Barf Blog Guest Blogger
Barfblog's guest bloggers are friends of of the iFSN from all over the world. We ask our guest bloggers to give their take and provide their insight into current food safety issues.
I feel naked without my thermometer -- when cooking
Me and Misti Crane, of The Columbus Dispatch, had a chat about all things food safety yesterday, as 18 people in Ohio and another 20 in Michigan have been stricken with the same strain of E. coli O157:H7, linked to hamburger from Nebraska Beef.
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As Bill Marler pointed out last night, Nebraska Beef tried to downplay the seriousness of its recall of over 265 tons of ground beef and components when it said in a press release,
"The Company has processed over 10 billion pounds of product without a confirmed customer illness."
Not sure what confirmed means, but …
What I tried to explain with Misti was that it’s not nearly enough to expect people to just handle things safety because food safety is so simple; that pathogen loads – the sheer numbers of dangerous microorganisms on product like hamburger – need to be reduced from farm-to-fork.
If you’ve ever tried making hamburgers from scratch, you’ll know why.
The opportunities for cross-contamination -- a few of those E. coli O157:H7 moving from hamburger to hands or counters or utensils, and then somewhere else –are just overwhelming.
And if the burger does make it to the grill, it has to be cooked. As I said,
"I feel naked without a thermometer," and that brown meat is not necessarily cooked meat. "Color is just a terrible indicator. Over half of hamburger will turn brown before it's actually done.”
That’s why a risk reduction approach, beginning on the farm and right through to the fork, is essential. Especially with E. coli O157:H7.
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Casey Jacob, guest barfblogger: The south central Kansas omnivore's dilemma
My husband and I just moved to south central Kansas after I graduated from Kansas State University’s food science program in May and we got married. I’ve talked him into taking me to see Pixar’s Wall-E tonight, but we need some dinner first.
We thought we might try Acapulco Restaurant, a Mexican franchise in town. That is, until I read on FSnet that the restaurant had just been named as the source of a 19-person salmonella outbreak. My new hubby was suddenly not too keen on going.
I, however, reasoned that after gaining some bad press and losing a bit of business, the restaurant’s management would be preaching food safety harder than they ever had before. The chances of an outbreak due to kitchen hygiene issues likely decreased dramatically.
In August 2007, Donna Garren, vice-president of health and safety regulatory affairs for the National Restaurant Association trade group, said outbreaks were leading restaurant chains to “[spend] additional resources outside of the typical food safety domain.”
Donna also admits, however, “There are costs associated with not knowing your suppliers.” If ingredients aren’t sourced from safe suppliers, even that assumedly sparkling-clean kitchen is no guarantee I’ll be served safe food.
Her quote was included in an article that claimed it was statistically safer to eat at fast-food chain restaurants than to cook for yourself at home.
While the title of Biggest Source of Foodborne Illness – home, restaurant, elsewhere -- is still hard to pin down, it can be safely said that both chain restaurants and the household kitchen are still in the running. So who knows where I’ll have dinner tonight… or if I’ll make it out without barfing.
As one Acapulco Restaurant patron confessed, “You compare all the bad to the good, sometimes it's worth the risks.”
Casey Jacob is the married version of former barfblogger Casey Wilkinson, and continues to work with her Kansas friends.
Michelle Mazur, guest barfblogger: Insect, the other white meat
Earlier this month Doug talked about entomophagy, the practice of eating insects as food. It’s no mystery that many cultures eat bugs for nutrition. However this is not the case for the cultures of the United States and Europe, where not only are bugs unappetizing, but there is an entire market devoted to their extermination.
Western culture has put a certain social taboo on insects in general. If a cockroach is found in a kitchen of a restaurant, health inspectors will shut the place down. But who can blame them? Most Americans are brought up to find bugs disgusting and dirty. 
As part of an introductory entomology class in my undergraduate work, I had the chance to try cookies containing dried crickets and salsa containing live mealworms. I definitely was not excited about tasting either of them, but you would be surprised what some students would do for extra credit. After sampling the supposedly “tasty treats” I have to admit that they weren’t half bad; in fact they tasted completely normal.
Just as a cook might add tofu to a noodle dish, there is also the option of earthworms or grasshoppers for an extra dose of protein. And a large number of countries have a booming market for raising insects, just as there is a market here in Kansas for raising beef cattle.
Not only would there be a little more variety in food options, but also the option to “go green” in other ways than driving a hybrid. Multiple studies and articles have been written about how insects are much more efficient converters of energy compared to typical farm animals. Bryan Walsh of Time.com has a terrific article about how environmentally friendly insects can be used as a food source.
Now I’ve read the articles too, but the first large hurdle to jump over will be the cultural taboo. The food industry of Western culture will have a hard time changing “Waiter, waiter, there is a fly in my soup!” into “Waiter, waiter, I do not have enough flies in my soup!”
New iFSN Food Safety Infosheet: Raw egg dish linked to 18 Salmonella illnesses
Raw egg dishes have been linked to numerous Salmonella outbreaks (check out CSPI's outbreak database for a list of egg-related outbreaks since 1990).
