The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-16-10
Today, Kevin explains how low Barack Obama will go just to get his healthcare bill passed and why people in higher power always end up losing their sense of morality.
Plus, get the headlines you aren’t hearing anywhere else:
Vitamin D Proven More Effective Than Vaccines at Preventing Flu
WHO Admits Cell Phones Cause Brain Tumors
Bananas May Prevent HIV Transmission
Former FDA Commissioner ‘Ordered’ Agency Not to Enforce DSHEA
IMF Proposed Plan to Raise Climate Change Funds
Gender-Bender Chemicals Are Turning Boys Into Girls
Dean Foods Pulls Bait-n-Switch!
3D TV May Be The Future Despite Fears of Causing Health Problems
Weed Killer Known to Chemically Castrate Frogs
E.Coli & Chicken Feces Allowed by USDA
Illinois Residents Scared by Local Cancer Study
Heart Treatments for Diabetes Causing Harm
Plavix Gets New FDA Warning
It’s ALWAYS About The Money
Maximize Your Downline
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Fecal Matter Found In Nearly Half Of Fast-Food Soda Fountains
January 8, 2010
ABC News
By Lauren Cox
Those soda fountain machines found in restaurants and fast food joints may be squirting out liquids contaminated with fecal bacteria, a small study found. Whether it was self-serve or behind the counter, nearly half of all sodas dispensed from a sample of 30 machines in the Roanoke Valley in Virginia had coliform bacteria — a group of bacteria banned in drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because it indicates the possibility of fecal contamination.
“The EPA regulates our drinking supply, and there can be some bacteria, but one of the things that is not allowed is coliform bacteria,” said Renee D. Godard, professor of biology at Hollins University and a co-author of the paper published in the January print issue of the International Journal of Food Microbiology.
“We can’t have that in our drinking supply. But they’re coming out of these soda fountain machines,” she said.
The soda machines had turned into a bacteria metropolis with Escherichia coli (E. coli), species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the bacteria were resistant to the 11 antibiotics Godard tested on her samples.
“About 70 percent of the beverages had bacteria and 48 percent of them had coliform bacteria,” said Godard.
However, only 20 percent of the sodas sampled had coliform bacteria that exceeded the EPA limit for drinking water.
Since the tap water and ice from the machines didn’t test positive for bacteria, Godard and her team ruled out the possibility of a valley-wide contamination of the water supply.
Various brands of soft drinks and various types — sugared, diet or even water — were contaminated, leading Godard to think that it wasn’t the soda, but the machine that was growing bacteria.
From all her testing, Godard still isn’t sure where the bacteria came from. Few people observed in the restaurants touched the nozzles of the soda fountain machines and restaurant managers Godard interviewed reported cleaning the nozzles daily.
But only one restaurant manager reported rinsing the plastic tubing within the machines on a regular basis.
Click here for the full report
Meat Industry Using Tactics to Distract From e.coli Contamination
December 7. 2009
Food Business News
By Steve Bjerklie
In several recent public appearances, executives with the American Meat Institute, including president and chief executive officer J. Patrick Boyle, have stated that the prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 in beef products is going down, and they’ve used data from the Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to support the claim. Using test data from the F.S.I.S., the A.M.I. has in particular emphasized that from 2000 through 2008, E. coli prevalence in ground beef dropped 45%, suggesting the beef industry’s various efforts to control the pathogen have been effective.
But Barbara Kowalcyk, director of food safety for the Center for Foodborne Illness, Research & Prevention in Grove City, Pa., and a doctoral student in molecular epidemiology and environmental health, said the A.M.I. is misusing the data to paint a rosy picture for consumers that’s dishonest. In a strongly worded statement released last month, in which she called Mr. Boyle’s recent comments about E. coli reduction in beef “inappropriate and misleading,” Ms. Kowalcyk wrote: “U.S.D.A.’s E. coli O157:H7 microbiological testing program is strictly regulatory and was not statistically designed to estimate the prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef. Different establishments are sampled each year. Further, the methods used to select establishments and to conduct the microbial testing have changed over the years. As a result, it is inappropriate to make year-to-year comparisons. Several sources, including U.S.D.A. itself, have noted the limitations of the data obtained from U.S.D.A.’s Verification Testing Programs.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to draw any conclusions about the prevalence of E. coli from these data,” she said. “This is not a small issue, this is a big one.”
Jim Hodges, executive vice-president of the A.M.I. and director of the American Meat Institute Foundation, which supports scientific research, said he doesn’t necessarily dispute Ms. Kowalcyk’s statements.
