Frankenfood

ICHC

If you've ever worried about corporations putting weird stuff in your food, and who hasn't — or about how the media disinforms and misinforms consumers in our endless battle to ensure that we're not being used as guinea pigs to help corporations like Monsanto make megabucks off our bodies and our lives, look no further than this site for information on one of the leading offenders.

Yeah, you say, sure. Well, I don't watch Faux Noise. But I'll bet you have friends, relatives, neighbours who do, and when you're out there trying to convince your fellow citizens that they should get informed about this issue and stop feeding their children, or themselves, shit that will kill them, well. See, the link up there (like the video below) tells you how Fox News basically won a ruling from an appellate court that says they're free to lie or distort the truth, fire journalists who try to tell the truth, sue them for trying to tell the truth, and win.

Here are the journalists, in their own words.



Srsly, folks. This is beyond disgusting. We already know corporations have no problem killing us all to make a few dollars more of profit. Just look at what BP has done to the Gulf Coast. The tourist industry, the fishing industry, the beautiful beaches, the living things all along that coast are dying or dead. And BP says oil could continue to gush from that undersea volcano till December this year.

So do your friends, relatives, and neighbours a favour, and tell them to watch the video clip and read a few of these articles. They need to know what is in their food supply and we all need to work together to make sure it's clean. I really don't want trout genes in my tomatoes, thanks. And I don't want Monsanto charging poor farmers for seed.

oldamericancentury.org

Fuck you, Monsanto, can't you leave our goddamn food alone, you bastards? You already own everything and everyone else, body and soul, motherfucking asshole dipshits.

To do something about these outrageous developments, click here. The link takes you to the Center for Food Safety site, which is publicizing a letter being circulated in the Senate and the House by Senator Pat Leahy and Rep. DeFazio, asking the USDA to maintain the ban on genetically engineered alfalfa. Everytime you or your kid get a sandwich outside the house, chances are there will be alfalfa sprouts on it. Well, we don't need singing sprouts for fuck's sake. No new laws need be passed, the Center (and these two worthy Congresscritters) just want the USDA to maintain the existing policies.

More action to take: Let's stop the Enviropig while we're about it. Do you really want to eat swine that have been engineered to include mouse genes? Probably not. Go here to keep teh Enviropig off the market.

Christ, what the fuck next?

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Animal Stories: Important Warning

Image courtesy of The Chai Story

La Casa de Los Gatos has no idea if this story is true, but — as all of us who might have four-legged friends know — better safe than sorry.

If you have a dog, and if you purchased this dog toy — pimple ball with bell. (Item #20227-001, UPC Code 0 4566320227 9) — please, for the love of dog, get that toy away from the dog at once and dispose of it responsibly.

This woman's dog was horribly injured by the toy, she says. Well, you know, on the internet, nobody knows if you're a — er, dog. We checked with Snopes, but they're still researching the story. The Consumerist has issued an alert, and the story is starting to appear in the news. No guarantee of its veracity, but there might be some fire behind the smoke.

In any event, as we said, better safe than sorry. The poor animal was, apparently, horribly injured. We who are guardians for our four-legged friends do everything in our power to make them happy, safe, and comfortable in return for their love, loyalty, and companionship. So if you have this toy, or if you know anyone else who has dogs and loves them, you might want to spread the word.

If your dog has been injured by this toy, you might want to contact Chai's owner and share your story, or you might want to contact the company itself: hbirk@fourpaws.com. Best to all you dog people out there, and to your doggies also, long may they remain safe and uninjured. Many thanks to dear friend KD for sending me the tip.

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Environment: China Drilling Off The Coast

If we have to listen to this bullshit one more time, we're going to scream.

Hello, people? You know the Republicans lie about everything, right? They lied about the war, they lied about WMD, they lied about 9/11, they lied about the Clintons, they lied about their own compassion, they lied about military casualties. So why do you believe them when they tell you that China is drilling off the coast of Cuba?

Because that is NOT HAPPENING, people. No, no, a thousand times no. Dick Cheney, the father of all lies (in his other incarnation as Satan) started this particular lie. Think about all the times over the past five years this moronic monster has told you that the Iraqi "insurgents are in the last throes" of their insurgency. How many times was it true? Once? Even once?

Nope. Not even once.

Now, it's true that China has signed some deals with Cuba allowing it to explore Cuban LAND for evidence of oil that might, ultimately, be worth drilling for. But for Dick "DICK" Vampiris to use the Yellow Peril Red Menace Energy Scare to rally the troops is the usual substitution of sound bite and immediate return that will make him and his minions rich while you (the whole nation) pay the cost and continue to bleed dry. Dickie and his minions are hoping to scare us into saying, "Yes! Let's drill the whole country for oil!"

Incidentally, Florida's Republican Senator Mel Martinez refuted Dick on the alleged Chinese offshore drilling.

So let's look at the idea that drilling for oil in the U.S. will help the American consumer, shall we?

First off, who profits from higher oil prices? Oh, let's see, Halliburton maybe? Remember Halliburton? Unca Dick's former bosses? Who have been mysteriously winning no-bid contracts by the fistful ever since Unca Dick became President, er Vice?

From citizen x's fine blog, hitherto undiscovered

That's OK, you say. America is a capitalist nation, not socialist. We want our businessmen to make profits. Good, good. So consider this. If we open up our coastlands and shorelines for the oil companies to drill in &mdash where is the guarantee that oil will be sold to the U.S. consumer? After all, these companies must make a profit. Japan and China and India have money. Lots of money. They can afford to pay more for the oil than we can. Now put yourself in the businessman's position. You just drilled up a whole bunch of oil, and that cost you money in equipment, wages, taxes, leases, whatever. Along come the Chinese and say, "Hey, we'll pay you $150 a barrel for some of that sweet light crude."

American consumers are screaming about having to pay $140. You gotta make a profit, right? Are you gonna sell that oil to those goddamned screaming Americans? Or to the nice Chinese who will put cash on the nail? Do you really need to think about that for more than two seconds? Because if you do, please don't quit your job and go into business.

Now, let's pretend there are no Chinese wanting the oil more than Americans. Let's pretend we have all the money we used to have and we're the richest and we can somehow force those businessmen to sell whatever they manage to get out of our coastal waters. How long will it take before the first barrel appears? You're screaming about the price of oil, better get yourself some throat lozenges, because you'll be screaming for at least another FOUR YEARS before the oil companies can even begin to explore, says the Seattle Times.

See, drilling for oil is not like buying stuff from the store. When you want something &mdash throat lozenges, say &mdash you climb into the car and drive to the store, or get on your bicycle and bike to the store, or walk to the store. And you look for the thing you want on the shelf. You whip out your wallet, hand the money and the product to the clerk at the register, and whammo, scalammo, you're done. Right away, you got an ample supply of lozenges to soothe your screaming throat with.

