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Half a Billion Eggs Recalled; Worries About Gulf Seafood; Islamic Mosque Outrage

Aired August 21, 2010 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD: All right. You're back in the CNN NEWSROOM, where the news unfolds live this Saturday afternoon, August 21st. I'm Fredericka Whitfield.

So we begin with food safety and your health. A lot of you may be eyeing those eggs in your refrigerator and wondering if they are, indeed, safe to eat.

Well, right now more than a half billion eggs have been recalled due to a salmonella outbreak. Yes, I said half a billion eggs. Hundreds of people across the country have already gotten sick and health officials fear it will get worse.

Earlier today, I talked with infectious disease expert Dr. Carlos Del Rio about how we can protect ourselves.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, EMORY UNIVERSITY, ROLLINS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: If you have any of the eggs that have been recalled, you can discard them or you can return them.

Any time you buy eggs, it's better to keep them in the refrigerator. When you're eating eggs it's better to cook them as oppose to eat them raw and it's very important that if you make an omelet or make eggs afterwards you put them rapidly in the refrigerator, your leftovers. Don't leave them on the counter.

WHITFIELD: So why do we want to potentially throw some out if it is simple as cooking the eggs thoroughly?

DEL RIO: Well, because there's always the chance that you're not going to be able to cook them thoroughly and I think if you know that there's a potential risk then you might as well take care of it.

I want to also say that most cases of salmonella we see, you know, in this country we have about 40,000 cases of salmonella every year. Most cases are mild. People don't get terribly ill, you get diarrhea, you get fever and you get better most of the time usually without antibiotics.

But people who are -- the elderly, the very young and people who have some sort of immune deficiency like patients with AIDS or people who have received a transplant, are particularly at high risk of dying from a salmonella infection. And one thing very important people to know is a lot of people say, well, I'm going to make a milk shake and put a raw egg in there, and give it to my kid, not a good idea.

WHITFIELD: Right, OK, and perhaps refrain from using those eggs even in cake batter or cookie dough because sometimes those things don't get cooked so thoroughly.

DEL RIO: As long as you cook them. You put them in the oven, the salmonella is going die. I mean, I think that's not a problem. The big problem is if, you known, you're making a salad and you decide to put a raw egg in there. You're making a holiday sauce --

WHITFIELD: Or a Caesar salad, don't do that?

DEL RIO: Those kinds of things - as I said, I worried many times if people make a milkshake, you remember that movie, "Rocky" where Rocky would eat a couple of raw eggs and make that his morning breakfast.

WHITFIELD: -- milkshake, yes.

DEL RIO: Yes, I wouldn't do that. That's not a good idea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: All right, Dr. Carlos Del Rio there. For more information and a complete list of recalled eggs, go to cnn.com/health.

A symbolic end to "Operation Iraqi Freedom." U.S. service members in Kuwait held a flag ceremony this morning marking the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops in Iraq. The last combat brigade left this week, but about 52,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq.

Here is a breakdown of what the remaining forces will do, 2,000 of them will leave over the next 10 days. That's when "Operation Iraqi Freedom" officially ends and "Operation New Dawn" begins.

Fifty thousand U.S. troops will take part in that new mission, advising and assisting local forces and President Obama has promised all troops will be out of Iraq by the end of next year.

Meantime, Iran is taking a big step toward its nuclear energy plans today. Nuclear fuel is being transferred into what will be the country's first atomic power station.

Tehran says the plant will be used for civilian purposes to produce electricity, but the U.S. and international community are worried that it could be used to create nuclear weapons. Iran state media has reported it will take at least two months for the reactor to begin generating power.

All right, fresh oysters, shrimp, clams, all from the Gulf. A real treat for those of us who love good seafood, but how safe is it really these days? Is that testing effective?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) WHITFIELD: All right, a look at our top stories right now. A hostage drama in Brazil is over. One person is dead and four police officers were wounded during a shoot-out around the Intercontinental Hotel in Rio de Janeiro.

Police say they intercepted 40 suspected drug dealers outside the hotel and that triggered a gun battle. Some of the suspects grabbed hostages in the hotel. The hostages were later released.

More relief supplies are trickling into flood-ravaged Pakistan, but the pace is still viewed as too slow to meet the soaring need. The world food program says it needs at least 40 more heavy duty helicopters to get assistance where it's needed. Floods have left more than 20 million people in need of food and shelter.

And welcome news for Louisiana crabbers. Another section of the state's waterways near the Mississippi river, which had been closed by the Gulf Oil disaster, has now been reopened.

