Posted on 10/01/2011 10:41:45 PM PDT by FreedomNotSafety
DENVER (AP) — Charles Palmer is a hardy 71-year-old former Marine and Vietnam veteran who trains cockatiels to say "Semper Fi" and "Whatcha doin', man?" He also loves fruit — and especially melon for lunch. "He's never one to get sick," said his wife, Tammie. The Colorado Springs man ate a cantaloupe that was purchased in mid-August, his wife said. Within several days, he was overcome by an excruciating headache. The next morning he was extremely weak and gripped by dry heaves, his wife recalled. "I started slapping his face and saying, 'You've got to talk to me,' but he couldn't," she said. She called 911. At the hospital, she said, he was diagnosed with the strain of Listeria blamed for a 19-state outbreak that has killed at least 15 and sickened at least 84.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I notch it up to part of the media complicit great green cover up. Environmentalism kills and the liberal news mediums will not report it.
Seems like all of the recent deadly food borne illnesses have originated from organically grown food.
Don't read if you dislike rants... Sign me up for more DNA altered, pasteurized, irradiated, bleached, cleaned, refined, precooked, preservative filled foods. Make sure it is grown on land fertilized with man made chemical compounds straight from a factory and not from an animal's A$$. I will take my beef full of hormones and antibiotics, medium rare and full of fat. Grill it over very high heat just to make sure it has the proper amount of carcinogens
I love my non-organic farming....all research indicates it is healthier, had more vitamins, and the food stays fresher longer.
Why field hands have diarrhea, and not have sanitary facilities is another policy problem.
But organic or non-organic has nothing to do with folks dying because of fecal splashing.
/johnny
I’m wondering if it’s because of wild hogs. They’ve been a problem getting into farmlands. They carry a ton of diseases.
Listeria is a frequent pestilence of things like processed meat. Modern science came up with the neat idea of using phages, which are viruses that infect and kill only Listeria bacteria. Spray phages on the Listeria-prone food and voila, no more Listeria. And also something that organic food processors would eschew as artificial.
By the way who cut up the melon? The guy who was afflicted? His wife? A food store? It would be easy to get Listeria from contaminated meat onto the melon by an insufficiently cleaned knife or cutting surface, or other accidental contact.
Everything I can find thus far says the ‘processing’ area and the ‘processed’ melons tested positive for Listeria. It would not matter if the farm was ‘organic’ or ‘inorganic’, if the processing facility was filthy there would still be contamination.
The fecal matter is not just from the field hands and is usually from animal feces besides that, washing in a chlorine solution is not organic. In fact the green weenies wish to see the use of chlorine banned.
/johnny
I don’t think this has beans to do with organic farming. You can bet your sweet booty this will remain forever officially a mystery if indications point to infected illegal alien field hands pooping in the fields.
There’s also the possibility of someone using municipal sludge as fertilizer or irrigating with contaminated water.
Either way, I very much doubt the cause was some freak of nature.
Always you say? Well, well.
Just more of the price of cheap labor...
50 ppm of sodium hypochlorite would be 2 tablespoons of laundry bleach per gallon of water.
I often wash produce with a dab of dish soap, just enough to suds a little then rinsed till suds are gone. The soap emulsifies oil based contaminants and allows them to be flushed off the surface with water. Bleach might not be able to touch anything that is in an oil based medium, but bleaching after washing is probably overkill.
At an “inorganic farm” of “melon factory” the melons would have been spayed to remove and kill contaminants reducing the chance of this happening. The “organic” farm is far more likely to not use unnatural cleaners and use “natural” fertilizers. They even allow their animals to free range into the melon patch.
It would be best if they weren't here.
And if they are here, it should be via a lawful route, and they should have the same protections as American workers.
/johnny
Vegetarians show us the horrors of what goes on in chicken coops, slaughterhouses, and pig farms hoping that we will stop eating meat.
This news of yours puts me right off vegetables for good.
Nature is perfectly capable of dealing with weak solutions of bleach, which decomposes into common salt.
Well, Jesus did speak of the sickly tree, where the owner told the gardeners to “put manure” and see if it perked up, before condemning the tree for not fruiting. To be fair, to manure at the base of a tree would be unlikely to result in contamination of the fruit well above it.
Generally, my clientel were young, strong males, but I did the same in civilian establishments.
Can't have a military all bent over with stomach cramps.
And you can't wash lettuce.
/johnny
“I love my non-organic farming....all research indicates it is healthier, had more vitamins, and the food stays fresher longer.”
plus you know it’s not grown in poop
In every case I’ve followed... And I did food safety as a career for a while.... It was fecal splashing from humans. Illegal field hands, always.
Try reading this: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/8/dead-bodies-demand-organic-food-moratorium/?page=all
Excerpt: “ Those who cling to the 1850s feces-based agricultural technology should face the same hurdles. As should those who reject key safety advances such as the E. coli-killing practice of irradiating suspect foods and genetic engineering, which holds promise in using natural biological proc-esses to limit the spread of food-borne illness.”
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