The highest rate of soil-borne botulism in the U.S. is west of the Rockies. So if fresh vegetables were an issue, there'd be a lot of us sick (or dead). I know you mentioned prioritizing health and life-quality issues according to their severity and statistical frequency, but I don't see botulism as falling into the same categories. Many social issues (i.e. carbon in the atmosphere) are politically freighted, complicated and expensive to address. Botulism is none of those things. In the food world with appropriate processing or handling strategies it needn't be an issue at all. I encourage you to read about botulism itself, the nature of the spores, the many strains, how it's best avoided because that will alleviate many of your concerns. It does no good to understand the statistics if you don't understand the phenomenon. Carol

Thanks everyone. Everyone is recovering well. Listeria is another one of those commonly present in the environment. Mostly, the amount is so small it can only make someone with a compromised immune system slightly ill and probably briefly. Refrigeration doesn't kill it. Long-term refrigeration gives it time to grow, incubate and balloon into toxic levels that easily spill out onto surfaces and cross-contaminate. Lettuce from garden to sink to table is really pretty safe even when contamination is present. The levels are very low. Lettuce from garden to sink to refrigerator until the next serving is more risky. Contamination can grow to levels that will make everyone very sick. Lettuce from farm to refrigerated containers, to refrigerated trucks, to other refrigerated trucks to refrigerated retail display and with new packaging - particularly the prepackaged lettuces - that prolong the shelf life is sufficient for gd knows what. This part is no one's fault. The CDC recommends avoiding pre-packaged salads for this reason. The only solution is to sanitize everything that was directly and indirectly in contact. Once contamination is confirmed, it can be just about anywhere and all over that system. Kinda puts a new perspective on the importance of routine sanitation of the home refrigerator! When was the last time I spilled something in the frig? Ensuring each individual container is closed tightly helps reduce the spread of contamination. Goodness!

First of all the overly wet cheese you experienced a couple of months back was in no way related the present findings. Secondly the surface mold on your present wheel has nothing at all to do with lysteria. That is caused by air getting to the surface of the cheese. Blue mold grows when exposed to air, which is why holes are punched in the cheese after it is formed into wheels, to allow air to get in so the mold can grow. Either the person who hand wrapped the cheese wasn't careful enough, or when you re wrapped the cheese you didn't take enough care to make sure the foil was firmly in contact with the cheese. The reason they found lysteria in the cheese is because one of the farmers whose cows supplied the milk for the cheese was not keeping a close enough eye on his cow to notice when one was sick. Lysteria can cause still birth or abortion in a cow and since milk production depends on healthy cows having calves, no farmer wants lysteria anywhere near his dairy herd. I am told that the milk comes from dairy farmers within this county....so we don't deal with big tankers of milk from California. Lysteria in aged cheeses has been a subject of controversy for many many years. Cany lysteria bacteria present in cheeses aged 60 days or longer at a temperature above 35 degrees is rendered in active or killed during that time....but it seems that if it was ever present it is still detectable. This has been an ongoing war with makers of fine cheeses and the FDA. Imported Romano was recently recalled and Blue Bell had a huge recall of their ice cream a little while ago> I get more than a little irritated by government agencies that are sending alarms about cheese when no illnesses have been reported and that same government allowing the presence of hormones in our fluid milk and meat> I wish I could get my hands on some of that recalled cheese....I'll bet it's cheap....and just as good as any ever made!

I just got this information from an email from my vet. Please pass this along to all pet owners.