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Many different food organizations are offereing less quality food, trying to find wys to make cheaper food products faster. These big companies have a grip on the food industries and it is turning to have negative affect for the customers. The quality is downgrading because the industries are more worried about making more omeny for themselves instead of producing quality and safe foods for the consumer. This is very unethical because they are more worried about their own money then the wellbeing of their customers buying the produce.

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Feasting with family and friends is part of many holiday celebrations. Follow these simple tips to keep safe from food poisoning, or foodborne illness, during the holidays.

Everyone can practice food safety during the holidays

Wash your hands. Be sure to wash your hands with soap and water before and after preparing food, after touching raw meat, raw eggs, or unwashed vegetables, and before eating or drinking.

Cook food thoroughly. Meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs can carry germs that cause food poisoning. Use a food thermometer to ensure these foods have been cooked to the safe minimum internal temperature. Roasts, chops, steaks and fresh ham should rest for 3 minutes after removing from the oven or grill.

Keep food out of the "danger zone" . Bacteria can grow rapidly at room temperature. After food is cooked, keep hot food hot and cold food cold. Refrigerate or freeze any perishable food within 2 hours. The temperature in your refrigerator should be set at or below 40°F and the freezer at or below 0°F.

Use pasteurized eggs for dishes containing raw eggs. Salmonella and other harmful germs can live on both the outside and inside of normal-looking eggs. Many holiday favorites contain raw eggs, including eggnog, tiramisu, hollandaise sauce, and Caesar dressing. Always use pasteurized eggs when making these and other foods made with raw eggs.

Do not eat dough or batter. Dough and batter made with flour or eggs can contain harmful germs, such as E. coli and Salmonella. Do not taste or eat unpasteurized dough or batter of any kind, including those for cookies, cakes, pies, biscuits, pancakes, tortillas, pizza, or crafts. Do not let children taste raw dough or batter or play with dough at home or in restaurants.

Keep foods separated. Keep meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs separate from all other foods at the grocery and in the refrigerator. Prevent juices from meat, poultry, and seafood from dripping or leaking onto other foods by keeping them in containers or sealed plastic bags. Store eggs in their original carton in the main compartment of the refrigerator.

Safely thaw your turkey. Thaw turkey in the refrigerator, in a sink of cold water that is changed every 30 minutes, or in the microwave. Avoid thawing foods on the counter. A turkey must thaw at a safe temperature to prevent harmful germs from growing rapidly.

Pregnancy and Food

While everyone wants to keep food safe during the holidays, it is especially important for pregnant women to do so because they are at increased risk of food poisoning.

Avoid raw or unpasteurized milk and products made with it, such as soft cheeses. Raw or unpasteurized milk and products made with it can contain harmful germs, including . Avoid drinking raw milk and eating soft cheeses, such as queso fresco, Brie, Camembert, feta, goat cheese, or Roquefort, if they are made from raw or unpasteurized milk. Do not eat or drink other raw or unpasteurized products, such as juice or cider.

Be careful with seafood. Do not eat refrigerated smoked seafood unless it is in a cooked dish, such as a casserole, or unless it is canned or shelf-stable.

Be aware of holiday beverages. To reduce the possibility of fetal alcohol syndrome, watch out for alcohol-containing holiday punches and eggnogs. Avoid eggnog entirely unless you know it contains no alcohol and is pasteurized or made with pasteurized eggs and milk.

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Feasting with family and friends is part of many holiday celebrations. Follow these simple tips to keep safe from food poisoning, or foodborne illness, during the holidays. Wash your hands . Be sure to wash your hands with soap and water before and after preparing food, after touching raw meat, raw eggs, or unwashed vegetables, and before eating or drinking.

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It was still dark when Jay hit the highway. At 6 o'clock that morning, he would be starting his first shift at Quality Pork Processors, part of the Hormel Foods complex in Austin, Minn., almost an hour's drive down Interstate 90 from his rented apartment in Rochester. He'd applied for the job on the meatpacking line barely a week earlier and was still mentally preparing for it. "When you're in the car," he told me recently, "you have to go over everything again." He had to remember his story: where he was from, why he was there. He had to remind himself what he could and couldn't say. He was going to be meeting a lot of new people that day, and it would be essential not to arouse suspicions.

