Don Schaffner, guest barfblogger: Biking for food security
As I've blogged before, I'm interested in the intersection of disparate ideas.
Today's intersection relates to the good folks at Barf Blog, and the cross-country adventures of a fellow food safety microbiologist.
Many professional food safety scientist readers of this blog may know Dr. Tom Montville. He's the coauthor of Food Microbiology: An Introduction and co-edited the first two editions of Food Microbiology: Fundamentals and Frontiers.
But the reasons for this post don't have too much to do with food safety, although they do have a lot to do with food, more specifically food security. And when I say food security, I don't mean defending the food supply against bioterrorism, although this is also one of Dr. Montville’s research interests. No, when I say food security, I mean it in the original sense, "availability of food and one's access to it".
Tom, you see, has managed to combine two of his passions: food, and riding his bicycle. He is currently riding his bicycle across the county (west coast to east coast) to raise funds for Elijah's Promise, which began as a small soup kitchen and has since become a multi-service agency that moves people out of poverty.
And (here’s the intersection) he's about to pass within 30 miles of Manhattan, Kansas!
I find his efforts very inspiring, and I hope you will too. Check out his blog to learn more.
Viruses
Today's New York Times has a great article on viruses, inspired by writer Natalie Angier's post-New Year's Eve norovirus encounter.
In it she writes that viruses are:
infectious parasitic agents tiny enough to pass through a microfilter that would trap bacteria and other microbes, tiny enough to fit millions on board a single fleck of spit. All viruses have at their core compact genetic instructions for making more viruses, some of the booklets written in DNA, others in the related nucleic language of RNA. Our cells have the means to read either code, whether they ought to or not. Encasing the terse viral genomes are capsids, protective coats constructed of interlocking protein modules and decorated with some sort of docking device, a pleat of just the right shape to infiltrate a particular cell. Rhinoviruses dock onto receptors projecting from the cells of our nasal passages, while hepatitis viruses are shaped to exploit portholes on liver cells.
I've been a big fan of viruses for a long time. I read a book in high school (Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC) which led me into molecular biology and genetics, where virology became my favourite undergraduate course. Angier succinctly summarizes why I think viruses are so cool:
They depend on our cells to manufacture every detail of their offspring, to print up new copies of the core instruction booklets, to fabricate the capsid jackets and to deliver those geometrically tidy newborn virions to fresh host shores. Through us, viruses can transcend mere chemistry and lay claim to biology.
Like cockroaches? Hit up some Irish businesses
This week's infosheet is all about pest control in food businesses. The inspiration for the sheet was a report out of Ireland that some upscale restaurants in a popular Dublin mall were closed due to infestation.
FSAI chief executive said Dr John O'Brien was quoted as saying "Catering for increased turnover during the Christmas festivities can result in commercial caterers, restaurants and retailers working flat out to meet demands."
Dr. O'Brien goes on to say that pest control and proper storage are especially important around the holidays as special functions may mean large quantities of food are often prepared several hours in advance, increasing pressure on refrigeration storage, meaning procedures should be monitored carefully.
Here's the infosheet -- enjoy the giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches
McDonald's food handler in Calgary has hepatitis A
A food handler at a McDonald's restaurant in Calgary, AB was diagnosed with hepatitis A this week, resulting a risk of exposure to thousands of customer who ate there between October 1 and 23.
There has been a bunch of coverage locally and nationally. While watching Canada AM this morning I caught this on the Crawl; "Thousands exposed to Hep A at Calgary McDonald's" The Calgary Herald, and Calgary Sun both covered the story today.
From the Herald:
Ron Thompkins, who drives a semi-trailer truck in the area and eats at that McDonald's almost everyday, plans to get vaccinated. "This really sucks," he said, explaining that he's concerned about the cleanliness of McDonald's in general. "The bathrooms are very dirty. The toilets are filthy. It needs to be cleaned more."
I think it's interesting that Thompkins brings up that he's concerned about how often the bathrooms are cleaned, and still eats at the McDonald's almost every day. I'm not surprised, likely the safety of the food at this location was never in question for Tompkins until the hep A news hit -- that's an assumption I'm making based on him eating there often. Now he's been told about the risk and he's voicing something he noticed but didn't think was a problem. This is one of the problems food safety communicators face -- though around 1 in 4 people get sick each year, events like these are still quite rare, and only when they occur do some individuals (consumers, staff, managers) really take notice.
For today's iFSN infosheet sheet, we used the story as the hook, and focused on what food handlers can do. Hep a is more problematic for businesses than other pathogens because staff can have and pass on the virus without showing symptoms, and even if the food handler is a handwashing superstar you are going to have a line up outside your restaurant (or at the health unit/clinic) while patrons get their post-exposure shots. So maybe the answer for some businesses is to require (and possibly pay for) hep A vaccines for food handlers. Staff turnover, lack of protection from other bugs and the cost are problems, but vaccinations may be worth requiring to keep your company out of the newspaper.
In the land of the Conchords
I've been in New Zealand for the past week hanging out with our friends at the New Zealand Food Safety Authority. Last week I attended and spoke at the NZFSA's annual meeting in windy Wellington (check out my slides here), and will be here for another week meeting with NZFSA staff and some industry folk.
My talk focused on the impact of electronic communication on how food safety is discussed in the ether of the internet, and how industry and government should be aware and ready to respond and use the same methods. I also spoke about iFSN's infosheets, and how we are attempting to use the same channels of info to get food safety messages out to the front lines in a compelling way.
A major topic at NZFSA's conference was what the food industry, with support from NZFSA, are doing to reduce the relatively high rates of campylobacterosis within the country. As I walked through Wellington this afternoon, I saw a huge poster of Flight of the Conchords -- a Kiwi comedy duo who has made it big in the US and Canada on HBO -- and thought that maybe one of their catchy tunes focusing on food safety might be a cool way to create a dialogue around food safety with a different set of target food handlers. Maybe something along the lines of Business Time.
Also had the chance to do some sailing (thanx to Philippa, Rod, Chris and Roger -- and I didn't puke this time, so that was pretty awesome.)
