uOctober Food And Supplement Recall Roundup: Beware Of Surprise Cheese Curlsr

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• In this month’s Recall Roundup for food and supplements, dried fruit doesn’t declare its sulfites, tortilla chips may have some cheese curls mixed in, and plenty of pet food and treats may contain foodborne illnesses that can make you and your furry friends sick.

  Our monthly Recall Roundups have grown so expansive that we’ve had to separate them into two separate posts: one for consumer goods, and one for food and supplements.

  If you have any of these listed items in your pantry, refrigerator, or freezer, first check the varieties and flavors against the ones listed on the recall site or press release, then check expiration date or lot numbers.

  When there’s a match, don’t panic! If an item is listed as having undeclared walnuts and you’re not allergic to walnuts, for example, you don’t have to do anything at all. You can keep the item, eat it, not eat it, or return it to the store or the manufacturer for your own peace of mind.

  Items that may be contaminated with pathogens or foreign objects are worrisome for everyone, and you should return them to the retail store where you bought them, or contact the company for a refund and further instructions.

  DAIRY
  Kraft cheese singles: Wrapper may not unwrap and pose choking hazard
  Papillon Organic Roquefort cheese: May contain Listeria
  Karoun Dairies soft cheeses, sold under brands Karoun, Arz, Gopi, Queso Del Valle, Central Valley Creamery, Gopi, and Yanni: May contain Listeria

  SNACKS
  Suncrest Farms, Food Lion, and Larry’s Old-Fashioned Pork Rinds: May contain undeclared milk and soy.
  Ocean’s Halo Gluten-Free Seaweed Chips: May contain gluten (undeclared wheat)
  Snack Out Loud Sea Salt Crunchy Bean Snacks: May contain undeclared dairy ingredients, since the package may have ranch flavor inside
  Nature’s Eats Natural Macadamia Nuts: May be contaminated with Salmonella
  Southern Grove, Simply Raw Trail Mix: May be contaminated with Salmonella
  Always Save, Wendy’s, 7-Eleven Brand Yellow Round Tortilla Chips: May contain some cheese curls (undeclared dairy)
  On The Border Café Style Tortilla Chips: May contain undeclared dairy
  Mr. Goodcents Chocolate Chip Cookies: May contain undeclared peanuts
  ABC Cookies Banh Chu: Cookies have elevated levels of lead

  ICE CREAM AND SORBET
  Sunkist Frozen Mango Fruit Sorbet Bars: May contain undeclared dairy

  CEREAL
  Trader Joe’s Coconut Cranberry Granola: Contains undeclared milk, wheat, and pecans (tree nuts)

  NUTS
  Sincerely Nuts Macadamia Nuts: May contain Salmonella

  FRUIT
  Heng Cheong Loong Co. Golden Raisins: Contain undeclared sulfites
  Basma Golden Raisins: Contain undeclared sulfites
  Shad Raisins: Contain undeclared sulfites

  VEGETABLES
  Wylwood, Market Basket, Bountiful Harvest, and West Creek frozen corn, 1-pound bags: May contain Listeria
  Cascadian Farm Cut Green Beans: May contain Listeria
  Western Beef Sun Dried Tomatoes: Contain undeclared sulfites

  PACKAGED MEALS
  Aspen Foods frozen stuffed chicken breasts: May contain Salmonella
  Royal Frozen Food stuffed grape leaves, cabbage leaves, and pot stickers: May contain undeclared egg

  CONDIMENTS AND SPICES
  Kermit, Inc Sauces: May contain undeclared soy

  SUPPLEMENTS
  RHINO 7 3000 capsules: Contain undeclared new drugs.
  American Pure Whey Protein: Contains undeclared milk and soy ingredients
  Baidyanath Ayurvedic supplements: Contain high levels of lead and mercury
  Miracle Diet 30 and Miracle Rock 48: Contain unapproved drugs

  FISH
  All Skipanon canned seafood products: May contain Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism.

  PET FOOD
  K-9 Kraving Chicken Patties: May be contaminated with Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.
  Good ‘n’ Fun – Beefhide Chicken Sticks: May be contaminated with Salmonella
  OC Raw Dog Chicken, Fish & Produce Raw Frozen Canine Formulation: May be contaminated with Salmonella

  MEAT
  Johnsonville Grillers pork sausage, cheddar cheese and bacon flavor: may contain “extraneous materials,” or “metal shards.”

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uKmart Employee Saves Monthly Elevator Music Tapes From Trash To Torture Us All 26 Years Laterr

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  It’s October 1989. Your family is spending a pleasant Saturday afternoon at Kmart, browsing for some late back-to-school clothes, or maybe some Halloween costumes. The shelves are full of clearance lunch boxes and plastic pumpkins, and you hear soft instrumental adult-contemporary music interspersed with Kmart promos over the store speakers. That music’s all piped in, though, isn’t it? That bit of retail ephemera must be rarer than a new-in-box Ice Capades Barbie.

