The fancy-pants Letchworth Hall Hotel in Hertfordshire, U.K., near London, was ordered to pay more than £12,000 after pleading guilty to two charges of poor food hygiene practice on Friday.

Hertford Magistrates’ Court heard that 49 of the 118 guests at the hotel in Letchworth Lane who had eaten a chicken liver pate starter had reported illness after the meal in September 2011.

Subsequently 22 cases of a Campylobacter infection were confirmed, including the bride and groom who both became ill while on honeymoon in Las Vegas. Symptoms of the infection included stomach cramps and diarrhea.

North Herts District Council (NHDC) received the initial complaint five days after the wedding on September 8 and two environmental health officers visited the hotel to investigate.

The officers established that the chef had cooked the chicken livers to 60 degrees C, in breach of hotel policy and Food Standards Agency guidance which recommends a temperature of 75 degrees C to prevent food poisoning.

Letchworth Hall Hotel admitted undercooking the pate, rendering it unsafe for human consumption, and failing to ensure the kitchen followed the company food safety policy and procedures, including a failure of management to uphold those procedures.

When someone asks, What’s wrong with Kansas, I reply with, What’s wrong with Canada?

My journalism friends have long complained that the flow of information about public health – public anything – is a tinkle in Canada compared to other places.

According to a report in The Province, British Columbia.'s Liberal government is poised to further choke off the flow of public information, this time with respect to disease outbreaks.

The Animal Health Act, expected to be passed into law by month's end, expressly over-rides B.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, duct-taping shut the mouths of any citizens - or journalists - who would publicly identify the location of an outbreak of agriculture-related disease such as bird flu.

"A person must refuse, despite the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, to disclose . . . information that would reveal that a notifiable or reportable disease is or may be present in a specific place or on or in a specific vehicle," Section 16 of the Act reads.

It is quite conceivable that the provincial government, in the event of a disease outbreak at a farm, would delay releasing a warning in order to protect the farm in question or the industry it's part of.

In that event, should you as a citizen hear about the outbreak, or if you were an employee at an affected farm, you would be breaking the law by speaking publicly about it or bringing concerns to the media.

Will the law also apply to farms identified as sources of foodborne illness, like tomatoes from a B.C. greenhouse, or BSE traced to a B.C. farm, or stupidity traced to a government bureaucrat who lives on a farm?

The proposed law will probably have no practical effect because there is no animal disease or foodborne illness traced to B.C. farms; it’s all imported.

Canada, where complacency rules.

This would be a stirring endorsement for the Yosemite Sam mudflap industry if they existed for bikes.

But mudguards are readily available and are being touted by Norwegian and Swedish researchers as a way to reduce the risk of gastroenteritis related to bicycle races over courses with animal feces and mud.

The researchers write that Birkebeinerrittet is one of the world’s largest mountain bike races, taking place every year in the mountains in the southeast of Norway. The track is 95 km and around 19,000 participants are expected each year, divided into two races on consecutive days.

The Birkebeinerrittet track crosses an area where many grazing animals are present. Feces from grazing animals can contain enteropathogens and in wet and muddy conditions, mud splashes to the face during cycling may cause infection.

In 2009, the race took place under severe weather conditions, with heavy rainfall during the previous days. That year, an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness affected an estimated 3,800 participants, resulting in one of the largest diarrheal outbreaks in Norway, with significant media coverage and a heavy socioeconomic toll (more than 2500 days of absence from work). A retrospective
cohort study using web-based questionnaires was performed after the race in order to identify any potential common sources. No single food or drink item was identified as the source; however, mud splashes to the face were associated with gastrointestinal illness.

The study also showed that spitting out the first sip when drinking from a bottle or ‘camelbak’ and using mudguards had some protective effect.

Based on the findings from the 2009 study, the organizers recommended that the participants use mudguards and spit out the first sip of water from drinking bottles during the race in 2010. They also implemented environmental control measures, by draining parts of the track and spreading gravel in the sareas more prone to get muddy, and asking sheepowners to gather their animals earlier than the previous year, so fewer animals were close to the tracks.

In 2010 around 19,000 people registered to take part in the races that took place on 27–28 August. Although slightly colder, weather conditions were similar to the previous year. The average temperature was 13.1 C in 2009 and 10.1 C in 2010. Rainfall during the 5 days preceding the races was 43.7 mm in 2009 and 36.6 mm in 2010.

A retrospective cohort study using web-based questionnaires was conducted to measure the use of preventive measures and to assess risk factors associated with gastrointestinal illness. A 69% response rate was achieved and 11,721 records analyzed, with 572 (attack rate 4.9%) matching the case definition, i.e. participants reporting diarrhea within 10 days of race. There was a clear increase in the use of mudguards (96.7% reported access to/receiving information on preventive measures) and a significant decrease in gastrointestinal illness. This may indicate that the measures have been effective and should be considered, both in terms of environmental control measures as well as individual measures.

The complete abstract and paper are available from Epidemiology and Infection at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8577676

The French published their own series of detailed foodborne disease surveillance papers, and did it the day before the Americans.

A special issue of the Bulletin épidémiologique hebdomadaire (BEH) and the Bulletin épidémiologique Anses-DGAL, May 2012, number 50, Microbiological hazards in food products of animal origin: monitoring and evaluation contains 13 research papers.

In an editorial, the author writes foodborne illness surveillance is an important and complex issue. Important because tens of thousands of cases of foodborne outbreaks are still reported each year, complicated by the difficulty in assessing and controlling the risk throughout the supply chain -- from the farm to the fork.

Thanks to Albert Amgar for passing along the information and some translation.

The abstracts are available at http://www.anses.fr/bulletin-epidemiologique/Documents/BEP-mg-BE50.pdf and are available in English. They are also available in the daily bites-l listserv and at bites.ksu.edu.