Doors Floors and More

Cited: Reuters

On August 19, a federal official stated that more cases of the food-borne illness of salmonella that has sickened hundreds of people in three states and prompted a nationwide recall of suspected eggs is expected.

State officials in California, Colorado and Minnesota have linked more than 270 illnesses to eggs from Wright County Egg in northern Iowa. The company voluntarily recalled 380 million eggs that were distributed throughout the country.

“I would anticipate we will be seeing more illnesses reported and likely as a result of this outbreak,” Christopher Braden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said during a telephone news conference. It often takes two or three weeks for an illness to be reported to CDC.

During the teleconference, Food and Drug Administration officials said the recall was among the largest egg recalls in recent years. Fifteen investigators were working on a probe that includes tests of laying hens at the Galt, Iowa, farm for salmonella infection. No results were available yet.

Nearly 2,000 cases of salmonella were reported from May to July, Braden said, a period during which 700 cases would be usual. Many were a common subtype of the bacteria.

“We can’t say all 2,000 are related to this outbreak,” he said.

CDC said later it was using advanced molecular tests to help identify cases from the outbreak. It said a trace back by state and federal officials found eggs from Wright County Egg factored in five cases in California, Colorado and Minnesota.

Salmonella can cause fever, diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain and sometimes more serious illness or death.

Some 266 cases of salmonella in California have been linked to the eggs, according to Los Angeles County officials. Seven cases in Minnesota are linked to the Iowa eggs, say state health officials. The Colorado Department of Public Health says some of 28 salmonella cases during June and July “likely” are linked to eggs from Wright County Egg.

Salmonella investigations are underway in 13 states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas,.

The 380 million eggs in the recall are equal to nearly all the eggs consumed by Americans in two days, according to Agriculture Department figures. It says Americans will consume 247 eggs apiece this year.

Wright County Egg announced the voluntary nationwide recall of eggs produced since May 19 on Friday and expanded it on Wednesday to include eggs from two other sites. Wright County Egg is part of DeCoster Farms, a family-run agribusiness.

The eggs were sold under the brand names Lucerne, Albertson, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Boomsma’s, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms, Kemps, James Farms, Glenview and Pacific Coast. Their cartons are stamped on the end with P-1720, P-1942 P-1026, P-1413 or P-1946 and followed by a number from 136 to 229.

An FDA egg-safety rule took effect on July 9 that requires large-scale producers to take steps such as refrigerating eggs, safeguarding feed and water supplies from contamination and testing in the poultry house for salmonella bacteria.

If the bacterium is found, producers must test eggs for it and if the eggs are contaminated, they must be treated to destroy the bacteria or divert them to non-food use.

“The risk of illness would have been reduced,” stated Associate FDA Commissioner Jeff Farrar as he spoke about the role that took effect earlier in July. Farrar also disagreed that if the rule was implemented earlier the outbreak could have been prevented or that the rule fell short in this case.

————————————————————————

My Take: I bet everybody who read this stop eating eggs. I am sure that the top pharmaceutical companies in the country are making money off of this incident as well as medical supply companies. The only ones not making any money are the egg farmers. If anything, they have lost a lot of money.

If you think you might have salmonella, go to your doctor and ask him or her. I believe they have got rapid test kits that might be able to tell if you do have salmonella. You just might have some kind of gastric problem and they will use one of the gastric pH test kits to determine what your problem is.

If you happen to live in New Jersey and you can’t leave your home, you might contact the visiting physicians to come to your home and check you. Yes, they will make a doctor house call and I am not joking. There are doctors who make house calls again! I wish they had that kind of service here in Arizona.

————————————————————————-

Other Resources

Expansion of Coffee Locations

There are some amazing types of coffee machines out there today and people have tended to think that they can make the same sort of coffee house cup of coffee in their own home that stores and specialized coffee houses can do with their own, personal coffee supplies. This has led to some stiff competition as far as companies being able to get people to come into stores to purchase cups of coffee when they have advanced machinery at home to serve the same purpose. Modern coffee sellers have had to sweeten the deal with interesting new drinks.