  Nope. A former Kmart employee writes the music and ads came on a cassette tape from corporate weekly or monthly until around 1993. When new tapes arrived, he would save them from the trash and stash them at home for the day in the future when someone would need them.

  It’s still not clear whether anyone needs them, but the tapes have been digitized, providing listeners with a better trip back to the late ’80s and early ’90s than that time capsule house in Buffalo. Thank you, Internet Archive, for dragging the sounds of my childhood back from my subconscious.

  Confusingly, about fifteen minutes in, the October tape has “You Make Me Feel Like Christmas” by Neil Diamond, which I was always under the impression was supposed to be a Christmas song.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uSubway Customer Claims Dead Rat Came Free With His Spinach-Filled Sandwichr

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  There’s just something about frogs, spiders and rats that make our skin crawl, especially when they come free in our bags of lettuce, grapes, frozen lemonade, and now, as one Oregon man claims, a Subway sandwich. 

  A pair of friends’ trip to “Eat Fresh” at a local Oregon Subway shop last week included a decidedly “unfresh” – and unwanted ingredient: a dead rat, KGW-TV reports.

  “It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s also the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” the man said. “I laughed because I was like, there is no way this just happened.”

  The man says the trip to the sandwich shop started off normally. Both he and his friend ordered sandwiches with spinach, which was nearing the end of the container.

  “I got my drink, turned around and they were in shock like something happened,” he said, noting that he was able to snap a photo (warning: dead rat). “There was a mouse in there. It was gross.”

  The Subway franchise headquarters said that as soon as the issue was found, the customers were given a full refund and an investigation was launched.

  “To be cautious, all of the products in the sandwich unit were disposed of and a thorough cleaning took place…there were no other complaints made,” the company said in a statement.

  KGW reports that the county health department arrived at the restaurant, examined the rodent, the bin it came out of and searched the area for any signs of contamination.

  “The investigation determined that the rodent problem did not come from inside the facility. It was probably in a bag of the bagged spinach product, not from the facility itself,” Cheryl Connell, Director Of Lincoln County Health and Human Services, said. “Everything was sanitized and cleaned properly afterwards.”

  While it’s possible customers who ordered sandwiches with spinach at the restaurant earlier in the day may have consumed tainted greens, Connell says it was unlikely they would become sick.

  “They [health inspectors] consulted with physicians and we followed their advice that, although it is not very appetizing, the risk of someone becoming sick due to eating lettuce with those particular circumstances were very low,” she said.

  Dead rodent found in Subway sandwich in Lincoln City [KGW]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uLaser Razor Raises $4 Million, Gets Kicked Off Kickstarter For Maybe Not Existingr

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• Hey, remember how a few years ago, Kickstarter changed their rules to require that all hardware projects funded through the platform actually exist in a working form? Late last night, Kickstarter enforced that policy on a campaign that had already raised $4 million. Kickstarter administrators apparently didn’t believe that the product, which promises a “shaving revolution,” exists yet as promised.

  Kickstarter’s rules dictate that a new product must have a working prototype. While having a single homemade prototype doesn’t guarantee that a project will be successful or easy to mass-produce, it does at least guarantee that it exists, and that the thing it purports to do is physically possible. With the Skarp Laser Razor, it’s not clear that either of those things is true.

  Here’s a video of what is supposedly the prototype, which shows a few wrist hairs falling after multiple passes. The “shaving revolution” apparently is that users will roll into work around noon if they try to shave their faces with this thing in the morning.

  In an interview with The Verge, one of the company’s cofounders explained that the prototype sucks precisely because it’s a prototype. “To produce the shaving results we discuss in our presentation, we require a high performance precision manufactured fiber,” he explained.

  I think that translates as, “We can’t show you that it works until we have a few hundred grand to do a production run.” Kickstarter apparently didn’t buy this, and suspended the campaign, which is a non-reversible decision. It’s also a costly decision: the campaign had several days left, and had already raised $4 million, Kickstarter’s cut of which would have been $200,000.

  Skarp packed up its alleged razors and took them to competing crowdfunding site Indiegogo, which has looser rules about things like collecting money for a product that may not be possible. They’ve raised $148,544 in the first 14 hours since moving, with the minimum set at $160,000.

  Suspended: Skarp Laser Razor Campaign Shut Down by Kickstarter After Raising $4 Million [Crowdfund Insider]
  $4 million laser razor campaign banned from Kickstarter is already on Indiegogo [The Verge]
  Prototypes & Renderings [Kickstarter]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uAT&T CEO Really Doesn’t Want To Hear Your Suggestions. At Allr

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  If you’re thinking of sending a helpful note to AT&T CEO and resident Sith Lord Randall “Milhouse” Stephenson about a product his company might want to offer, just don’t. He not only doesn’t want to hear from you, he’ll sic his legal team on you to drive home the point that he doesn’t want to hear about your idea.

  The L.A. Times’ David Lazarus has the story of a California AT&T customer who sent Randy Steve an innocuous e-mail and got a bizarre response from the company.

