Thank you, spammers, for adverts promoting generic penis enlargers. Your 300-500 comments per day have forced me to close all comments on barfblog.com.

We have been preparing a new site, with new software, over the summer, but it isn’t ready yet.

We will be moving as soon as we can.

In the meantime, barfblog.com will be of limited functionality, but news will continue to be available through the listserv at bites.ksu.edu.

With at least two people dead and 178 sick from Salmonella linked to cantaloupe in 21 states, Jim Howell of the Indiana Department of Health told growers improper food handling procedures may be to blame for a good portion of the illnesses.

But now the Indiana State Department of Health has insisted to the Evansville Courier and Press the report was inaccurate.

"Consumers are not to blame for the salmonella outbreak, and no member of the ISDH staff has ever stated or insinuated such a claim," said state health department spokeswoman Amy Reel.

Dr. James Howell, an assistant Indiana State Department of Health commissioner who heads the Public Health and Preparedness Commission, visited melon growers Monday at Vincennes Tractor Inc.

He was quoted in the Vincennes Sun-Commercial as saying that "most of the bacteria is on the surface" and that "people just need to clean their produce before they eat it." He also reportedly said consumers are increasingly unaware of how to handle fresh produce, reciting the stand-by that home economics needs to be re-introduced in schools.

Reel said Howell's comments were misconstrued, stating, "Assumptions were made that could detract from the important health message that consumers should be washing all produce to help reduce their risk of any foodborne illness. The current salmonella investigation is ongoing.”

But washing doesn’t do much, especially with Salmonella on cantaloupe. And what hasn’t been reported anywhere is the food safety precautions undertaken – or not – on the farm; the Food and Drug Administration will figure that out, and I’ll wait for the report.

There’s a rich tradition of people saying dumbass things in the midst of an outbreak.

With at least two people dead and 178 sick from Salmonella linked to cantaloupe in 21 states, Jim Howell of the Indiana Department of Health told growers improper food handling procedures may be to blame for a good portion of the illnesses.

“The American consumer doesn’t understand the farm,” he was quoted as saying by Associated Press. “They treat fresh produce just like it was packaged food. A big problem is that home economics is not taught in schools anymore. People don’t know this stuff. I have a daughter-in-law who can’t cook at all. I doubt she would know to wash fresh produce. More and more often the attitude is becoming, if it looks clean, let’s eat it.”

He went on to say he would like to hear suggestions about how to label the packaging to include directions for food safety.

“Most of the bacteria is on the surface. People just need to clean their produce before they eat it.”

Howell also suggested that cleaning a cantaloupe with soap, water and a very small amount of bleach is a good idea before ingesting it because the surface is so rough.

Not quite Mr. Health Type.

Bleach, maybe; soap, no.

There’s a lot of idiotic stuff in these quotes, if that is what he actually said. But I’ll refrain from judgment until real health types complete their investigation and issue their report.

A California slaughterhouse that was shut down last week amid wide-ranging allegations of animal abuse reopened for business Monday, with federal officials saying that employees will receive new training on the handling of electric cattle prods, stun guns and other devices.

But does training actually work? Or is the culture of the workplace more important to continuous reinforcement and desired results (like not abusing animals).

The company also said more frequent third-party audits of its operations, would "establish a new industry standard for the handling of animals."

Third-party audits can sorta suck.

Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities.

Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart wrote in his aptly named 2009 book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture, and that culture is patterned ways of thought and behaviors that characterize a social group which can be learned through socialization processes and persist through time.

Yiannas also writes:

• The goal of the food safety professional should be to create a food safety
culture – not a food safety program.
• An organization’s culture will influence how individuals within the group
think about food safety, their attitudes toward food safety, their willingness
to openly discuss concerns and share differing opinions, and, in general, the
emphasis that they place on food safety.
• When it comes to creating, strengthening, or sustaining a food safety culture
within an organization, there is one group of individuals who really own it –
they’re the leaders.
• Having a strong food safety culture is a choice. The leaders of an organization
should proactively choose to have a strong food safety culture because
it’s the right thing to do, as opposed to reacting to a significant issue or
outbreak.
• Creating or strengthening a food safety culture will require the intentional
commitment and hard work by leaders at all levels of the organization,
starting at the top.
• Although no two great food safety cultures will be identical, they are likely to
have many similar attributes.
• Identifying food safety best practices can be useful, but one major drawback
to creating such a list is that it doesn’t really demonstrate how these activities
are linked together or interrelated. It misses the big picture – the system.
• To create a food safety culture, you need to have a system.

Fox17 reports that business has been slow for the Holland area Mexican restaurant, Margaritas, where several hundred people contracted Norovirus in late July.

After reopening his doors in early August, owner Alonzo Salinas has made some changes.

“I think a lot of people will always be cautious about what they eat and where they eat. … Our customers put their trust in us and I believe we’ve done that.”

He says he keeps in contact with the Ottawa County Health Department for things ranging from proper handwashing to food temperature.

Salinas says a handful of customers have come forward wanting to be reimbursed for hospital visits and lost wages during the time they fell ill. He says his insurance has and will continue to take care of any claims, as long as customers can prove them.