“She takes a pure view of how these numbers are derived,” he said. “Fundamentally, I don’t disagree with her. But the fact is, everyone uses these numbers to look at trends – F.S.I.S. does it, C.D.C. does it, everyone does it. If we wanted to be perfectly accurate, we’d say there has been a significant reduction in E. coli, but people want to know how much, so we use percentages to show a trend.
“I guarantee you trends are important to everyone,” he added. “And that’s all we’re trying to communicate. The point is trends, not actual numbers.”
Ms. Kowalcyk isn’t buying it. She said it isn’t accurate to compare selected year-to-year data from tests that were never intended to point toward a trend. She said the test data collected in 2008 came from a different group of beef plants than the test data from eight years earlier. The side-by-side comparison does show a 45% drop, she admitted, but likens such a comparison to comparing someone who weighed 300 pounds in 2000 to someone else who weighed 150 pounds in 2008 and drawing the conclusion that people in general have experienced a 50% drop in weight.
“If you want to do a trend analysis, let’s be honest about it,” she said. “The misuse of statistics is what gives statistics a bad name,” adding that U.S.D.A.’s own Web site misapplies E. coli test data to prove trends that don’t exist.
She also said the A.M.I.’s recent claims that C.D.C. data show that E. coli infections have decreased 44%from 2000 through 2008 are also misleading and ignore more recent trends.
“In actuality, C.D.C does not compare individual years of FoodNet data (i.e. 2008 versus 2000). Rather, C.D.C. compares the data for a given year to a composite of the 1996-1998 FoodNet data and to a composite of the preceding three years, which in this case would be 2005-2007 FoodNet data. This is done to account for changes in the number of FoodNet sites and changes in the size of the population. It is true that, when comparing the 2008 FoodNet data to the 1996-1998 composite, E. coli O157:H7 infections have decreased 25%,” she said last month. “However, when comparing the 2008 FoodNet data to the 2005-2007 composite, E. coli O157:H7 infections have not changed significantly.”
Mr. Hodges responded: “Our numbers probably over-estimate the prevalence of E. coli. They’re regulatory samples and tend to be biased toward where the problems are. But they’re the best data we’ve got. To not use them is a complete disservice to the public.”
Ms. Kowalcyk and Mr. Boyle appeared together in October on a segment of CNN’s “Larry King Live” interview program in which beef safety was the focus, following a New York Times report that uncovered serious lapses and gaps in the industry’s efforts to control E. coli.
Ms. Kowalcyk herself has a direct connection to the issue: her two-and-a-half year-old son Kevin died in 2001 from O157:H7 poisoning that apparently came from adulterated ground beef that was later subject to a recall.
“It very much concerns me when the government or industry puts out information that can give the public a false sense of security,” she said. FSM
Click here for the full report
Half of ICU Patients Suffer From Infections
December 2, 2009
ABC News
By Maggie Fox
Half of all patients in intensive care units around the world have infections, and more than 70 percent are being given antibiotics — a trend that could help more drug-resistant superbugs emerge, researchers reported on Tuesday.
Patients who had infections were more likely to die, especially of bloodborne infections known as sepsis, the survey of more than 13,000 patients found. They also spent more time in the ICU at greater expense to hospitals and patients.
But one of the biggest concerns was the widespread use of antibiotics in patients who were not infected — a practice that has been shown to lead to antibiotic resistance, when germs defy common drugs.
“Importantly, the incidence of sepsis is increasing, as is the number of consequent infection-related deaths,” Dr. Jean-Louis Vincent of Erasme University Hospital in Brussels, Belgium and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
For the study, Vincent’s team surveyed 13,796 adults in 1,300 intensive care units in 75 countries on one day — May 8, 2007.
The analysis took some time and revealed that 51 percent of the patients had infections and 71 percent were receiving antibiotics, either as treatment or to prevent infection.
In 64 percent of cases, the lungs were infected, and infections of the abdomen and bloodstream were also common.
The most common bacteria was Staphylococcus aureus, but E. coli and a family of bacteria called Pseudomonas were also common.
“Infection and related sepsis are the leading cause of death in noncardiac ICUs, with mortality rates that reach 60 percent and account for approximately 40 percent of total ICU expenditures,”
E.Coli Burger – What’s the Beef
November 06, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
There are 14 billion hamburgers consumed each year in the United States alone. The people who eat those burgers, though, have little knowledge of what’s actually in them. Current USDA regulations, for example, openly allow beef contaminated with E. coli to be repackaged, cooked and sold as ready-to-eat hamburgers.
