Poop and food don’t mix- KFC edition

Always a bad idea to prepare and serve food when there is a sewage back-up and no surprise it was caught on video.
Public health takes a back seat to monetary gains I guess. I’ve seen this before when I was in the field. When I was in the field as an inspector, the City informed me that there was a sewage break in the south end. I went to visit the affected food establishments to ensure they were closed and following proper protocols. Three restaurants were involved, 2 shut down but 1 continued to operate in sewage. I shut down the third and when I asked why they continued to operate, the manager played the ignorance card. Meanwhile, his staff were sloshing around in sewage back of house, no excuse for that.

Vanessa Vasconcelos of ABC 30 reports

Cell phone video shows the conditions Kentucky Fried Chicken employees say they were forced to work in last Tuesday. The fast-food restaurant at Kings Canyon and Willow took on several inches of dirty water in the kitchen area.
According to the Fresno County Health Department, it all started with a sewer line blockage. “They brought in a hydro-flush unit that uses high-pressure water to (clean) it and that caused the backed up water in the building as they were trying to get it unclogged,” said Health Department division manager Wayne Fox.
The worker who captured the images didn’t want to be identified, but says their daily operations continued; including serving customers. By Wednesday, health inspectors received a complaint and investigated.
Fox says, “staff was working to clean the place up. Our environmental health staff determined the place needed to be closed while they were doing that cleaning.” He added the site manager should have been trained enough to understand the severity of the violation.
They held an office hearing with senior management then conducted a re-inspection that determined they could resume business, “We wouldn’t take any chances. We take this very seriously we want all the food that anyone gets at a restaurant to be pure and wholesome.
Site supervisors at KFC and JEM restaurant management corporation — which manages the KFC — declined our requests for comment.
Health Department officials say this is only the third complaint in the last decade this particular KFC has received and the previous ones weren’t as severe. They include food temperature violations, pests and improper handling of food.
The KFC at Kings Canyon and Willow is back up and running, but management and all employees will be undergoing mandatory training and will develop an emergency plan so employees know what to do should this ever happen again.
If this does become a recurring problem, the restaurant will have its health permit revoked.

Kentucky father says his three children caught salmonella from class lizard

Taking classroom pets home for the weekend was a kindergarten ritual 40 years ago, along with the scurrying to find the bunny corpse behind the couch and returning it to class Monday morning.

It’s not dead. It’s sleeping. Tuckered out.

Jerry Curtsinger of Louisville, Kentucky, thought it would be a good idea if his kids could bring home the green anoles, a type of small, green lizard, that are apparently science class favorites.

Curtsinger said the problems began two weeks after his kids took home two lizards from school.

"Caden, our youngest, he got sick, and he had a fever of between 101 and 102.”

In the weeks that followed, Curtsinger and his two other children also became violently ill. And he said the doctor’s diagnosis was salmonella.

Curtsinger learned about three out of four lizards carry salmonella. So he brought his concerns to the Jefferson County Public School District.

Lee Ann Nickerson, a science specialist with JCPS, said JCPS has a standard letter that is sent to all parents when their children want to adopt any kind of class pet, which outline the guidelines of each adoption and give some caretaking tips. After the Curtsinger family’s salmonella episode, a new warning was inserted into that letter in bold italics.

Those classroom pets are now on double secret probation.

Nickerson said JCPS has been using lizards to demonstrate habitats in science class for several years, and this is the first time anyone has contracted salmonella from them. She also noted that other common pets, such as dogs, can also carry salmonella. Like lizards, they’re perfectly safe as long as you practice proper handwashing when you handle them.

I’m sure that’s tremendously comforting to the Curtsinger’s of Kentucky.

Woman’s Day: Top-10 foods on a stick

While ironic that a magazine called Woman’s Day would feature the top-10 surprising foods on a stick – there’s probably an app for that – here they are:

Deep-Fried Spam (right)

Deep-Fried Bacon Cheddar Mashed Potatoes

Octopus Tempura

Deep-Fried Tootsie Roll

Deep-Fried Mac-n-Cheese

Pizza

Deep-Fried Bacon and Fries

Deep-Fried Chocolate Cake (left)

Livermush

Deep-Fried Cheese
 

Three California KFC employees take a dip in restaurant’s sink

Don’t slaughter goats in the restaurant kitchen; don’t moon drive-through customers at the Dairy Queen, and don’t make your girls gone wild demo tape in the commercial dishwashing sink at the KFC where you work.

Three Anderson, California girls (right) decided to go for a dip in the sink at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken, and one of the girls thought only her close friends who would never tell would see the pics so she decided to share on MySpace.

The Redding Record Searchlight reports the photos had been filed under a gallery called “KFC moments.” Captions for the photos included “haha KFC showers!” and “haha we turned on the jets.” …

Although the pictures were available to the public earlier today, all of the photos on the girl’s site were restricted to private viewers tonight.

Kentucky Fried Chicken marketing food safety

I must have been in grade 11.

The object – no, not an object, the girl — of my affection worked part-time at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken in Brantford, Ontario (that’s in Canada).

We’d meet after work, and ever since, the Colonel’s secret spices have held a special place.

In university and afterwards, I always seemed to live within smelling distance of the Kentucky version of deep-fried chicken thingies. And then there was the moving ritual: who hasn’t changed residences without a bucket of the Colonel and a case of beer to pay off the movers? (I’m thanking you, Marty)

It’s been a long time, but driving back from Des Moines Sunday morning with Amy, I was suddenly struck with the KFC urge. It was gross, although the corn-on-the-cob was as good as I remember when Chapman and I got a similar meal in upstate New York before crossing the border into Canada — no corn-on-the-cob in Canadian KFC, at least not in 2003 – returning from a golf trip I was particularly grateful for.

And now KFC is marketing food safety.

Maybe they have been for a long time. I apparently only visit during nostalgia trips.  But there it is, right there on the Colonel’s bucket: rigorously inspected; thoroughly cooked; quality assured.

Now, can I get that same assurance on the cole slaw – the cabbage-containg cole slaw that led to an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in 1998 and again in 1999 at KFCs in Indiana and Ohio?