Just before the exit off the Interstate, Jay passed an illuminated billboard for Austin's Spam Museum: "FIND SALIVATION." He steered down the winding road along the plant perimeter, past the high wall guarding the loading docks, until he came to the Q.P.P. employee entrance on Hormel Century Parkway. The factory was already enveloped in steam; overnight cleaning crews had hosed down the stainless-steel cutting line, and now the compound's six-story hydrostatic Spam cooker was warming for the day shift. The steam billowed and swirled in the lights of the plant. Jay shuffled into the line of workers making their way through the employee turnstile. He swiped in and headed through the glass doors to where the day's freshly laundered uniforms were being handed out, color-coded according to department.

"What station?" the person at the window asked.

"Gam table," Jay said. His job would be slicing open the rear legs of hog carcasses, loosening the tendons of the trotters and inserting a gambrel. "It looks like a clothes hanger, but with hook tips that point up," he told me. The gambrel attaches to a trolley that carries the carcass on a chain conveyor system as it is broken down into "primal cuts," before being sent to the Hormel Foods side of the plant for final processing and packaging.

Jay knew that the job would be physically grueling. To keep up with the speed of the line, a carcass had to be cut and hung in about six seconds. But more than that, it was going to be psychologically - even morally - taxing for him. Jay had been a vegetarian since he was in college. He couldn't say why he quit eating meat, really, only that he always loved animals and that his vegetarian younger sister convinced him.

But in recent years, Jay's commitment had grown. He became a vegan. When he was online, he found himself drifting toward websites of animal rights groups, pulling up footage of abuse shot by undercover investigators. One day it occurred to him that he should try to find such work. On a job site, he found an opening at Compassion Over Killing, or C.O.K., an advocacy group intent on ending cruelty to animals in agriculture and promoting vegetarianism. And just like that, he entered the shadowy world of undercover video activism, where no one around you knows whom you really work for and few people, not even your family and friends, know where you are or what you're doing for months at a stretch. (To protect his identity, Jay uses only his middle name when speaking to reporters.)

Now, as Jay dressed in the locker room, put on a hard hat and picked up gloves in the equipment room, he could feel a weight descend on him. Once you're inside, he said, you realize how alone you are. "You're going to be out there pretty much by yourself," he told me. "You're going to be working these really long hours and seeing animal abuse on a day-to-day basis."

His manager at C.O.K. had warned him that it would be months before he could transfer to the kill side of the plant, where live animals are handled, and weeks more before he would have enough video to complete the investigation. Every day for five or maybe six months, Jay would have to walk past posters reminding employees that all cameras were strictly prohibited inside the plant and to immediately report any suspicious individual, even if that person was a co-worker. The isolation and paranoia can be consuming, he said, coloring every sidelong glance, every passing conversation. "It's definitely something that's always there in the back of your mind," Jay told me. "When you're talking to people, you really have to just focus on who you're supposed to be."

When picking among shrink-wrapped packages in the meat aisle of your local grocery, it's remarkable how little information you're provided about the steak, pork chop or chicken breast inside. The label tells you the particular cut, its weight and the price per pound, but store brands almost never give even basic information about how that animal was raised. In December, Congress repealed its country-of-origin labeling requirements for beef and pork, so now meatpackers don't identify where the animal came from. Beef commands a premium if it is labeled "grass-fed" or "naturally raised," but the Department of Agriculture withdrew oversight of those terms in January and no longer verifies such claims. Even in cases where the U.S.D.A. does certify labels, the rules can be slippery. The term "humanely raised," for example, has no standard definition, and the U.S.D.A. does not conduct site visits to confirm enforcement for those approved to use the label.

