Michéle Samarya-Timm, a Health Educator for the Franklin Township Health Department in New Jersey, writes,  Thanksgiving, and its hours of food prep, certainly creates a reason to appreciate sound food safety advice.  After all, 3 hours seated at the dinner table should never be followed by 3 days seated on a porcelain throne. 

Over the past few days, I’ve seen lots of advice to ensure a perfectly cooked (and foodsafe) thanksgiving turkey, but what if you’ve applied the cooking process a little too thoroughly?   

Amending a list I found several years ago, here’s an updated version of Reasons to Be Thankful for Burning the Bird:

1.    The useless pop-up timer was rendered useless.
2.    Your tip sensitive digital thermometer will read at least 165F.
3.    Salmonella won't be a concern.
4.    Another valid reason for cooking stuffing outside the bird.
5.    No one will overeat.
6.    Post dinner sleepiness won’t be due to the tryptophan in turkey.
7.    Uninvited guests will think twice next year.
8.    Pets won't pester you for scraps.
9.    The smoke alarm was due for a test.
10.    Ash residue is a great motivation for handwashing.
11.    Carving the bird will provide a good cardiovascular workout.
12.    After dinner, the guys can take the bird to the yard and play football.
13.    The less turkey Uncle George eats, the less likely he will be to walk around with his pants unbuttoned.
14.    You'll get to the desserts quicker.
15.    No arguments about throwing out turkey leftovers.
16.    Next year you’ll pay closer attention to Doug Powell’s Canadian Thanksgiving food prep video.

Enjoy your holidays.  And wash your hands!

Being a food safety nerd, I’ve had a lot of fun developing food safety infosheets over the past 5 years. The idea behind the infosheets is to take stories, add some humour/shock/kitch and generate dialogue around food safety.

The turkey food safety infosheet is generating a lot of interest. I’m no Sarah Palin, but most responses have been from over-eager gotcha folks who are pointing out what appears to them to be serious food safety errors (especially around thawing, stuffing and cooling leftovers). Some have been nice; others, not so much.

Our focus in building the food safety infosheets is to provide practices based on the best available science. And sometimes what the FDA Food Code, USDA FSIS consumer education and published peer-reviewed articles say around food safety practices differ.

Go figure.

We base the food safety infosheets  on the best available science, not jurisdictional regulation. It’s our way of being consistent because recommendations changes so much from location to location (Canada and the U.S. recommend two different temperatures for endpoint temp for poultry: 165F in the U.S., and 180F in Canada -- both countries apparently looking at the same data).

People seem to get especially antsy when we disagree with the regulators. Everything we put in "what you can do" section of the food safety infosheets has to have references to back it up (which sometimes the regulatory recommendations do not).

Here are the references for the 3 recommendations folks have mentioned the most (thawing, cooking stuffing to 150F and cooling leftovers)

Thawing on the counter:

Lacroix BJ, Li KW, Powell DA. 2003. Consumer food handling recommendations: is thawing of turkey a food safety issue? Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research, 64(2): 59-61. (this whole paper can be found at the bottom of this post)

Lee M. 1993. Methods and risks of defrosting turkeys. Environmental Health Review (Winter):96-100.

OP Snyder, 1999. Thawing at ambient temperature on the counter. Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management, St. Paul, MN USA.

Stuffing:

The 150F recommendation is based on a 6-7 log reduction of salmonella in stuffing at 140F for 12.7 min (pathogen destruction is time/temperature, and it will take that long to take the stuffing from 140-150. Pete Snyder's Turkey HACCP document explains it well (second paragraph on page 2).

From the doc:

As expected, no salmonellae or staphylococci was recovered.  They were killed above 130°F as the turkey was cooking.  Actually, if the stuffing had been sampled at 140 to 150°F, they would have found that these organisms would be dead, considering that 140°F for 12.7 minutes gives a  7D reduction of Salmonella in beef.

Cooling:

Turkey should be refrigerated within 2 -- and continuously cooled reaching 41F within 15 hours.  Pete Snyder also has a referenced cooling paper that explains this well.

from the doc:

In 1992, this author received an agreement from Ray Beaulieu and Jeffery Rhodehamel at the FDA that there was indeed no scientific basis for the FDA retail food cooling regimes, and that it was appropriate to do a study. With the help of Dr. Vijay K. Juneja, USDA ARS ERRC, a study was conducted using hamburger as the food item and C. perfringens as the target organism (Juneja, 1994). Clostridium perfringens was selected, because, of the three spores, C.perfringens has the shortest lag and fastest generation time.