  In his note to the CEO, the customer made two suggestions: Allow unlimited data for DSL customers, and bring back affordable, tiered text messaging plans for people who don’t use the service that frequently.

  The customer’s e-mail explicitly stated that he had no interest in having a back and forth on this matter and that he was just throwing these out there as suggestions, so obviously he wasn’t expecting to hear back from the CEO’s office.

  What he certainly wasn’t expecting was a letter from Randy’s legal team.

  “AT&T has a policy of not entertaining unsolicited offers to adopt, analyze, develop, license or purchase third-party intellectual property… from members of the general public,” reads the response from AT&T’s chief intellectual property counsel. “Therefore, we respectfully decline to consider your suggestion.”

  Lest you think this was some sort of automated response that is being misread as an overreaction, a rep for the Death Star confirmed to Lazarus that this is the way the company responds to customer suggestions.

  “In the past, we’ve had customers send us unsolicited ideas and then later threaten to take legal action, claiming we stole their ideas,” explained a company rep. “That’s why our responses have been a bit formal and legalistic. It’s so we can protect ourselves.”

  We can understand why AT&T might want to short-circuit any future legal battles, there has to be a better, that doesn’t scream “WE DON’T WANT YOUR SUGGESTION EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE A CUSTOMER WHO PAYS US HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS A MONTH.”

  Like perhaps having an auto-reply to all customer messages with a more polite disclaimer? Or maybe just not treating every helpful customer like a potential litigant.

  The AT&T rep says the company “will take a look at our processes to see where we can do better going forward.”

  Yippee!

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uUnion Claims Air Traffic Controller Shortage Could Lead To Widespread Flight Delaysr

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  Bad weather, aircraft maintenance, computer glitches, crew not showing up on time: these are just a few reasons why a flight might be delayed. But you may soon have to add “not enough air traffic controllers” to that list, as the union representing controllers says a lack of manpower will result in more late and canceled flights.

  The Washington Post reports that officials for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said during a news conference on Tuesday that a “chronic” shortage of controllers has reached a point where widespread delays are likely.

  The union warned that if something isn’t done to alleviate the shortage soon, the industry could see delays on the same level as 2013 when government spending cuts led to furloughs for controllers.

  The Post reports that during the seven days the furlough was in place, 12,760 flights were delayed.

  The union said Tuesday that the issue stems from the Federal Aviation Administration’s failure for the past five years to meet hiring goals, despite the fact that air traffic has increased.

  According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the number of “certified professional controllers” – employees who can direct air traffic without assistance – declined 10% from 2012 to August of this year.

  Trish Gilbert, vice president of the union, says the decline in controllers means that, in some cases, employees at the nation’s busiest airports have had to work six-day work weeks.

  Complicating the issue is the fact that of the 10,859 certified controllers currently working, about 30% are eligible to retire, she says.

  Union: Chronic shortage of air traffic controllers a crisis [The Washington Post]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uAncestry.com Wants To Get Into The Genetic Disease-Diagnosing Businessr

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• Nearly two years after federal regulators drove genetic testing startup 23andMe out of the business of identifying potential risks for disease, the folks at genealogy website Ancestry.com say they want to be able to review customers’ DNA tests for potential problems.

  For the moment, commercially available DNA testing kits are not approved for diagnosing disease or even alerting a user to the risk for disease. That’s what got 23andMe in trouble with the Food and Drug Administration in 2013 and why the company had to pivot to only providing non-medical hereditary information.

  In an interview with The Verge, Ancestry.com CEO Tim Sullivan says his company is in the “very early stages of a conversation with the FDA” about allowing it to offer diagnostic DNA services to customers.

  “We think it’s totally appropriate that the FDA has stepped in to pretty aggressively regulate direct-to-consumer genetic tests — and we’re just starting from that perspective, and trying to work very closely with them,” he explains.

  After years of helping users trace their family trees through a variety of public records, Ancestry recently began selling $99 DNA kits that provide information about the users’ ethnic origins and other hereditary data.

  No commercially available DNA kit has passed FDA muster regarding its accuracy. And the agency is also concerned that these services don’t require a consultation with a physician. There are concerns that users, when told they might be at risk or predisposed to certain diseases, will unnecessarily or improperly try to treat those conditions.

  In fact, Sullivan himself admits to The Verge that “Today, family health history is still a better predictor of health risk than a DNA test.”

  23andMe’s marketing for its diagnostic service not only promised to identify health risks and carrier status, but even went so far as to detail potential drug interactions based on a user’s test results.

  Those sorts of claims are effectively begging for FDA scrutiny, but Sullivan says Ancestry has no intention of rushing a diagnostic product to market without approval.

  “Ancestry is going to follow the FDA’s lead on this and add as much value to our DNA test as we can within the FDA’s guidelines,” he tells The Verge. “We’ll expand the AncestryDNA test in, frankly, whatever way the FDA allows us to do.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist