Posts Tagged ‘supermarket’
Supermarket chicken packaging reeks with bacteria
Picking up a packet of chicken in a supermarket is more likely to give you food poisoning than handling a raw bird, a pioneering survey has found.
Food standards officials discovered that 40 per cent of packets of chicken in a range of supermarkets, convenience stores and butchers were covered with bacteria on the outside.
Of 20 packets of chicken studied, eight had food poisoning bacteria on their wrapping while seven chickens were contaminated inside the packet. One tested positive for salmonella.
Shoppers are now being warned to wash their hands after handling chicken cartons to combat the risk of catching the campylobacter bug which can induce vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain.
Birmingham Food Safety officials…is believed to be the first to test packaging and it has reported its findings to the Government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) and major retail chains…
“These findings reinforce our advice to avoid cross-contamination when handling and storing raw chicken even if it is still in its packaging…”
The contamination is believed to take place during the manufacturing and shipping.
Which is why as soon as we return home from our weekly shopping, we remove the packaging from most meat, fish and poultry we buy – wash the food and repackage it in clean plastic bags – washing our hands in the process as well.
This also cleans off some of the solutions used – even by reputable firms – to help preserve foods before sale.
Weird supermarket bank robber turns out to be supermarket clerk
The Los Angeles area bank robber had an outrageous disguise for an audacious plan, authorities said. He wore pink hospital scrubs, a Darth Vader mask, black wig, and gloves.
His unusual weapon: a hatchet.
His target: a Bank of America teller inside a Los Angeles area grocery.
The menacing get-up worked, and the robber allegedly got away with an undisclosed amount of cash on Thursday, authorities said.
But the heist was successful for only three hours…
Investigators found the alleged robber back at the scene of the crime — this time working his job as a courtesy clerk inside the same Albertson’s grocery in Rowland Heights, California…
Authorities declined to disclose how they tracked down the alleged robber.
Gregory Sanchez, 46, of West Covina, California, was charged with the bank robbery and was being held on $100,000 bail…
Maybe I shouldn’t let prospective bank robbers know this; but, exploding dye packs in the cash are so 5 minutes ago. Nowadays, banks salt the money with tiny RFID tags – radio traceable from nearby.
Bet numbnuts had some of the money in his pocket when he returned to the scene of the crime – to go to work.
Butter in supermarket contaminated by flame retardant
A new study reports what scientists believe is the worst documented U.S. case of food contamination with polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants. The incident also marks the first time food contamination has been thought to result from PBDEs in a food’s packaging.
One of ten samples of butter purchased at five Dallas grocery stores contained high concentrations of deca-BDE, a PBDE compound widely used in electronics as well as in textiles, wire and cable insulation, and automobile and airplane components. Animal studies have linked consumption of deca-BDE with thyroid hormone changes in adult rodents and neurobehavioral changes in young rodents.
PBDE levels in the contaminated butter were more than 135 times higher than the average of the other nine samples; levels of BDE-209, the main component of deca-BDE, were more than 900 times higher.
The contamination came to light during a routine investigation intended to help scientists improve estimates of the amount of PBDEs and other persistent organic pollutants people inadvertently consume in food. Scientists have detected low levels of these compounds in many fat-rich foods including fish such as salmon, meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products.
Further investigation revealed the butter’s paper wrapper had PBDE levels more than 16 times greater than levels in the butter itself. It is unclear whether the paper was contaminated before or after it reached the butter packaging plant, according to lead author Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas School of Public Health, Dallas Campus. The source of the contamination also is unclear.
U.S. manufacturers have agreed to end all uses of deca-BDE by 2014, and the European Union phased it out in 2008. Is it faster reflexes got this banned in Europe 6 years ahead of the US? However, chemicals don’t vanish from the environment just because they’re phased out, Schecter says, and products containing deca-BDE often are used for many years
The authors agree the conclusion of this research further points out the need to test foods for crap like PBDEs.
Salmon will be first GM animal available for consumption
Jetliner carrying one fish to market
A salmon that grows at twice the normal rate is set to be the first genetically modified (GM) animal available for human consumption.
Usually Atlantic salmon do not grow during the winter and take three years to fully mature. But by implanting genetic material from an eel-like species called ocean pout that grows all year round, US scientists have managed to make the fish grow to full size in 18 months.
They hope that the sterile GM salmon can offer an efficient and safe way to breed salmon in fish farms, so that the wild fish can be left in the oceans.
US watchdog the Food and Drug Administration is currently considering whether the GM Atlantic salmon, called AquAdvantage, is safe to eat. The fish could be on supermarket shelves within a year…
But Lord Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association, said the new technology is not worth the risk.
“Once you have bombarded an animal with other genes, the DNA is unstable, and there is no guarantee these fish remain sterile. It poses far too great a risk to wild salmon. A fish that grows that quickly is likely to lose some of its environmental benefits. There is no such thing as a free salmon lunch and we will pay the price,” he said.
I hope he knows more about soil than he apparently does about genomics.
And I have to laugh over the Telegraph’s headline. I can picture this giant salmon lurching through the aisles of a supermarket. When in fact the growers are aiming at bringing the farmed fish to market size sooner – not larger.
Such foolishness and sophistry.
Mother refused wine at supermarket – in case daughter, 17, drinks it
Management consultant Jackie Slater thought she was completing a normal shopping trip to Morrisons until the checkout assistant demanded to see her ID before scanning two bottles of wine.
“I told her I was really flattered, but I was the wrong side of 50,” she said. But the assistant pointed to her 17-year-old daughter, Emily, and her 18-year-old niece, Annice, who were standing at the end of the checkout chatting.
“She asked: ‘Are they with you?’ I said they’d come to help me carry the bags back to the car. The assistant said: ‘You could be buying the wine for them. It’s the policy – I have to see everyone’s ID to make sure they are all over 18′.”
In vain, Mrs Slater insisted that the wine was for herself and her husband, Peter. But the assistant and then the store manager refused to budge.
At this point I would expect management of the chain to apologize and, maybe, throw in a jug of Chilean Carmenere for free as good will. Not, apparently, at Morrisons.
Bull in a supermarket! WTF?
A bull filmed rampaging around a supermarket after escaping from a cattle market has put a small town in the west of Ireland on the international map.
CCTV footage from the security cameras in Cummins’ SuperValu store in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, put on YouTube has been viewed by thousands of people around the world.
Residents’ relatives have been calling from as far afield as Sydney and Hong Kong to say they have seen it.
Har!
