British school headmaster channels John Cleese in response to campylobacter outbreak
My favorite John Cleese movie is not one of the Monty Python things, or a Fish Called Wanda, or the Faulty Towers TV bits. It is the rarely seen and vastly underappreciated 1986 effort, Clockwise. It is so … British.
“Brian Stimpson (John Cleese) is the headmaster of a comprehensive (high) school in England. He sets himself, his staff and pupils very high standards. On the way to a conference at which he is to talk, all manner of disasters strike."
Brian Stimpson came to mind after This is Croydon Today reported that Cumnor House School, in Pampisford Road, South Croydon, has been hit by an outbreak of campylobacter.
Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt, who I am totally envisioning as John Cleese, insists there is no proof that the bug came from the school kitchen.
"We have had five confirmed cases of campylobacter which is a type of food poisoning.
“The recommendation that the environmental health and independent food hygiene consultant made are all very minor and by minor I mean temperatures of fridges. But there is nothing sinister.
"We're talking about food storage, temperatures of fridges not being too high or too low, making sure we don't prepare raw meat alongside salads.”
Yes, John-Cleese-in-Clockwise character: don’t prepare raw meat alongside salads.
Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt also said,
"In terms of tracing this back to the kitchen that will never be proved one way or the other."
How reassuring.
Make customers barf, score a perfect rating
Food safety culture is miniscule compared to food porn culture.
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How is it that Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant was rated as a perfect 10 in the new edition of the Good Food Guide 2010, despite being closed for a norovirus outbreak?
Making customers barf doesn’t seem to count in the scoring system.
Good Food Guide editor and food porn aficionado Elizabeth Carter, said
"It is the most extraordinary restaurant in Britain. … It’s a destination restaurant, a place you save up to go to, and you will remember it forever."
Especially the barfing.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail of Listeria
As part of her cultural education, about-to-be graduate student Katie has been exposed –inundated – with some of the favorite movies of Doug and Amy.
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Last week it was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Young Katie wasn’t too impressed, and I’ll admit, the film has aged.
But certain bits still come readily to mind. When Amy asks me to clean up the yard and landscape, I think of the Knights Who Say Nee and ask for shrubberies from Roger the Shrubber. When Amy and her colleagues speak French, I want to taunt them John Cleese-style, such as, “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries.”
So when Canadian Agriculture Minister and would-be standup comedian, Gerry Ritz, told special parliamentary hearings tonight that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has "suffered a black eye" over last summer's deadly listeriosis outbreak and that it was time to "get past the politics of this issue and move forward," I couldn’t help but think of the scene from the Holy Grail after Lancelot has killed and maimed many of the wedding party celebrating the union of Prince Herbert and the huge tracks of land owned by Princess Lucky. Prince Herbert’s father, eager for land and not a swamp, says to the dead and wounded,
"What’s the point of bickering and arguing about who killed who, it’s time to move forward.”
The layers of the listeria onion are slowing peeling away, and if a few key reporters can keep their jobs before being swallowed by the Intertubes, Canadians may eventually find out who knew what when and why in the listeria shitfest of 2008.
Sarah Schmidt of Canwest reports tonight that CFIA is permitting food companies to use non-accredited laboratories to analyze some listeria tests after the industry shot down a pricey proposal tabled after last summer's deadly listeriosis outbreak requiring the use of accredited labs, according to newly released ministerial briefing notes. …
At the time of the listeriosis outbreak, such companies as Maple Leaf Foods were not required to conduct environmental listeria tests throughout their meat plants, including food-contact surfaces.
And if companies were analyzing these tests at in-house labs, CFIA inspectors were not required to review them.
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