Food Poisoning Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark : Food Poison Blog

Something called the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission last week held a hearing on “Chinese Seafood: Safety and Trade Issues.”

The big talker was Don Kraemer from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. He is deputy director in the Office of Food Safety.

Kraemer went into some extensive detail on the legal authority FDA maintains over Chinese imports to the United States; and all the policies and procedures it employs.

With doctors telling us all to eat fish twice a day, Kraemer started to get our attention with statements like this: “More than 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported from approximately 130 countries, and over 40 percent of that seafood comes from aquaculture operations.”

And about China specifically, this:

"By volume, China is the largest exporter of seafood to the U.S., and the second largest in terms of monetary value. In particular, China exports significant amounts of shrimp and catfish products, which represent two of the ten most consumed seafood products in the U.S.

As the aquaculture industry continues to grow, concern about the use of unapproved drugs and unsafe chemicals in aquaculture operations has increased significantly. There is clear scientific evidence that the use of unapproved antibiotics and other drugs and chemicals, such as malachite green, nitrofurans, fluoroquinolones, and gentian violet, can result in the presence of residues in the edible portions of aquacultured seafood.

 

Fluoroquinolones are not approved for use in food fish and have been prohibited from extra-label use in the U.S. and many other parts of the world because of public health concern about the development of antimicrobial resistance. Moreover, prolonged exposure to nitrofurans, malachite green, and gentian violet, or their metabolites, has been shown to induce cancer in humans or animals.

 
Since June 28,2007, there’s been a detention order on all farm-raised catfish, basa, shrimp, dace and eel from China. This means the Chinese farm fish are subject to detention FDA without examination.

Since imposition of the countrywide Import Alert, FDA has detained 2,964 shipments of aquacultured seafood from China, and through laboratory testing, 1,387 of those shipments have been released into U.S. commerce.
Only one company, Zhanjiang Guolian Aquatic Products Corporation, Zhanjiang, China (Guolian), has taken the steps needed to get out from under the detention order.

The Review Commission is a 12-member panel created by Congress to monitor trade with China.

For Kraemer’s complete statement, go here.

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The Institute for Food Laws & Regulations (IFLR) at Michigan State University will present a Food Labeling Workshop on July 23-24, 2008, at The James B. Henry Center for Executive Development adjacent to the MSU campus.

This workshop is designed for food industry personnel and regulatory officials who are responsible for reviewing food labels and labeling for compliance with state and U.S. federal law.

Those involved with label evelopment or review will find the course of invaluable interest. Trade association staff, food consultants, and attorneys will also find this program valuable.

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The CDC estimates that 76 million foodborne illness, or food poisoning, cases occur in the United States every year, which means that one in four Americans contracts a foodborne illness annually after eating foods contaminated with such pathogens as E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella, Hepatitis A, Campylobacter, Shigella, Norovirus, and Listeria. Approximately 325,000 people are hospitalized with a diagnosis of food poisoning, and 5,000 die. The estimated costs in terms of medical expenses and lost wages or productivity are between $6.5 and $34.9 billion (Buzby and Roberts, 1997; Mead, et al., 1999).  While most foodborne illness cases go unreported to health departments, nearly 13.8 million food poisoning cases are caused by known agents – 30% by bacteria, 67% by viruses, and 3% parasites (Mead, et al., 1999).

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The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that there is no evidence of: the relationship between food contamination and hand-washing; nor is there any  risk to the public if a restaurant employee's hand-washing is limited (or non-existent) and no reason for concern about other employees being adversely affected.  

So maybe  if your planning a vacation trip or convention in Vancouver, BC, you may want to cancel now and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!  

The context for this daffy decision by the BC Tribunal was a dispute between McDonald's and long-time employee Beena Datt.   After working at McD's for more than 20 years, Ms. Datt came down with a skin condition that her doctor said limited or prevented her from being able to wash her hands as often as required by McDonald's policy for all employees.

There's a long story here and it is told by the blog Northern Exposure, which covers employment law for U.S. companies with employees in Canada.    It's a great read.  Check it out here.

The bottom line is McDonald's was ordered to pay Ms. Datt about $55,000 for what apparently amounts to unlawful dismissal.   Who among us can be critical of someone else for getting McDonald's to pay up?  

Still to make an actual finding that there is no link between food contamination and failure of restaurant workers to wash their hands is so stupid, one has to question what's going on in name of "human rights" in Canada.   No restaurant worker has the right to make his or her fellow workers or their customers sick.

Canada may want to be taken seriously in the worst way.   Well, this is the worst way.

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The Centers on Disease Control & Prevention today (4/10/08) held a telephone press conference to mark the release of "Preliminary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of Infection with Pathogens Transmitted Commonly Through Food - 10 States, United States, 2007" which is also being published in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Dr. Robert Tauxe, Deputy Director, CDC Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases, said that after marking declining trends for food borne diseases after FoodNet was established in 1996, more recent data--including that for 2007--is not showing progress.

"The lines go up and the lines go down," Dr. Tauxe said.  "We cannot say we've made significant progress in the last few years.

FoodNet monitors every diagnosis of a major food borne illness in each of ten states and then projects on the population to spot trends.

