I haven't covered many other outbreak stories... but here's one that I made a video on a while ago: the Philadelphia Legionnaires' Outbreak: th-cam.com/video/x1ELZC9SdEM/w-d-xo.html
Is there a link to the newspaper archives you sourced this from and showed on screen? Please post if you do I would love to read the articles Edit: I answered my own question if anyone else needs to know. British newspaper archives has it and it looks to be free access if you sign up
Right now, the U.S. has a Listeria outbreak connected to Boar's Head deli meats. Definitely now worth a video, 9 deaths, 57 hospitalizations. Liverwurst in particular was affected. The Virginia plant has been reported to have black mold, blood on the floor, and foul odors. 69 Dept of Agriculture Violations.
@@matthewcole4753 And drug resistant salmonella (65 already affected) from eggs, and a recall of cucumbers for salmonella as well. There’s been so many recalls this year alone.
If anyone is confused by the newspaper headline "Did germ come from 13 year old bully?" - Bully beef was a well used term for corned beef. Not an obnoxious teenager.
My mother is a food microbiologist. "The the cold meat was stored for three days in room temperature conditions, in full sun" and "The meat slicer was not properly sanitized" are going to give her nightmares tonight, I thank you for that.
@@Notyourcupofteacake The video points out that there was an outbreak of E. Coli in the mid 90s because they didn't change regulations, so it's a more recent problem then you think.
I’m a retired FDA investigator, specializing in inspections of low-acid canned foods facilities for my first 20 years. In the early 90’s, I began conducting inspections abroad. It was 1993 during an inspection of a French mushroom canner, when asking for their records testing the chlorination of their cooling water, I found they pumped their cooling water directly from the local river. They said the water was clean as it was fed by streams from the mountains. I told them they had no idea what could be contaminating the water and it’s known that seals are still in flux when containers are first cooled and may actually suck in a small amount of water before sealing completely. Afterwards, the firm was placed on import alert, their products no longer allowed in the US. Even after outbreaks happen and their causes determined, rules written, you still find fools who will do stupid things to save money.
Thank you for helping to put a stop to this madness! And thank you for all your hard work over the years. People take food safety for granted but it's only because of the hard work and integrity of our food inspectors that we can assume our food is safe! 🙏
Mountain streams are the cleanest and best-tasting water to drink - unless there's a dead deer lying somewhere upstream that no one has found yet. Or a cow with something nasty has pooped into it. But hey, what are the odds, right? (To be clear, I regularly drink from mountain streams, but I'd never use an unsupervised stream for large-scale food production)
This reminds of people who get sick in Mexico because their precautions about only drinking beverages from sealed containers goes out the door when said drinks get poured over ice cubes made from local tap water.
That’s because the ice cubes are known to contain bacteria that only harm people who are rude to them. They’re very finicky, but I always talk to the foreign ice cubes like I talk my dog. I’ve never had any illness using this method, I only get ice in my drinks at the bar, and for some reason, my hangovers are horrible and last for days. sometimes coming out both ends with hot and cold flashes. Super weird, I’m sure it’s a totally unrelated coincidence
I was an 8 year old Scottish schoolboy then, the day after it was announced that the outbreak was caused by corned beef our school served corned beef for our dinner, all the kids rioted and refused to eat it, we all went hungry that day
Technically it could've been contaminated at any point. Do you even know who or what has touched that can in your pantry? Obviously still a good procedure to use safe water for cooling, but my point is that doesn't necessarily remove all the risks. You should sanitize all food containers before opening them. It became common practice during the last pandemic and there's a good reason for that.
It has been a similar story in the building trade. Several major fire incidents during the 1990s and 2000s led to reports and safety recommendations being made. The majority of these recommendations were ignored and then the Grenfell disaster occurred. The report on that has just emerged with 56 recommendations which, if acted upon, should prevent a similar catastrophic fire happening again. However British governments are not obliged to act upon any report's recommendations, no matter how high profile the event or the report's authors, and neither is there any mechanism for finding out why they chose not to act. This lack of transparency should be a major concern for both the media and the public generally but for some reason it isn't. It's also why I regard any announcement of 'a major enquiry' into anything by a British government with considerable cynicism. A lot of money gets spent, hands are wrung, fingers are pointed, a few apologies get made, but nothing significant gets done. Rinse and repeat.
That, sadly, is how it tends to go especially in the UK. It really came to a head around 1990, with a big outbreak of salmonella in eggs. Government minister Edwina Currie decided to crack down on this (pun accidental), and though she's a very long way from being my favourite politician (or person) I really admire the way she stuck to her guns in the face of "It'll be too expensive" "It will ruin the industry" "Farmers will go out of business" etc. Forcing chicken farmers to implement really quite basic hygiene standards (and destroy thousands of blameless infected chickens) has the result that nowadays, supermarket eggs don't even have to be kept in the fridge, just out of the sun (not a major difficulty in Britain). Meanwhile, of course, we were feeding cows with their own brains, Hannibal Lecter style, which surely couldn't be a problem, right?
@@kevinjohnbetts Companies do not like change - especially when it is going to cost them more!!! 🙄. Sometimes these changes for the better, go at snail pace.
Several decades ago, my mother made salmon paste sandwiches for my dad to take to work. He was a coal miner. At about 1pm, she got a phone call from the mine asking her to come and collect him, as he was very ill. He was diagnosed with food poisoning. When my mother was told this she said, "Oh, I thought the salmon looked and smelled a bit strange, but I thought it would be OK"!! Luckily, he made a full recovery.
I got into an argument with a cafeteria worker who insisted that hummus didn’t need to be refrigerated. He told me that if it didn’t have dairy in it he didn’t need to refrigerate it. Umm, no, water is a huge conductor of bacteria when not refrigerated. 🙄
ב''ה, cafeteria hummus is one of those 'at your own risk' kind of things, but it should have a decent squeeze of citrus in it that in practical terms gives it a chance of staying good standing for, I guess, a day? Emphasis on should.
In my opinion anything containing even a hint of moisture should be refigerated as soon as the seal is broken, except for preservatives and things containing preservatives.
I've worked in a few food places, stories like these always make me paranoid. Even with modern refrigeration and hygiene practices, you still can't do much if your supplier is at fault.
Reminds me of when we got a large shipment of Ben and Jerry's and it was all melted so when it refroze, it was all wrong. It was gritty and tasted funny. We still had to sell it though. 🤢
@SkunkApe407 Refrigerating may be re' bottled and canned goods, but stowing the goods out of hot & wet situations certainly is relevant, and is *still* a problem in retail today.
We've currently got a listeria outbreak in the U.S. that's killed nine people from Boar's Head deli meats, another "premium" brand that didn't do its due diligence on safety and cleanliness. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I actually worked at a Deli that served Boar's Head products during the recall. We had to get rid of everything we had open minus cheese (as we kept our meats and cheeses in separate refrigerators and used separate slicers). That plus the sanitizing made those few days difficult, but thankfully nobody got listeria in our state. All of this was started by one contamination, in one factory with only 9 products affected. You have to stay on top of your shit in this industry, or you are certainly gonna kill someone. I ended up quitting a few weeks ago for other reasons; this reminds me of how much I don't regret leaving...
It was one specific plant. There are multiple plants. And, it was due to a specific process only used in that one plant for liverwurst. Fear of contamination spreading is why it shut down. You're safe to eat their products as they shut down that plant in July indefinitely.
@@volunteerworker It's closed for good and they are discontinuing the product, apparently. But now you have to wonder what condition the other plants are in if the company let that one get so bad. If the company allows their other plants to be inspected and they come back without issues, I might be persuaded to try their products again. But for now, I'm pretty put off of deli meat in general.
I remember Blue Bell had an outbreak of listeria. Nearly put them out of business, and forced them to temporarily close their recently developed distribution center in Raleigh, NC. Thankfully they resolved the issue and they are selling better than ever.
Amazing that you still find fascinating stories and STILL don't belittle the suffering of others to clickbait or sensationalise. In the new era of misinformation, thank you for still creating short documentaries
No clickbait, no stupid arrow thumbnails or video titles, no sensationalizing, no "And be sure to watch till the end of the video because it will blow your mind!" trash. Instead a respectful, properly written and delivered recalling of the events that happened.
what did you eat? & what did you drink? are typical questions asked when many becoming ill in a short period of time with similar signs. no need a rocket scientist to figure out what they all had in common. and even its 1964, people weren't particularyly more stupid than us.
Epidemiology has been around since John Snow took the handle off the Broad Street pump in 1854. By the time of the 1964 outbreak it was a well-established science.
Another instance of "even when people do die, sensible changes to prevent the disaster from happening again *aren't* enacted soon after". Wonder how many times that's come up beyond "too many".
@@JBravoEcho09thoughts and prayers, followed by blaming the mental health of the shooter, followed by “but there isn’t anything to be done!” Followed by proposals for sensible measures that are shot down (pun intended) by gun lobbyists… lather, rinse, repeat. There is nothing to be done because nothing IS done. Over and over and bloody over (pun grimly intended.) No other “civilized” country has this problem. And I use the quotes because I maintain that we in the US can’t possibly be civilized if we allow this to continue to happen.
