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Even Your Cereal Isn’t Safe — Why Now?
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Even Your Cereal Isn’t Safe

Not even vegens are safe: FDA: Same Salmonella strain in recalled cereal sickens 23 people

Symptoms of salmonella infection include nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. It can be life-threatening for people with poor health or weakened immune systems, including young children and the elderly.

The FDA said people who experience such symptoms after eating a puffed wheat or puffed rice cereal made by Malt-O-Meal should contact their doctors and report the illness to state or local health authorities.

The FDA said the recalled products were distributed nationally under the Malt-O-Meal brand name, as well as private labels including Acme, America’s Choice, Food Club, Giant, Hannaford, Jewel, Laura Lynn, Pathmark, Shaw’s, ShopRite, Tops and Weis Quality. The cereal bags have “best if used by” dates from April 8, 2008 (coded as APR0808), through March 18, 2009 (coded as MAR1809).

Consumers with products from the recalled lots are advised to throw them out, and retailers have been told to remove the cereals from their shelves.

This is surreal – getting sick from your breakfast cereal.

5 comments

1 Michael { 04.14.08 at 1:31 am }

What has to happen for impeachment? If Dick Cheney raped a child on live television, with George Bush standing there saying, “I approved this message?”

Isn’t this basically what they did, only without the live television?

2 Steve Bates { 04.14.08 at 1:37 am }

Details and product codes here.

Some prepackaged breakfast cereals are not vegan… not a problem for me, as I’m lacto-ovo-veggie… but I was unable to find specific ingredient lists for the various Malt-O-Meal flavors. But you are most certainly right: even a strict vegan diet will not save one from some kinds of food poisoning. For example, in August of last year, I wrote some doggerel, or rather actually parody, about the salmonella scare in packaged spinach, to be sung to the tune of “Oklahoma!”

3 hipparchia { 04.14.08 at 1:45 am }

i’ve always maintained, ever since i was a small child, that cereal was eeeeeevillllll.

i’m a big fan of ice cream for breakfast. has anybody recalled any of that yet?

4 Sorghum Crow { 04.14.08 at 8:53 am }

Who would eat salmon cereal, anyway?

I prefer cake for breakfast.

5 Bryan { 04.14.08 at 12:51 pm }

This problem went on for over a month before it was caught because there is no inspection system in place and no inspectors. Beginning with Reagan, the GOP has systematically destroyed the health and safety systems put in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening. These systems were put in place because of abuses, and man has not appreciably evolved in the last century to the point that we can expect that the greed that led to the problems has, in any way, abated. Truth be told, corporations have found news ways of increasing the problems through factory farming that did not exist when The Jungle was written.

If the people at the top start going to prison for gross violations, the violations will stop. As long as there are no significant penalties, there is no reason not to do ignore health and safety regulations to make more money until you are caught.