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UPDATE, July 27, 2012: The final tally is 425 people sicked in 28 states by salmonella-tainted raw scraped ground tuna, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
Nearly 400 people in 27 states and the District of Columbia have now been sickened by an outbreak of two rare strains of salmonella detected in raw tuna products used in sushi and other dishes, health officials said.
Some 390 have become ill and 47 have been hospitalized, up from 316 confirmed infections and 37 hospitalizations in May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed. No deaths have been reported.
The outbreak includes 14 people sickened by salmonella Nchanga and 376 people sickened by salmonella Bareilly, both rare strains of the foodborne pathogen. The culprit has been identified as raw Nakaochi Scrape tuna product produced by Moon Marine USA Corp. of Cupertino, Calif.
In April, Moon Marine recalled 58,828 pounds of the frozen tuna product. It wasn't for sale to individual customers, but may have been used to make sushi, sashimi, ceviche and similar dishes in restaurants and grocery stores.
The numbers of new cases have declined substantially since the peak of the outbreak in April, CDC officials said. Illnesses may continue, however, because some food establishments may be unaware that they received recalled product and continue to serve the raw yellowfin tuna scraped from the backbone of the fish. It has a long shelf life.
Seattle food safety lawyer Bill Marler has called on the federal Food and Drug Administration to release the names of all restaurants and other outlets where the contaminated product was distributed. FDA officials did not immediately respond to questions about the action.
Some 390 have become ill and 47 have been hospitalized, up from 316 confirmed infections and 37 hospitalizations in May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed. No deaths have been reported.
The outbreak includes 14 people sickened by salmonella Nchanga and 376 people sickened by salmonella Bareilly, both rare strains of the foodborne pathogen. The culprit has been identified as raw Nakaochi Scrape tuna product produced by Moon Marine USA Corp. of Cupertino, Calif.
In April, Moon Marine recalled 58,828 pounds of the frozen tuna product. It wasn't for sale to individual customers, but may have been used to make sushi, sashimi, ceviche and similar dishes in restaurants and grocery stores.
The numbers of new cases have declined substantially since the peak of the outbreak in April, CDC officials said. Illnesses may continue, however, because some food establishments may be unaware that they received recalled product and continue to serve the raw yellowfin tuna scraped from the backbone of the fish. It has a long shelf life.
Seattle food safety lawyer Bill Marler has called on the federal Food and Drug Administration to release the names of all restaurants and other outlets where the contaminated product was distributed. FDA officials did not immediately respond to questions about the action.
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take you cat with you & if it wont eat , you dont eat it!
All the people who think "RAW FISH" is instantly bad for you are obviously redneck hicks that don't have sushi by them. OR you live in a trashy poor town that only gets the lowest of the low quality meat. This weekend I went fishing for Fluke. Few hours after catching them I was eating them raw on my dock. I am 100% fine. I bet you anti-raw meat hillbillies didn't even know you can eat raw beef as well, which gets served in resturants. It's called beef tar tar. Look it up on your 56k internets.
jcal29 I'm surprised that you said what you said. Most animals won't eat raw fish. Except a few bears during a salmon run. It really isn't bright to eat raw fish because of worms. Now unless you have fur growing on you and you walk on all fours then be my guest. Now if you can't afford a fire to cook your food then it is other story. When my father was drunk he would eat raw cow brains. The only time he did was when he was drunk. Even my cat won't eat raw fish who figured. You call people rednecks and hicks. Let me explain something to at least when they kill their deer they cut open the deer and eat the liver right away while it is still warm. Not likely to get sick that way. At least they don't wait couple of hours to eat it. If they did it would be cooked. Tar tar and sushi have spices to kill the taste and to perserve the raw meat.
Cook your fish first. No wonder people get sick. Unless it is a fresh kill. Most fish caught in California needs to be cooked because of worms. What I'm really surprised at that it didn't happen sooner. The only time I will eat raw meat is when I have no choice.
By the way, you dont need to cook it to get rid of the worms or bacteria. They "Flash Freeze" raw fish to kill any CHANCE that there is bacteria that will get you sick. Another way to avoid getting sick is to throw it on a hot pan for 10 seconds on each side. Orrr, wonder why they give you ginger with your sushi? Yes it "cleanses the palate", but along with that it kills any bad bacteria that may be in the fish. Always eat a peice after you are finished with your sushi dinner....just in case.... (I never have and I never got sick)
Only one issue jcal, some parasites leave eggs or cysts. Depends on the life cycle of that parasite whether it is infectious in that stage, or needs an intermediate host.
Salting meat all kills bacteria.
You don't have to flash freeze it - putting it in a freezer overnight is sufficient, but it won't kill bacteria effectively either way. Freezing sushi meat kills parasites.
So next we need to freeze all the bankers.
For the people who want to call people hillbillies if they don't like sushi, LOL!!!!
We don't eat bait! Just kidding but really, my husband and I don't like suchi, we like all kinds of fish, just not raw!
hummbird-3359530 That is great! I can't stop laughing! I guess I'm a hick!
how many moronic useless comments can fit on a page? this many. thank you boys and girls from the home, time for arts and crafts, goodbye.
Let's see, our vegetables are covered in salmonella, our fast food is tainted with salmonella, ground beef.. you guessed it, and now tuna Buying food is getting to be a real crap shoot out there.
heh heh...good pun.
So, i guess the ones that are so against eating meat and only veggies have already forgotten about the ailments that their 'fresh' spinach etc have caused. Vegatarian - old Indian word meaning lousy hunter.
