Food Recall: Castella Chicken Soup Base

Castella Imports, Inc. Conducts Nationwide Recall of Castella Chicken Soup Base Because of Possible Health Risk

Castella Imports of Hauppauge, NY, is voluntarily recalling Castella Chicken Soup Base because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be bloody), nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections (i.e., infected aneurysms), endocarditis and arthritis.

Product label #1. Click image to enlarge.

Product label # 2. Click image to enlarge.

The product was made using hydrolyzed vegetable protein manufactured by Basic Food Flavors, Inc. Las Vegas, Nevada. Basic Food Flavors initiated a recall of the hydrolyzed vegetable protein due to Salmonella contamination.

Castella Chicken Soup Base is distributed nationwide to food service (25 lbs. product) and sold in retail stores (1 lb. product).

Castella Chicken Soup Base 1 lb. is packaged in an opaque plastic jar with a white cap, a gold seal, a light yellow label, and UPC code 7 50144 33000 5. The recalled lots are: 0912039918, 1001121915, 1002013074, and 1002194266. The expiration dates for the lots affected are 12-3-2010 through 2-28-2011.

Castella Chicken Soup Base 25 lb. is packed in an all white bucket, a yellow label, and UPC code 7 501144 3320 9. The recalled lots are: 0911259508, 0911259508A, 0912150738, 0912180973, 0912211087, 1001192342, 1001282925, 1002194267. The expiration dates for the lots affected are 11-25-2010 through 2-28-2011.

To date no illnesses have been associated with this product.

Consumers that have the product may return it to the place of purchase for a full refund. Consumers with questions may contact Castella Imports at 631-231-5500, Monday thru Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.

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• Listeria Prompts Food Recall
• Listeria Suspected, Cheese Recalled
• Premature births caused by Virgin Blue airline food

• Virgin Blue liable for chicken-wrap compensation: lawyer
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• Imported Food Alert 22 Oct 2008
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U.S. FBI Cost $500 Per Head in Healthcare, Losses

Press Release: Safe Food for a healthy Life

Foodborne Illness Costs Nation $152 Billion Annually – Nearly $39 Billion Loss Attributed to Produce

Washington DC – Acute foodborne illnesses cost the United States an estimated $152 billion per year in healthcare, workplace and other economic losses, according to a report published today by the Produce Safety Project (PSP).

The study, Health-Related Costs from Foodborne Illness in the United States, was written by Dr. Robert L. Scharff, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) economist and current Ohio State University assistant professor in the department of consumer sciences. The study estimates that more than a quarter of these costs, an estimated $39 billion, are attributable to foodborne illnesses associated with fresh, canned and processed produce.

The FDA has announced that it will propose before the end of the year mandatory and enforceable safety standards for the growing, harvesting and packing of fresh produce. These will be the first nationwide safety standards for fresh fruits and vegetables.

“An up-to-date cost analysis of foodborne illnesses is critical for FDA officials and lawmakers to craft the most effective and efficient reforms,” said Jim O’Hara, PSP director. “A decade ago, we spent more than $1.3 billion annually to try to reduce the burden of foodborne illness and today we are spending even more. We need to make certain we are spending limited funds wisely and hitting our target of reducing sicknesses and deaths, and this study gives us a yardstick to measure our progress.”

Produce (fresh, canned and processed) accounts for roughly 19,700,000 of the reported illnesses documented, at a cost of approximately $1,960 per case and $39 billion annually in economic losses. California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania were the states most impacted by foodborne illness cases related to produce.

In additional to national data, the report includes data at the state level.

“The contribution of this study is that it provides more complete estimates of the health-related cost of foodborne illness in the United States by summing both medical costs (hospital services, physician services, and drugs) and quality-of-life losses (deaths, pain, suffering, and functional disability) for each of the major pathogens associated with foodborne illness,” said Dr. Scharff. “This cost includes both expenses to the person made ill such as pain and suffering losses and costs to others in society such as outlays by insurance companies that pay medical expenses.”

