Posts Tagged ‘ Food Poisoning ’

Foster Farms Apologizes for Salmonella, but why wasn’t there a Recall?

November 6th, 2013. By AbiK

Foster Farms CEO Ron Foster sent out this full-page ad apology regarding the recent salmonella outbreak brought on by his company’s chicken. However, while there was a health alert issued by the CDC, reports of over 360 salmonella cases in 21 states, Costco’s been pulling the chicken off their shelves, and now the salmonella lawsuits are starting to roll in, Foster Farms did not issue a voluntary recall for the chicken. So the question remains: why?

 

Tags: CDC, Costco, Food Poisoning, Foster Farms Chicken, Foster Farms lawsuit, Salmonella
Posted in Food Illness, lawsuits | 2 Comments »

KFC: Hoax Or We Do Chicken Raw? Nasty Pic Looks Like Salmonella To Go

September 18th, 2012. By AbiK

It’s bad enough when mango or cantaloupe recalls are on just about every salmonella email alert. But this photo of a KFC chicken sandwich allegedly served up raw in Ontario is quite another thing, and it’s pretty nasty.

Now, we do not have confirmation that this did, indeed, happen—the image originally posted on Reddit user boneriffic12‘s page a few days ago. And it’s making the internet rounds having been picked up by HuffPo and Q13 Fox out of Seattle. The pic was posted with this message:

“Fried Chicken #FAIL. My friend ordered a chicken burger from KFC & it came back raw. Yes he ate that bite that’s missing.”

So hoax or horror, you be the judge for now.

What it does bring to mind, however, is the recent case of the little Australian girl who had allegedly suffered brain damage as a result of salmonella poisoning stemming from a KFC chicken wrap sandwich she had eaten. The girl, Monika Samaan was just 7 years old when she ate a chicken wrap purchased at a KFC in Australia in 2005. She was hospitalized in serious condition and spent months in a coma. The judge ruled in favor of the victim, awarding her 8 million Australian dollars.

KFC has said it will appeal the judge’s decision.

And, in the midst of all this, just last week WFAA-TV (Dallas/Fort Worth) published an investigation they did regarding reports of spoiled chicken meat—the reports were coming from KFC employees, not patrons. Apparently, some of the KFC workers had noticed a “stench” coming from the walk-in cooler which housed the raw chicken meat. According to the workers, KFC has a policy that raw meat must be used within 10 days of being killed; however, workers claimed that some meat was still being cooked—and served—after sitting for up to 16 days.

The Conroe KFC is a franchise owned by Tem-Kil, Inc. Both Tem-Kil and KFC declined to speak on-camera with WFAA’s I-Team, but both, no surprise, expressed their commitment to high food safety standards. KFC also shut down the Conroe outlet for a week to investigate the charges and to provide additional food safety training to workers there.

Since the reopening of the Conroe KFC, health inspectors have visited the restaurant and did not find any food safety violations.

UPDATE: (9/18/12) We received this email from Doug Hernandez—the guy who holding the chicken in the picture above. Here’s what he had to say:

The KFC chicken sandwich that you posted on your site is actually my picture, and it is a real picture unfortunately. I did not think that it was going to get this much attention until my friend Greg mentioned that he had posted it on reddit.com.

The incident actually happened on August 31st, I originally filled out the feedback form on KFC’s website, but did not get a call or email. I posted the picture on the KFC Canada Facebook page, and got a response from them asking that I call the 1-800 number. I did and they filed a report and said they would be in touch with me. I have not heard back from them yet, that was on September 4th. I hope they will be getting back to me soon. That’s all I have on this so far for an update.

Guess we’ll see what happens…

 

 

Tags: Australia, Conroe TX, Food Poisoning, KFC, KFC Lawsuit, Monika Samaan, Raw Chicken, Salmonella, Tem-Kil Inc
Posted in Food Illness | 3 Comments »

Food Safety Alert: The Problem With Meat Glue

April 21st, 2011. By Hunter West

Oh, you haven’t heard of meat glue? The food industry loves the stuff—and for good reason. Anything that would allow the morphing of a bucket of meat bits, like stewing beef for example, into what looks like a Grade A steak and commands a Grade A price at the counter, is akin to manna from heaven. 

To the untrained eye (meaning, you and me), it’s impossible to tell the difference. It looks like a steak. It grills like a steak. It tastes like a steak. But it’s not a steak, but rather chunks of meat that in a previous era would have been sold as stewing beef for a lot less than the kind of price a steak commands. But mix in some meat glue, roll it up and after six hours in the refrigerator, out comes a gelled roll that can be sliced into a series of lovely-looking, boneless steaks. 

