In one of my favourite Arrested Development episodes Zach Braff, who plays a producer for the spoof television show Girls with Low Self Esteem, reveals he, like Tobias, is a never nude. Never nudes, are (as the name implies) never nude. Employees at Vinh Phat restaurant in Australia should abide by the same rules if they wish to avoid repeated fines for breaching food hygiene laws.

Foodweek.com.au reports that three male foodhandlers in the Sydney restaurant were preparing food topless.

Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald, said,

"This incident is a blatant breach of food safety laws, it goes against every basic rule in the book… there is no excuse for not wearing the appropriate clothing, regardless of how hot it may be in the kitchen.”

Continuing,

"This type of behaviour disregards fundamental food handling rules for eliminating the risk of cross-contamination. onsumers should not have to take any risks when dining out."

The restaurant's owners were fined $330, and appears on the New South Wales Name and Shame website.

If only the foodhandlers had been wearing denim cut-offs like Tobias.

Sorenne eating breakfast with dad, Sept. 29, 2009, about 7:15 a.m.

Buttermilk pancakes with berries, bacon and fruit

Dry

2 cups buckwheat flour
1tsp. baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
dash salt
 

Wet

1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
vanilla
frozen berries

Mix wet and appropriate amount of dry, heat in frying pan, top with Canadian maple syrup (not that Vermont stuff) serve with bacon, fresh cantaloupe and pineapple.

The dog waits like a parasite every time Sorenne eats; does make cleanup easier.
 

Sorenne did not sleep last night.

There was seemingly nothing to console her, and I was up much of the night.

But I’m getting some payback now as she enters the third hour of her nap, and decided a homemade hamburger with grilled corn and salad would make a decent lunch for myself. Coupled with the season premier of Californication on the recorderer, I was set.

Except I didn’t have Californication because I can’t tape it until tonight because Amy just had to watch and tape the season premier of The Amazing Race in case she missed a minute of the zzzzzzzzzzzz action.

And then I got this how-to-cook-a-hamburger advice by the geniuses at epicurious, forwarded by my friend Mike.

James Oliver Cury reveals his burger snobbery by suggesting those in search of a medium-rare burger – whatever that is – avoid “low-end” eateries because high-end eateries use higher quality beef and “preparation methods are superior: clean, safe, reliable.”

Guess he’s never heard of The Fat Duck.

In a linked story about burgers, the poke test for doneness is promoted:

“Medium-rare is softly yielding, medium is semifirm, well-done is firm."

 Another says he prefers the visual approach, judging by the juices:

"When they start to come out of the top of the burger, it's medium. When the juices that have oozed out of the top get cooked (stop looking red and become a bit more clear), it's medium-well."

A tip-sensitive thermometer is the only accurate way to determine whether a hamburger has been safely cooked to 160F.

Sorenne woke up before I could finish this, so I changed the TV in the background to something more child-friendly than, No Country For Old Men – Goodfellas was on AMC -- and safely fed her some leftovers.
 

William Perry, aka The Tipton Slasher, was the bare-knuckle heavyweight boxing champ of England in 1850 and 1856.

Apparently, I am related, through my father’s father’s family.

You can see it in the profile (left).

I figured this out during a grade 8 genealogy project in 1975.

Now that Al Gore has invented the Internet, I looked on-line, and there are lots of purported relatives of The Tipton Slasher.

But I have a collection of newspaper clippings outlining the alcohol-fueled antics – and downfall – of the Slasher, as well as a copy of the 1959 Pictorial History of Boxing, by Nat Fleicher and Sam Andre, passed through the family to me.

Hey, the Slasher’s even got his own wiki page.

“William Perry (21 March 1819 – 18 January 1881), known as the Tipton Slasher, was an English boxer of the bare-knuckle era.

“Born Tipton, Perry claimed the heavyweight boxing championship of England twice, in 1850 and in 1856. He was finally defeated by Tom Sayers in 1857.

“He died in Wolverhampton aged 62. A statue stands in the town of Tipton, yards away from the Fountain Inn public house, which was once his headquarters. The building received Grade II Listed Building Status in 1984 on recognition of its association with Perry, who regularly fought fellow boatmen on the many local canals in order to be first through the lockgates.”

Another site described great-great-great-great-great uncle Perry as possessing average physical skills but was “tricky, cool under pressure and used good judgment.”

