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FDA shutters tainted peanut butter manufacturer

by Myrna Posted on November 27, 2012

FDA shutters tainted peanut butter manufacturer

By Philip Bump

vivarin

The odds are super low that this will make you sick, but still.

For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration has used the power it gained in the landmark 2011 food safety bill to shut down a manufacturer.

In September, an outbreak of salmonella linked to organic peanut butter sold at Trader Joe’s sickened 41 people in 20 states. The tainted goo was linked back to a Sunland, Inc., plant in New Mexico — the latest in a series of problems for the site. So yesterday, the FDA revoked its license to manufacture food.

From CBS News:

Sunland had voluntarily closed its plant after a September outbreak and planned to reopen its peanut processing facility on Tuesday, with hopes of selling peanut butter again by the end of the year. Sunland’s Katalin Coburn said FDA’s decision to suspend the registration was a surprise to the company and Sunland officials had assumed they were allowed to resume operations. …

Sunland is the nation’s largest organic peanut butter processor, though it also produces many non-organic products. The company recalled hundreds of organic and non-organic nut butters and nuts manufactured since 2010 after Trader Joe’s Valencia Creamy Peanut Butter was linked to the salmonella illnesses in September.

The details of what the FDA found are … unpleasant.

During a month-long investigation, after the outbreak linked to processor Sunland and to Trader Joe’s, FDA inspectors found samples of salmonella in 28 different locations in the plant, in 13 nut butter samples and in one sample of raw peanuts.

The agency also found improper handling of the products, unclean equipment and uncovered trailers of peanuts outside the facility that were exposed to rain and birds.

The FDA said that over the past three years, the company shipped products even though portions of their lots, or daily production runs, tested positive for salmonella in internal tests. The agency also found that the internal tests failed to find salmonella when it was present.

FDA inspectors found many of the same problems — including employees putting their bare fingers in empty jars before they were filled, open bags of ingredients, unclean equipment, and many other violations — in a 2007 inspection. Similar problems were recorded by inspectors in 2009, 2010 and 2011, though government officials didn’t take any action or release the results of those inspections until after the illnesses were discovered this year.

Which prompts the question: Why wait so long? The company tests positive for salmonella for three years and then, when it finally makes several dozen people sick, the FDA steps in?

One moral of the story is: Even organic food is not without its problems. And the other moral is: Don’t eat anything, ever.

Source

FDA halts operations at peanut butter plant linked to salmonella outbreak, CBS News

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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California’s Central Valley is tired of taking Los Angeles’ shit

by Myrna Posted on November 26, 2012

California’s Central Valley is tired of taking Los Angeles’ shit

By Philip Bump

From the Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles’ land in Kern County features a red barn and a sign: “Green Acres Farm.” The city’s website proudly describes the corn, alfalfa and oats that are grown there.

Hey, sounds nice! Except:

[T]he city of Los Angeles … has been sending up more than 20 truckloads a day of “wet cake” from the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant near LAX. …

Most experts say recycled products such as sludge and compost are safe if handled properly. But Kern County officials filed court declarations from scientists who are skeptical. Portland State University engineer Gwynn Johnson, for instance, said research shows that biosolids contain metals, antibiotics and flame retardants, and that more study is needed to determine the implications for “human health and the environment.”

Residents tend to focus on the “ick” factor.

Ronald Hurlbert, who owned property near one sludge operation that at one point received waste from Orange County, said the odor was “virtually unbearable (like a well-used bathroom at LAX),” according to a sworn declaration filed in court by Kern County officials.

vmiramontes

As it drives through Kern County, this RV will also be leaving behind its sludge.

At issue: Los Angeles’ endless supply of solid waste. Not, you know, garbage. Waste. Much of which is shipped north from the city every day into California’s agricultural heartland, the Central Valley — where it is increasingly unwelcome. This is the downside to recycling: Sometimes, no one wants to do (or live near) the dirty work.