Amid such dwindling transparency and oversight, animal rights activists, once regarded as the radical fringe, have taken on a somewhat unlikely role as consumer watchdogs. Trading provocations (splattering fur-wearing models with fake blood) for middle-ground strategies ("Meatless Monday"), they are drawing the attention of not only shoppers concerned about humane animal handling but also food-safety advocates and environmental groups who worry about the ecological impact of large-scale meat production. The principal tool of this public-relations effort has been daring hidden-camera footage, released in slickly edited videos that aim to shock consumers about what really happens on the production line.

Undercover investigations of the American meat industry go back at least as far as the early 20th century, when Upton Sinclair lived in the Packingtown section of Chicago, gathering material for his classic muckraking novel, "The Jungle." During his two months there, Sinclair made several visits to the Armour slaughterhouse, which he rendered in vivid detail. Sinclair had hoped to arouse public outcry over the treatment of workers; instead, readers were horrified by the unsanitary conditions in which their meat was slaughtered and butchered. J.Ogden Armour publicly denounced the book, declaring, "Not one atom of any condemned animal or carcass finds its way, directly or indirectly, from any source, into any food product or food ingredient." Sinclair responded with a letter addressed to President Theodore Roosevelt: "I saw with my own eyes hams, which had spoiled in pickle, being pumped full of chemicals to destroy the odor. ... I saw hogs which had died of cholera in shipment, being loaded into box cars to be taken to a place called Globe, in Indiana, to be rendered into lard."

Roosevelt demanded that Congress pass immediate reforms. The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 mandated adherence to new sanitary standards and the presence of federal inspectors to enforce these rules. Any product that failed to meet the new standard was to be condemned.

The strength of these reforms, combined with consumer eagerness for cheap meat during the hard times of the Great Depression and food rationing of World War II, ushered in a golden age for the industry. Meat sales soared, workers' wages climbed and the industry engaged consumers in a new spirit of openness and transparency. As late as 1965, a business like George A. Hormel & Company was advertising public tours of its plants. The company even produced a half-hour educational film called "This Is ... Hormel," showing four farm boys and their father on a tour of the Austin slaughterhouse. "From balconies," the narrator says, "you can look across entire rooms of assembly - or rather disassembly - activity."

All that started to change in the 1970s, as the meatpacking industry mechanized and moved away from skilled labor. Confined animal-feeding operations, commonly known as "factory farms," were born and sustained by the intensified production of crops like corn and soybeans for feed. By the Reagan era, Americans had fallen in love with microwaveable food, frozen food and especially fast food. The number of McDonald's franchises, as just one metric, had grown from fewer than 150 stores in 1959 to more than 11,000 in 1990.

In this new climate, the industry began to manage its image as aggressively as it had begun to manage its animals. Large producers successfully lobbied Congress to create a "checkoff" program, which imbued private industry with the power, via the U.S.D.A., to collect a percentage of all beef and pork sales to be used for the general promotion of eating meat. But the bill also included language from meat producers, specifying that "despite the fact that many of our members may produce a commodity that is the subject of governmental price supports, we are opposed to increased government intervention or regulation." Thus began an era in which U.S.D.A. officials began to view themselves as partnering with industry, rather than monitoring it.

Soon groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which had focused almost exclusively on abuses of laboratory animals and anti-fur campaigns, decided to begin conducting their own sorts of inspections. C.O.K. scored an important victory when its investigators videotaped chickens crowded, sometimes eight per crate, into rows of wire cages stacked at a barn owned by I.S.E. America, which sold eggs with the industry-created Animal Care Certified seal. C.O.K. filed a Better Business Bureau challenge to that self-certification and eventually won. I.S.E. dropped the label.

The North American Meat Institute, the lobbying group representing most of the country's largest meat companies, complains that consumers are being misled by animal rights activists, who, they say, are not simply encouraging consumers to reduce meat consumption but are also opposing consumers' right to eat meat, cheese and dairy, all as part of what one headline on the institute's website called "the liberal vegan agenda." Mike Wolf, the manager of C.O.K.'s undercover investigations, doesn't deny that animal rights organizations are trying to persuade consumers "to move toward a plant-based diet," but he insists that meatpackers are the ones who have created the necessity for undercover investigations by blocking consumers from seeing how their food is made. With the government working hand in hand with business, the only remaining window into the food system is the lens of an activist's camera.

