I've walked down Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Chinese Theatre. I bought a $2 map of the stars' houses and photographed the "foot prints" of Star Wars' R2D2 and C3PO in the cement. But I didn't touch anything.

That sidewalk made the list of the five germiest tourist spots in the world as determined by editors at TripAdvisor.com this summer:

1. Blarney Stone in Blarney, Ireland - Last year, about 400,000 people hung upside down to kiss this stone in their quest for the gift of eloquence.

2. Market Theater Gum Wall in Seattle, Washington - This 15'x50' wall of gum began as a few sticky pieces discarded by college students waiting in line for movie tickets fifteen years ago.

3. St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy - For some reason, people love feeding the pigeons here, though city officials have been cracking down on the pooping menaces in recent years.

4. Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California - The celebrity handprints in the cement  out front encourage bare-hand contact with a city sidewalk, which, according to a Theatre tour guide, is mopped daily and pressure washed once a week to support the trend.

5. Oscar Wilde's Tomb in Paris, France - Admirers of author and playwright Oscar Wilde don bright lipstick to kiss his tomb when they come to pay their respects.

CNN's report of the list states,

"Though it is unlikely to get sick from visiting one of these places, health experts say germs are always a gamble. The more people who touch and visit a spot, the more germs there are in the mix, they say.

"Their traveling advice? Travelers should load up on hand sanitizers and wash their hands often on their trips."

Good advice, baseless assumptions. Now, what about the kissing? And the pigeons?

TripAdvisor travel expert Brooke Ferencsik was quoted as saying, "These places are great attractions regardless of the fact that they are germy."

I'd say they were good for a photo, maybe. But I'm passing on the hands-on (or mouth-on) participation.

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Friday we took baby Sorenne to her first pediatrician’s appointment. Everything was cool, we went and got some groceries, and on the way home a reporter from the Times of London rang me up. He wanted to chat about dioxin in feed in Ireland and had actually found a technical report me and a couple of students wrote almost a decade ago about dioxin in Belgian feed.

Indeed, I was the same person, oops, hang on a sec, removed the car seat from car, then chatted for about 20 minutes as I trugged the groceries up the hill.

The stories are running Sunday morning in London and my quotes are an excellent example of baby brain: some of the right words are there, but much of what I said comes across as gibberish. Nevertheless, the stories provide an excellent overview of the dioxin-in-Irish-feed crisis.

In the central science laboratory in York last Saturday, scientist Martin Rose stared in disbelief at his dioxin detector. He had injected a sample of Irish animal feed into the machine, and the results had gone off the scale. The level of toxic contamination was at least 5,000 times the legal limit.

Rose knew there was some urgency about the analysis. The Irish authorities had asked the laboratory team to work over the weekend to get test results in a few days; normally it would take four weeks.

At 3.40pm on Saturday last, Alan Reilly, deputy chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), was given the bad news. He called Brian Cowen and outlined the grim scenario. While only 8% of Irish pork was contaminated, it could not be isolated quickly.

Every minute that the taoiseach dallied, consumers were eating dioxin-laden Irish meat. How much damage that might be doing to people’s health was not known. Nevertheless, Cowen made his decision almost immediately. Aware of the damage it would do to Ireland’s pork industry, he ordered a full recall of all pork products from September 1.

“I actually can’t believe this decision is even being questioned,” said the FSAI’s Reilly. “I’m astonished by the people saying that we shouldn’t have ordered a recall. If we had left that meat on the shelves, leaving people to eat contaminated product, we would have been lambasted for being irresponsible, and in all probability we’d be out of our jobs.

Doug Powell, scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University, said off-the-scale readings from the feed justified the action.

