Is La Cosa Nostra running food safety summits? 'If you don't pay us, you will have an "accident"' messages were sent and the administrators forgot to grease the wheels?

Or a secret conspiracy, poisoning themselves so they would have casus belli to declare war on gastroenteritis?

We may never know but it's certainly funny - an almost 'flying all over the Eastern seaboard for a week to raise Earth Day awareness' the way the head of the EPA did level of hilarity.

The conference in Baltimore attracted 1,300 top food safety officials - and then a bunch of them got sick. An inspection found some condensation dripping from an ice machine but otherwise no source was found.

Possible Food Poisoning Sickens 100 at Safety Summit By JoNel Aleccia, NBC