Except when he bet everything he owned, including his bar, on a comeback title match for which he was woefully underprepared and lost everything, returning to work the canals and dying, penniless and drunk.

Cool statue though.

When they’re not bare-knuckle boxing in British prisons – I wonder which inmate has insisted on the nickname, The Tipton Slasher -- they’re drinking alcohol-based sanitizers.

Peter McParlin of the Prison Officers Association says inmates were using hand sanitizer distributed to control H1N1 flu,  to make illicit alcohol.

The gel had been distributed around the prison to stop the spread of the swine flu virus. McParlin said on Thursday that giving inmates access to a gel with an alcohol content was unwise.

The Tipton Slasher would approve.
 

 Vet school doesn’t leave much time for extracurricular activities (especially during second year classes), but I try my best to stay relatively well rounded throughout these four years of academic boot camp. One of my favorite weekend activities is Cat town, a tailgating area near the football stadium here at K-State. (Doug talked about it yesterday)  Each home football game has a different Vet med-associated club volunteer to help serve food at Cat town, and yesterday’s game against Tennessee Tech was CVMF’s day (Christian Veterinary Medical Fellowship).  As a CVMF member, I helped to set up and serve lunch to the tailgaters. In typical vet student fashion, some brought their pets to the event. One of my classmates has two beautiful black-capped caiques that are always a big hit at Vet med events, and we had them strategically placed at the t-shirt selling booth to attract people to support the second year class.

Now to defend myself, when serving I wore my food-serving plastic gloves in aseptic fashion. I didn’t touch my face with my fingers or sneeze into my hands. I wish there would’ve been hand sanitizer available before I put my gloves on, because serving food hygienically involves a combination of good hand washing and regular glove changes.  We only had one server touching food directly (handing out burger buns) and everyone else used a utensil such as a spoon, knife or tongs to serve food along with gloves. During the slower parts of the afternoon, I would take breaks to chat with people and often drift over to see the birds, Monty and Apple (right). They are very charming little creatures, so I took full advantage of holding them and kissing them (glove-free).  

Lo and behold, who shows up to Cat town but my food-safety boss Doug Powell. He eyes my classmate and I suspiciously as we hold the birds on our fingers and give them kisses on the beak, all while enjoying burgers and cake (pretty much doing everything the CDC recommends avoiding).  Amy and Sorenne got an especially close look at the birds. In the background Doug said, “Keep that Salmonella factory away from my baby.” There’s the Doug I know, always thinking about the potential pathogens.

Later in the afternoon I chatted with my classmate about her food safety practices with the birds. She goes on to tell me that she frequently consumes food around her birds, and has never had any sickness in the past that could be related to the birds. While feeding the birds potatoes salad from her own fork, she tells me that she may have gotten Salmonella from them in the past, but she’s been around them so much that her body may have developed a tolerance to the bacterium. She has never has them tested to see if they carry Salmonella in their feces, though most birds do.

I’m thankful that my classmate has never had any sickness related to her birds, but that may not be the case for the rest of the nation. The young, elderly and other immunocompromised individuals are most likely to contract a zoonotic disease when handling pets. Practicing good food safety habits such as washing your hands thoroughly and cooking your meat to the proper temperature can help reduce the risk of food borne disease. Also, don’t kiss animals to allow them to lick your face, especially not in front of your boss.

When I first moved to New Zealand and discovered the delicious gold kiwifruit I went a little overboard, consuming at least four of these a day. Little did I know the sweeter sibling of the green kiwifruit may be helping to keep me from, ummm, embarrassing body functions.  Kiwi researchers have found that kiwifruit may help flatulence, reports The New Zealand Herald. 

We've all had those awkward moments when a roomful of people tries to ignore a less-than-fragrant blast from someone's nether regions. It's bad enough at work - but much worse on the bus or, heaven forbid, in a lift. Now help could be on the way, with the humble kiwifruit…

Up to one in five men and one in four women suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), with flatulence and constipation among common symptoms. The fruit contains an enzyme called zyactinase, and a small study has shown it could provide relief for IBS sufferers.

Gastroenterologist Dr Russell Walmsley, who worked on the research, said,

"People think of kiwifruit for constipation but it also seemed to be quite good for general irritable bowel.”