One of the most bitter battles in California is over sludge, the batter-like material left over after treatment plants finish cleaning and draining what is flushed down the toilet or washed down the sink.

“Batter-like.” Let that one marinate in your brain for a while. Until the ’80s, the poo-batter was dumped in the ocean — until someone figured out that dumping lightly processed feces into the sea was a form of pollution.

Kern County voters passed a ballot measure in 2006 banning sludge from entering the county. Los Angeles sued. While the dispute remains unresolved in the courts, Los Angeles is allowed to keep using Kern County as its toilets’ toilet.

And there’s more to come for the Central Valley.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles County announced that it had purchased 14,500 acres in Kings County — also in the Central Valley — where it would be allowed to send hundreds of thousands of tons of sludge and yard waste.

Some material could start arriving at the end of next year.

Source

Central Valley residents tire of receiving L.A.’s urban waste, Los Angeles Times

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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The shells of ocean animals are already dissolving in acidic seas

by Myrna Posted on November 26, 2012

The shells of ocean animals are already dissolving in acidic seas

By Philip Bump

Several times over the past months we’ve noted the anticipated effects of ocean acidification. As the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content increases, some of it mixes with ocean water, forming carbonic acid, lowering the pH of ocean water. Even a slightly more acidic ocean could be enormously damaging to sea creatures, because it also means less of the mineral aragonite that some sea creatures use to form their shells.

National Geographic

We just didn’t really expect it would happen this fast. From New Scientist:

In a small patch of the Southern Ocean, the shells of sea snails are dissolving. The finding is the first evidence that marine life is already suffering as a result of man-made ocean acidification.

“This is actually happening now,” says Geraint Tarling of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. He and colleagues captured free-swimming sea snails called pteropods from the Southern Ocean in early 2008 and found under an electron microscope that the outer layers of their hard shells bore signs of unusual corrosion. …

He visited the Southern Ocean near South Georgia where deep water wells up to the surface. This water is naturally low in aragonite, meaning the surface waters it supplies are naturally somewhat low in the mineral — although not so much so that it would normally be a problem. Add in the effect of ocean acidification, however, and Tarling found that the mineral was dangerously sparse at the surface.

“It’s of concern that they can see it today,” says Toby Tyrrell of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK.

The state of the world: It is of concern that a terrible thing we expected in the future can be seen today.

How do we save these sea creatures? The way we save ourselves.

The only way to stop ocean acidification is to reduce our CO2 emissions, Tyrrell says. It has been suggested that we could add megatonnes of lime to the ocean to balance the extra acidity. However, Tyrrell says this is “probably not practical” because the amounts involved — and thus the costs — are enormous.

If only there were some animal on Earth that we felt was worth such an expenditure.

Source

Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean acid, New Scientist

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Paris to ban older cars, ruining all of your chase scenes

by Myrna Posted on November 26, 2012

Paris to ban older cars, ruining all of your chase scenes

By Philip Bump

If you know Paris, you know that it is primarily populated by men with pencil-thin mustaches who wear berets and carry around baguettes in paper bags. A lot of them wear shirts with thick horizontal stripes. These men don’t talk much, they mostly loiter around in the background speaking a language comprised mostly of sniffs and grumbles. (There are also women in Paris; they are uniformly stunning.)

roger4336

This is exactly what Paris looks like today.

The protagonists of the city are the superspies, the well-coiffed American and British men who use Paris as a rendezvous point with clumsy, heavyset agents from Russia or Bulgaria. Invariably, these meetings end poorly, and the superspies — though heavily outnumbered — manage to effect an escape by driving vintage cars along the banks of the Seine. Depending on the day, the Bulgarians either end up in the river, emerging with a spluttering curse, a fish draped across their heads, or they vanish from the scene in some sort of horrific explosion.

But all of that is likely to change, ruining the Paris that we know so well. The mayor of the city is going to ban vintage cars.