I was 8 when this happened, we were off school for quite a while, although we had lessons sent by mail.. I wasn't allowed out to play at all and we dipped our hands in disinfectant after washing them..this video is very interesting, as I didn't really know what was going on at the time...one of my classmates did catch it, but recovered.
I work as a workshop technician and a lot of my job is about health and safety, and occasionally when I’m working on something dangerous I hear the theme song in my head.
@@fionamackie3357 🤦♂️ Thos scenario was born because the food was contaminated at the packaging facility. It had nothing to do with refrigeration. You should probably watch the whole video, and actually pay attention. Typhoid can only infect food of handled by an infected person or exposed to contaminated water. Typhoid does not come from a lack of refrigeration.
^ Be quiet. The reality is the cans *should* have been stored *In a cool dry place* (like is says on the ruddy packaging), and it wasn't, which only made the level of contamination in the cans even worse. Same thing with the severely lacking cleanliness measures on the store and its food preparation procedures... or lack thereof. Most tragedies have a chain of f'ups from source to result l, not just one.
I remember this well, I was ten year old son of an attache at the US embassy in Grosvenor square in Mayfair in London. While far north in Scotland there was a cold war fear that this was a bio-war attack and most Embassies shut down cold meat purchases, forbidding Embassy staff from same. We were restricted to American meats for several weeks, flown in by the USAF. Oh what a mad cold war we had!
It was the same way when there were mysterious illnesses in the USSR (and the DDR where I also lived), always a western plot or blaming it on Jewish people.
The news paper headline, "Did germ come from 13 year old bully?" I assumed some big bully kid was going around infecting kids, but no, the bully referred to was a can of corned beef, bully being short for bully beef, which is another name for corned beef.
Wondered about that too. Also noticed the story about 'price of beef rising' and thought "Well okay, but if it's infected fewer people being able to afford it is a GOOD thing..."
I still remember a mass food poisoning at the Golden Jubilee in '77. Street party prepared, rain threatening, so all the tables were moved into garages which people decided to sweep the bare concrete floors of beforehand "to make them clean", brushing all the dust, fungi etc into the air beforehand. As seems to be the way with me, I got ill quickly, with family initially blaming me for over-consumption before realising it was more than that, but also recovered quickly. Then the rest of the family came down with it somewhat harder, and we soon learned that the whole street was having the same problem. Given that we only had one toilet, I was *really* glad I got ill when there was no-one else desperately needing it. Thankfully, everyone recovered OK, but it was still a learning experience.
Here in America, we've been moving backward. When I worked fast food as a teenager I was required to have a food handlers card. It's not required anymore...
As a lab director... I have just come to criticize and nitpick obnoxiously moaning how Typhoid is not diagnosed from a blood sample but from a stool cultive + classify serum... but suddenly I remembered the Widal reaction. You just took me through memory lane, and how I salute my bold, brave and intelligent past colleagues in clinical lab!
@@mallarielove my dear... all lab people are. We are nitpickers, perfectionists, experts at diagnosing the tiniest detail , that-dont-belong-here-whyyy-is-this-here crowd. I dont know if its a prerrequisite or a professional sickness, but yes, we are a pain in the ass.
I'm from Aberdeen, so this was really interesting to watch. The typhoid outbreak is one of those things you hear about, and everyone knows something happened even if the details get lost. The local paper runs a story on it every now and then, including a big feature on the anniversary recently. For the curious, Sheena Blackhall became a short story writer and poet, particularly noted for her writing in Doric (our local dialect). She is well-known in our area, and very respected.
Hello. I moved to Aberdeen in 1979 and remained in the N East for 26 yrs. I recall the Bon Accord Fortnight, later named The Aberdeen Festival (I think) and it was put on in the month of July, year on year. I loved all the fun of it and even did the parade myself as Lady Godiva complete with white horse, thanks to someone in Aberdeen City Council. I did wear a body stocking! The parade always ended up down at the old Beach Ballroom. Fireworks, fun and great food. Who could have wished for more. I did love the pipe bands and the music from the Band of the Royal Marines. Oh, those were the days. Never been fond of Corned Beef, strangely!
Stuff like this is why we have food safety regulations; and why they can be very strict. edit: why did it take them forever to update their food safety laws??? unbelievable.
Money. It's always money that makes lax and slow regulations. Look at how many contaminated food outbreaks the States are having since the orange devil axed a meter high stack of regulation laws.
I was a child (almost 5) in central Scotland during the outbreak. There were 2 chants us kids partook in. One was a simple "Typhoid Aberdeeeeeeeen!" and "Aberdeen, Aberdeen, cannae keep their knickers clean!" Yeah, kids can be unthinkigly cruel. But it all seemed to be happening so far away.
I was at Primary School in Aberdeen at the time and was told "dinna eat anything ootside the hoose in case you get the typhoid" lol! I remember seeing Prince Charles (now King) at Aberdeen station too but that might have been much earlier because its a hazier memory than being in the Broomhill School girls playground wondering which kids had the germy sweeties.
"Frey Bentos' cornbeef was so popular with soldiers at the start of WWI" true but would you believe the Tommies who survived developed a hatred of what they came to call 'Bully beef' might have been a good product, but eating it almost everyday for several meals a day for years really made soldiers get so sick of it.
@@DebTheDevastator The creator of spam was inspired by how much he hated Bully Beef in WWI and wanted to make a better canned product, only for GIs in WWII to also come to hate it
They hated it immediately after, but many likely started craving it years later. Happens a lot with food you ate a lot - you hate it in the moment, but miss it later when you never eat it anymore
@@DebTheDevastator I came here about SPAM myself. After spending the war in China, my father hated the stuff with a passion. He wasn't crazy about rice, but would eat it. SPAM? NEVER again!
I've lived in Aberdeen for close to 20 years and have never heard of this outbreak! Union Street looked a lot more vibrant in those days, it's pretty much destroyed now. A new shopping centre, high business rates, covid, and the Aberdeen City Council are pretty much to blame for it's current state, though perhaps still with some lingering issues from the typhoid outbreak? Difficult to tell really, either way Union Street isn't really worth visiting any more unless you need to go to one of the remaining shops there or want to look at what's left of the older architecture.
I moved out of Aberdeen about 3 years ago but have heard its a lot worse now, which is sad really the city has a lot of potential. It's really weird seeing Union Street look so great in these pictures though. The city really went to crap when Melt shut tbh.
Aw, I liked it :p visited from Canada a couple months ago. I thought it had a nice balance of city aspects with the beach or nature watching not too far a walk away
It doesn't help having a national government determined to stamp out our oil industry. You've sucked a hundred billion in taxes out of North Sea and now claim that your taxes subsidise fossil fuels. You have no clue. Like stupid children who think that beef is produced by McDonald's, you think your petrol comes from Tesco. It doesn't, it comes from a lot of bloody hard work, and a lot of men have died getting that oil from under the seabed.
Aberdeen is a destination city for aficionados of tumbleweed, mainly because eco twats in London have decided to shut down our oil industry. Oil is beastly and awful though you've benefited greatly from taxing it, and we don't even have rail electrification to show for it
@@theravens_keeper9146 The building is really close to the beach, the neighbourhood was nice, there is a lot of grass and nature around, the building was very spacious and the roofs were tall, rent was good etc. As for hated, I guess the wallpaper was bad in one room and the flat got cold really easily🤷♂️
As someone who had typhoid as a child, I have never felt closer to death than when I was sick. I was burning up but freezing at the same time, hungry but couldn’t eat and my chest sounded like a diesel engine with every breath. Ever since, I’m very germaphobic when it comes to food. Changes your life lol
Videos like this are great as a parent, I've got friends with different types of allergies and we're a family that love baking and cooking for our friends and neighbours, so being able to show my kids videos show what happens when we don't follow safe food handling even within the home are very useful, and that explain why we have food safety laws.
There is a cold cut business in USA called Boar's Head having contamination issues now. It has been reported for weeks, yet when I went to my local grocery store over the weekend, they are still selling Boar's Head meats. While the problems may be confined to one manufacturing plant and just a few cuts of product, I'm not buying anything from that company. Frankly, I'm dismayed that they are still selling the brand after such reported problems.
Yeah I managed to catch that on the news two weeks ago and trashed three packages of deli ham and sliced turkey, and I still saw Boar’s Head at the supermarket over the weekend.
Products can be tracked down from not only a specific facility, but also the day produced, processing line run on, and shift. You should be fine, because BH should also know what stores received the questionable product.
A problem with the meat packing industry is that processing has moved from small, local meat packing facilities to massive, regional facilities. In the old days, contaminated products would be limited to a small geographical area and a smallish number of cases. Now, if a processing line at a big plant gets contaminated, the effects can be spread over several provinces/states, affecting a huge number of people.
I believe that the outbreak was also associated with poor meat handling practices and sanitation procedures at a number of in-store delis. Lesson learned; buy pre-packaged lunch meat from factories where USDA inspectors are on duty every day. On site inspection isn't foolproof, but considering the huge quantities of meat processed in those facilities, their safety record is pretty good. Buying from a deli is always a roll of the dice.
