Is anything safe to eat anymore?
0Is it just me, or have we had way more food recalls and warnings than before? I seem to see a new one every day. Some are regional, like the recent McDonalds one. Some are national, like the nasty Quaker one from last year that cost me the only cereal I really liked, they have apparently quit making it.
What do you think is the cause? Are we just more aware and do we find more of them or is something else going on?
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I think awareness plays a large part, as does what I can only assume is increased testing prior to distribution.
If you look at the listeria recalls recently, the only one that seems to have had any direct link to patients is from Boar’s Head. There are at least two or three others that I’m aware of that were possibly pulled before they got into the food supply evidently (or at least there are no reported illnesses linked to them).
@Cerridwyn
Actually reviewing this it seems that a lot of it was recalled prior to any reported illness. So it appears that maybe they did get distributed and were found wanting when testing was done. I suspect there is a very small amount of the 9 million pounds of Bruce Pac products that actually are contaminated, but because they can’t narrow down the specific dates better than a few week range they had to recall everything processed through those plants during that time.
I do know from working in the ER that we had a lot of patients who came in with “food poisoning” that they associated with whatever their last (usually a restaurant) meal was. Being a small community hospital we rarely sent anything off for testing, and the vast majority of those people never had to be admitted. Open these cases came during community-wide runs of gastrointestinal illnesses in general.
@Cerridwyn @chienfou A GP friend in Tennessee related that she’d seen multiple instances of such widespread gastro upsets which, if you knew the people involved, were suspiciously restricted to just the members of one church. Sometimes it was just after their potluck, which pointed to possible food contamination, but often it was mid-week, which made more of a case for a viral issue.
Some of it is definitely increased testing, though we’re way short of the frequency of testing that took place back in the '50s and '60s when “USDA INSPECTED” was a common thing to see. Some of it is increased sensitivity of testing, a subject that has mixed science behind it. Much of it is “processing almost but not quite to the rules” by manufacturers (or their employees in pursuit of an efficiency bonus) who are confident that nobody’s really going to get sick from a little corner-cutting (or worse, who just don’t give a damn). Some of it is uncertified or nonexistent “testing” by suppliers outside the US. This is not an exhaustive list.
those twin pack of trails best double salami sticks i got from meh were pretty damn safe. (side note: i’m out and need someone to sell some more… hint hint… i’m looking at you meh)