A ProMED-mail post
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Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 0
From: Dan Silver dgsilver@yahoo.com
Source: Mingpao News [trans. by submitter] [edited]
http: //www.mpinews.com/htm/INews/20070311/ca71833c.htm
11 villagers in Guangdong's Xuwen County are suspected to have [food] poisoning after eating jumping fish (mudskippers), and 1 has died. Ciguatera is preliminarily suspected.

11.mar.07
Deseret Morning News (Utah)
Lee Davidson
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660201947,00.html
Inspectors were cited as saying that most local eateries work hard to follow health department rules, but some struggle, including Cafe Kim in West Jordan.
Health inspectors closed it twice for serious violations during the past two years, for a total of 11 days — the longest stretch for any local restaurant. During inspections, it also amassed four times more violation points on average than a typical full-service restaurant, the worst in Salt Lake County.

08.mar.07
New Zealand Herald
Hawke's Bay Today
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10427610
Fruit is rotting in one of New Zealand's main growing regions because, according to this story, there are not enough pickers.
The labour shortage is the single biggest worry for Hawkes Bay fruitgrowers.
Len Thompson of Johnny Appleseed said he would need at least 200 pickers when the Braeburn harvest started next week and he was "nervous" about finding them.

08.mar.07
Associated Press
J.M. Hirsch
When it comes to motivating people to wash their produce before eating it, visuals, according to this story, seem to help.
Ann Zander, a food-safety expert with the Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. Was quoted as saying, "Probably 100 people handled that banana before you did. If you have somebody who hasn't washed his or her hands after using the bathroom or has the flu, that's all over it."

07.mar.07
Reuters
KOLKATA, India -- Ajit Ghosh, the owner of dozens of missing chickens in a remote West Bengal village, was cited as saying he caught his cow -- a sacred animal for the Hindu family -- gobbling up several of them at night, adding, "We were shocked to see our calf eating chickens alive."
The family decided to stand guard at night on Monday at the cow shed which also served as a hen coop, after 48 chickens went missing in a month.

07.mar.07
from a press release
WASHINGTON -- Following reports that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) will not allow sales of high mercury canned tuna into the Canadian market, a mercury watchdog group is calling on the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to do the same.

07.mar.07
Aspen Daily News (CO)
Christine Benedetti
According to a new Colorado state law, "bare-hand contact with any food that is ready-to-eat or not subject to any further cooking" is prohibited as of March 1, according to a statement released by the city of Aspen on Tuesday.
The story says that means everything from lettuce on a sandwich to the lemon in a vodka and soda can't immediately touch bare hands before going to the customer. Employees are now recommended to use gloves, tongs and other serving utensils in food preparation going directly to a customer.

07.mar.07
Environmental Working Group
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bisphenola/newsrelease.php

05.mar.07
The Edmonton Journal
Norman J. Temple, a nutrition professor at Athabasca University who has published more than 50 papers in academic journals, as well as nine books, writes that there are hundreds of nutrition researchers in Canada and the United States and every aspect of diet and health comes under scrutiny.
Yet, for some reason, one topic has been almost ignored, namely the way hundreds of supplements with no proven value are being sold to a gullible public. The people of Canada are being swindled out of hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

05.mar.07
New York Times/Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pandemic-Vaccine.html?_r=1&oref=slogin