Longtime city contractor supplies expired food to Brooklyn homeless shelter

 

 NY Daily News

A Brooklyn homeless shelter turned into a vomitorium after at least half a dozen people ate rancid chicken salad served by the city, the Daily News has learned.

The poison poultry – which had a bogus expiration sticker — was offered for lunch at the Fort Greene Shelter on Auburn Place last Thursday.

Shelter resident Edna Smith said some of the sickening salad smelled sour, but she dug in anyway and immediately regretted it.

“All of a sudden I started to get light-headed and I started sweating,” Smith, 53, explained. The projectile vomiting came next.

“The coffee went through my nose and the food went through my mouth," she told The News.

 At least three other people tossed their cookies after chowing down on the chicken salad – which was marked as expiring on Oct. 31.

But that date was wrong. A closer look at the empty containers revealed the original label underneath, dated Sept. 20.

“They’re giving us food that has double labels and I have the evidence," said shelter resident Pierre Landro. “This isn’t the first time this happened. This has gone on a number of times. This is unbelievable.”

 The city Department of Social Services confirmed that a food vendor called Whitsons delivered expired meals to the shelter with inaccurate labels.

 That salad came from Sally Sherman Food, a Mount Vernon, Westchester County based business, and the labels were switched there, according to records and city officials.

“We will not tolerate any action that puts the health and safety of families experiencing homelessness at risk and we have temporarily replaced the food provider at this shelter pending our ongoing review," a DSS spokeswoman said. "We have confirmed this was an isolated occurrence at this location and have required the provider to take immediate corrective actions and submit a quality assurance plan to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Whitsons won a contract with the city in a 2010 competitive bid process, authorities said.

Under the contract, Whitsons has been providing food to six shelters, at a cost of roughly $35 million since 2014, records show.

In August, the Food and Drug Administration slapped Bronx-based Whitsons with a warning letter after an inspection found “serious violations,” unsanitary conditions and the presence of the germ listeria.

Don't fret! Mayor Big Slow de Blasio is on the case!

NY Daily News

Mayor de Blasio called for an investigation into how a city homeless shelter ended up serving rancid food to residents, leaving them puking poultry while callous staff allegedly laughed at their suffering.

“There has to be an investigation,” Hizzoner said Thursday, after the Daily News broke the story of the food foul-up. “There has to be a look at it to see if it’s a situation that can be resolved. But if we don’t like what we see, we’ll change vendors.”

He also expressed sympathy for the at least six victims who were served rancid chicken salad at the Fort Greene Shelter in Brooklyn on Oct. 24.

“It’s horrible,” de Blasio said at an unrelated news conference. “Thank God, as I understand it, the folks who were exposed are going to be okay.

“But no, we don’t accept that,” he continued. “Any vendor who doesn’t do their job, they’re not going to be a vendor with us.”

 Yes, food poisoning is horrible Bill and you should find a new vendor. Idiot.

Shelter resident attends protest to expose DHS abuse

• The State Senator from the area actually shows up for protests.
• He mentions that this hotel is not near a subway or jobs.
• It is meant to keep people out of view.
• He calls for it to be shut down.

To recap Aaron's remarks:

• The DHS told the residents of at least one shelter on Jericho Turnpike that last week's protest would be violent and that they must leave.
• Those who did not want to leave were threatened with being sent back to the PATH center in the Bronx and having their kids taken away.
• You get preferential treatment in the shelters if you are an "MOS" (member of the service). Otherwise, you get treated like shit.
• Food is provided at the shelter that is spoiled and has made his family and others sick.
• DHS relies on scare tactics.
• You actually have to take them to court to get anywhere.
• DHS bounces people around from shelter to shelter, and keeps people in the system for years.
• The de Blasio administration's video was a lie because the shelter residents are more afraid of DHS than of protesters.
• The caseworker at the shelter got fired. A new one was hired, and there is only one on site for the entire shelter.
• The young man's family just got approved for permanent housing because DHS knew Aaron was talking with the protesters.

• Sam Chang built a 205-room hotel on a marsh in a remote area.
• After Sandy, a service provider named Bedco opened a men's shelter on the first two floors of the hotel.
• The men are forced to leave via side entrances and hotel guests are not told about the presence of the shelter.
• The men eat meals in their rooms instead of in a congregate area.
• Sex offenders are housed there without notification to the community.
• There is no proof that paid for services are actually provided to the men.

