With Greg in Garmisch, Germany.

Doing food safety stuff.

Sticky rice balls are the suspected culprit behind a Mother’s Day outbreak of foodborne illness that sickened dozens who attended a Mother's Day garden party and food fair at a Buddhist monastery in Carmel.

About 700 people, most of them arriving on tour buses from New York City, came to the annual event where dishes were prepared by volunteers, a spokeswoman for the Chuang Yen Monastery said.

When the tour buses arrived at Woodbury Common for a post-lunch shopping excursion, witnesses saw people crying and gripping their stomachs as they were stricken with nausea and diarrhea.

Eric Gross of the Putnam County Bureau of Emergency Services said about 150 people overall became sick and about 80 of those had boarded buses to go to the shopping outlet.

The Chuang Yen Monastery will be working with health officials on the investigation, the spokeswoman said.

The Putnam County Health Department asks people who fell ill after attending the party to call their hotline at (845) 808-1390.

People want to know about their food. Where it was grown, how, what’s been added and if it’s safe.

The N.Y. Times, as usual, gets that little bit right in a commentary yesterday, but wrongly thinks right-to-know is something new, that media amplification is something new because of shiny new toys, and offers no practical suggestions on what to do.

The term pink slime was was coined in 2002 in an internal e-mail by a scientist at the Agriculture Department who felt it was not really ground beef. The term was first publicly reported in The Times in late 2009.

In April 2011, celebtard chef Jamie Oliver helped create a more publicly available pink slime yuck factor and by the end of 2011, McDonald’s and others had stopped using pink slime.

On March 7, 2012, ABC News recycled these bits, along with some interviews with two of the original USDA opponents of the process (primarily because it was a form of fraud, and not really just beef).

Industry and others responded the next day, and although the story had been around for several years, the response drove the pink slime story to gather media momentum – a story with legs.

BPI said pink slime was meat so consumers didn’t need to be informed, and everything was a gross misunderstanding. BPI blamed media and vowed to educate the public. Others said “it’s pink so it’s meat” and that the language of pink slime was derogatory and needed to be changed. USDA said it was safe for schools but quickly decided that schools would be able to choose whatever beef they wanted, pushing decision-making in the absence of data or labels to the local PTA. An on-line petition was launched.

Sensing the media taint, additional retailers rushed to proclaim themselves free of the pink stuff.
BPI took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, the favored reading choice for pink slime aficionados, and four mid-west governors banded together to repeat the same erroneous messages during a media-show-and-tell at a BPI plant. Because political endorsements rarely work, and the story had spread to the key demographic of burger eaters, others sensed opportunity in the trashing of BPI. Wendy’s, Whole Foods, Costco, A&P, Publix and others launched their own media campaigns proclaiming they’ve never used the stuff and never would.

Guess they didn’t get their dude-it’s-beef T-shirts.

These well-intentioned messages only made things worse for the beef producers and processors they were intended to protect.

Here’s what can be learned for the next pink slime. And there will be lots more.
Lessons of pink slime
• don’t fudge facts (is it or is it not 100% beef?)
• facts are never enough
• changing the language is bad strategy (been tried with rBST, genetically engineered foods, doesn’t work)
• telling people they need to be educated is arrogant, invalidates and trivializes people’s thoughts
• don’t blame media for lousy communications
• any farm, processor, retailer or restaurant can be held accountable for food production – and increasingly so with smartphones, facebook and new toys
• real or just an accusation, consumers will rightly react based on the information available
• amplification of messages through media is nothing new, especially if those messages support a pre-existing world-view
• food is political but should be informed by data
• data should be public
• paucity of data about pink slime that is publicly available make statements like it’s safe, or it’s gross, difficult to quantify
• relying on government validation builds suspicion rather than trust; if BPI has the safety data, make it public
• what does right-to-know really mean? Do you want to say no?
• if so, have public policy on how information is made public and why
• choice is a fundamental value
• what’s the best way to enable choice, for those who don’t want to eat pink slime or for those who care more about whether a food will make their kids barf?
• proactive more than reactive; both are required, but any food provider should proudly proclaim – brag – about everything they do to enhance food safety.
• perceived food safety is routinely marketed at retail; instead market real food safety so consumers actually have a choice and hold producers and processors – conventional, organic or otherwise – to a standard of honesty.
• if restaurant inspection results can be displayed on a placard via a QR code read by smartphones when someone goes out for a meal, why not at the grocery store or school lunch?
• link to web sites detailing how the food was produced, processed and safely handled, or whatever becomes the next theatrical production – or be held hostage

