A new challenge...

I've just agreed to 'ghost write' the David Wilson blog for my old school mate, Dave 'Snooks' Wilson. The URL is http://thedavidwilson.blogspot.com/ and although I have a free hand in what I report, I have been given strict boundaries including a must inclusion of Aston Villa at least once a week. As we, along with Phil Finney and Richard (1099) Phillips were the only Villa fans in our year at school, then that shouldn't be too hard.

in reference to: Bob De Bilde (view on Google Sidewiki)

130 school students suffer food poisoning

Ahmedabad, Jan 27: Over 130 students of a primary school in Junagadh district of Gujarat suffered from food poisoning after participating in mid-day meal today, police said.

The incident took place in a government-run primary school of Navadra village, they said.

"Nearly 160 students took the mid-day meal at the school today, out of which 130 complained of feeling sick," Junagadh District Development Officer (DDO), Banchhandi Pani told PTI.

"Nearly 103 students have been referred to Veraval civil hospital, while 16 are getting treatment at Prabhas Patan primary health centre (PHC) while some have been sent home after treatment," he said.

According to Bani, the students were served Lapsi (prepared using wheat flour, sugar and ghee) and potato curry.

Police said samples of the cooked food as well as the raw material have been sent to the forensic science laboratory at Junagadh district headquarters for tests.

Be cool: Don't risk food poisoning in school lunches

NSW Spokesman Steve Whan

A NSW Food Authority survey has found that school children in Australia are at heightened risk of food poisoning from the food inside their lunch boxes if they are not kept cool throughout the morning.

According to the New South Wales (NSW) media release, “Keep lunches cool for school – simple tips to avoid food poisoning,“ over 70% of students are at increased risk of food poisoning because they do not keep their food lunches at cool temperatures for the four or five hours before it is eaten.

The NSW Food Authority survey looked at 766 students from Sydney primary schools. The survey found that 29% of the lunches were kept at a safe, cool temperature so that bacteria does not build up on and in the food.

However, over 70% of the lunches were up to 12% warmer than considered safe by the NSW agency.

Steve Whan, Minister for Primary Industries for the NSW government, stated, “It is essential lunches are kept cool for school – sandwiches with meat or chicken can sit for up to five hours before kids eat them, so they can have much more bacteria if food is stored at room temperature.”

He added, “On a very hot day that can be a recipe for food poisoning – the warm summer temperatures provide an ideal environment for bacteria to multiply.”

Whan also stated, “While the majority of lunchboxes are kept inside the classroom, alarmingly the survey also revealed there were a handful of students which kept their lunch outside in the sun – which should be moved to the shade immediately.”

Page two continues with solutions to the problem of food poisoning and school lunches.

Was it my multi-blogged moan?

Was it my multi-blogged moan that un-locked my new blog http://sequels-and-trilogies.blogspot.com/ ?
I know that blogger took the full 20 days to un-lock a blog of a friend of mine. Now his block WAS highly political but there should be no difference.
Perhaps it was my genuine threat to move to wordpress?

Who knows?

Thank You blogger for acting quickly

Bob de Bilde

in reference to: Prequels, Sequels & Trilogies (view on Google Sidewiki)

Food poisoning bug is found in two thirds of supermarket chicken

Contamination fears: Fresh chickens on sale at a superstore

Nearly two thirds of chicken sold in supermarkets carry the bug that causes most cases of food poisoning in Britain.

Now the Food Standards Agency is calling on stores to reduce contamination levels.

It said 65.2 per cent of all fresh chicken sold in supermarkets across the country is contaminated with campylobacter.

An estimated 440,000 people fall ill and 80 die each year after becoming infected.

Cooking chicken properly and disinfecting contaminated areas kills the bug.

But the number of human cases has leapt by more than 40,000 compared to four years ago.

Yesterday FSA chief executive Tim Smith told the watchdog's board: 'I wrote to the chief executives of the major food retailers - Asda, Sainsbury's, the Co-op, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Morrisons - to highlight the issue of campylobacter in chicken and to request their help in tackling this problem.

'We sense the time is right for retailers to make the sort of changes to buying policies, specifications and future purchasing strategies which will ensure the speediest most effective reduction in campylobacter incidence in their own products.'

The FSA has called on supermarkets to attend an international summit in March looking at ways to clean up chicken. Officials are investigating whether steam cleaning or deep freezing the birds for a short period will eliminate contamination.

In its survey of 3,274 samples of chicken from major supermarkets, the FSA also found strains of the bug resistant to antibiotics had risen from 48 per cent in 2001 to 87 per cent last year.

Andrew Wadge, the FSA's chief scientist, said: 'For a lot of us who are fit and healthy, food poisoning is unpleasant and inconvenient - but for others it is a very serious issue.

