An employee who worked on the butcher's counter at an Adelaide supermarket has tested positive for hepatitis A, prompting a health warning.

The supermarket specialises in retailing products to the Afghan community.

"While the chances of becoming infected are small, we're asking customers who bought produce from the butcher's counter during the infectious period to be aware of the risk," director of public health Kevin Buckett said.

Hepatitis A is spread when traces of faecal matter containing the virus contaminate hands, objects, water or food and are then taken in by mouth.

The 'ole poop-on-the-hands-oral-fecal-route routine.

Dr Buckett said employees from the Vatan supermarket had been offered a vaccination against hepatitis A and health officials continued to work with the business owners to inform the local Afghan community of the health warning.

He said 55 cases of hepatitis A had been reported in South Australia so far this year compared to just 19 in 2008.

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A New South Wales Food Authority crackdown on backyard butchers has caught unlicensed operators producing and selling smallgoods from homes in Sydney.

The NSW has been targeting illicit meat processors and confiscated almost 120 kilograms of homemade nem chua - a Vietnamese-style fermented pork.

The authority made 10 seizures of the product from illegal processors operating out of homes that were then selling the meat to butchers' shops, restaurants and private consumers.

Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said the crackdown, which started in March, would continue.
 

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The families of the 150 sickened and one killed in the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in Wales told a public inquiry today it was "galling" that lessons from other outbreaks were not learned and that the events caused "lasting and untold harm" to many families.

Mark Powell QC (no relation but a fine Welsh name), representing the families, said warnings had not been heeded following an E.coli outbreak in Scotland between 1996 and 1997 which left 21 elderly people dead.

"It is galling to the families that many of the observations the Sheriff's inquiry, with the substitution of the name of Tudor for that of Barr, the butcher involved in that outbreak, could be written about the 2005 outbreak. Much of what was said then could equally be said now."

The inquiry, chaired by Professor Hugh Pennington, who also chaired an inquiry following the 1996 outbreak in Scotland, is hearing final submissions on Wednesday and Thursday.

It was as if the report following the Scottish outbreak was never written, he told Professor Pennington, adding, "The families are determined that in 10 year's time, the same might not be said of your inquiry."

The inquiry’s findings and any recommendations are not expected to be published until later this year.

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I grew up in a deer hunting family, and although my own deer hunting career started and ended when I was 13, I was so used to eating venison that beef tasted weird. I still remember one deer my family butchered at home, and my brother chased me around the house with an eyeball. We packaged and marked the cuts, but they stayed in our family freezer. Perhaps we had some guests over for dinner or gave some to a friend at church, but if anyone got sick, it was us.

In Omaha, apparently, things are run differently. Deer processor and poacher extraordinaire Jack McClanahan was finally put out of the summer sausage business.

According to the Omaha World-Herald McClanahan processed and sold tons of tainted summer sausage, much of it from poached deer. McClanahan told federal undercover agents that he sometimes shot deer at night with a rifle from the bathroom window of his home in Omaha's Ponca Hills and then would retrieve the carcasses in the morning. He baited the deer with corn, used a spotlight to blind them, and then shot.

McClanahan is a retired butcher who sold summer sausage in 5-pound casings at $3.50 a pound. He also made salami, jerky and snack sticks, and authorities estimated annual production at about 10,000 pounds.

Mark Webb, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent, said mouse droppings, maggots, deer carcasses, dried blood, deer hair and other contaminants littered the commercial-grade meat processing equipment that filled McClanahan's three-car garage. There was no running water for cleaning. When wildlife agents seized the equipment and cleaned it with hot water and soap at a carwash, they discovered two lead bullets the size of a man's thumb lodged in the grinder. The blade had been shaving lead into the meat.

The butcher-poacher was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years of probation Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

My family and most deer hunters I have known have a strong conservationist ethic. I was raised to respect wildlife and have a deep appreciation for nature. McClanahan, and other poachers, are appalling, but making humans sick and putting their lives at risk with filthy processing conditions is even more disgusting.

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