Pan Am contract rejected...for now

From DNA Info:

Comptroller Scott Stringer has rejected a contract for the homeless shelter in the former Pan Am Hotel, citing concerns about the safety of those living there, his office announced Monday.

Stringer said he won't approve the permanent contract between the city and the shelter's operator, Samaritan Village, until his office "receives assurances that anyone staying in these facilities will be safe, all outstanding violations and complaints have been corrected and all documentation that the requirements of the contracting process were met."

The 216 rooms lack kitchens, which are required by law.

Stringer's office sent the permanent contract back to the administration along with a contract for a shelter on West 45th Street in Manhattan run by Aguila Inc., his office said.

When asked about the conditions at the shelter inside the Pan Am, specifically the lack of kitchens that are required by law, DHS Commissioner Gilbert Taylor said they didn't have any immediate plans to add them.

"We don’t have a plan yet to install cooking facilities in that location. We’re not certain that that would be actually the best thing for us to do," he said.

From DNA Info:

Life in the nearly year-old Pan Am homeless shelter is worse than serving time in jail, some residents told DNAinfo New York.

The facility, which opened in June 2015 to help house the record-number of New Yorkers living in shelters, which was 56,602 as of May 5 and included 11,600 families, crams clients into tiny rooms without kitchens — against city, state and federal guidelines.

Instead, the 216-room shelter operator, Samaritan Village, offers three meals a day. But the food is "disgusting" and "garbage," according to nearly a dozen residents, all mothers, who spoke to DNAinfo about how they have found it difficult and expensive to live in a shelter without kitchens.

“The food is still frozen, it’s terrible,” said one mother, who has a 9-year-old daughter. DNAinfo is withholding the mothers' names because they fear retaliation for speaking to the media.

When she moved into the shelter, also know as the Boulevard Family Center, in January she got sick with what she believed to be food poisoning her first week there, she said.

“It’s exhausting when you don’t get enough food stamps because [the] shelter says they provide food," she said. "I did time — the food was better in jail."

Another resident estimates she spends $60 a day on food for her and two teenaged sons, including one with special needs. She usually picks up dinner at McDonald's across Queens Boulevard or at a nearby deli.

“If we had kitchen, I’d spend $20,” she said. “Food is expensive.”

Her tiny room, where her two sons share one bed, is equipped with a small refrigerator but she's forbidden from keeping a microwave.

The one communal microwave broke weeks ago and hasn't been fixed, residents said.

Another mom of three teenagers said she used to buy meals at a local supermarket and heat them in the microwave, but couldn't anymore since it broke.

Who is poisoning the Elmhurst kitties?

From WPIX:

Stray cats have been turning up dead, baffling an Elmhurst man, who's been caring for them for years.

"There used to be 12 or 13, now there are nine sometimes three," according to David Taylor, Vice President of Yoga Gupta Ashram.

The feline caretaker has turned his backyard on 51st Avenue into a playground. But, he says a few weeks ago, it went from backyard to graveyard when dead cats began showing up -- some at his front door.

"They are dead they are stiff when we find them, and we find them in unusual places," Taylor explained.

Taylor and others on the block are sad and upset about the deaths and believe the cats are being poisoned. "We suspect these animals are killed, slaughtered or poisoned," adding they've called 311 and the police.

FDA shutting down Queens cheesemaker

From the NY Times:

The Food and Drug Administration is trying to shutter permanently a cheese factory in Queens whose owners failed to clean up the plant after a potentially deadly bacteria was discovered on more than one occasion, according to the government.

This week, the agency filed suit in Federal District Court in Brooklyn to halt all dairy production at the company, Mexicali Cheese Corporation in Woodhaven, due to what it called a history of unsanitary conditions and its managers’ refusal to change their practices.

Inspections over the last three years, which were set off by the finding of staphylococcal bacteria in a cheese sample in 2009, have turned up a long list of violations, including equipment that was covered in harmful bacteria; flies, maggots and mold in production areas; stagnant pools of dirty water on the floor; and rodent excrement in the supply rooms, the suit said.

Besides staphylococcal bacteria, which can cause a staph infection, inspectors found traces of listeria, another deadly bacteria, particularly for pregnant women and their fetuses and for people with compromised immune systems. The agency had no reports of illness caused by Mexicali cheese.