Category Archives: Fail!

Raw milk cheese yummy and potential killer! FDA Shuts Down NY Cheese Maker for Listeria Contamination

Under the consent decree, Finger Lakes, the manufacturer and distributor of raw cow’s milk cheese, cannot receive, prepare, process, pack, hold or distribute food until it demonstrates that it has developed a control program to eliminate Listeria monocytogenes from its production facility and products.  Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen that can cause serious illness and death.

 

The company must, among other actions, hire an independent laboratory to collect and analyze samples for the presence of Listeria; retain an independent sanitation expert; develop a program to control Listeria in the production facility and to train employees on sanitary food handling; and destroy all food items currently in the facility. Should the company be permitted to resume operations, the FDA may require the company to recall products or cease production if future violations occur.

via FDA Shuts Down NY Cheese Maker for Listeria Contamination.

Pedaling Cincinnati’s hills is hard; this shop’s electric bikes can help – Cincinnati Business Courier

“In Cincinnati – looking like you are doing something is as or more important than actually doing something – so look for a lot of people riding bikes that are doing the work and not their legs – grin.”

All Show-No Go

“We had a grand opening last Saturday, and everybody that has ridden a bike really super, super likes it,” he said.

Electric bicycles have a motor that can either assist as a rider pedals, or it can take over and power the bike without any need to pedal. Riders can also turn the motor off and pedal normally. Electric bicycles can go up to 20 miles per hour and have a range of 40 to 50 miles on a single charge. It costs only 5 cents to charge the bike fully. Unlike motor scooters, the motor on an electric bike is almost silent, Powell said.

Segway sells and rents electric bicycles in Cincinnati, but Pedego Cincinnati alone converts mechanical bikes into electric bicycles.

Powell said it costs between $350 and $1,500 to convert a mechanical bike to use an electric motor. The difference is in how powerful the battery is and the quality of the motor, he said.

via Pedaling Cincinnati’s hills is hard; this shop’s electric bikes can help – Cincinnati Business Courier.

“For Tennessee lawmakers, punishing pregnant women is more important than protecting fetal life.”

As I mentioned yesterday, Tennessee has officially become the first state in the country to criminalize drug use during pregnancy. The new law, which was signed by the Governor yesterday despite the best efforts of reproductive justice advocates, holds pregnant people criminally liable for harm caused to their fetuses or newborns.

Over at The Nation, Michelle Goldberg points out that, in addition to being just generally terrible for the health of both pregnant people and fetuses, the law could lead to more abortions — since folks who have used drugs during pregnancy may opt to terminate (which, lest we forget, is still totally legal) instead of risking up to 15 years in prison. In fact, that was a concern expressed by at least some anti-choicers when the legislature was considering the bill.

But, as Goldberg notes, apparently most ultimately chose to prioritize punishing pregnant people over protecting fetal life. Which, given that anti-choicers consistently oppose things, like birth control and comprehensive sex-ed, that would reduce abortion rates, is hardly surprising — but telling nonetheless.

via “For Tennessee lawmakers, punishing pregnant women is more important than protecting fetal life.”.

Avian Flu Diary: WHO: Antibiotic Resistance – Serious, World-Wide Threat

30 April 2014 | Geneva – A new report by WHO–its first to look at antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance, globally–reveals that this serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country. Antibiotic resistance–when bacteria change so antibiotics no longer work in people who need them to treat infections–is now a major threat to public health.

“Without urgent, coordinated action by many stakeholders, the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill,” says Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security. “Effective antibiotics have been one of the pillars allowing us to live longer, live healthier, and benefit from modern medicine. Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections and also change how we produce, prescribe and use antibiotics, the world will lose more and more of these global public health goods and the implications will be devastating.”

via Avian Flu Diary: WHO: Antibiotic Resistance – Serious, World-Wide Threat.

New York Times: USA – Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett dies of heart attack on the gurney after given unknown lethal drug. The other execution delayed. (EN) | No to the death penalty, Community of Sant’Egidio

A doctor started to administer the first drug, a sedative intended to knock the man out and forestall pain, at 6:23 p.m. Ten minutes later, the doctor announced that Mr. Lockett was unconscious, and he started to administer the next two drugs, a paralytic and one intended to make the heart stop.

At that point, witnesses said, things began to go awry. Mr. Lockett’s body twitched, his foot shook and he mumbled, witnesses said.

At 6:37 p.m., he tried to rise and exhaled loudly. At that point, prison officials pulled a curtain in front of the witnesses and the doctor discovered a “vein failure,” Mr. Patton said.

