The worlds most expensive case of food poisoning?

[manxman]

Two soccer teams in the UK were competing for fourth place in the top division..... the "Premiership".

The night before the game one of the teams were served up a buffet including lasagne in a Marriot hotel in London. Ten members of the team went down with food posioning, allegedly from the contaminated lasagne.

The next day one of the teams (Arsenal) won their remaining game and finished fourth in the league whilst the other team (Spurs) lost their remaining game fielding a well below par team several of whom had been ill all night. If they had won the remaining game they would have finished fourth no matter what the other team had done.

One allegation appears to be this was done on purpose but more likely it was just a very unfortunate accident.

However, the difference between finishing fourth or fifth means the difference in revenue for the clubs concerned of between £10/$16 and £30/$48 million depending on a number of factors.

Talk now is that the club concerned are planning to sue the hotel for £10/$16 million, quite an expensive price to pay for a dodgy plate of lasagne! :o

Apparently this hotel chain made people sign a disclaimer up to a few months ago if anyone ordered food containing ground/minced beef (e.g burger) and wanted it cooked anything less than medium/well done but scrapped it due to bad publicity.

Is this the worlds most expensive individual case of food poisoning??

[iceman]

I think the worst case I heard of was in Japan. It seems some tourists brought back salmon from a trip to Alaska and served it raw like Sushi. The problem was it had sat at room temp for the entire flight back home before it was chilled and served. 30 people died and over 100 went to the hospital. It kind of put a squash on my craving raw seafood. :-\

[manxman]

I think the worst case I heard of was in Japan.

Yes, I seem to remember something about that, definately the worst I have heard of as well. I love sashimi (?spelling) but always make damn sure I know where it has come from! :o

Similarly in years gone by a great fruit punch was made for our laboratory Christmas parties using neat ethanol and oil of juniper together with fruit and fruit juice!

Make a mistake and use methanol (we use both in the lab) and you can kill or blind people and this actually happened on a couple of occasions in other places.

I seem to remember a quite recent episode in India when ethanol and methanol were confused and several people were badly injured/died.

Needless to say, in these Health and Safety conscious days you would never dream of making such a drink........ we had some WONDERFUL (hic!) Christmas parties in years gone by though!! ;D :D

[iceman]

Manx, I think that happened up here in some of the villages too. Kids got into a drum of some type of alcohol (not the drinking type). Bad deal. Some died others are messed up for life. I'll stick to the stuff from the booze warehouses. Years ago grand dad slipped me some of his home brewed sour mash. I thought I was going to die! My throat swelled up, I was blinded momentarily, and my head was spinning for two days. ::) ;D