The FDA has tested the crabs and say they are safe to eat, but large areas of Louisiana's commercial fishing waters remain off limits.

So shrimpers are back in the Gulf at least in certain areas and government scientists say the tests show the contamination levels of Gulf seafood are generally what they were before the oil disaster.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADMIRAL THAD ALLEN (RET.), NATIONAL INCIDENT COMMANDER: Seafood that comes from the areas that have been open for fishing, that have been subjected to the testing regime established by NOAA and FDA is safe. It's probably tested more than any seafood in the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: OK, but not everyone is convinced. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE BARBER, ALABAMA SEAFOOD ASSOCIATION: We've had major distributors call up some of our processors who have been working with them for years, generations.

And they basically said we don't want Gulf product. The dominant feeling right now and it just kind of permeates everything is fear. We're in uncharted waters. Nobody knows what's going to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: So now a major environmental watchdog group is calling for more stringent testing. Dr. Gina Solomon is a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. So why don't you trust what has already been tested and what government is saying?

I don't think that there's an immediate health threat from Gulf seafood, but the contaminants from the oil spill have not gone away. They are still out there in the environment and they are still going to be accumulating in seafood for years to come.

These chemicals can cause cancer over the long run or neurological harm with repeated exposure. So what we're calling for is a robust, scientific system that's in place that will protect consumers for not only months, but years into the future.

WHITFIELD: So does that mean this scientific system is to conduct different kinds of testing on the seafood, for one. Number two, are you saying there needs to be another system in place that would clean the gulf waters to reduce the contaminants or rid the contaminants all together?

GINA SOLOMON, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL: What we're saying is that the government is doing some things right and some things not as well as it could be. For example, NOAA is claiming that it's taking thousands of tests of Gulf seafood.

But less than a hundred so less than 10 percent of their samples have been made available to the public, to scientists like myself to double-check them. And they are also testing for certain contaminants in the oil, but not for others that should be tested for.

And finally, the states are making some unilateral decisions on opening state waters offshore. Those decisions are not getting scrutiny that they should and the data again are not made public.

WHITFIELD: So are you saying bottom line, prematurely, shrimping, oystering, fishing, all of that is being done when it shouldn't be right now?

SOLOMON: Some of the areas that have been reopened have probably been reopened quite wisely, others maybe not so especially some of the near shore areas where we're hearing some reports from shrimpers of oil contamination still persisting in those areas.

So there's a need for a little bit more scrutiny just to make sure that the system is really in place to assure safety. It's not a good time for quick and hasty conditions.

WHITFIELD: Some environmentalists are saying dispersants have coated the floor in the Gulf in some regions. That's where your bottom feeders, your oysters, shrimp are being contaminated. Is that also the contention of your group?

SOLOMON: About 2 million gallons of dispersant chemicals were used on the oil spill. What they did is they broke the oil up into tiny little particles that are now in the seawater and settling to the bottom of the Gulf.

These particles actually may -- they don't stifle and coat the fish and shrimp but they may actually get into the bodies of the shrimp and the crabs and other seafood in a way that non-dispersed oil may not. So there's a lot more testing that needs to happen to sort that out.

WHITFIELD: Do you think people will get sick from eating Gulf products? We heard from the one fisherman who says he's concerned that people are staying away from Gulf products overall. But for those who are not, do you think folks are risking their lives and their health?

SOLOMON: I don't think that there's a risk in the near term. But if this system isn't fixed, I think that there could be a problem over the long-term, especially for people who eat a lot of seafood from the Gulf and especially for pregnant women and children.

Because the FDA's risk assessment assumed that the fish consumer weighs 176 pounds that they only eat shrimp once a week and they only eat about four shrimp per serving. From my experience in the Gulf Coast, people eat a lot more shrimp than that down there.

And pregnant women and kids weigh a lot less than 176 pounds and they are the ones whose bodies are most susceptible to these contaminants.

WHITFIELD: Dr. Gina Solomon of the National Resources Defense Council. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

SOLOMON: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: Two words many of you are dealing with across the U.S. today, heat and thunderstorms. We'll see where they are and what we can expect.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, let's check with Jacqui Jeras because something tells me -- this is going to sound like a broken record depending on where you are in the region. It's been hot, humid, hazy, horrible, well, that's just the way the summer has been.

JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: How many other adjectives can we throw on there -

WHITFIELD: That's all I can come up with.