Today's infosheet focuses on a couple of recent outbreaks where raw egg dishes were implicated on Guernsey Island and in Australia. Raw egg dishes including Caesar salad dressing, Hollandaise, mayonnaise, mousses, icings and homemade ice cream have been linked to Salmonella outbreaks.
Click here to download the infosheet.
Infosheets are created weekly by iFSN and are posted in restaurants, retail stores, on farms and used in training throughout the world. If you have any infosheet topic requests, or photos, please contact Ben Chapman at bchapman@uoguelph.ca
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.
Michelle Mazur, guest barfblogger: Gus, the World's Ugliest Dog
Gus the dog is anything but a beauty queen, but on Saturday he won a contest for his looks. The World’s Ugliest Dog of 2008 is a three-legged, one eyed, Chinese crested dog, named Gus. The Chinese crested dog is a popular breed in the contest; in fact eleven of the seventeen contestants for this year are of this breed. (See all there pictures here)
The World's Ugliest Dog contest has taken place each year in Petaluma, California since 1976, and each year many people gather to look at faces of dogs that only a mother could love. It’s kind of like a bad car wreck, these dogs are so disgustingly ugly, but you can’t look away.
There are numerous sites on the web that showcase photos of the cutest, cuddliest pets. So why do people care about the ugly ones? I suppose that just as beauty is celebrated throughout the media, it would be only fair to display the ugliness as well. Many magazines at the checkout line in the grocery stores have photos of celebrities on the red carpet in all their glory, and they also have photos of celebrities looking their worst, without any makeup or fancy clothes.
American culture will continue to celebrate the cutest of the cute pets, but there will always be a special place in our hearts for those truly ugly dogs.
Michelle Mazur, guest barfblogger: Risking your life for a meal?
Most would shy away from fugu, or puffer fish, but the Japanese love it. The internal organs and skin of the puffer fish contain a deadly poison called tetradotoxin, which causes paralysis of the diaphragm and death due to respiratory failure. It must be prepared by licensed cooks in order to remove the poisonous areas. Though it’s a dangerous meal, it’s been eaten for centuries.
It’s not just that one-in-one thousand fish are poisonous; each fish comes packed with a dose of death if not properly prepared. Statistics from the Tokyo Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health indicate 20-44 incidents of fugu poisoning per year between 1996 and 2006 in the entire country, leading to 34-64 hospitalizations and 0-6 deaths per year, for an average fatality rate of 6.8%
Not only is it deadly, but fugu is costly. Most people consider it to have a weak taste, but Japanese gourmets will disagree. Chefs spend 7 to 8 years training in order to be certified to serve this treat.
An outbreak of E.coli in spinach or Salmonella in tomatoes leads to national recalls and mass consumer aversion as products and produce become stigmatized. Yet a fish that is positively poisonous is still sought out in countries like Japan and Taiwan. There is some speculation as to how popular fugu would be if it was known to be completely safe. Would there be a sharp decrease in demand for the dish, or would it continue to be a special meal?
The acceptance of fugu in Japanese culture is completely opposite of the Japanese attitude towards beef with BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) commonly known as mad cow disease. Any meat that is at risk for containing traces of BSE is immediately removed from the food supply. What is the difference between dying from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of BSE, and being poisoned by fish?
Whether it’s the taste of the fish or the thrill of knowing it could be the last meal, I plan to stick to salmon instead.
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Michelle Mazur is a first-year veterinary student at Kansas State University, hailing from Wichita, Kansas. She is an avid dog lover, a crafty seamstress, and a bit of a workaholic. She recently spent two weeks in Japan and took a lot of pictures of bathrooms.
Don Schaffner, guest barfblogger: Perhaps it will help keep poop out of food?
I've always found it interesting when disparate objects or ideas come together.
One such collision was the subject of an earlier barfblog contribution when I wrote about a norovirus at a boy scout camp, integrating my interest in food safety and the the volunteer work I do with the boy scouts.
It also happened twice this week. The first example has nothing to do with food safety, but hey, if Doug can write about Blacky the donkey, all's fair. I just can't resist plugging this amazing YouTube video, where the band Phish covers the Lou Reed classic "Sweet Jane". Hippy culture meets New York grit. Cool stuff.
Anyway, on with the food safety story, sort of. I need to explain: I'm a productivity pr0n addict. For more on this addiction look here. I think that one of the most entertaining and useful productivity gurus out there is Merlin Mann (yes, that's his real name), the editor and founder of productivity website 43Folders.com. Anyway, when Merlin is not blogging about productivity, talking at The Google or Macworld, he's scouring the interweb looking for cool stuff.
And... now we get to the point of this article... and the second collision, where productivity guru meets food safety: Bottom Toilet Tissue Aid Self-wipe Cleaning: Health & Personal Care. As Merlin quips, "Why is all the cool stuff for "disabled" people? I could totally use this". And maybe he right. This might be something we could all use, and as Amazon notes "After use the tissue is discarded by pressing an easy-to-use release button on the end of the handle.
This might be the solution to fecal cross contamination, and allow us all to avoid what O. Pete Snyder calls "toilet paper slips", helping us all to eat less poop.