Exposing the industry's standard practices, Wolf argues, generates a demand for change from legislators and, perhaps more significant, from major restaurant chains. In 2012, for instance, after the Humane Society of the United States released undercover footage of pregnant sows immobilized for months in narrow "gestation crates" at a Smithfield Foods subsidiary, McDonald's announced that its breakfast sausage would no longer be made from pork bred in gestation crates - and Smithfield, along with other major pork producers, raced to announce that it was phasing the devices out. The industry opposes undercover investigations, Wolf says, precisely because they work.

When Jay arrived in Minnesota, he wasn't specifically targeting Quality Pork Processors. He applied for jobs at several plants, and Q.P.P., which sends all the fresh meat it processes to the Hormel Food Corporation in another part of the complex in Austin, was simply the first to call him back. But once he got the offer, Mike Wolf let him know that this wasn't just any meatpacking plant. It was one of only five pork packinghouses nationwide where the U.S.D.A. was experimenting with a controversial new form of oversight. Introduced in 1999, the program - called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points-Based Inspection Models Project, or HIMP - replaced traditional manual inspection with a "risk based" approach. Meat-industry managers would hire their own quality-assurance auditors to identify and remove obviously sick or defective animals from the line before they reached government inspection stations, and employees from the U.S.D.A.'s Food Safety and Inspection Service would instead focus their efforts on more sophisticated microbiological testing in places where contamination was most likely to occur.

The U.S.D.A. called HIMP a "hog-slaughter modernization" program that allows the F.S.I.S. to perform more inspections, but activists contend that the program is less about modernization than it is about reducing government oversight in order to increase production speed and therefore profits.

In May 2013, two years before Jay went undercover in Austin, the inspector general's office for the U.S.D.A. issued a stinging critique of HIMP. Three HIMP plants had made it into the top 10 for food-safety violations out of 616 pork-processing plants nationwide. Such numbers, it reported, represented "a systemic failure" that should have resulted in more aggressive enforcement action or even a halt in production. In 2014, though, the U.S.D.A. not only approved the continuation of the HIMP pilot project but also called for a review to determine if the program "could be applied to additional establishments." In January 2015, the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistle-blower-protection organization, released affidavits from four federal inspectors from HIMP facilities attesting to food-safety violations. A U.S.D.A. spokesman dismissed them as being "part of a well-funded and organized public-relations campaign."

In Jay's time at the gam table, he shot video of numerous hogs with obvious fecal contamination being processed for food. In one sequence, Jay cuts into the hind legs of four different carcasses, and pus-filled abscesses under the skin pour forth a brownish-green ooze or spray clear liquid across the workstation. Though the footage Jay collected at the gam table was disgusting, the U.S.D.A. says procedures were in place to ensure that the infected tissue was removed farther down the line.

Jay was eager to move to the live-animal area, where he could see how hogs were treated in a part of the plant where U.S.D.A. inspectors had been virtually replaced by Q.P.P.-hired quality-assurance auditors. Once Jay had enough seniority, he bid on a transfer to the station known as "stick, stun and shackle," where pigs are shocked to death, drained of their blood and shackled to the conveyance chain.

Almost immediately after Jay was transferred, he saw - and was able to record - multiple instances of behavior that seemed far out of compliance with U.S.D.A. rules for the humane treatment of livestock. (Q.P.P. maintains that he never reported any of that behavior to supervisors, as was his duty.) He filmed a hog being hit in the face with plastic rattle paddles and electrically prodded on the head. He filmed another hog being repeatedly beaten then rolled and pushed by its hindquarters. He filmed hogs having their throats slit while still alive and - in one particularly harrowing sequence - appeared to capture a hog struggling to right itself in its shackle as it is carried toward processing. A spokesman for Q.P.P. said all the hogs "had been properly rendered insensible," but the video itself seems to contradict that claim. At one point, a worker shouts over the din of machinery and squealing pigs: "Too many sensibles. If U.S.D.A. is around, they could shut us down." Because of HIMP reductions, however, the U.S.D.A. wasn't around.