Drilling for oil, that's a bit harder. See, you need specialized equipment. Like these deep-sea drill rigs. And, guess what? Every single goddamned fucking drill rig in the whole wide world is booked solid for the next five years. They can't even START drilling for your oil till they finish all those other booked contracts.


No probs, you say, let's build some more! Well, the U.S. isn't in the business of shipbuilding and shiprepair any more. All those jobs got outsourced (remember Bethlehem Shipbuilding?) to Asia and Europe in the 1970s. It requires specialized technology and equipment and skillsets to build ships. Little Johnny who just finished high school would need a couple years' worth of training before he could even start to work on one of those monsters.

A single deep-sea rig costs approximately half a billion (that's BILLION) dollars to build. They used to cost less, but hey, yaknow, shipbuilders are businessmen too, when they saw that the oil companies were making record profits, they decided they needed to make more too, so they raised their prices. A single day's worth of drill rig operations costs a little over half a million. Those businessmen need to make their money back too, yaknow.

Shipbuilders are working overtime to build more vessels, but even those vessels have already been booked, for up to four years. And they're not even completed yet. So don't let these filthy crooks rip you off yet again, America. We're in the shit here, y'all better grab yourselves a paddle and start paddling like crazy. The shore's a long ways off.

Nope, we're all gonna have to learn to make do with less. Use public transportation more, cut down on driving, move back to the city from the suburbs, buy bicycles. Because even after all those years, even if we start drilling in 2012 when we finally get our mitts on some drill rigs, guess what? The U.S. government estimates that there are 30 billion barrels of oil in the ANWR and off the coast of the U.S. All told. Total.

The U.S. government also shows that Americans use 20 million barrels of oil PER DAY. So after all that waiting and suffering, we're gonna use it up in three years. Assuming, of course, that the oilmen bother to sell it to us at all.

Don't even ask about Brazil. Yeah, they found the oil, but they don't have the equipment to retrieve it either.

And another thing: Thanks to the Bush Misadministration's disastrous mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, refinery capacity dropped precipitously (from 111% to 103%, says the Asia Times). It takes a little over three years to get a refinery built and operational. Since the RubberStamp Republican Congress of Tom Delay and Denny Hastert were busy colluding with lobbyists to bleed the Treasury dry, it wasn't until after the Democrats won the elections of 2006 that Congress passed laws to assist in building refinery capacity. So the first increases in refinery capacity should occur sometime between 2010 and 2011.

With refinery capacity running at 103 or 104% in the meantime, any combination of unfortuitous circumstances &mdash natural disasters, wars, maintenance downtime, blockage of shipping channels &mdash could cause the price of oil to spiral higher.

Not that Dick "Dick" is complaining, since every dollar increase in the price of oil represents a few more pennies in his bank account.

Meanwhile, idiots like Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois continue to lie about the Chinese drilling off the coast of Florida and offer to shoot Obama on sight.

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Consumer Alert: Tomatoes

Panicking about raw tomatoes? Relax.

Sure, there was that foofaraw in the papers and TV over the past few days, allowing as how all kinds of people were turning their toes up to the heavens and keeling over thanks to the ingestion of raw tomato products contaminated with a relatively uncommon strain of salmonella. The Florida tomato growers wept and beat their collective breast, claiming that their industry was in "complete collapse," their families homeless, their children unfed and deity alone knows what other blather-am-skate.

It was alleged that 40 people had fallen ill in Texas and New Mexico after ingesting raw tomatoes, and some 17 subsequently had been hospitalized. An additional 30 individuals in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Idaho, Illinois and Indiana had also suffered illness resulting from the same strain of Salmonella saintpaulia. It was, at that time, unknown whether raw tomatoes were implicated in these additional illnesses. Roughly four people in each of those states. Hardly deserving of panic mode, don't you think?

One person &mdash an elderly Texan &mdash did die as a result of the infection. So, fellow old farts, what lesson can we draw from this? Old farts shouldn't take risks with their food? Hey, you're gonna die anyway, why not choose to go as a result of a memorable caprese salad or a nice salsa? OK, the symptoms aren't exactly delightful, but you'll be dead so you won't have to clean up, right?

In any event, the CBC now tells us that tomatoes from the states of Florida and California are not implicated in the recent illnesses. These tomatoes are safe to eat:

• Cherry tomatoes
  
  
• Grape tomatoes
  
  
• Home-grown tomatoes
  
  
• Tomatoes with part of the vine still attached
  
  
• Tomatoes from California or Florida
  
  
• Cooked tomatoes of any shape or form

So you Florida growers can quit your weeping and wailing and go back to gouging your poor workers (who had to fight for years to get a penny per lb. increase in their wages) and the public. As for the rest of us, this is yet another excellent reason to buy local, preferably organically grown.

In fact, today we learned that farmers have to pay stores to keep their products on the store shelves. (Yeah, yeah, we're hardly as well-informed or as smart as we like to think). So, really, the best way to buy would be direct from the farm. It's time to eliminate the middle-schlub. Instead of paying big corporations obscene amounts of money to rape the land and destroy the air we breathe and the water we drink, how about shopping at farmer's markets?

The farm bills that Congress signs are the worst offenders in draining the resources of small farmers and polluting the quality of the nation's food supply. There is a program available called Community Supported Agriculture\ that tries to get conumers directly in touch with farmers. It sounds like an excellent idea. Much better than being poisoned by tomatoes schlepped from Mexico (which are the current suspects in the salmonella scandal) at high cost of fuel and under, probably, appalling labour conditions.

We're off to examine our options. Eat the damn salsa, already.

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Consumer Alert: FDA and Humour

Yaknow, while the FDA drops the ball on contaminated heparin, and the USDA fails to hire enough inspectors to keep our food supply clean, apparently the FDA has the time, staff, and funding to get their panties in a big waddy bunch over a supercaffeinated product marketed as Blow.

You got that right. The same FDA that was busy approving the sale of meat and milk from cloned animals, despite widespread consumer resistance. The same FDA that approves the food items that cause 85 per cent of the food-poisoning cases reported. The same FDA that is closing down half of its food safety labs, despite multiple incidents of food contamination at home and abroad.

Instead of making sure we don't get poisoned food, drink, or medication, FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach and his politically appointed crew of thugs and idiots are busy trying to crack down on a powdered caffeine "energy drink" that is marketed to adults as "Blow," complete with packaging that makes it look like cocaine. Whoop-de-doo, you fucking eejits. Couldja go back to checking the fucking food, drink, and legal drugs we ingest?

