Post-probe, problematic peanut paste products pulled
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Friday, January 30, 2009
In what the Food and Drug Administration is characterizing as one of the largest recalls in recent history, numerous types of products containing peanuts are being recalled in the United States. The FDA issued a recall on Wednesday on food items with peanut paste and other peanut products made after January 1, 2007 at a Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) center in Blakely, Georgia. The recall affects over 430 products containing peanut paste or peanut butter from the PCA plant.
U.S. federal inspectors stated salmonella was found in 12 instances at the plant. So far the incident has been linked to eight deaths, with over 500 individuals sickened from the tainted products.
U.S. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has announced he will hold a Congressional hearing February 11 before the House Energy and Commerce Committee to investigate the matter. According to an FDA report, peanut products from the Georgia plant returned to the United States after being exported were prevented from reentering the country in September due to containing “filthy, putrid or decomposed substance, or is otherwise unfit for food,” but the products were not tested by federal inspectors.
According to the FDA, peanut products were shipped from the PCA facility though the company knew they were contaminated. PCA asserted it was unaware products were contaminated before being shipped, and released a statement saying it had “taken extraordinary measures to identify and recall all products that have been identified as presenting a potential risk”. The PCA plant has since been shut down after state and federal inspectors discovered mold, roaches, a leaky roof, and other issues at the facility.
| If the FDA discovered that there was an issue with this product inspection, why didn’t they follow up on it? | ||
Multiple members of Congress have made critical statements about the FDA regarding the incident. “The FDA failing to follow up after this incident, does that mean that products that are not good enough for a foreign country are still good enough for the USA?” said Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
“If the FDA discovered that there was an issue with this product inspection, why didn’t they follow up on it? Why didn’t they take a closer look at this facility?” asked Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). Representative DeLauro called the actions of PCA “reprehensible and criminal”.
Beth Falwell, daughter of PCA’s founder Hugh Parnell, told WSLS-TV, the NBC affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia, in a statement Thursday that her brother Stewart Parnell who currently runs the company would not knowingly harm his customers. She believes the FDA report documenting poor conditions at the PCA facility contains inaccuracies. Stewart Parnell did not respond to repeated attempts by The News & Advance for a comment.
Consumers can find out more information at the website of the FDA, www.fda.gov, which lists the peanut products affected. The FDA list of items containing recalled peanut products is 35 pages long. Individuals can also find out more information about the incident by calling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at 1-800-CDC-INFO.
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Bridgit Mendler Biography
by
Ben Counsell
Bridgit Mendler is a 16 year old who is on the brink of taking the world by storm. Having already starred in a number of major movies, she has just been given her own Disney TV show. But just who is Bridgit and how did she get to this stage?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EhRiCw3FrM[/youtube]
Bridgit Mendler was born on the east coast and largely did not take an interest in acting until she moved to the west coast aged 11. Moving to San Francisco, she found an agent who got her a number of small-time modeling and acting jobs. Despite this, Bridgit found that she had a passion for acting and wanted to chase bigger dreams. For this reason, she moved to LA when she was 13 and signed with Gersh Agency, a famous talent agency in Hollywood.With this agency she gained a number of other roles including a part on the show “General Hospital”. Although she had some success in these formative years, she really broke through when she was offered small roles in the movies “The Clique” and “Labor Pains”. Acting alongside stars such as Lindsay Lohan meant that she was quickly recognized by the Disney channel.Disney asked Bridgit to feature in the hit show “JONAS”. In this role, she played a single-episode girlfriend of Nick Jonas. Disney was so impressed with her that they asked her straight away to come back and do a four part series in the even bigger show, “Wizards of Waverly Place”. Filming had barely begun when they realized that Bridgit Mendler could be the next Miley Cyrus and so they offered her her own show, “Good Luck Charlie”. The show will have Bridgit as the main character who is forced to look after her younger brother by her absent parents.Bridgit Mendler is definitely one to watch in the future. With the backing of a huge studio such as Disney and already a growing fan base, Bridgit Mendler could be set to knock Miley Cyrus off her coveted perch.
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France still a hot topic on college campuses
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Thursday, April 21, 2005
On Monday residents of an apartment building just outside of Paris discovered a World War II bomb lodged in their chimney. Officials were able to defuse the device, reports All Headline News. However, there are other remnants of the World Wars that have been much more difficult for the French to defuse.
