Tainted Guinea Pig Street Meat Suspected Of Sending 81 To The Hospital

(MeneerDijk)

While you might see a guinea pig and think, “Oh, I used to have one of those as a pet and it made funny grunting sounds,” there are plenty of people who see a guinea pig and think, “Mmm, dinner.” Health officials in Minnesota say 81 of the latter kind of people were felled by tainted guinea pig meat and other food at a street fair this month in big case of suspected salmonella poisoning.

According to the Star Tribune, a spokesman for the city of Minneapolis said the street vendor had a permit but sold unapproved food and handled it improperly. The guinea pig blowback all started during an Ecuadorean celebration earlier this month, after which a whole lot of people went to the hospital with severe gastrointestinal symptoms after dining on tainted food.

A county public health spokesman said it wasn’t only the guinea pig that started the stomach-clutching epidemic, however.

“It was most likely a bad food item or items being poorly handled,” he said. “The diseased organism that originated somewhere got spread to other food items by cross-contamination.”

Officials are still doing research to figure out the exact cause of the contamination to see whether it started with the guinea pigs and spread elsewhere or vice versa.

Tainted guinea pig meat at Minneapolis festival sent 81 to hospitals [Star Tribune]

via Consumerist http://consumerist.com/2013/08/26/tainted-guinea-pig-street-meat-suspected-of-sending-81-to-the-hospital/