FoodNet has picked up on a signficant increase in cyptosoridium that Dr Tauxe says may be partially due to a better lab test and treatment for the parasite.

Here's the preliminary data from FoodNet for 2007 from the MMWR;  Go here for the real thing.

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The top health official for Colorado's El Paso County, home of the U.S. Air Force Academy,  U.S. Northern Command,  and the Northern American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), just acknowledged local restaurants could be unsafe.

"We've got a large increase in the number of complaints that are coming to us, we really ought to be out there finding these things before they end up to be a complaint," says El Paso County Public Health Administrator Rosemary Bakes-Martin.  "We think what's lagging the most right now is restaurants, a restaurant inspection is pretty time consuming."

Colorado law requires local health departments inspect restaurants twice a year.  El Paso County budget constraints keep them from inspecting even once every two years.

At a budget hearing, the health department said the number of restaurant-related complaints and violations increased six-fold.   Maybe someone should call Homeland Security.

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Every year the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association and Pennsylvania Diary Promotion Program sponsor the "butter sculpture" at the Harrisburg Farm Show.  This year, the buttery likenesses of Benjamin Franklin and the Liberty Bell were big hits.   At the end of the show, they were converted into high quality biodiesel.

Butter would become a whole lot more expensive if Auckland University epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson gets his way.   Professor Jackson says butter is poison and should be hit with high taxes just like tabacco and alcohol.

Here's the news about the proposed butter tax from Stuff.co.nz

A top public health expert is calling for a health tax on butter, saying it's "pure, natural poison" and as bad as cigarettes.

 New Zealanders eat more butter per head than any other nationality and Auckland University epidemiologist Professor Rod Jackson says that's why our cholesterol levels are also among the world's highest.

"We have a health tax on alcohol and cigarettes and there should be a health tax on butter. It's the most poisonous commonly consumed food in New Zealand. It's about the purest form of saturated fat you can eat and it has no protein and no calcium. Butter has had all the good things taken out and just left the poison."

Find out more here.

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Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, KY proves again that sometimes its the really popular places that can be the most dangerous for eating and drinking.

After making more than 100 people god-awfully sick with Staphylococcus bacteria on Easter Sunday, the southern landmark is going to re-open for weekend business, beginning tonight with the lounge.

Scott Harvey at WAVE 3, the NBC affiliate in Louisville, spent today (3/28/08) with Health Department officials finding out more than most people probably want to know about staph infection.  In the WAVE 3 report, he says:

Preliminary tests released by state health officials show the Staphylococcus bacteria or Staph Infection caused the problems. But they still don't know what the source was.

"The Health Department felt that we got some bad ham," said (Dinner House Manager) Riley. "But again, we are still waiting on the report so I will be glad to get it in black and white."

Dr. Matt Zahn, Medical Director for the Metro Public Health Departments, says the bacteria is common. "If you look at every person in Louisville, or around the country, about one in three of us at any one period of time will have this staph bacteria on our system."

Harvey also learns its not the bacteria, but the toxin it produces, that makes people so sick.  Check out the whole story here.

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The decline of the print media gets much attention.   So much so, that one sign of life for the print media goes un-noticed.   That is the rise of the number of Sunday newspapers.   We are a weekend people in this 21st Century, and newspaper publishers while often stupid are usually are not fools.

For that reason, according to figures from the Newspaper Association of America, the number of Sunday newspapers today is over 900, up from 549 in 1950.

We bring this up as an excuse because it sometimes takes us the whole week to get to what was really important in one of America's Sunday newspapers.   In fact, we cannot really make any excuses because we should always check on what Phil Brasher at the Des Moines Register is reporting.

Last Sunday, writing from the newspaper's Washington bureau, Brasher filed a story that ran online under the headline: Inspectors didn't catch cattle abuse in California.

We ran across it on www.the-inspector.com

That's the website for the federal "badge-carrying" inspectors.  However, Brasher's focus was not on those guys, but the "third party" auditors that the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co,. owner made the central item in his testimony to Congress.

In the system that grown up, we've been led to believe that meat packers are more likely to jump to their feet if one of their customers ---like Jack In The Box or Sam's Club-- are in town with "third party" auditors.  This is suppose to relieve our worries about their not being enough federal inspectors around with those badges.  Brasher reports:

Independent inspectors from auditing firms based in Virgina and Illinois both missed the livestock abuse at the Westland/Hallmark's Chino slaughterhouse that resulted in the plant's entire production for the past two years - 143 million pounds - being recalled.

The vice president of HACCP Consulting Group, a Virginia-based auditing firm, inspected the California plant last Nov. 13-14 and reported that it had a well-designed humane-handling program "to ensure that live animals are treated in a manner conducive to the tenets of established humane-handling practices."

A week later, a representative of an Illinois-based auditing firm, Silliker Inc., graded the plant's humane-handling practices according to an audit system that's in wide use through out the meatpacking industry.

The plant received 106 out of a possible 110 points, including perfect scores on the condition of the cattle and the way they were unloaded and treated in holding pens.

How could a plant treat cattle poorly - the company president says he was sickened by what he saw on the videos - and yet pass its outside inspections with no problem?

One possible explanation is that the company knew the auditors were coming and cleaned up its act.

There's a link to Brasher's story here.

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