Appliance Repair in Livingston, CA

Foster Farms is recalling around 148,000 pounds of fully cooked frozen chicken breast patty products over possible plastic contamination, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Oct. 29.

The American poultry company, headquartered in Livingston, California, produced the frozen breaded chicken breast patties on Aug. 11, 2022.

They were then shipped to Costco distribution centers in Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, and Washington, and may have been further distributed to Costco retail locations.

As of Oct. 31, the product was not listed on the recall page on Costco’s official website.

In total, 148,000 pounds of 80-ounce bags of 20 pieces of breaded chicken breast patties with rib meat are being recalled because they may be contaminated with extraneous materials, specifically “hard clear pieces of plastic,” according to officials.

USDA said the contamination was first discovered when Foster Farms notified the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) that it had received a number of complaints from consumers who had found the hard clear plastic “embedded in fully” in the breaded chicken breast patty products.

The affected products have a best-by date of Aug. 11, 2023. The bags have the establishment number P-33901 and lot code 3*2223** on the back edge of the packaging, and 7527899724 under the barcode.

Plastics Could Cause Potential Injury

While there have been no confirmed reports of injuries associated with consuming the specified products to date, FSIS raised concerns that the hard plastic pieces could be sharp enough to potentially cause an injury.

“Anyone concerned about an injury or illness should contact a healthcare provider,” USDA said.

Consumers who may have purchased the recalled products are warned not to eat them and either throw them away or return them to the store at which they bought them. Retailers are also being asked not to sell them any more.

The recall is a Class I high, which means, as defined by FSIS, that there is a “health-hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.”

Consumers with questions about the recall can contact the Foster Farms Consumer Hotline at 1-800-338-8051 or email them at info@fosterfarms.com.

The Foster Farms recall comes shortly after microplastics, or extremely small plastic particles composed of mixtures of polymers and functional additives, were detected in the breast milk of women for the first time.

The discovery has raised concerns over the potential toxic effects and health impact they may have on infants.

The Epoch Times has contacted Costco for comment.

More than 400 university scholars, students, community organizers, foundation representatives, artists, and activists came together in late October for a one-of-a-kind event to build collaborative partnerships for community-engaged research and meaningful social change at the UC Santa Cruz conference: All-In: Co-creating Knowledge for Justice. The event was co-presented by UCSC’s Institute for Social Transformation (IST) and Urban Research Network and co-sponsored by a broad range of foundations, community organizations, and partners on and off campus.

All-In, which was held from Oct. 26-28, 2022, at multiple locations around Santa Cruz, included five plenary sessions, 87 presentations across 42 breakout sessions, a poster session, numerous spoken word performances, including by Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS), Monterey County Poet Laureate Daniel Summerhill, and Fong Tran, and a screening of the award-winning film “Fruits of Labor.” There was also a reception at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) with cultural performances by Senderos Centeotl Danza y Baile folkloric dance group.

“This was not your traditional academic conference,” said Chris Benner, professor of environmental studies and sociology and faculty director for IST. “Right now, we face a crisis of racial and economic inequality, climate change, democracy, and undermining faith in political solutions; this requires all of us to collaborate. Sharing strategies to expand and deepen the co-production of knowledge will help us tackle these pressing social issues.”

All-In centered on the idea of critical community-engaged scholarship, an action-oriented, equitable collaboration towards achieving structural change and social justice. The goal is to build stronger relationships between universities and the communities they serve by addressing issues of power and equity and deeply engaging undergraduate students.

According to Benner, All-In demonstrated that the university is well-positioned to be a leader and convener for like-minded higher education institutions across California interested in community-engaged scholarship. Grassroots organizations like the ACCE Institute say they can see the value.

“We want to ask people from the universities to come out of the university and into the community first to listen, and then to help us really understand what they [the universities] are missing,” said Christina Livingston, ACCE’s executive director during the All-In closing plenary session. “There is real wisdom and knowledge that the community members hold, but we don’t know everything.”