Hamburger was selected as the media, because C. perfringens is found in hamburger, and hamburger has often been involved in C. perfringens outbreaks. Various cooling times were evaluated in order to determine the safe cooling time. One cooling time chosen arbitrarily was 15 hours to go from 130 to 45ºF, with a 38ºF temperature of coolant, in this case, air in the refrigerator. The 15-hour cooling time showed about 3 multiplications of C. perfringens. The USDA has accepted this cooling time as safe (Federal Register, January 6, 1999), because it now accepts cooling when there are 3 or less multiplications of C.perfringens.

As I replied to one interested subscriber, here are our references, show us yours.
 

I’ve gotten more done around the house in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years. Must be the nesting hormones. Amy figures she’s had enough. Baby’s due in a few days, but Amy would rather have it out now.  My youngest daughter, Courtlynn, arrives on Thanksgiving for five days, and we hope the baby arrives then as well.

But, there’s still work to be done, and every year, it’s the same issue. We say it’s OK for people to do what they are already doing – thawing turkey on the counter – and people freak out. After all, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and their extension types insist it is never OK to thaw turkey at room temperature.

We have lots of evidence and have written about it in peer-reviewed journals. But why doesn’t USDA or FDA, with all their resources, tell people why it’s not OK to thaw poultry at room temperature instead of repeating -- as my friend Marty once quipped -- like a fascist calling out country line dancing instructions, that it is never OK to thaw at room temperature?

Show us the data.

Pete Snyder at the Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management in St. Paul, Minnesota, has a summary available demonstrating the safety of thawing poultry at room temperature at http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Thaw-counter.html.

My group wrote a review note on the topic a few years ago, and it is included in its entirety at http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/2007/10/articles/food-safety-communication/how-to-thaw-poultry-ignore-government/

However you thaw your turkey, use a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer to ensure it has reached an internal temperature of 165F. The laws of physics are apparently different north of the 49th parallel and poultry is required to reach 180F. No one knows why the Canadian government has different advice. And they’re not telling anyone.
 

In Canada, Thanksgiving is in October. It's kind of cool because the weather can be nice (26C this year -- and we've had snow all day today) and it's not too long after Labour Day (an October holiday is fun).  This year, Thanksgiving was extra exciting because of Jack, the newest addition to the family (right, being compared, size-wise, to a half-eaten turkey).

For the past few years we've held thanksgiving at our house, and with the aid of Tyler Florence and a tip-sensitive digital thermometer things have been peachy. It's my favourite Candian holiday. But, being a huge NFL and college football fan I also like U.S. Thanksgiving. Four days of football on television during the day is awesome.

One thing about U.S. Thanksgiving has always been a bit weird to me:  the presidential pardon of the White House turkey. I read today that the 2008 turkeys are from Ellsworth, Iowa. The 20-week-old turkey weighs about 45 pounds. Their names are chosen by public vote from a list: Popcorn & Cranberry; Yam & Jam, Dawn & Early Light; Roost & Run; Pumpkin and Pecan; and Apple & Cider. It's all a bit creepy.

To get you in the holiday mood, the newest food safety infosheet focuses on the safey thawing, preparation and cooking of a holiday turkey. Thanx to Pete Snyder for his excellent information at Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management.

Click here to download the infosheet.

Australian food guru or food idiot Margaret Fulton joined other celebrity chefs in comparing genetically engineered canola to Hitler in launching the Greenpeace True Food Guide Canola Edition 2009 in Sydney.

"They're going to control the world. We thought Hitler was a bad fella ... these guys could show him a thing or two - and they're creeping up on us quietly without guns or anything like that, but the poison is there."

Individual genetically engineered crops should go through safety assessments, which they do in most countries, and consumers should be able to choose what they like. Instead of Hitler comparisons, maybe the Greenpeace-backed chefs of Australia should focus on not making their customers barf, and not showing up in the name and shame directory of wayward restaurants.
 

About six years ago I was flying from Toronto to Ottawa and after a particularly turbulent morning ride, I was looking a little green. Although the plane was preparing to land, the steward said, ‘you gotta go, you gotta go,’ so I experienced landing while kneeling at the airplane’s plastic throne.