@@LucidDreamer54321 Well, it is probably just that one would never really consider canned meat products with a high salt content to be dangerous. As they are meant to last long periods of time.
The story of "Typhoid Mary " is one about spreading a contagious disease.She was a cook in the early 1900s, here in the USA. She was infected with Typhoid, but never got sick herself. She didn't wash her hands apparently before she prepared the meals for the family she worked for. I forgot how many people died.
I worked down the road from J.Barr’s, Wishaw at the time of the E-Coli outbreak, and even got our lunches out of the Deli counter. A terrible tragedy on its own, but knowing it could have all been prevented had the recommendations been implemented decades before makes it a scandal.
I'd heard of this one years ago, as while it was before I was born, my Mum's friend had only moved from Glasgow to Aberdeen a couple of months before this happened. What a welcome to your new city as a young nurse.
Hey, that's my home city. My Mum always tells me stories about her experience as a child during the typhoid outbreak. She remembers visiting Gt-Grandma at hospital, having to talk from outside the windows to Gt-Grans ward to prevent transmitting typhoid etc. Was very nasty times to say the least, mum still won't touch Corned-Beef/Bully-Beef to this day.
Aberdeen mentioned! As usual it's never mentioned for good reasons lol. Both my mother and father lived here at the time and have told me about the sheer panic that gripped the city once news got out.
My mother had typhoid from eating candy she bought from a street vendor when she was a child in the 1930s. She was always a fragile person who died in her 60s
i was 6 when this happened, i am fom aberdeen and still live here, i remember being told not to even drink a cup of tea or eat anything if we visieted someone, and being in a butchers shop in king street with meat openly hanging on hooks, flys crawling on it and the smell of off meat and the sawdust on the floors , and saying to my mother i didnt want to eat any of that meat that flys were crawling on , my mum looked at the butcher and said out of the mouth of babes, then we left the shop. tv adverts telling us not to blow into paper bags to open them, and to use tongs to pick up food, and wash your hands.
I absolutely love this channel so much, I love how you don’t target hot button or trending horror topics. You go deep into specific instances in history that unless otherwise told about second hand I’d never have known had even happened. This as much as history channel as it is based on horror, it’s all horrific of course but I just love the niche focus on specific events. Thank you very much for all your hard work ❤
I had Typhoid fever back in the Army when I got the vaccine. It only lasted one full 24 ish hour period of time, but damn did I have the highest fever of my life. We were in the desert so as the day went on the fever rose I began to hallucinate. I was seeing 10ft tall jackrabbits, spinning coyotes (Taz style) and spirits swirling around behind vehicles as they drove by. Once I was finally in bed I kept seeing a man outside my window whispering to me. I was ok by midday the following day but I'll never forget that. (This is by no means an anti vax message!)
I can't believe the shop put the corned beef in the window for 3 days and were still selling it. And not cleaning the slicer. It's horrific. And William Lowe carried on trading across Britain for 30 years. And how about the Argentinian factory washing the cans with sewage?!!!
In my time Aberdeen never had a single Low's supermarket, when it was one of the biggest supermarket chains in Scotland. Low's was based in Dundee and this made for a certain animus of Aberdeen towards their southern neighbour, to say the least!
They didn't "wash the cans with sewage." They used river water to cool the cans after processing. By the time the water got anywhere near the cans, they had already been sealed and the contents sterilized. Nobody thought it would be a problem, and 99.9+ percent of the time, it wasn't. Unfortunately, this can had a tiny defect that allowed ingress of the cooling water. I presume they began treating their cooling water shortly thereafter.
Being from this part of the world I had heard about this Typhoid outbreak but didn’t know that much about it. Thanks for covering this and telling the story in detail, I think you did it very respectfully. I also appreciate the pictures you used, it’s always nice to see photos from the past of somewhere local to you.
Yeah, Typhoid Mary. Although the worst thing about that story is that she was told, _repeatedly,_ that she was a carrier and needed to stop working in food preparation and just kept it up under assumed names anyway.
@@chrisc6857 It seems like the worst thing about that story is that nobody telling her "don't do this anymore" gave her any other viable options to make a living, given her level of education and skill. You can't really deny a person their entire vocation and then wash your hands of it and not realize they're gonna find some way around the ruling -- especially given that she still had no reason to believe that the assessment was correct (after all, *she* wasn't sick -- she was the very reason we understand that asymptomatic carriers of serious diseases can even exist). Imagine how different things would have been had someone in authority taken the time and effort to help position her into a new career where she could make a decent living at the same (or better) level of income yet without such a risk of spreading the disease. That kind of compassion and pragmatism would've saved so many lives.
@@aluvrianne that's eerie how that can happen sometimes. Especially when there are kids who have PANDAs disease, that causes their body to attack itself when exposed to strep. Their own immune system goes into overdrive trying to attack the strep but ends up attacking their own bodies Brain cells.. it's a scary illness. Especially because we were all exposed to strep when we grew up
You say that, but I was up for work a few weeks ago and there were loads of them - particularly German and Dutch. Not that I'd advise going there mind, as someone who grew up down the road in Stonehaven.
When the second newspaper asked if the infection came from a “13 year old bully”, stupid American me, despite having lived in London and also elsewhere in the Commonwealth in Accra, Ghana, initially assumed it was referring to the poor infected schoolboy mentioned in the previous newspaper, so you can imagine my surprise when reading on in the article it became clear it was talking about some surplus government food inventory from 13 years in the past. I love your videos @FascinatingHorror
I was half-listening, and my mind went to a bully breed dog (I train pit bulls), and I suddenly pictured an English bulldog that had somehow gotten typhoid fever and gotten into the beef. Yours at least made some sort of sense. 😂 This is why I shouldn't listen to stuff while falling asleep, especially stuff with silly UK nonsense.
I've always lived in the UK but had never heard that particular slang so I also thought it was a child they meant. 😅 I thought 'bit harsh blaming one kid for the outbreak and calling him a bully too!' I'm glad it wasn't the case as if you were 13 and some newspaper blamed you for the outbreak that harmed so many people, I think you'd basically have to leave town forever.
"We've had 34 cases of typhoid from Argentinian corned beef." Health minister: "This is fine, keep killing our own population, it's a British time honored tradition. Mad cow for everyone! Hey remember when we allowed the selling of poisoned candy to kids? Good times!"
@@thisperson5294 Yep, told people immigrants were going to kill them to take their minds off the fact that the government were perfectly happy to let imported food do that.
I contracted extremely bad campylobacter food poisoning from a Sainsbury’s prepackaged salad about 15 years ago. I lost 2 1/2 stone in weight in 3 weeks. Because of cases like in this video, my doctor had to report it to a government agency, I think environmental health, and I got a letter from them informing me that I wasn’t allowed to prepare or handle any food, or do any washing up, putting away dishes, cutlery etc for I think 2 months. That was the only bright side to an otherwise hellish experience; seriously, my digestive system was WRECKED and hasn’t been the same since 😱, but at least I got out of some chores for a couple of months!
Oof, I know how those digestive illnesses can destroy you, I got viral gastroenteritis in my last year of high school, and while before that I could eat as much as I wanted, ever since then I've been a "small meals several time a day" person. (Academically it was quite good for me because I missed my final Art History exam which by all reports was *rough*. I got an aegrotat based on my class rank which gave me a result I absolutely could not have achieved by actually sitting the exam lol.)
Those Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pies are legendary in the UK. They come in a tin which you open up, remove the lid, then with the pie still contained in the bottom half of the tin, you put it in the oven. Thing is the pie is in puff pasty, but the the pastry never cooks properly, with it being burned on top and just slop at the bottom.
My grandma was a nurse at the city hospital during the outbreak. My mum was around 7/8yrs and also remembers it well as it happened before her birthday, they were all quarantined due to my grandma being a nurse at the hospital.
The only time I've had food poisoning was at Pitlochry in Scotland in 1990. Fish served at a local restaurant. Was ill for days. Maybe with their cold climate they are used to leaving food out of the fridge.
@DoctorProph3t I'm not entirely sure what difference the Highlands and lowlands make but I live in the Highlands which is notoriously "freezing" and its not even that cold 😂
I hadn't heard of this one!! But the 1996 e coli one happened just one town over from me so as soon as you started talking about that my brain was like oh wait that will be Barr's! It's great how you find less talked about things to make videos about.
I honestly like that you still have to open the tin with the key thing to eviscerate a strip of metal, and detach the greasy coil without cutting yourself 🙃
When I was wee I used to steal the keys from the cans knowing how much of a bastard it is to get in to them without one. The abject rage of someone being denied their corned beef.
There's currently an outbreak of listeria going on in the US right now that was traced back to a certain brand. I used to work in a deli and they were so paranoid about food-borne illness that we had a whole management team for just food safety and they made sure we were keeping product cold, our deli slicers clean, and checking expiration dates on all product. Their job was to be annoying about it but we've managed to avoid a major outbreak of anything so it works
This is interesting as someone who grew up in aberdeenshire. Everyone always complains about how dead the high street is, but I never knew it was related to a typhoid outbreak... Also explains first bus' and stagecoach's iron grip on the city buses
As someone who has gone through food safety training a few times over the years, I had my heart in my throat when you described how those dopes at the store kept the meat stored.
