Australia: Restaurant owner sues food critic for bad review
This Christmas I will be venturing to Australia for the first time. My flatmate graciously invited me to spend the holidays with her, and the chance to potentially bump into Mr. G (Summer Heights High) was something I couldn’t pass up.
While I search for the famous mockumentry star, a Sydney restaurateur will likely be continuing her ugly legal battle against a food critic reports TheAge.com.au.
In evidence in the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday, Ljiljana Gacic sobbed as she launched a diatribe against the critic, Matthew Evans, whom she described as "low life".
She said the review had been "done for a purpose", and told Justice Ian Harrison she had put on 57 kilos in the six years since its publication because of the stress.
In September 2003, Fairfax's The Sydney Morning Herald published a review referring to "unpalatable" dishes, describing the restaurant's overall value as "a shocker" and scoring it 9/20 - in the "stay home" category. The restaurant went into administration in March 2004.
The article has been found to convey defamatory meanings, including that the trio "incompetent" as restaurant owners because they sold unpalatable food and employed a chef who made poor quality dishes.
Mr [Tom] Blackburn [ SC, for Fairfax – the newspaper] then suggested that either Ms Gacic was "malevolently and maliciously fabricating it or you are deluded".
The judge is now holding a hearing relating to defences - including truth - put forward by Fairfax, and on the amount of damages, if any, which should be awarded.
Milking cows on the Sydney Habour bridge
The bridge over Sydney Harbour connecting Sydney with the business area of north Sydney is an engineering marvel.
Ben, Dani and I walked it one night after too much fine wine with some Australian colleagues. I’ve jogged across it many times. And walked, like in this pic from 2004 (right).
But I haven’t seen any cows.
On Sunday, for the first time since the 1930s when farmers paid tuppence to move their stock across the span, dairy cows, along with about 6000 people are expected to attend a picnic on the coathanger as part of the Breakfast on the Bridge event, the centrepiece of the Crave Sydney festival.
To help the cows acclimatise, a hectare of Kikuyu turf from Pitt Town in Sydney's far north-west will be transported to the heart of the city and laid over the tarmac.
Danielle Krix, the farm manager at Hurlstone Agricultural School, said,
''For some people that come from the city, it's going to be an eye-opener that milk comes out of an actual cow and not a carton.”
Evergreen Turf is the company responsible for trucking in the turf to cover the bridge roadway and its chief executive, Dean Holden, said it would take about eight semi-trailers to transport it and three hours to lay it.
''Three o'clock in the morning is always fun to be doing a bit of work … but while looking over Sydney Harbour it will be a magnificent experience.''
There will be a cow milking display for the ticket holders.
Breakfast on the Bridge will run for two hours from 6.30am, with the bridge closed on Sunday from 1am to 1pm.
Australian state cracks down on backyard butchers
A New South Wales Food Authority crackdown on backyard butchers has caught unlicensed operators producing and selling smallgoods from homes in Sydney.
The NSW has been targeting illicit meat processors and confiscated almost 120 kilograms of homemade nem chua - a Vietnamese-style fermented pork.
The authority made 10 seizures of the product from illegal processors operating out of homes that were then selling the meat to butchers' shops, restaurants and private consumers.
Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said the crackdown, which started in March, would continue.
Sydney KFC sued for $10 million after 7-year-old develops Salmonella and brain damage in 2005
Monika Samaan was seven years old when she collapsed and was rushed to hospital with salmonella poisoning after eating a Twister from the Villawood KFC outlet in Sydney's south west in October 2005.
She has acquired spastic quadriplegia and a profound intellectual disability.
Today, Monika arrived at the New South Wales Supreme Court in a wheelchair (right) as her just over $10 million lawsuit against KFC got underway.
The family's lawyer, Anthony Bartley SC, told the court in his opening address that Monika had been an extremely bright and active young girl before her illness.
Bartley said there was little doubt Monika's illness was caused by salmonella on the chicken she ate, adding, "You will hear unsettling and disturbing practices in the kitchen, including the kitchen KFC operated at its Villawood store.”
To keep up with orders and deliver them with speed to customers, KFC's "young, enthusiastic" staff would frequently help each other out. But by manning different work stations, the staff could easily have transferred bacteria from raw chicken to the cooked product, he added.
