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Germs Gone Wild!

Yo quiero renal failure!Photo: Mel Evans/AP
Normally, an article like this Boston Herald piece on our city’s efforts to crack down on exotic meats would have us up in arms. No turtles, frogs, or cow lungs? No “smoked rodent meat”? What is this, Moscow? But a spate of food-borne illnesses in the last week has made us reconsider our libertarian stance. Four Taco Bells in Long Island were just closed after nineteen people got sick from E. coli at a New Jersey location (like so many other chains, the Bell gets most of their food from a central commissary; twenty more people were sickened in New York); Dinosaur BBQ’s Syracuse branch was the source of a recent viral outbreak that sickened 600 people upstate, and Ess-A-Bagel on First Avenue was shuttered for not having any Health Department permit at all. We’re all in favor of eating what we like and hoping our antibodies do their part, but writhing in bed is not how we intend to spend the holidays. That’s how we plan on spending the days after the holidays.

From Iguanas to Armadillos, New York State Cracking Down on Mystery Meats [AP via Boston Herald]
E. Coli Sickens 39 in New Jersey and New York [NYT]
600 Sickened After Eating at N.Y. Bar [AP via Island Packet]

Germs Gone Wild!