Without effective sedation, the second two drugs are known to cause agonizing suffocation and pain.

Mr. Lockett’s apparent revival and writhing raised questions about the doctor’s initial declaration that he was unconscious and are sure to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the sedative used.

via New York Times: USA – Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett dies of heart attack on the gurney after given unknown lethal drug. The other execution delayed. (EN) | No to the death penalty, Community of Sant’Egidio.

Jewish extremists spray anti-Muslim graffiti on mosque | Maan News Agency

Vandals left anti-Muslim graffiti on a mosque in northern Israel, police said on Tuesday, the latest in a string of racist and religious attacks against Palestinians.

“Unidentified people drew a Star of David and wrote ‘close the mosques and open yeshivas’ (Jewish seminaries) on the outer wall” of the mosque in Fureidis, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.

“The tires of several cars parked nearby were slashed,” he said, adding that “crimes committed for nationalist motives are extremely serious.”

On April 18, suspected Jewish extremists set fire to a mosque and sprayed racist graffiti in the town of Umm al-Fahm.

A week earlier, Jewish extremists sprayed anti-Christian graffiti on the walls of a convent west of Jerusalem and damaged vehicles parked nearby.

Slogans including “Mary is a cow,” “price tag,” and “America (is) Nazi Germany” were sprayed in Hebrew on the walls of the Roman Catholic sanctuary.

In March, vandals slashed the tyres of more than 40 cars in East Jerusalem, spraying a slogan reading: “Gentiles in the land are enemies.”

via Jewish extremists spray anti-Muslim graffiti on mosque | Maan News Agency.

Holocaust survivors feel abandoned by Netanyahu – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Everything that Netanyahu did in those years implied that he was acting out of a conscious need to become the one to prevent a second Holocaust. Yet, those same years were also the period in which the economic, medical and emotional state of Holocaust survivors living in Israel kept declining because of their advanced age alongside their physical and emotional scars from the war. Their medical costs have increased, and their ability to pay for treatments, medication, food and heating in winter has been reduced significantly. Social Security payments they receive are absorbed by the steep cost of living and cuts to pensions, implemented by none other than Netanyahu, as part of the economic decrees he devised as finance minister in 2003.

via Holocaust survivors feel abandoned by Netanyahu – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Eugene Robinson: The racists among us – The Washington Post

The Republican Party, Fox News and a majority of the Supreme Court would like to believe such naked prejudice is history. Yet some big-city school systems are as segregated as they were in the 1960s. Leading public universities are admitting fewer black students than a decade ago. The black-white wealth gap has grown in recent years. Blacks are no more likely than whites to use illegal drugs, yet four times more likely to be arrested and jailed for it.

No, racism isn’t back. It never went away.

via Eugene Robinson: The racists among us – The Washington Post.

Saudi prince slaughters 2,100 nearly extinct birds – for thrills? | Green Prophet

Saudi royals seem to be more hazardous to the world bird-life than wind turbines and skyscrapers! A Saudi prince poached thousands of protected birds during a 21-day hunting safari in Pakistan, so claims a new report.

Why would Pakistan allow exemptions from global conservation regulations? The bird meat is considered an aphrodisiac, which may explain why the men hunt.

Prince Fahd bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud reportedly killed 1,977 of the nearly-extinct houbara bustards last January, violating his hunting permit by killing so many of the birds. The rest of his party killed an additional 123 of the creatures, raising the final death toll to a staggering 2,100.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources estimates the houbara bustards’ global population to be at 110,000, declining by around 20% annually.

The incident, described in a report dated February 2014, says that during the safari the prince hunted the birds for 15 days in reserved and protected areas, poached birds in other areas for six days and then “took rest” for two days.

The report was prepared by local divisional forest and wildlife department officer Jaffar Baloch, according to Dawn News.

via Saudi prince slaughters 2,100 nearly extinct birds – for thrills? | Green Prophet.

Saudi Arabia MERS death toll rises above 100 | News | DW.DE | 28.04.2014

The Health Ministry in Riyadh on Sunday confirmed it had identified 16 more cases of the disease within a 24-hour period.

In a statement on its website late in the evening, the ministry reported there had been eight deaths – taking the number of people who have died from the disease, which first emerged two years ago, to 102.

Of those, a full 39 deaths have been this month. Among the latest deaths was a nine-month-old infant, the ministry said.

via Saudi Arabia MERS death toll rises above 100 | News | DW.DE | 28.04.2014.