Earlier this week, an FDA report revealed that Basic Food Flavors Inc., the company at the center of a recall of more than 100 food products, continued to make and distribute food ingredients for almost a month after it learned the bacteria salmonella was present at its processing facility.

According to a recent, Wall Street Journal news report, the FDA last week recommended companies recall products, from chips to soups that contain a commonly used additive made by Basic Food Flavors that tested positive for salmonella. The additive is mixed into foods to give them a meaty flavor.

FDA officials inspected Basic Food’s plant for about two weeks starting in mid-February and found the company didn’t adequately clean equipment and store foods to protect against the growth of contaminants such as salmonella, according to the inspection report.

The report comes as the number of products being recalled has expanded to over 100, including vegetable dips made by McCormick & Co. and honey mustard pretzels sold at CVS Caremark Corp. drug stores and Safeway Inc. grocery stores.

The inspectors noted that “light-brown residue” and “dark-brown liquid” was observed on or around where Basic Food makes flavor-enhancing ingredients used in foods. The inspectors said brown residue was also found in a plastic pipe used in making food ingredients.

Basic Food makes a flavor enhancer called hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP. The FDA report said the company first learned salmonella was present at its processing facility for HVP on January 21. The company continued to distribute the ingredients until February 15.

Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Gerber® Gator® Machete and Gator® Machete Jr.

Units: About 149,000 Gator Machetes and 6,000 Gator Machetes Jr.

Importer: Gerber Legendary Blades, of Portland, Ore., a division of Fiskars Brands Inc., of Madison, Wis.

Hazard: The saw side of the machete can stick in wood during use, and if the user’s hand slips off the handle and slides forward across the machete blade, this poses a laceration hazard.

Incidents/Injuries: Gerber has received five reports of individuals cutting themselves while using the Gator Machete, all of whom required stitches.

Description: This recall involves the Gerber Gator Machete and Gator Machete Jr. with the original handle. The Gator Machete is approximately 25 1/2″ long and the Machete Jr. is approximately 18 3/4″ long. The blade is marked with the “Gerber” trademark. The Gator Machete and Machete Jr. with a modified handle (an extended hand guard) are not included in this recall. Consumers should visually inspect their machete to determine if it is included in this recall.

Sold at: Retail stores nationwide, including The Sportsman’s Guide, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops/American Rod & Gun, and through on-line stores from March 2007 through February 2010 for between $16 and $25.

Manufactured in: China

Remedy: Consumers should stop using the recalled machetes immediately and contact Gerber to receive instructions on how to return the machete for a free replacement machete.

Consumer Contact: For more information, contact Gerber Legendary Blades toll-free at (877) 314-9130 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. PT, Monday through Friday, or visit the firm’s Web site at www.gerbergear.com

On February 23, 2010, Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota acknowledged in prepared remarks made public that the automaker’s efforts to expand resulted in lax safety standards.

The driver of a Toyota Prius who called 911 on March 8, 2010 to report his accelerator was stuck finally got the car stopped after about 20 minutes with the help of the California Highway Patrol, officers said, according to a recently published Los Angeles Times news report.

“He was reaching speeds over 90 miles per hour,” CHP Officer Larry Landeros said of the driver, James Sikes. A Toyota spokesman said that the company, which has recalled millions of vehicles because of reports of unintended acceleration, was sending a representative to investigate the cause of the incident.

The cell phone call came about 1:30 p.m. from the driver of the 2008 Prius eastbound on Interstate 8 in San Diego County. “He was driving near the La Posta Indian Reservation when he called 911 and said his gas pedal was stuck,” Landeros said.

“I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car and it did something kind of funny, it jumped and it just stuck there,” Sikes, 61, said at a news conference. “As it was going, I was trying the brakes, it wasn’t stopping.”

A CHP patrol officer caught up to the Prius about 20 minutes later and used a loudspeaker to tell the driver to apply his emergency brake in tandem with the brake pedal, Landeros said.

Sudden unintended acceleration has allegedly been the cause of 56 fatal accidents involving Toyotas in the U.S., going back as far as 2004.

The Prius that Sikes was driving was one of more than 4 million Toyota vehicles recalled in November because of the reported acceleration problems.

