At least 16 people have been sickened by an outbreak of foodborne illness which started at North Cape Elementary School in Wisconsin.

"We are in the process of doing an investigation," said Cheryl Mazmanian, director and health officer for the Western Racine County Health Department.

The incident apparently began about June 3 when a number of foods were served at a celebration for fourth-graders. Symptoms - diarrhea and similar gastrointestinal problems - were first reported about June 6, she said.

"Raw milk was served. We have not pinpointed it as that."

The 16 people infected includes family members who contracted the germs brought home from the school.

Mazmanian the public health type, actually said, As in similar cases, prevention comes down to washing hands and practicing good hygiene.

How about don’t serve raw milk to little kids?
 

Jimmy John’s launched a new ad campaign earlier this month stressing speed instead of safety after making 130 or so people barf with salmonella-in-sprouts-on-sandwiches in two separate outbreaks.

Over the past two days, seven core members of the Jimmy John’s Workers Union were fired at five Minneapolis-area locations for distributing hundreds of posters claiming that eating at Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches puts customers at risk of food-borne illness.

The poster shows identical sandwiches, one labeled as being made by a healthy worker and one by a sick worker. The poster asks if customers can spot a difference between the two. “We hope your immune system is ready because you’re about to take the sandwich test,” it reads.

I would have gone with the sprout and ingredient angle, what with all the sick people, but having sick sandwich artists work is an excellent way to spread norovirus, salmonella and lots of other nasties.

According to The Minnesota Daily, the posters were in response to the union’s unmet demands for paid sick days, which “force” employees to come in sick, putting customers at risk, they said.’’

Union supporter David Boehnke, said, “We were fired for saying we want better working conditions for ourselves. We were standing up for ourselves.”

Boehnke said their activities were legally protected because the employees were organizing for higher wages. However Franchise Owner Mike Mulligan of MikLin Enterprises disagrees.

According to a statement from MikLin, the posters disparaged the company’s reputation and showed “extreme disloyalty and malicious intent to damage” the company.

If you want to preserve the company’s reputation, try not to make customers barf – it’s bad for business.

The workers currently have a four-point system, in which workers are deducted one point for missing work without finding a replacement and half a point for coming to work 10 minutes late.

At four points, the worker is fired.

Maybe? Who knows? But with all the gushing --"The Food Safety Modernization Act is the most significant food safety law of the past 100 years" – Debora MacKenzie of New Scientist presents me as food safety grump.

It’s accurate.

Margaret Hamburg, head of the FDA, said at a press conference on 3 January that the law will shift the FDA's approach to food safety "from a reactive to a preventive mode", regardless of funding.

Didn’t that happen years ago?

On 15 December the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its first estimate since 1999 of the toll of food-borne diseases in the US: 48 million people sick each year, 128,000 hospitalized and 3000 deaths.

This is down from 5,000 deaths in 1999, but it could be even lower if the FDA inspected food producers more often, says Michael Jacobson, head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food-safety pressure group in Washington DC. The FDA, which regulates all foods except meat and eggs in the US, normally inspects producers once every five or 10 years.

The new law gives the FDA more inspectors and mandates more inspections. It also requires producers to have written risk-management plans, requires importers to check the safety of imported products, and excludes foreign producers who refuse FDA inspections. In a food-poisoning emergency it gives the FDA power to inspect producers' records and to order a recall if a producer refuses to do it voluntarily.

The last measure "is a red herring", says Powell: faced with a public relations disaster, no producer ever refuses to recall suspect food.

The bill gives the FDA the money to do its extra inspections by allowing it to charge for them. The expected bill, $1.4 billion over five years, is far less, the FDA argues, than the cost of poisoning incidents to the food industry.

The most effective way forward, Powell believes, is to make producers list safety procedures and track records on food packaging, and compete for buyers on the basis of safety.

Food service employees working while sick is a recurring theme in restaurant-related outbreaks.

Add this scenario:

An outbreak of diarrhea has decimated the staff of a Tex-Mex restaurant and Godfrey the manager, is on the phone imploring a staff member to come in anyway, even if that means wearing an adult diaper.

“Astronauts wear them. Do you think you’re better than an astronaut?”

The scene is from an upcoming Canadian movie called Servitude, and like the best comedy, has an element of truth.

Godrey is being played by Kids in the Hall/News Radio alumnus, Dave Foley. He’s one of the French fur trappers in the bit below.