Larry M. Stone Food Safety Advocate

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE REALLY EATING? RODENT FECAL MATTER COULD BE IN YOUR MEALS TONIGHT AND THE USDA AND THE STATE OF FLORIDA ARE AWARE OF THIS SITUATION. THIS BLOG EXPLORES THE COVER-UP AND CORRUPTION BEHIND THIS NATIONAL FOOD SAFETY ISSUE.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

WELCOME TO OUR SITE WHERE YOU CAN VIEW THE FACTS OF RAT FECAL CONTAMINATED MEAT . HOW LONG BEFORE THE CONSUMPTION OF THIS MEAT STARTS SHOWING UP IN OUR CHILDREN AND CITIZENS. THE CDC SAYS IT COULD BE YEARS -WHY THE SILENCE ON THIS ISSUE?? DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSION

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN AND VIEW OUR PHOTOS.

HOW MUCH MORE DOES THE USDA WANT TO HIDE AND COVER-UP

U.S.D.A. mulls limiting meat recall information
(MEATPOULTRY.com, March 27, 2008)by Bryan Salvage
WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering a proposal to not identify retailers where meat cited in recalls was sold except in cases of potential serious health risks to consumers as it puts the final touches on a proposed disclosure rule, according to The Associated Press.
This proposal had reportedly been in draft form for two years until it was pushed to the front burner in February, when 143 million pounds of beef were recalled by Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino, Calif.U.S.D.A. spokesman Chris Connelly confirmed yesterday that the agency is trying to decide whether to make identifying the stores mandatory only for Class I recalls, which pose the greatest health hazard. The Hallmark/Westland recall was categorized as Class II because authorities determined there was minimal risk to human health.
Currently, U.S.D.A. only discloses a recall has been issued, but does not list which retailers might have received meat or poultry subject to a given recall. Consumer groups and Democratic lawmakers contend that the public should have access to the names of retailers in all meat recalls. As originally written, the rule would have applied to all meat recalls, AP said.Industry groups support the way recalls are currently done, partly for competitive reasons, where a description of the recalled product is released by U.S.D.A.’s Food Safety and Inspection Service along with other information including where it was produced, AP said. Although retailers must remove recalled meat from their shelves, there is no requirement that they notify customers about meat already sold. Some, however, voluntarily disclose this information.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

EFFECTS OF CONTAMINATED MEAT MAY NOT SHOW UP FOR YEARS .THIS FACT IS WHY WE CONTINUE OUR QUEST TO MAKE OUR ISSUE KNOWN.

