Summary: A severe outbreak of hepatitis A linked to frozen strawberries in smoothies has sickened 89 people in seven states since Thursday. Luckily, no one has died yet, though 39 people have been hospitalized. The first outbreak occurred in Virginia, which had 70 cases of hepatitis A, and several others have occurred in Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, West Virginia and Wisconsin. This illness seems to have been caused by drinking smoothies containing strawberries at Tropical Smoothie Cafés before August 8. These strawberries were imported from Egypt and were infected with the virus. Since then, the Café company has switched its supplier to a different, more sanitary location. Anyone that has had a strawberry smoothie from this Café company after August 8, 2016 should be perfectly healthy!
Analysis: This article was published by Susan Scutti at CNN. This is a very reliable source that I trust and do not believe that they put any bias into this article. It was published on September 8, 2016 which worries me a little because this outbreak happened a month ago. People may could have saved themselves from this disease if they knew about it earlier! Additionally, I did not have any knowledge of this subject before I read this article. This affected my view on this issue because I did not have any bias. After reading the article, I believe that more companies should buy their supplies locally to boost our economy and protect our people from deadly disease. I also believe that this significantly shows how our food system needs to have tighter restrictions on imported produce. This outbreak synthesized to what we learned a couple weeks ago about the outbreak of smallpox among the Native Americans. Both of these outbreaks were widespread and were brought to America from a foreign country. The smallpox epidemic was definitely a much larger outbreak, but the poor people who are now suffering from Hepatitis A, definitely feel pain.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/health/hepatitis-a-outbreak-strawberries-89-sick/index.html
It's so sad that things like this happen, especially through your source of food because of the mass consumption of it. Anyone can be affected and some aren't made aware of it until it's too late.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you that U.S. companies should stop outsourcing and use local produce, because I do think it will help our economy. I mean, if we don't use the supplies we grow here, why even grow them?
ReplyDeleteIt's awful that things like this happen. Who knew that getting a smoothie could led to getting a disease
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that the article was published on September 8th. Why is this news so late in getting out? I'd never heard about the incident until now, and I agree that more people could have been saved had it been published earlier.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of when the number one restaurant in the world, Noma, in Denmark fed the entire restaurant oysters. It turned out everyone who had eaten the oysters got infected with norovirus. Also, I agree with Kennedy. How come we haven't heard about this?
ReplyDelete-Ava Noble
It's sad when companies are so obsessed with making as much money as possible by getting the cheapest supplies to therefore increase their profit margin that they put their consumers' health at risk.
ReplyDeleteIt's so unfortunate that people have gotten sick just from drinking a strawberry smoothie. Also many more people could have prevented from getting sick if they knew about this sooner. When it comes to people's health it's important to keep us all aware.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that something as simple as drinking a smoothie can lead to severe illnesses. I hope that people learn their lesson and that they will be more careful when buying their products. People's heath definitely come before money.
ReplyDeleteI agree, why haven't we heard about this?
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