(sorry for the autoplay video, I didn’t add any video to the post)
At least 104 cases of E. coli infections were linked to the outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including 34 hospitalizations and one death.
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FDA inspectors said they discovered “numerous equipment with apparent biofilm and large amounts of food debris” around the Taylor Farms facility in Colorado Springs, even after workers had supposedly completed their required cleaning procedures.
The FDA said that Taylor Farms quality control officials had signed off on cleaning at the facility as passing, even when agency inspectors said they could still see “several food contact surfaces that were not visually clean and should have been marked as a ‘Fail’.”
Food debris building up on the company’s equipment was so bad that it was leading to cross-contamination, the FDA’s inspectors worried. A company that had been buying green peppers from Taylor Farms complained that onions had found their way into their ready-to-eat product.
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“Production employees handling RTE produce and food contact surfaces were not observed using any of the handwashing sinks in the facility,” the FDA’s inspectors wrote.
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The FDA’s inspectors also discovered Taylor Farms was frequently skipping the drying step after dunking tools into a solution of sanitizing chemicals, which inspectors feared was resulting in the solution being “directly applied” to ready-to-eat produce.
Honest answer? Grow your own food or buy produce from your local co-op. Don’t order food from amazon or any other sketchy online store. Seek out international products that come from the EU or a country that still has real food safety standards. Never eat at chain restaurants. Don’t eat at restaurants that have low business because they will most likely cut corners on food quality and proper cleaning. Wash your produce and pray that it contains a low level of PFAS.
We can also channel our rage into something productive, such as passing local and state laws on improving food safety standards, and limiting farmers from growing crops in PFAS-contaminated soils.
Food safety standards in the US are pretty awful. Lack of food safety is exactly the type of problem a government should exist to solve, yet the billionaires and the orange felon are happy to poison everyone as long as our deaths are slow enough to not interfere with their profits.
I think you’re fucked on that last part, because the levels just keep increasing, but the rest of it is good advice.