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Food service food safety failures made public in Sydney; public benefits
The Sydney Morning Herald this morning – this being Sunday morning in Australia – has a huge feature on the effects of the New South Wales state Food Authority taking a more, uh, vigilant approach to restaurant inspections.
The newspaper concludes that 40 per cent of all restaurants, takeaways and other food businesses in NSW were caught breaching one or more of the critical food handling practices when first visited by an inspector.
That may not be an entirely fair representation. Lots of places have at least one critical violation, and in the U.S., how a critical violation is defined can differ from state-to-state, and even county-to-county. There needs to be some sort of control or comparative group to determine whether that number is high or not.
But it sure sounds gross.
Inspection rates are woefully inadequate in some local councils, and there is often a lack of follow-up.
Anna Cenfi, part-owner of the Belli Bar, got it right when she said inspections conducted in the past few months were more thorough than in previous years, but that she had received three letters warning that a food safety inspection was imminent.
"I think that warning people that they are coming to inspect is ridiculous. They should just spot check everyone, even if it's just once a year. I'm not worried for myself but I know a lot of dodgy places out there."
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Journalist Mathew Moore does clearly state that whatever the limitations, “making this information public we can now expect improvements in standards that transparency and public scrutiny of government information can bring. The Food Authority deserves praise for releasing this information and giving the public far more data than it can get in any other state. It's an important addition to the name and shame list … With its website and release of the statewide data, NSW has gone further than any other state.
“Yet it still lags behind many cities in Britain and the US, where the results of every restaurant inspection are posted online. New York City even allows consumers to search restaurants according to their number of violation points.
“Governments there have learnt what the NSW Government is now only beginning to realise; there are major public health benefits in shining a public light into the kitchens of every food business that serves the public.”
Restaurants challenge 'name and shame' in Sydney
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a Sydney restaurant is considering legal action against the NSW Food Authority over its controversial name-and-shame website.
Satasia opened in Balmain 28 years ago and has become one of the most popular restaurants in Sydney's inner west.
The owner, Andrew Lum, says that reputation is in tatters after his eatery was fined by the Food Authority, then included on its name-and-shame list alongside rat- and cockroach-infested restaurants.
The database was launched in July to try to improve hygiene standards.
But Mr Lum and other restaurateurs argue its format is unfair.
Several businesses, including Satasia, have consulted lawyers about suing the State Government.
But the Food Authority appears to be immune from legal action, including defamation, under section 133G of the 2003 Food Act, which states: "No liability is incurred by the state, the minister or the Food Authority, for publishing in good faith any information contained on a register."
A University of Sydney senior law lecturer, David Rolph, said,
"The Food Authority clearly takes the view that when you balance it out between the rights of the trader and the right of the public not to consume food prepared in unsafe places, public interest has to prevail."
Lavender Blue Cafe, at McMahons Point, joined the list in November after receiving a fine for a broken probe thermometer. The manager, Andrew Menczel, said: "The list is a good idea in principle but to lump everyone together is wrong. There should be clearer categories for different offences.”
New South Wales, Australia - this is your public health inspector
Every restaurant and cafe in NSW will receive a random health inspection in the next 12 months after Government health bosses were left reeling by the results of their latest food safety crackdown.
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Health and safety inspectors have issued 160 fines in four weeks. The NSW Food Authority launched a "name and shame" website in July to try to improve hygiene standards. Department officials expected to uncover kitchen nightmares but did not envisage dishing out 1000 fines to 600 businesses in 10 months.
The name-and-shame list is updated on Tuesdays and has had more than 1.5million hits since it was put on the Internet.
Sydney KFCs fined $73,000 for filth
Franchisee QSR Pty Ltd, the owner of two KFC restaurants in Sydney’s south, has been convicted of 11 charges of breaching food hygiene laws between May 2007 and February 2008 and has been fined $73,000.
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NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said the potential health issues were compounded by the fact the company ignored directives to lift its game.
Inspectors discovered the problems after a complaint from a member of the public.
Mr Macdonald said the case was a "textbook example" of how consumer complaints helped inspectors police food safety in NSW.
But KFC defended QSR Pty Ltd, saying the breaches were just a "temporary breakdown" in standards.
KFC -- Food Safety Assured (right).
136 hospitalized; Australian bakery fined $40,000
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Sydney bakery responsible for a food poisoning outbreak that affected 319 people, of whom 136 were admitted to hospital, has been fined more than $40,000 for breaches of the Food Act.