No one figured I was contagious.

Not so in Los Angeles this morning.

United Airlines flight 890 arriving from Japan informed ground crews shortly before touching down at 8:30 a.m. that a 28-year-old man aboard the aircraft of more than 300 passengers was sick and might have some sort of virus.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Cecil Manresa said,

Los Angeles city paramedics and personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention boarded the Boeing 747 after it landed. It took about 20 minutes to determine that the passenger was not contagious, Manresa said.

"He had some kind of stomach ailment or food poising issue, and it was not a virus [or] an infectious disease," he said.

Manresa said that city paramedics, and not the CDC, generally respond when airline passengers complain of illness. But the unidentified man must have told the airplane's crew something to make them think that his condition was more severe, he said.

All I said was, leave me alone.

Hugh ‘Groundhog Day’ Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, wrote in a column for the BBC earlier this week,

“The kitchen has the potential to be most dangerous room in the house. Making it safe is easy. When handling raw meat mutter the mantra ‘turd to tongue’ or - if you have squeamish tendencies – ‘manure to mouth.’”

The good Dr. Pennington was talking about how Campylobacter is the most common cause of foodborne illness and that it “is an embarrassing fact that Campy is a natural bug of birds.”

It’s not easy. Food safety isn’t simple. That’s why up to 30 per cent of everyone gets sick from the food and water they consume each year. And as Jorgen Schlundt, director of food safety at the World Health Organization said the other day,

??????“The notion that you can deal with it at the end of the food chain is clearly wrong.”??????

Amy the French professor is originally from Minnesota. She thought the 1996 movie, Fargo, was a linguistics masterpiece, what with its ‘Yah, you betchas’ and ‘you don’t says’ and demonstration of the ‘Minnesota nice’ conversational style.

Fargo seems like a distant memory, now that Sarah Palin has appropriated all the best lines.

Former VP candidate and current Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was in Wasilla today to do the traditional pardoning a local turkey ahead of Thanksgiving. Minutes later, a farm worker began slaughtering another turkey just a few feet behind her ... plainly visible in the background of the video (below).

Governor Palin was told by the photographer what was going on behind her and allowed the interview to continue.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) could sign Governor Palin up as an undercover slaughterhouse worker. As the N.Y. Times reported Wednesday, PETA is asking for prosecution of workers at the Aviagen Turkeys plant in Lewisburg, W.Va., in a complaint filed with the local sheriff’s office under state laws regarding cruelty to animals. …

The Aviagen video can be seen at www.peta.org. The scenes show stomach-turning brutality. Workers are seen smashing birds into loading cages like basketballs, stomping heads and breaking necks, apparently for fun, even pretending to rape one. …

Bernard E. Rollin, a professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University, said the workers’ actions were “totally unacceptable” and suggested that they be removed from working with animals and prosecuted.

If there’s one result from the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak this summer it’s this: public health types sure are reluctant to finger fresh produce in outbreaks of foodborne illness.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the bureaucrats club know as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed they are looking to U.S. suppliers of E. coli-infected romaine lettuce that has been linked to 153 illnesses across southern Ontario, “but he had few other details.”

On Monday, something called the Produce Safety Project, an Initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts at Georgetown University concluded in a report that weaknesses in food safety policy, organization and communications were all displayed during this summer's outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul.

The report, "Breakdown: Lessons to Be Learned from the 2008 Salmonella Saintpaul Outbreak," represents an in-depth review of the public record of last summer's Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak that caused illnesses in more than 1,400 people across the country.  For a full copy of the report and the executive summary click here: http://www.producesafetyproject.org/reports?id=0001

Highlights and recommendations from the report include:

The need for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use its existing statutory authorities to establish mandatory and enforceable safety standards for fresh produce.  While FDA officials said the outbreak showed the need for these standards, they said Congress needs to pass legislation to grant it explicit authority to do so.  However, the report notes that FDA has already used existing authorities to put in place preventive safety standards for seafood in 1995 and for juice in 2001.

The need for organizational reforms throughout the public health system for a more coordinated outbreak response. The report raises questions about how timely and effectively data was shared between public health agencies and if it contributed to a delayed identification of jalapeno and serrano peppers as a vehicle for Salmonella Saintpaul.