Andrew von Eschenbach looks like another one of Gee Dumbya's Good-Ole-Boy Texas buddies who got their jobs because they either knew the worthless motherfucker or were born, raised, or domiciled in Texas. For the record, we don't doubt that Dr. von Eschenbach is a highly qualified urologist. But skill in diagnosing penile problems is not necessarily helpful when running the FDA. A genuine concern for the public health is.

Raw Story has the details of the story on Blow, including a video clip. Dr. von Eschenbach, quit playing the giant nanny, leave our adult pleasures alone, and do your goddamned job.

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Taxpayer Alert: This is Ridiculous!

This story is just one of those that make you go WTF??? Are these people fucking kidding?

Here's the dealio, peoples. Remember back when a slaughterhouse in Chino got busted for processing sick "downer" cows &mdash cows so sick they couldn't even stand up &mdash into ground beef that was then sent to schools and other institutions as well as commercial outlets? Approximately 143 million pounds of ground beef was recalled for possible contamination. Some fifty million pounds of that beef had been distributed to school lunch programs. Kudos to Democratic Rep Rosa DeLauro for putting pressure on the USDA to reveal which districts were affected.

The US Department of Agriculture has billed the Westland/Hallmark Company, that was the source of the contaminated meat, $67 million for expenses associated with the recall. Replacement of the contaminated meat could cost an additional $50 million.

Here's the most important part of the article:

If the plant can't pay — which is likely — taxpayers will pick up the bill, officials said.

WHAT??? Excuse the fuck out of me? Are you people out of your fucking minds?

The government refuses to adequately fund and staff the agencies responsible for our food supply. The government then (big whoopdeedoo fucking surprise!) has to pay millions of dollars to clean up the contaminated food that results from this stupid fucking policy. Now the government wants to charge us, the contaminated victims of its incredible stupidity, to cover the cost of the mess.

Here's a suggestion, USDA: Sue Dick and George and their families &mdash they're worth multiple millions &mdash for their negligence in allowing the food supply to be contaminated in the first place. Use THAT money to pay the costs of the recall.

We need our goddamn tax dollars to pay for all the other problems this Misadministration, and its gang of thugs, have inflicted upon us.

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Consumer Alert: Yoghurt

Not the blueberry yoghurt!

Stonyfield Farm is recalling its Organic Fat Free Blueberry Yogurt in the 6 oz. cup size.

Look for these dates on the cup bottoms: Apr 13 08, Apr 14 08, April 15 08, April 25 08 and April 26 08.

If you bought fat-free blueberry yogurt with the identifying dates, return opened or unopened containers to the store for a full refund.

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Consumer Alert: Food Contamination

Oh, no! Not mozzarella!

Raw Story is reporting that Japan and South Korea have suspended mozzarella imports temporarily after reports surfaced claiming that some of the cheese was made with contaminated milk. the European Union has asked Italy for safety assurances by Wednesday at the latest.

Italy responded with the statement that follows:

"Checks have been made on 132 producers and only in nine cases traces of dioxin have been found," Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema told reporters, saying international alarm over the mozzarella was "totally exaggerated and unjustified."

Italian health officials claim the dioxin contamination apparently resulted from a garbage crisis earlier this year in Naples and the surrounding Campania region.

According to the article:

With landfills and dumping sites in the area full, locals burned piles of garbage in the streets and in open fields. Health officials say industrial waste was also set ablaze, spreading fumes that in some cases contained dioxin.

"The presence of dioxin is not due to the garbage itself but to the fact that substances containing dioxin have been burned and the fallout from the smoke brought some dioxin to the ground," Health Ministry undersecretary Gianpaolo Patta said.

Disposing of the garbage that the human population generates each year is becoming an insoluble problem. With a continent-sized mess of plastic in the ocean, and airborne contaminants from burning of garbage, we're poisoning our water, our earth, our air, and our food chain. For what it's worth, the Italian governmental sources are claiming that only one per cent of the mozzarella di bufala has been found to be contaminated. Hopefully it will all be consumed by those responsible for lowering clean air standards.

Dioxins result from some forms of combustion and can also come from industry, including paper and pulp production, and businesses that use chlorine.

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Consumer Alert: Contaminated Water

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter has declared a state of emergency in the town of Alamosa, which gets its water from a deep aquifer. Aquifer water is normally so pure that it needs no chlorine disinfection. Unfortunately, for reasons as yet unknown, the aquifer water that supplies the town is giving its residents salmonella.

There are 138 people with confirmed or suspected cases of salmonella, said Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health. Seven people remain hospitalized. The ill range in age from infants to those over 80 years old, Calonge said.

East Alamosa gets its water from a different system, so its (apparently) safe.

In the meantime, if you're in that city, several businesses are providing bottled water for free, so look around. Do not drink, brush your teeth, or cook with the city water. If the cost of bottled water will put a dent in your budget and you can't find someone to supply it free, you might be eligible for reimbursement. Contact your city officials.

The Denver Channel has a detailed list of do's and dont's here, including telephone numbers you can call for more help.

In case anyone's forgotten, the NRDC has detailed information on how bottled water is not necessarily safer than tap water &mdash with the exception, of course, of not generally having salmonella.

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Consumer Alert: Contaminated Meat

If you have purchased Jenny Craig diet food with beef, it might contain meat from the Chino slaughterhouse that was the subject of a major recall recently.

Check your freezer for any Jenny Craig meals containing beef, such as the meatloaf with barbeque sauce or Salisbury steak.

10News of San Diego has heard from Jenny Craig customers who claim the company did not notify them. See their site for more information.

In the meantime, check your freezer, and alert any friends who might be using Jenny Craig.

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Consumer Alert: Contaminated Chicken

Image from ICHC

If you've switched to poultry because of the nasty video evidence of what the food processing companies are doing that contribute to the recall of over 143 million pounds of ground beef, you ought to know that there's a recall currently under way of chicken contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

Warning: Do not click the video link unless you plan to swear off eating beef, or possibly meat, for life. Especially, do not click if you are (a) sensitive; (b) an animal lover; (c) eating, or about to eat.

Some 7.5 tonnes of chicken product — specifically, Discover Cuisine Red Curry Chicken & Jasmine Rice, with a best by date of Dec. 18, including 1.7 tonnes from Inovata Foods of Edmonton — have been recalled.

The product is distributed in 12-oz packages, each bearing the Canadian establishment number Est. 302 inside the Canadian Food Inspection Agency mark of inspection.

The frozen chicken entrees were produced on Oct. 18, 2007, and were exported to the United States. Some 10,368 pounds have been recalled from Costco Wholesale of Issaquah, Wash., and 2,184 pounds from Meijer Distribution Center of Grand Rapids, Mich. Meijer apparently distributed these products in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. If you shopped at these locations in any of the states mentioned, inspect your purchases carefully for the distinguishing marks described.