NFL discusses poop
I'm not talking about the Buffalo Bills' offense. The NFL has according to this story discussed a problem with bird poop falling on patrons and into their food and beverages, in Cincinnati's Paul Brown Stadium.
Operators of Paul Brown Stadium want permission from the city to kill birds the birds by allowing stadium employees who are familiar with firearms be allowed to shoot birds a few days prior to an event, adding that company officials believe the shooting to be a “cost-effective way to get this problem under control.”
The bird problem reportedly solved itself initially, with fan noise on game days driving the birds away, said Bob Bedinghaus, the Bengals’ director of development. But the birds apparently have adapted. In fact, pigeon poop has become such a big problem around the National Football League, he said, that officials have discussed it at league meetings and stadium management meetings.
Poop falling into food and on patrons is probably not a good idea.
Augusta's Castleberry plant
The US FDA issued a warning a couple of days ago, saying that over 700,000 lbs of Castleberry's
canned meat products might contain Clostridium botulinum
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this morning, investigators have linked hot dog chili sauce produced in Augusta to the first outbreak of botulism from commercially canned foods in nearly four decades.
The problem may be linked to a retort machine that wasn't working properly.
I drove through Augusta last week to snap a picture of the hallowed Augusta National's entrance. Eating food that might contain bot toxin is probably not good way to cure the yips.
Yawn. White House forms import safety group
President Bush met with the import safety working group yesterday and stressed,
"I've called together key members of my Cabinet to review the procedures in place, the regulations in place, the practices in place to make sure that our food supply remains the safest in the world. The world is changing, and in order to make sure that we can continue to have the confidence of our consumers, that we will continually review practices and procedures to assure the American consumer."
Uh oh. The world's safest food supply? Where's the data to back up that claim? Politicians in Canada, U.K., France, Australia and New Zealand have all at some point claimed that theirs is the world's safest food supply.
Some of them are wrong.
And while it's important to focus on imports, don't forget to keep the home fires burning. As I said in USA Today this morning,
While it may be "psychologically comforting to blame others," what the U.S. needs is farm-to-fork food safety, said Douglas Powell, director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University. "Imports are a problem. So is food produced in the U.S. One should not distract from another."
Killing the regulator
A N.Y. Times editorial today said that "the Chinese government’s extraordinary decision to execute its chief food and drug regulator for taking bribes and allowing the sale of tainted drugs is a perfect example of all that is wrong with China’s approach to regulation."
The editorial also says that "the scope of the problem is too big, too complex and too urgent for the United States — with $300 billion worth of Chinese imports a year — to wait for Beijing to act. American importers need to provide the first line of defense. Companies like Wal-Mart should send inspectors regularly to visit the factories of Chinese suppliers, to ensure that products are up to acceptable standards. Ultimately the American government will have to enforce these norms."
That echoes what I told Elizabeth Weise in USA Today last Wednesday:
"Whether your food comes from down the street or around the globe, you want to verify that producers and processors are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing."
The Wall Street Journal also ran a great piece today on food safety being used as a protectionist trade barrier.
Safety standards have a history of being used as trade barriers, and observers in China and the U.S. worry that a pattern may be reappearing. The back and forth of blocked imports looks increasingly like a trade battle, one in which accusations of endangering consumers have taken the place of charges of unfair competition and dumping.
"We are likely to see these requirements increasingly being used, and abused, as a trade barrier," says Leora Blumberg, an international-trade adviser based in Hong Kong for the law firm Heller Ehrman LLP. Ms. Blumberg says that a series of global trade pacts has reduced import duties across the board and restrained the ability of nations to block trade through other means.
I adopted a similar line in the Washington Post yesterday:
"(I've) watched food safety long enough -- 15 years -- to know that one country's scientific standard is another's non-tariff trade barrier. Science gets used and abused all the time."
And the L.A. Times this morning:
"Food safety issues are often used for political means in times of strained trade relations. … Politically, it's a standard tactic. They'll say it is a food safety issue, but really it's a political issue."
100 posts on barfblog
I do news.
And now, with 100 posts on barfblog, and food safety news as prominent as ever -- that's me doing an interview for the Today show on NBC while driving back from Florida on Wednesday in a shirt borrowed from a reporter -- it's time for a recap.
The Food Safety Network -- the FSnet listserv -- began in my basement office while I was a graduate student. In the aftermath of the Jan. 1993 Jack-in-the-Box outbreak of E. coli O157:H7, I started sharing electronic media accounts of food safety issues with some of my colleagues through the wonders of e-mail. I had an undergraduate degree in molecular biology, had worked for years as a journalist, and as communications thingy for the Information Technology Research Centre at the University of Waterloo.
By 1994, the e-mail distribution list was growing, and we undertook a research project to see if the daily FSnet mailings actually helped front-line workers.
This was before Al Gore invented the Internet, so it was nearly impossible to get e-mail access for the various government agencies participating in the trial. However, within months, the information superhighway was commonplace, my daily e-mail was converted to a listserv distribution system, and the daily FSnet postings went out beginning in May, 1995. FSnet and the other listservs are still available to whoever wants them in their e-mail; instructions are available here.
FSnet archives are available at foodsafety.ksu.edu dating back to Jan. 1, 1996. In Sept. 1996, I got a professoring job, and my lab began to expand. In 1998, the Food Safety Network website was launched, and by 2000, I had enough people working on news and in my lab that we started keeping track of things.
For the last five years, we have collected approximately 25,000 media accounts, scientific papers, reports, press releases and now blog postings related to all things food safety, each and every year. That's 125,000 individual items. About half of those items are edited and posted in the four daily listservs -- FSnet, Agnet, Animalnet and FFnet.
After starting on a Mac computer in my basement, I'm now working with a 
small group of individuals passionately committed to reducing the incidence of foodborne illness. Wireless instead of dial-up means that we work in our living rooms or rooms around the world. And we have nicer Macs now.