The investigation into the source of Salmonella Paratyphi B linked to Smiling Hara Tempeh now focuses on a Maryland company who distributed a fungal starter culture used to make the product. According to the Citizen-Times, North Carolina Dept of Agriculture and Consumer Services identified the distributor as Tempeh Online of Rockville MD.

A culture starter for tempeh, a bean product popular in vegetarian cuisine, was found to have the same type of salmonella that caused a county outbreak beginning as early as February, lab work by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Thursday.

The Rockville, Md., company, Tempeh Online, sold the starter culture to Smiling Hara Tempeh, which made the meat substitute in Candler.
Federal regulators have been involved, and the Buncombe County Health Department on Thursday said it is continuing to investigate.

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is already involved in tracing the origin of the ingredient to identify (the) source of contamination as well as the potential for other salmonella outbreaks in the U.S.,” according to a release from the Health Department. FDA spokesman Curtis Allen could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon. Allen has said the administration has a policy against naming companies behind outbreaks.

State Department of Agriculture spokesman Brian Long had identified the distributor as Tempeh Online but said he didn’t know the producer of the culture, which is made up of fungal spores. Long said his department was in touch with the FDA, trying to find out if other tempeh makers in the state are using the culture. “We are concerned whether other tempeh makers in North Carolina are using this culture, but we haven’t received any distribution records from FDA, which would first have to review the maker’s and distributor’s records,” he said.

Smiling Hara Managing Executive Chad Oliphant said he began buying cultures from Tempeh Online after his regular company ran out.

On April 26, after state agriculture inspectors found the possibility of salmonella in Smiling Hara’s tempeh, Oliphant said he contacted the company. “Once this thing came up, I contacted him and he wasn’t really forthcoming in the conversation,” he said.

The Citizen-Times reports that the distributor could not be contacted and a call to a number listed on their website (which has since been taken down - but can be seen here with some internet magic) was answered but "said the the number was wrong and hung up after learning he was speaking with a reporter." Doesn't seem like Tempeh Online is employing a positive food safety culture - they would be forthcoming with risk-reduction steps, sympathetic towards those affected by the outbreak and would be infoming customers/recalling their products to avoid similar incidents.
 

KTNV, Contact 13 in Las Vegas, reports in this week’s Dirty Dining segment that food improperly handled and issues with storage lead to the recent closure of Valerio's Tropical Bake Shop.

Inspectors slapped the shop with 49 demerits, forcing it to close its doors. Anything more than 40 demerits means an automatic closure.

Issues included food stored unprotected both outside and inside the restroom.

Inspectors also found what they describe as a black mold-like growth in a kitchen sink.

Other violations included chicken thawing improperly and several foods were at the wrong temperatures, including chicken salad, boiled eggs, carrots and egg rolls.

Contact 13 was not allowed on the property, but manager Rex Jose tells us: "Things at the bakery have been very busy. But we have listened to what the Health District had to say and have made all the necessary changes."

The Health District tells us Valerio's Tropical Bake Shop is back open, and operating with a 4 demerit A grade.
 

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.

Ten years ago, armchair epidemiologist and fidelity poster boy Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers (apparently a basketball team) came down with food poisoning after eating a room service dinner of a cheeseburger and cheesecake at the Lakers' Sacramento hotel. The Lakers won.

