FDA Inspection Reveals Chinese Restaurant Supplier Was Rat-Infested Nightmare

(Rennett Stowe)

There are fascinating horrors hiding in letters from the Food and Drug Administration to the food, drug, and cosmetic companies that it regulates. One letter that we wish we could un-read is directed to New Yung Wah Trading Company, a Brooklyn-based company that supplies Chinese restaurants all over the East Coast. The results of multiple inspections of their warehouse near Pittsburgh were frightening to potential diners…at least, those of us who prefer our food to have as little rat urine as possible.

The letter describes inspections performed in October, but wasn’t sent until December 9 and was made public this week. Here are a few items out of the letter’s catalog of horror:

• A box of “rib meat” (animal unnamed) that was set on top of a box of melons to thaw. The box of meat contained an “apparent active rodent nest containing multiple rodents,” which sounds very cozy for the rodents but maybe not so much for people who were planning to eat the meat. Or the melons.


• Rodent carcasses throughout the building, during the October 15th inspection and a repeat inspection on October 20th.


• Birds flapping around the warehouse and defecating on food items, which rarely ends well. Specifically, it ends in salmonella contamination.


• Nesting material and rodent poop in a case of pineapples.


• More rodent “excreta” in a walk-in cooler, and rodent gnaw holes and even more leavings contaminating bags of flour and of monosodium glutamate.


• Insufficient plumbing in different parts of the facility created pools of standing water and even “marshy soil” indoors, which creates a fine hiding place for some pests.


• Workers were spotted smoking while preparing food products for distribution.

When AOL’s DailyFinance site contacted the company, they didn’t respond. The distributor’s website has also mysteriously disappeared.

Birds Slur When They Sing After Too Much Booze, Just Like Us

(Karen Chappelle)

Anyone who’s ever had a Drunk Uncle Hal knows that a natural result of imbibing a bit too much fire water is the propensity to slur, when talking, or when singing at the top of one’s lungs about all the joys of life. We are not alone in our slippery-tongued warbling, however, as one study says birds get a bit loose beaked after a stiff drink, too.

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University say in a study published this month in PLOS ONE that a kind of songbird called the zebra finch slurs its songs when drunk.

While one might imagine scientists setting up a tiny bar (and high expectations in life) for the birds and letting’em slam shots, in reality they were served a mixture of grape juice and ethanol.

The result sounds much like a scene out of any late night bar where the feelings are warm and the mood is right — birds ended up singing songs with “altered” acoustics. Most likely to the tune of “Danny Boy.”

“The most pronounced effects were decreased amplitude and increased entropy, the latter likely reflecting a disruption in the birds’ ability to maintain the spectral structure of song under alcohol,” the researchers wrote. “Furthermore, specific syllables, which have distinct acoustic structures, were differentially influenced by alcohol, likely reflecting a diversity in the neural mechanisms required for their production.”

So what’s this got to do with us? It could help researchers understand why we act how we act when we’re boozing, researchers explain. Because we’re all just a bunch of drunk birds with a song to sing.

Drinking Songs: Alcohol Effects on Learned Song of Zebra Finches [PLOS ONE]

It Was Once Dubbed The World’s Largest Mall, And Now It’s About To Be Dust

(Brandon Doran)

Oh, how the mighty have fallen: The former ruler of wide swaths of parking lot as the world’s largest mall when it was built in 1976, Randall Park Mall near Cleveland, has been dead for years. But the final nail in the coffin comes this week as the building undergoes the final demolition from which no mall can return.

Tumbling from its throne as the ruler of all the pavement it could see, Randall Park will soon be reduced to dust after demolition started yesterday, reports CNNMoney.

The mall was touted as the largest of its kind way back when, but has gone the way of many formerly busy malls, slipping into disrepair and decline until finally shutting its doors for good in 2009.

“I remember walking through it and feeling overwhelmed by the memories, most of which were good ones,” said Seph Lawless, a photographer who included the mall in his book of fallen malls, Black Friday, told CNN.

“I mean, this wasn’t just a place to shop, it was a place people went to talk and meet other people. We didn’t have social media or smartphones. We had malls and it was what we did.”

The land the mall sat on will be turned into an industrial park, reports Cleveland.com, to be haunted by the ghosts of tweens seeking an Orange Julius forevermore.

Is In-Store Pickup Any Faster Than Just Shopping At The Store?