The conference also marked the debut of the new Campus + Community initiative, led by Rebecca London, associate professor of sociology.

“We now have a web of engaged scholarship that reaches across disciplines, throughout our campus, and into our various communities,” London said during the opening plenary session.

According to many who attended, the conference inspired participants with the range of ideas and examples for effective university-community partnerships and energized by the possibilities of co-creating systemic change for justice.

All-In was initially scheduled to be held in March 2020 but was canceled abruptly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The organizers wanted to keep the conversation going in the interim, so they hosted a series of virtual events in 2021 to encourage conversation and collaboration. But this year’s event was the first opportunity for All-In to meet in person.

“Colleges and universities seem to have discovered community engagement and the importance of raising their visibility off campus, rolling out new programs like service learning, and touting scholarship opportunities that serve the public good,” said Steve McKay, associate professor of sociology and director of the UCSC Center for Labor Studies, who presented at the conference. “But such loose definitions of the ‘public good’ can sometimes lead to a kind of shallowness that may sound nice and does not cost much, but also does not strike at the heart of inequality or injustice.”

Many at the All-In conference aspired to do even more.

“We want to push this budding movement beyond ‘performative engagement’ - that is beyond slogans and colorful banners with ‘diverse’ faces and community handshakes,” said McKay. “Critical community engagement means not settling for ‘public good,’ but working for the ‘public better.’”

Want to learn more? Check out the complete recap of the All-In Conference on the IST website.

^[4]

Recall supporters

Organizers gave the following grounds for the recall effort in their notice of intention to circulate a recall petition for Mayor Aguilar.^[2]

Recall opponents

In response to the recall, Aguilar said, “I have nothing but the best interest in mind when it comes to the community. ... Some of these allegations of corruption, I’m an open book. Anybody who’s anybody can reach out to me.”^[3]

Path to the ballot

Recalls of local officials in California start with notices of intent to recall an official. Each notice requires signatures from city residents, the name of the official, and reasoning for the recall that cannot exceed 200 words. A copy of the notice is delivered to the city clerk, who publishes the notice in at least three public places. Officials have seven days following receipt of their notices to issue statements of defense. A recall petition can be circulated against each official once the notice of intent is published.

Organizers submitted notices of intent to circulate recall petitions for Aguilar, Garcia, and Kang on May 28, 2021.^[1] They submitted an additional notice for Kang several weeks later.^[2]

On December 1, organizers submitted signed petitions to the city. For a recall election to have been scheduled, organizers needed to have collected 1,483 verified signatures for each official.^[3] The Merced County Registrar of Voters announced in January 2022 that organizers had failed to submit enough signatures for a special recall election to be scheduled.^[4]

See also

External links

Footnotes

Oakland—The Labor Commissioner’s Office has cited three temporary staffing agencies (Viking Staffing CA LLC, Human Bees Inc. and Marcos Renteria Ag Services Inc.), as well as joint employers Foster Farms, LLC and Foster Poultry Farms (“Foster Farms”), for nearly $3.8 million for their failure to inform 3,476 temporary workers of their available COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave.

“Workers should not have to worry about financial hardship if they need to take care of themselves or a family member who is COVID positive,” said Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower. “That’s what supplemental paid sick leave is for – it keeps sick workers at home and protects against the spread of COVID-19.”

The Labor Commissioner’s Office in 2020 opened an investigation into Foster Poultry Farms, a processing plant in Livingston, after COVID-19 outbreaks were reported at the worksite. The investigation included an audit of payroll records, which determined that the temporary staffing agencies named above hired staff to fill in for permanent workers affected by COVID-19 outbreaks at the processing plant, but failed to inform the temporary staff of their rights to supplemental paid sick leave. The Labor Commissioner’s Office found the temporary staffing agencies, Foster Farms, LLC and Foster Poultry Farms jointly liable for these violations.