Food poisoning can be long-term problem
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's a dirty little secret of food poisoning: E. coli and certain other foodborne illnesses can sometimes trigger serious health problems months or years after patients survived that initial bout.
Scientists only now are unraveling a legacy that has largely gone unnoticed.
What they've spotted so far is troubling. In interviews with the Associated Press, they described high blood pressure, kidney damage, even full kidney failure striking 10 to 20 years later in people who survived severe E. coli infection as children, arthritis after a bout of salmonella or shigella, and a mysterious paralysis that can attack people who just had mild symptoms of campylobacter.
"Folks often assume once you're over the acute illness, that's it, you're back to normal and that's the end of it," said Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The long-term consequences are "an important but relatively poorly documented, poorly studied area of foodborne illness."
These late effects are believed to make up a very small fraction of the nation's 76 million annual food poisonings, although no one knows just how many people are at risk. A bigger question is what other illnesses have yet to be scientifically linked to food poisoning.
And with a rash of food recalls — including more than 30 million pounds of ground beef pulled off the market last year alone — these are questions are taking on new urgency.
"We're drastically underestimating the burden on society that foodborne illnesses represent," contends Donna Rosenbaum of the consumer advocacy group STOP, Safe Tables Our Priority.
Every week, her group hears from patients with health complaints that they suspect or have been told are related to food poisoning years earlier, like a woman who survived severe E. coli at 8 only to have her colon removed in her 20s. Or people who develop diabetes after food poisoning inflamed the pancreas. Or parents who wonder if a child's learning problems stem from food poisoning-caused dialysis as a toddler.
"There's nobody to refer them to for an answer," says Rosenbaum.
So STOP this month is beginning the first national registry of food-poisoning survivors with long-term health problems — people willing to share their medical histories with scientists in hopes of boosting much-needed research.
Consider Alyssa Chrobuck of Seattle, who at age 5 was hospitalized as part of the Jack-in-the-Box hamburger outbreak that 15 years ago this month made a deadly E. coli strain notorious.
She's now a successful college student but ticks off a list of health problems unusual for a 20-year-old: High blood pressure, recurring hospitalizations for colon inflammation, a hiatal hernia, thyroid removal, endometriosis.
"I can't eat fatty foods. I can't eat things that are fried, never been able to eat ice cream or milkshakes," says Chrobuck. "Would I have this many medical problems if I hadn't had the E. coli? Definitely not. But there's no way to tie it definitely back."
The CDC says foodborne illnesses cause 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths a year. Among survivors, some long-term consequences are obvious from the outset. Some required kidney transplants. They may have scarred intestines that promise lasting digestive difficulty.
But when people appear to recover, it is difficult to prove that later problems really are a food-poisoning legacy and not some unfortunate coincidence. It may be that people prone to certain gastrointestinal conditions, for instance, also are genetically more vulnerable to germs that cause foodborne illness.
For now, some of the best evidence comes from the University of Utah, which has long tracked children with E. coli. About 10% of E. coli sufferers develop a life-threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, where their kidneys and other organs fail.
Ten to 20 years after they recover, between 30% and half of HUS survivors will have some kidney-caused problem, says Dr. Andrew Pavia, the university's pediatric infectious diseases chief. That includes high blood pressure caused by scarred kidneys, slowly failing kidneys, even end-stage kidney failure that requires dialysis.
"I don't want to leave the message that everyone who had symptoms ... is in trouble," stresses Pavia.
Miserable as E. coli is, it doesn't seem to trigger long-term problems unless it started shutting down the kidneys the first time around, he says. "People with uncomplicated diarrhea, by and large we don't have evidence yet that they have complications."
Other proven long-term consequences:
•About 1 in 1,000 sufferers of campylobacter, a diarrhea-causing infection spread by raw poultry, develop far more serious Guillain-Barre syndrome a month or so later. Their body attacks their nerves, causing paralysis that usually requires intensive care and a ventilator to breathe. About a third of the nation's Guillain-Barre cases have been linked to previous campylobacter, even if the diarrhea was very mild, and they typically suffer a more severe case than patients who never had food poisoning.
While they eventually recover, "We don't know a great deal about what happens to those people five years later. What does 'normal' look like?" Tauxe says.
•A small number of people develop what's called reactive arthritis six months or longer after a bout of salmonella. It causes joint pain, eye inflammation, sometimes painful urination, and can lead to chronic arthritis. Certain strains of shigella and yersinia bacteria, far more common abroad than in the U.S., trigger this reactive arthritis, too, Tauxe says.
What about other patient complaints?
A variety of other organ problems might be triggered by HUS, that severe E. coli — because it causes blood clots all over the body that could leave a trail of damage, says Utah's Pavia. Among his hottest questions: HUS patients often suffer pancreatitis. Does that increase risk for diabetes later in life?
But proving a connection will require tracking a lot of patients who can provide very good medical records documenting their initial foodborne illness, he cautions.

Chairmen of house committee states" USDA so completely failed to do its job"

USDA SHOULD IMPROVE PROCEDURES FOR HELPINGSCHOOLS MANAGE FOOD RECALLS, WITNESSES TELL HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEEUS Fed NewsWASHINGTON Source of Article: http://www.meatpoultry.com/The House Education & Labor Committee issued the following news release:The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not provide adequate support to help school districts track, handle, and dispose of tainted beef in the wake of the largest meat recall in U.S. history, witnesses told the House Education and Labor Committee today.The USDA issued the recall last month after a U.S. Humane Society investigation revealed that meat from non-ambulatory (or "downer") cows at a California meatpacking company had been allowed to enter the food supply. Federal law prohibits meat from downer cows from entering the food supply because it poses a greater risk of salmonella and e.coli contamination and mad cow disease. More than a third of the tainted meat - more than 50 million pounds - had gone to federal nutrition programs, including to schools."This incident raises very alarming questions about the U.S. Department of Agriculture's ability to monitor the safety of meat in this country - including the meat that is being served to children in the National School Lunch program," said U.S. Rep George Miller, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. "Schools and parents should have every assurance that the food supplied to their kids' cafeterias by the federal government is safe. It is unacceptable that the USDA so completely failed to do its job."
 
Google
Web Page Visitor Counters
Barnes and Noble Online Coupons