In October 2015, when Compassion Over Killing put out a news release and a five-minute video made from Jay's footage, the story was national news. "The actions depicted in the video under review are appalling and completely unacceptable," said Adam Tarr, a U.S.D.A. spokesman. Q.P.P. said that, before the release of the video, it reprimanded the worker - Jay - who cut into the pus-filled abscesses for departing from company procedure and would now reprimand another employee for aggressive behavior and would introduce "corrective measures" to improve animal handling.

In January 2016, Representatives Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Louise Slaughter of New York led a bipartisan group of 60 members of Congress urging the U.S.D.A. to delay proceeding further with HIMP until the U.S.D.A. could provide evidence that it is an effective program. The very next day, the U.S.D.A.'s Office of Investigation, Enforcement and Audit closed its inquiry into the plant. "The actions depicted in the video occurred at times when U.S.D.A. inspection personnel were not performing verifications," a letter from the U.S.D.A. to C.O.K., in response to the beatings, reads. "Had these actions been observed by F.S.I.S. inspectors, they would have resulted in immediate regulatory action against the plant." But because these actions were not directly observed by U.S.D.A. inspectors, the department could only demand that Q.P.P. document how it would improve animal handling.

Mike Wolf was exasperated: "How can you say, 'If we were there to see it, we would have done something,' on one hand, and on the other hand say, 'O.K., well, we're going to pass this [rule] now so that we're not going to be able to see anything'?"

As video activists push harder, the industry is pushing back, against not just activists but also journalists and whistle-blowers, with laws to prosecute a new kind of crime: "animal-facility interference."

In 2011, State Representative Annette Sweeney of Iowa introduced H.F.431, a bill that sought to make it illegal to produce, possess or distribute any record of "a visual or audio experience occurring at [an] animal facility." Sweeney, a former executive director of the Iowa Angus Association, wrote the bill at her kitchen table with input from lawyers for the Iowa Poultry Association. The law that eventually passed, H.B. 589, makes it a crime only to give a false name on a job application, but the intention was clear.

Since then, four more states have passed similar measures, known collectively as "ag gag," with each law more ambitious than the last. Last year, for example, legislators in North Carolina, still the largest hog producer in the United States, passed an anti-whistle-blower law that gives businesses the authority to sue any person, including employees, who have accessed nonpublic areas of the workplace in order to document company lawbreaking. Wyoming passed a law that makes it a crime to "preserve information in any form" about any "private land" if you intend to share the data with the federal government - potentially shielding cattle ranchers from being cited by the Environmental Protection Agency for polluting state waterways.

Wolf told me that the industry response over the last decade has made him think hard about the limits of undercover videos. While the camera may expose inhumane or unappetizing actions at a place like Quality Pork Processors, it doesn't capture the corporate higher-up who demanded increased production, the industrial engineer who came up with a work flow to make it happen, the union boss who approved the speedup or the floor supervisor who berates workers who fail to keep pace. The hidden cameras carried by undercover investigators provide our only view onto the meatpacking industry, but they are a pinhole, not a panorama.

As such, the view is imperfect - and, the meat industry says, distorted. But its best defense from the animal rights activists may be simply to reinstate the power of the government-led transparency that we had in the mid-20th century. If companies like Hormel feel that they have been misrepresented, they might do better seeking more transparency, not less.
Ted Genoways is a writer whose book "This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Farm" will be published next year by W.W. Norton.

Produced by Rodrigo de Benito Sanz, Jeannie Choi and Linsey Fields.
Photo editor: Christine Walsh.

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The Fight Over Transparency in the Meat Industry

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It was still dark when Jay hit the highway. At 6 o'clock that morning, he would be starting his first shift at Quality Pork Processors, part of the Hormel Foods complex in Austin, Minn., almost an hour's drive down Interstate 90 from his rented apartment in Rochester.

