Rats, mice and cockroaches, oh my - UK KFC needs to clean up
KFC may be dabbling with marketing food safety (see the lid from a bucket of chicken), but marketing has to be backed up with data. And having a lousy restaurant inspection report will turn anyone’s stomach, no matter how many checkmarks are on things.
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Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is being prosecuted after environmental health inspectors reported finding cockroaches, mice and flies at one of its busiest UK restaurants.
Officials from Westminster Council said that a cockroach scurried across a counter when they visited the fast food outlet in Leicester Square, central London.
They claimed a mouse was seen running across the floor and flies buzzed around their heads at the Coventry Street premises, Press Association reports.
In total, KFC faced 13 charges brought under food hygiene regulations following an inspection on August 15 last year. It has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Queering Ratatouille
eatmedaily.com reports that UCLA French professor Laure Murat will present, “Queering Ratatouille: A Rat Reclaiming French Cuisine” this afternoon. Having just returned from the NeMLA (which Doug lovingly calls NAMBLA) annual meeting in Boston, my first thought was ratatouille is the perfect dish to represent queering. Then I realized this is a talk about a gay rat in a cartoon.
Ratatouille is a relatively safe dish from a food safety perspective. It’s a combination of vegetables like eggplant, zucchini, green bell peppers, tomatoes, garlic, onions and the like, simmered or roasted together until the flavors meld into a gorgeous Mediterranean flavor. Any unsavory microorganisms should be amply cooked out by the time it is ready to serve.
Green bean rat casserole
Green bean casserole is one of my favorite dishes. Lots of people serve it as a side dish, but it always ends up being the main course for me. It’s a typical staple at our family Thanksgiving dinners, so much so that I decided to bring my own GB casserole to Doug’s Canadian Thanksgiving. I’ve never had any food safety problems (that I know of) with my casseroles, but unfortunately a woman in Utah had quite a nasty surprise when she went to make her GB casserole. A dead rat head in the green beans ruined a Super Bowl green bean casserole in Texas. Even more disturbingly, the company that produced the green beans is a repeat offender. A can of Allen’s Italian Green Beans was found to contain a rat head back in June, along with another report in 2007 from Utah.
But don’t worry about the rat head. It’s “commercially sterile.” Though high temperatures for cooking (265 degrees) ensure that the product is free from bacteria, the appearance of rat heads in a vegetable product is unsettling for most consumers. The fact that there have been three reports of rat heads in this particular brand of green beans should cause a big blip to appear in anyone’s food safety radar.
Unless Allen’s Canned Vegetables wants to start listing “dead rat” on it’s ingredient list, a thorough cleaning and inspection of the packing facility is in order.
Rat in peanut roaster; safest food in the world?
A former employee of the Georgia peanut plant at the center of a criminal investigation in a nationwide salmonella outbreak told CBS News he saw a rat dry-roasting in a peanut area.
Jonathan Prather, one of 50 people who lost their jobs last month when the Peanut Corporation of America shut down its plant in Blakely, told Early Show national correspondent Jeff Glor the facility is dirty.
"Roaches get up there in the dry roast. Some of them blend in with the peanuts. You'd never know they're there.” … (There were) "plenty of holes in the roof, throughout the roof. And when it rained, water just came through the whole plant."
Prather says it saddens him that many people have been impacted by the salmonella, adding he's speaking out now because his mother always raised him to tell the truth.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler told The Early Show Tuesday,
"... The problem is we don't have a system of preventive controls. We're always reacting in this country. It's always chasing the horse after it's out of the barn. … We have the safest food system in the world, but that doesn't mean it can't be safer. And each of us has responsibilities. Making sure that our food is well-cooked, good hygiene, those things are still important. … (Our food is) certainly safe, but our system is broken. And it needs to be improved, and it needs to be improved quickly."
Not sure what the basis is for the good doctor’s safest-food-in-the-world bit. Are rats in the roaster part of the equation?
Toronto shuts restaurant after rat sighting
The rats must have seen the Stephen Colbert bear-visiting-Subway bit cause they showed up for a video performance in a Toronto Chinatown restaurant last night.
A passerby originally posted a photo of the rat-in-the-restaurant to blogto.com. Video footage soon followed.
The Toronto Star reports,
Inspectors visited Happy Seven, a Chinese restaurant on Spadina Ave. known for late-night munchies, yesterday after seeing the video, but did not find any signs of vermin.
The restaurant passed an inspection on Oct. 2, and public records show it was inspected an average three times per year.
In February, someone photographed a rat in the window of the Dumpling House, about a block south of Happy Seven. The restaurant was forced to close while it disinfected the premises and called a pest control company. Between clean-up expenses and the temporary closure, the restaurant lost about $10,000, a manager said at the time. It has since re-opened.
Hosers surface in Wisconsin: woman accused of placing dead rat in food
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The finger belonged to an associate of Ayala’s ex-husband and both are now doing time. Less noticed was that at least 20 copycat claims surfaced since Anna's tale, bringing back memories of hosers Bob and Doug MacKenzie of Second City fame explaining how to get a free case of beer by claiming to find a dead mouse in a beer bottle.
This is not funny to the food companies who have, and succeed, in providing safe, affordable food but have to further protect themselves against bogus claims.
Debbie R. Miller, 41, of Appleton, Wis. was charged Monday with one felony count of extortion after she was accused of planting a dead lab rat in restaurant food and demanding $500,000 to keep quiet.
Miller claimed to find the rat in her lunch April 17 as she ate at the upscale Seasons Restaurant in Grand Chute, according to the criminal complaint.
She threatened to alert the media unless the owners paid her $500,000, the complaint said.
The owners turned the rat over to their insurance company. Investigators there determined the rodent was a white laboratory rat, the complaint said.
Tests also suggested the rodent had been cooked in a microwave, but the restaurant doesn't use microwaves in cooking.
Even Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector could have figured that one out.
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"I wouldn't be happy showering under a rat"
The Manawatu Standard reports that the two flatmates are nervously awaiting the results of blood tests after they learnt the "smelly water" they had been drinking and showering in came from a tank housing a badly decomposed rat.
Having suffered bouts of diarrhoea and vomiting before becoming aware of the corpse, they still have to shower at their parents' homes and clean cooking utensils on the front lawn.
The saga began in early November when a 19-year-old resident noticed the water was "smelly" and she began feeling ill.Her mother, worried sewerage had seeped into the water pipes, contacted the council, which in turn flushed the home's pipes.
Several weeks later the shower blocked up, which eventually led to a plumber finding what was left of the large rat.
Rather than remove it, he gave instructions not to use any water until someone else did the dirty work.
The landlord said, "I can't believe they didn't ring me to say it was still there. I thought it was gone. Oh, I just feel ill. I have barely slept thinking about rats in tanks. It's just a dreadful situation, but I thought the plumber or sanitisers had dealt with it."