On March 6, 2010, U.S. District Judge George King of the Central District of California in Los Angeles issued the order against Tierra Santa Inc. and its owner, Cayetano Martinez. Martinez earlier signed a consent decree prohibiting him or any affiliated company from hauling passengers without U.S. Department of Transportation authority, which is required to take passengers from one state to another.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration demanded Van Nuys, Calififornia based Tierra Santa stop operating on March 5, 2010, the day of the crash south of Phoenix. The judge’s order makes the shutdown enforceable by the court.

“They knew they were running illegally,” Duane DeBruyne, a Department of Transportation spokesman in Washington, D.C., said.

A federal complaint to be filed against the company today says the motor carrier administration previously shut down Martinez, who then attempted “to reincarnate himself as a new carrier” that unsuccessfully sought Department of Transportation operating authority, the department said in a news release Sunday.

“Martinez has shown a persistency and determination to continue operating under new entities and businesses,” the release quotes the complaint as saying.

The bus that crashed entered the United States from Mexico at El Paso, Texas. It was headed to Phoenix to change drivers when it hit a pickup truck, veered onto the left shoulder of the road and rolled on Interstate 10 on the Gila River Indian Reservation. The impact crushed the roof and knocked out the windows.

More than a dozen passengers remained hospitalized over the weekend.

Tierra Santa applied last April for operating authority to haul passengers across state lines. The Department of Transportation notified the company by registered mail that it could not conduct interstate transportation during the review, DeBruyne said.

The agency sought more information for the application but the company never responded. In December, the department sent another certified letter telling the company it had run out of time and was not authorized to take passengers across state lines, DeBruyne said.

The consent decree does not prevent civil penalties against Martinez for possible violations of motor carrier safety regulations, transportation officials said.

Almost 40% of Massachusetts 437 nursing homes received below-average scores during their most recent inspections due to a troubling catalog of lapses and abuses that are putting vulnerable seniors at serious risk, according to a recent Boston Herald review.

Massachusetts nursing home population is about 45,000. The Herald’s findings come at a time when the number of residents in such homes is expected to surge as baby boomers age into their 80s.

With so many boomers in the nursing home pipeline, advocates and families say they are extremely worried about the quality of care today and in the future.

“I think our system doesn’t require nursing homes to be good,” said Janet Wells, director of public policy at the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, who blames lack of oversight and low staffing for poor quality.

A Boston Herald examination of two years of inspection reports and complaint investigations for the worst-performing nursing homes in eastern Massachusetts bears out Wells’ concerns. The documents, provided by the Department of Public Health after months of public records requests, revealed dozens cases of poor staff training, unsanitary living conditions and overall neglect. For example:

At a Danvers home in 2008, nurses failed to perform CPR on a resident after finding her unresponsive. A doctor arrived 15 minutes later and pronounced her dead. The state investigated and faulted the home for providing poor care. In addition, a nurse said she falsified the dead woman’s medical records, the state found.

Residents are not always safe from their peers, as evidenced by the Sept. 24 murder of 100-year-old Dartmouth nursing home patient Elizabeth Barrow who was strangled in her bed. Her roommate, Laura Lundquist, 98, has been charged with murder.

A woman at a Lawrence nursing home informed investigators she was in “unbearable” pain for days because staff failed to reorder her pain medication on time.

Investigators caught a Lawrence nursing home resident smoking while using an oxygen tank. A resident was found flicking ashes on her bed sheets in a Chelsea home. In Danvers, a smoking room lacked a fire extinguisher.

In 2008 and 2009, there were 71 complaints of neglect and physical, sexual and verbal abuse of residents at 40 homes reviewed by the Herald. Of those complaints, 11 were deemed valid by the state. In 41 cases, the state couldn’t determine whether the abuse occurred. The rest were deemed invalid.

In many cases, staff failed to develop or follow through on plans required to protect residents from extreme weight loss, falls and leaving the home unattended, leading to serious injuries and health setbacks.

Below average

Overall, 38% of the state’s 437 nursing homes scored below the state average on recent inspection reports, according to state data. The average score is 121 out of 132 points.

Department of Public Health workers inspect nursing homes for state and federal violations on behalf of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Surveyors review medical records, interview patients and staff, and tour the facility for several days. The inspections, done about once a year, are unannounced.

The information is used to compile a score for each of the state’s nursing homes.

