Live data from Hacker News

Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

efoodalert.com

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#21
post #7

If you are eating the garbage they sell at supermarkets/chain restaurants then you are not immune to any of this. Do yourself a favor and get a CSA, a local meat supplier, and knowledge about eating with the seasons. The whole food supply chain is lined with fecal parasites from field to Sysco sales reps.

Small farmer here: it’s true. Supermarket food is horrible in terms of nutrition and taste, but it’s laden with literal shit too.

For example, milk is pasteurized because dairies are too lazy careless to keep literal shit out of the milk. Sure, they filter out the chunks, but a huge number of pathogens remain.

When heated those cells die, but guess what? All of their cellular machinery is still present in the final product. It can’t infect you as such, but it sure as hell isn’t anything that you should be drinking.

Look up the USDA standards for contamination. Food production involves industrial processes with necessarily loose safety margins, due to the relative scale of operations. If a small farmer caused this outbreak, they would be burnt to the ground, but anyone think this will impact the guilty beyond a minor dip in stock price?

Those corps do not care one whit about individuals any more than Apple or Facebook cares about their customers, unless you count how it affects their next quarterly statements.

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#24
post #7

If you are eating the garbage they sell at supermarkets/chain restaurants then you are not immune to any of this. Do yourself a favor and get a CSA, a local meat supplier, and knowledge about eating with the seasons. The whole food supply chain is lined with fecal parasites from field to Sysco sales reps.

Small farmer here: it’s true. Supermarket food is horrible in terms of nutrition and taste, but it’s laden with literal shit too. For example, milk is pasteurized because dairies are too lazy careless to keep literal shit out of the milk. Sure, they filter out the chunks, but a huge number of pathogens remain. When heated those cells die, but guess what? All of their cellular machinery is still present in the final p…

Is it any better in Canada

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same with Taco Bell executives - but customers should only be getting the regular, normal amount of explosive diarrhea from their food.

I don't think Taco Bell are the villains of this story. They got right on tracing the problem down and were open about it, from what I understand. Taylor Farms... not so much.

It doesn't help that they were getting mixed signals from the FDA. The further up you go, the worse it gets.

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#26

I don't understand the mechanics of how an outbreak like this even happens. It spreads by contact with contaminated feces. So if a few cases happen at a restaurant that's nasty and easy to understand. But how do you get tens of thousands of cases on a national level? Were they cleaning the produce before shipping it off with poop contaminated water or what?

Watering fields with grey water and whoopsie

Gray water doesn’t have poop in it, and I’d be shocked if it were legal to dump black water (raw sewage) on fields.

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#27

any reason why a foodborne illness would have two "waves" like this? Different batches?

There's two things going on here.

Most people don't report their illnesses, especially minor ones. The people that did report their illness trigger an investigation that then hunts down the people that didn't initially report their illnesses, so a month or two after the initial outbreak, you get numbers that are revised higher.

Regarding the two humps in the illness dates, that's because there's two events involved, over two different supply chains. Restaurant supply chains are faster than retail supply chains, and retail customers don't immediately consume the food they purchase, so the peak illness date from the retail supply chain is much later than the peak illness date from the restaurant supply chain.

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#28
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Taco Bell are the villains of this story. They got right on tracing the problem down and were open about it, from what I understand. Taylor Farms... not so much.

It doesn't help that they were getting mixed signals from the FDA. The further up you go, the worse it gets.

Yeah, corruption hurts all of us.

There's also a lesson in there for the "this sucks, they're all corrupt" type nihilists. It turns out that it was possible to be a lot more corrupt, and that things could indeed become much worse.

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watering fields with grey water and whoopsie

Gray water doesn’t have poop in it, and I’d be shocked if it were legal to dump black water (raw sewage) on fields.

The whoopsie is implying that what was on paper and legal, grey water being used, is not what actually occurred. Of course one will ask for proof of such mistakes or corruption and to which all I can give are thousands of people infected with parasites.

Re: Taylor Farms Cyclospora outbreak triples in size

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gray water doesn’t have poop in it, and I’d be shocked if it were legal to dump black water (raw sewage) on fields.

The whoopsie is implying that what was on paper and legal, grey water being used, is not what actually occurred. Of course one will ask for proof of such mistakes or corruption and to which all I can give are thousands of people infected with parasites.

The whoopsie is implying that what was on paper and legal…

Where in the U. S. is it legal to irrigate crops with gray water? Nowhere I’m aware of, except a few places where subsurface drip irrigation is allowed.

Post reply on HN