Meijer representatives said only 21 packages of the potentially contaminated product have been sold, including one each at stores in Holland and Big Rapids, Michigan. If you purchased this product at Meijer, contact them at 800-543-3704.

Do not consume this product. Call Bob McColl of Inovata Foods at 780-454-8665 for instructions on disposal and refunds.

Additionally, The Guardian is reporting that Gourmet Boutique of Jamaica, N.Y., has recalled 6,970 pounds of meat and poultry products bearing the production code GBD 08058 on the package. These products are mostly chicken but also include meatloaf and turkey and were sent to stores in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wisconsin, as well as distribution centers in New York. For more information, call 718-977-1200.

Image from MicrobeLibrary

Listeria monocytogenes can be life-threatening to young children, elderly people, and those with weakened immune systems. So far, the media has been publicizing the food processors' and distributors' line in implying that Listeriosis, which results from infection by Listeria monocytogenes, has few consequences in healthy adults.

They neglect to mention, for example, that listeriosis is dangerous to pregnant women, whose immune systems are suppressed as an effect of pregnancy. And anything that affects the health of a pregnant woman affects the health of the fetus. (Perhaps this will convince those "right-to-a-miserable-life" troglodytes in the hardly-ever-right wing that food safety is important.)

However, a little research reveals how patently untrue that is. From ScienceDirect:

The repeated oral administration of a sublethal dose (5×109colony-forming units) of Listeria monocytogenes for 7 or 10 consecutive days led to the development of severe central nervous system (CNS) lesions in 25% of experimental mice. Histopathological examination of the brain revealed rhombencephalitis and ventriculitis as two distinct inflammatory patterns, resembling those seen in human listeriosis.

Michael Barza, M.D., of Tufts University School of Medicine explores in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) some interesting observations on Listeriosis and milk:

The excretion of L. monocytogenes in cow's milk is well recognized. Cows with listeric mastitis may produce normal-appearing milk containing large numbers of bacteria. Some of the organisms may survive pasteurization and may then grow better than competing species at refrigerator temperatures — a phenomenon called "cold enrichment." Milk may be a particularly effective vehicle because it protects the bacteria from gastric acid.

If you consume milk regularly, you might want to consult this post. Dr. Barza goes on to tell us about the effects of Listeriosis:

as many as 20 per cent of patients with listeriosis may have a cerebritis. The lesions range from macroscopic abscesses to a diffuse encephalitis. A fascinating variant, the "rhombencephalitis syndrome," which involves the pons and medulla, is the human counterpart of circling disease in sheep.

About 25 per cent of patients with listeriosis have a "primary bacteremic form" without evident foci of origin or metastasis. This form, too, occurs mainly in immunosuppressed patients but may also strike pregnant women. Other patients have localized infections such as endocarditis, endophthalmitis, hepatitis, and oculoglandular or cutaneous infection.

Tasty!

In other barfacious news, Heinz Foods is recalling some 40,000 cases of Boston Market brand lasagna with meat sauce, after having discovered that the meat therein is derived from the recent recall of 143 million pounds of beef from a California meatpacker of dubious ethics and inarguable inhumanity. Call Boston Market Frozen Food Consumer Helpline at 1 (800) 488-0050 if you have a question.

Congress has subpoenaed executives of the meat-packing company, Reuters tells us:

Steve Mendell, president of Hallmark/Westland, was invited by the subcommittee to testify at a hearing on February 26 on the role companies play in recalls and food safety, but he did not appear. The subpoena orders Mendell to testify on March 12.

What, is this another personal friend of George W. Bush? He thinks he can do like Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten and just not show up? Mr. Mendell, you have your nerve. If you wanted to evade Congressional oversight, you should have arranged to kill 4,000 U.S. troops and 1 million Iraqis!

Rep. Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, chairs the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations. Members are:

• Diana DeGette, D-CO
  
• Ed Whitfield, R-KY
• Charlie Melancon, D-LA, Vice Chair
• Greg Walden, R-OR
• Henry A. Waxman, D-CA
• Tim Murphy, R-PA
• Gene Green, D-TX
• Michael C. Burgess, R-TX
• Mike Doyle, D-PA
• Marsha Blackburn, R-TN
• Jan Schakowsky, D-IL
• Joe Barton, R-TX (Ex Officio)
• Jay Inslee, D-WA
• John D. Dingell (Ex Officio)

You might want to consider contacting your Rep if s/he is on that list. Doing the people's business requires input from the people. If you want safe, clean food for your family, you can go vegan or vegetarian or produce (and butcher) your own, in your copious free time. If you want safe, clean food for the entire nation, including your family, you need to supervise the people who are monitoring your food supply.

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Consumer Alert: Organic Food

Cookie Jill over at Skippy's alerts us to the deceptive labeling of meat, and other food, and tells us what we can do about it.

So? Whattaya waiting for? Get it done tomorrow! (That's the last day you get to comment on whether they're gonna feed you cloned meat and meat from animals too sick to stand and crap that's been shot full of antibiotics, irradiated, sprayed with pesticides, or otherwise poisoned.)

Thanks, Cookie Jill!

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Consumer Alert: Contaminated Food

If you bought crispy battered fish fillets in the 11.4 oz pack from Gorton's, be aware that there is a possibility the fish, or the batter used, is contaminated. Gorton's has issued a recall. Specifics: Gorton's 6 Crispy Battered Fish Fillets, 11.4 ounces; UPC Code No. 44400157770; date code 7289G1; use-by date April 2009.

So far, the fish has been distributed in:

• Alabama
• Delaware
• California
• Florida
• Georgia
• Oklahoma
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Texas.

If you bought the fish, contact Gorton's at 1-800-896-9479 or at http://www.gortons.com/. And, that Gorton's fisherman? He's an actor, dude. Real fisherman don't look half as good after spending most of their lives out in all kinds weather baking their skin to the approximate texture of scrap leather.

This is yet another reason why one should never ever buy prepackaged or processed foods.

Sure, it takes a little work to make your own, but which would you rather be, tired or poisoned?

Here's a recipe for fish that you can make and eat all week. Why? Because we can't write about politics or even read about it any more. We need a break. So do you.

So get yourself some fish and experiment.

Marinated broiled fish

4 fillets catfish
1 thumb ginger
1 lemon
1-2 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp red chilli powder or to taste

Wash the lemon, zest it (peel off the yellow portion of the skin) and juice it. Peel the ginger and slice very thinly lengthwise. Pour half the powdered turmeric and red chilli in a ceramic or glass (nonreactive) bowl, add fish, sprinkle with remaining spice powder.

Add soy sauce and lemon juice, ginger slices, and lemon zest over. Gently turn the fillets over. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Broil approximately 5 min per side till done. Serve garnished with green onions and/or cilantro.

