Alert: Baby food in So. California laced with Ricin

[Bluebear]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - At least one jar of Gerber baby food sold in Southern California was found to have been contaminated with the poison ricin, authorities said on Wednesday.

In two separate incidents, parents in Irvine, California discovered notes inside jars of Gerber banana yogurt warning that the food was contaminated, an FBI spokesman said.

A Gerber spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

On May 31, a couple brought their 9-month-old girl to an Irvine hospital after she ate from a jar that contained the first note, police said.

Three weeks later, an Irvine man called police to report finding a similar note inside a jar of Gerber banana yogurt that he had been feeding his 1-year-old son. Neither child was harmed by the food, police said.

Both notes also mentioned an Irvine police officer, but authorities were unsure whether the person who tampered with the baby food meant to retaliate against the officer.

Neither of the families who purchased the tainted food had any connection to the officer, police said.

The FBI and the Food and Drug Administration have opened investigations into the incidents, and Irvine police alerted local markets to remove the food from their shelves.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040728/us_nm/crime_ricin_dc_1

[Parche]

1. babyfood

And once ingested makes people go GOOGOO GAGA

[Rainbowreflect]

2. That is sick.

[Carni]

3. WTF?

This is terrible.

[supernova]

4. How awful!

Why would anybody wanna spike baby food?!? :crazy:

[TheWraith]

11. Sounds like a psychotic.

No real rationale or reason, just completely insane behavior.

[arwalden]

5. The Story At The Link Is Different (Or Has Changed) From Your Quoted Text

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - At least one jar of Gerber baby food sold in Southern California was found to have been contaminated with non-lethal amounts of the poison ricin, authorities said on Wednesday.

In two separate incidents, parents in Irvine, California discovered notes inside jars of Gerber banana yogurt warning that the food was contaminated, an FBI (news - web sites) spokesman said.


A Gerber spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Gerber Products Company is a unit of pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG.NVS.N> .

-------------------

ME: Are they trying to soften the impact of the story?

[shraby]

13. I didn't know there WAS such a

thing as a non-lethal dose of ricin. That stuff is absolutely deadly. A drop can kill.

[pocket]

14. anything has a non-lethal dose

though it may be down to a few parts-per-billion. One drop may kill, but one drop spread over 100 jars may not.

[lapfog_1]

6. terra terra terra

Ricin in baby food.

I'm not sure WTF to think about this one. But it doesn't sound
like something Al Qaeda would want to do.

[Skip Intro]

9. very suspicious

and now there is a port shut down in Palm Beach concerning some "suspicous" containers

My gut sez panic-driven stunts designed to call media attention away from Edwards tonight.

I mean, non-leathal quantities - for a baby?

[daleo]

7. I thought ricin was very lethal

"At least one jar of Gerber baby food sold in Southern California was found to have been contaminated with non-lethal amounts of the poison ricin, authorities said on Wednesday."

How much would a non-lethal amount be, I wonder? The story seems to be pretty incomplete still. How did the note and poison get in? I thought most products were sealed, since the Tylenol poisonings way back when.

I wouldn't want to be a Gerber shareholder. ("Gerber Products Company is a unit of pharmaceutical giant Novartis")

[whistle]

12. You might have hit on something here....

...I wonder if there have been significant increases in buy and put options on Novartis stocks over the past few weeks? Remember what happened to United Airlines just before 9/11, this could very well be another terrorist (not necessarily Al Qaeda either) attack motivated by greed.

[thebigidea]

8. so why did they let the baby eat from a jar with a note inside?

[truthisfreedom]

15. parents often serve baby food directly from the jar. if the note was

pushed down below the surface of the food, perhaps it would be hard to see until a couple of spoonfuls of food were out.

can you imagine the horror to the parents as they read the notes? put this wacko away for a long, long time, and DO IT QUICK.

[Maeve]

26. I really can't imagine not noticing

I stirred every baby-food the kids got--and I also made sure the cap "popped" when I opened it.

But I can imagine the horror. :scared:

[depakid]

10. Alert: Commercial baby foods contaminated with pesticide

residue.

see, e.g. http://www.ewg.org/reports/Baby_food/baby_short.html

[Canuckistanian]

16. Is Ricin poisonous when ingested?

I always thought that it was most effective as a poison when injected.

[Career Prole]

17. Apparently ingestion is the least effective means of delivery.

"As a harmful biological agent, ricin can be inhaled, injected or ingested. Though injection would only require a very small amount, a much larger dose would be needed if the ricin were inhaled or ingested."
http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/SciRefGuides/ricin.html


Scientists Play Down Ricin's Lethal Threat

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 4, 2004; Page A07

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A10287-2004Feb3¬Found=true

[still_one]

18. Something is very strange about this

why would someone put notes in the bottles?

[Papa]

19. Ill tell you what's so strange about this

This happened May 31st, and they just tell us NOW about it? More bullshit to throw in the way of the Democratic convention in my opinoin.

[City Lights]

23. That's what I thought.

One incident May 31, another three weeks later. It's the end of July. Why wasn't this reported sooner?

[belle]

25. Or are Mom and Dad gunning for attention?

[rman]

30. it's like terrorists leaving the Koran all over the place

and like the passport that was found at WTC crash site.

[Kelvin Mace]

20. Okay, this story is weird for a lot of reasons

1) A "non-leathal does" of ricin. You mean that prehaps somebody just piy some castor beans in the baby food and removed it?

2) Happened almost two months ago.

3) Probably a domestic nutjob.

[et]

21. Castor beans

Just heard on local radio (KPCC) that mashed Castor beans were found in the baby food, not ricin.

[daleo]

22. A false alarm? Like the port shut-down in Florida?

Makes you wonder.

[goforit]

24. (The boogie man is at work)........."Scare the massess"said Bush!!!!

Can we Now we can call Bush a Baby killer???

And the repugs thought those abortionists were bad, eh?

[bobbyboucher]

27. Turrists want to kill our bebies!!

Just more fear into the pot.

And what's this with the notes telling that this jar of baby food is poisoned?

[shraby]

28. If this really happened, the jars of

baby food would have been off the shelves nationwide within a day, the news would have been on all the news services and articles in every newspaper in the country also by the next day...not a month after the fact.

[allalone]

29. ok, calm down

it wasn't really refined ricin. It was some ground up castor bean which is one of the componants of ricin.
a non-lethal amount, note refered to an Irvine policeman who this guy has a grudge against. They played this story like it was a giant terror attack and I for one am getting sick of all this "the sky is falling" shit. They already have a suspect. It's over. Half the time when this stuff happens, like, oh say, a mouse in the soda, etc, it turns out to be a hoax or somebody wanting to sue someone. aaarrrggghhh