What the heck's going on with food lately? First spinach, then a local area restaurant around here had a salmonella outbreak followed by a bunch of other area restaurants (bad tomatoes), then Taco Bell & now 300 people get sick at an Olive Garden restaurant in Indianapolis with E. Coli! Some body's not washing their hands!

I have no idea. What restaurant(s) from around you had an outbreak? I know a Taco John's around my home had some kind of problem like that. I'm sure that food problems are bound to come around sometime or another, but this is just plain ridiculous. Someone needs to look more carefully at the food before serving it.

Looking at the food won't help. Bacteria and viruses are not visible to the naked eye. Proper handwashing, use of gloves, washing all fresh vegetables, cooking foods fully and keeping them at the proper temperature are the steps that need to be taken - and even then it might not prevent illness. Unfortunately, everytime we eat out, we're putting ourselves - literally - in the hands of others.

And, I'll probably draw fire for this, but in the hands of others who may not have grown up with the same cultural strictures about this that we did.

I don't understand why you'll probably draw fire for that statement, but I think it's also a problem before the restaurant even gets the food. The FDA, the growers, nature itself. Does thoroughly cooking always get rid of salmonella and E. coli? I don't know.

Now I'm going out on a limb... could bio-terrorism be involved? There just seems to be too many incidents too close to each other, much different than in the recent past.

I was wondering these very things... It's not clear to me if this was ON the vegies in question or IN thme. Does that mean no more salads?

the e-coli is IN the veggies, usually due to exposure from infected manure, dung, etc. in/around the soil. You can't wash it off. Raw veggies are the primary culprit. Cooking (if to the proper temps) will usually kill 'em off. That's why you hear about folks getting sick from salads, dressings, toppings, etc.
Salmonella is what you usually hear about. E-coli is not as frequent a guest at the table.
Me? I ALWAYS wash my hands before going to the bathroom!!!

if ya wanna be safe, when you go to the fast food places, use the scallion as a rolling paper, roll up the spinach and the lettuce and smoke it. this should kill the e-coli and give you a better appetite for the rest of the meal.

"i'll have some dry white toast, please." --elwood blues

Wyldflower wrote:


I didn't mean literally looking at the food (Guess I should've specified though.) I don't know how they could do better checks, but there's got to be a way.

I don't know now. If there's critters of some kind livin IN the vegie maybe it will stand up and do a little dance or something. Then we'd have dancing salad!

The outbreak was due to their supplier and not them. It was salmonella tainted tomatoes. Turns out a bunch more restaurants had the same supplier and had the same problem. But these folks were made to close down for over a week or two and scrub the place down, top to bottom with bleach and disinfectants and such. They lost a lot of business and are still recovering from it, so I don't want to say who they are. I've played there a few times. They're good people, always running benefits for their community or somebody in it who needs a helping hand. This wasn't even their fault. I don't know if it was traced farther back than their supplier. But the point is that it was something that was brought in and not their doing. I mean, you get tomatoes in salad and they're not cooked. Could happen to anyone in the food biz. I just don't get why it's happening so often lately.

When I was married it was risky to eat at home too

I remember seeing in the news where an Olive Garden restaurant somewhere had the same or similar as the Taco Bell incident happen there recently. Evidently it's happening at some non-fast food restaurants too now...