Cook's notes:

1. This recipe is perfect for catfish because it removes the muddy smell like magic, leaving tender, flaky fish. Substitute any firm white fish. Very low fat. Adjust soy sauce to taste.

2. Do not use Mexican chile powder. Use Indian red chili powder available in most Asian or Indian stores or through spice purveyors (like Dean & Deluca or Penzey's) online.

3. If you don't own a zester, peel the lemon with a vegetable peeler and slice into shreds. Do not use white part of skin.

4. The marinated fish keeps two to three days. The broiled fish keeps about five. You can marinate the fish and cook individual portions for up to three days. The longer the fish sits in the marinade the more "cooked" it gets by the acid lemon juice.

5. Optional: you can discard the ginger before or after broiling the fish, or eat it. If you prefer, juice only half the lemon, and cut the remaining half into slices to be squeezed over the fish when served.

This recipe is hella betta for you than any crispy battered prepackaged gunk. It takes approximately 30 minutes to prep and 10-15 minutes to cook and serve. If you put a cup or two of brown rice to cook right before you start on the fish, the rice will be cooked a few minutes before the fish is done. Add some saucy asparagus in black beans, and you're set. Fast, tasty, healthy, and no chance of "pills" appearing in your dinner.

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Economy: It's About Bloody Well Time

Harry Reid apparently found these somewhere in Washington:


Because, according to Raw Story, he has decided

[...] to defy a threatened White House veto and try to win passage of a bill to curb rising home foreclosures by changing bankruptcy law.

"I have no expectation of reaching any agreement with the White House," said Reid a day after the administration warned the bill would need changes to get President George W. Bush's signature.

"I have tried for seven years" to reach agreements with Bush on a variety of issues, but have repeatedly failed, said Reid, a Nevada Democrat, at a news conference.

"So we are going to do what we think is best for the country," Reid said. "If we get 67 votes (in the 100-member Senate to override a possible Bush veto), that's great."

Now don't get your hopes up too high, peoples. We here at La Casa de Los Gatos are still saying, "Be still, my beating heart."

Is he really gonna do it? Are we gonna see sixty-seven of the idiots in the Senate stand behind him?

Now's the time to start pressuring your Senateschmuck to get the fuck in line and vote with Harry. Now, a caveat here: we're not saying the bill as it exists is just peachy-keen and we totally buy into it. We have not yet read the bill, and we don't know what's going on. We plan to get our eyeballs on a copy but we're no financial genius, so we can't promise to update this post with the latest and greatest.

We do refer you to Bonddad's blog, which has a fine analysis of the housing crisis. La Casa de Los Gatos is fiscally conservative. We don't believe in throwing money (assets, resources, whatever) away. That means we don't believe Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have lost billions over the past quarter should be angling to lose even more by raising the cap on their investment portfolios.

We believe the "subprime mortgage crisis" was created by greedy lenders and greedy consumers working hand in glove with an inattentive and duplicitous government that relied on hocus-pocus as the mainstay of its economic policy. If financial idiots like ourselves who have to read Managing Your Money For Dummies can figure out that something's wrong with the mortgage industry, there is no way that the Misadministration's economists can pretend they didn't notice.

Thus, we say, let's all scrutinize this foreclosure bill. We think people who bought houses for investment, and speculators, lazy mortgage brokers and lenders who failed to do even the most rudimentary financial checks or even duplicitously tried to push on consumers loans they should have known said consumers could not afford, don't deserve a bailout, and certainly not at the expense of those of us who have carefully budgeted and saved and been responsible consumers and taxpayers. On the other hand, there are many people who were bamboozled into buying and failed &mdash or did not know enough &mdash to read the fine print.

Some people deserve rescue. But rescue doesn't have to equal bailout. A good rescue would be for the very banks who are found to have engaged in duplicitous practices to be forced to freeze homeowners' mortgages at a rate that allows such homeowners to pay off their loans. This would serve the dual purpose of punishing the greedy and duplicitous lenders and simultaneously temporarily staving off the impending collapse. However, we doubt that such a course of action will commend itself to the rich and powerful who rule the nation. Still, we can try to remove the most egregiously unfair provisions and add language that achieves the goal (staving off impending fiscal collapse) without overly burdening the taxpayer or letting lenders go scot-free.

The Dim Son will undoubtedly stamp his little feet and throw a hissy fit. That's fine. Mr. 19 Per Cent is not exactly a force to be reckoned with any more. And we well know that his desired "changes" to the language of any bill will serve only his wealthy and powerful friends, or as he has referred to them, his "base." While simultaneously screwing common working people.

Image from WhoHijackedOurCountry

We gotcher base right here, Chimpy. Vanculo, you worthless little putz.

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Consumer Alert: Culling The Herd

Okay, WHAT??? How dumb - or "relationship-challenged" would you have to be to believe something like this?

The WaPoo is reporting that scammers are actually emailing people and purporting to be hired killers who will not kill them &mdash for a fee:

"The sender tells the receiver, 'I've been hired to kill you, it's one of your friends, I'm watching you. However . . . I don't believe you did what they said, and I'm going to give you a chance to pay me, and I won't kill you,' " Fairfax police spokeswoman Camille Neville said.

Yaknow, if someone tried that line on us, our first response would be to try and trace their IP address, ping them, find out what we could and take it to the local villaincatchers. And the FBI.

Plus, we'd want some proof. Okay, you're watching us? What's our address? How many people live in our house. Something like that.

Plus, if someone's trying to rip us off over the internet, aren't they opening themselves to charges of fraud, extortion, and deity only knows what else?

We grew up in the era of Godfather-style gangster movies. We expect to receive messages like the above attached to the dismembered horse's head in our bed. Not in our damn emailbox.

To our great amusement, one recipient had this response:

"You sit there and start racking your brain and thinking, 'Who would want to do it?' " Walker said. "Say that e-mail went to 10,000 people. Five percent of people probably responded to it, if for no other reason than to ask what was going on."

You're kidding us, right? There are people who wouldn't automatically hit delete? Or, better yet, set up spam filters? Hey, this is people's work eaddies we're talking about here! What's IT's policy on spam, anywho?

The article goes on to say:

The Internet Crime Complaint Center, which tracks e-mail scam trends, warned of an increase in such threats in December 2006.

[...]

Web crooks have impersonated FBI agents who have demanded bribes or made threats; claimed to be State Department officials who discovered recipients' inheritances abroad; and called themselves U.S. soldiers in need of help, usually involving banking information.

The State Department wants you to know that it is not about to contact your skeezy ass with information about money that it might have that might belong to you. Hahaha. As if we needed them to tell us that. You'd probably have to beat the entire department about the head and shoulders with various weapons to make them release a single red cent of your money.