(Molly)

For years, an increasing number of retailers have been pushing their “buy online, pickup in store” (BOPIS, for all you acronym lovers) option as a expedient option that offers the convenience of online shopping without the hassle of having to search the aisles. But is it really any faster than traditional bricks-and-mortar shopping?

The folks at StellaService recently put this idea to the test at 11 of the country’s biggest retailers offering BOPIS — Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Office Depot, Sears, Staples, Target, Toys ‘R Us, and Walmart.

At each location, shoppers made a BOPIS purchase and bought the same item in the traditional manner.

In terms of the amount of time spent in the store, BOPIS did seem to speed things up a bit, with the average BOPIS shopper only needing 5.4 minutes to reach the cashier, compared to 7 minutes for standard shopping.

Office Depot was the most expedient BOPIS retailer, with shoppers only needing 2 minutes. The fastest traditional shopping was at Target, where shoppers were in and out in 3.5 minutes.

On the other end of the spectrum is Home Depot and Macy’s. Each clocked in at 8.5 minutes for a BOPIS purchase. At these retailers and at Nordstrom, traditional shoppers were actually out the door faster.

The slowest time in the entire survey was Sears, where it took more than 16 minutes for the traditional shoppers to check out.

But the in-store pickup aspect is only part of the process. When you factor in the wait time for BOPIS customers to receive confirmations that their order was ready, a more complicated picture arises.

The average wait time for a confirmation was just over an hour, reports StellaStervice, with Macy’s and Sears each taking at least 140 minutes to let BOPIS shoppers know they could do the PIS part of their transaction. In such cases, most people could easily have driven to the store and done their shopping faster.

But then there were stores like Best Buy and Lowe’s that only needed 10 minutes to confirm a purchase was ready to be picked up. That’s fast enough for customers to place an order, hop in their car and have it be ready when they arrive at the store. Others like Home Depot (25 mins.), Staples (28 mins.), and Toys ‘R Us (30 mins.) might be okay for those with longer drive-times to the store.

Of all the stores in the survey, only Home Depot allowed customers to schedule their pickup time.

Okay, so you have an idea how far ahead in advance you need to order, and how long it will take you to get through the store. But what about actually finding the in-store pickup counter?

Several retailers — Best Buy, Target, Lowe’s among them — had specific counters visible from the entrance for in-store pickup.

And while it might take longer than traditional shoppers for a Nordstrom BOPIS customer to get in and out, that’s probably because the department store lets customers do in-store pickup at any counter. That’s convenient — not having to search a massive, multi-floor store for customer service — but it also means you’ll have to wait for the item to be delivered to wherever you are.

Finally, things can get complicated when you’re finalizing that BOPIS purchase. Shoppers who placed their orders online ended up spending the majority of their time (3.1 minutes) at the store at the cashier. However, it only took about 1 minute for standard shoppers to pay.

What isn’t in doubt about BOPIS is that it offers the one thing that traditional shopping doesn’t — some assurance that the item you ordered will be there when you get to the store. Granted, we’ve heard numerous stories of retailers botching in-store pickups and customers finding out too late than an item is out of stock, but in general the process works as planned.

Parents Are Upset About This Play-Doh Extruder For Some Reason

Do you know who I feel sorry for this week? The people running social media for Hasbro’s Play-Doh brand of perpetual play clay. People keep posting to point out the resemblance of an accessory in one of their current play sets to a human phallus, and Hasbro keeps taking

Here’s the whole set, which lists for $20, is currently available from Amazon for $13, and looks pretty fun.

Yet what caught the eye of some parents is that frosting extruder over to the side. It looks like a fanciful turret on a castle decorated by Dr. Seuss. Or… like a human penis with particularly artful veins.

Of course, not all customers are complaining.

We somehow doubt this, since this poster would need to buy two of the entire cake set. Sets including the controversial accessory could become a collectible in the future, so buying entire sets and keeping them sealed could be an investment opportunity, but it’s also possible that no one will care in the future when it’s no longer the slow news week between the end-of-the-year holidays.

Anyway, Hasbro told a TV station in Tulsa back in November that they’ve replaced the controversial piece in future sets. Apparently, Santa delivered enough of the sets nationwide last week that the issue became freshly controversial.

Here’s the replacement version of the extruder, which is much less interesting but sure to be much less controversial.