In a joint interview, Bay State Elder Affairs Secretary Ann L. Hartstein and Mary McKenna, the Massachusetts ombudswoman for nursing homes, played down the state scores, which are available online at mass.gov. “We see it as one piece of data that people should use,” Hartstein said.

Neither would say whether they were concerned that 166 of the state’s homes scored below average. They also would not characterize a below-average score as good or bad.

“The average score is just the average score. People shouldn’t give it more weight than it has.” Hartstein said. “Just because (a home) is below the average score doesn’t necessarily mean they are not a good nursing home.”

Alice Bonner, director of the Bureau of Health Care Safety and Quality at DPH, said there are holes in the state system, but that it’s useful as one tool to evaluate nursing homes. The state and federal systems don’t measure staffing turnover, for example.

Not enough staff

There are no nurse-to-resident ratios mandated at Massachusetts nursing homes, although nursing home reform groups have pushed for them for years, said Wells, of the nursing home reform coalition.

Avoidable injuries and deaths at nursing homes in Massachusetts and other states can be traced to a lack of manpower, she said.

“Most nursing homes are too understaffed to avoid harming residents,” she said.

Some homes have replaced nurses with less-skilled and cheaper certified nursing assistants, said Charlene Harrington, a registered nurse and professor at the University of California at San Francisco.

The amount of time registered nurses spend with residents has shrunk by 25 percent, from 48 minutes per resident per day in 1998 to 36 minutes per resident per day in 2008, she said. A safe level is 45 minutes per resident per day, but higher for sicker patients, she said.

“If you don’t have that level it causes harm or jeopardy to residents,” Harrington said, citing malnutrition, infections and sores as frequent outcomes.

Susan Feeney of the Washington D.C.-based American Health Care Association, which advocates for 11,000 senior-care facilities, said nursing homes face a staff shortage. In addition, she said, Harrington’s numbers don’t reflect the efforts of therapists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

The indictment names James Lomma and two of his companies, New York Crane & Equipment Corp. and J.F. Lomma Inc. A former mechanic with New York Crane & Equipment also was indicted.

The top of the giant crane snapped and crashed onto a Manhattan apartment building in May 2008. It happened a little more than two months after another crane collapsed elsewhere in Manhattan and killed seven people.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said the indictments were expected to end his office’s investigations into the crane collapses. Mr. Vance said the company wanted the crane repaired quickly to keep it generating income from construction contractors who rented the equipment.

“Failing to keep the crane operational would have cost the defendants about $50,000 a month in rental fees, a price the defendants must have felt was too much to pay,” he said. “Today, two families are paying a much greater price.”

City buildings officials approved putting the crane back in service with the repaired turntable, but authorities say the company misled inspectors about testing on the part.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee told Toyota executive Jim Lentz in a letter that there is “an absence of documents” to show whether the company thoroughly investigated the possibility of unintended acceleration. The committee demanded to know who is involved with the testing and receive quarterly reports detailing allegations of the unwanted acceleration.

“We do not understand the basis for Toyota’s repeated assertions that it is ‘confident’ there are no electronic defects contributing to incidents of sudden unintended acceleration,” wrote Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.

Adding to the doubts, the government has received more than 60 complaints from Toyota owners who had their vehicles fixed following the recalls but say they’ve had more problems with their vehicles surging forward unintentionally. Toyota dealers have been fixing the accelerator pedals but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Thursday that if the remedy provided by Toyota is not addressing the issue, the government could order the company to provide a different solution.

Toyota hired a consulting firm to study whether electronic problems could cause unintended acceleration. The firm, Exponent Inc., released an interim report that has found no link between the two. But committee investigators have said the Exponent test was flawed because it studied only a small number of Toyota vehicles.

In the letter, Waxman and Stupak also request more details on brake override systems and “black box” information in Toyota vehicles.

Toyota plans to install brakes that can override the gas pedal in future models and many vehicles already on the road. The safety measure is meant to prevent the unintended acceleration that has caused some Toyota drivers to speed out of control.

The committee also wants to know what information is available in Toyota electronic data recorders. The “black box” information could help investigators learn more about what is happening in the vehicles before crashes. A review by the Associated Press found that Toyota has been inconsistent and sometimes even contradictory in revealing what the devices record and don’t record, such as critical data about whether brake or accelerator pedals were depressed at the time of a crash.

