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Lindsey Jennings (middle), our client, was a "perfectly healthy" twenty-one year old girl. Actually, better than that, Lindsey was an avid athlete, in training for a marathon, running over 40 miles a week, all while completing her pre-med courses during her senior year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, when she was unfortunate
FDA Takes Step One: Admits It Has A Problem
In a bit of news that is less surprising than it should be, the AP today reports that the FDA has for the last several years failed to perform a large percentage of required audits for inspections being conducted (under contract) by the States. According to today’s report (based on documents recently released to Congress:
Food Poisoning Is Not a Laughing Matter…
….unless you are the Simpsons. Last night’s season finale for the Simpsons was right off the front pages of Marlerblog. The episode set up? "Ogdenville’s economy takes a stumble after tainted barley is discovered in Krusty’s veggie burgers…" The episode even featured an on-camera .jpg)
investigative journalism report that revealed the dark underside of the make-believe town’s vital barley industry.
Before Food Was Fast: Some Looks Back to a Time when Food was Local, Slow, and Safe
In addition to being a lawyer, I am a longtime foodie. So my attention was definitely grabbed this morning when I was listening to NPR and there were segments on two food-related books that I defintely will be reading soon. The first is Watching What We Eat, by Kathleen Collins. It is a history of cooking shows, from its beginning on radio, to its current near-ubiquity on television, like on the Food Network. Here’s a link to the author’s fun blog. www.watchingwhatweeat.com/
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The other book that merited a segment on NPR is The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food–Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation’s Food Was Seasonal by Mark Kurlansky, who also brought us a fascinating history of a fish: Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. Here is an except from the new book’s description on Amazon:
In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, FDR created the Federal Writers’ Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called “America Eats,” was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and never completed.
The Food of a Younger Land unearths this forgotten literary and historical treasure and brings it to exuberant life. Mark Kurlansky’s brilliant book captures these remarkable stories, and combined with authentic recipes, anecdotes, photos, and his own musings and analysis, evokes a bygone era when Americans had never heard of fast food and the grocery superstore was a thing of the future. Kurlansky serves as a guide to this hearty and poignant look at the country’s roots.
I have not read Kurlansky’s latest yet, but I have read a great book that covers the same territory, and does so really well. It’s called: America Eats!: On the Road with the WPA – the Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define Real American Food, and its author is Pat Willard. I highly recommend reading it. (Did I mention that I have over 100 cookbooks?)
For an excerpt from Kathleen Collin’s book, copied from the NPR website, please click on the Continued Reading link.Continue Reading Before Food Was Fast: Some Looks Back to a Time when Food was Local, Slow, and Safe
Chorizo Recalled in Texas
The Texas Department of State Health Services announced a recall of dried Chorizo manufactured by Houston meat company, Los Corrales, covering product produced since January 2009. The reason? Los Corrales has not been documenting that the Chorizo was properly cooked.
The Texas Department of State Health Services believes the recalled product was distributed to stores
Raw Milk Dairy In Vermont Has Cow With Rabies That Threatens 21 With Painful Shots
Twenty-one people in Vermont who may have consumed raw milk from a cow infected with rabies may be looking at those painful shots in their future.
The raw milk drinkers are being advised by the Vermont Health Department to see their doctors about rabies shots.
While a rabid cow might seem like an isolated event
Getting Word of Recalls to Consumers
A tip of the meat-thermometer to Herb Weisbaum for an excellent column on how stores could to a better job of notifying customers about recalled products. Mr. Weisbaum points out that stores are the last line of defense in our food safety system. He also points out that they often fail.
California State Senator Dean Florez
Giving New Meaning to the Term “Kill Step”
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Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting, as well as disturbing, article on the continuing dangers of ConAgra frozen pot pies. Specifically, despite the 2007 outbreak and all the serious illnesses it caused, the safety of the pot pies still depend on the customer cooking them correctly. Apparently, the challenge of making the pot pies safe to eat, even if cooked to a temperature below what would constitute a "kill step," was simply too difficult. Here is how the NY Times described the decision:
The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified. At first they suspected the turkey. Then they considered the peas, carrots and potatoes.
The pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.
So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”
For the full article, see www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/business/15ingredients.html
But getting a frozen-hard pot-pie to reach a uniform temperature of 165 degrees is by no means an easy thing to accomplish, as the Times article amply demonstrates.
But attempts by The New York Times to follow the directions on several brands of frozen meals, including ConAgra’s Banquet pot pies, failed to achieve the required 165-degree temperature. Some spots in the pies heated to only 140 degrees even as parts of the crust were burnt.
A ConAgra consumer hotline operator said the claims by microwave-oven manufacturers about their wattage power could not be trusted, and that any pies not heated enough should not be eaten. “We definitely want it to reach that 165-degree temperature,” she said. “It’s a safety issue.”
A safety issue indeed. Because if that pot pie is contaminated with a deadly pathogen, and the cooking process does not essentially pasteurize the pot pie, then eating will could be the real "kill-step" here.
For additional discussion, please click Continue Reading.Continue Reading Giving New Meaning to the Term “Kill Step”
New York City’s Health Commissioner Takes Over At CDC
We now know who will be running the Centers on Disease Control and Prevention. The President has announced his pick to lead CDC is New York City’s Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden.
Dr. Rich Besser, who has been acting director since the new Administration took office, will return to his role as head of
Sprouts: 235 victims . . . and counting???
A new study finds that only 60 percent of Americans search their homes for recalled foods when a recall happens. Reuters carried an interesting article on the study recently, and it got me thinking . . . about the current sprouts situation, as usual. I have talked to a number of different publications recently about