Last night, Bryant was again suffering from gastro but the Denver Nuggets crushed the Lakers, 113-96, forcing a game 7 in their playoff series.

Bryant was not available for comment before the game, ignoring reporters' questions as he walked from the bus into the arena and down a corridor to the locker room. He headed directly for the training room.

A Journal of Infectious Diseases paper co-authored by Bill Keene about an investigation into a norovirus outbreak that hit 13 members of a soccer team has created a media furor and a press release competition. It could have been a gym bag, or a plastic bag - but the implicated vector happened to be a reusable grocery bag that was left in a hotel room that contained a bunch of food.
Cue the witch hunt on reusable bags.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recycled a recent press release saying that reusable bags need to be washed regularly by users as pathogens grow well and cross-contamination is likely.
From the release:
Reusable grocery totes are a popular, eco-friendly choice to transport groceries, but only 15 percent of Americans regularly wash their bags, creating a breeding zone for harmful bacteria, according to a survey by the Home Food Safety program, a collaboration between the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association) and ConAgra Foods.
“Cross-contamination occurs when juices from raw meats or germs from unclean objects come in contact with cooked or ready-to-eat foods like breads or produce,” says registered dietitian and Academy spokesperson Ruth Frechman. “Unwashed grocery bags are lingering with bacteria which can easily contaminate your foods.”
I don't dispute that washing bags is a good idea, I'm just not sure there's data that supports their statements.
Williams and colleagues (2011) have published the only peer-reviewed study on the microbial safety of reusable bags and tested growth of Salmonella in 2 batches. They spiked the bags with 10^6 cfu and let them sit in the trunk of a car for 2 hours. One of the batches, where the temperature reached 47C/117F, showed a one-log increase in the Salmonella. The other batch, where the temperature reached 53C/124F, there was a one-log reduction. That data doesn't show just a breeding zone - it shows they can be a killing zone too (and I'm not sure how realistic a 10^6 contamination really is).
The part of the press releases that is the least rooted in science is that pathogen-containing bags "easily contaminate your foods." The same Williams study showed generic E. coli is floating around in bags, recoverable in 12 % (n=58) of those tested but can it be (or is it likely) to be transferred to any ready-to-eat foods, or somehow to food contact surfaces in the home?
Just because the bacteria might be there, doesn't mean it can contaminate a ready-to-eat food. No one has presented data to support that. Maybe the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics - if so, they should share it.
In a cross-contamination event there is a dilution effect when it comes to transfer. 1000 cfus of Campylobacter on the outside of the package of raw chicken might become 100 cfus when transferred to the bag, and then only 10 cfus when transferred to ready-to-eat apples.
Washing bags frequently (as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics suggests) is probably a good idea (like washing hands in warm water) and probably won't increase risk, but I wonder how much it decreases the probability of cross-contamination when compared to doing nothing.
Aron Hall from CDC took a much more realistic approach to the outbreak focusing on norovirus (as opposed to the vector) calling the virus "the perfect human pathogen." I couldn't agree more, as I cleaned up puke over the past couple of days.
 

Almost a month after an elderly patient died in a Northern Ireland hospital and three others were sickened from Listeria, health trusts have been advised to stop serving sandwiches from a specific food company.

Following the outbreak, the trust carried out a review of food supplier and distribution chains with the Food Standards Agency and Environmental Health.

Health Minister Edwin Poots said preliminary results of tests on sandwiches provided to inpatients indicated low levels of listeria were present although he stressed these were within the legal limits.

In response to an Assembly question on the matter, he said: “As a precautionary measure the Northern Trust decided not to serve sandwiches from a particular supplier until investigations have been completed.

In 2008, three patients died during a listeria outbreak at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

Also in 2008, 23 people – primarily elderly – died from Listeria in Maple Leaf deli meats in Canada. Maybe the sandwiches could be heated?