The NSW Food Authority closed French Golden Hot Bread, in Homebush West, in March last year after tracing a salmonella outbreak to the egg mayonnaise served with its pork and chicken rolls.
Contrary to government regulations, the egg mixture was not heat-treated or kept below the specified 5 degrees.
A faulty refrigerator was also blamed for the elevated temperature of the mayonnaise, which allowed the bacteria to develop.
The Herald also reports this morning that more than half the local councils in New South Wales, the Australian state that contains, Sydney, have not fined any food businesses caught breaking food safety laws in the past four years, raising fears that much of the state has no effective protection against food poisoning from unhygienic restaurants and cafes.
Figures provided by the Office of State Revenue, which collects payments for fines imposed by councils, show that since 2004 only 67 out of more than 150 councils imposed any fines on restaurants and takeaway food businesses flouting hygiene laws.
"If you never issue a fine, they will laugh at you," said Des Sibraa, a former chief food inspector for NSW and now a food safety consultant.
He said the only conclusion to be drawn from the fact so many councils did not issue any fines was that many of them did not have serious inspection regimes.
"There is a place for warnings, but only for any minor matters, not for anything serious … Some councils are not doing anything," Mr Sibraa said.
The silence of the poop
If a so-called public relations expert says the only way your hotel and restaurant would recover from a PR disaster is to get “a makeover from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay,” just go ahead and pack it in.
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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that final tests on the gelato at the centre of the Coogee Bay Hotel poop scandal have come back inconclusive, with the DNA trace too weak to identify the person responsible for the murky affair.
The NSW Food Authority has declared "case closed" after completing testing on a sample of gelato served to the Whyte family at the hotel on October 5, and which was found to contain faeces.
The DNA trace was too weak to link to any one person, Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said.
The hotel and the family reached a settlement last month, with the family being paid compensation believed to be about $60,000. Both parties have declined to discuss the matter in the wake of the settlement.
'I'd like a large pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms and band-aid'
A pizza topped with a band-aid has landed a southern Sydney Dominos Pizza on an Australian state government's name and shame list of food safety infringements.
The New South Wales Food Authority name and shame website currently contains 317 businesses with 502 fines issued.
Primary Industries Ian Macdonald said the list was designed to stop individuals and companies that cut corners on food safety for consumers.
"The fines have been for a range of breaches including dirty premises, allowing pests into food preparation areas and inappropriate temperature control of foods.”
The website, has had over 1.4 million visitors since it was launched in July.
Sydney sandpits closed again after Salmonella found
It’s a good thing Hugh Jackman and his trainer work out at Sydney’s Bondi Beach (right, from a couple of days ago) rather than the city’s Northern Beaches, which have again been closed due to Salmonella.
In May, 2008, children's playgrounds were closed on Sydney's Northern Beaches after a rare form of salmonella, paratyphi B var java, normally linked to tropical fish, made dozens of toddlers seriously ill.
The sand was replaced at a cost of $140,000 but recent testing has confirmed the same Salmonella has returned.
Today, the Daily Telegraph reports that Hitchcock Park at Avalon and Winnererremy Bay at Mona Vale on the Northern Beaches have been fenced off for the second time this year, while a third South Avalon playground has not re-opened since May.
'I'm now known as the woman who ate the poo'
The Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney has reportedly paid compensation of somewhere between $60,000 and $200,000 to the family served poop-laden ice cream.
An agreed statement was released which said: "The owners and management acknowledge that Steven and Jessica Whyte or any of the people dining with them on the evening had no involvement in contaminating the ice-cream.
"The hotel acknowledges that the Whyte family (right, photo from Sydney Morning Herald) did not at any stage attempt to extort money from the hotel arising from the incident. The hotel regrets the hurt and distress suffered … as a result of statements that they acted improperly."
While the clarification and settlement ends a nightmare month for the family, Mrs Whyte has expressed fears she may forever be remembered. "Everywhere I go, I'm now known as the woman who ate the poo," she said. "It happens when I'm shopping, when I'm walking down the street and when I'm on the sideline watching my son at Little Athletics on a Saturday morning. I feel obliged to speak about it when people ask because everyone in the community has been so supportive."