Scharff based his analysis on the economic principles currently used by FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) economists in their cost analyses. In addition, to account for uncertainty he utilized confidence intervals and sensitivity analysis.

The cost of foodborne illness is calculated on both an aggregate level and a pathogen-specific level. To view a full copy of the report and the state-by-state data analysis, simply visit http://www.producesafetyproject.org and click on the Health-Related Costs report.

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http://www.producesafetyproject.org.

Interactive Map: Annual Health-Related Costs of Foodborne Illness for Each State

Related Links:

• How old is your ecoli-burger?
• Calif Massive Food Recall

• Listeria Prompts Food Recall
• Listeria Suspected, Cheese Recalled
• Premature births caused by Virgin Blue airline food

• Virgin Blue liable for chicken-wrap compensation: lawyer
• Airlines & Aviation Industry, Airline Safety, Air Travel …

• Imported Food Alert 22 Oct 2008
• Should You Be Afraid, Really Afraid?
• Outbreak of Dangerous Group A Streptococcus Bacterium in NZ
• Don’t Take the Kids To New Zealand

Mountaintop Removal: Satellite Images

Dreaming of a Flat Earth!

Mountaintop removal is a major violation of nature with deadly consequences—Fire-Earth

“There has been a global, 30-year increase in surface mining, which is now the dominant driver of land-use change in the central Appalachian ecoregion of the United States. One major form of such mining, mountaintop mining with valley fills, is widespread throughout eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and southwestern Virginia. Upper elevation forests are cleared and stripped of topsoil, and explosives are used to break up rocks to access buried coal. Excess rock (mine ‘spoil’) is pushed into adjacent valleys, where it buries existing streams.” Mountaintop Mining Consequences, M. A. Palmer et al.

Growth of Mountaintop Removal, West Virginia, 1984-2009

Click images to enlarge

large image (0.73 MB, JPEG)             acquired September 17, 1984


large image (683 KB, JPEG)                            acquired June 2, 2009

Closeup: Mountaintop removal. Photo by Vivian Stockman; source: OVEC; flyover courtesy SouthWings. [Original caption: What does it say about human nature that we allow this kind of destruction to go on?]

The following is a recent feature article by NASA Earth Observatory :

Mountaintop Mining, West Virginia

Below the densely forested slopes of southern West Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains is a layer cake of thin coal seams. To uncover this coal profitably, mining companies engineer large—sometimes very large—surface mines. This time-series of images of a surface mine in Boone County, West Virginia, illustrates why this controversial mining method is also called “mountaintop removal.”

Based on data from NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite, these natural-color (photo-like) images document the growth of the Hobet mine as it moves from ridge to ridge between 1984 to 2009. The natural landscape of the area is dark green, forested mountains, creased by streams and indented by hollows. The active mining areas appear off-white, while areas being reclaimed with vegetation appear light green. A pipeline roughly bisects the images from north to south. The town of Madison, lower right, lies along the banks of the Coal River.

In 1984, the mining operation is limited to a relatively small area west of the Coal River. The mine first expands along mountaintops to the southwest, tracing an oak-leaf-shaped outline around the hollows of Big Horse Creek and continuing in an unbroken line across the ridges to the southwest. Between 1991 and 1992, the mine moves north, and the impact of one of the most controversial aspects of mountaintop mining—rock and earth dams called valley fills—becomes evident.

The law requires coal operators to try to restore the land to its approximate original shape, but the rock debris generally can’t be securely piled as high or graded as steeply as the original mountaintop. There is always too much rock left over, and coal companies dispose of it by building valley fills in hollows, gullies, and streams. Between 1991 and 1992, this leveling and filling in of the topography becomes noticeable as the mine expands northward across a stream valley called Stanley Fork.