This simple fact would shock most consumers if they knew about it. People assume that beef found to be contaminated with E. coli must be thrown out or destroyed (or even recalled), but in reality, it’s often just pressed into hamburger patties, cooked, and sold to consumers. This practice is openly endorsed by the USDA.
But E. coli may not be the worst thing in your burger: USDA regulations also allow chicken feces to be used as feed for cows, meaning your hamburger beef may be made of second-hand chicken poop, recycled through the stomachs of cows.
Chicken poop in your burgers?
I remember writing about this two years ago. People sent accusatory hate mails to NaturalNews, saying things like, “Stop making things up and scaring people!” Few people believed that chicken feces was being widely used as cattle feed.
According to the FDA, farmers feed their cattle anywhere from 1 million to 2 million tons of chicken feces each year. This cross-species crap-as-food practice worries critics who are concerned it may lead to increased risk of mad cow disease contaminating beef products. So they want to ban the practice and disallow the feeding of chicken litter to cows.
Believe it or not, McDonald’s has joined the fight seeking to ban the practice, saying “We do not condone the feeding of poultry litter to cattle.” Apparently, even they don’t want their customers looking at a Big Mac and thinking, “Wow, this is made out of second-hand chicken crap.”
CSPI and the Consumers Union have also joined the fight, petitioning the FDA to ban the practice.
Now, you might wonder how chicken feces could pose a mad cow infection risk to cows. And if you’re not already grossed out by what you’ve read so far, you will be when you read the answer to this question: It’s because chickens are fed ground up parts of other animals such as cows, sheep and other animals. Some of that chicken feed spills out and gets swept up as chicken litter, then fed to cows.
So now we have a bizarre experiment in animal feed where dead cows, sheep and other animals are fed to chickens, and then chicken feed spills onto the floor where, combined with chicken poop, it gets swept up and fed to cows. Some of those cows, in turn, may eventually be ground up and fed back to the chickens.
Do you see how this might be a problem?
Meat with E.Coli Bacteria Allowed Back into Stores
November 4, 2009
ABC News
By Dan Childs ABC News Medical Unit
Imagine a ton of freshly ground beef. The company in charge of processing this meat finds out during a routine test that it is contaminated with E. coli. They record the test results, which are read by a government inspector, who acknowledges that the meat is indeed tainted.
You might think that this beef would be headed straight for the garbage bin. But in many cases, this meat is instead cooked, prepared and packaged as a pre-cooked hamburger patty that you pick up from the grocery store. And it’s all completely legal.
The issue of cooking and reselling formerly tainted beef comes to light as another E. coli scare has now spread to 11 states, although the meat in this new case was fresh ground beef, not pre-cooked meat that had been repackaged.
Health officials say at least 11 states now have reported illness from a batch of E. coli tainted fresh ground beef released to market nearly two months ago.
With the ongoing repackaging practice from previously contaminated meat and the new E. coli scare, it’s understandable that some consumers may be more than a bit wary of the meat that hits their plates.
But while the wave of illness could indicate a need for greater efforts to catch bad beef before it gets to consumers, many may not be aware that thanks to a U.S. Department of Agriculture regulation, at least some of the meat they eat may have tested positive for E. coli contamination at one time and been sold to them anyway after processing.
ABC News Senior Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser discussed this issue with ABC News’ Chris Cuomo on Monday’s “Good Morning America”. Besser noted that even if E. coli contamination is confirmed in a particular batch of meat, “[the company] can cook that meat and sell it in another product.”
Janet Riley, spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute, confirmed that such a government allowance exists, though she noted that such meat can only be released to the public if it is made safe through cooking or some other processing that kills the germs.
“Companies can divert it into a cooked product, such as a processed product, like cooked taco meat or something else where we have absolutely documented that it has reached the proper temperature,” Riley said. “This is allowed under USDA protocol.”
Caleb Weaver, press secretary for the USDA, confirmed that these practices are allowed.
“If the establishment finds a positive ground beef sample, they can implement steps to ensure the meat is safe to eat through proper cooking, and [the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service] inspection program personnel verify that steps are taken to ensure that the meat is safe,” he said. “These steps would include delivering a full lethality treatment to positive product, and verifying, as a critical control point, that this lethality is met. The product is then safe to eat.”
Dr. Ira Breite, assistant clinical professor of gastroenterology at the New York University Langone Medical Center, agreed that tainted meat is indeed safe to eat if it is properly cooked to decontaminate it. But he added that many consumers would not relish the idea of eating meat that had been considered tainted with E. coli at any point along its way to their tables.
“If something is coated with E. coli and you cook it, the E. coli is gone,” Breite said. “So could you eat it? Yes. Would I want to eat it? No. Is it gross? Yes… It’s the ick factor.”