The poop thickens: Australian ice cream tests 'inconclusive'
The New South Wales Food Authority says that tests on whether the feces in gelato served to a family at the Coogee Bay Hotel came from an animal or a human have come back inconclusive.
So while further tests will prolong the scandal for another week, webmasters aren’t waiting.
The following is gross, but apt.
Don't serve poop - it's on candid camera
While awaiting DNA test results on the poop in the Australian ice cream, Sydney’s Coogee Bay Hotel has announced it will install six new security cameras, with the food preparation area to be under constant surveillance.
It has also invited NSW health authorities to do monthly inspections of the kitchen, and customers will be able to have their say about the hotel via its website, to be launched soon.
Australian ice cream positive for poop - but whose poop is it?
The New South Wales Food Authority announced a few hours ago that a sample of the gelato allegedly served to a family at the Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney, Australia, has tested positive for fecal matter.
The sample, a small residual amount of gelato and faecal matter on a tissue, was provided by Stephen and Jessica Whyte this week.
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The NSW Food Authority began an investigation yesterday and carried out a brief test that confirmed the nature of the provided sample.
It will now perform a more detailed DNA-based test that will determine if the fecal matter is animal or human, and the sex of the "provider."
The results of that test will not be known for up to a week. However, because of the length of time since the incident, it was unclear whether the tests could provide a clear outcome in the murky matter.
Meanwhile, the lawyer for the Whytes, the family who say they found the brown stuf, said the DNA testing of staff was a distraction.
The hotel also released a statement late yesterday that said the three-litre container from which the scoops of gelato had come had been cleared of any contamination.
Manager served ice cream allegedly containing poop; chef offers his DNA for testing
The gelato caper gripping Australia had several twists and a couple of great soundbites Tuesday morning (Australia time).
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that security camera footage of an incident in which staff at the Coogee Bay Hotel allegedly served a family a cup of gelato laced with human faeces shows the dessert being delivered to the family by the restaurant's manager. …
"She was concerned about the family's experience and she had the idea of offering a complimentary dessert to try and make some amends," said the hotel's general manager, Tony Williams.
Meanwhile, the family's lawyer, Steven Lewis, of Slater & Gordon, also rubbished newspaper reports the family had links to a rival pub as a "Kevin Bacon … six degrees of separation [defence]. My question is: 'Did Kevin Bacon put the faeces in the ice-cream?"'.
Stephen and Jessica Whyte, along with their three young children and another family, were at the hotel to watch the NRL grand final, but after a series of complaints became suspicious when they were given a free bowl of gelato. "The real issue is that we were fed, as a family, shit, at someone's pub," Mr Whyte told 2UE.
Yesterday the NSW Food Authority announced it was investigating, and the hotel's management confirmed it had contacted Maroubra police in preparation for possible criminal charges against anyone who might have tampered with food at the hotel.
Meanwhile, the head chef at the Coogee Bay Hotel, Adam Wood, who had tendered his resignation before the incident and had continued to work at the hotel for several weeks afterwards, offered to put himself up for DNA testing.
Mr Wood's arrival was trumpeted by the hotel's general manager, Tony Williams, in a media statement about the hotel's revamped beer garden this month.
"Executive Chef Adam Wood [was] poached from Japan where he headed up kitchens for the Swissotel, Osaka and Foreign Correspondent's Press Club of Japan in Tokyo and brings extensive five star international and three hat experience with him," the statement read.
Why he resigned only weeks after being heralded as the hotel's most senior chef remains unclear.
Kitchen Confessional: What happens in restaurant kitchens
I hear stories about what happens in kitchens. We even started a blog on it, Kitchen Confessional, but it was difficult to sustain and it got merged with barfblog.
Matthew Evans has heard a lot of stories. Evans, who was the chief restaurant reviewer for the Herald for five years and whose autobiography, Never Order Chicken On A Monday, includes a sometimes-frightening look inside restaurant kitchens, writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that with poop allegedly being served in ice cream at the Coogee Bay Hotel, everyone in Australia is talking.
Evans says most Sydney food is great, cooked well and served with care. But a tiny minority of restaurants are incredibly dangerous.
“Some of the milder things that go on in NSW restaurants include chefs visiting the dunnies in their aprons. Or dipping odiferous chicken breasts in a mild bleach solution to whiten them and eliminate the smell. But when I went on Sydney radio to talk about these kinds of things last year, the comments turned even the hairs on my neck.
