Personal Injury Law

Social media spreads word on flu: CDC

Posted on May 11, 2009
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a modest 2,500 people followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Twitter feed, CDCEmergency, when it was launched during the outbreak of Salmonella linked to Peanut Corp. of America products earlier this year...

Don't eat poop cupcakes and more

Posted on May 10, 2009
Things are winding down at Kansas State University for the year – at least on the teaching side. In the past, Amy and I have planned some exotic trip to France or Canada to get out of Kansas for the summer, but this year, we're staying fairly put, with baby Sorenne...

Company says snakehead was planted in T.G.I. Friday's meal

Posted on May 09, 2009
T.G.I. Friday said a severed snake head found in a dish of broccoli at one of its upstate New York restaurants was likely planted in the meal. The Carrollton, Texas, company says Friday it  asked the New York State Police to open a criminal investigation into product tampering...

Customer says: I've had it with these mofo snakes on this mofo broccoli

Posted on May 08, 2009
Jack Pendleton found a snakehead, the size of the end of his thumb, while eating Sunday at the T.G.I. Friday's in Clifton Park, N.Y. The chain restaurant said it regrets the appetite-killing error. Pendleton said he has no plans to sue. Pendleton, doing what all consumers should do to hold suppliers of food accountable, snapped a photo with his cellphone camera, then summoned the waiter...

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Marketing the hell out of restaurant inspection results

Posted on May 07, 2009
That's what Wayne Strong, president of Ye Old Walkerville Bed & Breakfast in Windsor, ON wants to do with his latest inspection score, reports the Windsor Star. The star-rating system called Safe Food Counts will be rolled out over the next few months as businesses [in Windsor-Essex County] are inspected...

Mike Doyle unfairly slammed by wannabe foodies

Posted on May 07, 2009
I don't really know Mike Doyle, other than the brief chats we have at meetings where our paths cross a couple of times a year and talk about our kids' hockey-playing ambitions, or the time Amy and I ran into Mike and his wife at the local Orlando supermarket in 2006 cause I guess we were all too cheap to buy hotel food and went to stock up...

Jon and Kate Plus 8: Petting zoo for kids, just petting for Jon

Posted on May 07, 2009
Kate Gosselin of Jon and Kate Plus 8 was on the Today Show this morning addressing husband Jon's alleged affair, while TLC ran re-runs of the popular reality show.  This morning's re-run was an episode I've seen before, where the Gosselin gang visits the Pittsburg Zoo...

Don't drink infected pig blood

Posted on May 07, 2009
Reuters reported yesterday that new information from the World Health Organization suggested pigs sickened with H1N1 swine flu should not be consumed, despite earlier insistence that fully cooked pork is perfectly safe. The story states, "The WHO comments appear more cautious than those from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), which said import bans are not required to safeguard public health because the disease is not food-borne and has not been identified in dead animal tissue...

Save Lives: Clean Your Hands

Posted on May 06, 2009
Megan Hardigree, a research associate at Kansas State University working on hand hygiene, writes that this year, Cinco de Mayo wasn't just a holiday to celebrate the Mexican army's victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla (yesterday) or a song by the band, Cake...

New Zealand Food Safety Authority nails restaurant -- no one wins when people barf

Posted on May 05, 2009
A New Zealand restaurateur whose poor food safety practices caused more than 50 Christmas Day diners to fall ill has had his appeal thrown out. Robin Pierson, the owner-operator of Bushmere Arms, was ordered to pay $400 in fines, along with $850 in reparation to victims and $10,414 in costs to the Crown in a case brought by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA)...

Don't eat raccoon poop

Posted on May 05, 2009
CBC News reported last night that parents should be on alert for raccoon roundworm, a rare parasite transmitted through contact with the animal's feces, which has left a New York infant with brain damage and a teenager blind. Raccoon roundworm or Baylisascaris procyonis is an extremely rare parasitic infection in humans that can cause nausea, nerve damage and even death...

Can regulators regulate and promote? Safe food sells

Posted on May 05, 2009
I cringe when pompous professorial types begin sentences with, 'Clearly …'  It happens a lot. Over the years, I've repeatedly heard a variation of, 'Clearly, government agencies can't regulate and promote food at the same time.' I was on National Public Radio in Maryland a few weeks ago and statement was repeated mantra-like by both the host and some activist dude...

Obama at E. coli risk? What does a medium-well hamburger mean?

Posted on May 05, 2009
U.S. President Barack Obama and VP Joe Biden (right, photo from AP) ordered a couple of medium-well hamburgers for lunch today at Ray's Hell Burger in Virginia, and while media and blog reports were the usual gaga over, OMG, the President ate, no one asked, what does medium-well mean? Was the President at risk of contracting foodborne illness like the other 83 million American mortals each year? Color is a lousy indicator...

Shades Restaurant serves shady food

Posted on May 05, 2009
In Columbus, Ohio diners have restaurant inspection information readily available to them – inspection reports are posted on the Public Health website, and colour-coded signs are displayed conspicuously at restaurant premises. Making inspection results accessible to the public may help consumers make dining decisions, but it won't necessarily prevent restaurants from serving shady food...

