More than a million Americans get sick every year from salmonella-tainted food. Better federal regulation could stop outbreaks. Madeline Marshall explains. a Vox video.
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Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina is a lavatory libertarian. He told the Bipartisan Policy Center that governments shouldn’t force restaurant employees to wash their hands:
“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom.'”
Here’s a sane word on this from Mr. Tillis’ neighborhood:
“If a government shouldn’t create and enforce regulations to stop the spread of disease, for Typhoid Mary’s sake, exactly what should it do, and how many people have to suffer the avoidable consequences in the name of freedom?”
“Even if Tillis was joking, or half-joking, there’s no question that the Republican Party sees government not as the collective expression of a populace but an evil to be eradicated one set of rules at a time, even if it means people getting hurt or sick or financially ruined, because liberty. That, at base, isn’t funny, isn’t funny at all.”
— “Thom Tillis Steps In It,” Greg Lacour, Charlotte Magazine
The FDA has a cogent explanation for compulsory hand washing: It “reduces the spread of fecal-oral pathogens from the hands of a food employee to foods.”
McDonald’s in China has stopped using meat from a local supplier after Shanghai authorities halted the firm’s operations over food safety concerns. The meat processor is suspected of supplying meat well past its due date and mislabeling it. KFC and Pizza Hut in China have also stopped using products from the supplier, Shanghai Husi, which is owned by OSI Group of Aurora, Illinois.
More:
“Yum, McDonald’s in Shanghai food safety investigation,” Engen Tham and Adam Jourdan, Reuters
“KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald’s are hit with a new China food scandal: expired meat products,” Lily Kuo, Quartz
“China’s latest fast food scandal: McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut sold expired meat,” Lindsay Abrams, Salon
“China food scandal spreads to Japan as Burger King, Starbucks admit using tainted supplier,” Reuters via South China Post
Updates:
“Five held in China food scandal probe, including head of Shanghai Husi Food,” Brenda Goh and Paul Carsten, Reuters via 7 News/AUNews Yahoo
“Using expired meat in China was allegedly company policy for a US-owned supplier,” Lily Kuo, Quartz
“McDonald’s Japan Stops Sourcing All Chicken From China,” Chang-Ran Kim and Chris Gallagher, Reuters via New York Times
“McDonald’s China plans to continue using scandal-hit meat supplier OSI Group,” Nectar Gan, South China Morning Post
Further Updates:
“McDonald’s Food Supplier OSI Recalls Shanghai Products,” Liza Lin, Bloomberg News
“Some Chinese McDonalds are only selling fries and drinks due to a meat recall,” Lily Kuo, Quartz
“Fast-Food Scandal Revives China’s Food Safety Anxieties,” Anthony Kuhn, NPR
“McDonald’s Pulls Meat From China Restaurants,” Liza Lin, Bloomberg News
“Yum says China food safety scare hurting KFC, Pizza Hut sales,” Sruthi Ramakrishnan, Reuters
“Carving Out New Standards After China’s Fast Food Meat Scandal,” Zhang Yun, Economic Observer via Worldcrunch
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A fifth of China’s farmland is polluted by industrial effluent, sewage, excessive farm chemicals, or mining runoff. There’s carcinogenic cadmium in the rice. Heavy nitrogen fertilizer use is turning the soil acidic and less productive.
Tom Philpott summarizes recent reports:
“6 Mind-Boggling Facts About Farms in China, Tom Philpott, Mother Jones
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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com. Attention young people: The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl Buck.
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What is it that makes bacon so irresistibly delicious? Maybe it’s the unsanitary slaughterhouses, inhumane swine-raising conditions, or the generous doses of tangy veterinary drugs. Yum.
“Drop that bacon!” Martha Rosenberg, Alternet via Salon
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Sweden-based Ikea has 332 stores in 38 countries. Primarily known for assemble-yourself furniture, the firm also sells food products. Swedish Meatballs (köttbullar) are pretty famous, and IKEA’s are too, now that some were discovered to contain horsemeat.
Ikea’s equine meatballs were made in Sweden but first detected in the Czech Republic. The firm has reined in sales in 21 European countries.
Related: New catalog!
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Backyard Chickens are the new status symbol in hipster neighborhoods and upscale suburbs, a way to have pretty feathered pets and go green with local, fresh organic eggs. What’s not to like? Okay, aside from the noise and the odors and the expense and the cats and the authorities and the parasites and the thieves and Avian Flu?
Plenty.
“Many Germans only realized how much of the food on their plates is harvested and produced in China when thousands of schoolchildren in eastern Germany were afflicted with diarrhea and vomiting two weeks ago in an epidemic thought to have been triggered by Chinese strawberries contaminated with norovirus..”
“…by last Friday, 262 reports on Chinese products had been received in Brussels for 2012 alone. They included noodles infested with maggots, shrimp contaminated with antibiotics, foul-smelling peanuts and candied fruit with an excessively high sulfur content (see graphic).”
“There are few issues more deeply and universally felt in China than the safety of its food; after years of scandals on cooking oil sifted from gutters, glow-in-the-dark pork, deadly infant formula, and so on …. So it was grim news last fall when Chinese reporters uncovered a network of ‘special farms’ dedicated to providing Party leaders with top-quality vegetables, chicken, pork, rice, beef, fish, and tea oil. In the province of Zhejiang, for instance, forty ‘high-class eco-farms’ were said to have been earmarked to supply the land-resource department, water conservancy, agricultural units, and other government offices. (What are we to make of the fact that the offices receiving special food are exactly the ones overseeing the public’s supply?)”
— “Is a Clue to China’s Future on Its Dinner Tables?” Evan Osnos, New Yorker
A recent expedition to Manhattan Island revealed that New York City Health Department inspectors now grade the sanitary condition of restaurants. In order to guide potential customers, each eatery is required to display its grade in its front window. Here is the range of grades:
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