It’s not just the greater Atlanta-area where wannabies are trying to trade on the rock-star status of public health inspectors.

In India, the Oshiwara police have arrested two men for allegedly posing as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials and trying to extort Rs 50,000 from a bakery in the area.

Police officers said the incident took place on Friday afternoon when four men entered the bakery shop on SV Road in Jogeshwari West and complained about the quality of food. They told the owner of the bakery that they were officers from FDA and had been getting complaints from its customers about the inferior quality of products.

They demanded Rs 50,000 from him to shut the case and not seize his shop and goods in it. Sensing foul play, the owner asked them to show him their identification cards.

The men presented their ID cards, but the owner found them suspicious. He immediately alerted the police patrolling the area. On the arrival of the police, two of the fake FDA officers managed to flee, while the other two were nabbed and arrested.

Twin Trees Too, a popular Syracuse, New York restaurant, will be undergoing a serious cleaning over the next 18 hours, as the number of customers with norovirus is now up to 70.

The health department says there’s no evidence the bug is still being spread, but as a precaution, the restaurant is voluntarily closing for the first half of the day on Wednesday so Serve-Pro can come in and do a thorough cleaning.

The Onondaga County Health Department suspects the norovirus – or stomach bug – was spread in the restaurant sometime around the last weekend of February and was likely caused by sick employees preparing food.

While the restaurant is well known for its pies, it may have been some other foods that were contaminated.

"The investigation is still pending, but we do think that it’s more likely to be related to a salad or antipasto than to the pizza at this time,” said Onondaga County Health Commissioner, Dr. Cynthia Morrow.

A new report says Canadians suffer more foodborne illness than Americans, that most of it happens with restaurant meals, and that consumers are sorta dumb too.

Unfortunately, the report relies heavily on other reports that are not peer-reviewed, assumptions, and suffers from highly selective referencing to make a point – and I have no idea what that point is.

The report, Improving Food Safety in Canada: Toward a More Risk Responsive System, released by the Conference Board of Canada to coincide with their food safety conference and upstaged by Galen Weston Jr.’s comments that farmer’s markets were going to kill someone, says half or more of all cases of foodborne illnesses in Canada are picked up in restaurants or from other food service providers.

Daniel Munro, Principal Research Associate, said, “It is commonly assumed that farms and food processing companies hold the most responsibility for ensuring safe food, and their role is critical. But most foodborne illnesses are associated with the preparation and storage practices of restaurants, food service operations, and consumers themselves.”

I’m not sure who makes that assumption. It is estimated there are 6.8 million cases of food-borne illness annually in Canada.

Part of the problem can be traced to restaurant inspection systems that are seen as too sporadic to have an impact on restaurants’ day-to-day food safety practices.

Garth Whyte, president and CEO of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association dismissed the report describing it as "shockingly short on facts."

"This study did not even bother contacting us about what we are doing, and if they had, they would know that there are three government recognized food safety training programs that train tens of thousands food handlers per year," Whyte said.

Except training alone doesn’t do much for food safety behavior.

The report provides a number of recommendations to improve Canada’s food safety system including providing restaurants and other food service providers with timely information and advice on how they can minimize food safety risks.

We call them infosheets.

It also urges governments to build on current consumer awareness initiatives by engaging consumers directly in discussions about food safety in their households.

The report offers no advice on how to do that.

Another in the weekly we’ve-been-doing-it-this-way-all-our-lives-and-never-got-sick declarations from a restaurant tentatively fingered in an outbreak of illness.

The Hickory Daily Record reports 40 people have complained to officials at Catawba County Public Health that they got sick after eating a meal at Conover’s Harbor Inn Seafood restaurant.

One thing the victims have in common is that they ate at Harbor Inn on Jan. 13.
Health officials are working to determine what the illness is and what caused it, said Catawba County Public Health Outreach Manager Amy McCauley

The first complaints came in on Jan. 17. As of Monday, 40 cases had been reported. None have required hospitalization, said Catawba County Health Director Doug Urland.

“Our Environmental Health workers have been to the restaurant almost every day to investigate and educate the staff about proper food handling techniques and to make sure they are stringent about safe food handling techniques,” McCauley said.

George Ziogas owns the Conover Harbor Inn and said he has no idea why some of his customers got sick following their Friday the 13th meal.

“The Health Department came in and they could not find anything. All of the food temperatures were OK. All of the salad bar temperatures were OK,” he said. “We’ve been open for 23 years and we’ve never had a problem.”

Recent inspection results have given Harbor Inn consistently high marks.
The most recent inspection came on Dec. 29 and Harbor Inn got an A with a score of 99.5. Three months earlier the restaurant scored 99.5. In June, Harbor Inn earned a 100.5.

“I want people to know we’re going to be here a long time – we’re not going anywhere – we’ve been here 23 years and this was a one-time incident,” Ziogas said.

“I eat here all the time and I like the food – if I didn’t, I wouldn’t come back,” said Cora Greene, of Mountain View, on Tuesday, after sharing a meal of whitefish with her son. “This can happen anyplace, but I’ve never gotten sick. I’ll be back.”

Health officials are working to identify the mysterious illness and its cause, but won’t speculate on what it may be.

On Friday, Catawba County Public Health began distributing stool sample kits to the victims of the illness at the request of the North Carolina Division of Public Health. The people complaining of illnesses related to Harbor Inn meals have been instructed to use the kit and return it to Catawba County Public Health, which will then send the kits to the state lab for testing.

It takes about a week to process the tests, and it won’t be clear what’s been making people sick until the results are in.

None of the distributed kits had been returned to Catawba County Public Health as of Tuesday, McCauley said.

The symptoms associated with the Harbor Inn outbreak are intense nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The onset came within 12 to 24 hours following the Jan. 13 meal and lasted from 24 to 36 hours for most of the victims, according to reports from Catawba County Public Health.