Venus cafe owner Maree Little cried yesterday as she spoke of the devastation of knowing food prepared at her Hobart, Tasmania, eatery had made at least 79 people seriously ill, including mourners at funerals which her business had catered for.

She too became ill after eating food from the cafe, which had been made unknowingly with contaminated eggs.

The Tasmania Mercury reports that Little felt compassion for all those who had been sick, including her five-year-old granddaughter and five Venus staff who were all hospitalized, adding

"I want to sincerely apologise to all of our loyal customers, staff and other members of the community who've fallen ill as a result of eating food from Venus café. We profoundly regret that our business has been associated with this salmonella outbreak and we feel for everyone who has been admitted to hospital, or become sick as a result of eating at our cafe. It has devastated me and the staff as well. Our heart certainly goes out to those (sick) people because we know what they are going through."

The apology came after the Mercury revealed a 66-year-old Hobart man was struck down with salmonella after lunching at Venus and spent the past 12 days in hospital.

The hospitalised man was finally able to go home yesterday and said he was grateful that Venus had apologized.

The Health Department has confirmed the outbreak at Venus was caused by an aioli salad dressing and dipping sauce which was made from raw eggs.

The contaminated food was served in the cafe on January 24-25 and at several catered functions including funerals at Millingtons in Mornington.

Ms Little had to ruin her nice apology by saying it was unfortunate that her business had unknowingly used contaminated eggs provided by an external egg supplier, and that her business, which she had run for 16 months, would not use raw egg in any product ever again, and that,

"Our business is as much a victim as those people who have fallen ill as a result of eating contaminated food. The harm to our business and reputation is devastating, but the most important thing is the health of our customers, staff and loved ones and we sincerely hope they are able to make a full recovery as soon as possible."

Don't eat raw eggs. Don't eat poop.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Proper handwashing with the proper tools -- soap, water and paper towel -- can significantly reduce the number of foodborne and other illnesses.

So says the International Food Safety Network.

People should be washing their hands before handling food and, for example:
• after using the toilet;
• when entering the kitchen to prepare food;
• before handling ready-to-eat food;
• after handling any raw food;
• after changing diapers;
• after playing with or cleaning up after pets; and,
• after handling garbage.

The steps in proper handwashing, as concluded from the preponderance of available evidence, are:

• wet hands with water;
• use enough soap to build a good lather;
• scrub hands vigorously, creating friction and reaching all areas of the fingers and hands for at least 10 seconds to loosen pathogens on the fingers and hands;
• rinse hands with thorough amounts of water while continuing to rub hands; and,
• dry hands with paper towel.

Water temperature is not a critical factor -- water hot enough to kill dangerous bacteria and viruses would scald hands -- so use whatever is comfortable.

The friction from rubbing hands with paper towels helps remove additional bacteria and viruses.

Next time you visit a bathroom that is missing soap, water or paper towels, let someone in charge know. And next time you see someone skip out on the suds in the bathroom, look at them and say, “Dude, wash your hands!”

And Don't Eat Poop.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

The Chinese Year of the Rat begins tomorrow.

And rice farmers are rejoicing, eating the rodent that is damaging crops.

In Thailand, BBC News reports that fast food sellers are enjoying a boom in rat sales, as people learn to love the taste of the rodent.

The rats are drowned and sold uncooked or ready to eat, with happy customers purchasing rat meat for as much as 150 baht ($4.82; £2.30) a kilogram.

One customer was quoted as telling AP,

"It's better than chicken."

One rat seller, Sala Prompim, said that the hip and liver were the best cuts, adding,

"It's tastier than other meats - nothing can compete with rat."

Mr Prompim said he only used rats caught from rice fields, and not those found in towns or cities because,

"They are definitely clean."

The Wall Street Journal reports that due to bird flu, field rats have become a popular food in Vietnam.

The story says that in Tu Son, a small village sitting near the banks of the Red River, rat hunter Ngo Minh Tam reckons,

"99%" of the people regularly dine on rat meat."

Rat-based cuisine is beginning to catch on in the big cities as well. Handwritten signs in some of the backstreets of Hanoi offer cash in return for freshly caught rat.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

This morning the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is announcing a recall of a sesame seed product (crackers and chips) due to Salmonella contamination.  Although no illnesses linked to the crackers have been confirmed, this recall one is yet another in a string of recalls linked to Salmonella-contaminated sesame seeds and products.