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Op-ed

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A ConAgra subsidiary pleaded guilty Tuesday and agreed to pay $11.2 million - including the largest criminal fine ever imposed for a food-borne illness in the United States - to resolve a decade-long criminal investigation into a nationwide salmonella outbreak blamed on tainted peanut butter.

ConAgra admitted to a misdemeanor count of shipping adulterated food. No individuals at the food conglomerate faced charges in the 2006 outbreak, which sickened at least 625 people in 47 states.

Disease detectives traced the salmonella to a plant in rural Sylvester, Ga., that produced peanut butter for ConAgra under the Peter Pan label and the Great Value brand sold at Walmart. In 2007, the company recalled all the peanut butter it had sold since 2004.

Leo Knowles, the president of ConAgra Grocery Products, entered the misdemeanor plea Tuesday on behalf of the Chicago-based corporation's subsidiary.

Though the Justice Department called $8 million the largest criminal fine ever imposed in a United States food safety case, it represents just one-tenth of one percent of ConAgra's current $8 billion market capitalization. The company will also pay $3.2 million in cash forfeitures to the federal government.

The case began in 2006, as doctors around the country reported severe gastrointestinal illnesses caused by salmonella. Officials traced the common factor - peanut butter - to the Georgia plant.

In February 2007, ConAgra recalled its previous three years of peanut butter production, and Peter Pan vanished from store shelves for about six months. Despite the widespread illnesses, no deaths were confirmed to have been caused by the salmonella outbreak.

ConAgra said that it did not know that any peanut butter was contaminated with salmonella before it was shipped. However, the plea agreement documents noted that ConAgra knew peanut butter made in Georgia had twice tested positive for salmonella in 2004. The problems were not all fixed by the time of the outbreak.

None of the criminal penalties go to victims. United States District Court Judge W. Louis Sands said Tuesday that more than 150 people had filed paperwork seeking financial restitution, but that none could prove that they were sickened by salmonella caused by eating the recalled peanut butter.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: ConAgra Will Pay Record Fine in Outbreak. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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ConAgra Agrees to Pay $11.2 Million in Salmonella Outbreak

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A ConAgra subsidiary pleaded guilty Tuesday and agreed to pay $11.2 million - including the largest criminal fine ever imposed for a food-borne illness in the United States - to resolve a decade-long criminal investigation into a nationwide salmonella outbreak blamed on tainted peanut butter. ConAgra admitted to a misdemeanor count of shipping adulterated food.

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Chocolate covered pretzels and other snacks with long shelf lives are being recalled from hundreds of stores by at least six grocery chains across a dozen states because of possible Salmonella contamination,

The snacks - some in party trays themed for the football playoff season - were produced by Palmer Candy Co. using an ingredient that included powdered milk from Valley Milk Products LLC. Dozens of food companies have recalled products made with the powdered milk, which was recalled after federal officials found Salmonella problems at the milk plant in Strasburg, VA.

Grocery chains recalling the chocolate covered shacks, some packaged under the Palmer brand and some packaged in unbranded containers, include HyVee, Albertsons, Vons, Pavilions, Tom Thumb and Lucky.

All of the recalls by the retailers this week referenced Valley Milk Products LLC. The products have best-by dates ranging from this month to July. Consequently, consumers are being urged to check their homes for the recalled products.

"Customers who purchased this product should dispose of it or return it to their local Hy-Vee store for a full refund. Consumers with questions may contact Hy-Vee Customer Care representatives 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 800-772-4098," according to the Hy-Vee recall notice, which is posted on the Food and Drug Administration's website.

Hy-Vee operates more than 240 stores in eight states and is recalling the snacks from all its stores in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

To see the list of products recalled by Hy-Vee, click here.

"The product comes in a plastic container with a clear lid. The sell-by date range for all items is between Jan. 26 and Feb. 23, 2017. The sell-by date can be found at the top of the product label," according to the Hy-Vee recall notice.

Albertsons and Tom Thumb stores in three states, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, are recalling the snacks according to a news release. "The products are sold in the bakery area and packaged in clear, clamshell containers affixed with a scale label," according to the news release about the Albertsons and Tom Thumb recalls in the three states.