To think this happened in an era where food sanitation was the norm yet slips happened, and then another incident occurred years later finally leading to more solid enforcement.
I was at school in Aberdeen at the time of the typhoid outbreak and remember all the disinfectant measures introduced. However the term "beleagured city" didn't help and caused unnecessary alarm.
The quote about the bodies on the streets reminds me of all those 144p videos on the early covid days, about how people where collapsing on the streets and some middle easter countries was just nothing but streets full of bodies.
I myself am a deli worker and i cringed when it was mentioned how little the deli workers in this video washed their hands as well as how they handled their meats, and how they never sanitized anything. No wonder so many of their customers got sick. I'm surprised their little grocery store was able to stay in business after this. They likely would have shut down these days after being sued by everyone.
0:50 When I saw that picture of the steak and kidney pie tin it took me back to my childhood. My English Dad and American Mom would serve that at times. I liked everything about it but the kidneys. 🇨🇦
When I was walking to work back in 2021 (*in Abdn) I was stopped by an elderly lady because she spotted my mask and top of sanitiser bottle sticking out of my bag, she asked me whether I was worried about getting sick, I said that I needed these at work as per policy (working around ARI at the time) and she told me I shouldn't worry because it's just like the typhoid panic in the 60s - just wash your hands and don't lick doorhandles and you'll be grand! What a trooper :)
Ooh. I live in Aberdeen. My grandpa was a doctor and came up to aberdeen just at the time of this outbreak. Im not sure if he came specifically because they needed more drs, in which case i have the aberdeen typhoid outbreak to thank for my very existence! The store that sold the corned beef, William lowe i believe its called, was essentially banished from aberdeen and they have never opened a store up here since. There is/was one in dundee, around 60 miles down the road, however.
In fairness to the feverish patient who was concerned about the ambulance crew, anyone from Aberdeen can tell you that the fact someone is nearly six foot tall and trying to talk to you does not mean they're not a seagull.
Its legacy lives on. Although we're American, not British, my family never bought tinned meats - including SPAM, because of stories like this one from 50+ years ago.
I haven't covered many other outbreak stories... but here's one that I made a video on a while ago: the Philadelphia Legionnaires' Outbreak: th-cam.com/video/x1ELZC9SdEM/w-d-xo.html
Is there a link to the newspaper archives you sourced this from and showed on screen? Please post if you do I would love to read the articles
Edit: I answered my own question if anyone else needs to know. British newspaper archives has it and it looks to be free access if you sign up
You could say that about the entirety of Britain, really, but for the nostalgia of its diaspora. :)
Right now, the U.S. has a Listeria outbreak connected to Boar's Head deli meats. Definitely now worth a video, 9 deaths, 57 hospitalizations. Liverwurst in particular was affected. The Virginia plant has been reported to have black mold, blood on the floor, and foul odors. 69 Dept of Agriculture Violations.
@@matthewcole4753 And drug resistant salmonella (65 already affected) from eggs, and a recall of cucumbers for salmonella as well. There’s been so many recalls this year alone.
@@matthewcole4753oof! I knew about the Boars Head outbreak but the details of the factory 🤢
If anyone is confused by the newspaper headline "Did germ come from 13 year old bully?" -
Bully beef was a well used term for corned beef.
Not an obnoxious teenager.
Thank you for the clarification
I saw that and was thoroughly puzzled. Thank you for clearing it up! 🙂
Thank you for explaining that, had me confused too!
Yup. "Bully Beef" is still not uncommon as a term in the UK to this day 🙂 .
Yes, I was wondering; thanks for clearing it up!
My mother is a food microbiologist. "The the cold meat was stored for three days in room temperature conditions, in full sun" and "The meat slicer was not properly sanitized" are going to give her nightmares tonight, I thank you for that.
Remind her it was the 1960s
Well, you don’t have to show her this video, or tell her about it 😂
@@CiscoWes Oh, I do. Call it revenge for checking my burger to make sure it was cooked properly for years :D
@@Notyourcupofteacake The video points out that there was an outbreak of E. Coli in the mid 90s because they didn't change regulations, so it's a more recent problem then you think.
Lol that's perfectly evil, I just play horror movie theme music really loudly from my room when I'm trying to get back at my mom lmao
I’m a retired FDA investigator, specializing in inspections of low-acid canned foods facilities for my first 20 years. In the early 90’s, I began conducting inspections abroad. It was 1993 during an inspection of a French mushroom canner, when asking for their records testing the chlorination of their cooling water, I found they pumped their cooling water directly from the local river. They said the water was clean as it was fed by streams from the mountains. I told them they had no idea what could be contaminating the water and it’s known that seals are still in flux when containers are first cooled and may actually suck in a small amount of water before sealing completely. Afterwards, the firm was placed on import alert, their products no longer allowed in the US. Even after outbreaks happen and their causes determined, rules written, you still find fools who will do stupid things to save money.
We all know now how contaminated the French waters are.
Thank you for sharing… I bet you’ve got some crazy stories from your time as an investigator
I started screaming internally as I read your comment. I'm glad they were put on a ban list.
Thank you for helping to put a stop to this madness! And thank you for all your hard work over the years. People take food safety for granted but it's only because of the hard work and integrity of our food inspectors that we can assume our food is safe! 🙏
Mountain streams are the cleanest and best-tasting water to drink - unless there's a dead deer lying somewhere upstream that no one has found yet. Or a cow with something nasty has pooped into it. But hey, what are the odds, right?
(To be clear, I regularly drink from mountain streams, but I'd never use an unsupervised stream for large-scale food production)
This reminds of people who get sick in Mexico because their precautions about only drinking beverages from sealed containers goes out the door when said drinks get poured over ice cubes made from local tap water.
Add a lot of other countries.
That’s because the ice cubes are known to contain bacteria that only harm people who are rude to them.
They’re very finicky, but I always talk to the foreign ice cubes like I talk my dog.
I’ve never had any illness using this method, I only get ice in my drinks at the bar, and for some reason, my hangovers are horrible and last for days. sometimes coming out both ends with hot and cold flashes. Super weird, I’m sure it’s a totally unrelated coincidence
Thanks, Derelique, I needed that! 🤣🤣😝
Lmfao@@DereliqueMahBAWLS
@@DereliqueMahBAWLS I don't touch the nibbles on the bar for the same reason. Urine and smegma aren't for me.
I was an 8 year old Scottish schoolboy then, the day after it was announced that the outbreak was caused by corned beef our school served corned beef for our dinner, all the kids rioted and refused to eat it, we all went hungry that day
Haha! Ridiculous timing
That is amazing, kids were so much smarter in some ways back then, I doubt kids today would even draw those parallels.
@@AllGoodOutside If they're anything like Ethan Lindenberger, they just might.
@@AllGoodOutside Today they would eat contaminated meat on purpose as a Tiktok challenge.
You ate dinner at school? Were you the evening classes 😅
The concept of dousing sterilized cans with raw river water is baffling. That's like washing your car and drying it with oily rags.
Not really. The sterilization is for the contents (by heating). The water for cooling down doesn’t enter the cans though.
@@MM-tt7hy 11:26 Apparently the water did enter the can.
You could cool them in piss, it shouldn't matter, they're sealed metal containers.
Technically it could've been contaminated at any point. Do you even know who or what has touched that can in your pantry? Obviously still a good procedure to use safe water for cooling, but my point is that doesn't necessarily remove all the risks. You should sanitize all food containers before opening them. It became common practice during the last pandemic and there's a good reason for that.
@@MM-tt7hy Read a comment a few spaces down. When the cans are cooling the seals aren't completely solidified yet and CAN suck in the cooling water.
The most *_enraging_* thing that can appear in a post-incident report is "there are no new lessons to be learned here: only old ones.'
The fact that it took 30 years for most of the recommendations to be enforced is just disgusting.
It has been a similar story in the building trade. Several major fire incidents during the 1990s and 2000s led to reports and safety recommendations being made. The majority of these recommendations were ignored and then the Grenfell disaster occurred. The report on that has just emerged with 56 recommendations which, if acted upon, should prevent a similar catastrophic fire happening again. However British governments are not obliged to act upon any report's recommendations, no matter how high profile the event or the report's authors, and neither is there any mechanism for finding out why they chose not to act. This lack of transparency should be a major concern for both the media and the public generally but for some reason it isn't. It's also why I regard any announcement of 'a major enquiry' into anything by a British government with considerable cynicism. A lot of money gets spent, hands are wrung, fingers are pointed, a few apologies get made, but nothing significant gets done. Rinse and repeat.
The same thing happened with asbestos - they knew there were major issues with it and it was decades before governments started banning it.
That, sadly, is how it tends to go especially in the UK. It really came to a head around 1990, with a big outbreak of salmonella in eggs. Government minister Edwina Currie decided to crack down on this (pun accidental), and though she's a very long way from being my favourite politician (or person) I really admire the way she stuck to her guns in the face of "It'll be too expensive" "It will ruin the industry" "Farmers will go out of business" etc. Forcing chicken farmers to implement really quite basic hygiene standards (and destroy thousands of blameless infected chickens) has the result that nowadays, supermarket eggs don't even have to be kept in the fridge, just out of the sun (not a major difficulty in Britain).
