Every hour of every day people around the world are living with and working to resolve food safety issues. Here is a sampling of current headlines for your consumption, brought to you today with the support of iwaspoisoned.com.


Norovirus runs through 8th cruise in a row
For the eighth consecutive voyage on Princess Cruises’ Sun Princess, passengers became voilently ill from a norovirus outbreak. Since the end of 2017 into the first two months of this year, passengers sailing from Australia described outbreaks of violent vomiting.

According to a recent publication by the CDC detailing cases of acute gastroenteritis on cruise ships from 2008 to 2014, only 129,678 passengers of 74 million — or less than 1 percent — in that time period contracted a gastrointestinal illness as defined by the Vessel Sanitation Program.

An Australian law firm, currently investigating bringing a class action lawsuit against Carnival Australia, alleges that cruise chain was negligent in its sanitation of the vessel, leading to continued outbreaks.

Short turnarounds, about two hours, between voyages contribute to “an alleged failure of a duty of care by Carnival to properly and adequately sanitize the Sun Princess on each cruise and also to give adequate guidelines and safeguards to passengers in preventing them from coming down with norovirus.”

An estimated 16,000 cruise ship passengers could be eligible for compensation.


FDA blocks shrimp for drug residues, Salmonella
The Food and Drug Administration recently refused five shrimp shipments due to the presence of prohibited antibiotics. The shrimp belonged to two companies, Sea Fresh in Bangladesh and Zhangzhou TaiWang Food Co. Ltd. in China.

According to an FDA report, the U.S. agency refused four shipments from Sea Fresh because of the presence of nitrofurans. Zhangzhou TaiWang Food Co. shrimp was denied entry to the United States because of residues of veterinary drugs.

Additionally, 14 shrimp shipments were denied entry because of Salmonella contamination. Thirteen of those shipments were from India, sent by Falcon Marine Exports Pvt. Ltd. (one shipment); Sandhya Aqua Exports Pvt. Ltd. (one shipment); and Jagadeesh Marine Exports (eleven shipments). The other shrimp contaminated with salmonella was shipped by PT Bumi Meara Internusa in Indonesia.

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