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Don Schaffner is an Extension Specialist in Food Science at Rutgers University, the newly appointed director of the Center for Advanced Food Technology, and a self-confessed productivity pr0n addict.
Michele Samarya-Timm, guest barfblogger: Poop and pools do not mix
With Memorial Day on the horizon, people are gearing up for summer fun. As the weather warms, people are anxious to start partaking of warm weather activities, including jumping into the nearest swimming pool.
Before making that splash into swimming pool waters, we all need to be advocates for a splash of a different kind….the sudsing, scrub and splash of good handwashing…and we all need to make this an essential component of recreational water activities.
Outbreaks from recreational water are more common than we would like, and are especially more common than the average swimmer realizes. Trace amounts of fecal bacteria can be carried into the pool by our hands as well as by our bottoms. Chlorine kills germs, but it doesn’t work right away – it takes time. In fact, without good hygiene practices, even the best-maintained pools can spread illness. Poop and pools do not mix.
Standard signage at public pools often includes the rule: “Shower before entering.” Shouldn’t we also include the rule: “Wash hands before entering pool?” Good handwashing practices help prevent so many outbreaks, and we need to keep reinforcing the need to make handwashing as much a part of our daily lives as eating, sleeping, and –yes – having fun in our swimming pools.
Think healthy. Be healthy. Wash your hands!
May 19-25 is Recreational Water Illness Prevention Week 2008. You can find additional information at www.healthyswimming.org
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Michéle Samarya-Timm is a Health Educator for the Franklin Township Health Department in New Jersey.
Roy Costa, guest barfblogger: The "Great Escapes Resort" can't escape scrutiny after viral outbreak
A Six Flags water park and resort complex in up-state New York known as "Great Escapes", is the
focus of a large norovirus outbreak. Norovirus is transmitted from infected human carriers to food, water, and environmental surfaces. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognize noroviruses (and related viral strains) as the leading cause of foodborne illness in the US. The gastrointestinal illness is highly communicable and easily spread by hand to hand contact and even through the air. Outbreaks occur in resorts and other facilities when ill persons contaminate the environment, food and water through vomit and feces. Rapid and effective measures well-known to the public health community are needed to stop transmission. Many of these measures are developed by the US Public Health Service. Cruise lines have experienced many norovirus outbreaks and therefor there is much known about the pathogen and how to address it.
Untimely Responses to the Problem
According to the local health department a case of norovirus at the Great Escapes is defined as a person with norovirus symptoms at the resort on or after March 7, 2008. The health department therefore belives the date of March 7 was the beginning of the outbreak, but did not for some unexplained reason begin an investigation for ten days. It is not known to this writer when the operator of the facility was first aware of that employees and patrons were becoming ill. We are also unaware of how or when the health department was officially notified of the problem. The official coordinated response to this outbreak began on March 17, a full 10 days after the outbreak apparently began. By March 21, there were already 200 cases. The number of reported cases eventually reached at least 435 as news of the incident spread.
Rapid tests using sophisticated molecular testing platforms are available to provide confirming results of norovirus infection in 24 hours, yet investigators over 1 week into the investigation still didn't have a confirming diagnosis from the state lab. The slow state lab results were an unnecessary delay, as approved private labs are available.
Early recognition of this problem is critical. Once it is known that norovirus is in the environment, investigators can implement timely and appropriate sanitation and safety precautions to combat transmission. One example of appropriate response was the closing of the food service. But this only occured after numerous employees of the kitchen reported symptoms of norovirus. The pools, food and lodging facilities are undoubtedly contaminated. Delay in the the implementation of this and other preventive measures at this public, regulated facility likely increased the potential for the exposure of large numbers of unsuspecting people to the pathogen over several days. The licensed operator's delay in recognizing and reporting a large number of ill patrons and staff to authorities, the response of the authorities once notified, and the timeliness and effectiveness of prevention measures taken are critical questions.
Lawsuit
Four members of a family sickened by the resort have filed a lawsuit. Key issues that must be scrutinized are the delay between the start of the outbreak and notification of the health authorities, the large number of food service staff ill and whether they worked while ill, the basis for the decision to close the kitchen, and the basis for management's decision to allow the rest of the facility to remain open..
Unanswered Questions
A detailed analysis of the cases and their relationships to the food service or other environmental exposures will be key to determining the causes of this large and serious outbreak and whether the operator responded in an effective and timely manner to protect both it's employees and guests.
Could the large number of cases of illness been reduced if more timely and effective prevention measures were implemented at Great Escapes?
To read more, select the links below.
Health Department official statement Norovirus at Great Escapes Water Park
1st article from the Post Star. March 21st, 200 cases reported
2nd article from the Post Star, March 16th, 435 cases reported
Channel 6 report. Lawsuits filed.
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Mr. Costa is a professor at the Walt Disney World Center for Hospitality and the Culinary Arts at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida and is the founder and owner of the consulting firm Environ Health Associates, Inc. Mr. Costa is a registered professional sanitarian with 30 years of environmental heath practice in the academic, government and private sectors.
For our manual on Norovirus Contamination and Control send an email to rcosta1@cfl.rr.com
