By Carole Sugarman
My daughter never met a chicken tender she didn’t like. But during a recent family vacation in Florida, 9-year-old Anna was struck with a bad case of salmonellosis — disease caused by salmonella. And while we’ll never know for sure, we strongly suspect it was caused by contaminated, undercooked poultry at one of her daily restaurant chicken meals.
There is more than a little irony in this tale of excruciating stomach pains, bathroom vigils and hospital emergency rooms.
As a food writer for 25 years, I’ve interviewed numerous victims of food-borne diseases and parents of children who’ve died from them. I’ve attended scores of conferences and hearings where food safety issues are debated among government officials, industry and activist groups.

Continue Reading A Taste of Food Poisoning

POSTED: 11:58 am EDT July 5, 2005
CONCORD, N.H. — New Hampshire health officials said Tuesday that the state has seen a dramatic increase in cases of hepatitis A — a virus that causes liver disease.
The Department of Health and Human Services said that in a typical year, New Hampshire sees between 15 and 20 cases. So far this year, there have been 48 confirmed cases.
At a press conference on Thursday, Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen is expected to discuss measures the state has taken to deal with the increase and what people can do to avoid the illness.
In May, state officials said drug abuse was helping fuel the increase and urged that drug users be vaccinated.

Hepatitis A is a communicable (or contagious) disease that spreads from person to person. It is transmitted by the “fecal — oral route.” This does not mean, or course, that Hepatitis A transmission requires that fecal material from an infectious individual must come in contact directly with the mouth of a susceptible individual. It is almost always true that the virus infects a susceptible individual when he or she ingests it, but it gets to the mouth by an indirect route.
Food contaminated with the virus is the most common vehicle transmitting Hepatitis A. The food preparer or cook is the individual most often contaminating the food. He or she is generally not ill: the peak time of infectivity (i.e., when the most virus is present in the stool of an infectious individual) is during the 2 weeks before illness begins. Hepatitis A is spread almost exclusively through fecal-oral contact, generally from person-to-person, or via contaminated food or water. Outbreaks associated with food have been increasingly implicated as a significant source of Hepatitis A infection. Such “outbreaks are usually associated with contamination of food during preparation by an HAV-infected food handler.”2 Indeed, “[v]iral gastroenteritis was reported as the most common food-borne illness in Minnesota from 1984 to 1991, predominantly associated with poor personal hygiene of infected food handlers.”3

Continue Reading How is Hepatitis A transmitted?

www.about-hepatitis.com
Hepatitis A is one of five human hepatitis viruses that primarily infect the human liver and cause human illness. (There are many other viruses that can inflame the liver which infect us more generally.) The other known human hepatitis viruses are hepatitis B, C, D, and E. Hepatitis A is relatively unusual in nations with developed sanitation systems such as the United States. Nevertheless, it continues to occur here.
Each year, an estimated 100 persons die as a result of acute liver failure in the United States due to Hepatitis A1. Approximately 30 – 50,000 cases occur yearly in the United States and the direct and indirect costs of these cases exceed $300 million1. The unfortunate aspect of these statistics is that with 21st century medicine, Hepatitis A is totally preventable, and isolated cases, and especially outbreaks relegated to food consumption, need not occur.
Viral Hepatitis is a major public health concern in the United States, and a source of si1gnificant morbidity and mortality.1 The Hepatitis A virus or “HAV” is heat stable and will survive for up to a month at ambient temperatures in the environment.

June 28, 2005
Ontario Farmer
B28
Jim Romahn
U.S. lawyer Bill Marler of Seattle, Wash. Was cited as telling an audience at the University of Guelph recently that medicare has spared Canadian food companies from multi-million-dollar lawsuits when their products poison consumers.
Marler was further cited as saying that Canadian lawyers might file class-action lawsuits, but there won’t be much money for the victims.
There have, however, been Canadian food poisonings every bit as spectacular as the U.S. cases. The largest in Canadian history involved lunchmate products from Schneider Corp.; there is an ongoing lawsuit between Schneiders and cheese supplier Parmalat.

Continue Reading Canadian food companies escape food poisoning litigation; because of Medicare, lawyer says suits are not lucrative enough to attract lawyers

www.yumasun.com
MITCH M. FREEMAN, M.D.
Jun 20, 2005
The liver is a vital organ located in the upper right-hand side of the abdomen. It performs many functions in the body, including processing the body’s nutrients, manufacturing bile to help digest fats, regulating blood clotting and breaking down potentially toxic substances into harmless ones that the body either can use or excrete.
Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver that can be caused by viruses, chemicals, drugs, alcohol, inherited diseases or the patient’s own immune system. The most common cause of hepatitis is an infection with a virus.

Continue Reading Most with hepatitis A fully recover in a couple of weeks

Local News
BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, STAFF WRITER
Jun 15, 2005
Although his restaurant was at the center of a hepatitis A scare in Yuma last week, John Gutierrez is no less certain that he keeps his place clean.
To prove a point, he invited a restaurant inspector and a reporter from The Sun into Chile Pepper, where, he says, sales had decreased 90 percent since reports surfaced that one of his workers was infected with hepatitis A.
But Gutierrez knew that Chile Pepper received an “excellent” score on its last health inspection and that his facilities are up to county standards.

Continue Reading Nothing to hide

Sunday, June 12, 2005
BY JOHN BEAUGE
For The Patriot-News
LAMAR – State Trooper Richard Davy is not 100 percent, but he says he wants to go back to work because he’s running out of money.
The 39-year-old Clinton County resident says his life hasn’t been the same since he ate at a Chi-Chi’s in western Pennsylvania in October 2003. He is among the 650 people who contracted hepatitis at the restaurant. Four died.
His financial condition isn’t likely to improve soon.

Continue Reading Troopers who got hepatitis lose benefits