This is silly. I've been canning for years with no problems at all. Canning instructions are available for the beginner for any food you can imagine. If you've never done it before, then follow the instructions.

I don't can but I have many friends and family members who do. I have NEVER received icky items from any of these people.

I also find it infalmmatory that the article says only 3 people were hospitalized for eating improperly canned food and yet the big headline.

How silly---Merry Christmas to one and all.

This article is ridiculous. Trying to create a scare when there's no need.

Man these horror stories are disgusting!! It makes me think twice but how sad.. I've always LOVED homemade fudge or sugar cookies. Guess I will be more aware for sure.

Oh, let's just get rid of any self sufficiency and rely on goverment regulations to run everything. Nanny state. I have not been sick from any home canned goods. Just look at the seal and contents if you suspect anything. What a bunch of pansies this country is cultivating. Don't eat the soylent green

 I'm noticing a recent trend in articles. Milkshare could be BAD, gardening could be BAD, local farmer goods could be BAD, home-canned or homemade gifts could be BAD!!! Hm. Seems like one more ploy to get us all buying commercial, over processed, JUNKFOOD controlled and pasturized and homogenized and bland-ized by the FDA. No thanks!

(for the record, I am not some sort of conspiracy theorist ... just noticing a trend)

I also have never had a problem. Never sick, never any band aids or hair in my homemade fudge or sugar cookies. I think this article states the obvious. If you are receiving a homemade gift from a questionable source then yeah toss it. But not everyone allows pets to roam the kitchen counters. Dang website wont let me edit my previous comment...

Smelly banana bread that set up mold the next day. Yuck!

Also ana-you will see ------today one thing is good for you ----next month it is bad and really there are those people who think that if this is good ( either canning or something else) then "adding this" or "doing it this way" is better.................and some times that's good and sometimes that is very,very bad..................

Well this story will help spin the out of control anxiety of neurotic people. Now Home Canning a very long time practice with NO RECALLS or major outbreaks.....is a problem.

Let see....USDA inspects chickens at 90 per minute......also inspects many food products that have been recalled......oh yeah thats a comforting suggestion....Please oh lord safe us from the neurotic, prescription addicted, clean freaks and their assorted illnesses.

This is just another in a long trend now of trying to scare Americans into buying nothing but the crap they stock at the grocery store. The idiot at the beginning of the article, had she been educated, would know that it is highly unlikely that any mustard would make her sick. When is the last time anyone on here has thrown out mustard because it had "gone bad"? The reason it keeps so well is because it is so acidic, and bacteria tend not to do well in that environment.

The government knows what is coming. People are becoming more and more interested in self-sufficiency and eating real food. The government can't handle that because it makes you independent. These are the same criminals that wanted to pass S. 510 and fully take over the food supply in this country.

Ignore this article. It belongs in yesterday's trash. Keep growing and canning, folks.

 Most people who take the  time to make homegoods are typically folks who care enough about who they are giving it to to not poison  their friends and family. When I am making goods at home I wash my hands numerously and keep my hair back. If you think that factories are cleaner think again! I think people in America have become freaks about germs and need to get real. Germs are everywhere! Loved ones will do everthing possiable to keep you from harms way, more than any factory or grocyery site will.

If big brother, the FDA, does not approve, do not eat!!!!

He is watching!!

Course, the FDA approved those eggs from the midwest, they were good, weren't they?

My mother used to can tomatoes and peaches. She also used to make homemade applesauce (with the peel on, I might add). NOT ONCE did any of us get sick from anything.

Now if my father (parents are divorced) handed me a food gift that he'd canned himself, I would call a hazmat team to dispose of it for me.

This article, while it has a good point on food safety, is only going to stoke people's fears. How long till we hear food advocates calling for legislation on home canning? Geez.

 

 

This article breaks my heart. I can understand the iffyness about home canned foods. Come on home baked goods are a heartfelt gift. People in general aren't out to make people ill. Use common sense when it comes to food preparation. Only except food gifts from people you trust. Thank you.

OOOH! A whole 18 people sick out of millions. More got sick at restaraunts.

I have eaten canning and home made, farmers market for decades. Its healthy, tasty, and local food. I am sure there will be a learning curve as more persons try to learn what "Grandma used to do."

I have found just as much nastiness in processed foods as I ever found in what I have gotten at the market or made from my garden. If the gov tries to come in and regulate what I grow, make, and eat, they will have a fight on their hands.

