Sludge Watch ==> More E.coli from General Mills and Walmart

[Maureen Reilly]

BLOG: More E.coli, from General Mills and Wal-Mart
04.nov.07
The Complete Patient
David Gumpert


http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2007/11/4/more-ecoli-from-general-mills-and-wal-mart-new-theories-abou.html

You say your child still has diarrhea, two weeks after getting E.coli 
O157:H7 from one of our pepperoni pizzas? No problem. We hope you kept the 
box, because all you have to do is cut out the bar code, send it in to our 
special E.coli redemption center, and guess what? We’ll send you a coupon 
for another pizza.

Absolutely no charge.

You paid your hard-earned 99 cents for that pizza and we’re going to give 
you 99 cents of value! Plus, we’ll give you ten-to-one odds this 
replacement DOESN’T contain E.coli. What do you say? Is that a deal, or is 
that a deal! And give your little guy a kiss from us. We’re sure that 
before you can say FDA or CDC, he’ll be begging you for more Totino’s 
pizza.
You think I’m making this up? Gee, Totino’s Pizzas should hire me to 
write their ad copy. Totino’s (a subsidiary of General Mills) has in the 
last few days initiated a recall of more than 400,000 cases of its 
pizza—nearly four months after the first case of E.coli from its pizza was 
reported--and included its generous "replacement" offer.

The FDA didn’t think this was important enough to mention on its web site; 
the CDC has a Q&A about it, in which it says the company will give you “a 
full refund” (not just a replacement) on recalled pizza. Interestingly, it 
cautions against administering antibiotics to people who have E.coli 0157:H7 
(which has let to many developing kidney problems).

Is there a double standard here, or am I just imagining that contaminated 
pizza (and spinach, lettuce, frozen hamburger, etc., etc.) are treated 
differently from raw milk? I wish I were imagining it. If this were raw 
milk, I don’t think your main penalty would be to invite customers to 
receive a free replacement gallon. You’d be shut down, with inspectors 
crawling up the rear ends of your cows determined to link you to the 
illness. There’d be government press releases warning you to watch out.

And just as Mary McGonigle-Martin likes to suggest (and did in her comment 
following my posting on the California legislator), this is real people 
getting sick. This from a posting on a writers group listserve I am part of:

“Last night on the news the lead story was that 21 people had gotten sick 
after eating Totino's frozen pepperoni pizza.

Upon my return from New York on Monday morning I found everyone in my family 
SICK, SICK! We thought they picked up a bug at school and passed it around. 
Until we heard the news last night (Thursday).

“Because I was not home on Saturday, they decided to take the cheap-dinner 
route and each ate a Totino's frozen pepperoni pizza, which as it turned out 
was the culprit behind their sickness.
“To add injury to insult, yesterday…WalMart…indicated that if 
consumers send in the label they will be reimbursed--.99 per pizza. A lot of 
trouble for a few bucks.”

So actually, the total number of people who became sick is more than 21.