“Employers who contract with staffing agencies have a joint responsibility to protect the health of their workers. Employers are obligated to ensure that employees are made aware of sick leave benefits intended to protect workers, their families and the public from the spread of COVID-19,” added Labor Commissioner García-Brower.

The 3,476 temporary workers are owed a total of $3,783,800 in penalties. Human Bees, Inc. owes its 1,987 temporary workers $940,050; Viking Staffing CA, LLC owes its 341 temporary workers $377,850; and Marcos Renteria Ag Services Inc. owes its 1,148 temporary workers $2,465,900.

The 2022 supplemental paid sick leave law went into effect on February 19, 2022 and is retroactive to January 1, 2022. It provides covered employees up to 80 hours of COVID-19 related paid leave, with up to 40 of those hours for isolation and quarantine, receiving vaccines and caring for a child whose school or place of care is closed, and up to an additional 40 of those hours available only when an employee or family member for whom the employee provides care tests positive for COVID-19.

Workers whose employers have refused to provide paid sick leave or COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave as required by law can file a wage claim or report the labor law violation online, or can call the Labor Commissioner’s Office at 833-LCO-INFO (833-526-4636) from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (California Labor Commissioner’s Office) combats wage theft and unfair competition by investigating allegations of illegal and unfair business practices.

The Labor Commissioner’s Office in 2020 launched an interdisciplinary outreach campaign, “Reaching Every Californian.” The campaign amplifies basic protections and builds pathways to impacted populations so that workers and employers understand legal protections and obligations, and the Labor Commissioner’s enforcement procedures. Californians can follow the Labor Commissioner on Facebook and Twitter.

Contact: Communications@dir.ca.gov, (510) 286-1161

The California Department of Industrial Relations, established in 1927, protects and improves the health, safety, and economic well-being of over 18 million wage earners, and helps their employers comply with state labor laws. DIR is housed within the Labor & Workforce Development Agency

Livingston’s annual celebration of the versatile sweet potato will kick off Friday at the Max Foster Sports Complex, heralding in the start of a three-day festival featuring rides, contests, exhibits and all things sweet potato.

Livingston is known as the sweet potato capital of the world, producing nearly 300,000 tons of sweet potatoes annually, according to the city’s website.

The Sweet Potato Festival highlights the rich local industry and attracts thousands of attendees annually.

This year’s Sweet Potato Festival lands on the City of Livingston’s centennial birthday. The festivities will conclude Sunday night with a fireworks show commemorating the city’s 100 years.

Before the fireworks are launched Friday, Livingston residents and their families can enjoy a variety of daily activities.

Each day of the festival will include pie eating contests, carnival rides, live music, culinary demonstrations and a food court featuring various sweet potato dishes.

Every food vendor’s menu will offer a sweet potato specialty item. Festival-goers can feast on sweet potato fries, sweet potato ice cream, sweet potato pies and many other unique sweet potato dishes.

Attendees can also stroll through a farmers market of sweet potatoes, merchandise vendors and an antique harvesting equipment showcase.

Friday’s festivities will run 5-10 p.m. Special events that day include a skateboard exhibition and raffle, modified car show and DJ set.

The festival will open earlier Saturday and Sunday at 12 p.m. and close at 10 p.m.

Saturday’s events include a Cal Fire muster featuring a kids’ obstacle course and firefighter challenge, lucha libre wrestling, live bands and craft brew tasting in the beer garden.

Sunday will close the festivities with a car show, dancing and cultural music, centennial mobile exhibit and a beer garden before the fireworks finish the celebrations with a bang.

Entrance to the festival is free, but tickets must be purchased for carnival rides.

The Max Foster Sports Complex is located at 2600 Walnut Ave.

A complete list of event details can be found at the City of Livingston’s website on the Sweet Potato Festival page at cityoflivingston.org/recreation/page/sweet-potato-festival