"Seeing the chef sitting on the toilet as they peeled prawns, perhaps? The slightly dodgy drip tray from the pub being used in the beer batter? The chef wiping the steak inside their Y-fronts or running it around the rim of the toilet because the customer had complained that their medium-cooked steak was still pink? It has happened.
"As an apprentice I've been asked to take leathery-skinned pre-opened oysters, too old and whiffy to offer as natural, and top them with mornay sauce and sell them. I've been witness to steaks stamped on with heavy boots and retrieved from the bins, and met people who've dipped food in the toilet before serving it, but I've never seen someone pick their nose and put it in food.
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"Of course I've seen chefs over-season food because it was off, using it in curries and the like," says one Sydney chef I spoke to who did not want to be named.
"But the worst thing I've ever seen with my own eyes was in England. This guy always came in late. He'd order sea bass every night right on last orders at 11.30pm and then send it back and ask for it to be recooked.
"One day [the chef] did a huge hock and put a great big greenie under it. The customer reckoned it was the best sea bass ever."
If the ice cream's free, don't have the chocolate
That story about the Whytes who found some brown in their ice cream at the Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney, Australia will lead to a formal complaint and subsequent investigation by the New South Wales Food Authority.
To tackle the poopy publicity, the hotel hosted a press conference yesterday, and offered free ice cream to patrons.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports Monday morning that yesterday – they’re 14 hours ahead or something -- in the beer garden was just another sunny Sunday afternoon.
“Bevan Read, at lunch with his wife and three daughters, unknowingly took advantage of the free ice-cream offer. As the girls sat down to their bowls of vanilla ice-cream, a flash of horror passed across their mother's face as she heard the news. But after careful inspection, the girls were allowed to continue to eat.
Mr Read said, "We're pretty impressed they're putting on free ice-cream for the kids," before adding jokingly, "I'm just glad that I'm not having any."
Eddie and Lynne Sulkowicz had brought their granddaughters, Claudia and Alexia Karam, for a meal. They said they would probably still eat there but the girls' mother said they would not be having ice-cream. "At least not chocolate, anyway," Mr Sulkowicz added.
'You made my mum eat poo;' legal action planned against Australian pub
So this family goes to a pub to watch some footy. Let’s call them Mr. And Mrs. Whyte, because that’s their names.
The Whytes didn’t like the service, thought the food expensive, and complained.
Never complain about restaurant food and then get more food, especially if it’s free. Didn’t anyone watch that movie, Waiting, featuring Mr. Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds?
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Whytes and their three sons were served complimentary gelato dessert by Coogee Bay Hotel staff three weeks ago after complaining about food prices, facilities and staff attitude.
Mrs Whyte said,
"There were four scoops including vanilla, chocolate and hazelnut. At the bottom, there appeared to be chocolate. Greedily, I went for it ahead of the kids. Thank heavens I did. The stench, the taste … I spat the food into a napkin and immediately I was sick.
"There was no doubting what it was. The whole family became hysterical. My poor son screamed at one of their staff: 'You made my mum eat poo."' The family complained to Waverley police.
The story says that the family took a sample of the gelato and had it tested at the National Measurement Institute. A report from the institute found: "The sample has an offensive odour and physical properties similar to human excreta."
In a letter to the family, hotel general manager Tony Williams said,
"If the incident did happen, as claimed, then it may well have been an act of industrial sabotage — with the hotel as a victim alongside your family."
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But yesterday Mr Williams said the case was now a legal issue that would be "vigorously defended".
"We are aware of the allegation and are treating it as extremely suspicious. Mr and Mrs Whyte have made a demand for up to $1 million from The Coogee Bay Hotel … We categorically stand behind the high quality of our food and the exemplary hygiene standards set in the new brassiere kitchen."
Australian sushi business fined over rats
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Chief Industrial Magistrates Court fined Sushi World's Camperdown premises more than $60,000 after it heard the business was closed by the New South Wales Food Authority after an inspection in November 2006 revealed it was a "risk to public health.”
Inspectors who toured the premises found rat faeces scattered over the floor, on equipment and in food-processing areas. Two 12.5-kilogram bags of flour had been "gnawed open by rodents" and one of the creatures was seen in the food storage area, the court heard.
