Tummy Bugs
1. Rota virus. Nothing is more boring than other people’s illnesses. I mention this virus that I’ve been suffering for the past couple of weeks because it’s not clear that all doctors recognize it in adults (I wasn’t diagnosed the first time despite going to a hospital with a raging temperature thanks to a secondary infection). Up to now it’s been mainly confined to small children. Web sites suggest that every child in the world has had it by the time they reach the age of 5.
Well adults get it too. I’ve had it twice in the last nine months. Starts with diarrhea and flu-like symptoms. This is followed by “extreme lassitude.” I mean extreme–no energy even to read detective stories or watch movies, just sleep or lie in bed staring at the ceiling. You feel stupid because you have no temperature, chills, aches, perhaps even no diarrhea by this stage. Just a bit of will power, you say to yourself. Doesn’t work.
There’s no way to prevent it, since it’s in the air, soil, and water. No way to cure it since it’s a virus. You just have to chug electrolytes and wait. Believe you me, if you had the energy by about day 9 you would be entering chronic fatigue syndrome in Google.
The good news is that it goes away. Day 11 or 12 you wake up and feel just fine. The minor bad news is that you can get secondary infections because your body is weak.
So, if you get these symptoms, don’t blame the restaurant or the cleanliness of your house. Don’t take inmodium or other stopper uppers. And expect to be out of action for a while.
2. Contaminated cooked vegetables in Mexico.
Thanks to my Panamanian friend, linguist, journalist and food expert, Ana Alfaro, for this link to an article on coliform contamination in restaurants in Guadalajara, Mexico and Houston, Texas. The bottom line is that eating only vegetables that have been cooked is not going to prevent you ingesting coliforms in Mexico (though E. coli did not figure largely). Come to that it, it’s not going to prevent it in Texas either. And would dearly have loved it if the authors had given some idea about what was a normal level of coliform contamination in cooked vegetables, though perhaps no such figure is available.
3. Review of the salmonella outbreak associated with tomatoes in the United States from the Wall Street Journal. While one never wants to be dismissive of food borne illnesses, as a historian this outbreak says to me not that our food system is breaking down but that in general it is incredibly safe. To be able to devote this people power and money to an outbreak that affected around 500 people with no fatal results is the sign of a very rich country indeed. In fact even to have the capacity to track it, is the sign of a rich country.
Last week I heard on the news that even after 300 cases, the FDA hadn’t gone down to Mexico to investigate. Apparently the department has been gutted and they don’t want to offend or imply that food from Mexico isn’t safe. I suspect this is related to the fact that because of our immigration laws, American producers are relocating to Mexico (as you’ve pointed out) and we can’t stop business for heaven’s sake!
CNN Newsman Lou Dobbs: “You know, I have heard a lot of reasons over the years as to why George W. Bush should be impeached. For them to leave the Food and Drug Administration in this state, it’s leadership in sorry condition, and to have no capacity apparently, or will, to protect the American consumer, that is alone to me sufficient reason to impeach a president who has made this agency possible and has ripped its guts out in its ability to protect the American consumer. It’s insane what’s going on here.”
Dobbs is a huge advocate of immigrant control. I don’t know what the answer is but I do know you get what you pay for.
Sorry to hear about your illness Rachel. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. The coliform analysis report is shocking. I was of the opinion that cooked vegetables didn’t pose a health risk. Looks like i have to change my opinion.
Thanks for the insightful post.
No E. coli or Shigella, Salmonella, Campylobacter, or Vibrio is good. One question I would have is what is the source of fecal contamination in the Mexican samples? I’m not certain that it is of human origin for instance. Which raises the question of at what point in the process did the contamination occur. In the field (from manuring?), in the processing (water source?) in the restaurant (direct contamination humans?) or a combination?
So pleased to hear, Adam, that you think something is good about this. I had the feeling reading it that it was stretching to make a point.
I’ve no idea about the source of fecal contamination.
And Steve, I have to admit I’m, not quite clear abot your point. Is it that the salmonella was likely to have come from Mexico? I’m not sure that I’d agree that Mexico was more likely than the States given the hoops you have to jump through to get export permits for the States. Nor am I exactly clear about you get what you pay for. If tomatoes were more expensive, there’d be less contamination? May be, may be not.
Looking at the bugs they have isolated, although they are “coliforms” and this is used as a measure of fecal contamination, the types that they have actually found are also environmental (they don’t have to live in the gut of an animal). The lack of E.coli etc, would suggest to be that the contamination may have little to do with fecal contamination.
The Enterobacter cloacae and Klebsiella sp. are quite common isolates from fruit for instance. It isn’t clear from that paper if the isolates they found would actually be pathogen in normal healthy people.
I have no point!
Maybe one.
Only the cost of cheap imports from Mexico is that we have to monitor them if we insist on having them produced at a particular standard.
Maybe two: If we insists on closing the borders so that Mexicans can’t take all those jobs we refuse to do, there is another cost.
The E. coli tainted spinach in 2006 was grown in California.