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September 28, 2011
· Listeria outbreak deadliest in a decade
· Del Monte trying to bully regulators
· Deere to build tractors in Argentina
· Air Force and Navy high on biofuels
· High schoolers pick carrots over cookies
Listeria outbreak deadliest in a decade
(AP)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that 72 illnesses, including 13 deaths, are linked to the tainted fruit. State and local officials say they are investigating three additional deaths that may be connected.
The death toll released by the CDC Tuesday — including newly
confirmed deaths in
The CDC said Tuesday that they have confirmed two deaths in
Listeria is more deadly than well-known pathogens like salmonella and E. coli, though those outbreaks generally cause many more illnesses. Twenty-one people died in an outbreak of listeria poisoning in 1998 traced to contaminated hot dogs and possibly deli meats made by Bil Mar Foods, a subsidiary of Sara Lee Corp. Another large listeria outbreak in 1985 killed 52 people and was linked to Mexican-style soft cheese.
Listeria generally only sickens the elderly, pregnant women and others with compromised immune systems. The CDC said the median age of those sickened is 78 and that one in five who contract the disease can die.
Dr. Robert Tauxe of the CDC says the number of illnesses and deaths will probably grow in coming weeks because the symptoms of listeria don’t always show up right away. It can take four weeks or more for a person to fall ill after eating food contaminated with listeria.
“That long incubation period is a real problem,” Tauxe said. “People who ate a contaminated food two weeks ago or even a week ago could still be falling sick weeks later.”
CDC reported the 72 illnesses and deaths in 18 states. The
most illnesses were reported in
The outbreak has been traced to Jensen Farms in
FDA, which investigates the cause of foodborne outbreaks, has not released any additional details on how the contamination may have happened. The agency says its investigation is ongoing.
The Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes from Jensen Farms were shipped from July 29 through Sept. 10 to 25 states.
Unlike many pathogens, listeria bacteria can grow at room temperatures and even refrigerator temperatures. The FDA and CDC recommend that anyone who may have one of the contaminated cantaloupes throw it out immediately and clean and sanitize any surfaces it may have touched.
About 800 cases of listeria are found in the
Produce has rarely been the culprit, but federal investigators say they have seen more produce-related listeria illnesses in the past two years. It was found in sprouts in 2009 and celery in 2010.
Symptoms of listeria include fever and muscle aches, often with other gastrointestinal symptoms. Victims often become incapacitated and unable to speak.
Debbie Frederick said her mother knew something was wrong when her father, 87-year-old William Thomas Beach, collapsed at his home in Mustang, Oklahoma, and couldn’t get up. He died a few days later, on Sept. 1. The family later learned his death was linked to eating the cantaloupe and sued Jensen Farms.
“First you just kind of go into shock,” said
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Del Monte trying to bully regulators
(NewsInferno) – In a move that many say amounts to bullying and intimidation, Del Monte Fresh Produce has sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a controversial effort to stop some food inspection practices and reduce recent restrictions the FDA placed on food imports into the U.S. Health investigators have concluded that Del Monte Fresh Produce cantaloupes are the source of a Salmonella outbreak that began earlier this year.
In March, we wrote that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) announced a multi-state Salmonella poisoning outbreak that
was linked to tainted cantaloupe which sickened 13 people in
Del Monte agreed to a recall; however, the food giant is seeking to stop any other restrictions on melon imports, said The New York Times. According to Del Monte, the restrictions could adversely affect its reputation. Not unexpectedly, industry applauds the move, saying that regulators typically overreach. Consumer and safe food advocates say Del Monte is harrying regulators.
Del Monte has also threatened legal action against Oregon Public Health and its senior epidemiologist, William Keene and is challenging prevailing food safety investigation processes, such as using patient memories of what they ate prior to falling ill.
“This clearly looks like an attempt to intimidate state-level investigators,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director of the advocacy group, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), told the Times. “The chilling effect is real, and it could have serious implications for consumers who may be exposed to more tainted products because of delays in announcing the results of these epidemiologic investigations.”
Del Monte Fresh Produce claims its melons did not sicken
anyone and says it is simply attempting to improve food safety, the Times said.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in
Previously, Business Week reported that the lawsuit could cause ramifications over how regulators remove contaminated food from the market and could make officials wary about advising consumers about potentially contaminated food.
“If this case is successful from an industry perspective, it will change the attitude of regulators,” said former FDA assistant commissioner David Acheson, who is now a food safety consultant. “They will obviously be more reluctant,” Acheson added, reported Business Week.
