Now There Are Salmonella And Listeria Outbreaks, Too, In Case You Wanted A New Kind Of Food Poisoning
Meanwhile, RFK Jr posts 10-year-old videos of himself kayaking on Instagram.
On Tuesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took a break from foraging for roadkill and cold plunging in blue jeans in order to come out to announce that the cyclosporiasis outbreak was totally under control. On Wednesday, it was reported that there have been more 11,500 cyclosporiasis cases in 41 states. Several states are continuing to have major spikes, particularly Ohio, which more than doubled its number of cases of the “explosive diarrhea” foodborne illness this week (2,576 up from 1,192 last week), and the CDC has expanded the outbreak to include four more states. Now the outbreak area includes Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, in addition to Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. At this point, we’re looking at about 12,000 cases and the largest cyclosporiasis outbreak in US history.
But sure! Everything is totally under control. Except, you know, in people’s bathrooms. Or at the CDC, which reduced surveillance for cyclosporiasis and other foodborne illnesses last year. As a resident of Illinois, I know I’m excited to have to be super paranoid about my food and avoid lettuce, spinach, cilantro, parsley and various other leafy greens for however long this takes to die down. Berries too, I hear.
However, cyclosporiasis isn’t the only foodborne illness you need to worry about now, because there are also new outbreaks of salmonella and listeria.
Midwest Poultry Services is recalling close to 1.6 million white shell eggs and brown cage-free shell eggs produced in Texas, the Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday. The eggs in question have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis, and were being sold at Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana, as well as Brookshire Grocery stores in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Mexico.
The listeria outbreak has, very rudely, been linked to soft cheeses — which is just sad because we need brie at times like these.
Via FoodSafetyNews:
For the new outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections, the FDA is reporting eight confirmed patients. The agency is not reporting the patients’ ages or where they live. The FDA has begun traceback and onsite inspections but is not reporting what food is being traced or what location is being inspected.
Just a month ago, there was another listeria outbreak involving soft cheeses, so be careful with your charcuterie boards over the weekend. Because more severe forms of listeria poisoning can often take 1-4 weeks to present symptoms, it can be difficult to find and test sources.
There are also open CDC investigations into some other outbreaks, including one of clostridium botulinum in powdered infant formula, because babies love botulism and e. coli in frozen blueberries. In fact, there are 16 current investigations into outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, which does seem like a lot.
If multiple Democrats do not run explicitly on “Come with us if you want to live/don’t want to shit your pants” I will be very disappointed. Seriously. They’re all trying to pretend that this isn’t related to program cuts and budget cuts — Kennedy himself claimed that all they cut was “redundant surveillance” (totally don’t mind redundancy if it means I don’t get food poisoning) and USAID programs — but when was the last time we had this much food poisoning? I mean, sure, every once in a while there are a few weeks where you can’t buy romaine lettuce, but I have to worry about parsley now?
I’m starting to feel a little concerned about my $1 oyster happy hour habit.
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That’s not all, either. In other very exciting RFK Jr.-related health news, we have officially surpassed last year’s count of measles cases (2,289) and are now up to 2,318, the highest number of cases since 1991, when there were a total of 9,643 cases. And with Kennedy’s help, we’ll likely surpass that next year.
While this has all been going on, Kennedy has been hard at work, posting videos of himself kayaking 10 years ago on Instagram, which for sure seems like a very good use of his time. After all, he’s not there to give a shit about food poisoning or contagious diseases, he’s there to try to spend $5 billion of your money trying to prove that autism is caused by vaccines, that you can turn lead into gold and cure whatever ails you with leeches.
Just back from my favorite local sub shop here in Cleveland Heights and they have a sign saying they are not serving lettuce on the sandwiches due to safety concerns.
I have fresh tomatoes off the vine from my garden, so I'm not (yet) giving up on salads and salsa fresca. Fresh tomatoes are like a different food, compared to what you can buy in the stores.