Leftovers should not be left outside - or you may barf
Nine children and three women from a village in the Galilee who attended a wedding celebration Sunday ended up Monday evening at the emergency room with diarrhea, fierce stomachache and vomiting. The Jerusalem Post reports that seven of the children and two of the women had to be hospitalized for observation.
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They were diagnosed with food poisoning tracked back to the "doggie bags" taken and eaten at home. Amil Aga, epidemiological supervisor at the hospital, reached the conclusion that the leftovers had been left outside rather than in refrigeration for several hours until the extended family got home.
Hospital director-general Dr. Masad Barhoom warned people that during the hot summer months, store raw and prepared food under proper conditions to reduce the risk of food poisoning.
(The sticker, right, was a prototype; phone number and web site won't work; but we can come up with a new one -- dp).
Couple didn't know what they were eating
A 47-year-old Israeli woman crawled feebly to the front door to call for help from a neighbor before passing out. Her partner, also 47, had already fallen unconscious.
FOX News reports that the couple began to feel dizzy after eating a meal of fried blowfish, and could barely breathe when the ambulance arrived.
“From what they have been able to tell us,” Rambam Hospital spokesman David Ratner said, “a neighbor gave them the fish as a gift. They didn’t know what it was; they fried it up for dinner and ate it.“
The couple was unaware of the neurotoxins contained in the skin and certain internal organs of blowfish that are highly toxic to humans. Contacting or ingesting these toxins leads to muscle paralysis and can result in an excruciatingly slow and painful death.
Marine biologist Dr. Nadav Shashar said, though the fish is the second most poisonous vertebrae in the world, it is considered a delicacy in Japan and Korea, "but they know how to prepare it."
Dr. Shashar concluded by saying, “The basic rule of thumb is simple: Don’t stick things in your mouth if you don’t know what they are.”
Don't eat poop or blowfish poison.
Basil from Israel linked to UK Salmonella outbreak
I sorta figured out how to cook with fresh herbs this year. Fresh basil on tomatoes, loads of sage on poultry, rosemary and garlic in everything.
But fresh herbs are, like other fresh things, fresh, and therein lies the risk – anything that comes into contact has the potential to contaminate. And Amy and I watched squirrels and snails drawn to our fresh herbs, with their squirrel and snail shit.
The UK Telegraph reports today that basil grown in Israel is thought to have been the cause of 32 cases of salmonella in people in England and Wales last year, government scientists said.
The Health Protection Agency and the Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services sampled 3,760 packets of fresh ready to eat herbs between May and October last year and found a small proportion were contaminated with unsafe levels of Salmonella Senftenberg which can cause diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain and fever.
Jim McLauchlin, Director of the Health Protection Agency's Food, Water & Environmental Microbiology Services, said,
"Our survey found six herb types to be contaminated with ten different types of salmonella. The basil samples that were found to be contaminated with S. Senftenberg were all grown in Israel. Investigations undertaken at the time of these samples testing positive identified thirty-two human cases of S. Senftenberg in individuals throughout England and Wales, and it is likely that these cases were linked to consumption of fresh basil.”