I have been sick since last Friday. I got sick after eating Great Value Chuck Light Tuna. Heartburn like symptoms, gestural pain and all the bells and whistles, yet I haven't had many of the salmonella symptoms. Feeling better today, I decide to try a new can of tuna, same brand and it is deja vu all over again. It is either the tuna or the bread, but I had different bread so I have to rule that out.
You buy at WalMart? Even their food is made in China.
Where is the Zionist King of the New City? He's worried about soda pop while contaminated endangered species are decimated, to poison yuppie scum. What the sushi lovers are doing to the Tuna population, is exactly what the NYC Napoleon reject intends for non conformers, to his dietary prejudices. Leave the Tuna alone and stick with shellfish.
Hey now, don't misinterpret what I said. I said people who THINK YOU CANT EAT raw fish are hillbilies. I am fine with people who dont like it. I have even converted a few people to sushi lovers =P.
There are probably many mild cases that have gone unreported. they will not release the names of any of these establishments until people start to drop dead.
I am a commercial fisherman. Raw fish, fresh off the boat , never made anyone sick that wasn't already sick to begin with. I do prefer my tuna rare, very rare with a good quality sushi sauce or plain olive oil and lemon juice ,with a dash of salt and pepper.
I feel once you cook tuna fish, it turns into an entirely different food,very rich and heavy on ones stomach.Raw tuna fish on the other hand , is very light and I can eat 3 lbs of it verses 1/2 lb of the cooked CRAP.Its like eating whipped cream verses cake frosting.
I can't eat 3 lbs of cake frosting or whipped cream.
Just saying.
I said it before and I will say it again: NEVER EAT RAW MEAT!
This includes shellfish and seafood, just because it's fresh doesn't mean there aren't pathogens in it.
This is a sad thing, unless the sick are all K St whores, which it would then be better if more of them got sick.
What a bunch of ugly, red-neck, stupid Americans.........geesh, y'all y'all sound like a group of dumb thugs.
I personally love sushi. I just quit eating it a while ago out of concern about parasites since I have digestive problems already. I grew up in Mississippi, and I've seen plenty of bait-and sushi is MUCH more appetizing than any bait I ever saw!
The tuna were exposed to the radioactive waters off the shores of the Japanese Nuclear Plants that melted down. The whole area is poluted, and fish feeding there become contaminated too. Don't eat fish from the Pacific Ocean.
I find it ridiculous that nobody who writes about food contamination, nor those who read about it, ever seems to contemplate the root cause of the problem- centralized distribution of food along with unsanitary conditions. Real food spoils. Duh. Sanitized fake packaged food doesn't spoil.
(Can you really call ultra-pasteurized cream "cream" if it doesn't spoil?)
The FDA's answer for everything is to pasteurize it- now you can't even get raw almonds - even if they're labeled raw, they're not. So you can be sure that pretty soon the FDA will clamp down and require fish to be pasteurized. And spinach. LOL.
Sounds silly, doesn't it? No one EVER worried about drinking raw milk until confinement farming became popular in the late 1800's. Then there was a huge battle over whether to require sanitary conditions for the cows, and regular cleanliness inspections of the milk handling, or to require pasteurization instead. Since pasteurizing milk killed pathogenic bacteria (and destroyed a lot of the food value of the milk), it was far cheaper than actually raising the cows and handling the milk in sanitary conditions. Up until that time, there was no such thing as raw milk. There was only milk.
Similarly, if you were fishing and ate the meat raw, no big deal. Then we centralized the processing, and one contaminated worker or fish affects thousands of people. This is progress?
The FDA prohibits interstate transportation of raw milk for human consumption, but permits interstate transportation of raw fish, raw poultry, raw beef, etc. Go figure. I repeat- Real food spoils.
Rawness isn't the issue, sanitation and centralization of the food supply are. There are now five mega-companies that control nearly 90% of the food supply in this country. You tell me what the problem is.
These days, Americans will choose the cheapest alternative, no matter the quality. In 1960 we spent 17% of our income on food, and 4% on "health" care. Now we spend 4% of our income on food, and 17% of our income on "health" care. Hippocrates said something to the effect that our food is what makes us sick, and our food will be what makes us well. He wasn't thinking of highly processed packaged food (but it's sanitary!!) when he said that.
Will we ever learn? No, we'll blame the "crazies" who want to eat raw food, not the damnable system we've set up to save a couple of bucks.
You're assuming the fish was contaminated by contacting an infected surface(table, knife, etc), what if the infection was systemic?
No more grocery store sushi!
This is exactly why it's so hard for me to eat sushi! I used to eat it more often, but after having food poisoning last summer, I NEVER want to go through that again. It's tasty though!
If it smells fishy it's not fresh. Don't eat it if it smells like fish and has hair too.
The threat of illness through sushi will never present itself round my diet. But Washington, D.C., being all the way across the country from suppliers? C'mon folks, can't ya see the justice? "Bait" indeed!
As the late great Porn Actor John Holmes once said:
"THERE ARE TWO THINGS ON THIS PLANET THAT SMELL LIKE FISH...... AND ONE OF THEM IS FISH"
I know! I know!......It's Bush's fault!.......... Bush smells like dead fish!......................Do I win anything?
YES ! ! !
Simply read other posts from me, the are classic.
You flatter yourself.
@ Yoomama, you win the GOLDEN MEGAPHONE AWARD with the trophy showing W doing a tricky split move, magaphone tucked on the thigh. And a dinner with the former scoundrel president.