More Bad Beef

E.Coli Magnified Photo From HealthNews-Stat.com

Two more E. coli related beef recalls. The most serious effecting kids at a scout camp. The second is a recall of beef sold in June in Whole Foods stores. People have gotten sick on ground beef purchased from Whole foods in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

At least 73 people who attended the popular camp at Goshen Scout Reservation in the Blue Ridge Mountains have reported falling ill, Virginia officials said. So far, the E. coli infection has been confirmed in one adult from Maryland and 21 children from Virginia. Eight were hospitalized.

The outbreak began between July 20 and July 26, and may have continued into the next week, health officials said.

The first week, 1,647 scouts, leaders and staff members attended the camp, with 1,310 participants the next week, according to the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Boy Scout officials closed the camp Sunday.

Since spring 2007, more than 19,500 tons of E. coli-tainted beef have been recalled in more than 30 separate incidents, according to Seattle attorney and food safety expert William D. Marler.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced Monday that it was investigating six cases of E. coli that might be linked to a multi-state outbreak involving tainted meat from Nebraska Beef of Omaha. So far, at least 50 people have been sickened.

"Nobody I've talked to has any idea why we're seeing an increase, though everybody has a different theory," Marler said. "The meat industry basically has no answers. It's pretty frustrating -- there'll be some hand-wringing, a bunch of lawsuits and nothing will be done until three months later, when it all happens again." -- Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

So when are we going to really investigate all these industrial food safety incidents? When are we going to crack down on corporate perpetrators of unsafe, unsanitary practices? This is the kind of thing that people just don't really get their heads around and yet this food is in our fridges, at our restaurants, at the summer camps where we send our kids.

I will say it again, there needs to be a MAJOR overhaul of our food system and our food safety monitoring institutions. The Marler quote above says that no one knows why this stuff is happening more frequently?!

WTF? Gut departments that are responsible for health and safety and then put incompetent people in the driver's seat for 8 years and you wonder why this is happening?! I know exactly why it is happening more often. What I want to know is what are we going to do about it?

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Bennigan's Liquidates in Huge Restaurant Chapter 7 Filing

Chicago Tribune photo by Tom Van Dyke / July 29, 2008

Bennigan's, Steak and Ale To Liquidate as Glutted Restaurant Industry Shakes Out

After filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the parent company of national chains Bennigan's and Steak and Ale on Tuesday shut hundreds of restaurants, putting thousands of employees out of work.

The filing marked one of the largest Chapter 7 bankruptcies of a restaurant chain in recent history, according to restaurant consultancy Technomic, and is the most extreme sign yet of how midprice, sit-down restaurants are undergoing one of their worst periods in decades. Challenger, Gray & Christmas says the resulting layoffs constitute the sixth-largest mass job cut of the year.--JEFFREY MCCRACKEN and JANET ADAMY

This is bad in so many ways. While I am no fan of big chains the 9,000++ folks that just lost their jobs are going to be hit hard. Students, struggling families, these are the folks busting their asses for minimum wage. And according to the story staff were given no notice at all of the shut down.

Bennigan's, owned by privately held Metromedia Restaurant Group, collapsed in a particularly dramatic fashion Tuesday. Managers of restaurants across the country were awakened by midnight phone calls telling them to shutter their stores immediately, according to interviews with several restaurant managers.--By Michael Hughlett

That part pisses me off even more. No chance to go try to find other work. No warning at the end of the month with rent due and bills to pay. I know in my restaurant this year has been tough. But my staff and I are working together to get the company and ourselves through difficult times. I wonder if Bennigan's had more respect for their employees and communities-- they might have been able to avoid this liquidation?

Anyway, this is just the beginning. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the F&B business is the canary in the coal mine during a bad economy. People struggling to pay bills, or in danger of losing their homes are going to stop eating out as a first line of defense. And so the dominoes begin to fall.

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FDA Still Has No Idea-- Adds Cilantro and Peppers to the Watch List

No closer to knowing what is making people sick... maybe tomatoes, maybe not. Now cilantro and peppers go on the watch list. And people are still getting sick.

the U.S. Food and Drug Administration appears no closer to finding the source of a mysterious salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 900 people nationwide. The FDA is not even 100 percent sure that tomatoes are the cause — adding peppers and cilantro Saturday to its list of foods under investigation in the outbreak.-- MSNBC

Meanwhile; by the numbers
In addition to the 900 people who have gotten sick...

The USA Tomato Industry has sustained a more than a 100 million dollar loss.

More than 12,000 tons of tomatoes are rotting in warehouses.

And we still don't know anything.
Bon Appetit!

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Killer Tomatoes Update

As of this weekend-- Salmonella-tainted tomatoes have sickened more than 800 people in the food scandal that just keeps on giving.

As I have written before, the inadequacies of the FDA will have a long range impact. In addition to the people who get sick, (some fatally) when these big-ag outbreaks happen, the absolute inability of the inadequately funded and grossly mismanaged FDA to track down the actually culprits and causes, ultimately effects all growers and particularly medium sized ones - leading to more big ag, more mismanagement and more health & safety concerns. It is a vicious circle.

