Friday, October 5, 2012

Blog Entry #6



Salmonella in Dutch Fish
 Summary:
     The bacteria Salmonella has been found in Dutch smoked fish. This fish from the company Foppen is shipped to both the Netherlands and to the United States. Salmonella is a bacterium that makes people very ill with symptoms of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, blood in stool, abdominal pain, fever and chills. Usually one would get a salmonella infection from eating raw or uncooked meat products including poultry. Sickness from the bacteria usually lasts from four to seven days, but it may take a few months for your “bowels to be back to normal”. Two hundred people in the Netherlands have been reported ill with the same salmonella found in the fish and in 100 other Americans who all consumed the fish from the Dutch company. There has been an international recall on this fish and the number of those who are ill is estimated to be much higher.
Analysis:
     It’s scary to think that the food we consume every day has the potential to make us ill. Most of us trust where our food is coming from and that the health standards put in place by the government will protect us from such “accidents”. My concern specifically for this article is that the contaminated meat was allowed to be transported to different places around the world while having bacteria on it that makes people sick. Are not meat and other products supposed to be tested at different cycles during processing to check for things like this? Are there no standards for processing? No company wants their brand marked as one that has “bad food”; and no customer wants to worry about being made sick because of a certain food product. Therefore, it makes sense that products should be tested before they are sent out to be consumed. People are so trusting of set standards that they may get fairly upset when they are knocked out of work for a week due to a mistake by a food company.

10/5/2012 11:14 AM

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/salmonella/DS00926/DSECTION=symptoms

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