“When you get those kind of numbers the response should be ‘let’s pull everything.’ If the public perceive that the authorities knew there was a risk and didn’t do anything, then they’d be crucified. From a crisis-management point of view it’s clear they did the right thing. Compare that with [the similar contamination crisis in] Belgium and we see the mess that came out of that.” …

The International Food Safety Network’s Powell believes that the government’s policy of annual testing is insufficient. “One test a year is only a snapshot. How do you know what they are doing the other 364 days?” he said. “We talk ‘farm to fork’ food safety all the time, but are the guys making the feed taking it seriously? We need to get a culture where the manufacturer is saying ‘we can’t mess this up’ rather than waiting for somebody to catch you. Everybody needs to have a culture of food safety. The marketplace can be brutal but that’s why we need to change attitudes.” …

According to Powell, the way forward is to change the culture that led to the crisis. “There will be a stigma associated with the product for a while,” he said. “The marketplace is going to demand better. Supermarkets will want to know what is going into the feed of their pigs. The producers and the processors can’t just say they have testing in place; they’ve got to prove it.”

Below is the abstract from the technical report we produced on the dioxin in Belgian feed crisis of 1999. The entire report is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/articledetails.php?a=3&c=9&sc=64&id=316

In the spring of 1999, dioxin was introduced into the Belgian food supply, including exports, via contaminated animal fat used in animal feeds supplied to Belgian, French and Dutch farms. Hens, pigs and cattle ate the contaminated feed and high levels of dioxin were found in meat products as well as eggs. What followed was yet another European food safety scandal filled with drama and public outcry. There were government investigations, the removal and destruction of tons of eggs and meat products and huge economic losses. The case study of this incident reported here illustrates how the crisis unfolded, and evaluates how the Belgian government managed and communicated this crisis, based on publicly available documentation. The government's major error, based on the unfolding public discussion of the events, was a perceived failure to publicly acknowledge the crisis, resulting in accusations of a self-serving cover-up. The government's poor crisis management and communication strategy became the focus of intense public and media criticism and blame. Moreover, the significant issue of poor quality control in the food and feed industries was pushed to the sideline. Not only was the reputation of the food supply tarnished but public confidence in the government was damaged, leading to the resignations of two cabinet ministers and the ousting of the ruling party in a national election. This study confirms the basic components required to manage food-related stigma:

• effective and rapid surveillance systems;

• effective communication about the nature of risk;

• a credible, open and responsive regulatory system;

• demonstrable efforts to reduce levels of uncertainty and risk; and,

• evidence that actions match words.
 

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Far from the Carnival balls, parades and raucous crowds of New Orleans, Cajuns in St. Martinville held their last ''bon temps'' before Lent in a far different fashion: with a grand boucherie, or slaughtering of a pig.

Associated Press reports that hundreds of people watched at least part of the ritual Saturday, though most have seen it before. The pig's skin was being shaved for cracklins, a Cajun snack, while the carcass was being prepared for transport to a butcher shop.

Every year, Catholic Cajuns in this community about 140 miles west of New Orleans hold ''La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns'' the weekend before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.

Stephen Hardy, 38, who leads the group organizing the event, said,

"This is a celebration that was started out of necessity. Before refrigeration, they had to share the slaughter. One family could not consume a whole hog before it would go bad. They would have family and friends over to help, and everyone would leave with something."

With meat readily available at any grocery store today, the boucherie is simply a celebration of an old tradition, bringing family and friends together once a year for one last hoorah before the Catholic season of fasting begins.

Federal health code regulations prevent attendees from eating what is slaughtered during the celebration, Hardy said. So the butcher, after showing what is done traditionally, will take the carcass and byproducts to his shop to finish preparing the meat.

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Amy and I are visiting family in Anoka, Minnesota, for a couple of days, and everyone gathered tonight for her grandmother's 85th birthday.

Oh ya, and the weather's always a popular subject, eh?

Same for Paul Smokov, 84, of Steele, N.D, who looks at pig spleens and predicts: "It looks like a normal year with no major storms. That's what the spleens tell me."

Smokov, who along with his wife, Betty, raises cattle on their 1,750-acre ranch north of Steele, says if the spleen is wide where it attaches to the pig's stomach and then narrows, it means winter weather will come early with a mild spring. A narrow-to-wider spleen usually means harsh weather in the spring.

Forecasters are calling for a normal winter -- matching Smokov's prediction.

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