Tag Archives: Mammoth Burger

Everyone’s got a camera: Fake food poisoning Gangnam Style

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Dancing Gangnam Style by the side of a swimming pool in Cyprus, Liam Royle appears full of life.

Yet according to him, he was suffering from food poisoning he had developed while on his holiday – experiencing stomach cramps, diarrhea and vomiting.

The 23-year-old made a fraudulent sickness claim against Jet2holidays, stating that he suffered from “personal injury” and a “loss of enjoyment” while staying at Papantonia Hotel Apartments, and also “missed meals, excursions, swimming time and other general activities”.

However, when Royle’s former girlfriend became aware of his dishonesty, she contacted the company with a rather incriminating dossier which showed that instead on his holiday, Royle visited the nearby town of Ayia Napa, where he walked around the shops and ate a McDonalds, did not miss meals, drank beer and cocktails, swam in the pool, and was even filmed dancing Gangnam Style.

Instead, the woman who wishes to remain anonymous continued, the 2015 holiday was “fabulous”.

In light of the evidence, Jet2holidays challenged the Manchester man’s claim, and a district judge ruled that he was “fundamentally dishonest” and ordered he pay the company more than £6,000 in costs.

Jimmy Fallon tests Will Forte’s beard for bacteria & poop

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Will Forte, the star of “Last Man Standing” had his big beard tested with the results announced by “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon.

will.forte.beardForte told Fallon that his friends had been sending him articles about facial hair being infested with bacteria and “poop.”

“A lot of these beards are riddled with fecal matter,” he told Fallon.

You can’t sleep at night because you have poop in your beard?”

Forte’s beard was swabbed by a post-doctoral research scholar from UCLA. The samples were then sent to a lab where they underwent germ analysis.

The actor was flanked on either side by Emmy-award winner Jon Hamm and Rachel Dratch as Fallon read the test results live on the air.

Forte tested positive for several strains of bacteria.

Here’s what was found in Forte’s facial hair: pseudomonas, a bacteria most commonly found in soil and dirty sneakers, serratia marcescens, a bacteria found in dirty showers, staphylococcus, most commonly found in trash cans, and yeast.

But it all came down to the one final test.

“Did you have poop in your beard?” Fallon said.

The test results came out negative for poop. 

“I was so scared,” Forte shouted, running into the audience to celebrate.  

Public health types have better things to do: 8 sick from raw milk in Idaho

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Idaho Public Health officials are investigating eight illnesses in southwest Idaho likely associated with drinking unpasteurized (raw) milk.

napoleon.raw.milkTo date, four Campylobacter and four E.coli O157:H7 cases have reported drinking raw milk produced by the Natural Farm Fresh Dairy of Kuna in the week prior to getting sick. The investigation is ongoing with Southwest and Central District Health departments, working in association with the Idaho State Department of Agriculture.

“If people have recently purchased raw milk from this dairy, we advise them not to drink it and to discard it,” says Dr. Leslie Tengelsen, State Public Health Veterinarian with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

The Idaho State Department of Agriculture is working with Natural Farm Fresh Dairy to confirm if the raw milk from that facility was the source of the reported illnesses. The dairy is fully cooperating with the investigation and issued the following statement: “Natural Farm Fresh is committed to providing a safe and wholesome product to its customers. Effective immediately, we are voluntarily removing all raw milk products currently on the shelves in retail stores and we will discontinue further distribution of our raw milk until additional product testing is completed.”

Crackdown on food safety in Iran

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Hassan Qazizadeh Hashemi, who was speaking on the sidelines of a conference to mark World Food Day, said that no serious reform has taken place in the food sector over the last year, Tasnim reported.

iran-amputation-3_2464258bWorld Food Day is observed globally on October 16.

“What embarrasses us is that why we cannot spot all food safety violators. Or when we ban some unhealthy products, why do they return into market?” Qazizadeh Hashemi said, adding that the problem is in the type of the punishment which has failed so far.

“We are determined not to allow [anybody] to play with people’s health at all and we take measure against [law violators] but we need judicial system as well as executive power to support us,” he stressed.

How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? School lessons in food safety

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Today’s USA Today asked a bunch of food safety types what the government could do to improve the school lunch program.

My full answer included,

“Does it have to be government? They’re not very good at this stuff.”

 What got published this a.m., along with a photo by Dave Adams of Kansas State, was,

"Government should set minimal standards and demand continuous improvement from all of its suppliers. More importantly, every cafeteria needs to make microbial food safety — from hand washing to food handling — part of the daily culture." 