Play-Doh’s Facebook Appears To Be Deleting Comments From Parents About Their New Penis-Shaped Toy [Buzzfeed]

Controversial Toy Part Changed After Consumer Feedback [KTUL]

White Castle Changes Everything You Think You Know About White Castle, Puts Veggie Sliders On The Menu

What do you think of when you think of White Castle? If it’s “steamed meat,” you’re not alone. Thus, friends, we can get through this together: In a direct challenge to those who thought they knew a little something about White Castle, the home of the steamed meat slider has gone ahead and added veggie burgers to the menu.

Not that there isn’t enough room on the menu to share — in fact, I’d like to be the first to welcome my vegetarian brethren into the warm, slightly damp embrace of a White Castle slider. Because why should meat heads have all the Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle inside jokes and Crave Case case races (you’ll have to ask my college self and her reckless friends about that one)?

The sliders are made from Dr. Praeger’s brand of veggie patties, which are “chock full of lots of vegetables like carrots, zucchini, peas, spinach, broccoli, and more,” according to White Castle, reports Grub Street. They’ll be available at all White Castle locations, the company says.

Veggie sliders come with a choice of honey mustard, ranch or sweet Thai sauce, and presumably, the same day-after sense of regret upon realizing you’ve eaten way, waaaaay too many sliders the night before. They’re just so little, ya know?

White Castle Unveils Veggie Burgers [Grub Street]

Early Lawsuits Regarding GM Ignition Switch Defect Often Fell Through Cracks In The Court System

(paul bica)

Since General Motors began recalling millions of vehicles for defective ignition switches earlier this year, several reports have surfaced that show the car maker and federal regulators knew of the deadly issue but failed to address it. While they almost certainly dropped the ball, a new report shows that the country’s legal system also failed to protect consumers by creating an environment in which legitimate lawsuits involving deadly crashes of affected GM vehicles fell through the cracks for nearly a decade.

The New York Times reports that families who attempted to take General Motors to court after their children died in a crashes involving the company’s vehicles with defective ignition switches were either coldly rebuffed because the lives of their children weren’t worth the cost of litigation or settled their cases, barring them from discussing the issue in the future.

Brush-offs by law firms and settlements with strict restrictions to not discuss the defect highlight additional lost opportunities to sound the alarms regarding the deadly GM defect years before it would ever take the national spotlight.

These missed opportunities are a result of state laws that have capped awards for noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering, limited punitive damage awards or changed how liability is assessed.

These changes, critics tell the Times, often work against consumers and suppress vital information about product dangers.

The Times reports that factors such as tort reform and the rising costs of lawsuits have long diminished the legal system’s ability to bring risks like those of the GM defect to light.

Back in 2007, the family of a teenager killed in a 2006 crash involving a Cobalt was told by a local Wisconsin law firm that the value of their child’s life was too small to justify the expense and risk of taking on GM in court.

The value of the teen’s life was assessed at just $350,000, the maximum recovery of loss allowed under Wisconsin law. Because of this, the family was unable to proceed with their lawsuit, leaving the ignition issue uncovered.

Additionally, critics tell the Times that the ability of defendants to force plaintiffs to keep quiet about settlements regarding defective products also highlights the legal system’s failures when it comes to GM’s defect.

At the time the Wisconsin family attempted to bring forward their lawsuit, lawyers said they knew of six ignition-related lawsuits that GM had settled out of court. But reach of those settlements barred public disclosures about the issue.

By barring plaintiff discussion of the defect, GM made it increasingly difficult for lawyers handling new claims against the company to learn about previous incidents of defect crashes and fatalities.

Several families who had previously settled with GM confirmed to the Times that they were unable to speak about the defect publicly or they would risk losing their settlements.

“This is so frustrating to me,” the Wisconsin teen’s father tells the Times. “If we had gone to litigation, this would have gone to the forefront. We could have saved lives.”

The GM defect issues finally saw the light of day when a lawyer in Georgia – a state without strict caps on damages in product liability suits – filed a lawsuit against the the car maker in 2011.

The suit was successful in large part because GM lawyers did not move to settle the case since it involved a side impact collision, in which the car’s airbags were not expected to deploy.

The Times reports that this gave the plaintiff’s lawyer the opportunity to recruit an engineering expert who discovered the Cobalt’s ignition switch defect.

In 2013, following that engineer’s testimony and the testimony of a GM employee, the car company offered to settle the case for $5 million, as long as the family and lawyers never mentioned the defect.

Several months later – and years after the first ignition-defect related lawsuits against the company – GM publicly disclosed the defect for the first time and began recalling vehicles.

To date, at least 42 deaths have been linked to the GM ignition defect.

Victims of G.M. Deadly Defect Fall Through Legal Cracks [The New York Times]