Meanwhile, of course, we were feeding cows with their own brains, Hannibal Lecter style, which surely couldn't be a problem, right?
@@kevinjohnbetts Companies do not like change - especially when it is going to cost them more!!! 🙄. Sometimes these changes for the better, go at snail pace.
It's almost unbelievable!
Several decades ago, my mother made salmon paste sandwiches for my dad to take to work. He was a coal miner. At about 1pm, she got a phone call from the mine asking her to come and collect him, as he was very ill. He was diagnosed with food poisoning. When my mother was told this she said, "Oh, I thought the salmon looked and smelled a bit strange, but I thought it would be OK"!!
Luckily, he made a full recovery.
your mom is no joke, a psycho and tried to kill your dad.
Assassination attempt?
He could have ended up on ChubbyEmu's channel.
I’m sure he never let her forget it.
@@limbeboy7 🤔🤣
I got into an argument with a cafeteria worker who insisted that hummus didn’t need to be refrigerated. He told me that if it didn’t have dairy in it he didn’t need to refrigerate it. Umm, no, water is a huge conductor of bacteria when not refrigerated. 🙄
You’re absolutely right about the water, One drop that gets into a bag of sliced bread is enough to encourage mold growth.
ב''ה, cafeteria hummus is one of those 'at your own risk' kind of things, but it should have a decent squeeze of citrus in it that in practical terms gives it a chance of staying good standing for, I guess, a day?
Emphasis on should.
Have you asked them what we should do with raw meat and fish, if only dairy needs refrigeration?
Ask him why fruit rots.
In my opinion anything containing even a hint of moisture should be refigerated as soon as the seal is broken, except for preservatives and things containing preservatives.
What kind of food workers thought "3 days unrefrigerated in the sun, yeah it'll be fine"
Especially with this happening so long after Germ Theory became prevalent
Live in Aberdeen - you'll soon see why 🤣
@@willmackaness2991 I've seen enough sketchy Scottish stuff on YT already 😂
Fools.
Because they're Scottish
I've worked in a few food places, stories like these always make me paranoid. Even with modern refrigeration and hygiene practices, you still can't do much if your supplier is at fault.
Refrigeration is irrelevant regarding canned goods. Typhus isn't a food borne illness.
Reminds me of when we got a large shipment of Ben and Jerry's and it was all melted so when it refroze, it was all wrong. It was gritty and tasted funny. We still had to sell it though. 🤢
Money, money, Boar's Head, over and over.
@SkunkApe407 Refrigerating may be re' bottled and canned goods, but stowing the goods out of hot & wet situations certainly is relevant, and is *still* a problem in retail today.
@rebeccajeane8287 Yeah~ knew there was a reason I've never touched the stuff 😆
We've currently got a listeria outbreak in the U.S. that's killed nine people from Boar's Head deli meats, another "premium" brand that didn't do its due diligence on safety and cleanliness. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I actually worked at a Deli that served Boar's Head products during the recall. We had to get rid of everything we had open minus cheese (as we kept our meats and cheeses in separate refrigerators and used separate slicers). That plus the sanitizing made those few days difficult, but thankfully nobody got listeria in our state. All of this was started by one contamination, in one factory with only 9 products affected. You have to stay on top of your shit in this industry, or you are certainly gonna kill someone. I ended up quitting a few weeks ago for other reasons; this reminds me of how much I don't regret leaving...
It was one specific plant. There are multiple plants. And, it was due to a specific process only used in that one plant for liverwurst. Fear of contamination spreading is why it shut down. You're safe to eat their products as they shut down that plant in July indefinitely.
@@volunteerworker It's closed for good and they are discontinuing the product, apparently. But now you have to wonder what condition the other plants are in if the company let that one get so bad. If the company allows their other plants to be inspected and they come back without issues, I might be persuaded to try their products again. But for now, I'm pretty put off of deli meat in general.
Alot of things here in America being recalled laetly
I remember Blue Bell had an outbreak of listeria. Nearly put them out of business, and forced them to temporarily close their recently developed distribution center in Raleigh, NC.
Thankfully they resolved the issue and they are selling better than ever.
Amazing that you still find fascinating stories and STILL don't belittle the suffering of others to clickbait or sensationalise.
In the new era of misinformation, thank you for still creating short documentaries
Excellent ones!
No clickbait, no stupid arrow thumbnails or video titles, no sensationalizing, no "And be sure to watch till the end of the video because it will blow your mind!" trash. Instead a respectful, properly written and delivered recalling of the events that happened.
@@TomLehockySVK and no tired cliches like "throws under the bus"
that is one reason for loving this channel
Your algorithm is ficked up dude. Watch better videos and quit liking aliens and shit.
@@TomLehockySVK "what do you think happened? Comment down below"
I’m impressed how quickly they solved the mystery of where the typhoid was coming from.
what did you eat? & what did you drink?
are typical questions asked when many becoming ill in a short period of time with similar signs.
no need a rocket scientist to figure out what they all had in common.
and even its 1964, people weren't particularyly more stupid than us.
Epidemiology has been around since John Snow took the handle off the Broad Street pump in 1854. By the time of the 1964 outbreak it was a well-established science.
@@johnopalko5223so apparently, John Snow does know something.
What was it we had for dinner tonight?
Well, we had a choice of steak or fish.
Yes, yes, I remember, I had lasagna.
@@Z0RDR4CKyeah normally takes 1-3 working years to find out 🙄
Faster results in the 60s
Another instance of "even when people do die, sensible changes to prevent the disaster from happening again *aren't* enacted soon after". Wonder how many times that's come up beyond "too many".
Far too many 😂
a.k.a. how the US responds to every mass shooting
@@JBravoEcho09thoughts and prayers, followed by blaming the mental health of the shooter, followed by “but there isn’t anything to be done!” Followed by proposals for sensible measures that are shot down (pun intended) by gun lobbyists… lather, rinse, repeat.
There is nothing to be done because nothing IS done. Over and over and bloody over (pun grimly intended.)
No other “civilized” country has this problem. And I use the quotes because I maintain that we in the US can’t possibly be civilized if we allow this to continue to happen.
I was 8 when this happened, we were off school for quite a while, although we had lessons sent by mail.. I wasn't allowed out to play at all and we dipped our hands in disinfectant after washing them..this video is very interesting, as I didn't really know what was going on at the time...one of my classmates did catch it, but recovered.
Your theme song has an almost pavlovian trigger now... in a good way, but it's certainly interesting how iconic it is!
This is true for me as well!🙂
Reminds me of covid as I binge watched the entire channel while I was bed ridden a few years ago 😂
@@Cherrypop6348 of all the channels to binge when sick with Covid! 😂
I have it as my ringtone. 😄
I work as a workshop technician and a lot of my job is about health and safety, and occasionally when I’m working on something dangerous I hear the theme song in my head.
This is why everyone should take food safety extremely seriously.
Growing up in the 70s in the south of England, I recall my parents refusing to eat Argentinian corn beef. Good video - it explains much!
…..” LEMME JUST SELL THIS MEAT THAT’S BEEN SITTING OUT IN THE SUN FOR 3 DAYS 🤔🥴”
There're plenty of people who still do such things. Ick.
Um, it's canned. Canned goods don't need to be refrigerated. Typhus isn't a food borne illness.
@@SkunkApe407 they need to be refrigerated once opened, and yes, foodborne if it gets into food. Like, you know, this example.
@@fionamackie3357 🤦♂️ Thos scenario was born because the food was contaminated at the packaging facility. It had nothing to do with refrigeration. You should probably watch the whole video, and actually pay attention. Typhoid can only infect food of handled by an infected person or exposed to contaminated water. Typhoid does not come from a lack of refrigeration.
^ Be quiet. The reality is the cans *should* have been stored *In a cool dry place* (like is says on the ruddy packaging), and it wasn't, which only made the level of contamination in the cans even worse.
Same thing with the severely lacking cleanliness measures on the store and its food preparation procedures... or lack thereof.
Most tragedies have a chain of f'ups from source to result l, not just one.
I remember this well, I was ten year old son of an attache at the US embassy in Grosvenor square in Mayfair in London. While far north in Scotland there was a cold war fear that this was a bio-war attack and most Embassies shut down cold meat purchases, forbidding Embassy staff from same. We were restricted to American meats for several weeks, flown in by the USAF. Oh what a mad cold war we had!
It was the same way when there were mysterious illnesses in the USSR (and the DDR where I also lived), always a western plot or blaming it on Jewish people.
Amazing how nothing really changes got to have a bogey man to blame for your own crappy government.
The news paper headline, "Did germ come from 13 year old bully?" I assumed some big bully kid was going around infecting kids, but no, the bully referred to was a can of corned beef, bully being short for bully beef, which is another name for corned beef.
Thank you! I always wondered what bully beef was!!
Thank you! I saw that and was thoroughly puzzled!😄
Thank you for clearing that up. Thought the paper was being catty.
Ahhh, that makes more sense now! 😊
Wondered about that too. Also noticed the story about 'price of beef rising' and thought "Well okay, but if it's infected fewer people being able to afford it is a GOOD thing..."