Dr. David Acheson, managing director of food and import safety for the advising and investment firm Leavitt Partners, agreed that modern processing methods are more than enough to ensure that dangerous bacteria does not survive to sicken consumers.
“Often that winds up being a canned product,” Acheson said. “When you can something, you really do cook it to death. It is a massive kill.”
And what of the “ick factor?”
“On the one hand, you and I may say ‘ick’ I don’t want to eat cooked bacteria,” Acheson said. “But on the other hand, we do it all the time.”
E. Coli: Gaps in Inspection System?
But Besser said a bigger concern than cooked tainted meat may be lurking in our food supply. He said that while there is a requirement for companies to test for dangerous bacteria in their meat and there is also a USDA official who is charged with reviewing reports written by these companies that document cases of contamination there is as yet no requirement for companies to directly report to the USDA any cases of contamination that occur.
“The companies do testing for bacteria, and they don’t have to report those results to the USDA who are in their plants,” Besser told “GMA’s” Cuomo. “If the USDA wants to, they can.”
Weaver said that even though direct notification of contaminated meat is not required of the companies, weekly checks of records keep the products safe for consumers.
“While establishments are not required to notify FSIS of their testing results, the plans require the establishments to take action to address the hazards posed by [E. coli] and other foodborne pathogens,” he said. “Additionally, establishments must record these test results in their records and FSIS inspection program personnel have access to establishment testing records at any time and review the records weekly.”
Still, in the tricky business of meat testing, some public health experts said that more should be done in order to ensure that the meat that shows up on grocery store shelves is as safe as possible.
“If it’s done correctly then this is not something to scare consumers about, but from a public health regulatory side, should it be a little tighter? Yeah, I think it should,” Acheson said. “It would make a lot of sense for the meat companies to, number one, inform the FDA that they found it; and, number two, explain what they did to correct it.”
Cause of Fresh Ground Beef E. Coli Outbreak Has Experts Puzzled
Thus far, the exact cause of the new E. coli outbreak is unknown. While on Oct. 31, 2009, Asheville, N.Y.-based Fairbank Farms issued a voluntary recall of 545,699 pounds of beef products, Agnes Schafer, a spokeswoman for Fairbank Farms, noted that “no ground beef from Fairbank Farms has been positively tested for E. coli.
“Fairbank Farms recalled the product because the USDA determined an association between the product and illness in three states,” she said. “There have been no tests to our knowledge to prove an association.”
Still, CDC data suggests that the pattern of illnesses may be linked to the company’s plant, and at least one sample from an opened package of the company’s ground beef recovered from a patient’s home was found to have tested positive for the E. coli strain by the Massachusetts Department of Health.
According to the CDC, as of Tuesday evening, a total of 26 people from 11 states had been sickened. The states affected include California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont. Sixteen patients are reported to have been hospitalized, and two deaths have been reported.
How Consumers Can Protect Themselves From E. Coli
While the current outbreak may have many wary of ground beef now on shelves, Schafer pointed out that none of the beef associated with the recall would still be on the shelf at this time.
“The recalled products have passed their expiration dates by 23 to 32 days,” she said. “If [the product] does exist, it would be in your freezer.”
She added that at least on Fairbank Farms’ side, any tainted meat that is found is not processed and repackaged. “It gets thrown away; it gets disposed of.”
And despite the fact that contaminated meat is completely safe if cooked properly, Breite said that anyone who suspects that they may have tainted meat in their home has really only one completely safe option.
“You toss it,” he said. “You toss it immediately.”
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 11-3-09
Today, Kevin explains how traffic cameras could ruin your life and why all the real reporters aren’t being heard!
Lead in Face Paint
Bug Spray Blamed for Infant Death
Another Beef Recall
The Only Answer to Cancer
The Future of Our Army
Unemployment Rates Skyrocket!
Plus, The Amazing Kreskin reveals the secret to being the world’s greatest mentalist and reflects back on his 50 year career.
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
Beef Recall: E. Coli Kills Two
November 2,2009
Reuters
* CDC says total of 28 cases, 16 hospitalizations
* All but three cases are in U.S. Northeast
* Illness connected to recall of Fairbank Farms beef (Details on New York death; paragraphs 1, 3, 8 new)
An outbreak of food-borne illness, linked to dangerous bacteria in ground beef, sickened 28 people and may have caused two deaths in the U.S. Northeast, health officials said on Monday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all but three of the illnesses were in the Northeast and 18 were in the six New England states. A common strain of E. coli bacteria was involved so tests were under way to see if all of the reported cases have the same cause.