From produce to peanut butter and pet food, imports and outbreaks, my colleagues and students provide commentary about food safety issues from farm to fork. We want to make food safety a pop-culture phenomenon and change the way the world thinks about food. Through barfblog, we comment daily on food safety happenings including such categories such as celebrity barf and the "yuck" factor. Through donteatpoop.com, we encourage people to wash their hands, and not eat poop.
The first 100 posts on barfblog are just a beginning. And thanks to Bill Marler for his on-going support of our blogging efforts.
Organic foods and food safety: separate, antagonistic, or symbiotic?
That was the title of a talk I gave at the International Association for Food Protection annual meeting this morning in Orlando.
I spoke about the evolution and marketing of organic, genetically-engineered free and local food production systems, and commented on the rise of food pornography. The slides are available here. The abstract for a paper Katija Blaine and I prepared in 2004 on organic and conventional food safety systems is available here.
The formal abstract is below.
Douglas A. Powell, Katija Morley, Stacey Cahill, Benjamin C. Chapman and Amy L. Hubbell
Scientific Director and Associate Professor, International Food Safety Network, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 66506, U.S.
Fresh fruits and vegetables have been identified as a significant source of microbial foodborne illness for at least the past decade. Outbreaks have been linked to both conventionally and organically grown produce.
Previous studies have identified gaps between U.S. Food and Drug Administration on-farm food safety guidelines and organic standards in terms of microbial food safety. Although microbial food safety standards are often achieved indirectly under organic production, organic standards are process-based, and have nothing do to with end-product safety. Specific omissions include worker hygiene and recommendations for safe use of processing and irrigation water. Further, any guideline or standard is meaningless without robust verification. The production of safe food is the responsibility of everyone in the farm-to-fork chain -- conventional or organic -- and food safety, especially with fresh produce, must begin on the farm.
Petting zoos: Guidelines are there, will they reach the front-line?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Protection and the National Association of State Public Health Veterinarians have published an updated, Compendium of Measures to Prevent Disease Associated With Animals in Public Settings.
The package includes guidelines for animals in school settings, handwashing recommendations, suggested visitor handouts, and information for vendors and staff.
Sounds great. The challenge is, how to compel individual petting zoo operators to actually follow best practices, short of being sued by Bill Marler.
Meet David Acheson: Your stomach's best friend
That's the title of a great Rick Weiss piece in the July 4 Washington Post about U.S. Food and Drug Administration's assistant commissioner for food protection -- or, in the media lingo that he apparently abhors, "food safety czar."
The story says that climbing the ranks in public health can be a frustrating business because, as many on the front lines of public health know, nobody knows your name when bird flu is under control, when pets are not poisoned, when bacteria-laden burgers aren't making kids sick.
The story also notes that Acheson eats a lot of organic food -- not because he thinks it's safer, but because his wife works at an organic food co-op in Clarksville (I hope he's checking on the microbial safety procedures because organic is a food production system, not a food safety system) and that he watches a lot of the Food Network. I wonder if Acheson notices as many food safety errors on the TV cooking shows as we did (and I really want to update that study; any potential grad students who want to watch TV?).
The story goes on to conclude by citing Acheson as saying that education and creative training will also be crucial. The story says, Chinese-language Food Network, anyone?
Chinese Don't Eat Poop shirt, anyone?
Veggie Booty suppliers?
Robert's American Gourmet Inc.'s is blaming Chinese seasoning suppliers for the Salmonella Wandsworth contamination in their Veggie Booty pirate snacks.
The company reports that there was a positive sample of Salmonella Wandsworth found in the seasoning, though no reports from health officials have confirmed this yet. Newsday is reporting that yesterday afternoon the great lab folks at the Minnesota Department of Ag reported finding Salmonella in the snack product, but didn't suggest the source.
Reprints of the Washington Post story this morning suggest that the Chinese ingredients are to blame. But without the data, maybe this is just a convenient shifting of the problem to a country that has been in the news a lot lately.
The shift of blame to suppliers has happened recently with a ground beef recall as well -- both of these examples arise from processors who should know what their input suppliers do for food safety as part of HACCP prerequisite plans.
Natural, local, organic -- what's in a (French) label?
What does "food safety" mean?
To me and the other two thousand food safety geeks who will converge in Florida at the annual International Association for Food Protection meeting next week, food safety means keeping disease-causing microbes (along with chemical and physical hazards) out of food.
Ask your neighbor, and they'll say food safety is something to do with nutrition, allergies, calories, and anything else.
So if food safety is a broad term, is food safety also a term that is broadly manipulated?
Despite the protestations of grocers and manufacturers and producers, food is already extensively marketed and differentiated on safety -- or at least perceptions of safety.
The California Marketing Agreement covering leafy greens is talking about some sort of label representing certification on bags of lettuce and spinach. Is that implying safety?
Cauliflower, with a Primus Lab sticker that says, "When food safety counts," found in a large Guelph, Ontario, supermarket last year is pushing something.
Organic, natural, hormone-free, additive free: it's all directed at implied safety.
Below are a couple of images of organic almond milk purchased in France while Amy and I were touring about.
The approximate translation of the small print is:
"Bjorg’s commitments
- Bjorg chooses organic agriculture, a mode of cultivation that uses natural methods and processing that forbids all artificial flavorings and colors.
- To take advantage of the best part of nature, Bjorg creates recipes to offer you unique nutritional virtues.
For your security: strict controls
From production through to marketing, these organic products are controlled by certifying organizations that are independently registered. This product is certified by CCPAE Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 612-61E-08007 Barcelona."
Forget the implications. Provide meaningful measures of microbial food safety and American consumers, already inundated with food safety stories of the microbial kind, will buy it.
Thank you, Sarah Wilson
Canada Day (July 1) means beer, barbecues and baby back ribs.
For the Government of Canada, it means, Food Safety Can Be Fun!
"The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), Health Canada and the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education (the Partnership) invite media to attend Food Safety Can Be Fun!, an exciting, interactive food safety event."
Maybe. Or maybe it was as numbing as the June 21, 2007 press release from Health Canada reminding Canadians of "four simple steps they can take to protect themselves from food-borne illnesses: clean, separate, cook and chill."
