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22 Sep 2010 10:20

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U.S.: Wright County Egg Founder sorry his eggs made you sick

  • We were horrified to learn that our eggs may have made people sick. We apologize to everyone who may have been sickened by eating our eggs.
  • Wright County Egg founder Austin DeCoster • In prepared remarks for Congress, where he’ll speak today to explain how his company is responsible for so many salmonella-tainted eggs. His company’s barns were infested with all sorts of disgusting things that we won’t repeat here so as not to turn you off of eggs entirely. Partly because of this, there were traces of salmonella in the barns years before there was actually an outbreak. Also, there was another outbreak due to the same company way back in the late ’80s. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Aug 2010 11:19

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World: Not harsh enough? HIV-infected singer Nadja Benaissa sentenced

  • How harsh should the punishment be for an HIV-positive person who knowingly has unprotected sex with their victims? In Germany, apparently relatively light. Nadja Benaissa, a singer in the German girl group No Angels, was sentenced to a two-year suspended sentence and 200 hours of community service for her actions, which infected at least one of the people she slept with. Was the court right here? Or do they need to reconsider? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

24 Aug 2010 21:30

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U.S.: Why did the U.S. decide not to vaccinate hens from salmonella?

  • The U.S. chose not to force hens to get vaccinated for Salmonella. They claimed there wasn’t enough evidence that it did anything. (And it wouldn’t raise costs much; it’d cost less than a penny per dozen eggs.) With the very large egg-tainting problem in the U.S., it’s probably good to look at what happened after Britain mandated hen vaccinations:
  • 14,771the number of cases in England and Wales caused by the most common strain of salmonella in 1997, the year a new hen vaccine was tested by the country’s farmers
  • 581the number of cases in England and Wales last year, a decrease of 96 percent; the hen vaccine, which has been in use since 1998, has helped lead to yearly declines source
  • » So why didn’t they? Well, the FDA, while it claims that it looked at the vaccine seriously, said that there were significant differences between the U.S. version of the vaccine and the British one. The vaccine-maker, however, says that the differences were minor and the drugs were equally effective. Meanwhile, the current recall is at around 550 million eggs.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

19 Aug 2010 21:35

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U.S.: That Iowa egg company behind the salmonella outbreak is bad news

  • 380 million tainted eggs is a huge problem for Wright County Egg. But by no means is it the first huge problem the firm has faced. In fact, the DeCoster family, which owns Wright County Egg as part of their larger farming conglomerate, has had a number of legal problems in recent years, including these gems on their permanent record:
  • $2.1Mthe amount founder Austin Jackson DeCoster paid in penalties for immigration violations in 2003
  • $1.5M the amount the company was nicked for sexual harassment allegations (including rape!) by the EEOC back in 2002
  • yes the company has also had to pay fines for animal cruelty at another egg operation in Maine – just this year source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

18 Aug 2010 23:58

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U.S.: Scariest number of the night: Hint, it involves a ton of eggs

  • 380 million freaking eggs recalled over salmonella fears source
  • » And for the math-adverse: That breaks down to 31.6 million cartons, cartons that include these brands: Albertsons, Farm Fresh, James Farms, Glenview, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Boomsma, Lund, Kemps, Pacific Coast, Lucerne, Mountain Dairy, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Lund and Dutch Farms. Now is not the time to start your Atkins diet.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Jul 2010 22:34

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Biz: Who cares if it works? FDA won’t recommend weight-loss drug

  • yes Qnexa, a weight-loss drug developed by Vivus, helped obese people lose weight – lots of it.
  • but The drug, however, had side effects, and it was unclear if it led to heart attacks or strokes.
  • no A FDA advisory panel chose not to endorse the obesity drug. Vivus loses again! source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Jun 2010 10:44

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U.S.: “Eat fresh” questionable slogan for Subway in salmonella outbreak

  • 97 people sickened from an Illinois outbreak; no deaths yet source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

09 Jun 2010 10:17

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Biz: BPA: It lines your cans of Campbell’s Soup, and may cause cancer

Like soup, do ya? You’ll like it even more – along with Diet Coke and any other canned food – when you realize it contains BPA, a possible carcinogen. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

04 Jun 2010 14:19

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World: Did the World Health Organization overhype swine flu?

  • Two new reports suggest they did. Last year, swine flu, or H1N1, was treated as the second coming of the black plague. A couple of new reports suggest the people making the recommendations to WHO had ties to the drug industry, and those recommendations led to governments wasting millions of dollars on H1N1 vaccines that would never actually get used. “We are left wondering whether major public health organizations are able to effectively manage the conflicts of interest that are inherent in medical science,” one report says. So, who’s the swine now? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Jun 2010 10:59

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World: Speaking of cancer, the death rates are growing quickly

  • 7.6
    million     the number of people who died of cancer in 2008
  • 13.2
    million     the number of people projected to die of cancer in 2030 source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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