To see the list of products recalled in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, click here.

"The recalled products have been removed from sale. Customers are asked to check their cupboards and refrigerators for these products. The products should be discarded or returned for a refund. Customers who have questions about the recall can contact Albertsons and Tom Thumb anytime at 877-723-3929."

In a separate news release, Albertsons recalled assorted candy platters that contained the snack products and were distributed to stores in Southern California. The four retail banners involved in the Southern California recall are: Albertsons, Vons, Pavilions and Lucky.

"The Assorted Candy Platter is 32 ounces and has a UPC Code Number of 0041144 078586, which can be found on the scale label," according to the news release from Albertsons. "The product is sold in the bakery area and is packaged in a clear, clamshell container affixed with a scale label. The recall includes packages marked with Sell Thru dates up to and including 7.10.17 (July 10, 2017). The Sell Thru date is printed on the scale label."

Anyone who has eaten any of the recalled products and developed symptoms of Salmonella infection should seek medical attention and tell their doctors about the possible exposure to the pathogen.

Food contaminated with Salmonella may not look or smell spoiled but can still make you sick. Young children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems may contract serious and sometimes deadly infections.

Healthy people may experience short-term symptoms such as fever, headache, vomiting, nausea, abdominal cramps and diarrhea. Long-term complications may include severe arthritis.

Related recalls
At the request of the FDA, armed U.S. Marshals raided the Valley Milk plant in Strasburg, VA, on Nov. 30 and seized 4 million pounds of powdered milk and powdered buttermilk valued at almost $4 million.

On Dec. 9 Valley Milk Products recalled a separate 3.1 million pounds of powdered milk products produced and sold in the period from Dec. 5, 2015, through July 10, 2016.

While the FDA has access to company records showing who bought the recalled powdered milk, and when, it cannot publish those details because of a federal law protecting "confidential corporate information."

In a document filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia the FDA reported environmental swabs collected at the production facility returned positive results for Salmonella.

Inspectors also found internal records at Valley Milk that showed the company itself had found Salmonella in the facility and in finished products.

Close to 20 other companies' have similarly named potentially contaminated powdered milk from Valley Milk Products LLC of Strasburg, VA, as the reason for their recalls of products as varied as pudding mix, potato chips, frozen cream puffs and macaroni and cheese.
For additional details on other recalls related to the Valley Milk Products problems with Salmonella, please see:(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here.)

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Six grocery chains across 12 states recall snacks for Salmonella | Food Safety News

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Chocolate covered pretzels and other snacks with long shelf lives are being recalled from hundreds of stores by at least six grocery chains across a dozen states because of possible Salmonella contamination, The snacks - some in party trays themed for the football playoff season - were produced by Palmer Candy Co.

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Boucherville, Quebec-based Olymel S.E.C./ L.P. Saturday recalled approximately 1,124 pounds of pork ribs products for being repacked and distributed without the benefit of federal inspection, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

The pork ribs items were repacked and produced from Jan. 10 to Jan. 13, 2017. The following products are subject to recall:

10-lb. cardboard box of pork rib tips with a packaging date of Jan. 10-13, 2017.

30-lb. cardboard box of pork rib tips with a packaging date of Jan. 10-13, 2017.

The products subject to recall bear establishment number "Est. 8951" inside the USDA mark of inspection. These items were shipped to restaurants in Michigan.

The problem was discovered on Jan. 13, 2017 by FSIS while conducting routine failure to present monitoring activities. FSIS discovered that a shipment of pork spare ribs entered the United States from Canada on or about 1/08/2017, crossing the border in Michigan. The products were then processed and repacked at a federal establishment and further distributed.

There has not yet been any confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products. Anyone concerned about a reaction should contact a healthcare provider.

Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase.

FSIS routinely conducts recall effectiveness checks to verify recalling firms notify theircustomers of the recall and that steps are taken to make certain that the product is no longer available to consumers. When available, the retail distribution list(s) will be posted on the FSIS website.