I still remember a mass food poisoning at the Golden Jubilee in '77. Street party prepared, rain threatening, so all the tables were moved into garages which people decided to sweep the bare concrete floors of beforehand "to make them clean", brushing all the dust, fungi etc into the air beforehand. As seems to be the way with me, I got ill quickly, with family initially blaming me for over-consumption before realising it was more than that, but also recovered quickly. Then the rest of the family came down with it somewhat harder, and we soon learned that the whole street was having the same problem.
Given that we only had one toilet, I was *really* glad I got ill when there was no-one else desperately needing it. Thankfully, everyone recovered OK, but it was still a learning experience.
Here in America, we've been moving backward. When I worked fast food as a teenager I was required to have a food handlers card. It's not required anymore...
Can't make immigrants take safe food handling course, that'd be racist or something.
My first job was at McDonald’s in 1986 or 87 and I remember taking the food safety course. I can’t believe they not o that anymore!
It is regulated at the state level. Some states still require it.
I've had to have food handlers cards in two states (WA and OR) and the only reason I don't have one in Colorado is because I changed careers.
I grew up in Montana and was well into my twenties before I'd ever heard of a food handlers card. I think they're a great idea.
As a lab director... I have just come to criticize and nitpick obnoxiously moaning how Typhoid is not diagnosed from a blood sample but from a stool cultive + classify serum... but suddenly I remembered the Widal reaction. You just took me through memory lane, and how I salute my bold, brave and intelligent past colleagues in clinical lab!
bababooey
at least you’re aware you’re obnoxious lmao
@@mallarielove my dear... all lab people are. We are nitpickers, perfectionists, experts at diagnosing the tiniest detail , that-dont-belong-here-whyyy-is-this-here crowd. I dont know if its a prerrequisite or a professional sickness, but yes, we are a pain in the ass.
@@babsgalv6556 silence woman
@@TextileGeorge Sweetie, I'm silently typing. Those are the voices in your head, go to your school's psychologyst, honey.
I'm from Aberdeen, so this was really interesting to watch. The typhoid outbreak is one of those things you hear about, and everyone knows something happened even if the details get lost. The local paper runs a story on it every now and then, including a big feature on the anniversary recently.
For the curious, Sheena Blackhall became a short story writer and poet, particularly noted for her writing in Doric (our local dialect). She is well-known in our area, and very respected.
Hello. I moved to Aberdeen in 1979 and remained in the N East for 26 yrs. I recall the Bon Accord Fortnight, later named The Aberdeen Festival (I think) and it was put on in the month of July, year on year. I loved all the fun of it and even did the parade myself as Lady Godiva complete with white horse, thanks to someone in Aberdeen City Council. I did wear a body stocking! The parade always ended up down at the old Beach Ballroom. Fireworks, fun and great food. Who could have wished for more. I did love the pipe bands and the music from the Band of the Royal Marines. Oh, those were the days. Never been fond of Corned Beef, strangely!
I'm old enough to remember this. My rather OCD aunt took to listening for this hiss of air when you open a tin.
In the words of a certain MRE aficionado: Nice hiss.
I wipe the rim and lid before I open a can, because the can opener will push whatever is on the lid into the contents.
Don't used bent cans
Stuff like this is why we have food safety regulations; and why they can be very strict.
edit: why did it take them forever to update their food safety laws??? unbelievable.
Money. It's always money that makes lax and slow regulations. Look at how many contaminated food outbreaks the States are having since the orange devil axed a meter high stack of regulation laws.
Because the 3 days of sun in a row in the UK is a once in 15000 year experience.
Meanwhile, in America, food safety is seen as a violation of our God given freedom.
@@goatgirl5968 only if you don't understand the why behind it.
Because it's Britain
Aberdeen Typhoid would be a good prog rock band name.
Or a Deathgrind band. "The Aberdeen Typhoid Outbreak"
Introducing....Tainted Meat
But "Thai Food Mary" would be a bad name for a restaurant.
There's Typhoid Mary.
@@freckledone1073May I use the name Mate?
I was a child (almost 5) in central Scotland during the outbreak. There were 2 chants us kids partook in. One was a simple "Typhoid Aberdeeeeeeeen!" and "Aberdeen, Aberdeen, cannae keep their knickers clean!"
Yeah, kids can be unthinkigly cruel. But it all seemed to be happening so far away.
I was at Primary School in Aberdeen at the time and was told "dinna eat anything ootside the hoose in case you get the typhoid" lol! I remember seeing Prince Charles (now King) at Aberdeen station too but that might have been much earlier because its a hazier memory than being in the Broomhill School girls playground wondering which kids had the germy sweeties.
When hearing about what was in the river water, I'm only surprised that they only caught Typhoid!
"Frey Bentos' cornbeef was so popular with soldiers at the start of WWI" true but would you believe the Tommies who survived developed a hatred of what they came to call 'Bully beef' might have been a good product, but eating it almost everyday for several meals a day for years really made soldiers get so sick of it.
Spam. That's why spam is so hated by half the USA.
@@DebTheDevastator The creator of spam was inspired by how much he hated Bully Beef in WWI and wanted to make a better canned product, only for GIs in WWII to also come to hate it
They hated it immediately after, but many likely started craving it years later. Happens a lot with food you ate a lot - you hate it in the moment, but miss it later when you never eat it anymore
@@raerohan4241 …chili mac MRE
@@DebTheDevastator I came here about SPAM myself. After spending the war in China, my father hated the stuff with a passion. He wasn't crazy about rice, but would eat it. SPAM? NEVER again!
I've lived in Aberdeen for close to 20 years and have never heard of this outbreak! Union Street looked a lot more vibrant in those days, it's pretty much destroyed now. A new shopping centre, high business rates, covid, and the Aberdeen City Council are pretty much to blame for it's current state, though perhaps still with some lingering issues from the typhoid outbreak?
Difficult to tell really, either way Union Street isn't really worth visiting any more unless you need to go to one of the remaining shops there or want to look at what's left of the older architecture.
It certainly explains a lot. Aberdeen is a desolate dump.
I moved out of Aberdeen about 3 years ago but have heard its a lot worse now, which is sad really the city has a lot of potential. It's really weird seeing Union Street look so great in these pictures though. The city really went to crap when Melt shut tbh.
Aw, I liked it :p visited from Canada a couple months ago. I thought it had a nice balance of city aspects with the beach or nature watching not too far a walk away
It doesn't help having a national government determined to stamp out our oil industry. You've sucked a hundred billion in taxes out of North Sea and now claim that your taxes subsidise fossil fuels. You have no clue. Like stupid children who think that beef is produced by McDonald's, you think your petrol comes from Tesco. It doesn't, it comes from a lot of bloody hard work, and a lot of men have died getting that oil from under the seabed.
Aberdeen is a destination city for aficionados of tumbleweed, mainly because eco twats in London have decided to shut down our oil industry. Oil is beastly and awful though you've benefited greatly from taxing it, and we don't even have rail electrification to show for it
4:39 These hospital buildings are apartments now, I used to live inside this building before I moved! Beautiful place.
Are they haunted
Fascinating, is there anything you especially loved/hated living there?
Tenant: "Why can I unlock the loos from the outside?"
Landlord: "What? Don't worry about that. Your rent's due."
Seems like bad vibes!
@@theravens_keeper9146 The building is really close to the beach, the neighbourhood was nice, there is a lot of grass and nature around, the building was very spacious and the roofs were tall, rent was good etc.
As for hated, I guess the wallpaper was bad in one room and the flat got cold really easily🤷♂️
Me: "That was such a a great breakfast"
Also Me: "Ohhh! An FH video on food born illness"
Except typhus isn't a food borne illness. Typhus comes from drinking contaminated water.
I’m eating dinner while watching this as well. A beef satay, even!
Wait until you stumble upon Chubbyemu.
@@Loralanthalas bwahaha!
This is.what happened to their organs...😂
I want some Argentinian corned beef
I'm from Aberdeen.
Two things I never knew:
1. This story of the typhoid outbreak.
2. We had a tourist season.
3. The typhoid bacteria were your tourists ?
It's the time-old joke: 'What's the best thing about Aberdeen? The road oot...' 😆
Let’s raise a toast to all the laboratory staff who isolated and cultured each s. Typhi sample and pinpointed a common source outside the UK.
As someone who had typhoid as a child, I have never felt closer to death than when I was sick. I was burning up but freezing at the same time, hungry but couldn’t eat and my chest sounded like a diesel engine with every breath. Ever since, I’m very germaphobic when it comes to food. Changes your life lol
Videos like this are great as a parent, I've got friends with different types of allergies and we're a family that love baking and cooking for our friends and neighbours, so being able to show my kids videos show what happens when we don't follow safe food handling even within the home are very useful, and that explain why we have food safety laws.
There is a cold cut business in USA called Boar's Head having contamination issues now. It has been reported for weeks, yet when I went to my local grocery store over the weekend, they are still selling Boar's Head meats. While the problems may be confined to one manufacturing plant and just a few cuts of product, I'm not buying anything from that company. Frankly, I'm dismayed that they are still selling the brand after such reported problems.
