100 People Get Sick After Attending Food Safety Conference
Consider this a stranger than fiction kind of story. In early April, Baltimore hosted the Food Safety Summit, a three-day event that featured lectures (with names like Non-Thermal Technologies For Improving Food Safety and Extending Shelf Live of Ready-to-Eat Foods), panel discussions and HACCP Certification Training. It looked like kind of a blast, but it turns out the event was more of a gas after 100 people reportedly became ill after attending.
According to the Associated Press, officials have yet to determined what caused people to get sick. And it's unclear it the maladies were transmitted by food, or from person to person like in the movies. Symptoms for those afflicted with the mysterious bug included nausea and diarrhea. Rita Foumia, the corporate strategy director for BNP Media, the summit's host, was quoted as saying nothing like this has happened in the summit's 16-year history.