The need to have established and unified risk communication plans in place before an outbreak. The report documents "dueling" public health messages from various agencies announcing the outbreak, and questions why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its presentation of data numerous times in the middle of the outbreak.

I haven’t read the report in detail but will get to it.  And while everyone is pointing fingers, recall that epidemiology is a messy thing, but it can prevent people from barfing. Self-censorship could be worse.

Both CFIA and FDA need to establish clear and transparent protocols on when to go public in outbreaks of foodborne illness. No one will be happy, but it will provide a basis for discussion and a way to move forward; once it’s written down, it can be improved.

I remember when Chapman got a blackberry, the first in our little group to get one. He sent me an e-mail, and then another shortly thereafter:

“I wrote and sent that e-mail while sitting on the toilet.”

Today, it’s almost impossible to enter a public restroom without wondering who’s talking – it’s someone sitting on the toilet with verbal diarrhea into their cell phone.

So in honor of World Toilet Day, a survey of more than 2,000 people commissioned by charity Tearfund found that reading, chatting and texting are among the favourite activities of Britons on the toilet.

The study suggests more than 14 million people in the UK read newspapers, books and magazines on the loo.

The poll points to eight million people talking - either on the phone or to family - and one in five send texts.

The study also suggested people mostly thought about food while on the toilet, and that men were more likely to look around for a distraction than women.
 

It’s a good thing Hugh Jackman and his trainer work out at Sydney’s Bondi Beach (right, from a couple of days ago) rather than the city’s Northern Beaches, which have again been closed due to Salmonella.

In May, 2008, children's playgrounds were closed on Sydney's Northern Beaches after a rare form of salmonella, paratyphi B var java, normally linked to tropical fish, made dozens of toddlers seriously ill.

The sand was replaced at a cost of $140,000 but recent testing has confirmed the same Salmonella has returned.

Today, the Daily Telegraph reports that Hitchcock Park at Avalon and Winnererremy Bay at Mona Vale on the Northern Beaches have been fenced off for the second time this year, while a third South Avalon playground has not re-opened since May.
 

The World Toilet Organization, the other WTO, has proclaimed Nov. 19, 2008, World Toilet Day.

That’s because 2.6 billion people, or 4-out-of-10, have no access to a toilet.

CNN reports that Singaporean social-entrepreneur Jack Sim founded the non-profit World Toilet Organization in 2001, as a support network for all existing organizations. The group meets once a year to network, discuss sanitation issues and work together toward "eliminating the toilet taboo and delivering sustainable sanitation."

Goal number one: Making sanitation speakable. "What we don't discuss, we can't improve," insists Sim.

I’m all for that. With only a couple of weeks left till the increasingly uncomfortable Amy delivers, my conversations are soon to be dominated by the color, consistency and frequency of our baby’s poop. Oh, and the explosivity of it all.

Although as guest barfblogger Michelle of New Jersey points out, shouldn’t World Toilet Day come before Global Handwashing Day, which was Oct. 15, 2008?

There are now seven confirmed cases of E. coli O157:H7, all University of Guelph students, and 43 probable cases, as part of a larger Ontario outbreak believed to involve romaine lettuce.

Cameron Clark, health protection program manager with Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health said the outbreak served “as a reminder for anyone who ate at the campus from that date on, or has experienced symptoms of extreme diarrhea, stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting to contact public health.”

I thought it would be a reminder for food service to check their suppliers of lettuce and ask what is being done to ensure the microbial safety of fresh produce.

Clark also said it's important to continually remind people to wash their hands to prevent human-to-human spread and to thoroughly wash fruits and vegetables.

Does continual reminding work? Or is it nagging? Is washing the lettuce in a Pita Pit wrap -- believed to be the Guelph source -- an effective consumer strategy?

The first LP I bought for myself as a teenager was Led Zepplin IV, a few years after it came out. My parents were fans of the Captain and Tennille.

I still have a number of bad songs I can recite verbatim from exposure as a kid: Petulia Clark’s Downtown, Burt Bacharach’s Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, and the Captain and Tennille’s Muskrat Love.

So I was filled with nostalgia today when Ki Keun Kim and colleagues at Pusan National University, South Korea, discovered that muskrat poop contains a potent antibiotic that can kill both Salmonella and Vibrio, common bacterial causes of foodborne illness.

Maybe the scientists were inspired by bad 1970s music.
 