Poop samples are not easy to collect for testing, especially if you’ve got some foodborne-inspired runs.

Collecting vomit samples could be viewed by many as just gross.

Beijing health authorities now say that customers who are involved in suspected food poisoning incidents in a restaurant should keep any leftover food, and their vomit and feces as evidence.



The capital has a high incidence of microbial and mass food poisoning in summer and fall, said Cai Changjing, media officer of Beijing Health Inspection Institute on Monday. 

The institute has published a set of guidelines on its website, giving suggestions on how to deal with a food poisoning incident, he told the Global Times.

"Customers should keep the restaurant receipt, and then we'll know which dishes in which restaurants have problems," Cai said.

"We also suggest people keep any leftovers, or vomit and feces as evidence," he noted. 



Since the end of July, more than 2,000 cases of infectious diarrhea have been reported in the city, according to the Beijing News.

Li Na, 29, a resident in Beijing, said the institute's suggestion is useful but she feels it will be hard to implement.

"It's disgusting. I'd rather take some pills at home than collect the vomit as proof.

“If the poisoning is serious, I'll just go to the hospital and let the doctor decide whether to keep these things," said Li.

Cai.

There was this one time, Chapman and I went to Australia and New Zealand, and at a dinner in Melbourne, he thought it would be adventurous to order kangaroo.

Tasted like deer.

Now that I live in Brisbane, kangaroo meat is fairly easy to find; I just have no interest in it.

And like any other food, kangaroo is prone to contamination.

ABC reports that three years after Russia banned kangaroo meat after finding high levels of bacterial contamination, animal rights groups say there are still problems with hygiene in supermarket meat.

Some of the tests show high levels of E. coli.

The kangaroo industry says the tests are not scientific and it claims animal rights groups are extremists.

Animal rights groups are using the hygiene issue as a weapon to try and close down the industry, worth $75 million a year.

As part of their campaign, the animal rights groups purchased kangaroo meat for human consumption from Coles, Woolworths and IGA supermarkets in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and had the samples tested in an independent laboratory.

Eight of the 26 kangaroo samples tested positive for the bacteria salmonella and 11 samples showed relatively high levels of E. coli bacteria.

The Kangaroo Industry Association says the laboratory results are not scientific because there is no way of knowing how the meat was transported from the supermarkets to the laboratory or how long it took to get there, and no independent scrutiny of the process.

Associate Professor Vitali Sintchenko says that illness from eating kangaroo meat is extremely rare, adding, “We haven't seen any cases of food poisoning from - that we know of in New South Wales in the last five or six years coming from kangaroo meat.”

The kangaroo industry also claims there has never been a recorded case of food poisoning from kangaroo meat in Australia. Now the industry is lobbying the Russians to reopen the meat trade. But last month, Animal Liberation took their lab results to Russia to try to persuade authorities there to continue the ban.

Canadian government types remain hopeless about talking about food safety basics.

For all its talk of a single food inspection system, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can do no better than say, “there have been several confirmed illnesses associated with the consumption of these mangoes.”

It’s up to Health Canada to say how many are sick, which they did on a Saturday afternoon. The PR flunkies probably were paid double-time to produce this gem.

“Table 1, below, shows where and how many illnesses have been reported to date. The Public Health Agency of Canada will update this table weekly during the course of the investigation.

Table 1. Location and number of Salmonella Braenderup infections
as of August 22, 2012
Location Confirmed cases
British Columbia 17
Alberta 5
TOTAL 22

“What you should do

“If you have the product, do not eat it. Secure it in a plastic bag and throw it out. Then wash your hands thoroughly in warm soapy water.

“Everyone can protect themselves against Salmonella infections by taking proper precautions when handling and preparing foods.”

Salmonella is in your hands; not the mango growers, distributers or retailers, but consumers.

Why do taxpayers pay to be reminded that foodborne illness is their fault – when it isn’t?

The press release also has some advice, like to protect yourself from Salmonella, “wash your hands thoroughly after feeding or handling pets.”

I’m not sure what that has to do with Mexican mangoes.

The paternalistic press release also says people should practice these general food safety precautions at all times. Those tips are about cooking temperatures for meat.

It’s still summer in Canada, most people will go back to sleep.

Refrigeration of fresh produce is not something to trifle with in Texas -- in summer.

But that’s exactly what the fancy-pants Abilene Country Club did and now it has been linked to 35 of the 64 confirmed cases of salmonella in the area in the past month.

KTXS reports the club scored a ridiculously low 63 out of 100 on their July health inspection.

The club addressed the possible 35 cases in a letter to its members on August 21. Mike Bannister, president of the club's board of directors provided KTXS with a copy of the letter.

The letter, signed by General Manager Edward Grothaus III acknowledges the club has been "identified as a potential source of the salmonella type D cases recently reported in our community."

The July health inspection found the club was storing fruit at temperatures that were too warm. In the letter, Grothaus said the club has purchased a new, refrigerated salad bar along with other refrigerated units to correct temperatures.