The NSW Chief Industrial Magistrate, George Miller, said Sushi World's failure to adhere to parts of the food standards code indicated "serious shortfalls in basic food handling", and the company's continued breaches from November 2006 to May 2007 suggested a "disturbing willingness to run a food business without regard for basic hygiene standards".
During the hearing its director, Suk Joon Song, said trade decreased by 50 per cent due to negative publicity after the charges had been made public.
Sushi World no longer operates from the Camperdown premises but has opened a factory in Meadowbank, which has been approved by the NSW Food Authority.
Trendy Sydney restaurant named and shamed; no fridge thermometer
Bills, the trendy Darlinghurst eatery that helped make ricotta hotcakes an inner-city breakfast staple, has become the first upmarket Sydney establishment named on the State Government's list of restaurants fined for breaching food safety laws (right, actor Hugh Jackman and family headed to breakfast at Bills).The Liverpool Street restaurant, one of three Sydney eateries owned by the celebrity chef Bill Granger, has been fined $660 for failing to comply with the food safety code.
Just two days after the NSW Food Authority began publishing a register on its website of restaurants caught breaching food laws, a City of Sydney inspector fined Bills for failing to have a thermometer in its refrigerator.
Last night, Bills said in a statement it was "shocked at this isolated incident and we took care of it immediately. … We do everything we can to do the right thing by our customers and to empower our workers to also do the right thing."
Try harder. And pay attention to the basics.
Name and Shame of restaurants: works in Sydney, sucks in Melbourne
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As Jason Dowling reports in Melbourne’s daily paper, The Age,Dozens of city food businesses, including restaurants and cafes, have been prosecuted for breaching food hygiene laws in the past five years — but Melbourne City Council will not reveal who they are. …
The council's inability to name restaurants with poor hygiene records comes as a "name and shame" food hygiene website in New South Wales had attracted 25,000 visitors in its first month.
The NSW Government has boasted the new website improved consumer information and "provides a powerful incentive for the food industry to boost its performance".
Melbourne City Councillor David Wilson was cited as saying the council did not support wider disclosure of poor hygiene discoveries at restaurants, adding,
"We believe that it is not appropriate for details of prosecutions to be released as restaurants may have changed management since the prosecution or they may not have breached food safety regulations since the initial prosecution and publication of a past prosecution could severely impact the viability of the current business.”
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Councillor Wilson, I bet you won’t have the vote of my friend, Melbourne Milton (left, exactly as shown) next election. Milton wants to see the results of restaurant inspections and is so astute he said he knew the results didn't really meant anything, didn’t make the food any safer and were just a snapshot in time, but the public disclosure made people more aware of food safety issues and people talked about it.Even Durham Region in Ontario, Canada, is going to start with the red, yellow, green system of restaurant inspection disclosure.
Melbourne, figure it out. People who spend money in your restaurants should have access to inspection data if they want. Or they should take their money elsewhere.
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Fish of the day sauce a killer
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The sauce, which was served with the fish of the day at Tables restaurant in Pymble on January 12, 2007, had 9.8 million colony-producing units of Bacillus cereus per gram.Ms Culver said the sauce was made at 3pm the day before, on January 11, and refrigerated. It was taken out of the refrigerator on January 12 but not discarded after four hours of use. Four hours is the recommended amount of time for the sauce to be used after being refrigerated, Ms Culver said.
Instead of being thrown out, it was placed in a coolroom so that it could be used for serving meals.
Ms Culver said the container for the sauce had no label showing when it was made or when it should be discarded.
Beach playgrounds closed after 23 Sydney toddlers stricken with Salmonella
Authorities are now trying to figure out how sand used in at least two popular kids' playgrounds has become contaminated.The rare bacteria strain - salmonella paratyphi bio var java - has been linked to 23 cases of children struck down with severe vomiting, diarrhoea and stomach pain.
Tests have revealed the sand at both the Winnererremy Bay and South Avalon playgrounds are contaminated.
But health officials cannot rule out other playgrounds along the peninsula being affected. They are waiting for test results on other play areas.
Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service's public health physician Michael Staff said,
"In the past there have been cases of humans becoming sick from it when they have contact with their tropical fish tanks. But to our knowledge this is the first time in Australia a playground has been shut because salmonella is in the sand."
The source of the contamination is not known, but the pathogen is generally carried by certain species of birds and aquarium fish.
(from http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23710202-5005941,00.html)