This is what I hate about Top Chef.

When it comes to eliminations, the hosts all look like they have to pass a huge stool as the camera goes for pregnantly pregnant pauses.

The dramatic music. The looks. And then, Collect Your Knives. Bye-bye.

Heidi Klum on Project Runway is so much more Germanically efficient. You have been eliminated. Get out.

Every time I watch one of those shows I’m reminded of coaching rep or travel team girls hockey back in Canada. Imagine, you’ve got 40 little kids vying for 20 spots on a hockey team, and you call them into the dressing room, one-by-one, with the coaches there, cameras rolling, dramatic music, the knowing stares, and then, you tell a 10-year-old, your risotto, or your skating, sucked, go home.

I asked Amy if she wanted to blog weekly about the food safety mistakes that occur on Top Chef as I attempted to feign interest in the show.  She looked at me like I had just been cut from the family. After all, she’s pretty pregnant (that’s a double entendre, one of those fancy words I learned to use in my school).

That’s OK. Others are already spoofing the show.

Last night's season premiere of "Top Chef" may be the only episode you see all year!

Production on Bravo's popular reality cooking show has been shut down by the New York City Department of Public Health after an E. coli outbreak was traced to the "Top Chef" kitchen.

"It seems that some of our more eager contestants may have cut a few corners in the 'Make a meal out of raw meat in 8 minutes' quickfire challenge," said co-host and head judge Tom Colicchio. "In hindsight, we probably should have more thoroughly checked their work before letting them serve it at a Brooklyn street fair."

By the evening after Bravo finished shooting at the street fair, local officials reported that 24 attendees who sampled "Top Chef" contestants' food had been hospitalized and three were dead. The next morning, health inspectors raided the "Top Chef" kitchen just as co-host Padma Lakshmi was explaining that guest judge Rocco Dispirito had been delayed at his weekly plastic surgery session.

"All I have to say is that anyone convicted of spreading E. coli will likely find themselves in danger of elimination at our next judges' table," Lakshmi said when asked for comment.

Two local health units said today that lettuce – specifically Romaine lettuce –was the common factor in an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to food service operations in four southern Ontario towns that has sickened 130 people.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency responded by saying,

“Canadians are reminded that the best way to prevent foodborne illness is by handling their food safely. … Canadians can also refer to CFIA’s detailed four point plan to prevent E. coli in the home.”

All of the people got sick at restaurants or cafeterias – not in their homes. And contamination of lettuce and other fresh produce needs to be prevented on the farm – there is little consumers or food service can do when contaminated product arrives.
 

I don’t know what I have (right, exactly as shown), but can sympathize with the people quoted below.

University of Wisconsin freshman Ibrahim Balkhy contracted norovirus Sunday morning, saying,

“There was lots of puking and diarrhea — it was hell. All I have eaten are saltines.”

Between 20 and 30 residents of Sellery 6A, one of UW’s largest residence halls, have been fighting the virus since Thursday.

Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist for University Health Services, said the norovirus spreads through stool-to-mouth contact. It enters through the mouth and is passed via the stool or vomit of an infected person.

So don’t eat poop.

Meanwhile, 260 passengers and 17 crew members on board the Holland America Line M.S. Zuiderdam, have come down with norovirus

Brampton, Ontario, resident Ken Ould, 78, said that five days into his transatlantic cruise, the projectile vomiting and diarrhea started.

By the time he and the other 1,819 passengers and 794 crew disembarked in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday, he had missed three ports of call, and spent five days confined to his cabin with his wife Joyce.

Now, if you'll excuse me ...

Michael McCain, president and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, whose products killed at least 20 people, didn’t like the coverage in the Toronto Star over the weekend – those weekends when McCain is, according to e-mails, usually at his Georgian Bay cottage.

So Mr. McCain wrote a letter to the Toronto Star that was published this morning. He says,

“Within hours of being notified by the CFIA of a positive test for listeria monocytogenes (sic – should be Listeria), products were recalled by way of a news release issued to alert consumers.”

As I’ve said before, holding yourself and your company to the CFIA standard is really going for the lowest common denominator. Many people were already dead and dying. CFIA may have a standard – and it’s impossible to know because CFIA won’t come clean on when evidence is sufficient to go public – of issuing a recall once a positive is found, As Globe and Mail reporter Andre Picard wrote on Sept. 11, 2008,
 
“People started dying in June, and it took until mid-August to trace the problem to the plant. On Aug. 13, when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was in the plant looking for the source of listeria monocytogenes, Maple Leaf started warning distributors to stop shipping some meats. But nobody told the public to stop eating them.”