Yeah I managed to catch that on the news two weeks ago and trashed three packages of deli ham and sliced turkey, and I still saw Boar’s Head at the supermarket over the weekend.
Products can be tracked down from not only a specific facility, but also the day produced, processing line run on, and shift. You should be fine, because BH should also know what stores received the questionable product.
I hadn’t heard! Thanks! Almost bought that brand😢
A problem with the meat packing industry is that processing has moved from small, local meat packing facilities to massive, regional facilities. In the old days, contaminated products would be limited to a small geographical area and a smallish number of cases. Now, if a processing line at a big plant gets contaminated, the effects can be spread over several provinces/states, affecting a huge number of people.
Picked up a deli sandwich from Publix supermarket. They asked if I wanted Boars Head? I said, No, give me store brand.
I used to manage a Publix deli, the handling of the corned beef in the story is gnarly.
Your story is so timely given the fact that the U.S. recently suffered a contamination of Boar's Head brand deli meat. We live in a scary world!!
I believe that the outbreak was also associated with poor meat handling practices and sanitation procedures at a number of in-store delis. Lesson learned; buy pre-packaged lunch meat from factories where USDA inspectors are on duty every day. On site inspection isn't foolproof, but considering the huge quantities of meat processed in those facilities, their safety record is pretty good. Buying from a deli is always a roll of the dice.
Yes the factory is covered in filth and is currently shut down.
PLEASE do not say that because it was NOT TYPHOID in that meat.
@@AshleySpeaks4Ulisteria is about as dangerous to children as typhoid
We live in a fallen world.
It would never occur to me in a million years that it would be possible to catch typhoid fever from eating corned beef.
Did you think meat somehow repels bacteria?
@@LucidDreamer54321Typhoid isn't like salmonella or lysteria or botulism. Typhoid is spread through infected feces.
@@LucidDreamer54321 Well, it is probably just that one would never really consider canned meat products with a high salt content to be dangerous. As they are meant to last long periods of time.
Some bacteria can tolerate salty environments very well
The story of "Typhoid Mary " is one about spreading a contagious disease.She was a cook in the early 1900s, here in the USA. She was infected with Typhoid, but never got sick herself. She didn't wash her hands apparently before she prepared the meals for the family she worked for. I forgot how many people died.
I worked down the road from J.Barr’s, Wishaw at the time of the E-Coli outbreak, and even got our lunches out of the Deli counter. A terrible tragedy on its own, but knowing it could have all been prevented had the recommendations been implemented decades before makes it a scandal.
I'd heard of this one years ago, as while it was before I was born, my Mum's friend had only moved from Glasgow to Aberdeen a couple of months before this happened. What a welcome to your new city as a young nurse.
I sincerely appreciate the accuracy of the closed captions!!!
5:05 lol the high beef prices next to the typhoid outbreak from beef news 😅
I've been watching your channel for a long time and never expected to see an episode about my own city... never even heard about this before!
it's odd seen so many Aberdonians in one place lol.
@@stevenlornie1261 all it takes is someone to mention it and we all turn up haha
Don't know how you missed it ! It's mentioned regularly in the local press. Probably because people don't read newspapers these days ...
Hey, that's my home city. My Mum always tells me stories about her experience as a child during the typhoid outbreak. She remembers visiting Gt-Grandma at hospital, having to talk from outside the windows to Gt-Grans ward to prevent transmitting typhoid etc. Was very nasty times to say the least, mum still won't touch Corned-Beef/Bully-Beef to this day.
Everyone saying something like "things used to be better" should watch some video's from this channel.
The 'good old days' were horrible!
I think that sometimes, then i remember i would be dead if not for very modern medicine. So would my kids.
The good ol’ days is a myth. There is no country for old men.
@@DoctorProph3tthat is also a great movie
Nostalgia is a dirty little liar
I'm from Aberdeen and my grandad was a kid during this. I remeber him talking about it.
Aberdeen mentioned! As usual it's never mentioned for good reasons lol. Both my mother and father lived here at the time and have told me about the sheer panic that gripped the city once news got out.
What's worse is that whenever there is a North Sea oil disaster (i.e. Piper Alpha) they always reference the distance from Aberdeen.
My mother had typhoid from eating candy she bought from a street vendor when she was a child in the 1930s. She was always a fragile person who died in her 60s
Always look forward to a Tuesday morning video by FH
Best part of the week
the intro always gets stuck in my head😅
Me, too!
💯
i was 6 when this happened, i am fom aberdeen and still live here, i remember being told not to even drink a cup of tea or eat anything if we visieted someone, and being in a butchers shop in king street with meat openly hanging on hooks, flys crawling on it and the smell of off meat and the sawdust on the floors , and saying to my mother i didnt want to eat any of that meat that flys were crawling on , my mum looked at the butcher and said out of the mouth of babes, then we left the shop. tv adverts telling us not to blow into paper bags to open them, and to use tongs to pick up food, and wash your hands.
I could listen to you read an instruction manual! thanks for your videos
I absolutely love this channel so much, I love how you don’t target hot button or trending horror topics. You go deep into specific instances in history that unless otherwise told about second hand I’d never have known had even happened. This as much as history channel as it is based on horror, it’s all horrific of course but I just love the niche focus on specific events. Thank you very much for all your hard work ❤
I had Typhoid fever back in the Army when I got the vaccine. It only lasted one full 24 ish hour period of time, but damn did I have the highest fever of my life. We were in the desert so as the day went on the fever rose I began to hallucinate. I was seeing 10ft tall jackrabbits, spinning coyotes (Taz style) and spirits swirling around behind vehicles as they drove by.
Once I was finally in bed I kept seeing a man outside my window whispering to me. I was ok by midday the following day but I'll never forget that. (This is by no means an anti vax message!)
Wow, what a crazy experience! Glad you came out ok.
Sounds like a bad trip.
Jeez, glad you recovered. Something similar happened to me when I had heat stroke. I've never hallucinated like that in my life.
We’re only ant i vax for untested meds
The thing that astounds me the most is that Aberdeen had a tourist industry
I can't believe the shop put the corned beef in the window for 3 days and were still selling it. And not cleaning the slicer. It's horrific. And William Lowe carried on trading across Britain for 30 years.
And how about the Argentinian factory washing the cans with sewage?!!!
Its the 60s.....just wasnt the done thing....
The company never recovered in Aberdseen.
In my time Aberdeen never had a single Low's supermarket, when it was one of the biggest supermarket chains in Scotland. Low's was based in Dundee and this made for a certain animus of Aberdeen towards their southern neighbour, to say the least!
Yeah. Don't allow your rivers to be polluted
They didn't "wash the cans with sewage." They used river water to cool the cans after processing. By the time the water got anywhere near the cans, they had already been sealed and the contents sterilized. Nobody thought it would be a problem, and 99.9+ percent of the time, it wasn't. Unfortunately, this can had a tiny defect that allowed ingress of the cooling water. I presume they began treating their cooling water shortly thereafter.
Being from this part of the world I had heard about this Typhoid outbreak but didn’t know that much about it. Thanks for covering this and telling the story in detail, I think you did it very respectfully. I also appreciate the pictures you used, it’s always nice to see photos from the past of somewhere local to you.
Ooh. One I haven’t heard of at all. Thank you! Glad to see your channel still growing well, dude. Keep up the good work. You’re awesome at it.
I always thought it was crazy that in rare occasions someone can carry Typhoid, spread it to others but they are immune to it themselves..
Yeah, Typhoid Mary. Although the worst thing about that story is that she was told, _repeatedly,_ that she was a carrier and needed to stop working in food preparation and just kept it up under assumed names anyway.
Carriers aren’t uncommon at all, we carry many diseases all our lives that don’t affect us but can infect others.
There are people who do the same with staph and strep.
@@chrisc6857 It seems like the worst thing about that story is that nobody telling her "don't do this anymore" gave her any other viable options to make a living, given her level of education and skill. You can't really deny a person their entire vocation and then wash your hands of it and not realize they're gonna find some way around the ruling -- especially given that she still had no reason to believe that the assessment was correct (after all, *she* wasn't sick -- she was the very reason we understand that asymptomatic carriers of serious diseases can even exist).
Imagine how different things would have been had someone in authority taken the time and effort to help position her into a new career where she could make a decent living at the same (or better) level of income yet without such a risk of spreading the disease. That kind of compassion and pragmatism would've saved so many lives.
@@aluvrianne that's eerie how that can happen sometimes. Especially when there are kids who have PANDAs disease, that causes their body to attack itself when exposed to strep. Their own immune system goes into overdrive trying to attack the strep but ends up attacking their own bodies Brain cells.. it's a scary illness. Especially because we were all exposed to strep when we grew up
I can’t decide what’s worse; typhoid or considering Aberdeen a tourist spot. 😂
Nice one.
You say that, but I was up for work a few weeks ago and there were loads of them - particularly German and Dutch. Not that I'd advise going there mind, as someone who grew up down the road in Stonehaven.
@@blastvader that’s an indictment of Germany and the Netherlands. 😂
definitely the latter.
You mean UK in general.
