"safety" news and stories

There are plenty of signs that chefs and seafood lovers continue to wrestle with whether to serve and eat fish from the Gulf of Mexico. Many consumers have safety concerns, despite repeated assurances by the federal government and seafood promotion officials. Stories of illegal fishing haven't helped to bolster confidence either. According to FoodSafetyNews.com, more than a dozen catches have been dumped at sea because fishing had been taking place in closed waters. The result? Once bustling restaurants like Snapper's Seafood in Biloxi, Miss. are now painfully short on customers.

But many say that Thursday's move by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association will go a long way to ease the safety concerns of eaters.

NOAA announced it was reopening over 26,000 square miles of the closed Gulf area to commercial and recreational fishing. Why? Because according to their data, no oil spill has been observed in the area since mid-June. Additionally, fish caught in the area and tested by experts have shown no signs of contamination. The reopened area is approximately 190 miles southeast of the Deepwater/BP well, with most fishing occurring 220 miles from the BP site.

The nose knows. Or at least officials from NOAA and the FDA are counting on it as an inexpensive, reliable way to detect oil-tainted seafood and to keep it from reaching the public. The agencies have pooled resources with Michigan-based International Food Protection Training Institute (IFPTI) and have been busy training seafood inspectors from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida at the National Seafood Inspection Laboratory in Pascagoula, Miss.

Training sessions include plenty of hands-on sniffing of finfish, shrimp and oysters. Different stations are set up where students participate in blind whiff tests. Some samples are spiked with varying levels of oil, while other items were left untouched.

"Inspectors are taught not to let their sight confuse them. To just go by the smell, because oil can be washed off or masked with something else," says Joan Bowman, spokesperson for IFPTI.

BP chief Tony Hayward isn't the only executive putting his foot in his mouth. Fellow BP representative Randy Prescott brought on his own internet firestorm after he was quoted saying, "Louisiana isn't the only place that has shrimp." Ouch.

While it's true that shrimp are indeed harvested in other parts of the world, for those seeking sustainable American wild-caught shrimp, the Gulf has long been an important source. According to a Seafood Watch report, 90 percent of the landings of three major species of shrimp come from the Gulf of Mexico.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just issued a salmonella warning for some batches of Peter Pan peanut butter after linking more than 280 cases of food poisoning in 39 different states to the product. Con Agra, the manufacturer of the peanut butter, has already called for a recall, but unlike with the fresh veggies that were affected by an E. coli contamination last fall, the long shelf-life of peanut butter means that people who fail to check their jars at home could face problems at a later time. Fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps are common effects, but for those with autoimmune disorders or other serious medical conditions, salmonella infections can be life threatening.

All of the peanut butters in question are under the brand names "Peter Pan" and "Great Value" and bear the number 2111 at the beginning of the product code on the lid. They were all made at a single factory in Georgia. The first consumer that was affected by the peanut butter-borne salmonella became ill in August of 2006, so if you bought your peanut butter (assuming it's Peter Pan brand) around that time, or even a bit before, it is wise to throw it out and start with something fresh.

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All sorts of safety issue plague parents and children these days. Playground equipment and activities are carefully monitored and toys are painstakingly screened, especially if, unlike video games, they involve movable parts that the kids might play with too vigorously, thus injuring themselves, or eat, injuring themselves further. When it comes to food, most safety issues have to do with concerns about food allergies, but perhaps in light of the burns allegedly caused by Starbucks hot chocolate in the hands of a very small child, some groups are looking to ban hot drinks altogether, rather than supervise their consumption.

The Pat-a-Cake Playgroup, which meets at a library in Rawmarsh, South Yorkshire in England, has been "banned from serving tea and toast on health and safety grounds." The risk for burns is, apparently, far to high for the city council's liking, so the parents running the group have been told that they cannot boil water in the room where children are present, and that adults must drink their hot drinks in a separate area, far from the children, if not a separate room entirely.

As you can imagine, the parents are considering disbanding the group to escape from the oversight of the council before they demand that children be outfitted in protective gear at all times to avoid papercuts.

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