And once again, Mr. McCain you say that listeria is everywhere.

“All food plants and supermarkets have some amount of listeria.”

If that is so, then why don’t your products have warning labels saying, “Listeria is everywhere, don’t feed my deli meats to pregnant women and old people. They may die.”

My pregnant wife is married to someone who has a PhD in food science. So she never ate McCain’s contaminated meat. I know a few other PhDs in food science who have told me the same thing. But shouldn’t other people have access to the same information? After all, listeria is everywhere. McCain, what would you advise a pregnant daughter or daughter-in-law, now that you’ve “learned more in the past three weeks about (food safety) than I have ever learned before in my lifetime.”

McCain concludes his letter to the Star by saying,

“Referencing the company as ‘slow to respond’ is absurd. I am disappointed with the absence of frequently communicated facts from both the CFIA and Maple Leaf in the story.”

Dude, you must pay over $100K for your communications thingies. Shouldn’t they at least be able to write a grammatically correct sentence? Who or what are these “frequently communicated facts?” 

Then work on something that is actually compelling.

I got up at 4:45 a.m. Sunday.

Just habit, how I roll, watching No Country for Old Men in the background, which really does improve with repeated viewings, like most Coen brothers movies.

While scouring the Internet I came across probably the worst infomercial ever. Bill Marler, your competition ain’t going to be knocking down the doors any time soon.

This Florida law firm has its own Internet infomercial. I’m thinking Dan Ackroyd selling a Bass-o-matic.

“What kind of bacteria do you hear about?

The most common is the E. coli virus.

The E. coli virus was linked to Taco Bell shredded lettuce …

Another bacteria that can cause foodborne illness is the salmonella virus.”

Douche alert: Lawyer host -- even I got my hair cut. And telling viewers to “shop at places with reputable reputations” is not a real mastery of the English language.
 

Rob Cribb of the Toronto Star continues his excellent reporting on the Maple Leaf Foods listeria outbreak in Canada that has killed at least 20, and based on e-mails from the company’s CEO and president, Michael McCain (right, exactly as shown), I’m struck that the head of a $5 billion a year company that sells food is so whiney about food safety.

McCain blames the media for making a big deal out of the story, blames lawyers for being ambulance chasers, and says that,

"Eradicating listeria from a plant is akin to eradicating the flu from the office -- we have best practice systems in place to reduce it to the absolute lowest level because it's our reputation at stake, but eradication is just not possible."

So shouldn’t you warn those who are most vulnerable? Like pregnant women and old people?

The entire story is a good read, and it’s based on internal memos that McCain sent to thousands of staff (and which were regularly forwarded to me throughout the outbreak) but the most damning excerpt is this:

"I, for one, can say I've learned more in the past three weeks about (food safety) than I have ever learned before in my lifetime."

A company selling over $5 billion a year and bragging about it's culture of food safety should be doing better than on-the-job training.
 

Canada has the best healthcare system in the world.

At least that’s what Canadians are taught to believe. Never underestimate the persuasive power of wanting to believe.

The family of a seven-year-old boy who suffered complications from the North Bay, Ontario, E. coli outbreak which has sickened 249, needs help as they remain with their young son in a Toronto hospital.

Sylvie MacDonald, Carter’s mother, said,

“This is a nightmare. And asking for help is definitely one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. We don’t like to do this, but I don’t know how long this could last. It could last forever.”

The child from Mattawa was airlifted to Toronto after he was brought into the North Bay and District Hospital Oct. 24.

Huh huh huhhuh. He said wieners.

Contaminated wieners.

Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin announced today that Georgia Department of Agriculture food scientists have found Listeria monocytogenes in a sample of Zeigler Wieners.

Which is why you shouldn’t let little kids or pregnant women eat raw wieners.
 

“If you think the 10 commandments being posted in a school is going to change behavior of children, then you think ‘Employees Must Wash Hands’ is keeping the piss out of your happy meals. It's not.”

So said Jon Stewart in 2002.

A barfblog reader at North Carolina State sends along this url, a site devoted to the must wash hands concept.