So if you, or anyone you know, is a beneficiary of such scams, here's what to do:

[...Do] not reply but instead report them to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, at http://www.ic3.gov. Any e-mails that contain information such as the recipients' names or locations should be reported to police, authorities said.

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Health: Yellow Fever in Paraguay

Conquerors of Yellow Fever, from the Congressional Gold Medal site

Auntie Beeb is reporting a recent outbreak of yellow fever in Paraguay &mdash the first in 34 years. Seven people have died so far.

The World Health Organization is sending two million doses of vaccine. Paraguay's own stocks have apparently been used up, as have those sent by neighbouring countries in the region. Paraguay has declared a state of national emergency.

Meanwhile, desperate Paraguayans are anxious and upset, and riot police have been called in to protect buildings from which vaccine is being distributed. Brazil, which is also experiencing an epidemic of yellow fever, in which 16 people have died so far, is one of the countries providing assistance to Paraguay.

Yellow fever, like malaria and dengue fever, is spread through mosquito bites, and out of 200,000 cases worldwide every year, an estimated 30,000 people die. Unlike malaria, yellow fever is a viral disease. It is spread by Aedes mosquitoes &mdash Aedes simpsaloni, A. africanus, and A. aegypti in Africa, the Haemagogus genus in South America, and the Sasbethes genera in France.

The disease gets its name from the outbreak of jaundice in affected patients. Because initial symptoms are so similar to those of other diseases, such as malaria and dengue, and even some forms of poisoning, yellow fever may be difficult to diagnose.

There is no cure for yellow fever, and the medical approach is to treat the symptoms. The only existing vaccine has been known to cause severe reactions in people over the age of 60, up to and including massive organ failure. The vaccine provides an approximately ten-year immunity to the disease, and thus must be re-administered periodically.

Robert Shope of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit, Yale University School of Medicine, writes in Environmental Health Perspectives at length on the effects of a rise in temperature and rainfall patterns on the epidemiology of pathogenic infections. We do not have permission to reproduce his article, originally published in 1991; suffice it to say that he named yellow fever and dengue fever as the vector-borne diseases that pose the greatest threat in North America as the world warms.

Aedes mosquitoes are rapidly killed at freezing temperatures, according to the article. However, Shope goes on to say:

The northernmost winter survival of Aedes aegypti is now about 35deg. N latitude, or the latitude of Memphis, Tennessee. This distribution is predicted with global warming to move northward and encompass additional large population centers, the numbers depending on how much warming occurs. In addition, the development of mosquito larvae is faster in warm climates than cold ones, and thus with global warming, the mosquito will become a transmitting adult earlier in the season.

As early as January of this year, researchers were warning of a resurgence of dengue fever in the U.S., and the Los Angeles Times carried an article that cited Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who helped lead the government's efforts against AIDS.

In an article this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Fauci and his science adviser, Dr. David Morens, said more than 760,000 cases were reported in the Americas last year, of which some 20,000 involved the virulent form, known as dengue hemorrhagic fever. The disease [...] beginning to make its presence felt in the U.S., with cases popping up in Texas, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Last week, top health officials warned that a "widespread appearance" in the continental U.S. is "a real possibility."

Thus far, cases of dengue fever in North America — where disease scientists thought they had conquered it 30 years ago — have tended to be scattered and affect relatively few people. But increased travel to and from South America, where a resurgence has made dengue widespread, is thought to be boosting the disease's spread northward. And some experts suspect climate change is aggravating the problem.

So, to those who scoff at the need for the U.N., or universal health care, here's your answer. Dengue fever, like yellow fever, has no cure. It too can kill. These diseases, and other like them, can be controlled with the help of vaccines and global cooperation. However, there are costs to such diseases.

Massive organ failure is not a great way to die. If you value your life, and the lives of your friends, neighbours, children, et cetera, you should support truly universal health care. Because the world is a small, round globe, and ultimately we are all interconnected through the very web of life that makes our lives possible.

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Health Care: What Care?

These rotten bastards are looking for ways to cut care, not to provide it.

The Los Angeles Times tells us that Blue Cross of California, the state's largest for-profit health insurer, actually has the unmitigated gall to ask doctors to help them cut insured patients from the insurer's rolls.

"Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately," the letters say. The Times obtained a copy of a letter that was aimed at physicians in large medical groups.

What next?The article goes on to say:

WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based company that operates Blue Cross of California, said Monday that it was sending out the letters in an effort to hold down costs.

"Enrolling an applicant who did not disclose their true condition (and the condition is chronic or acute), will quickly drive increased utilization of services, which drives up costs for all members," WellPoint spokeswoman Shannon Troughton said in an e-mail.

[...]

Blue Cross is one of several California insurers that have come under fire for issuing policies without checking applications and then canceling coverage after individuals incur major medical costs. The practice of canceling coverage, known in the industry as rescission, is under scrutiny by state regulators, lawmakers and the courts.

Pretty fucking cheeky of them, we should think.

It's time to clean house, people. We need to send these people packing. Year after year, their CEOs receive millions in bonuses to inflate their already luxurious salaries, they hire doctors to assess every claim they receive in the hope of denying yet another suffering patient the health care that they, or their employers, have been paying for for years, they let us die rather than disgorge a tenth of a per cent of their profits, and now they want our doctors - not their own paid hacks - to help them kick the rest of us off the rolls.

Let them hear from you. Our legislators and regulators and courts won't do squat to protect us. Remember that until ordinary people marched to demonstrate against the denial of paid-for care to Nataline Sarkisyan, the insurers were perfectly willing to sit back and watch a teenager die in the name of their obscene profits. Only when people started marching and protesting and calling them till their phones rang off the hook did they even think of relenting. And of course, they timed their decision to come too late to save the girl's life.

These vultures and vampires have sucked our blood for too damned long. The L.A. Times has the details here. You can reach Steve Poizner, the insurance commissioner, here. Contact Lynne Randolph of the state Department of Health Care here. Contact Shannon Troughton, spokesweasel for WellPoint (the nation's largest healthcare provider) here:

Media Shannon Troughton, 404-842-8457 WellPoint, Inc.

shannon.troughton@wellpoint.com

You can contact Blue Cross right here.

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Health: Things To Look Out For

In case yesterday's post on infants and phthalates left you insufficiently nervous, here's more. Regrettably, it appears to be mostly geared towards women, as in "women are so dumb they use all this stuff to make them more beautiful and then oops, they die!"

We all know that the issue is really "Consumers don't have a fucking clue what's in all the crap that advertising tells them they must buy because their government wants them to spend money to keep the economy afloat, but not be protected from any possible adverse effects that might cut into manufacturers' profits, so they use it on themselves and their families and oops, they die!"

