What's particularly alarming is that the salmonella in question is resistant to antibiotics, at a time when drug-resistant bugs, of all stripes, are generating increased public attention. Just as Cargill was pulling its meat off of store shelves, French scientists released a report detailing the emergence of another drug-resistant strain of Salmonella, called "S. Kentucky," in Europe. (The California strain is "S. Heidelberg.") S. Kentucky made nearly 500 people sick across the continent between 2000 and 2008, and researchers suspect that it hopped over the pond to the U.S. and Canada. 

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The Agriculture Department and the Minnesota-based company announced Wednesday evening that Cargill is recalling fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., plant from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2 due to possible contamination from the strain of salmonella linked to 76 illnesses and the one death.

Illnesses in the outbreak date back to March and have been reported in 26 states coast to coast. Both the Agriculture Department and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are still working to identify the source. Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department has warned consumers to properly cook ground turkey.

Just before the recall announcement Wednesday, CDC epidemiologist Christopher Braden said he thought health authorities were closing in on the suspect. He said some leftover turkey in a package at a victim's house was confirmed to contain the strain of salmonella linked to the outbreak.

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Do you:

A) Call back the restaurant and ask for a refund;

B) Just eat the food and promise to deal with it next time;

C) Call the police

If you answered C, you are not alone. A woman in Savannah, Ga., called 911 to rectify her dinner order yesterday. This was the result:

Sadly, these kinds of calls aren't as uncommon as you might think. In March 2009 a woman called the police after being given the wrong order of McNuggets at McDonald's.

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Salon talked to Stephen Frantz, director of the Reed College Research Reactor, about the threat.

What does radiation in food do to people?

When you ingest radioactive material, as the material decays, some of the radiation will hit the cells in your body and perhaps do damage and increase the chances of cancer -- if there's a sufficient amount of materials. "Radioactive" does not mean it's deadly or dangerous. We've been eating radioactive materials all our throughout human history. It's the levels you have to worry about.

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According to the New York Times, the petitioner, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, is seeking either an outright ban or, at the very least, a prominent warning label. European companies have had to put warning labels on artificially colored products for years, and many have switched to natural dyes, such as from beets. Should the U.S. follow suit?

The dye debate has been raging since the 1970s, with very little conclusive evidence to settle for either side once and for all. The FDA previously stated that there was no reason to fear the dyes, but since the use of artificial coloring has skyrocketed in recent years, scientists have been examining this claim, with little success. The most convincing evidence comes from a 2007 study headed by University of Southampton professor Jim Stevenson. In the study, children were fed a daily fruit juice containing different concentrations of dyes and the preservative sodium benzoate, and noted a small effect on behavior. It isn't clear whether the dyes, the preservative or the combination caused the effect.

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So, curious about what other "filth" and "water insoluble inorganic matter" are legally tolerated, I consulted the Food and Drug Administration's stunningly poetic-sounding "Food Defect Action Levels" -- the level of screwiness you are allowed to have in your food before the FDA will take action. You never actually want to get some FDA action, but you might be surprised at how much gunk can be in your product before they will show up with some bad news.

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You want more? The friendly Cleveland congressman filed suit against a number of companies that supply and run the congressional eatery, because in 2008 he bit into a "sandwich wrap" of some kind and hurt his teeth on an olive pit.

According to the suit: "Said sandwich wrap was unwholesome and unfit for human consumption, in that it was represented to contain pitted olives, yet unknown to plaintiff contained an unpitted olive or olives which plaintiff did not reasonably expect to be present in the food prepared for him, and could not visually detect prior to consumption."

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The meat mixture sold by Taco Bell restaurants contains binders and extenders and does not meet the minimum requirements set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be labeled as "beef," according to the legal complaint.

The class-action lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in the Central District of California by the Montgomery law firm Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles.

Attorney Dee Miles said attorneys had Taco Bell's "meat mixture" tested and found it contained less that 35 percent beef.

Miles said the lawsuit does not seek monetary damages, but asks the court to order Taco Bell to be honest in its advertising.

"We are asking that they stop saying that they are selling beef," Miles said.

Irvine, Calif.-based Taco Bell spokesman Rob Poetsch (PAYCH) said the company denies that its advertising is misleading.

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The CBC recently reported the tragic story: A Canadian woman, by the near-symmetrical name of Lind Bird, was driving across the U.S. border when she was stopped for a random search, which randomly turned up the most randomly illegal contraband of all time -- a chocolate egg-toy that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has determined is a clear and present danger out to choke American children. The border patrol officer threatened a $300 fine, Ms. Bird politely gave up the Kinder Surprise, and, after an extended hassle including signing off on a seven-page letter authorizing U.S. authorities to destroy (read: snack on) the confiscated goods, she tried to pick up the pieces and get on with her life, scarred by a government that has that kind of time and money to throw around, but not enough resources for universal healthcare.