Enjoy.

Kansas State University president Jon Wefald likes my dogs.

Four times a week, I walk Amy to her office, and we pass by the admin types in Anderson Hall, which is next door to Amy’s building.

Yesterday was typical. President Wefald was standing in his corner office and gave a big wave to Amy and me and the dogs as we walked by.

President Wefald is great. Despite insisting the K-State will never have a hockey arena, he is always interested in the latest food safety news. He even subscribes to our food safety infosheets.

A few weeks ago as I was walking the dogs, Pres and I got to talking about human cases of Salmonella linked to dry dog food. The Pres kept asking how humans got the Salmonella and I sensed my explanation wasn’t sufficient.

Maybe this will help.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control yesterday said that Salmonella-contaminated dry pet food sickened at least 79 people, including many young children, and could still be dangerous.

Dry pet food has a 1-year shelf life. Contaminated products identified in recalls might still be in the homes of purchasers and could cause illness. Persons who have these products should not use them to feed their pets but should discard them or return them to the store," the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease.

The brands, made by Mars Petcare U.S., include Special Kitty, Pedigree and Member's Mark, among others. The full list of brands affected was available on www.petcare.mars.com.

The CDC report says,

"Consumers and health departments should be aware that all dry pet food, pet treats, and pet supplements might be contaminated with pathogens such as Salmonella, and consumers should use precautions with all brands of dry pet food, treats, and supplements.”

The CDC recommends that anyone handling dry pet food wash the hands and keep infants away from it.
 

I blogged earlier today that any food company doing over $5 billion a year in sales should already have a food safety dude and, after at least 20 deaths, really shouldn’t be bragging.

It gets worse.

Maple Leaf Foods president and CEO Michael McCain said yesterday that by appointing a chief food safety officer,

"I think we're the first in Canada and ... possibly in North America to have that role inside a major food company.”

Wow.

Jack-in-the-Box appointed a food safety officer after the 1993 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak. Odwalla acted like it invented flash pasteurization after the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in cider in 1996. I could go on. Michael McCain, your knowledge of food safety sucks.

And rather than pontificating, at some point Mr. McCain will provide a full accounting of:

• who knew what when;??????

• warn pregnant women and others at risk from listeria in deli meats; and,??????

• make your listeria data public.

There’s an old saying about reformed smokers or drinkers or whatever … they’re the worst critics.

And they want everyone to share their religion.

Natural Selection Foods got food safety religion after the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 in spinach outbreak. Bill Marler recently said upon settling some lawsuits, “Special mention to Natural Selection Foods for its leadership role in preventing leafy green bacterial outbreaks.  All companies should strive for its standards.”

I disagree. There were 29 outbreaks on leafy greens before the 2006 spinach outbreak. Why didn’t Natural Selection pay attention before they got caught?

It’s an old tale. Now, after 20 confirmed deaths, and probably dozens more, Maple Leaf Foods is proclaiming they’ve hired a food safety dude.

I thought food safety would be a priority if a $5 billion company was selling food.

But I’m hopelessly naïve. Ask old girlfriends -- or my wife.

Randy Huffman, formerly of the American Meat Institute, is going to be chief food safety dude for Maple Leaf Foods. Once he settles into his new post in Jan., maybe he can foster the food safety culture his boss, Michael McCain, claims to already have. And maybe he can address some outstanding issues, ones I wrote about back in Aug. 2008 when the enormity of the listeria outbreak in Canada was just emerging:

• who knew what when;

• warn pregnant women and others at risk from listeria in deli meats; and,

• make your listeria data public.

Here's Randy, the meat science guy, on video.

Every week or thereabouts, Ben Chapman and a few of us electronically chat and come up with a food safety infosheet, a graphical one-page food safety-related story directed at food handlers, and available at foodsafetyinfosheets.ksu.edu or http://fsninfosheets.blogspot.com/.

Thanks to Mayra Rivarola, food safety infosheets will now be translated into Spanish as they appear, and are available at http://fsninfosheetsesp.blogspot.com/.

Here is the most recent food safety infosheet in Spanish.