Douglas Powell, professor of food safety at Kansas State University and the publisher of barfblog.com.

The story explains that in 1982, hamburgers from McDonald’s fast-food chain sickened at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan. No one died, but the pathogen that caused the severe cramps, abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea turned out to be a little-known, especially dangerous form of the common stomach bacteria E. coli. The new subtype, E. coli O157:H7, produced a toxin that destroyed red blood cells and, in later cases elsewhere, caused kidney failure or death.

Confounded by the discovery, McDonald’s hired one of the nation’s best-known food safety scientists, Michael Doyle, and told him, he recalls, "to bulletproof their system so E. coli never happened to them again."

McDonald’s reconsidered its old assumptions about food — from how often beef-processing plants should test ground beef to how well a hamburger must be cooked to kill off pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella.

The results helped change the industry. For years, the federal food code said burgers had to be cooked only until their internal temperature reached 140 degrees; McDonald’s tests showed the safe standard was 155 degrees and that the meat must register that temperature for at least 15 seconds.

Microbial data also altered the demands McDonald’s imposed on its suppliers.

After a couple of years, the company saw that "about 5% of the suppliers could not get down to what we considered a reasonable level for salmonella and E. coli," says Doyle, now director of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety. "McDonald’s worked hard with them, but they couldn’t get there, so McDonald’s let them go."

The lesson, many analysts say, is that organizations with great buying power — such as fast-food chains or the school lunch program — can set higher standards, and industry ultimately will meet those standards because that’s where the money is. The school lunch program purchases huge volumes of commodities such as beef, poultry and other staples –– $830 million worth in 2008.
 

Potlucks and faith-based food safety

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I like potlucks because of the social interaction and sampling different kinds of foods.

I don’t like potlucks because who knows how various dishes are prepared, how they’ve been stored, and the dreaded double dipping.

I told Erin Quinn of the Waco Tribune-Herald in Texas Monday that,

Maybe you don’t want to eat the turkey noodle casserole made in the kitchen of the woman who you notice never washes her hands before leaving the bathroom.

And maybe you should avoid the pumpkin cheesecake brought by the guy whose shirts are always covered with cat hair.

“There is a lot of blind trust in it. Potlucks are really popular because they bring people together and do a lot of good things. But all of that fellowship can turn into a lot of sick people.”

Powell recommends bringing a digital thermometer to potluck parties. He jokes that this is the reason he is hardly invited to potluck parties.

Still, he said these parties are not inherently riskier than eating at restaurants. And most people, he said, wash their hands properly, have clean kitchens and cook food at the proper temperature.

Allison Lowery, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said she, herself, eats at potlucks and is not too concerned about any risks.

“You can’t go around being scared of everything. You’ve just got to have faith.”

Load Australian fridges with food, not beer, and keep it cool

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In 2004, I spoke at a conference in Gold Coast, Australia. I did a TV bit on Good Morning Australia, or whatever the equivalent was to the U.S. Good Morning America about food safety. The chef at the conference center was with me, and well-versed in food safety. He had a digital tip-sensitive thermometer in his front pocket, which I asked to borrow for the interview. One of the PR types said something like, you can’t go on TV and talk about using thermometers, we have enough trouble getting Australians to store food in the fridge, which is largely used for beer.

A survey by the New South Wales Food Authority found that some household fridges were twice as warm as they should be after groceries were transferred into them and they took four hours to return to a safe temperature.

The authority’s chief scientist, Lisa Szabo, said while most fridges operated well, overloading them with food or warm products increased the chance of micro-organisms growing, as did the age of the fridge and the condition of the seals.

Of the 57 fridges checked in the study, almost 23 per cent had an average temperature of more than 5 degrees. Almost 9 per cent had an average of more than 6 degrees. The highest average temperature for one fridge was 9.5 degrees.

Salmonella infections rise in the hotter months of the year (it’s summer there right now, and everyone, including Katie, is at the beach).

NSW Health statistics show 372 people had salmonella infections in both January and February this year, compared with 129 in June and 101 in July.

Last December 240 people had salmonellosis compared with 103 in June last year.

One fridge in the study was loaded with drinks at 1.20pm, raising the temperature from 3.5 degrees to 14.5 degrees, and it took until 5.40pm for the fridge to return to 5 degrees. The study found that ”although [loading or cleaning] is unavoidable, limiting the duration or frequency of opening the refrigerator can minimize its impact on temperature rises’.’