The most dramatic valley fill that appears in the series, however, is what appears to be the near-complete filling of Connelly Branch from its source to its mouth at the Mud River between 1996 and 2000. Since 2004, the mine has expanded from the Connelly Branch area to the mountaintops north of the Mud River. Significant changes are apparent to the ridges and valleys feeding into Berry Branch by 2009. Over the 25-year period, the disturbed area grew to more than 10,000 acres (15.6 square miles).

According to a report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly 40 percent of the year-round and seasonal streams in the Mud River watershed upstream of and including Connelly Branch had been filled or approved for filling through 1998. In 2009, the EPA intervened in the approval of a permit to further expand the Hobet mine into the Berry Branch area and worked with mine operators to minimize the disturbance and to reduce the number and size of valley fills.

Still, some scientists argue that current regulations and mitigation strategies are inadequate. After doing a survey of research on mountaintop mining and valley fills, the scientists concluded that the impacts on stream and groundwater quality, biodiversity, and forest productivity were “pervasive and irreversible” and that current strategies for mitigation and restoration were not compensating for the degradation.

Links related to article and references

• More mine images on the Earth Observatory
• Coal Controversy in Appalachia
• EPA Releases Preliminary Results for Surface Coal Mining Permit Reviews

Related Links:

• Circuit Judge OKs Mountain Rape
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Chilean Quake Shortened the Earth Days?

NASA Rocket Scientists Say ‘Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days’

This view of Earth comes from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite. Credit: NASA/JPL

NASA JPL researchers claim the February 27, megaquake measuring 8.8Mw that destroyed many Chilean coastal towns, may have also shortened the duration of the planet’s day.

JPL research scientist Richard Gross says he and fellow researchers, using a complex model, have calculated how the Earth’s rotation should have changed as a result of the Chilean mega quake. He claims, “Earth’s figure axis (the axis about which Earth’s mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters, or 3 inches). Earth’s figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet). ”

According to their preliminary calculation, the quake should have shortened the duration of the planetary day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).

“Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth’s axis. Gross calculates the quake should have moved Earth’s figure axis (the axis about which Earth’s mass is balanced) by 2.7 milliarcseconds (~ 80 mm, or 3 inches). Earth’s figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis; they are offset by about 10 meters (about 33 feet).”

Gross says, the 2004 9.1-magnitude Sumatran earthquake should have shortened the day’s length by an estimated 6.8 microseconds, shifting the planet’s axis by 2.32 milliarcseconds (~ 70mm).

“Gross said that even though the Chilean earthquake is much smaller than the Sumatran quake, it is predicted to have changed the position of the figure axis by a bit more for two reasons. First, unlike the 2004 Sumatran earthquake, which was located near the equator, the 2010 Chilean earthquake was located in Earth’s mid-latitudes, which makes it more effective in shifting Earth’s figure axis. Second, the fault responsible for the 2010 Chilean earthquake dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake. This makes the Chile fault more effective in moving Earth’s mass vertically and hence more effective in shifting Earth’s figure axis.”

Gross believes the Chile estimates could change as quake data are further refined.

IF these important findings can be verified, let’s hope, for the planet’s sake and ours, we won’t have another 68,571,428,571 magnitude 8.8 quakes occurring all in the same place and in such way that they do NOT cancel out each other’s axial shift!

Notes:

1. Fire-Earth has NO independent verification of the above claims, as of posting.
2. The energy released by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake is about 31.6 times greater than that of a M8.0 shock.
3. The Chilean M8.8 megaquake released about 1 exajoule of energy (about 240 megaton, or 16,000 times the size of Hiroshima A-bomb). It was about 180 times greater than the energy from  the recent Haiti quake (estimated at 7.3Mw).
4. The 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatran earthquake released about 2.81 exajoules of energy, about 2.82 times greater than the Chilean 8.8 quake.
5. Largest ever instrumentally-recorded earthquake, the 9.5Mw supershock that struck Chile on May 22, 1960 was 11.2 time more powerful than Chile’s February 27 quake described above.