Nueva Infosheet de Food Safety Network – Si estás enfermo, quedate en casa

El más reciente folleto sobre seguridad alimenticia, un relato gráfico de una página dirigido a productores de alimentos, está ahora disponible en http://fsninfosheetsesp.blogspot.com/

Puntos importantes:???Si estás enfermo con diarrea o vomito, habla con tu gerente. Es mejor que te quedes en casa para evitar la transmissión de enfermedades.
Una ley en Indiana requiere que los trabajadores se queden en casa si son diagnosticados con una de las siguientes 5 enfermedades: salmonella, shiga toxin-producing E. coli, shigella, hepatitis A o norovirus.

Un cocinero en Michigan se presentó enfermo al trabajo en el 2006 y fue asociado a un brote de norovirus que enfermó a 364 clientes después de vomitar en los basureros de la cocina.

Que puedes hacer: Llama al trabajo para avisar que estás enfermo. Siempre lávate las manos

Estos folletos son creados semanalmente y repartidos a restaurantes, supermercados, granjas, y son usados en entrenamientos alrededor del mundo. Si tienes alguna solicitud de otro tema, fotos que te gustaría compartir, contacta con Ben Chapman en bchapman@uoguelph.ca

Dr. Doug Sider, Niagara Region’s associate medical officer of health said a food supply problem likely led to the spread of E. coli O157:H7 that has made 46 people sick and caused Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Little Red Rooster to voluntarily close its doors Oct. 24, and Welland’s M. T. Bellies Tap & Grillhouse to close its kitchen on Oct. 29.

Sider said that extensive interviews with dozens of people who ate at Little Red Rooster, including 80 people who did not become sick, suggest some type of contaminated lettuce or salad component is to blame, adding,

“All of the evidence is pointing to the fact that the restaurants were, in a way, innocent bystanders of probably some contaminated produce that was distributed.”

Another 28 people in Burlington have fallen ill in an E. coli outbreak primarily linked to Johnathan’s Family Restaurant on Fairview Street. Three cases are confirmed E. coli O157:H7, and one has a similar “fingerprint” or molecular makeup to several cases in Niagara.

Sider was further cited as saying the three affected restaurants do not share a common food supplier, which is puzzling to investigators, adding,

“That’s why we’re scratching our heads and looking farther upstream. You know, could it be a more central distributor? Places like the Ontario Food Terminal (in Toronto), where a lot of regional or local suppliers buy their produce. … The fact that we’ve got these sort of localized areas with a number of people who became ill, frankly, it’s perplexing. I can’t explain it at this point in time.”

As I’ve said before, there are no guidelines – at least not publicly available guidelines -- on when to go public. Federal agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency must come clean with the public and industry and articulate the basis for public notification, or even restaurant closures, during outbreaks of foodborne illness. Until then local health units are left cleaning up the mess. Good for Dr. Sider for clearly articulating the process.
 

While awaiting DNA test results on the poop in the Australian ice cream, Sydney’s Coogee Bay Hotel has announced it will install six new security cameras, with the food preparation area to be under constant surveillance.

It has also invited NSW health authorities to do monthly inspections of the kitchen, and customers will be able to have their say about the hotel via its website, to be launched soon.

BJ’s wholesalers has pulled all products from a bakery after a local man in North Carolina discovered a form that looks like a mouse attached to a hotdog bun.

Arnold’s Bread Bakery claims it is hardened dough or “pan accumulation”.

The supposed accumulated dough took, “the eyes and the ears and the feet curled up underneath him and the tail,” said Bruce Van Dyne describing what he had found.

North Carolina’s Department of Agriculture began investigations and asked Florida to inspect the factory where the buns were baked.

The chief health inspector in Florida told NewsChannel 36 that businesses rarely fail inspections, but Arnold's Bakery failed twice -- in April and on their re-inspection in May.

Some of the violations: One report shows there was evidence of the presence of insects or rodents, there were bugs in a mixer, and the conveyor built where the dough is baked was held together with duct tape.

The bread company has sent the bun to be tested, expecting results next week.

According to the CDC website, rats and mice can spread over 35 diseases.

Rodent-borne diseases are spread directly to humans through bite wounds, consuming food or

Diseases from rodents are also spread indirectly to humans by way of ticks, mites, and fleas that transmit the infection to humans after feeding on infected rodents. In some cases, the rodents are the reservoirs (carriers) of the diseases, while in other cases the ticks, mites, or fleas act as the disease reservoirs.

The list of diseases transmitted directly by rodents to humans include: Hantavirus, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, rat-bite fever, salmonellosis, among others.