to six counts of supplying E .coli-infected meat to schools in South Wales and of breaching food hygiene regulations.

The subsequent E.coli public inquiry said Tudor, who ran John Tudor & Sons on Bridgend Industrial Estate, rode roughshod over essential food safety rules as he cut corners to cut costs.

Sharon Mills told Wales on Sunday,

“The eight-month sentence is good because it shows the courts are taking this more seriously. But the fact that Tudor only got four months extra doesn’t seem right. Even if this guy [Aslan] serves half his sentence it will still be longer than Tudor did.

“This bloke rightly deserves time in prison for what he’s done, but Tudor’s actions killed someone and left all these other children with long-term damage and uncertain futures. Tudor got away with it. I feel as though all the fighting we’ve done over the last five years has been for nothing.”

Julie Price’s 15-year-old son Garyn was one of nine of Tudor’s victims who needed dialysis after contracting E. coli O157. He may need a kidney transplant in the future.

“We’re still living with the consequences of what Tudor did. We said at the time that his sentence wasn’t long enough and this sentence [Aslan’s] confirms it.

“Tudor did the same, if not worse, than this shop owner – he blatantly ignored the risks and the warning and we’re still suffering the consequences.”

248 arrested in China for food safety in 2010

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Douglas Powell

The Xinhua News Agency reports a total of 248 people were arrested in China last year for involvement in food safety cases.

The country dealt with 130,000 cases involving food safety last year, including 115 criminal cases, according to a statement of the National Food Safety Regulating Work Office.

The cases touched upon such areas as production of edible agricultural produce, food production, food circulation, catering services and food exports and imports.

"No major incident occurred last year, and the overall food safety situation maintained stable," said the statement.

Last year also saw a nationwide crackdown on "gutter oil", usually made from discarded kitchen waste that has been refined, after media reports that it was commonly used by small restaurants.

A total of 191 officials were punished for failing to do their duty in food safety enforcement, with 26 of them fired, it said.

China: 10 years in jail for food safety failures?

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Douglas Powell

While the political boffins in Washington continue their crawling to some sort of food safety legislation, the Chinese have come up with their own legislative push: public servants responsible for supervising and managing food safety will face up to ten years in jail for dereliction of duty or abuse of power in the case of a severe food safety incident.

Xinhua News Agency reports that according to the Commission for Legislative Affairs of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the new item will protect people’s livelehood.

The draft also broadens the conditions for food safety crimes. It says those who produce and sell a harmful food product will be punished even if poisonings fail to occur.

The draft was submitted Monday to the NPC Standing Committee, China’s top legislature, at its bimonthly session for review. The session started Monday and will run until Saturday.

Mixed messages from China on food safety

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Douglas Powell

China’s government vowed on Tuesday to make more information available to the public regarding food safety, while sentencing a consumer activist who tried to make more information public about the melamine scandal to 2.5 years in jail.

The whole mess sounds overtly Orwellian.

Deng Haihua, spokesman for the Ministry of Truth Health, the main government agency in charge of overseeing food safety, said the new regulations define exactly what information should be publicized and under which government departments.

Zhang Jian, a food safety researcher with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said,

"Only in that way can consumers get credible and scientific guidance."

Michael Taylor, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Deputy Commissioner for Foods, told reporters in Shanghai today that China’s implementation of food safety standards is the country’s biggest hindrance in exporting high quality, trusted food products overseas,

"An important development is the new food safety law that was passed here in 2009 with a very high-level food safety committee. It just shows a forthright approach to making food safety an important priority, to creating more transparency in the food safety system."

Incarcerating people who set up web sites to help consumers doesn’t help.

Food poisoners: deliberate or negligent, send them to jail

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Douglas Powell

I’ve screwed up. I’ve done time. Maybe not enough, that’s another discussion.

With Peanut Corporation of America CEO Stewart Parnell back in the nut business after killing 9 and sickening 700, there’s a move afoot for stricter penalties for those who knowingly market unsafe food.

BBC News reports that Ramazan Aslan, the former owner of some hole-in0the-wall takeaway in Walse that was the likely source of an E. coli outbreak that sickened four, will face charges in court.

He will face a number of food hygiene offences.

The National Public Health Service for Wales said in 2009 that the Llay Fish Bar, Llay – now operating under new ownership – was the likely source.

Four people, including a three-year-old girl, had the same strain of E.coli after buying food from the premises in July last year.

New Jersey man sentenced for vomiting on baseball fans

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Douglas Powell

Mugshot hall-of-famer and deliberate vomiter on other people at baseball games, Matthew Clemmens, 21 (right, exactly as shown), was sent to prison for at least 30 days, given two years probation, and ordered to serve 50 hours of community service, and pay $315 in restitution after the incident.

Reuters cited the district attorney’s office as saying in a statement that,

"Clemmens pleaded guilty to making himself throw up on a young girl at a Phillies game.”

USA Today reported in April, 2010, the barf started brewing when the man’s friend was kicked out of the stadium after the police captain complained to security about their drunktard ways which included cursing and spitting at people. When the man’s friend was escorted out of the place, he retaliated by putting his fingers down his throat and barfing all over an off-duty police captain and his 11-year-old daughter.

When police arrived to arrest the man, he spewed on another officer. In addition to attacking the officers with the insides of his stomach the man also punched a couple of cops.

Baseball is so boring.

I said a quarter chicken not a whole chicken – unleash the oil

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Douglas Powell

Borrowing medieval battle tactics, a 24-year-old Australian man poured boiling oil over his sleeping housemate last August because he bought a whole takeaway chicken instead of a quarter.

Today he was sentenced to six years in prison.

Justice Mark Weinberg said the man’s act was "of extraordinary violence bought about by your feelings of anger and resentment towards your victim. Yours was a cowardly act and one of great cruelty."

Salmonella in Mississippi maximum security jail

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Ben Chapman

SunHerald.com is reporting an outbreak of Salmonella at a maximum security prison in Jackson County, Mississippi:

The state Health Department is currently trying to determine what food could’ve caused a salmonella outbreak at the maximum-security jail this week.
The outbreak sent five inmates to the hospital, though only one remains hospitalized, officials said.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd said the inmates started getting sick, suffering mostly from diarrhea and abdominal cramps, on Monday, with two the inmates experiencing a low-grade fever. The sheriff said the jail gets its food from an international food services company.

He said the ingestion of peanuts or peanut butter has been ruled out as the possible cause of the illness. He said, so far, officials believe the potentially life-threatening bacterial infection could’ve been caused by some lettuce that the food services company provided and the inmates ingested.
The Sun Herald updates this story in Thursday’s edition.

Lettuce and leafy greens have most often been associated with pathogenic E. coli in outbreaks, but food handlers have been known to shed Salmonella without showing symptoms.

The peanut butter solution

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Douglas Powell

With at least eight dead, 575 sick and 1,200 products recalled because of Salmonella in peanut thingies, the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee began hearings yesterday to figure out the peanut butter solution.

Some want jail time for company execs; more inspectors; public oversight of microbial test results; a single food inspection agency; better auditors, and so on.

Maybe the 1985 movie, The Peanut Butter Solution, had it right. Or late 1960s psychedelic band, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy. Or the B-side to the Jimmy Buffett tearjerker, He Went to Paris, from the 1973 album, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean, "Peanut Butter Conspiracy."

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