Food safety is not simple. And Dr. Sarah Wilson has been helping me spread that evidence-based message since joining my lab, the Food Safety Network, in 2002. When consumers, reporters, and agencies like Health Canada, CFIA and the Partnership had food safety questions that went outside the paternalistic cook, clean, chill and separate, they turned to Sarah and her staff in the Food Safety Network information centre.
Sarah has now moved on to a new job, and hopefully much greener pastures. When I left Guelph for Kansas State University in 2006, I publicly stated that FSN was expanding, and that Guelph and Kansas would work together. My new administration agreed; the folks at Guelph responded they wanted to separate -- and maybe cleanse by cleaning, cooking and chilling -- and that there should be two Food Safety Networks.
There is one International Food Safety Network; one barfblog; one donteatpoop.com. We will miss Sarah Wilson.
Tyson hucksterism?
Tyson Foods Inc. is the latest food company to spend a lot of money on feel-good advertising designed to enhance earnings. At a New York press conference yesterday, Tyson Chief Executive Dick Bond was quoted as saying he believes the conversion to antibiotic-free fresh chicken should "have a positive effect on our earnings," but he offered no projection.
At the news conference, Tyson showed a commercial from that campaign in which an announcer says serving antibiotic-free chicken should help parents to "feel good about feeding your family." The Wall Street Journal reported that the products will be more expensive but the company provided no premium estimate beyond asserting that they would be "affordable for mainstream consumers."
The move is aimed at eliminating the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in Tyson brand chicken. You probably can't read the label below, but there is a full-page version in today's USA Today that I saw while stranded at the Philadelphia airport. It says:
Chicken raised without antibiotics
No hormones administered
No artificial ingredients
Except Tyson will still use therapeutic antibiotics. And in the small print, it says:
Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones in chicken.
Who says food isn't marketed based on perceptions of food safety? Now if someone would start marketing based on microbial food safety.
The government isn't your mom
A story today in the National Post reports that Canadian farmers have filed four class-action suits seeking compensation for losses of more than $9-billion since 2003 due primarily to government mismanagement of BSE.
C'mon food industry, the government isn't your mom. You should not continually rely on regulators to protect you from everything, and expect them to know the risk associated with your business better than you do. The government is there to support public health and create an infrastructure to produce safe food and control disease.
Cameron Pallett, the lawyer representing the cattle farmers was quoted today as saying that the
Canadian government lost track of cattle imported from the UK in the 1980s and 90s and that "the government released a report in 2006 that said the likely cause of Canada's BSE crisis was one of these cows -- whoops." Mr. Pallett also goes on to say it took 18 months for Canada to act on a World Health Organization recommendation in 1996 to ban feed containing cattle or sheep remnants.
So why didn't the cattle industry force a defacto feed ban by requiring that their input suppliers not use risky products? That could have been done without the government's help -- farmers, not the government, actually bought the feed.
Even if Pallet and his clients are correct about the mismanagement, how many other cows with the BSE were not counted or couldn't be counted? We still know little about BSE appearance and transmission. How well has the industry been implementing feed restrictions? The Edmonton Journal suggested not very well in 2005 (CFIA found mislabeled or problem feed during inspections) -- but went on to also blame the government.
It's garbage to suggest that the economic impact of BSE in Canada can be blamed primarily on one player. Like many food safety issues everyone from farm to fork had a role to play.
It's expected that farmers, processors, distributors, retailers and food service operators know the risks that come with their raw ingredients, processes and final products and how to manage them. If there are problems, it's industry's job to fix them. And if they can't, they face the repercussions.
FDA launches tomato initiative
The FDA announced yesterday that it will begin a multi-year Tomato Safety Initiative to reduce the incidence of tomato-related foodborne illness in the United States.
FDA investigators in coordination with their respective state counterparts will visit tomato farms and packing facilities in Florida and Virginia to assess food safety practices and use of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs).
It's clear that the FDA thinks, as do I, that the produce industry must do more to ensure that everyone from farm-to-fork recognizes food safety risks and take concrete actions to reduce the risks of dangerous microorganisms. And in the absence of verification from within, government is stepping in.
Regulators and the industry in the past have have released food safety guidelines for tomatoes, but there is a lack of verification; it is unclear if all growers are actually following the guidelines. The FDA announcement is a good step, but the industry should have been able to do this themselves.
Guidelines are a first step, but we need more creative ways to compel everyone, from the person harvesting to the person distributing, to take food safety seriously, even in the absence of an outbreak.
A list of North American tomato outbreaks can be found here.
Check out our papers below:
Luedtke, A., Chapman, B. and Powell, D.A. 2003. Implementation and analysis of an on-farm food safety program for the production of greenhouse vegetables. Journal of Food Protection. 66:485-489.
Powell, D.A., Bobadilla-Ruiz, M., Whitfield, A. Griffiths, M.G.. and Luedtke, A. 2002. Development, implementation and analysis of an on-farm food safety program for the production of greenhouse vegetables in Ontario, Canada. Journal of Food Protection. 65: 918- 923.
We also published a book chapter entitled Implementing On-Farm Food Safety Programs in Fruit and Vegetable Cultivation, in the recently published, Improving the Safety of Fresh Fruit and Vegetables
Food safety is not simple
Bill Warren of CBS 7 television in Texas reports that no one has to get sick from E. coli O157:H7 contaminated meat, as long as, "you keep everything clean, and cook the meat thoroughly."
Cross-contamination and cooking a hamburger to 160F are not simple tasks. Most of food safety is not simple.
Warren also says that plastic cutting boards are safer than wooden, and that if the juice is still pink, "it's not done yet. If it's clear, it's done." Not so.
The only way to ensure that hamburger has reached such a temperature is to use a tip probe, instant-read digital meat thermometer. Research has shown that colour is a lousy indicator of doneness -- some burgers turn brown prematurely before 70 degrees C is reached, others can remain pinkish well beyond 70.
To further complicate matters, an individual hamburger will cook at different rates throughout the burger depending on thickness and fat content.
