Publisher’s Platform: Safe Employees = Safe Food

by Bill Marler | Jan 22, 2012
FOOD SAFETY NEWS

When the Associated Press reported this week that an owner of Jensen Farms was being fined by the U.S. Department of Labor for failing to provide safe migrant worker housing, I must admit even I was a bit shocked. Could it be that an owner of a business that allowed a deadly fecal bacterium, Listeria, to coat its product would treat its employees like crap, too?

Well, apparently yes. It seems that Eric Jensen, the Colorado Cantaloupe grower whose product caused an outbreak that sickened 146 people and killed 30 (by my count 32), rented migrant workers unsanitary, overcrowded rooms at a motel he owns. Inspectors said many rooms lacked beds, laundry facilities and smoke detectors. Jensen now faces a whopping $4,250 in civil penalties. As the Labor Department’s Denver director said:

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TSA Is NOT Planning To Test Employees For Radiation?

Despite numerous reports this week suggesting that the TSA is to buy equipment to test employees for radiation exposure, the agency itself says it has no intention of doing so.

The LA Times reported that the agency was planning to equip its security officers with individual radiation dosimeters, to test the levels of radiation they were being exposed to from backscatter x-ray body scanners.

“After years of rebuffing health concerns over airport scanners, the Transportation Security Administration plans to conduct new tests on the potential radiation exposure from the machines at more than 100 airports nationwide,” the report read.

Details of the tests were reportedly leaked via a request sent to government vendors to provide wearable dosimeters.

However, a post from the TSA’s official blog says that the Times report “missed the mark”

“Why the confusion you might ask? TSA routinely puts out Requests for Information (RFI) that are basically market research, asking industry to tell us what else is out there.” the blog post noted.

“In this case, TSA put out an RFI to gather information on available tools to continue to monitor our technologies. This is simply designed to ask industry what new technology might be available.”

The blog then repeated the claim that the body scanning machines have been tested and approved.

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Related articles

• TSA to Test Airport Scanner Operators for Radiation Exposure (truthsupport.wordpress.com)
• TSA Is NOT Planning To Test Employees For Radiation (mountainrepublic.net)