The NHTSA has linked 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by Toyota’s acceleration problems.

On March 3, 2010, four Ohio residents told a Cincinnati judge that they lost their sense of smell after using Zicam Nasal Gel to relieve their cold symptoms, according to a Cincinnati Enquirer news report. The four made the accusation in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that claims the maker of Zicam, Matrixx Initiatives Inc., based in Scottsdale Arizona, knew about the health risks but continued to promote and sell the product.

The suit claims a scientist who developed the technology for the nasal gel warned company officials the product could cause damage and told them more testing should be done before it was put on the market.

“Despite this knowledge, defendants continued to manufacture, market and sell Zicam Nasal Gel,” the lawsuit states.

But soon after they used Zicam, all four claim they experienced discomfort or a burning sensation in their nasal passages. They said doctors later told them they had lost their sense of smell, possibly permanently.

Zicam contains zinc gluconate, a chemical compound that the lawsuit said is known to cause damage to tissue inside the human nasal cavity.

The flavoring; hydrolyzed vegetable protein, is used in soups, sauces, hot dogs, snack foods, dressings and dips and is made by privately held Basic Food Flavors Inc of Las Vegas, Nevada. A handful of companies have recalled products ranging from dips, potato chips and dressings to tofu, burritos and pasta. They include T. Marzetti, a unit of Lancaster Colony Corp, which said on March 1 it was recalling various dips.

The FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Agriculture Department are working with Nevada state health officials on the outbreak. The FDA said it collected and analyzed samples at the Nevada facility and confirmed the presence of Salmonella Tennessee in the company’s processing equipment. The company is recalling all hydrolyzed vegetable protein in powder and paste form that it has produced since September 17, 2009.

The FDA, CDC and USDA are currently working with Congress to overhaul U.S. food safety regulation. Deputy FDA Commission Dr. Joshua Sharfstein said this outbreak showed why new regulatory powers were needed.

Since 2006, the U.S. food supply has been battered by a series of high-profile food borne outbreaks involving meat, lettuce, peppers, peanuts and spinach.

Contamination of peanuts with salmonella in 2009 forced the recall of 3,200 products and sickened 600 people.

This week, the Produce Safety Project reported that food poisoning costs the United States $152 billion in health-related expenses each year.

Many firms including Kellogg Co, whose company lost nearly $70 million in products from the recent peanut recall, and ConAgra Foods have been affected.

“Device problems critical to insulin pumps exist across manufacturers,” the agency said, noting there have been 18 recalls of devices over a five-year period, including recalls by a Roche Holding AG unit and Medtronic Inc. The FDA is putting together an advisory panel of outside medical experts on to discuss what actions might be taken to “minimize risks associated with the devices in these recall situations.” Background materials for the meeting were posted on the FDA’s Web site Wednesday.

The agency didn’t single out specific manufacturers, which also include a Johnson & Johnson unit.

Insulin pumps are primarily used by people with Type I diabetes, a condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin, a hormone needed to help the body properly use sugars from foods. People with Type 1 diabetes need to administer insulin daily whether through a pump or other methods like shots.

The more common form of diabetes, Type 2, which is often associated with obesity and typically develops later in life, is managed with oral medications designed to help the body properly use insulin, although some cases do require insulin.

The FDA said the number of Type I diabetics using insulin pumps have grown, with about 375,000 U.S. users in 2007, up from about 130,000 in 2002.

Manufacturers are required to report problems potentially associated with devices to the FDA. The FDA conducted a review of insulin pump-related adverse-event reports and found nearly 17,000 reports from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 30, 2009. The reports don’t necessarily mean a device caused a problem but serve as a signal for more investigation. Even if a device is functioning properly patients can inadvertently misuse the device. Of the reports, about 12,000 reported a patient injury (such as problems with blood glucose levels) and 310 deaths.

The agency said the information provided by manufacturers involving deaths “was typically incomplete.” The agency said in 225 of the deaths reported the device problem was listed as “unknown,” although in many cases the device was never returned to the manufacturer for additional follow-up.

However, in 41 death reports, a device problem wasn’t identified but the circumstances involving the death involved diabetic coma and problems associated with blood-sugar levels being too high or too low, suggesting the device may not have been working properly.