Takata Airbag Recall Widens

Now Chrysler is expanding the scope of the recall:

After resisting for several weeks, Chrysler issued a statement today that it will recall 3.3 million older vehicles globally, including nearly 2.9 million in the U.S., as demanded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This brings the total to almost 3.7 million affected vehicles.

The recall includes Chrysler's popular 2004-07 Ram pickup as well as the Dodge Durango, Charger, Magnum, Dakota and Chrysler Aspen and 300 as well as the Mitsubishi Raider pickup. Detroit Free Press

The dates of the affected vehicles now extend into the 2007 model year. I am still confused.  There seems to be no definitive root cause or means to isolate affected airbags. The recalls before were at least trying to capture airbags around the defective incidents and in areas where the environment was at play.  As loose as the prior recalls were, what is the justification for this new series of recalls?

The recall previously was limited to Hawaii, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on the premise humidity is a contributing factor.

Chrysler (just officially renamed FCA US LLC), notes the inflators in its vehicles are not from the same batch as ones involved in fatalities in the vehicles of other automakers.

"More than 1,000 laboratory tests have been performed on these components," Chrysler says in its statement. "All deployed as intended, but FCA US continues to study the suspect inflators, which are not used in the company's current production vehicles."

Food Quality

Quality is important for fresh foods as well as for manufactured goods. Cases of E. coli outbreaks are becoming more common, at least to my perception. I would be interested in hearing from experts in the food management industry about common methods to prevent E.coli outbreaks and how those controls may be failing.

An interesting fact is that due to the time required for an outbreak to become identifiable and the perishable nature of the food, sometimes the evidence is lost.

California is the source of E. coli-tainted iceberg lettuce suspected to have sickened 36 people in Michigan, officials said Thursday.

The culprit probably is industrial-size packages of iceberg lettuce sold to restaurants and institutions, according to the Michigan Department of Community Health.
Although lettuce is the "common link" among all the cases, the produce is so perishable that state agencies were not able to test packages produced during the outbreak's time frame, Holton said. So far, all tests for E. coli in lettuce have come back negative.