Deere to build tractors in Argentina
"This investment squares with the import substitution model...to supply the growing domestic market [for farm machinery] without depending on imports," Production Minister Debora Giorgi said in a statement following a meeting between her, Kirchner and Deere executives.
The company will expand its current production facility in
Local daily La Nacion said Monday that Deere will invest $100 million in the expansion. A Deere spokesman didn't respond to emails seeking comment.
During the first eight months of the year, grain and derivative product exports totaled almost $22 billion, up 30% on the year, according to local consultants IES.
Argentine farm machinery makers are expected to see record sales this year as the country's farmers sink their profits into new equipment.
Sales of domestically made farm equipment are on track to reach $1.38 billion this year, up from the previous record of $1.35 billion set in 2007, according to the farm machinery chamber Cafma.
Earlier this year,
The Deere investment "will allow the company to equalize its trade balance starting in 2012, substituting imports and increasing exports by $155 million," the ministry said.
Air Force and Navy high on biofuels
(npr) – The Pentagon's hunt for an alternative to petroleum has turned a lowly weed and animal fat into something indistinguishable from jet fuel, and now the military is trying to kick-start a new biofuel industry.
"To flip the line from Field of Dreams, if the Navy comes, they will build it," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a recent speech.
The Air Force and the Navy have been busy testing their aircraft — everything from fighter jets to unmanned spy planes — on jet biofuel. Together with the Departments of Energy and Agriculture, the Navy has launched a project to invest up to half a billion dollars in biofuel refineries.
Mabus says he is committed to
getting 50 percent of the Navy's fuel for aircraft and surface ships from
renewable sources by 2020 because dependence on foreign oil makes the
"We buy too much fossil fuels from potentially or actually volatile places on earth," Mabus says.
There are lots of negative consequences of relying on foreign oil. For instance, when conflicts abroad spook the petroleum market, the military faces massive increases in fuel costs.
Science Fiction Becomes Reality
The fast pace of the development of jet biofuel has surprised even the experts.
After President George W. Bush called on the country to kick its addiction to foreign oil several years ago, the Air Force first focused on turning coal into liquid fuel. But it soon switched its focus to biofuels.
Elizabeth Shogren/NPR
Air Force Maj. Josh Frey pilots a plane running on jet biofuel. Frey says his C-130 flies the same on 50 percent biofuel as it does on petroleum.
"When we first started, nobody had any clue that the biofuels were so close behind," says Jeffrey Braun, who heads the Air Force biofuels program. "We thought it was going to be another 10 years before we started looking at biofuels but it turned out it was about two years."
High-tech chemical processing makes the jet biofuel nearly indistinguishable from petroleum jet fuel. It doesn't matter whether refiners start with beef fat, leftover cooking oil or a plant like camelina. Camelina is promising because it can be grown on fallow wheat fields so it doesn't displace food crops, and tests show it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent compared with petroleum.
Already, the Air Force has approved F-15 and F-16 fighters and C-17 transport planes to use 50 percent biofuel. The Navy plans to approve all its planes and surface ships to run on green energy by the end of the fall.
One Big Catch
The Air Force hopes to get half of the fuel it uses for domestic flights from alternative sources by 2016. But the small batches of biofuel made so far cost about 10 times the price of traditional fuel. Braun says that's a hurdle for Pentagon officials.
"They're committed as long as they can get these fuels at cost-competitive pricing. So that means that industry is going to have to step up their production and start creating much larger quantities of fuel," he says.
Producers say that has created a classic chicken and egg problem.
"To build a refinery at scale is hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. If you don't have known customers you will not ever build that facility," says Tom Todaro, CEO of Altair, a company turning camelina into jet fuel.
Todaro says larger plants will produce cheaper fuel.
"We've demonstrated this works. We're going to demonstrate very, very quickly that it's surprisingly affordable," Todaro adds.
The military isn't the only potential big customer. Airlines want jet biofuel too, but they're not in the best financial shape to back a new industry.
"We can't get there by ourselves," Sharon Pinkerton, a vice president of the Air Transport Association, told a recent Senate hearing.
Industry officials hope the federal government's effort will help the nascent industry get off the ground.
In addition to the program to help fund new refineries, the Agriculture Department has awarded incentives to lure farmers to start growing camelina.
