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Groton Daily Independent
Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 165 ~ 36 of 44
In a statement, Lactalis apologized to customers and said investigations con rmed the outbreak began after renovation work earlier this year at the Craon site. Production has been halted at the site.
French health authorities have said 31 infants around France contracted salmonella in recent months within days of consuming baby milk made in Lactalis’ factory at Craon. Sixteen were hospitalized but later released and are now doing ne, according to a statement from the government public health agency.
It is unclear whether children in other countries have also fallen ill.
The symptoms of salmonella infection include abdominal cramps, diarrhea and fever. Most people recover without treatment.
Lactalis spokesman Michel Nalet told The Associated Press on Thursday that the newest recall affects about 30 countries but did not have a breakdown of which ones.
A French government list earlier this month said countries affected include Britain, Greece, China, Paki- stan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Sudan, Peru and Colombia. The United States is a major market for Lactalis but is not affected by the recall. The company has production sites in 47 countries, including the U.S.
The products affected include baby milks sold under the Picot, Milumel and Pepti brand names.
At the Pharmacie de L’Ourcq in the 19th arrondissement of northern Paris, employees emptied shelves and piled cans of milk into carts as warnings about the new recall spread around the country.
“Today safety means removing everything. Even if tomorrow we come to learn that there are lots that we can leave on the shelves or that there are boxes that we can leave on the shelves, I think that today we are taking the decision to remove everything,” said pharmacist Deborah Cohen. “If we have to have empty shelves for a while we’ll do it.”
Merveille Gamimi, a customer at the pharmacy and mother of an infant son, expressed concern. “For big companies, (consumers) are numbers .... But for us — these are our lives, our everyday lives. When my child is sick, I don’t sleep. I’m up the whole night. I worry. I search for solutions,” she said.
Lactalis owns leading dairy brands including President and Galbani cheeses and Parmalat milk. A pri- vately held, family-run company headquartered in Laval in western France, it has 75,000 employees in 85 countries and annual revenues of about 17 billion euros ($20 billion).
High-speed internet to bring big change in remote Alaska BY RACHEL D’ORO, Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Jeff Kowunna used his drone to record this year’s celebration of another successful bowhead whaling harvest for one of the oldest Alaska Native settlements.
The video from the three-day event in remote Point Hope, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, showed whal- ing captains sharing the ippers with residents, traditional drumming and dancing, and the ever-popular blanket toss, where villagers use seal skins to heave each other into the air.
But Kowunna’s plan to share this unique slice of Inupiat culture online was thwarted by the area’s notori- ously slow satellite connection.
This month, the 34-year-old whale hunter is ready to try again. His community of 700 and several other isolated Alaska towns are getting a commodity much of the U.S. has long taken for granted: high-speed internet.
“I’ve been counting the days,” Kowunna said of the broadband he hopes will help him connect more im- mediately with the world with posts from gatherings like the June whaling feast, or Qagruk, while updating folks who have moved away. “I think it’s going to be a lot smoother sailing as far as streaming to the web.”
The new service is part of a planned international ber-optic system from Anchorage-based wholesaler Quintillion that eventually will connect London and Tokyo via the Arctic. It’s the result of several factors, representative say, including technical advances, private investors willing to bet on the system, and a warming Arctic environment that opened up a limited construction season, allowing crews to bury hundreds of miles of subsea cable off Alaska’s upper coast.
“Clearly, 20 years ago, even 10 years ago, the situation with the ice in that part of the world would have