You think we're kidding? No, my friends, we're not kidding. Here, we give you an example in young, athletic Arielle Newman who died because she used an OTC pain-relieving gel on her sore muscles. Either she was peculiarly susceptible to absorbing the gel, or she used very large amounts. Or, like many athletes who might suffer from stiffness and soreness, she used both the gel and aspirin as pain relief. The moral of this story is, that shit will kill ya.

What about the non-athletes? What are they using that might kill them, and for what? Well, apparently, lots of young women opt for laser hair-removal treatments to make their legs and pits look hairless and "pretty." Jeez, people, talk about neonatophilia. Real adult humans have hair all over their bodies and especially in their armpits and crotches. And if you want to get rid of it, try a razor instead of something that could kill you. Is it worth dying just to get laid?

At any rate, ABC tells us that many laser treatment providers give clients a gel that contains both lidocaine and tetracaine, and numbs the areas to be worked on.

Unfortunately, lidocaine and tetracaine, alone or in combination, can cause death in some susceptible people. Because people have different absorption rates, and the product they're using is not reviewed by any agency, because human error exists, and there have not been long-term safety studies done on many of these compounds, users who fail to educate themselves on the issues might just kack from using this stuff.

One of the women in this report, Shiri Berg, put a 10-10 solution (ten per cent hydrocaine, ten per cent lidocaine) on her legs, then wrapped them in cellophane to speed the absorption. Who told her to do this? You read something like this and just go WTF? She puts the stuff on without knowing anything about it, wraps her legs to speed the absorption process, then gets in a car and drives to the spa, and surprise! She dies!

Her family's attorney is now complaining that she received no education on the product. We bet he votes Republican and would be simply scandalized at the thought of losing his tax breaks so the FDA and other regulatory agencies can be beefed up to exercise proper oversight. This is where the "cut the taxes of the very rich and slash all public programs to the bone" policies of the Republican Party and the Bush junta have left us.

Nobody's paying attention to what's in our food, our water, our medicines, our soil, our air, and our bodies. There are a few dedicated nonprofit groups out there, but they are hamstrung by tiny budgets and overworked. We pay taxes in order to create and protect our entire community - in this case the community called a "nation."

Not to give the obscenely wealthy even more wealth. Not to pay for spoiled fratboys to kill men, women, and children. Not so that manufacturers can make huge profits by poisoning and killing people.

Other things that can happen to people who do not insist on better and greater scrutiny of commercial products, or fail to educate themselves thoroughly (which, let's face it, ain't much of a substitute if you don't know a lot about chemistry, biology, medicine, law, and deity knows what else):

• Chemical face peels can leave you burned and disfigured.
  
  
• Aspirin can interact with any pain-relieving externally applied OTC medication that contains salicylic acid.
  
  
• Blood-thinning medications such as Coumadin or Plavix can interact with these medications and natural healants.
  
  
• Ginger has blood-thinning properties.
  
  If you're taking other blood-thinning medications or being evaluated for heart health, let your doctor know if your diet is high in ginger. As an example, ThePoliticalCat consumes ginger tea daily. This is important for the doctor to know.
  
  
• Do not use OTC analgesics on children without a doctor's prescription and supervision.
  
  If they're in pain from athletic injuries, they need to rest and heal, not be medicated and keep going so they can do greater damage to their bodies.
  
  
• If you're using any OTC topical analgesic to deal with vaginal itching, and the itching persists, do not apply more analgesic.
  
  Instead, go to a doctor and find out why you have the problem.
  
  
• When using topical analgesics, always use the smallest possible amount that does the job.
  
  Never use more than recommended. Never try to increase the effect by using bandages or other coverings over the affected area. Apply to the smallest possible area.
  
  
• Do not use hydrocortisone or other corticosteroids except as prescribed by a doctor and under medical supervision.
  
  We are reliably informed that some very stupid people use hemorrhoid cream to remove the bags under their eyes. Listen people, medication that is formulated for your arsehole is not necessarily suitable for your eyes. If you don't want bags under your eyes, quit hitting the bottle, put down the fucking cigarettes, cut out the salt, and ice your eye tissue till it shrinks. Here's a list of the possible side effects of corticosteroids.
  
  
• Do not use creams containing estrogen or progesterone without first having your hormone levels tested.
  
  If you think you need them to counter menopausal side-effects and your doctor's being a jerk about it, find a different doctor, talk to experts in women's health issues (they do exist) and research the subject thoroughly before slathering on the stuff.
  
  
• Lightening "age spots" with hydroquinone is not for everybody.
  
  Especially, it appears, for darker-skinned women, who can end up with darker skin instead, or, worse yet, with cancer.
  
  
• Retin-A or glycolic acid, which removes the top layer of your skin, might reduce your wrinkles but it's also going to leave your skin more vulnerable to injury.
  
  So don't do anything that stresses your skin (like using another exfoliant, or a chemical peel, or waxing your eyebrows, or even lying around on the beach in the sun) shortly after you've used these substances. Put on extra SPF sunscreen, wear a hat, and fer chrisake, stay away from cigarettes.
  
  
• If you're using henna, whether for temporary tattoos or to colour your hair or make nice patterns on your skin, always test it first.
  
  If you're one of the X number of people who are allergic to the stuff, you're going to look utterly gorgeous with your eyes swelled shut and your whole face, scalp, or other skin red, cracked, shiny, itchy and oozing.
  
  
• If your kid has a cold or cough, do not give them medications, OTC or prescription.
  
  Such medications send thousands of little children to the ER every year. The unlucky ones die. If they're under 6 years of age, the FDA recommends that you not give them any OTC meds. If they're between 6 and 11 years old, be very careful. Yeah, symptoms suck, but death sucks worse. Antibiotics don't work either. Just put the kid to bed, administer lots of fluids (chicken soup, orange juice, water - not soda), keep the kid wrapped up and warm, and get your tubes tied ASAP so you don't have to do it with a second or third kid.
  
  
• Don't use antibacterial soaps.
  
  Most of the liquid or gel soaps on the market and about a third of bar soaps are supposedly antibacterial. How does that help us resist illness? It doesn't. Most of the bugs that will knock you and your family out are viral. Antibacterial soaps don't do squat for those. Moreover, a common chemical in antibacterial personal care products, triclosan, is now implicated, ScienceDaily tells us, as an endocrine disruptor, causing a variety of problems, including cancer, reproductive failure and developmental anomalies, according to animal studies.

Finally, consider this enlightening quote:

A study has shown that some women use more than 20 different beauty products a day [...].

This reliance of this ‘cocktail’ of cosmetics to enhance beauty means that 4lb 6oz of potentially dangerous chemicals is absorbed into the body through the skin.