Growers urge salmonella hearings. Western Growers is urging the House Committee on Agriculture to quickly hold hearings on the salmonella outbreak associated with fresh, red round, roma and plum tomatoes. The industry group, whose membership includes produce growers in Monterey County, said federal food safety and health officials haven't been able to pinpoint the outbreak's source. As a result, tomato growers are suffering great harm, the group said Saturday.

"Congress must investigate this matter and determine ways to avoid this in the future and make the innocent tomato growers, packers and shippers whole," said Western Growers president Tom Nassif."- The Monterey County Herald

The big companies can write this kind of thing off, pass on the expense, push a different product. The Medium size growers, canners, packers and shippers will go out of business which leaves us with less choice, more mono-culture, higher risk of poor health and safety standards.

It will help small, local producers and that is the only good part of this story. Unfortunately small growers cannot grow enough to meet need and demand.

We need some real house-cleaning in the FDA and almost every other federal oversight-bureau. It is going to take years to root out all the corruption and insider “looking the other way,” that is the legacy of this administration.

In addition to making people sick, every major mistake like this will drive food prices higher. As with so many other Bush and Co. policies we are seeing the inevitable conclusions brought about by the GOP conservative, corporatist ideology.

Here are just some highlights of the who's who in regulatory jobs under Bush-Cheney Inc.

DAVID LAURISKI, chosen as the Labor Department’s Assistant Secretary of Mine Safety and Health, previously spent 30 years in the mining industry, during which time he advocated loosening of coal dust standards.

J. STEVEN GRILES, named Deputy Secretary of the Interior, was previously a lobbyist for major oil and mining companies and for the National Mining association.

JACQUELINE GLASSMAN, appointed chief counsel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, previously worked in the general counsel’s office of DaimlerChrysler, where among other things she helped defend against charges brought by California State officials that the company had recycled defective cars to consumers.

In the DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE (keepers of the tomato saftey responsibility along with the FDA)

Deputy Chief of Staff, Michael Torrey, had been a vice president at the International Dairy Foods Association.

Deputy Secretary James Moseley was a partner in Infinity Pork LLC, a factory farm in Indiana.

Under Secretary J.B. Penn had been an executive of Sparks Companies, an agribusiness consulting firm.

Under Secretary Joseph Jen had been director of research at Campbell Soup Company’s Campbell Institute of Research and Technology.

Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment Mark Rey, whose post involved oversight of the Forest Service, was previously a vice president of the American Forest and Paper Association.

Deputy Under Secretary Floyd D. Gaibler had been executive director of the National Cheese Institute and the American Butter Institute, which are funded by the dairy industry

Deputy Under Secretary Kate Coler had been director of government relations for the Food Marketing Institute.

Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations Mary Waters had been a senior director and legislative counsel for ConAgra Foods.

--all the above taken from http://www.revolvingdoor.info/

I am sure none of these fine people were influenced by their prior corporate positions and none of them would put American citizens at risk in order to create larger profit margins for their former bosses. I am feeling pretty safe, how about you?

*Update* from the thread (h/t ensley) there now seems to be some question if it even was the tomatoes which caused the outbreak. That's how poorly run the FDA really is.

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Pakistan Plans to Export 1 Million Tons of Rice

(Photo / Pam Berry for the Globe)

Rice prices eased after a record high in April because Pakistan, confident of meeting local demand, will export 1 million tons and it looks like other countries will follow suit.

Pakistan, the fifth-biggest exporter, will permit shipments of 1 million metric tons because local needs have been met, Mohammad Azhar Akhtar, chairman of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan, said yesterday. Rice has fallen 13 percent in Chicago this week.

Prices reached an all time high in April and helped trigger riots over food cost from Haiti to Egypt. This peak and food cost fear was partly due to real concerns over increased demand and diminished supply but was also made dramatically worse by speculative hedge funds and corporate greed.

In spite of good news from Pakistan rice exporters, the outlook is not all that rosy.

The surge in rice prices, coupled with record energy and wheat costs, stoked concern that basic goods would cost more than the poor could afford, creating a global food crisis. The UN's FAO estimated May 12 the global rice trade will drop 7.1 percent this year to 28.8 million tons.

and

Rice prices had also gained earlier this month after a cyclone slammed into Myanmar's main rice-growing region on May 3, inundating farmland and fueling speculation that the nation will be forced to halt exports. The impact of Cyclone Nargis had been factored into global rice prices, Sunny Verghese, chief executive officer of commodity supplier Olam International Ltd., said today. Myanmar used to contribute about 5 to 6 percent of the world rice trade, Verghese said in an interview. ``The new crop, I don't think they will export.- Bloomberg

Now that food concerns are going to finally be center stage, maybe food politics will gain a stronger consideration in global political circles and progressive discourse. Our food strategy in the future is going to have to be an important part of foreign policy in future years. The politics of the world food supply is not going to be something anyone can ignore.

For some basic background reading about food politics I reccomend anything by Marion Nestle

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