A pioneer in the biofuel industry predicted that the federal investment will enable the Navy to reach its renewable fuel targets and create a "snowball effect" that will make it easier to start supplying commercial airlines with biofuel too.
"That's why I'm very excited about what the government and the administration are doing because I think this is going to be a fantastic kick-start for the advanced biofuel industry," says Jim Rekoske, a vice president of Honeywell UOP's renewable energy unit, which developed the jet biofuel.
High schoolers pick carrots over cookies
(Sunday
Telegraph) – At the beginning of September last year, pupils at
Alongside the traditional vending machines that had been supplying them with chocolates, crisps and fizzy drinks for most of their formative years, was another machine - painted bright orange - selling nothing but carrots. Exactly the same size and shape as a conventional snack machine, the fresh produce on its shelves was packaged in small, opaque, crinkly bags similar to the sort of bags crisps come in. There were a number of different designs - one featured a weird orange alien creature on a green background, another had a black carrot-shaped object travelling through space - but inside all of the bags was the same thing: about three ounces of washed and peeled baby carrots, selling for 50 cents a bag.
Just in case the broad brush strokes on the packaging hadn't got the message across, a strapline, in bold white lettering on the side of the machine, hammered the point home: "Baby carrots. Eat 'em like junk food".
The response was startling. Within an hour, pupils all over the school were walking around, munching on their new orangey treats. In the weeks that followed, the machine was emptied faster than the manufacturers could fill it.
"If they wanted a snack, they bought a bag of
carrots," recalls Tim Keeton, Mason's assistant principal. "It easily
got as much custom as our other vending machines which were selling the normal
range of stuff; Sun Chips, Doritos, Cheetos and
chocolate chip cookies." The machine is no longer at the school. It was
part of a six-month trial by one of the largest growers of carrots in the
"We looked at the success of mass-marketed categories
and decided to take a page out of their marketing book," says Reese.
"We said, 'We are not a vegetable, we're a snack. If you want a vegetable,
go eat broccoli. If you want a snack, eat baby carrots. They're perfect for
you. They're crunchy, they're bright orange; they're sweet and they're fun.' We
advertised for a couple of months and the category grew in double digits."
The brand is now off the market as Bolthouse makes
plans for another, larger trial. If that trial is successful, then Reese thinks
he may finally have discovered something parents and campaigners, both in the
It comes not a moment too soon.
Of course, our penchant for junk food and high-calorie, high-fat snacks can't take all the blame. The advances in technology over the past five decades have made us, as a nation, much lazier, meaning we burn off fewer calories in our day-to-day lives than we used to.
In recent years, the problem has simply become too big to ignore. Forced into action by a string of shocking reports from bodies like the World Health Organization and media campaigns like Jamie's School Dinners - in which the chef Jamie Oliver went to war against Bernard Matthews's Turkey Twizzlers - government ministers have started to talk tough on junk food and adopted a new, more interventionist approach towards the nation's diet.
Primary and secondary schools have been banned from serving chocolate, crisps and sugary drinks, both in their canteens and in vending machines, and television broadcasters are no longer allowed to show adverts for foods high in fat, salt and sugar during programs aimed at children. All pupils aged between four and six now get a piece of fresh fruit every day at school and everyone - adults and children alike - are told to include five portions of fruit or vegetables in their daily diet.
Many health campaigners would like the government to go further, introducing strict limits on exactly how much fat, sugar and salt manufacturers are allowed to put in their products. But, actually, something altogether more surprising is happening: junk-food behemoths like McDonald's, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are adapting to the new antipathy towards junk and remodelling themselves as responsible, health-conscious companies who can legitimately contribute to a well-balanced lifestyle. And while some of their initiatives might be nothing more than good PR, the corporations have also taken real steps, both to reduce the harm their products do to their customers and to develop new, healthier lines that challenge traditional snack foods in terms of taste.
Pepsi has led the charge. Early last year, its chief executive, a tall, slim, vegetarian called Indra Nooyi, announced that the company was fundamentally changing the mix of products it made, and was aiming to treble the revenue gained from nutritional and healthy food within 10 years.
In an interview with the New Yorker magazine earlier this year, Nooyi said the new strategy went to the heart of her ambitions for PepsiCo - to construct a company that not only makes things that taste good, but one that is considered a "good company" by the general public. She also laid out robust commercial reasons behind her decision.
"With the aging population and with everyone focusing on health, products that are good and nutritious, or nutritionally better than anything else out there, are a huge opportunity," she said. "These categories are growing several times faster than anything else."