Domino's pizza girl whines she can't get a job

Posted on May 05, 2009
Megan K. Kelly-Hardigree, soon-to-be handwashing guru and latest barfblogger (right, pretty much exactly as shown), writes: After being rightfully fired from a Dominos Pizza in North Carolina, Kristy Hammonds apologized to the public on ABC's Good Morning America this morning...

White Castle pulls pulled pork pig ad

Posted on May 05, 2009
Maybe it was the swine flu, maybe it was the bad Flashdance welder-by-day-peeler-by-night references, maybe it was the BBQ sauce, but an advertisement for White Castle's new pulled pork sliders has disappeared, only to reappear through the magic of YouTube...

Mobile food-safety labs get FDA up to speed

Posted on May 04, 2009
Elizabeth Weise of USA Today once again goes to the food safety frontlines to report about the mobile testing laboratory being used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this time at the border crossing between Mexico and Nogales, Arizona. Seventy percent of the fruits and vegetables Americans consume in winter are imported from Mexico, a total of 7 billion pounds, says Allison Moore, communications director for the Nogales-based Fresh Produce Association of the Americas...

Ackroyd does the best Julia Child impersination

Posted on May 04, 2009
Meryl Strep as renowned culinaryist Julia Child? Sure. Some of the bloggers have seen the trailer and are not happy. Me, I'll always prefer Ottawa native Dan Ackroyd's take on Julie Child on an early Saturday Night Live.  

FDA finds seed supplier of sprouts with Salmonella

Posted on May 04, 2009
Cases of Salmonella Saintpaul linked to raw alfalfa sprouts are now up to 35 and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration thinks they can all be traced to one seed supplier. That seed supplier, based in Kentucky, is voluntarily withdrawing from the market all of its 50-pound bags that have a lot code starting with '032...

US waits to react to flu discovery in Canadian pigs

Posted on May 04, 2009
As a backlog of state and federal lab test results reached the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the total number of confirmed cases of H1N1 in the US climbed to 244 in 34 states, the Associated Press reported this weekend. The Globe and Mail reported numbers from the World Health Organization, stating, 'Canada, for its part, has tallied 101 cases in seven provinces...

Underground restaurants in St. Louis: how bored are Americans?

Posted on May 04, 2009
Food pornography is nothing new. Neither are so-called underground restaurants. That the St. Louis Post-Dispatch thinks both may be new and newsworthy may help explain the decline of American newspapers (and look at that cool arm decal in this pic from the Post, right, below)...

Flu in Canadian swine

Posted on May 04, 2009
Someone finally found the H1N1 swine flu in pigs. After I bashed them for allotting resources for hog surveillance when little evidence for such a need existed, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization is now applauding Canada for spotting the flu in a herd of Alberta swine...

Handwashing on South Park, restaurant inspection on the Hills, Chapman vomiting

Posted on May 02, 2009
I have a bunch of food safety images but no literate story line. So here they are, food safety in public. And I told Chapman I'd stop using this picture of him barfing if he ever got his PhD. I'll probably still use it.      

barfblog, bites, and food safety

Posted on May 02, 2009
Foodborne illness can be an unpleasant experience or something more serious. The World Health Organization estimates up to 2 billion people get sick from food and water each year – 30 per cent of all citizens in all countries. Dr. Douglas Powell, associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University, leads a group of individuals passionately committed to reducing the incidence of foodborne illness, through research, teaching and information...

Chapman gets PhD

Posted on May 01, 2009
Irony is pretty ironic sometimes. On the three-year anniversary of me officially starting at Kansas State University, two-years after the beginning of barfblog.com, and a year after going down the baby road yet again, Chapman finally gets his PhD, and all the staff at the remnants of the Food Safety Network at the University of Guelph are fired...

Egypt kills pigs to stop a virus that moves person-to-person

Posted on May 01, 2009
Egypt began culling its roughly 300,000 pigs on Wednesday and, Reuters reported, 'The move is not expected to block the H1N1 virus from striking, as the illness is spread by people and not present in Egyptian swine. But acting against pigs, largely viewed as unclean in conservative Muslim Egypt, could help quell a panic...

VP Biden says dumb things about swine flu

Posted on May 01, 2009
While on the road for several hours yesterday after visiting family, I finally settled on National Public Radio. I hear lots of good stuff on NPR when I'm in the mood for it. Just a few miles from home, I heard a story about some bad risk communication from an uninformed political figure...

Petting zoos and poo

Posted on May 01, 2009
A few years ago I experienced the Exciting and Educational Adventure that is the Elmvale Jungle Zoo in Ontario. It was a blast. The zoo has any animal you can think of: lions, tigers and, not bears, but giraffes, monkeys, lemurs and more. My favourite part was the goat pen where visitors get a hands-on chance to pet and feed goats...

Monty Python and the Holy Grail of Listeria

Posted on April 30, 2009
As part of her cultural education, about-to-be graduate student Katie has been exposed –inundated – with some of the favorite movies of Doug and Amy. Last week it was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Young Katie wasn't too impressed, and I'll admit, the film has aged...

Obama also says, if you're sick, stay at home

Posted on April 30, 2009
It's not swine flu, it's people coming to work when they're barfing. I understand it's probably not the person's fault – they may get fired if they don't show up. But barfing employees should not be serving food. And that's exactly what happened to 46 other employees at a Des Plaines, Ill...

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