When the second newspaper asked if the infection came from a “13 year old bully”, stupid American me, despite having lived in London and also elsewhere in the Commonwealth in Accra, Ghana, initially assumed it was referring to the poor infected schoolboy mentioned in the previous newspaper, so you can imagine my surprise when reading on in the article it became clear it was talking about some surplus government food inventory from 13 years in the past. I love your videos @FascinatingHorror
I was half-listening, and my mind went to a bully breed dog (I train pit bulls), and I suddenly pictured an English bulldog that had somehow gotten typhoid fever and gotten into the beef.
Yours at least made some sort of sense. 😂 This is why I shouldn't listen to stuff while falling asleep, especially stuff with silly UK nonsense.
I was thinking a bully holding kids heads down in the toilet
I've always lived in the UK but had never heard that particular slang so I also thought it was a child they meant. 😅 I thought 'bit harsh blaming one kid for the outbreak and calling him a bully too!' I'm glad it wasn't the case as if you were 13 and some newspaper blamed you for the outbreak that harmed so many people, I think you'd basically have to leave town forever.
TBH Aberdeen's streets have always been littered with corpses waiting to be cast into the sea.
"We've had 34 cases of typhoid from Argentinian corned beef."
Health minister: "This is fine, keep killing our own population, it's a British time honored tradition. Mad cow for everyone! Hey remember when we allowed the selling of poisoned candy to kids? Good times!"
It's their class system! The lords and ladies never ate that canned food only the pesants, who cares for them?
He later made the famous racist "rivers of blood" speech.
@@thisperson5294 Yep, told people immigrants were going to kill them to take their minds off the fact that the government were perfectly happy to let imported food do that.
The minister in question, wrote and uttered The rivers of blood, anti-immigration speech.
The UK is now killing its people by importing millions of pounds of another kind of “foreign meat”…
I contracted extremely bad campylobacter food poisoning from a Sainsbury’s prepackaged salad about 15 years ago. I lost 2 1/2 stone in weight in 3 weeks. Because of cases like in this video, my doctor had to report it to a government agency, I think environmental health, and I got a letter from them informing me that I wasn’t allowed to prepare or handle any food, or do any washing up, putting away dishes, cutlery etc for I think 2 months. That was the only bright side to an otherwise hellish experience; seriously, my digestive system was WRECKED and hasn’t been the same since 😱, but at least I got out of some chores for a couple of months!
Oof, I know how those digestive illnesses can destroy you, I got viral gastroenteritis in my last year of high school, and while before that I could eat as much as I wanted, ever since then I've been a "small meals several time a day" person. (Academically it was quite good for me because I missed my final Art History exam which by all reports was *rough*. I got an aegrotat based on my class rank which gave me a result I absolutely could not have achieved by actually sitting the exam lol.)
Severe acute pancreatitis is a very effective diet - I lost 9 1/2 stone in 3months and barely survived
Those Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pies are legendary in the UK. They come in a tin which you open up, remove the lid, then with the pie still contained in the bottom half of the tin, you put it in the oven. Thing is the pie is in puff pasty, but the the pastry never cooks properly, with it being burned on top and just slop at the bottom.
Guilty pleasure - am still very partial to an FB steak & kidney pie, soggy bottom included. 😋
Ah yeah, used to love that soggy pastry!
That sounds like you cant even cook a frey bentos pie.. mine always cook perfectly.
@@brightnbreezyfelix1003 And the tins are great afterwards for DIY, mixing stuff.
Real men only eat Melton Mowbray pies.
My grandma was a nurse at the city hospital during the outbreak. My mum was around 7/8yrs and also remembers it well as it happened before her birthday, they were all quarantined due to my grandma being a nurse at the hospital.
The only time I've had food poisoning was at Pitlochry in Scotland in 1990. Fish served at a local restaurant. Was ill for days. Maybe with their cold climate they are used to leaving food out of the fridge.
Some folks just don’t believe in the regulations, people are fundamentally lazy and arrogant.
@@DoctorProph3t And cheap. Cutting corners by ignoring regulations saves money to the business.
It's cold in Scotland but it's not Antarctica cold 😂 I can assure you we don't leave our food out because its a bit nippy outside 🙈
@@pc2986 most folks don’t know there’s two kinds of Scotland. Loland and Hiland
@DoctorProph3t I'm not entirely sure what difference the Highlands and lowlands make but I live in the Highlands which is notoriously "freezing" and its not even that cold 😂
I hadn't heard of this one!! But the 1996 e coli one happened just one town over from me so as soon as you started talking about that my brain was like oh wait that will be Barr's! It's great how you find less talked about things to make videos about.
2:51 Really thought you were gonna say “Aberdeen was known for its buildings made of corned beef”
I honestly like that you still have to open the tin with the key thing to eviscerate a strip of metal, and detach the greasy coil without cutting yourself 🙃
When I was wee I used to steal the keys from the cans knowing how much of a bastard it is to get in to them without one. The abject rage of someone being denied their corned beef.
There's currently an outbreak of listeria going on in the US right now that was traced back to a certain brand. I used to work in a deli and they were so paranoid about food-borne illness that we had a whole management team for just food safety and they made sure we were keeping product cold, our deli slicers clean, and checking expiration dates on all product. Their job was to be annoying about it but we've managed to avoid a major outbreak of anything so it works
Another soothing, put you to sleep horrific story.
I was in Aberdeen, Scotland in August of 87 for the Aberdeen International Music Youth Festival. Beautiful city.
back then it was. Not now.
The summer season for Aberdeen will be July 15 next year.. Starting at 10am and finishing at 3pm... Winter will then begin again
Oh cool ill book my hotel 🏨 at least I can get really drunk 🥴
@@Mr.Blonde92 get drunk but just avoid that deep fried corned beef
It has some very nice buildings.
On the topic of healthcare, how about doing the five days at memorial hospital in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina?
3:32 the moment I heard the name Enoch Powell, I was like yep that's why
This is interesting as someone who grew up in aberdeenshire. Everyone always complains about how dead the high street is, but I never knew it was related to a typhoid outbreak... Also explains first bus' and stagecoach's iron grip on the city buses
As someone who has gone through food safety training a few times over the years, I had my heart in my throat when you described how those dopes at the store kept the meat stored.
I thoroughly enjoyed all the old photos of Aberdeen.
To think this happened in an era where food sanitation was the norm yet slips happened, and then another incident occurred years later finally leading to more solid enforcement.
I was at school in Aberdeen at the time of the typhoid outbreak and remember all the disinfectant measures introduced. However the term "beleagured city" didn't help and caused unnecessary alarm.
2:25 "LIE BIG" corned beef? 🤣 Who would believe their ads?
Their slogan is “Our beef is the worst!”
I think theyre trying to tell us something 😂
Good morning from Canada🇨🇦
Good morning from the US!
Good evening from Western Australia!
Good morning from the Moon.
Good evening from Mars.
Good Morning from California, USA!
The quote about the bodies on the streets reminds me of all those 144p videos on the early covid days, about how people where collapsing on the streets and some middle easter countries was just nothing but streets full of bodies.
From a retired microbiologist, EXCELLENT video. Thank you!
I myself am a deli worker and i cringed when it was mentioned how little the deli workers in this video washed their hands as well as how they handled their meats, and how they never sanitized anything. No wonder so many of their customers got sick. I'm surprised their little grocery store was able to stay in business after this. They likely would have shut down these days after being sued by everyone.
I actually remember more stories from the 80s and 90s like this. That's terrifying!
0:50 When I saw that picture of the steak and kidney pie tin it took me back to my childhood. My English Dad and American Mom would serve that at times. I liked everything about it but the kidneys. 🇨🇦
Thankfully mum never fed us frey bentos because of 64
When I was walking to work back in 2021 (*in Abdn) I was stopped by an elderly lady because she spotted my mask and top of sanitiser bottle sticking out of my bag, she asked me whether I was worried about getting sick, I said that I needed these at work as per policy (working around ARI at the time) and she told me I shouldn't worry because it's just like the typhoid panic in the 60s - just wash your hands and don't lick doorhandles and you'll be grand! What a trooper :)
Except they are spread in different ways...
You expect me to fact check an elderly lady who was clearly joking? Lol
ARI as in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary? We had a DRI here in Dundee but it closed in the 90's.
@@krashd Yes :)
Glad she came out of it in good humour! If I'd been there for the typhoid outbreak I think I'd be a nervous wreck about illness even decades later. 😂
Ooh. I live in Aberdeen. My grandpa was a doctor and came up to aberdeen just at the time of this outbreak. Im not sure if he came specifically because they needed more drs, in which case i have the aberdeen typhoid outbreak to thank for my very existence! The store that sold the corned beef, William lowe i believe its called, was essentially banished from aberdeen and they have never opened a store up here since. There is/was one in dundee, around 60 miles down the road, however.
That family doctor saying he recognized the symptoms because he was a prisoner of war gave me chills
In fairness to the feverish patient who was concerned about the ambulance crew, anyone from Aberdeen can tell you that the fact someone is nearly six foot tall and trying to talk to you does not mean they're not a seagull.
Its legacy lives on. Although we're American, not British, my family never bought tinned meats - including SPAM, because of stories like this one from 50+ years ago.