Merc can you tell me any other interesting food safety fact, like you did with your pizza funeral post?
Fun OOC Facts || Always Accepting
Oh boy. Okay. Back to Food Safety Classroom with Merc. So we have Food Safety Day coming up at work so I've been delving heavy into my fun historical food facts. The Great Michigan Pizza Funeral is a great one.
So do you guys all remember how when we were young we were told that we had to check our Halloween candy for poison and razor blades and stuff? Well fun fact - that did not come from actual tampering with candy! There has never been a single incident of the poisoning/tampering of Halloween candy that was not done by an immediate family member.
Instead, the fear that fueled this came from The Chicago Tylenol Murders. Now, no one has ever officially been "caught" as the person behind the Tylenol Murders. The theory I was taught was that it was a woman who wanted to poison her husband, so she laced his Tylenol with cyanide, but to cover it laced several other bottles before returning those to store shelves and waiting for the first of the deaths to happen before administering her own to her husband. This came from reports that there was a woman at several of the locations that ended up selling the tainted tablets who "seemed off".
I hear that there's a pretty good and pretty recent documentary out on this. They've investigated and reinvestigated the shit out of it tbh.
But basically, several things came from the Tylenol Murders:
COPYCATS. HUNDREDS of copycats struck IMMEDIATELY after the original crime was investigated. .
Johnson and Johnson fared considerably better than the company that featured in the Great Michigan Pizza Funeral. Instead of fighting the order of the Federal Government for the recall, they DOVE IN on finding out what had happened. .
Their investigation told them that the tainted capsules "came from" two different plants in different parts of the country. This was a red flag for them. .
Johnson and Johnson tried to cash out on insurance after, and this sparked a heavy legal battle. The insurance company argued that since ultimately the company hadn't actually done what led to the deaths, they didn't owe on the claims. Johnson and Johnson argued otherwise. Eventually it settled for undisclosed amounts. I believe they paid it all out to the families affected. .
Their response in this case is actually taught as a "role model" for other company responses.
But then more: 1. This is why there is tamper-proof packaging on medicine now. It's good to note that Johnson and Johnson came up with this on their own, and that other companies followed suit out of social conscience. This is not something that the Federal Government forced. 2. This is why medicine is no longer served in powder-filled "plastic" capsules, but rather those hard-form tablets and gel-filled gelatin capsules. To make tampering harder.
And ultimately:
While poisoned candy being given to trick-or-treaters at Halloween has never been documented, the Tylenol incident, which unfolded across October 1982, raised renewed fears of it. Some communities discouraged trick-or-treating for Halloween, and American grocery stores reported that candy sales were down over 20%