In one study it was found that when the outer temperature of hamburgers reached a temperature of 71.1ºC, the inside was only at a temperature of 56.7ºC. To check a burger, grab it with tongs, insert the thermometer sideways into the middle of the burger and wait a few seconds. As Pete Snyder of the Hospitality Institute in Minnesota has documented, when done correctly, one can observe the hot temperature at the surface and, as the probe is pushed into the hamburger, the temperature goes down. As the probe passes through the cold spot, the temperature goes up again. It is critically important that temperature not be taken with a stationary thermometer, but in a dynamic manner by pushing through the hamburger, so that a few Salmonella or E. coli in the middle of the hamburger are reduced.
Humble pie tops the menu for TV chef
Scotland on Sunday reports that Nick Nairn, one of the UK's foremost celebrity chefs, who has cooked venison for the Queen's birthday, pops up regularly on television screens and charges guests up to £300 a day to master the culinary arts has been forced to eat an exquisitely prepared portion of humble pie by a team of health and hygiene inspectors.
Unannounced visits to the chef's cook school at Port of Menteith near Stirling between 2003 and last year resulted in no fewer than 13 recommendations to improve standards of cleanliness, equipment and food storage.
Perhaps most embarrassing of all, officials invited the Aston Martin-driving chef and his staff to attend a cleanliness seminar.
Nairn last night insisted the criticisms were minor and did not affect food safety, and revealed his cook school was shutting for a week this summer for a major refurbishment that would exceed health standards.
In 2004, my laboratory reported that, based on 60 hours of detailed viewing of television cooking shows, an unsafe food handling practice occurred about every four minutes, and that for every safe food handling practice observed, we observed 13 unsafe practices. The most common errors were inadequate hand washing and cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat foods.
Bathrooms without borders
Massachusetts lawmaker James Valle, Democrat, has filed legislation that would require all new public bathrooms built in the State to have doors that open outward without doorknobs.
Valle was quoted as telling ABC News, "It makes pretty good sense. You go into a men's or lady's room, you clean yourself up, you wash your hands, and then you have to touch a doorknob that everyone else who just used the bathroom touched. It could be seen as paranoia, but it makes perfect sense to me."
Valle is carrying the legislation on behalf of a friend and fellow member of the Massachusetts National Gaurd, Douglas Flavin, who brought up his sanitary "pet peeve" during weekend training together.
Flavin was quoted as saying in an interview that, "You wash your hand and you've got to grab the knob that some guy just had his pissy hand all over. It's been annoying me for some time."
Valle said the law, if signed by the governor's pen, would not require existing bathrooms to retrofit their doors to remove doorknobs and re-hang the doors -- a grandfather clause that might stave off opposition from the building unions. "Maybe the the doorknob lobby, but not the builders," he said.
Bathroom innovations can be seen in many places, from the all-in-one handwashing units frequently found in Kansas and Missouri (and have serious problems)
.jpg)
to the retractable toilet seat in a woman's washroom in a Marseille, France restaurant.
Visit donteatpoop.com for an inventory of handwashing materials.
Letterman: Researchers advise, don't eat poop
As part of the small town news segment of the David Letterman Show on CBS Monday, June, 4, 2007, Dave told Paul, "Here's good advice, take a look at the headline, 'Researchers advise, don't eat poop.'"
The story comes from extensive wire coverage about the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University in recent months, and can be summarized by:
Don’t-eat-poop T-shirts, barfblog, and a group of individuals passionately committed to making the world's food safer. That's the International Food Safety Network (iFSN) at Kansas State University.
Dr. Douglas Powell , scientific director of iFSN leads a team of researchers who want to make food safety a pop-culture phenomenon and change the way the world thinks about food, from farm-to-fork. They comment daily on food safety happenings at.jpg)
barfblog, which includes categories such as celebrity barf and yuck factor. At the height of the E. coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak in 2006, Powell noted that people who got sick were eating cow feces, and advised, Don't Eat Poop. T-shirts to encourage proper handwashing -- and not to eat poop -- are available in English, French, Chinese and Spanish.
For further information:
foodsafety.ksu.edu
donteatpoop.com
http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu
Thanks to Dan Thomson at K-State for alerting us to the Letterman broadcast.
Learning from animals
Four-year-old Erin Jacobs of Jeffersonville, Penn. went to Merrymead Farm in 2000 to pet the animals and learn about farm life. Her learning experience included contracting E. coli O157:H7 and an eventual kidney transplant.
At the 2005 Florida Strawberry Festival, a 7-year-old Tampa girl and a 53-year-old St. Petersburg woman who visited the petting zoo acquired E. coli O157:H7, required extensive medical treatment and settled lawsuits for millions of dollars.
Last month, several cases of cryptosporidium, which causes severe diarrhea, were diagnosed across Greater Manchester (U.K.) after people visited local farms on educational trips.
There have been over 20 outbreaks of severe illness from petting zoos in the past decade.
And now, Canadian researchers have reported that operators and visitors at petting zoos in Ontario aren't doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Scott Weese, a clinical studies professor at the University of Guelph, and colleagues report in the July 1 edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases that in a study of 36 petting zoos in Ontario between May and October of 2006, they observed infrequent hand washing, food sold and consumed near the animals, and children being allowed to drink bottles or suck on pacifiers in the petting area.
So seven years after 159 people, mainly children, were thought to be sickened with E. coli O157:H7 traced to a goat and a sheep at the 1999 Western Fair in London, Ontario, and seven years after all Canadian fairs were urged to adopt 46 recommendations to enhance petting zoo safety, many are still doing a lousy job.
In commenting on the Florida settlement last month, Seattle attorney Bill Marler said, "It's a hard lesson for petting zoos and county fairs to learn, but they really need to do more than what they have been doing."
Weese noted that risk can be significantly reduced by locating hand-washing stations at the exit of a petting zoo, posting signs promoting good hygiene and educating people about the risks of bringing food, beverages or items that may end up in a child’s mouth into the zoo.
Such measures echo recommendations issued in 2001 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unfortunately these reports and recommendations do not offer advice on how to ensure that fair operators are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing.