From the Times:

[T]he ban would include many of the most recognizably French cars, including the Citroën 2CV, known as the Deux Chevaux; the Citroën DS, celebrated for its clean, distinctive design; the Renault 4L, a practical Everyman’s car of the 1960s and ’70s; and many classic Peugeots. …

The ban would apply to private and commercial vehicles that would be older than 17 years in 2014 and therefore do not comply with existing European standards for the tailpipe emissions that cause smog.

A spokesman for the city estimated that 367,000 cars would be affected. Also targeted are heavy trucks older than 18 years and motorcycles older than 10.

Oh la la, etc.!

The primary motivation for Mayor Delanoë’s decision (an umlaut! How European!) is a set of regulations issued by the E.U. aimed at cutting pollution from automobiles. But Delanoë has been on an anti-car jeremiad for some time. Over the past decade, one expert notes, car traffic in the city dropped by 25 percent.

The plan would extend the mayor’s efforts to make the city more pedestrian-friendly by reducing the number of cars. These efforts include introducing the Vélib’ bicycle rental program, establishing the Autolib’ electric-car rental system and cutting vehicle traffic along the banks of the Seine.

We share this story primarily because it will have a ripple effect. Not in the sense that other cities will soon ban their signature vehicles, but because the next time you travel to Paris for a bit of skulduggery, your adrenaline-drenched chase will be an exhausting one, taking place on a bike. Or, worse, you’ll be zipping along the Champs Élysées in a silent electric car, suddenly able to hear all of the various tut-tuts of those striped-shirt gentleman and the guttural curses of the fruit stand vendors who shake their fists as you unnecessarily plough through their wares.

Source

Premature Retirement? Old-Car Owners Bristle at Proposed Ban, New York Times

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Soon-to-retire weather satellites played key role in predicting Sandy’s path

by Myrna Posted on November 21, 2012

Soon-to-retire weather satellites played key role in predicting Sandy’s path

By Philip Bump

Last month, shortly before Sandy ripped apart the shorelines of New Jersey and Long Island, we noted the possibly imminent budget-related retirement of government satellites that help forecasters refine weather data. As the article we cited then asked:

All this week, forecasters have been relying on … satellite observations for almost all of the data needed to narrow down what were at first widely divergent computer models of what Hurricane Sandy would do next: explode against the coast, or veer away into the open ocean?

Now we know just how much reliance forecasters placed on satellites. Without them, predictions that Sandy would veer sharply to the west — the path that brought it to New York — would not have been made as early as they were.

weather.com

This early projection of Sandy’s path had it sliding harmlessly along the coast.

From the Capital Weather Gang:

The European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasting (ECMWF), widely praised for the superior predictions of its model during superstorm Sandy, conducted an interesting experiment: how would its 5-day model simulation for the devastating storm [have] performed without any polar-orbiting satellite data?

The answer is astonishing: Rather than correctly simulating Sandy’s hard left turn into northern mid-Atlantic coast, an ECMWF model run without polar satellite data would have kept Sandy harmlessly out to sea.

It’s impossible to know at what point forecasters would have predicted the last-minute veer, seen in the video below at about the 17-second mark. Even with that data, broad agreement that such a turn was expected didn’t happen until Oct. 25 – four days before the storm hit. Each of those four days allowed authorities to prepare for its arrival, however many gaps in that preparation existed.

A caveat.

[T]he potential “gap” in polar satellite coverage expected is just that — a gap, stressed Capital Weather Gang’s Steve Tracton, an expert in numerical weather prediction. Data would still stream in from other satellites. Since the ECMWF excluded all polar-orbiting satellite data in its experiment, it cannot be seen as a realistic representation of a possible decline in forecast quality from the loss of a single satellite Tracton emphasized.

Nonetheless, predicting where massive storms are headed is an instance in which a surfeit of information can only be a good thing. It is not the sort of scenario in which we should settle for just enough.

And with climate change promising more large storms like this, the need has quite literally never been greater.

Source

Without polar satellites, forecast for Superstorm Sandy would have suffered European analysis finds, Capital Weather Gang

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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