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Recall of ribs for no inspection; sent to Michigan restaurants | Food Safety News

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Boucherville, Quebec-based Olymel S.E.C./ L.P. Saturday recalled approximately 1,124 pounds of pork ribs products for being repacked and distributed without the benefit of federal inspection, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). The pork ribs items were repacked and produced from Jan. 10 to Jan.

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News Article

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A writ of certiorari has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting the high court review DeCoster v. United States. The government has until Feb. 15 to respond the writ.

Appellate attorney Peter D. Keisler asks in the writ that the Supreme Court consider the case because a ruling by the 8th U.S. District Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld a district court permits imposition of a prison sentence for strict liability offenses, which Keisler contends conflicts with other circuit court decisions on the same issue.

When the 8th Circuit decision came down last year, attorneys Jennifer M. Thomas and John Fleder, writing on their Hyman, Phelps & McNamara FDA Law Blog, labeled it "the biggest Park Doctrine ruling in over 40 years."

They said it is the first case in decades to test the limits of the Park Doctrine, or the "Responsible Corporate Officer" law. The Supreme Court justices are now being asked whether the doctrine and law extends to imposing prison terms.

"Strict liability" means a responsible corporate official can be found guilty for a violation without having any personal knowledge of the offense. Jack and Peter Decoster, the owner and chief operating officer of Quality Egg LLC, were willing to plead guilty to a "strict liability" offense and, each paid $100,000 fines.

However, they appealed being sentenced to three months each in federal prison. Their appeal attracted broad support from organizations supporting free enterprise including the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S., the National Association of Manufacturers, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers, the Washington Legal Foundation, and the Cata Institute. Amicus briefs were filed with the 8th Circuit by all of those organizations.

In the 8th Circuit, a three-judge panel went against the DeCosters on a 2-1 vote. The two judge majority found "vicarious liability" was not involved. Only a handful of 8th Circuit judges favored reviewing the three-judge panel's ruling.

The DeCosters are free pending the outcome of the appeal process, which is now on hold until the Supreme Court decides if it will take the case.

While only a relative few cases that file for certiorari are heard by the Supreme Court, ones involving conflict among the circuit courts are in an improved position to be heard.

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U.S. Supreme Court asked to review DeCoster v. U.S. | Food Safety News

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A writ of certiorari has been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, requesting the high court review DeCoster v. United States. The government has until Feb. 15 to respond the writ. Appellate attorney Peter D. Keisler asks in the writ that the Supreme Court consider the case because a ruling by the 8th U.S.

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News Article

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The United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a new notice with instructions for Public Health Veterinarians (PHVs), inspection program personnel (IPP) and District Veterinary Medical Specialists (DVMs) regarding humane handling and slaughter.

It directs official livestock establishments to determine if their written systematic approach for human handling meets the notice's criteria for being a robust plan.

FSIS in 2004 called for livestock establishments to come up with a systematic approach for humanely handling and slaughtering livestock based on a systematic approach involving assessment, design, evaluation and response. FSIS also permitted establishments to adopt what it calls "a robust approach," which could be flagged by issuing various notices

The new notice says when a more robust program is adopted, FSIS review must be requested. Once in place, the programs are subject to monthly verification by PHVs.

Quarterly enforcement data produced by FSIS has for more than a year indicated humane handling has been a priority for the agency.

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FSIS issues new notice on slaughter, humane handling | Food Safety News

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The United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a new notice with instructions for Public Health Veterinarians (PHVs), inspection program personnel (IPP) and District Veterinary Medical Specialists (DVMs) regarding humane handling and slaughter. It directs official livestock establishments to determine if their written systematic approach for human handling meets...

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The Effects of Meat Eating on the Environment

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Final project for my Contemporary Green Living Class. Looks at the meat industry and it's negative effects on the environment.

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How Much Are Antibiotics Used in Your Meat?

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McDonalds: Behind the Scenes of the Menu | Good Morning America | ABC News

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Academic Source

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Academic Source