As fridges across the state are filled with prawns, ham, champagne, desserts and fruit for Christmas celebrations, the Primary Industries Minister, Steve Whan, reminded consumers to keep the fridge out of the danger zone – between 5 and 60 degrees.
 

Food poisoning during the Dominican honeymoon means Pepto-Bismol and baby wipes

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Kansas State University student, and news hunter and gatherer, Gonzalo Erdozain (right, sorta as shown), finally got away on his honeymoon to the Dominican Republic after classes ended last week. Gonzalo returned yesterday and shares his tale below.

I probably contracted a slight case of food poisoning while honeymooning in the Dominican Republic.  So did my wife, and I spent my birthday, literally, in the bathroom and having to use baby wipes on sensitive and inflamed, uh, skin.

We apparently weren’t alone.

The Toronto Star reported yesterday that five passengers aboard a WestJet flight from the Dominican Republic were taken to hospital by ambulance Wednesday night after apparently suffering from food poisoning.

I’d like to know the resort where those other sick people were staying, but if it was anything like ours, it became rapidly apparent that food safety standards in the U.S. are still much, much higher than those of the Dominican Republic.

The resort was luxurious and the service was indeed top of the line, but what they consider to be safe and appropriate is just different than what Americans do.

Gonzo’s do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do advice when visiting a resort in the Dominican:

• don’t eat ceviche that isn’t cold enough or that isn’t entirely covered by lemon and lime juice (which is what is supposed to kill microorganisms;

• don’t eat the fruit they put as decoration on your drinks, its been sitting out all day at the bar in temperatures around 80-90F; and,

• if you want to be extremely careful, even though the hotel tap water is purified, always use bottled water if it will end up in your mouth such as washing your toothbrush, mouth guard (yes, I wear one myself due to grinding), or even rinsing the toothpaste from your mouth – if you use the tap water for any of these, and it happens to be tainted, you will get sick.

Bonus traveler tips: A small bottle of Pepto-Bismol at the hotel costs $18, the equivalent of a year’s supply in the U.S., and yes, baby wipes are available, but there is nothing funny about having to go to the pharmacy and buy baby wipes in a couples-only resort.
 

Rats filmed in Honolulu’s Chinatown market

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Here’s the video of rats in a Chinatown market that sparked the story in the Honolulu Advertiser that Chapman just blogged about.

The video sparked a Department of Health inspection of Pacing’s, which was cited for a violation.

The Geller rat video has been seen by tens of thousands of people, and has spurred some to stop coming to Chinatown, according to shop owners, who say business has decreased — by 30 to 50 percent or more — over the last weeks.

Last year, Sekiya’s Restaurant in Kaimukí closed its doors for days and dumped all its food after an E. coli outbreak, which sickened seven.
 

Inspection reflection; is more always better?

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A rat issue in Honolulu’s Chinatown market has led to politicians to blame the situation on a shortage of state food safety inspectors and environmental health officers.

Inspectors in the region have dwindled from 23 in 1988 to nine today, causing State Sen. David Ige, chairman of the Health Committee, to state that there is an immediate public health need to beef up the number of inspectors on O’ahu.

Maybe. But it’s not as simple as throwing more food referees into the mix.

A couple of years ago, Brae Surgeoner and I interviewed restaurant operators and environmental health officers about their views regarding restaurant inspection. Almost all of the operators suggested that inspection was a good thing, and that they had a good relationship with EHOs.  And that’s when things got fun. Restaurant operators reported to us that what was being seen and recorded wasn’t representative of what was really happening with every meal.  They adjusted their personnel and their procedures so they looked good. The best part of the study for us was that the inspectors reported the same thing: they felt they weren’t getting the full picture and knew everyone was on their best behavior while they were around.

More inspectors alone won’t solve everything, and it sounds like Hawaii Department of Health’s Laurence Lau gets it.

"Any regulatory and public health program would like to have more staff," said Laurence Lau, the department’s deputy director of environmental health. "We would do more if we had more. We’re just going to do the best we can."

Lau also said even if DOH had more inspectors, they still couldn’t be "everywhere all the time" to prevent problems. "The first responsibility remains with the restaurant and the food seller to sell safe food."

The time the auditor/inspector spends in the facility represents an unrealistic snapshot of what actually happens.  Even if multiple inspectors show up to a facility over a period of time to gather more snapshots, what they see will likely be different. What’s more important to the health and safety of customers is what happens when the inspectors, or auditors, or the boss, aren’t there.