Foodborne Illnesses from Fruits and Vegetables on the Rise

While foodborne illnesses such as E. coli are usually associated with meat eating, the American Phytopathological Society reports that the incidence of foodborne disease related to fruit and vegetable consumption is on the rise.

According to the plant pathologist J.W. Buck, the annual number of produce-related food disease outbreaks doubled between 1973-1987 and 1988-1992 and continue to rise. The outbreaks include,

Pathogen Product
Aeromonas alfalfa sprouts, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, pepper, spinach
Bacillus cereus alfalfa sprouts, cress sprouts, cucumbers, mustard sprouts, soybean sprouts
Campylobacter jejuni green onions, lettuce, mushroom, potato, parsley, pepper, spinach
Clostridium botulinum cabbage, mushrooms, pepper
E. coli O157:H7 alfalfa sprouts, apple juice, cabbage, celery, cilantro, coriander, cress sprouts, lettuce
Listeria monocytogenes bean sprouts, cabbage, chicory, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, mushrooms, potatoes, radish, salad vegetables, tomato
Salmonella alfalfa sprouts, artichokes, beet leaves, celery, cabbage, cantaloupe, cauliflower,
chili, cilantro, eggplant, endive, fennel, green onions, lettuce, mungbean
sprouts, mustard cress, orange juice, parsley, pepper, salad greens,
spinach, strawberries, tomato, watermelon
Shigella celery, cantaloupe, lettuce, parsley, scallions
Staphylococcus alfalfa sprouts, carrot, lettuce, onions sprouts, parsley, radish
Vibrio cholerae cabbage, coconut milk, lettuce

Among the large outbreaks, an E. coli outbreak in Japan in 1996 affected 4,000 school children and killed four. The source of the outbreak was traced back to radishes. In the United States 1995-1998 saw nine separate outbreaks of Salmonella or E. coli traced back to contaminated sprouts.

Why the increase? Part of the reason is due to good news on the nutrition front — people are simply eating more fruits and vegetables. From 1988 to 1996, per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables in the United States increased by 20 pounds. With the increase in consumption, the amount of fruits and vegetables imported from abroad has increased while methods of storage and processing have changed as well.

Unfortunately, according to the American Phytopathological Society, while there is an apparatus in place to inspect meat and reduce the risk of foodborne pathogens, there is no parallel system in place for inspecting fruits and vegetables.

Sources:

More people are getting sick from eating fresh fruits. American Phytopathological Society, Press Release, January 27, 2003.

Recent Trends in Microbiological Safety of Fruits and Vegetables. J.W. Buck, R.R. Walcott, L. R. Beuchat, Plant Health Progress, Jan./Feb. 2003.

Charges Dropped Against Hunt Supporter

Back in November, I wrote briefly about the case of Daily Telegraph columnist and hunt supporter Robin Page. Page gave a speech saying, among other things, that the minority of rural folk in Great Britain should be accorded the same rights as Jews, Muslims and other minority groups.

The British government responded by arresting Page and charging him with stirring up racial hatred, even though the Prince of Wales himself had made a similar argument in a letter obtained by The Telegraph.

In January, police determined they had insufficient evidence to prosecute Page and dropped all charges against him. Page told The Daily Telegraph that he is exploring legal action against police for defamation and unlawful detention.

Source:

Race claim against Telegraph man dropped. Sally Pook, The Daily Telegraph, January 21, 2003.

Increased Expectations

Brad De Long has written a brief look at the progress of Project Gutenberg. The piece nicely illustrates how dramatically the Internet has shifted expectations into high gear.

De Long writes,

Thus Project Gutenberg has inched ahead at a snail’s pace. In its 32nd year of existence, the collection has only 6,267 etexts.

Only 6,267 free etexts? Certainly it’s far short of its ultimate goal of 1 million online texts, but almost 6,300 online public domain books is still a pretty impressive accomplishment in my book (especially since it was accomplished with donated labor — there are quite a few publishing companies who don’t average 195 books a year over a 30 year period).

Moreover, De Long leaves out the important part of the story — that as scanning technology becomes more widely available and more people have come online, the number of books Project Gutenberg adds every year is accelerating quickly. For example, more than half of those 6,267 free etexts were added to Project Gutenberg in just the last two years. Based on that, I’d say Project Guenberg has a very bright future.

Best Pre-Super Bowl Moment

Aside from watching all of the experts pick the Raiders (did they learn nothing from the Giants/Ravens matchup a few years ago?), the best moment in the hours of pre-Super Bowl coverage had to be Warren Moon’s explanation on ESPN that he would have had several Super Bowl rings if he hadn’t had so many teammates who sucked.

On the one hand, it’s fascinating to see how driven many of these athletes are to win a Super Bowl, but a little scary at the same time to see someone like Tom Jackson intone year in and year out that his failure to win a Super Bowl ring will haunt him for the rest of his life (and like Moon, Jackson has no problem blaming his teammates who — at least according to him — were more interested in partying than preparing for the two Super Bowls he played in and lost).

Tom’s Hardware Reviews First DivX Standalone Player

Tom’s Hardware has an in-depth look at the first standalone DivX player. This sucker plays DVDs, CDs, and CD-R/RWs & DVD-RWs encoded with DivX, MP3, or even JPEG images.

The KiSS DP-450 is manufactured in Denmark and currently available in many European countries. No word yet on availability in the United States (and this will almost certainly face an MPAA challenge, just like the first MP3 players faced a legal challenge from the RIAA).

New Freedom Force Patch

Freedom Force broke the superhero computer game jinx and is one of the best computer games I’ve ever played. But despite good reviews and relatively good sales, Irrational, the game’s developers, ended up partnering with Crave Entertainment which seemed primarily interested in a quick take-the-immediate-profits and run maneuver. Despite an excellent fan base, Crave even shut down the game’s official discussion board system to save money and a second, much-needed patch to the game has been in limbo since late last spring.

To their credit, however, Irrational kept on working on the patch in-house and this week finally announced its release (they seem to have a Seth-like approach to their software).

So, the good news is if you have a decent PC (the game runs fine for me on a 1 ghz. Celeron with a crap PCI 3d card), you can probably find this game in a discount bin for $20. Add the two patches, and you’ve got a full campaign worth of superhero strategy goodness along with a Danger Room option that, combined with all of the free content available online, means you can set up pretty much any superhero combat action you can think of? (Want JLA vs. Avengers? It’s in there).