Monday, April 11, 2005
NYT ON DANGEROUS FOODS
Two articles in the New York Times on April 10 described very different, but very serious problems with food.
A front page article by Marian Burros described tests on eight samples of salmon that were being sold as wild in different stores. The tests showed that six of the salmon were farm raised. One appeared to have been raised in a farm and then caught wild. Only the salmon from Eli's Manhattan on the Upper East Side tested wild.
According to the article, in addition to salmon taken directly from a farm, millions of salmon escape from farms. These fish are caught as wild, but were raised on a farm.
A number of stories (here is a selection from google) have described farm raised salmon as potentially very dangerous.
The second article (on a back page) by Michelle York, describes a banquet of venison served in New York State. One of the deer that was used in the feast (as well as several others not used) tested positive for chronic wasting disease, the deer version of mad cow disease. According to the article, there are no known cases of people getting sick from eating infected venison. However, because of the similarity to mad cow and other prion diseases, it is a serious concern.
