Remember kids, it’s not just the bugs themselves you have to worry about… it is the fact that bugs engage in chemical warfare with other bugs by excreting their own toxins into their environment (i.e. your food).
ETA: oops, my erudite fellow boingers already made this point.
This one feels a bit odd next to the mistaken amputation one.
Food safety and handling protocols are, and ought to be, serious business; but meticulous operating room protocol is also something that should be serious business; so it seems a little weird to see a 4 month sentence(albeit suspended) for the cook, £10,000 in fines for the owner; and £3,000 for the company over improper thermal husbandry of shepherd’s pie; but a €2,700 fine for the surgeon and €5,000 in damages to the next of kin for hacking the wrong leg off.
The Guardian article reports that:
Billingham, of Northampton, who admitted three charges of contravening food regulations was fined £9,000 and ordered to pay £1,000 court costs. His company was fined almost £3,000.
I have no idea what kind of jurisprudencemancy is used to decide how to divide the punishment between a man and his legal fiction; but it looks like both the pub and the proprietor were punished.
Apparently I missed that. Still, 3k?
The toxin made in this sort of contamination is very heat stable. You can cook it thoroughly and still serve a toxic mess if you have allowed it some time to brew prior to cooking.
(Ninja’d by several. Slow on the draw tonight!)
What he served was not Shepherd’s pie, even without the food poisoning!
Unbaked?
(Which is not to say that mashed potatoes on mince couldn’t be good, just not Shepard’s pie.)
So bye-bye, Shepherd’s Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey in Rye
Singin’ “This’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die”
It’s a new fusion variation on a theme: Shepherd’s Poo.
Typical case of small mistakes can have desasterous consequences.
[ insert Starship Troopers memes ]
Yeah, that’s what made me think it may have been the potatoes, not the meat.
From the description, it sounds like it was Staph aureus enterotoxin: heat stable, odorless and tasteless. It hits within a couple of hours or sooner, and causes violent vomiting.
Cooking would not have prevented this - proper hand sanitation and initial cooking might have.
Maybe I’ve just been American for too long; but I’m pleasantly surprised to see a case where (while the corporation was fined as well) the authorities went directly for the people who actually make and execute the decisions ascribed to the company; rather than acting like it’s somehow possible for a company to do a bad thing but everyone within it to have not been involved in any culpable way.
I’m certainly in favor of companies incurring civil penalties for bad conduct; since it helps align the shareholders’ interests with worrying about keeping a clean house; rather than just making sure scapegoats are in stock; but it seems like there are an awful lot of cases where that side of the issue completely eclipses the fact that there are specific, identifiable, people who made certain decisions, did or didn’t do certain things; allowed certain practices to continue under their operational authority, etc. and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be held accountable for that, whether they are acting on their own account or on the clock.
I’m sorry but making a point with a Ramsy gif is a disservice to shepherds pie and to all of us that have been punched and bloodied by such a bully in a kitchen.
This is a violent mongrel and does not deserve to have his image used in a light casual way.
I know of more deaths by suicide from brutal kitchen experiences than I do of food poisoning.
Please stop promoting the systemic violence embodied by this person.
Sorry but I am triggered as I suspect many may be.
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