In 2003, U.S. researchers, in a study of livestock at 29 county and 3 large state agricultural fairs, found E. coli O157:H7 in 13.8 per cent of beef cattle, 5.9 per cent of dairy cattle, 3.6 per cent of pigs, 5.2 per cent of sheep, and 2.8 per cent of goats. Over seven percent of pest fly pools also tested positive for E. coli O157:H7.
The bad bugs are there and handwashing may not be enough to get rid of them.
The E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 82 people in 2002 at the Lane County Fair in Oregon appears to have spread through the air inside the goat and sheep expo hall. In a case-controlled study, health investigators found that the percentage of sick people who washed their hands after leaving the Lane County animal barns -- 31 percent -- was only slightly lower than the percentage of healthy people who washed their hands -- 36 percent. In other words those who washed their hands were at almost the same risk of contracting E. coli, O157:H7. One child sickened at the fair, 23-month-old Carson Walter of Eugene, spent a month at Doernbecher Children's Hospital before coming home.
These learning experiences raise questions: how best to motivate fair managers to provide petting zoos that are microbiologically safe? Should the urban public be allowed to interact with livestock at all? Should petting zoos be inspected, as restaurants are, and the results displayed?
Prof. Hugh Pennington of the U.K. has gone so far as to say that children under five (who are more vulnerable because of their still-developing immune systems) should be banned from visiting livestock farms because of the serious risk of acquiring E. coli O157:H7 infection from farm animals. Such a ban already exists in Sweden.
There is much to learn from interacting with animals, farms, the world. The challenge is to do so in a microbiologically safe manner.
Douglas Powell is scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University
foodsafety.ksu.edu
dpowell@ksu.edu
Spinach (leafy green), worse than the green leaf
Marijuana has a bad public image in the US, no question there; but is spinach just as bad now?
In this article, all about the double standard of pot smoking, comes a resurfacing of the comparison of pot and spinach (not something I'd want to see if I was in the spinach business, well maybe, depends who your target market is I guess). Even fark.com has a link to the story, with the headline More people died last year from eating spinach than from smoking pot
This is another reference to spinach being worse than pot, following up on what Willie Nelson reportedly said last year after being charged with pot possession:
"It's a good thing I had a bag of Marijuana instead of a bag of spinach. I'd be dead by now."
This example is a reminder of what happens when you make people sick and don't have verification of all the things you are doing to reduce risk. An do a good job talking about all of your measures that are in place. People manage outbreaks all the time, fix problems that lead to them and get on with business.
The discussions that occur on the internet on outbreaks (especially the spinach and peanut butter outbreaks) provide a template for how rapidly interested consumers engaged in discussions around food safety. It used to be at the dinner table that these discussions happened, and damage was limited because it was small pockets of discussion. Now we have many people globally instantly discussing food safety issues and stories get big. Fast.
If I was involved of the risk management or communications at a spinach or leafy green company (or any company that makes a food product that might be linked to an outbreak) I'd have a plan together on how to manage these types of discussions, to get my messages out in places like youtube , myspace, facebook, wikipedia and the blogs (and use the comment fields to discuss and respond) and put a face on who is managing things. Be rapid, relevant, reliable and repeat your messages. I'd give my outbreak a myspace page, put my press conferences on youtube and generate a place for discussion where I could respond. And I'd be ready to do it now, not when the outbreak hits.
As demonstrated by the legs of this story, it's too late now.
Beer and biofuels
For Germany's beer drinkers, their beloved beverage -- often dubbed 'liquid bread' because it is a basic ingredient of many Germans' daily diet -- is, according to a wire story, getting more expensive as farmers abandon barley to plant other, subsidized crops for sale as environmentally friendly biofuels.
Helmut Erdmann, director of the family-owned Ayinger brewery in Aying, nestled between Bavaria's rolling hills and dark forests with the towering Alps on the far horizon, was quoted as saying, "Beer prices are a very emotional issue in Germany - people expect it to be as inexpensive as other basic staples like eggs, bread and milk. With the current spike in barley prices, we won't be able to avoid a price increase of our beer any longer."
The story notes that in the last two years, the price of barley has doubled to about US$270 per tonne as farmers plant more crops such as rapeseed and corn that can be turned into ethanol or biodiesel. As a result, the price for the key ingredient in beer -- barley malt, or barley that has been allowed to germinate -- has soared by more than 40 per cent, to around 385 euros or $520 per tonne, from around 270 euros a tonne two years ago.
Ben and I share the German's frustration.
As do many of us at the International Food Safety Network (iFSN).
.jpg)
Doggy dining
Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of Florida's so-called doggy dining law, a three-year experiment allowing pooches on restaurant patios.
Watching dogs in restaurants, stores and trains as we tour France has made us wonder if indeed 60 million Frenchmen can't be wrong.
Yet the other night during dinner at a patio table next to us, a couple sat with their ‘tween son and a tiny doggy that they passed from person to person until the food came. The Yorkie was then expected to sit calmly under a chair while his family ate. Within minutes he started yelping when a large stray wandered by looking for handouts. Most of the diners good-naturedly ignored the dog, but our neighbors, clear dog lovers, juggled patting the big beast, feeding table scraps to their own puppy, keeping the two from scuffling (surely the tiny dog would win), and finishing their dinners. The management softly discouraged feeding scraps to the stray, but there was no real effort made to dissuade him from joining the families.
No one seemed bothered.
But poop happens. Having to engage in athletic contortions to avoid dog poop in the narrow streets of Nîmes, Marseilles or Toulouse makes us recognize that dogs without yards, grass-lined sidewalks, and pooper-scoopers, quickly make an otherwise lovely city unsanitary. One pioneering doggy-friendly restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida discovered this when a canine guest had diarrhea during peak hours. The owner said, "Ultimately, we're here to serve people, not dogs," and reverted to the no-dogs-allowed camp.
As lawmakers in Oregon, Missouri, Washington, Florida, Chicago, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, New York City and San Diego have discovered, there are reasons why dogs and their companions should -- and should not -- be allowed to “have a brewski together, a hot dog together or whatever they want” as former governor Jeb Bush worded it a year ago in enacting Florida's legislation.