State officials said a death in New Hampshire was linked to the ground beef that is being recalled by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, New York. The New York State Health Department said a death in the Albany area from E. coli O157:H7 bacteria was being investigated to see if it is linked.
New Hampshire officials did not release information about the death in their state. The death in New York state last month involved an adult with underlying medical conditions, said the CDC. Two people were hospitalized in New Hampshire.
Fairbank Farms announced the recall on Saturday of 545,699 lbs (248,450 kg) of fresh ground beef products. The beef was produced in mid-September and probably was labeled for sale by the end of the month, said USDA.
The Agriculture Department, which oversees meat safety, said an investigation led it to conclude “there is an association between the fresh ground beef products and illnesses in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts.” USDA worked with state and federal officials in examining a cluster of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses.
A potentially deadly bacteria, E. coli can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in severe cases, kidney failure. The very young, the elderly and people with weak immune systems are the most susceptible to foodborne illness.
USDA said it would examine Fairbank Farms’ food safety plan this week.
A string of food-borne safety scares led the U.S. House of Representatives to pass legislation this summer to require more inspections and oversight of food manufacturers and would give the government new authority to order recalls.
The Fairbank Farms beef went to retailers including Trader Joe’s, Price Chopper, Lancaster and Wild Harvest, Shaw’s, a unit of Supervalu, BJ’s, Ford Brothers and Giant, a unit of Ahold , in eight states — Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
1 Dead in U.S. Meat Recall
November 2, 2009
Reuters
By Charles Abbott
A New Hampshire resident died and two others were hospitalized after consuming ground beef that may have been tainted by bacteria that can cause diarrhea, dehydration and kidney failure.
The death was connected to the recall of 545,699 lbs (248,450 kg) of ground beef products by Fairbank Farms, of Ashville, New York. The U.S. Agriculture Department said it became aware the meat might be tainted by E. coli O157:H7 bacteria during an investigation of a cluster of food-borne illnesses in New England.
New Hampshire officials announced the death on Saturday but did not release information about the victim. Two other New Hampshire residents have been hospitalized, they said.
In a statement, USDA said it worked with health officials and “determined that there is an association between the fresh ground beef products subject to recall and illnesses in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts.”
Fairbank Farms announced the recall on Saturday. The beef was produced in mid-September and probably was labeled for sale before the end of the month, said USDA. It went to retailers in eight states including Trader Joes, Price Chopper, Lancaster and Wild Harvest, Shaw’s, a unit of Supervalu (SVU.N), BJ’s (BJ.N), Ford Brothers and Giant, a unit of Ahold (AHLN.AS).
A complete list of products is available by clicking:
link.reuters.com/vyx27f
The company said the beef was produced Sept 14-16, and in a statement urged consumers to check their freezers for products listed in the recall. Labels of the recalled packages will say EST 492 inside the USDA seal.
Click here for the full report.
Ethanol Linked to E.Coli in Cattle
October 7, 2009
NaturalNews
By David Gutierrez
Emerging research is suggesting that in addition to boosting food prices, ethanol production may have another unintended consequence: higher E. coli infection rates in cattle.
In light of growing concern over global warming, ethanol — produced from corn — has been touted as a potentially carbon neutral liquid fuel. Government incentives for ethanol production have provided so much encouragement to the industry that corn prices have skyrocketed.
In 2007, scientists began to notice a sudden increase in contamination of beef products with the E. coli strain O157:H7, which does not harm cows but can be lethal to humans. In that year, the U.S. government recalled beef 21 times due to O157:H7 contamination, with roughly a third of those recalls sparked by reports of human illness due to the bacteria. In contrast, only eight recalls took place in 2006, none of them associated with human illness. In 2008, O157:H7 contamination remained on the rise, with 50 percent more reported cases from January through mid-October than in the same time period of 2007.
Late in 2007, researchers from Kansas State University noticed that cattle fed a diet of distillers grain — the residue left over after the starch has been removed from corn for ethanol production — had significantly higher levels of O157:H7 in their feces than cows fed with regular grain.
The recent spike in ethanol production has resulted in an abundance of distillers grain, driving prices down until it is cheaper than corn. In addition to the cost savings, ranchers favor distillers grain because it is higher in fat and protein than regular corn, leading to fatter cattle for the same amount of feed.
In a follow-up study, researchers infected calves with O157:H7, then fed them either distillers grain or regular grain. The bacteria proliferated more rapidly in the guts of the cows fed distillers grain. This finding was later confirmed by researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Click here for the full report.