'The concern is not limited to eating under-cooked chicken. When you bring it into your kitchen, you may be cross-contaminating your hands and transferring campylobacter to salads and fresh produce.'

Other countries, notably New Zealand, have reduced campylobacter contamination by disinfecting chicken meat with chlorine washes before it reaches the shops but this method is banned in the EU.

The British Retail Consortium said: 'This is a complex issue. The biology of campylobacter is not yet fully understood and, so far, there is no proven single solution.'

Bob de Bilde gets his 15 minutes of fame...

on IS A C*NT...

http://isacunt.blogspot.com/2010/01/bob-de-bilde.html

Thanks to GOT & the crew

in reference to: Bob De Bilde (view on Google Sidewiki)

My Disgust at Blogger

Blogger has marked one of my blogs (Prequels, Sequels & Trilogies) as spam...

It will be deleted within 20 days if I do not lodge a review

WTF Blogger... I am seriously considering moving all my blogs to the more versatile Wordpress !

I am reposting this on ALL my other open blogs using the sidewikibar thingy!!!

in reference to: My Sony Ericsson Sucks: My Disgust at Blogger (view on Google Sidewiki)

Pâté sandwiches leave hundreds sick in Binh Thuan

More than 200 people were rushed to the hospital with severe food poisoning after eating homemade pâté sandwiches at two local shops in Binh Thuan Province, the local health department has said.

Binh Thuan authorities forced local resident Vo Thi Cam Tu to close her Cam Tu bread shop in Bac Binh District indefinitely on Wednesday after finding discovering nearly 180 of the patients had eaten at the establishment prior to becoming sick.

“The main cause of the poisoning was pâté,” the Bac Binh Preventive Health Center was quoted by the press as saying on Friday

Cam Tu shop, based in Cho Lau Town, self-processed all the paste and meat in their sandwiches, said the center’s director Dinh The Hung.

Bui Thi Phuong Binh, who lives next to the Cam Tu shop, said she bought two loaves of bread from the shop on Monday, one plain and another with stuffing including the pate.

She ate the stuffed one and got sick while her child ate the other loaf with an omelet and was fine, Binh said.

More than 170 people in Cho Lau were admitted to the province general hospital between Monday and Wednesday with symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea and headaches. They had all eaten sandwiches from Cam Tu on Sunday.

The hospital said it had treated 173 people in the case but many more had treated themselves at home or visited private clinics.

Nguyen Quang Thoa, deputy director of the hospital, said this was the first mass poisoning case he had seen after 20 years working in the district. Rooms for in-patients at the Infectious Diseases Department were filled to the brim and the hospital had some patients lying on the floor in the halls, he said.

Forty others in Hong Thai Commune were hospitalized the same way after they ate sandwiches from Thuy Giang shop in Dang Thi Chau Giang, which bought its pâté from Cam Tu.

Giang’s shop has also been indefinitely closed.

“There are problems in the way Tu makes pâté,” Hung said.

“It’s very lucky Tu has only supplied her homemade pâté to Giang, or many more people would have been poisoned.”

Cam Tu shop is known as a popular sandwich shop in Cho Lau and has been granted food safety and hygiene certificates. Bread at the shop is a favorite breakfast among local residents.

Authorities are inspecting the pâté to pinpoint the cause of the poisoning

School food: serving up salmonella and E. coli

From The Boston Globe: Not to give fast-food companies any bright ideas, but a wicked ad campaign could show Ronald McDonald, the Burger King, and the KFC colonel waiting outside America’s high schools with Pied Piper smiles as students flee buildings at lunch time.

A USA Today investigative report found that the nation’s fast-food franchises test their beef far more stringently for harmful salmonella or E. coli bacteria than the US Department of Agriculture does for the beef it purchases for the National School Lunch Program.

The newspaper found that the government will buy beef with generic E. coli counts 10 times the amount that goes into Jack in the Box burgers.

The USDA still purchases the meat of old, “spent hens,’’ a practice long ago discarded by KFC and Campbell Soup because the meat is tougher and there’s a possibility that older chickens have more bone splinters that may aid the transmission of salmonella.

For decades, the mediocre quality of school lunches has been the butt of student jokes and sober Government Accountability Office reports.

The laudable intention of President Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to make the school lunch program a more nutritious tool against obesity and hunger does not stand a chance if the perception grows that school food is not only dull, but dangerous. The USDA has a lot on its plate, but it can ill afford parent panic over cafeteria cutlets.

The agency must revise its standards immediately before Ronald McDonald, the Burger King, and the colonel stare at us on TV to say with a straight - and legitimate - face, “We’re more safe than your school lunch.’’