The potential for fraud is obvious. Beyond the deception, however, why did the European Union ban meat glue last year? 

First, the back-story of what meat glue is. In fact, meat glue is actually an enzyme derived from thrombin and fibrogen, which is obtained from the blood plasma of swine and cattle. This is the stuff that causes blood to clot—and it also does a spiffy job, it turns out, of knitting small bits of meat together to appear like more expensive-looking steaks. 

Is meat glue harmful? Well, the European Food Safety Authority gave meat glue a positive safety opinion in 2005, only to ban it five years later. And a butcher participating in a story Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: EU, fibrogen, Food Poisoning, meat additive, meat glue, thrombin
Posted in Defective Products, Drugs/Medical, Food Illness | 2 Comments »

How do Eggs get Recalled for Salmonella?

August 30th, 2010. By Kristine B

If recent news about egg and meat recalls has you nervous about eating, well, anything, you might be interested in learning how a food recall is initiated. These food recalls are designed to keep consumers safe and healthy, although sometimes they cause panic in people who worry that the food supply system isn’t as safe as it should be. I’m not going to comment on how safe the food system is or isn’t. All I can do in this Pleading Ignorance post is explain how the meat and egg recall process works.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) operates within the US Department of Agriculture. Its job is to inspect and regulate meat, poultry and processed egg products that are produced in federally inspected plants. Basically, the job of the FSIS is to make sure that any meat, egg or processed egg products are safe and properly labeled. Foods that don’t fall into the meat, egg or processed egg product categories are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

A recall occurs when the product’s manufacturer or distributor voluntarily removes potentially hazardous food from the marketplace to protect the public’s health. All recalls are voluntary—even those initiated at the request of FSIS. If a company refuses to recall its products, the FSIS can seize the products.

Products can be recalled if they are believed to be hazardous to the public’s health (they can cause illness or death) or if they have been mislabeled (for example, if they contain ingredients not listed on the ingredients label).

According to the FSIS website (fsis.usda.gov), FSIS usually learns about hazardous or improperly labeled products from the manufacturer or distributor, from test results obtained by FSIS during its sampling program, from FSIS field inspectors or program investigators or through data submitted by other agencies. Once FSIS learns about a hazardous or improperly labeled product, the agency begins a preliminary investigation to determine whether or not the product should be recalled.

There are three classes of recall based on the risk to the public’s health:

Class I: there is reasonable probability that eating the food will cause illness or death (for example, the food is contaminated with E. coli bacterium);

Class II: there is a remote probability of adverse health affects from eating the food (for example, if a product contains an ingredient not included on the ingredients list but that can cause an allergic reaction); or

Class III: there are no health consequences from eating the food (for example, a product contains excess water, not included on the ingredients list, but the water will not cause any health problems).

People who are concerned about the lack of food safety might be happy to hear that a food safety bill is scheduled for a Senate vote in September. The bill, called the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, would give the FDA power to issue recalls and increase the frequency of factory inspections.

The USDA is not affected by the Food Safety Modernization Act; however, as of July 9, new rules gave the FDA power to inspect shell eggs once they leave the breaking facility (where they are broken and pasteurized).

Tags: Egg Recall, Food Poisoning, Pleading Ignorance, Salmonella
Posted in Pleading Ignorance | No Comments »

Taming the Egg Salmonella Outbreak Will Take an Inside Job

August 30th, 2010. By Hunter West

It’s ironic that just a month after new rules for egg safety came into effect, the US is hammered with one of the largest eggs recalls in its history due to salmonella poisoning. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had been working on the portfolio for the better part of a decade before the rules were finally rolled out like so many Grade A extra large whites and browns.

It’s a further irony that during the 10 years or so when the FDA was mulling over the rules, a grand experiment in the UK was being met with stunning success.

And that’s where we go for the back-story.

A similar outbreak of salmonella in eggs hit Britain a little over a decade ago. While Brits stared en masse at their scrambled yellows and wondered if they were safe to eat, the British government assessed the available safety protocols—similar to what the FDA was already considering—and decided a more advanced step was required.

So they started vaccinating hens—essentially attacking the problem from the inside out, and the results were spectacular. Cases of salmonella infection have effectively disappeared. According to the latest data from the Health Protection Agency of England and Wales, salmonella infections from eggs have dropped a stunning 96 percent since 1997. That represents a caseload of just Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Egg Recall, Food Poisoning, Salmonella
Posted in Emerging Issues | No Comments »