On January 22, 2008 CFIA announced a recall of bulk and packaged organic sesame seeds distributed under various brands in the Atlantic provinces, Quebec, Ontario and Alberta and British Columbia due to Salmonella contamination.

In June 2007 CFIA warned that GD Sesame seed might have been contaminated with Salmonella and conducted a recall (and check out the related alerts under the press release title, there were an additional eight sesame/Salmonella recalls linked to this one in 2007).

In May Salmonella-contaminated sesame tahini was recalled by Whole Foods Market Inc.

Last January the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found Salmonella in sesame seeds at Woodhouse Commodities Inc. (and the president of the company was charged for allegedly not disclosing that some of the seeds were sold despite a product hold).

Last years major Salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter, and two big Salmonella outbreaks linked to almonds earlier in the decade demonstrate how resilient Salmonella can be on dried products. At IAFP in August 2005, I co-moderated a symposium at which Robert Tauxe of the CDC said sesame seeds and Salmonella was the next big thing on the international food safety horizon.  His prediction is looking pretty good.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

WAFB 9News is reporting that a five-year-old boy had to be hospitalized after playing with one of the throws his mom says he caught at the notoriously risqué Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade this weekend.

Mom Tracy Bamburg told  9NEWS that among all the beads, cups, and doubloons was a real chicken foot, which also happened to be raw.

"We were all touching it, squeezing it, and playing with it." Then, the next morning, reality hit. "My stomach was hurting very, very, very, very bad," the little boy says. "He woke up with 103 fever and vomiting," his mother says.

Spanish Town parade organizer Bruce Childers said throwing raw chicken parts from the floats in this parade is not acceptable and that if the crew members who did this are caught, they will be banned indefinitely from riding in the parade.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

HealthInspections.com has uncovered yet another television story that has found that the glasses don't get washed.
 
WCPO in Cincinnati borrowed an idea that was first tried by a Fox television station in Atlanta. They placed hidden cameras into hotel rooms to watch housekeepers in action. 

WCPO found that instead of washing the drinking glasses in guest rooms, they're just wiping them off and reusing them. And it's happening at big name hotels such as the Hilton.

In one case, it shows a housekeeper wiping the bathroom floor with a towel then using the same towel to wipe off drinking glasses.

WCPO found glasses being reused at hotel rooms in Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas City, Phoenix, and Baltimore.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

"You’ve got the tender beef, butter, salt, French fries, beer — all your major food groups. But it’s very unique to North Jersey. I go to other places and nobody’s heard of it."

He's talking about a beefsteak, described by Paul Lukas of the N.Y. Times as a
"raucous all-you-can-eat-and-drink banquet."

The story says that back in the days before cholesterol testing, beefsteaks — boisterous mass feeds featuring unlimited servings of steak, lamb chops, bacon-wrapped lamb kidneys, crabmeat, shrimp and beer, all consumed without such niceties as silverware, napkins or women — held sway in New York for the better part of a century.

The ritual was documented by the writer Joseph Mitchell for the New Yorker magazine in his 1939 article “All You Can Hold for Five Bucks.” As Mr. Mitchell told it, the beefsteak came into being in the mid-1800s, became popular as a political fund-raiser and vote-buyer, and began a slow decline when women started taking part after being granted suffrage in 1920.

Today the beefsteak features slices of beef tenderloin washed down with pitchers of beer, and has migrated from its New York roots to New Jersey.

The events, which typically attract crowds of 150 or more, with a ticket price of about $40, are popular as political meet-and-greets, annual dinners for businesses and civic groups, and charity fundraisers. Caterers said they put on about 1,000 of them in the region last year.

The story says that in 1938  a Clifton butcher and grocer named Garret Nightingale, known as Hap, began catering parties with a set formula.
He grilled tenderloins (the muscle used for filet mignon) over charcoal, sliced them, dipped the slices in melted butter, served them on slices of white sandwich bread, added French fries on the side, and let everyone eat as much as they wanted. This he called a beefsteak. Within a decade, it had become an entrenched local phenomenon.

Hap Nightingale died in 1982. By that time he had passed the business on to his son, Bob, who turned it over to his son, Rob, in 1995. The second- and third-generation Nightingales continue to run the operation today out of an unassuming Clifton house where Bob Nightingale was raised and still lives. Their business office is the house’s cramped basement, and the tenderloins are grilled over hardwood charcoal in the driveway before being taken to the beefsteak venues. From this unlikely command center, the Nightingales catered over 600 beefsteaks last year, going through 88,000 pounds of tenderloin in the process.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None