What's with all the food illnesses lately? A normal thing, or government failure?

[Target_For_Exterm]

Here's another one from today:

"INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (CNN) -- -- About 300 people have reported becoming sick after eating at an Olive Garden restaurant in northeast Indianapolis, a spokesman for the Marion County Health Department told CNN on Friday.

The customers became ill after eating at the restaurant between Saturday and Wednesday, said John Althardt. They have reported nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and, in some cases, fever, and three have been hospitalized, he said.

Althardt said the health department hopes to start testing -- as early as Friday afternoon -- stool samples of the sick and leftovers that restaurant patrons took home. Results may be available in about 48 hours.

Steve Coe, director of media relations for Olive Garden, said in a written statement that the company is "working closely with the local health department ... and will temporarily close the restaurant to give the health department a better opportunity to investigate this matter that may be tied to employees that recently had flu-like symptoms.""

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/12/15/olive.garden/index.html

Maybe food illnesses didn't used to get so much publicity, but lately it seems there are a LOT of food borne illnesses. I don't trust the FDA under Bush, so I wonder if it's just a naturally occuring thing that we normally don't hear about, or if the FDA isn't doing their job.

Seems there've been a lot more food illnesses ever since the government moved to corporate self-inspections. Are they REALLY self-inspecting like they need to be?

[Rosemary2205]

1. You answered your own question.

Seems there've been a lot more food illnesses ever since the government moved to corporate self-inspections. Are they REALLY self-inspecting like they need to be?

******************************


The reason consumers demanded and got government food/health inspection is because corporate self inspection does not work. These laws didn't happen in a vacuum. They happened because so many people were getting sick and dying.

[havocmom]

2. Yep, at the corporations' insistance, America has become a Third World nation

Corporations can do as they please, nothing but token regulation, substandard wages and worker protection leading to increasing poverty, unsafe food and water.

The neocons have pretty well done in America for their corporate sponsors.

[NMMNG]

3. ....

Seems there've been a lot more food illnesses ever since the government moved to corporate self-inspections. Are they REALLY self-inspecting like they need to be?


Yeah, the corporations have our best interests at heart.



And if you believe that I have a bridge you might be interested in... :P

[kestrel91316]

4. It's the logical outcome of industrialized corporate profit-based agriculture.

[Canuckistanian]

5. Most of it comes down to - cow shit

Improper slaughtering, poor cleaning and disinfecting practices in slaughterhouses.

Vegetables processing in the fields using tainted water supplies. Vegetables grown in manure and E. coli rich soils.

How to avoid this? New regulations for food handling NOT written by the food industry themselves.

[SoCalDem]

6. MANY more people get sick from food..and we never hear of it.

Think about all the people you know who claim to have " 24 hr bug"... "slight case of flu"..."upset stomach"..

That's FOOD POISONING, folks..

Chain rstaurants chasing the cheapest produce, hiring the cheapest workers, spending the least they can on food safety training..and whadda-yah-get? Sick customers, who usually don;t even know they were poisoned, because most people's systems just 'work it out" and after a day or two of feeling shitty, they recover and never even know where they got it.

Also look at the lifestyle of lots of people

Monday
breakfast...Egg Mcmuffin
lunch.......Del Taco
dinner....Pizza Hut

Tuesday
breakfast...Jack n the Box
lunch.......mc Donalds
dinner...Olive Garden

Wednesday
breakfast.....Dennys
lunch........Weinerschnitzel
dinner......left over Olive Graden


and so on..

If they get sick on any of those days, which one poisoned them?? All those places have their food delivered by probably Kraft or a similar provider.. the produce is probably from the same place..

all those meals probably included some kind of dairy/meat/produce..

[cassiepriam]

7. More foxes guarding the hen house??? nt

[flordehinojos]

8. angry illegals crapping all over the country - what else?

:sarcasm:

[AnnInLa]

9. John Aravosis at Americablog

has been blogging about this on occasion. If you go to his site, www.americablog.com (I think) and do a search, you can see where he discusses the lobbying money paid to legislators by the growers' associations and by the meat packing associations, even Big Dairy (hormones in our milk), in order to get the regulatory rules relaxed...very relaxed. More profit for them...more E Coli for us. Gotta love that free market system that is so free that it encourages poisoning the populace.

[Mnemosyne]

10. Read "Bushwhacked" by Molly Ivens. * removed all

the safeguards that Clinton put in place within a month of being "sworn in".

Very scary book.

[Kat45]

11. I've been wondering about that myself.

I'm thinking that it's from the lack of true inspections these days. But there's another thing I'm wondering: why is it taking them so long to track the cause of the poisoning, the type of food and its origin. In the recent Taco Bell case, they attributed the poisoning to green onions, then a couple of weeks later decided it was actually the lettuce. And in the incidents with the spinach, it seemed to take forever before they figured out where the guilty product came from. Shouldn't the origins of the food be easier to track? My boyfriend is a chef, and he says that at the restaurant where he works, they know exactly where each of their food items comes from, making it easy to track things down if they had to. Don't other places work like that?