Of course, many of the products PepsiCo bills as "good for you" are not always that good for you in nutritional terms; many, like Tropicana juices, have a high concentration of sugar, but they are better for you than the products the company describes as "better for you", such as Diet Pepsi, which are, in turn, healthier than the "fun for you" products, such as regular Pepsi and Walkers crisps, that make up the largest part of the business.
The company has also hired senior figures from the World Health Organization to drive through the changes, and spent millions of dollars reducing the sugar, fat and salt in products throughout its portfolio. In one of its most successful brands - Walkers - salt levels have been reduced by between 25 and 55 per cent and saturated fats by 70 to 80 per cent, and soon the company's biochemists hope to introduce a brand-new salt, with drastically reduced sodium levels, yet all the taste.
Coca-Cola too has accepted some responsibility for the current levels of obesity (although, like all junk-food manufacturers, it prefers to single out sedentary lifestyles as the main culprit) and pledged itself to cutting the amount of sugar in its drinks if this can be done without changing the taste. Coke Zero, launched five years ago to appeal to health-conscious men who didn't like Diet Coke (drunk predominantly by women), is the main feather in its cap. It boasts a taste that's virtually indistinguishable from that of regular Coke. But Coca-Cola has also reduced the amount of sugar in regular Fanta by 30 per cent and Lilt by 60 per cent, without anyone really noticing. You simply cannot buy full-sugar Fanta or Lilt anymore.
"We don't always flag it with a sign on the front saying this is no longer full-sugar because, for some people, taste is the most important thing, and you don't always want to tell people in big letters what you've done," says Helen Munday, Coca-Cola's director of science. " 1/8But 3/8, like many responsible manufacturers, we want to play our part in making sure that people have foods that can fit into their healthy lifestyles." The world's largest fizzy drink manufacturer spending millions on reducing the calorie content of two of its biggest brands and not even telling any of its customers what it's done? It sounds a little strange. But, multinationals like Coca-Cola have not got to where they are today without learning how to predict trends and stave off potential crises. Realizing how much pressure politicians are under to look tough on junk food, they have reasoned it's better to move fast and prove themselves responsible, than to stay still and ultimately provoke new legislation which could impose expensive burdens on them to reformulate their products faster than they can or would like to.
Following the same logic, United Biscuits has reduced the saturated fat of McVitie's Digestives by 80 per cent and Hobnobs by 75 per cent, Nestle has reduced sodium levels in Shreddies by 43 per cent and Kraft Foods has globally reformulated or launched more than 5,000 products.
There have also been significant changes at McDonald's,
which now includes the calorie content of its products on its menus and has
reduced the saturated fat and calories in its burgers. It also cooks its chips
in a healthier canola-blend oil and includes slices of apples in the Happy
Meals sold to children in the
Manufacturers are also keeping a keen eye on the latest trend for so-called "nutricosmetics"; foods that improve the structure of the skin. Mars tested the proposition in 2008 with Dove Beautiful and Dove Vitalize, chocolate with added flavonols and minerals, but none of the major producers has so far developed a range for the mainstream market. There is also a line of prototype sweets, currently being trialled by the German-based company Beneo, that strengthen bones and improve digestion.
Of course, we shouldn't get carried away. Junk-food manufacturers are still motivated primarily by profit and will do whatever they can to maximise the bottom line without damaging their image. Many low-fat products have simply replaced fat with sugar and are still far from healthy.
What's more, if the public protests against the taste of a reformulated product - as happened earlier this month with Heinz's HP Sauce, which, it was revealed, had had its salt levels reduced surreptitiously - the producer can normally be expected to change it back.
All of which means there is still a gap in the market for a smaller company to become some sort of consumer champion. Bear, a healthy snack-food producer which was set up two years ago by personal trainer Hayley Gait-Golding and her husband Andrew, could be that company. Its Yo Yos fruit rolls, aimed at children, and its Fruit and Granola Nibbles for adults, have been flying off the shelves in Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury's and seem to have the appeal of a "treat" without any of the corresponding ill effects of chocolate or crisps. The company's turnover for this year is already pounds 3?million and, as it continues to grow and win fans with its refusal to use chemicals and preservatives, its popularity might force the standards of bigger companies upwards.
In the meantime, Dr Mike Rayner,
director of the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at the
"There is some evidence to show that some things are
improving in
End Transmission