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Wholesalers from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and other East Coast states started sending cases of the high-alcohol, caffeinated malt beverages to MXI Environmental Services in Virginia after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a crackdown on the sale of such beverages in November.

Brian Potter, vice president of operations at MXI's facility in Abingdon, Va., said about a couple of hundred truckloads of the drinks would be coming to the plant. Each truck holds 2,000 cases of the 23.5-ounce cans.

MXI Enterprises is one of three facilities in the U.S. that recycle ethanol, according to the American Coalition for Ethanol, an industry group. Potter said Thursday that his competitors also are taking shipments of the drinks.

"We're equipped to process four truckloads a day, and we're at full capacity," he said. "There are about 30 different products involved, and we've only seen a couple of them at this point. It could go on for several months."

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Conservative lawmakers, sensitive to public frustration over high levels of government spending, are balking at the price tag. Obama has said food safety is a priority for him.

Obama signed the bill into law Tuesday, a day before a more Republican and less White-House friendly Congress returns to Washington.

The law emphasizes prevention to help stop outbreaks of foodborne illness before they occur. It requires food manufacturers to prepare detailed food safety plans and to tell the Food and Drug Administration what they are doing to keep the food safe at different stages of production.

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As reported by Food Safety News, a new study in the even-more-thrilling-sounding Journal of Food Protection found that wearing gloves is not only no better than thorough, regular hand washing, but may actually be worse than wearing no gloves at all. The heat and moisture from your hands inside are like a Jersey Shore hot tub for bacteria, and neither glove nor reality show star is ever impervious to "losses of integrity," letting that bacteria loose on your ham and Swiss on rye. But to my mind, the study's most salient point is the notion that wearing gloves creates an aura of hygiene that makes it far too easy for cooks to stop thinking about where their hands have been.

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Salmonella and its discontents

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Avoiding food poisoning is complex (the p.c. term now is "foodborne illness," lest we start tainting the deli guy as a "poisoner"), but it can be largely boiled down to a few key points about how bacteria grow, taught to us by our friend Fat Tom.

Fat Tom is not, in fact, a person, but a mnemonic device used by the National Restaurant Association, for whom wit and cuteness don't come easily. (Its literature contains earnest warnings against foods that have been "time temperature abused," and warns against getting your customers sick with an illustration of a judge's gavel banging on a stack of cash.) But it is  good at telling you how to keep bacteria from growing on your lunch. So, Fat Tom helps you remember what makes a bacteria-friendly environment and how to avoid creating one:

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The Journal argues that those American retailers who think they can just blame their Chinese suppliers for tainted pet food or poison toothpaste and merrily escape any liability are mistaken. "But all bets are off as soon as injured children or sick adults start appearing before juries." Likewise, publicly traded companies "will increasingly see their willingness to invest in China-based quality control reflected in their stock price."

The critical point is this:

American companies have not always realized how expensive Chinese-manufactured goods can turn out to be once the cost of low quality is factored in. Low costs are still to be found in China, but they won't be quite as low after accounting for quality control.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/07/13/liability/feed/ 19 http://www.salon.com/2007/07/05/kerala_walmart/ http://www.salon.com/2007/07/05/kerala_walmart/#comments Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:18:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works//2007/07/05/kerala_walmart The Communist government of Kerala is threatening to ban "retail giants" from setting up shop in the Indian state. The measure, which appears to be backed by all the major political parties in Kerala, is chiefly aimed at India's version of Wal-Mart, Reliance Industries. The concern is that a proliferation of large retail outlets would drive tens of thousands of mom-and-pop shop operators out of business.

Kerala made headlines not so long ago for attempting to ban Coca-Cola; the state has a long history of pursuing its own unique path to development. Naturally, the more gung-ho-for-capitalism elements of Indian society aren't mincing their deprecating words: An editorial in the Indian Express made no attempt to restrain its sarcasm:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/07/05/kerala_walmart/feed/ 3 http://www.salon.com/2007/05/01/e_coli_2/ http://www.salon.com/2007/05/01/e_coli_2/#comments Tue, 01 May 2007 11:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/01/e_coli It all started with Little League baseball players in Napa County, Calif., in early April. Three of them, as young as age 9, ate hamburgers they purchased from snack vendors at the game. They each fell ill, complaining of cramps and diarrhea, classic symptoms of a potentially deadly bacterium known as E. coli O157:H7. Just a few days earlier, five people in four Pennsylvania counties became sick with similar symptoms in an apparently unrelated E. coli case. They had each recently ordered rare and medium-rare steaks at a local restaurant chain, Hoss's Steak and Sea House.

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