This article is making three people getting sick on home-canned goods sound like an epidemic. My husband and I have been canning our home-growed food for 35 years, and no one complained about getting sick. If they did get sick, why did they ask for more the next year? Of course, with the passage of SB510 in the Senate, ordinary people will not be able to even grow gardens and can their own home-grown foods without the permission of the FDA. We will be eating genetically altered food made by Monsanto. Talk about people getting sick along with mass starvation! The author of this article is an enabler of our corrupt government. Ignore it and keep on growing and canning your own food.

This is Silly. So many starving people in the world and we should just throw out homemade gift jars of jam??? and all this based on THREE people getting sick? I have opened a can of progresso soup before to find mold in it and no it was not even close to the best by date! should we all stop eating progresso soup now too?

If it looks good and it tastes good go ahead and keep it. If you are one of the few who get sick.......At least you got sick from food from the heart and not a giant faceless company that meets the lowest standards possible to mass produce food.

3 people got sick? How many cans of infant formula where recalled this year by a reputable company?

I have to say that this article makes a big joke out of people who go to a lot of work to make homemade gifts for people. I have been canning and preserving for almost 40 years. Thank goodness I don't waste my goodies on people I don't know very well. Canning is very expensive and very very time consuming. Not only do I treat canning like a science, my mantra is sterilize, sterilize, sterilize. This article could have been tailored more to steering people away from altering recipes and canning things they can't find recipes for. Instead you come across laughing at people and acting like everyone puts cat hair or poison in their gifts. I would be willing to bet that the person who wrote this article has never canned and knows nothing about it. It is a piece of journalistic rubbish - if you could even tag this as journalism - which I wouldn't. Factories in this day and age are often filthy places with no inspection and bacteria and health violations everywhere, and here you are pretending people who make cookies or jam are dirty or careless. SHAME ON YOU!

Bwahahaha!! People should look at the source and use their minds before they accept something to eat from someone. If they are dirty and unkempt then maybe you shouldn't accept that item from them. Or you could just throw it away after they have left. I have eaten at some "regulated" restaurants that I will never go to again.......ever!! When I make food items for other people I make sure that all of my cooking surfaces and utensils are spotless clean!

I suspect more Americans found unwanted or dangerous objects in commercially packaged foods than in homemade gifts (except perhaps hair).

Last year I found a shard of metal in some major brand canned meat. I notified the company, sent the metal to them in an envelope they provided, and was later informed that the company had tracked down where in their manufacturing plant the problem had occurred.

They sent me some free item coupons -- for the same exact item I had bought before! Obviously, I had no intention of eating the same brand of canned meat after my dangerous discovery.

Hair in food is disgusting, and cat hair is gross. I don't even want to enter someone's house if they have a cat.

My questions is: Why don't the Food Network TV shows require all cooks and contestants to wear hair nets? Occasionally the judges find hair in their food, but no action is taken to prevent this. And watching chefs repeatedly push back their hair while cooking is disgusting and unsanitary.

 This article is offensive.  Is msnbc recommending that, instead of cooking food ourselves, we rely on corporate, processed foods?  Yum!... preservatives, massive amounts of sugar and salt, mystery ingredients with multi-syllabic chemical names.  Gosh, that's SO much better for you than cooking with real food.  WAKE UP, people.  These ridiculous fear-mongers are pushing you further and further away from self-sufficiency and common sense. 

This article is just plan silly. It is offensive and tries to promote the concept that we are a nation of idiots and can not figure out how to make holiday gifts.

I have a friend who cans. I trust her, as she's very detail-oriented and won't do something unless she knows what she's doing. But I know not everyone who bakes and cans understands sterility. I think that was more the point of the article.

I really doubt the FDA plans to regulate home canning and gardening, people. They barely have enough money and people to regulate businesses, and spending their resources on those will help prevent way more illnesses. They may make a few public safety announcements (a lot of the knowledge on canning has been lost, and it's important to do it right), but that's probably about it. Not everything is a conspiracy!

And for those of you making the 3 illnesses not seem like a big deal, would you want botulism? If you survive, and that's a big if, you're stuck to a ventilator unable to move for a month or longer. Your lungs will have long-term effects from the process, and you're completely aware of your surroundings all while not being able to move/breath on your own. Low acid foods are a big risk of canning (jellies and jams not so much), and if you don't think the person knows what they're doing, I wouldn't eat them.

My boyfriends thought he would can went out and bought all those special pots and stuff canned corn and peas ended up sicker than a dog. I looked at the bottom of one of those jars and it was all milky and I throught it all away. wasn't going to have him to and feed that crap to the kids. he tried it later with peppers stuffed with ham again sick. not everyone can can food. take it from him if you dont know what your doing don't try.