E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSGovernment health officials issued a final tally Thursday for a months-long outbreak of listeria food poisoning in contaminated cantaloupe: 146 sick and 30 dead.
Those numbers reflected infections in 28 states tied to tainted whole melons from Jensen Farms of Holly, Colo., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. Faulty processing and shipping practices at the firm's Granada, Colo., packing facility led to the dozens of illnesses and deaths -- and decimated the melon market in several states.
The outbreak is the worst since a California listeria outbreak in 1985 in which contaminated Mexican-style fresh cheese caused 52 deaths, including many stillbirths, according to the CDC.
Among 140 ill people who offered information about what they ate, 94 percent reported eating cantaloupe in the month before they got sick, including many who said it came from one region in southeastern Colorado. The outbreak of listeria monocytogenes, the first detected in melons, led to at least 142 hospitalizations and a miscarriage.
More than 310,000 cases of potentially tainted cantaloupes were shipped to at least 24 states between July 29 and Sept. 10.
Leave a Comment:
Well it's certainly a good thing that the FDA is spending it's money figuring out whether or not people who are having sex ought to have access to birth control.
American food production requires people involved NOT to act like greedy felons who don't give a damn about quality. In any industry quality has to happen in the production not after it. You can never have enough 'inspectors" for a crook.
When they act like felons put them in jail -30 dead that's a serial killer. Since corporations are now people - execute the convicted corp. and jail the responsible management -for a long, long, long time.
If they can get away with it,,,,,, Then it should be legal to poison your spouse - heck, that would only be killing ONE person !
This is a perfect example of why we need federal agencies like FDA and regulations with enforcement. This kind of thing happens every day throughout this country and in every part of the private sector there are businesses that put profts above everything. Republicans would have you believe government and regulations are the problem when in fact they are the bought and paid for polititions, who are causing the problems.
Before I get too crazy over this situation, I'd like to know one small detail... 146 sick and 30 dead out of how many people? I know it would be impossible to put an exact number on how many people ate this cantaloupe, but a rough estimate shouldn't be too hard to come up with. Also, what was the age/health of those who were sickened and/or died from eating the cantaloupe seems to have not been addressed either.
If this article was a well written and honest piece of journalism, it would have included such facts as: Of the estimated "x" number of people who ate this cantaloupe, "x" percent were sickened. Of those sickened, "x" percent died. Of those people who got sick and/or died, "x" percent were in this age group, this age group and this age group. AND "x" percent were already reported as being in poor health or suffering from some other malady... THAT'S PERTINENT INFORMATION!!!
I'm sorry for the people who died, but I think those details are extremely important in assessing just how dire the situation is here.
People are DEAD, and their families have to pay for their funerals and other things out of their own pocket...why? because some company can KILL people and GET AWAY with it without having to deal with any repercussions. Other people had to pay a lot of money when they had to be hospitalized...Did the company pay their medical bills-probably NOT. Companies are people (still pathetic that they still are considered this) and they KILL people, and for the government and the companies, its ok with them.
Oh S**t, I just purchased a cantaloupe from Walmart!