Florida appears to have considered the risks -- at least on paper. And although doggy dining may be convenient for a client, for the restaurant owner it’s not as simple.
Under the law, Florida cities are able to enact an ordinance allowing restaurants to apply for permission to open their patio doors to dogs, under the following conditions:
• food service employees must not touch, pet or handle dogs while serving food or beverages;
• food service employees must wash their hands promptly after touching, petting or handling dogs;
• patrons must be advised to wash their hands before eating and the restaurant must provide waterless hand sanitizer at each table;
• dogs must not come into contact with serving dishes, utensils and tableware or other items involved in food service (this is the only applicable law in France);
• dogs will not be allowed on chairs, tables or other furnishings.
• accidents involving dog waste must be cleaned immediately and the area must be sanitized;
• cats and other pets are not covered by the law; and,
• local governments can issue a fee to the restaurants for permit.
While the benefits for a dog-loving nation may seem apparent, there are any number of risks: tripping, biting, dog fights, barking, allergies, and the transfer of dangerous microorganisms such as E. coli, salmonella and cryptosporidium, among others. If it's difficult to get employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom, what about after touching a dog? And do public health inspectors, who already investigate both dog bites and restaurants in many cities, really need more of both without extra help?
The transfer of pathogens from dogs to humans (and vice-versa) is well-documented -- but not on restaurant patios. The outbreaks of foodborne illness just aren't there. A pre-rehab Britney Spears changing her baby's diaper on a restaurant table likely poses a greater risk.
As pet owners, we would likely choose to frequent restaurants that allow our (exceedingly well-behaved) dogs on the terrace, as we have done in the past.
If we were restaurant owners, we would want to know we weren’t serving poop, whether it came with the bags of spinach, was ground up in the beef that wasn’t sufficiently cooked, or transmitted on our patio by a pet. Further, we'd want to know the dog -- and more importantly the owner -- before they came anywhere near our patio.
The evidence suggests that dogs can and should be allowed on restaurant patios -- but only at the discretion of restaurant staff and only if staff and owners follow the Florida protocol.
Amy Hubbell and Douglas Powell are with the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University.
What's a consumer to do?
Adulterating food, recycling out-of-date foods, fake foods, they've been with humans for … a long time.
Madeleine Ferrières a professor of social history at the University of Avignon, France, writes in Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, first published in French in 2002, but translated into English in 2006, that "as soon as man learned how to write, he left evidence of his fear of poisoning himself with toxic food."
I started reading this book last year, but was stalled. Now, traveling in France with Amy and steeping myself in the history of the area, I've revisited it with a new vigor.
Audrey Brown reported on May 23, 2007 for the BBC that after working undercover for a couple of major U.K. supermarkets, she observed staff all too willing to change best-before dates, repackage dated food, and generally show a disregard for any potential health impacts.
But Ferrières reminds us in the introduction to the American edition that "the fear of poisoning has never been reserved for the world's great and powerful. It is a collective fear, shared socially. Furthermore, we still experience it."
Today it's produce, pet food and peanut butter.
In 1184 Toulouse, France, from where I write this, city leaders "took three archetypal measures regarding butchering: the profit of the butchers must be limited to one denier out of 12 (eight per cent); partnership between two butchers was forbidden, and selling the meat of sick animals was likewise forbidden unless the buyer was warned." Similar articles on butchering were created in Montpellier (1204), Avignon (1246), Marseilles (1253) and Salon (1293).
Below is the public slaughterhouse in Toulouse, which was closed in 1989 and reopened as an art museum in 1997. This slaughterhouse, opened in 1831 just outside of town, consolidating the dozens of slaughterhouses which were located in the center of the city like other French cities, beginning in the 12th century, to observe the health of animals before slaughter and to facilitate the collecting of taxes.
Ferrières provides extensive documentation of the rules, regulations and penalties that emerged in the Mediterranean between the 12th and 16th centuries. But rules are only as good as the enforcement that backs them up. The owners of the supermarkets documented by the BBC would have been subject to fines, flogging or banishment.
As today's society grapples with how best to validate that food is indeed what it says it is -- and safe -- and as the huskers and buskers emerge with cure-alls, I find some comfort in Ferrières' incisive words:
"All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates. … And we are often too blinded by this amnesia to view our present food situation clearly. This amnesia is very convenient. It allows us to reinvent the past and construct a complaisant, retrospective mythology."
What's your score, mate?
Sydney, Australia is a great city. I go there regularly and will return in July.
And it'd be even better if restaurants and regulators provided the public with information about the safety of the city's restaurants.
Restaurants and food service establishments are a significant source of the foodborne illness that strikes up to 30 per cent of citizens in so-called developed countries each and every year.
Sydney officials are now being pressured to release information about the safety of local restaurants and bolster restaurant safety in general.
After watching the mish-mash of federal, state and local approaches to restaurant inspection in a number of western countries for the past decade, I can draw two broad conclusions:
• Anyone who serves, prepares or handles food, in a restaurant, nursing home, day care center, supermarket or local market needs some basic food safety training; and,
• the results of restaurant and other food service inspections must be made public.
Here's why.
Parenting and preparing food are about the only two activities that no longer require some kind of certification in Western countries. For example, to coach little girls playing ice hockey in Canada requires 16 hours of training. To coach kids on a travel team requires an additional 24 hours of training.
It's unclear how many illnesses can be traced to restaurants, but every week there is at least one restaurant-related outbreak reported in the news media somewhere. Cross-contamination, lack of handwashing and improper cooking or holding temperatures are all common themes in these outbreaks -- the very same infractions that restaurant operators and employees should be reminded of during training sessions, and are judged on during inspections. Some jurisdictions -- such as the city of Fort Worth, Texas -- place so much importance on teaching these lessons they require mandatory food handler licenses and have invested in an infrastructure of training that demonstrates the city's commitment to public health. Other cities and states have no training requirement.