The prevalence of anti-French sentiments reached a frenzied zenith prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. While it seemed that the storm had calmed recently, this week’s release of Richard Chesnoff’s latest book, The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can’t Stand Us–and Why the Feeling Is Mutual, reminds us that this issue is not going away anytime soon. While there have been fewer sightings of “liberty toast” in recent months, from discussions with students in both the U.S. and France, this reporter found that America’s perception of the French remains a hot topic of discussion on college campuses.
Bryan Doeg, a military science student at the University of Central Florida, outlined the two prevailing thoughts that are the basis for many of these anti-French sentiments.
“Most of my fellow students feel that the French are politically and militarily weak,” said Doeg. “And their people are stuck up.”
Doeg believes that he and his classmates are not without reason for their perceptions about the French.
“They are weak because of France’s decline in power over the last century and it’s defeats against the Germans and Algerians,” Doeg said. “And most of my experiences regarding their arrogance comes from soldiers who visited France and were treated like untouchables by the locals.”
Southwest Missouri State (SMS) finance major, Fabian Florant, got straight to the point when discussing Doeg’s first assumption that the French are weak.
“Americans hate the French with a passion because of World War I and II,” Florant said.
However some students pointed to France’s involvement in the American Revolution, questioning how long America’s memory really is.
Jessica Morgan, an SMS English major, said that this and other examples have shown that France is far from being weak.
“They stood up against Hitler when he was in his prime for months before he occupied their country,” Morgan said. The fact that by the time we got there, the Germans were a heck of a lot weaker than they were when the French had to face them doesn’t seem to register.”
Morgan emphasized that France’s refusal to support U.S. war efforts is a resounding display of strength.
“It’s somewhat ironic that we call them weak,” Morgan said. “They stood up to the U.S. as well, daring the disapproval of the U.S. … and all we can do is throw childish insults back at them.”
Lysiane Lavorel, a native of France and college student studying English there, offered a tongue-in-cheek response to France’s supposed weakness while making reference to the 1996 film Independence Day.
“As for the French being weak, it’s true that in comparison with the strong and good Americans preventing aliens from invading the Earth, we are more than weak,” Lavorel said. “It’s true that we don’t have any real impact on the world, and I find it much more comfortable that way … I wouldn’t want to feel responsible for a war, for example.”
Doeg’s second assumption is that the French are arrogant, and Lavorel agrees again.
“Yes of course, I think we French are very arrogant,” Lavorel said.
Lavorel went on to explain her definition of French arrogance.
“It’s quite hard for us to see how people [Americans] seem to be so easily manipulated by government, big firms or media,” Lavorel said. “Because for most French, we have learned to become skeptical, doubtful and to make our own opinion on things. This appears to be very arrogant, doesn’t it?”
However, she pointed out that this is especially true of Parisians, from which she says many of American’s perceptions about the French are based.
“Even in France, they [Parisians] are said to be arrogant,” Lavorel said. “They are said to consider France as only composed of Paris, and provincial people are just hillbillies.”
An American student at a California university, who asked to remain anonymous to prevent the damage of his reputation among colleagues, said that he would describe 90 percent of the Parisians he has met as being arrogant.
“In an academic setting, this arrogance is particularly frustrating,” the source said. “Often the Parisians I know belittle other people when they understand a complicated concept better than another person.
“On one occasion, a Parisian made a fool out of a good friend of mine,” the source said. “My friend asked him how to model the eigenfunction of a microdisk resonator with finite-differences time-domain. He said ‘everyone knows you can derive these fields analytically.”
The source said that he is not perpetuating these stereotypes and that his preconceived notions do not alter how he perceives these interactions.
“Often I’ll hear someone say something like, ‘Oh and be careful when you meet him–he’s French,” the source said. “But you know, 99 percent of the time, all of the stereotypes prove to be perfectly true and the warning is useful.”
SMS media student Lydia Mann, who visited France for two weeks recently and has hosted two French foreign exchange students, said that these perceptions are based upon cultural differences.
“Americans, I think, misunderstand their culture which leads to their actions,” Mann said. “They make a point to make themselves individualistic, which people find rude.”
SMS English major Christin Green agrees and believes that this entire discussion that attempts to blanket such a large group of people is ridiculous.
“I want to learn about them with an open mind and a fresh perspective, unpolluted by bias or preconceived ideas,” Green said. “It is not my place to judge or make assumptions about an entire people. There are bad people everywhere. There are good people everywhere. Stereotypes ruin this foundation and build another one that is much more destructive.”