JERAS: Sounds pretty good though actually. We'll start out in Dallas today. That's where all those HT apply. It doesn't look terrible. You've got a little breeze today, but the heat index at this hour, 102 degrees.

We could be reaching 110 at times this afternoon, of course. Closer into the congested city you are, the hotter that temperature is going to be, as much as maybe 4 degrees to 5 degrees.

In fact, heat warnings in effect and that's going to last through the weekend maybe a little break for you, Dallas, by the middle of the week. But we're talking about probably upper 90s on the thermometer instead of the triple digits.

The heat advisories and warnings do stretch from Dallas down towards Houston and New Orleans, up towards Memphis for you and into Birmingham and Huntsville even Little Rock so this is pretty widespread in this area. That heat bubble kind of holding through and even though we have a cold front that's going to try and pass through this area, I don't think it's going to really do a whole heck of a lot unfortunately to cool you down so the best hope that you have is to get a shower or thunderstorm. Get a little cloud cover and that could cool you off just a bit.

Here is where showers and thunderstorms are today. We're really focusing it in on the Ohio Valley in the mid-south for that severe weather threat. Damaging winds will be our primary concern.

In addition to that, I know I don't have to tell you that dew points are really high. The humidity, it's just oppressive out there. We've had some real heavy downpours. It's localized, don't have widespread watches like that, Fredericka, but isolated areas could see problems in northeastern Georgia and the western Carolinas. They have seen so much rain there and in eastern Tennessee in the last number of days.

WHITFIELD: All right, I think it's very moist, wet, yucky -- added to all the other H's.

JERAS: We'll work on M's next time.

WHITFIELD: Thanks very much, Jacqui.

All right, some relief of another kind each week. We go to the ends of the earth to find the strangest, my gosh, you can't believe this stuff type of videos. Who's doing the work on that? Josh Levs. He's here with a little preview of more to come.

JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, me and the folks out there at the ends of the earth who keep send their favorite videos. We are actually starting off with something amazing here.

I will give you a taste of what we are going to have this weekend in viral video rewind. Take a look at this, Fred. Indian pole gymnastics.

WHITFIELD: OK, I never heard of that one.

LEVS: People are going wild for this. Watch what these kids can do.

WHITFIELD: This is a little circus - kind of stuff.

LEVS: This is a video from the (Sangam) Institute of Indian Martial Arts. It's Malakam pole dancing. It's fascinating. Catch me online, I'll give you behind this.

WHITFIELD: My gosh.

LEVS: I know.

WHITFIELD: OK. It looks like he's moving so fast. Is there a stopwatch going on here, too?

LEVS: This is actually a whole sport and competition to have the sports. I'm going to tell you about it tomorrow in the 5:00 p.m. eastern hour as part of our viral video rewind. This is one of the many awesome videos and, as always, I have a relaxation video to help you recover from that one.

WHITFIELD: I'm ready for the Zen moment.

LEVS: 5:00 p.m. Eastern tomorrow.

WHITFIELD: OK, good. Look forward to that. Thanks so much.

All right, saving lives by building bridges. This week's CNN Hero when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: More than 60,000 people drown in Africa each year. This week's CNN hero, saving lives by building bridges that help Kenyans cross dangerous rivers. Every day, Harmon Parker connects thousands with life-changing resources. Just take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What strike me about this place is the beauty and the feeling of being insignificant. Life for people here is very difficult, very secluded. The beauty of this place becomes dangerous because of the mountains when it rains.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My father came to the market in the morning. He was with my mother. On the way back in the evening, they found the river was flooded. They drowned.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have worked all over Kenya. Every community has the same story. Crocodiles and hippos and loved ones lost. When it floods, the people really suffer, not being able to get across to the clinic or the market or to school.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first bridge I built I saw an opportunity to change lives, transform communities so I carried on. I love what I do.

My name is harmon parker and I build bridges to transform people's lives. The community has to initiate the project. They had to participate and make some sort of financial contribution. I don't know how many goats I have in this region, but they always give me a goat.

I have spent half my life in a tent. I have had malaria seven or eight times. It takes a lot of determination. A bridge is a beautiful metaphor for many things. I'm privileged to do what I'm doing, destined to help people and I'm driven by that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: So Harmon's work has brought 45 foot bridges to remote Kenya, improving the lives of tens of thousands of people. To watch the residents of one village dedicate his latest bridge product or to help Harmon build more go to cnnheroes.com.

Building an Islamic mosque near ground zero, a new obstacle that could stand in the way.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)