There was this one time, Chapman and I went to Australia and New Zealand, and at a dinner in Melbourne, he thought it would be adventurous to order kangaroo.

Tasted like deer.

Now that I live in Brisbane, kangaroo meat is fairly easy to find; I just have no interest in it.

And like any other food, kangaroo is prone to contamination.

ABC reports that three years after Russia banned kangaroo meat after finding high levels of bacterial contamination, animal rights groups say there are still problems with hygiene in supermarket meat.

Some of the tests show high levels of E. coli.

The kangaroo industry says the tests are not scientific and it claims animal rights groups are extremists.

Animal rights groups are using the hygiene issue as a weapon to try and close down the industry, worth $75 million a year.

As part of their campaign, the animal rights groups purchased kangaroo meat for human consumption from Coles, Woolworths and IGA supermarkets in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and had the samples tested in an independent laboratory.

Eight of the 26 kangaroo samples tested positive for the bacteria salmonella and 11 samples showed relatively high levels of E. coli bacteria.

The Kangaroo Industry Association says the laboratory results are not scientific because there is no way of knowing how the meat was transported from the supermarkets to the laboratory or how long it took to get there, and no independent scrutiny of the process.

Associate Professor Vitali Sintchenko says that illness from eating kangaroo meat is extremely rare, adding, “We haven't seen any cases of food poisoning from - that we know of in New South Wales in the last five or six years coming from kangaroo meat.”

The kangaroo industry also claims there has never been a recorded case of food poisoning from kangaroo meat in Australia. Now the industry is lobbying the Russians to reopen the meat trade. But last month, Animal Liberation took their lab results to Russia to try to persuade authorities there to continue the ban.

There was this one time, Chapman came to Manhattan (Kansas) and lasted one quarter of a Kansas State football game before rushing home with explosive diarrhea.

My whiny kid didn’t help either.

He spent the rest of the visit holed up downstairs, sucking back Gatorade and sitting on the toilet.

When he got back to North Carolina he had the wherewithal to donate a stool sample, and eventually found out he was part of a state-wide antibiotic-resistant campylobacter outbreak.

In light of the German-based E. coli O104 outbreak in raw sprouts last year, researchers in Germany and Sweden are now calling for all stool samples from patients with diarrhea to be tested for enteropathic E. coli.

Writing in Eurosurveillance, the authors state:

Following an outbreak of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) in Germany 2011, we observed increases in EHEC and non-EHEC E. coli cases in Bavaria. We compared the demographic, clinical and laboratory features of the cases reported during the outbreak period, but not related to the outbreak, to the cases reported before and after. The number of EHEC and non-EHEC E. coli cases notified per week during the outbreak was fivefold and twofold higher respectively, compared to previous years. EHEC cases notified during the outbreak were more often reported with bloody diarrhoea, and less often with unspecified diarrhoea, compared to the other periods. They were more often hospitalised during the outbreak and the following period compared to the period before. Their median age (26.5 years, range: 0–90) was higher compared to before (14.5 years, range: 0–94) and after (5 years, range: 0–81). The median age of non-EHEC E. coli cases notified during the outbreak period (18 years, range 0–88) was also higher than before and after (2 years, p<0.001). The surveillance system likely underestimates the incidence of both EHEC and non-EHEC E. coli cases, especially among adults, and overestimates the proportion of severe EHEC cases. Testing all stool samples from patients with diarrhoea for enteropathic E. coli should be considered.

A 23-year-old is dead after she got E. coli, possibly after eating at a local restaurant. Her family is now asking for an investigation into the restaurant.

KMOV reports Ciera Brookfield told her family that she felt sick after eating at a Chinese restaurant in Overland, near St. Louis, Missouri.

Ciera was just 23 when she passed away on Thursday. Her family says the Ladue Horton Watkins High School grad got sick after eating at Hon's Wok, which is next door to where she worked at Woofie's on Woodson Road.

"She came home about 8 that night. She came in, she laid down on the couch, she said 'mom, I think I have food poisoning,'" said Donna Clark, Ciera's mother. "I went to work, came back and she was very frantic, saying that she thought it was really bad."

That was last Thursday. By Friday night Ciera was in the ICU. Mercy Hospital confirms that she had E. coli. But Ciera also suffered from Sickle Cell disease, which made the infection worse.

"It went to her blood stream and for a person with sickle cell, it's harder to fight it," Clark said.

As Ciera's family grieves, they want the St. Louis County Health Department to investigate the Chinese restaurant.

"We don't want anybody else to die like my daughter died," Clark said.

But it's important to note that the CDC says E. coli symptoms usually appear three to four days after someone contracts the bacteria but that it can be as short as one day.

The St. Louis County Health Department cannot confirm that Ciera contracted E. coli at Hon's Wok. The department is investigating a complaint there but says, at this point, it does not include E. coli.

"We've been open over 10 years and [nothing] like this [has happened] before," said Thao Vuong, Hon's Wok manager.

One of the individuals hospitalized following an E. coli outbreak at Folklorama two years ago is suing the organization and the Russian Pavilion.

Trudy Andrew, 52, of Oakbank, is seeking damages for lost wages and pain and suffering she endured after eating contaminated food at the Russian Pavilion.

"If I hadn't gone to the hospital when I did, I wouldn't have made it," Andrew told the Winnipeg Free Press. "I ended up seriously ill and in hospital."

Andrew is suing Folklorama Inc., the Folk Arts Council of Winnipeg Inc., the umbrella organization that oversees the popular two-week Folklorama festival and the Russian Pavilion, which health authorities identified as the source of the outbreak.

There were 40 reported cases of E. coli between Aug. 9 and Aug. 30, 2010; 34 of those cases were individuals who ate at the pavilion, and three others were children at a daycare who were infected by a person who visited the pavilion and spread the germ.

Seventeen people went to emergency and five individuals were hospitalized, including a two-year-old boy who suffered acute renal failure and was put on dialysis in pediatric intensive care.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority concluded a locally made juice, known as kompot, was the source of the outbreak, speculating the juice had somehow come into contact with contaminated ground beef.

Health inspectors had found deficiencies in the pavilion's kitchen on Aug. 1, the first day the venue opened, including improperly stored raw hamburger meat and a fridge with an operating temperature that was deemed too high.

Sofia Barklon, co-ordinator of the Russian Pavilion, maintains the pavilion was not the source of the outbreak -- the position it took two years ago, despite the findings of the WRHA.

Debra Zoerb, executive director of Folklorama, said she would not comment on the legal action but said it was the only one stemming from the E. Coli outbreak two years ago.