Related Links:

• Chile Earthquake: Disaster to Tragedy

• Chile Earthquake: Topographic Map
• Chile quake Update 3 (March 2)
• Chile Earthquake Update 2 (Mar 1)
• Santiago, Chile: Satellite Images
• Chile Earthquake and Tsunami Update 1 (28 Feb)
• Destructive Tsunami Generated by Chile Quake

• Chile 8.8 Megaquake Strikes Offshore Maule
• Earth undergoing significant geophysical disturbances
• Recent Earthquakes ≥ 6.0 Mw
• Powerful Quake Strikes Chile [November 13, 2009]
• The Largest Earthquake

Chile Earthquake: Disaster to Tragedy

Submitted by a reader with additional information added by FEWW

Chile Megaquake Death Toll Rises above 800

How to turn natural disasters into national tragedies the Chilean way

‘When we have a catastrophe of this magnitude… the populace … starts losing the sense of public order’ —President-elect Sebastian Pinera

Never mind, the populace is hungry; the people need running water, food, electricity and shelter …

There’s goes your hopes for better times under the new management!

The President-elect Sebastian Pinera is clearly a philosopher; unfortunately, he comes from the wrong school of philosophy—perhaps he would have felt more comfortable joining the Chilean military.

The Concepcion “Looters”

If you landed in Concepcion by mistake, you would have been forgiven for thinking it was a war zone, with heavily armed soldiers paroling the streets, threatening to kill hungry citizens.

NO running water? Let them Have Coca Cola, “it’s the real thing!”

Outgoing Chile’s president,  Michelle Bachelet, has issued the victims of quake in Concepcion with an ultimatum:  Chill out, or you’ll be sorry the quake didn’t bury you!

To prove to the starved, traumatized and displaced that she isn’t kidding Ms. Michelle Bachelet confirmed that 14,000 troops were now operating in the region, planted in every street corner with loaded rocket launchers.

According to various media reports, police (and the army) have arrested just about everyone and their uncles in Concepcion, anyone who was scouring for food and clean water, and that is a very large number indeed, in a city of an estimate 750,000 victims.

Death Toll

As the death toll form the 8.8-magnitude quake rises above 800, search and recovery teams said at least 2 dozen others are still unaccounted for.

Missing

Anyone old enough to remember the spellbinding film Missing, would also be forgiven to believe the photo below was a freeze frame from the film.

Missing was an American drama directed by Costa Gavras in 1982, starring Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea and Charles Cioffi, among others. The script was based on the true story of an American journalist, Charles Horman, who went missing in the bloody aftermath of the US-backed Chilean coup that deposed President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.

The US-backed military junta headed by the murderous head of the army General Augusto Pinochet usurped power. Pinochet allegedly ordered the murder of Allende, and ended the democratically elected Popular Unity government.

Pinochet established a military dictatorship marked by severe human rights violations that repressed Chileans until 1990.

Up to a quarter of a million Chileans were arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Pinochet regime. Many thousands were murdered. Thousands more went missing.

A freeze frame from the film Missing? [Original caption: Police detain people on suspicion of looting in Concepcion, Chile, on March 1.]  Credit: Ricardo Pasten/AP. Image may be subject to copyright.

Related Links:

• Chile Earthquake: Topographic Map
• Chile quake Update 3 (March 2)
• Chile Earthquake Update 2 (Mar 1)
• Santiago, Chile: Satellite Images
• Chile Earthquake and Tsunami Update 1 (28 Feb)
• Destructive Tsunami Generated by Chile Quake

• Chile 8.8 Megaquake Strikes Offshore Maule
• Earth undergoing significant geophysical disturbances
• Recent Earthquakes ≥ 6.0 Mw
• Powerful Quake Strikes Chile [November 13, 2009]
• The Largest Earthquake