The Environmental Working Group provides a Cosmetic Safety Database that you can use to find out whether what you're putting on your skin is safe.

Remember, sometimes less is more. Many thanks to Sister GTG, Regular Reader and Terrorist Nun, for the info on triclosan.

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Consumer Alert: Pthalates and Babies

Random baby product

Note: This blog does not endorse any product, including the one pictured here, as safe or containing no phthalates.

Reuters is reporting that Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana of the University of Washington in Seattle has, together with colleagues, published the results of a study in the journal Pediatrics showing phthalate levels in infants under the age of 28 months.

According to the study, all infants' urine samples contained at least one phthalate at measurable levels. Additionally, 81 percent of the samples had measurable amounts of seven or more phthalates.

This association was strongest in infants under 8 months old, "who may be more vulnerable to developmental and reproductive toxicity of phthalates," the investigators note in their report.

Phthalates have been linked to developmental and reproductive toxicity in animal studies. They are used to stabilise fragrances and make plastics flexible, and are used in baby powder, baby lotion, nail polish and other cosmetics, medical equipment, soft vinyl teethers, baby bottles, floor coverings, etc. There are few studies on the effects of phthalates in humans, although a recent study showed that pregnant women exposed to phthalates suffered a higher incidence of stillbirths and their children showed physical markers that might indicate future reproductive problems.

The current administration has gutted the organizations responsible for ensuring the safety and health of American consumers, and manufacturers are not required to indicate phthalate levels in their products. As a result, it is difficult for parents to make informed decisions. Additionally, phthalates have been implicated in obesity and diabetes.

If you have children under the age of five, you need to inform yourself of the potential problems that phthalate exposure might cause them. If you use cosmetic products of any kind (lotions, shampoos, powders) that do not come from trusted sources or are not certified to contain no phthalates, you might find this link useful.

You might also want to stop using nail polish at all if you are pregnant, or planning to become pregnant, or if you have very young infants at home. This site has some information and might be able to help you find products without phthalates. This does not constitute an endorsement of the site or of any products that they recommend. There are other toxins in the world than just phthalates.

About.com tells you why phthalates are dangerous and includes some useful information.

Auntie Beeb reports that the European Union has banned phthalates in varying degrees, thereby offering some protection to European consumers.

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Health: Keeping The Food Supply Clean

Lauren Neergard, a science writer for AP, reports that a single bout of food-borne illness, such as caused by E. coli, Yersinia enterocolitica, Salmonella enteritidis, the Shigella group of bacteria, or Campylobacter jejuni, can cause a multitude of ailments decades later.

In interviews with The Associated Press, [scientists] attribute high blood pressure [and] kidney damage [and possible] 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."

Some 76 million food poisonings occur each year in the United States. However, because no one tracks the occurrence of ailments that might result from food-borne illnesses, it is not possible to speculate how many people suffer these illnesses or symptoms in later years.

This should give us all pause for thought. More than 30 million pounds of ground beef were recalled last year for contamination.

Donna Rosenbaum, of the consumer advocacy group STOP (Safe Tables Our Priority) says that her group hears regularly from people with health complaints that they suspect or have been told are related to food poisoning years earlier. She cites a woman who survived severe E. coli at 8 and had her colon removed in her 20s. Some develop diabetes after food poisoning inflames the pancreas.

In response to this widespread yet poorly tracked problem, STOP is creating a national registry of food-poisoning survivors with long-term health problems. Hopefully, their medical histories will provide scientists with useful information and spur much-needed research.

According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), foodborne illnesses cause 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths a year. However, the CDC does not track health issues of survivors of food-borne illnesses.

The University of Utah, which has tracked children with E. coli for years, has found that some 10 percent of E. coli sufferers develop a life-threatening complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, where their kidneys and other organs fail.

Dr. Andrew Pavia, the university's pediatric infectious diseases chief, states that one or two decades after a bout of E. coli, between 30 and 50 percent of HUS survivors will have kidney-related problem, including high blood pressure.

Although he stressed that not everyone who has had a bout of food-borne illness will have complications, and one-third to one-half of roughly ten per cent is really not that many, we'll bet that those words will not console the unlucky.

Essentially, he's saying if E. coli didn't damage your kidneys the first time around, you're not going to have kidney-related problems later. Great. We didn't even know that E. coli could damage the kidneys.

What about the other food-borne illnesses? After all, although the ground beef recalls were enormous and apparently all caused by discovery of E. coli bacteria, there are people who avoid eating red meat, or ground beef. What are their odds?

If you cook or eat poultry, you could be exposed to campylobacter. The CDC tells us that Campylobacter jejuni is

"the most commonly reported bacterial cause of foodborne infection in the United States."

One-tenth of one per cent of others JUST LIKE YOU will get Guillain-Barré syndrome about a month afterwards. In Guillain-Barré, your immune system attacks your nervous system, and the resulting paralysis will put you on a ventilator for assistance with the simple human task of breathing. Oh, yeah, and that could happen even if it was a relatively mild food-poisoning. You could also end up getting reactive arthritis. Reactive arthritis, unlike your regular flavour, includes conjunctivitis and possibly simultaneous inflammation in other organs such as the mouth, skin, kidneys, heart, and lungs, as well as your joints. It can lead to chronic arthritis.

In a cheery aside, the CDC goes on to inform us that

" ... an increasing proportion of human infections caused by C. jejuni are resistant to antimicrobial therapy. Mishandling of raw poultry and consumption of undercooked poultry are the major risk factors for human campylobacteriosis."

Reactive arthritis may also affect you six months or more after you experience a bout of salmonella, shigellosis, or yersiniosis. Fortunately for you (and the inhabitants of Casa de Los Gatos), yersiniosis is far more common abroad than in the U.S. No figures were given on how many of us can expect a more intimate relationship with these various bacteria; however, the same advice was given for all - wash your hands thoroughly. So this is Montezuma's revenge?

Severe E. coli can cause blood clots all over the body, which could damage other organs, says Dr. Pavia. HUS apparently can also cause pancreatitis, which might increase your risk of diabetes.

Well, that was exciting morning reading. Now we know why we have to work really hard to tighten controls on the nation's food supply. It's that, or a ghastly disease or diseases requiring hideously expensive medical care. So what if no one gets out alive? We want, at least, to enjoy the goddamned ride.

Incidentally, this entire article seemed like one long admonition for home-cooking and against restaurants. Oh, yeah, and against "rare" poultry. Cook the damn thing till all the fat leaks out of it and the skin caramelizes, dammit. Sheesh.

Caveat: Yersiniosis is spread by undercooked or contaminated pork, especially pork chitlins. Thorough handwashing, as always, and thorough cooking. Sheesh again.

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