There should be mandatory food handler training, for say, three hours, that could happen in school, on the job, whatever. But training is only a beginning. Just because you tell someone to wash the poop off their hands before they prepare salad for 100 people doesn't mean it is going to happen; weekly outbreaks of hepatitis A confirm this. There are a number of additional carrots and sticks that can be used to create a culture that values microbiologically safe food and a work environment that rewards hygienic behavior. But mandating basic training is a start.
Next is to verify that training is being translated into safe food handling practices through inspection. And those inspection results should be publicly available.
A philosophy of transparency and openness underlies the efforts of many local health units across North America in seeking to make available the results of restaurant inspections. In the absence of regular media exposes, or a reality TV show where camera crews follow an inspector into a restaurant unannounced, how do consumers -- diners -- know which of their favorite restaurants are safe?
Cities, counties and states are using a blend of web sites, letter or numerical grades on doors, and providing disclosure upon request. In Denmark, smiley or sad faces are affixed to restaurant windows.
Publicly available grading systems rapidly communicate to diners the potential risk in dining at a particular establishment and restaurants given a lower grade may be more likely to comply with health regulations in the future to prevent lost business.
More importantly, such public displays of information help bolster overall awareness of food safety amongst staff and the public -- people routinely talk about this stuff. The interested public can handle more, not less, information about food safety.
Lots of cities still do not disclose restaurant inspection results, worried about the effect on business, but they aren't great cities.
Sydney is.
And instead of waiting for politicians to take the lead, the best restaurants, those with nothing to hide and everything to be proud of, will go ahead and make their inspection scores available -- today.
Food -- fashion over facts
The N.Y. Times is once again promoting the fashionable over the factual when it comes to food safety. Yesterday, Mark Bittman wrote in his quest for a good burger, that, "well-done meat is dry and flavorless, which is why burgers should be rare, or at most medium rare. The only sensible solution: Grind your own. You will know the cut, you can see the fat and you have some notion of its quality."
Dangerous microorganisms like E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella cannot be sensed by sight and are equal opportunity pathogens -- they will happily adulterate so-called quality cuts of meat.
Bittman also says that "if you grind your own beef, you can make a mixture and taste it raw," adding that, "To reassure the queasy, there’s little difference, safety-wise, between raw beef and rare beef: salmonella is killed at 160 degrees, and rare beef is cooked to 125 degrees."
Kids, don't try this at home. Or anywhere else. Ground beef of any sort needs to be 160F.
Even with quality cuts like steaks or roasts, dangerous bugs can contaminate the exterior of the meat. That's why rare steak is relatively safe with an external searing. In the process of grinding, whatever pathogens are on the outside become internalized in the burger -- whether the meat is ground at a factory or the kitchen counter-top.
Bitman concludes by saying that cooking time depends on the size of the burger but that his take about 6 to 8 minutes total, for rare to medium-rare.
Except that color or time are lousy indicator of doneness. The only way to properly tell if a burger is microbiologically safe is to stick it in, using a digital meat thermometer (preferably a tip-sensitive one). Most people, trying not to sicken their family or guests, overcook burgers. A 160 F burger, verified with a thermometer, satisfies and is safe.
Bittman joins Nina Planck, who at the height of the fall 2006 E. coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak, wrote in the Times that E. coli O157:H7 "is not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. … It's the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms."
The natural reservoirs for E. coli O157:H7 and other verotoxigenic E. coli is the intestines of all ruminants, including cattle -- grass or grain-fed -- sheep, goats, deer and the like. The final report of the fall 2006 spinach outbreak identifies nearby grass-fed beef cattle as the likely source of the E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 200 and killed 4.
Being a fashionable foodie is fun for some; a few facts can keep it safe. Don't eat poop.
Where will genetically engineered food place in history?
I'm working on a book chapter about genetically engineered foods while sitting in the shadows of a First century, AD, still functioning Roman coliseum in Nimes, France, while Amy is off working on her research.
In reviewing the past decade of apocalyptic predictions related to all foods genetically engineered, I can only conclude, what a massive waste of well-meaning time, energy and money that could have been instead devoted to fewer people sick from microbial foodborne illness.
A story out of Canada once again fawningly reported that all things organic were booming.
What caught my eye was the statement by the spokesthingy for Loblaw Companies Ltd., who said, "As long as you are in the business of giving consumers choice, I think you have to have organics as part of your offering."
This from the same company who, when asked in 1999, and 2000, if they would be interested in giving consumers choice and offer a genetically-engineered Bt sweet corn -- the benefit being significantly reduced pesticide use -- responded with, no, we can't tell consumers that pesticides are used to grow sweet corn.
Whatever kinds of food production, processing and distribution system we humans come up with, what matters is not the technology, but whether the results make people sick. There's lots of food-related things that sicken 30 per cent of all citizens in developed countries each and every year -- genetically engineered food isn't one of them.
Clinton rides the food safety wave -- again
At noon on Jan. 19, 1993, William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd President of the U.S. A few hours later, the King County Health Department in Washington State issued a public warning linking consumption of undercooked hamburgers with an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7, sometimes known as hamburger disease. What came to be known as the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak eventually killed four young children and sickened over 700.
Those two events, more than any other, dramatically changed the public discussion of food safety in the U.S. The Jack-in-the-Box outbreak had all the elements of a dramatic story: children were involved; the risk was relatively unknown and unfamiliar; and a sense of outrage developed in response to the inadequacy of the government inspection system. The newly inaugurated President Clinton made microbial food safety a Presidential issue.
Today, the N.Y. Times is reporting in a larger story about food safety and federal regulatory oversight, that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first presidential candidate to make food safety reform a part of a campaign platform.
In addition to signing on to a bill to create a single food inspection agency by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, Senator Clinton said in a telephone interview that she would double the agency's budget over five years, double the number of inspectors, mandate a minimum frequency for inspections and provide mandatory recall authority.
Hillary Clinton told the Times that, "We’ve had a long history of problems with food safety because of the divided system, But it was not as acute a problem in the minds of many Americans because we didn’t have so many outbreaks of food-related illness. There has not been much support from the Bush administration, and now we are playing catch-up. We need a new system of food safety prevention.”