Melanie Palmer, communications manager for kiwifruit marketing company Zespri, said the fruit was known for relieving that "blocked and bloated feeling".

Continuing,

"Early results show eating green kiwifruit as part of a meal may improve digestion."

I’m a fan of the Zespri kiwifruit, mainly because they come with a clever little knoon (knife/spoon) for scooping your fruit (see picture, right).

 

When I was pregnant with Sorenne in the summer of 2008, we spent a month in Canada while the Maple Leaf Listeria outbreak was, in retrospect, percolating in cold-cuts that were being consumed across the country.

If I hadn’t been informed by my food safety guru husband, I could have very easily consumed ready-to-eat deli meat on our car trip north, potentially putting my baby at risk. Sorenne turned out healthy, huge and wonderful. And we are thankful every day.

Several of my former students, friends, and family members are pregnant right now, and somehow I’ve become the expert on food safety during pregnancy. These women have expressed frustration and confusion about the conflicting information they read and receive from their doctors regarding what they can and cannot eat during pregnancy. While I generally think moderation and eliminating stress are priorities, there are a few food safety concerns that are definitely worth considering. I’ve already written on “What you can and cannot eat during pregnancy,” but in light of major outbreaks (and this is barfblog, of the 4 Rs), the information bears repeating.

Pregnant women should avoid:

-       ready to eat refrigerated foods such as deli meats, smoked fish, hot dogs, sausages, pâté, and the like. If the food is shelf-stable (canned), it should be ok. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find canned pâté in Manhattan, KS during my pregnancy – but now it’s available at Hyvee.

-       soft-serve ice-cream which has been suspected as a listeria risk

-       soft cheeses (brie, camembert – pasteurized or not) and we are uncertain about blue-veined cheeses (I toasted or melted my cheese to alleviate my fears. Now this seems laughable since I’m not eating any dairy while I breastfeed.)

-       and sprouts because they have been identified as a source of listeria and other pathogens.

Listeria is one of the main food safety concerns during pregnancy because it causes a high rate of miscarriage and stillbirths.

For further reading, consult the Bad bug book, http://www.foodsafety.gov/~mow/chap6.html and the CDC’s excellent site http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/pregnancy_gateway/infection_list.htm#protect

The number of E. coli cases believed to be linked to the PNE has climbed from 13 last week to 18, and the mother of one sick child is questioning health officials' response.

Coquitlam, B.C., mother Caroline Neitzel says her 14-month-old daughter, Jacklyn (right), was infected with E. coli after a visit to the annual Vancouver fair on Sept. 5.

Neitzel said her daughter touched a number of different animals at the petting farm. She said she did her best to wipe her daughter's hands with wet wipes during that visit.

Despite her efforts, Jacklyn became very ill. At first doctors thought the toddler had the flu. Jacklyn was sent home twice before being admitted to Royal Columbian Hospital, according to her family.

"By that time, her eyes were rolling into the back of her head. She was just so lethargic," Neitzel told CTV News on Friday.

The toddler spent four days in hospital. Neitzel said she thinks her daughter would have been diagnosed earlier if health officials had issued a public warning when a cluster of E. coli cases was discovered.

Anna Marie D'Angelo, a spokeswoman for Vancouver Coastal Health, said the public was not alerted because there was no risk at the time.

"We became aware of the situation three days after the PNE had closed. So there was no risk to any future people getting this E. coli," she said.

Health officials say an alert would not have changed how a patient was treated at the hospital.

The PNE says E. coli has never been a problem in the past at the petting farm and that the fair has stringent hygiene measures in place, including signs and staff directing visitors to hand-washing stations.
 

I don’t know who does public relations for the Fat Duck restaurant but they should be fired.

Seven months after sickening 529 customers with norovirus, Fat Duck chef Heston Blumenthal today said,

"I am relieved to be able to finally offer my fullest apologies to all those who were affected by the outbreak at the Fat Duck. It was extremely frustrating to not be allowed to personally apologise to my guests until now.

"It was devastating to me and my whole team, as it was to many of our guests and I wish to invite them all to return to the Fat Duck at their convenience."

Wow. Saying sorry is not an expression of guilt. It is an expression of empathy. Like, that really sucks you and 528 other people are barfing. I barfed once and it felt awful. Hope you feel better.

Some spokesthingy for the restaurant said,

"The Fat Duck, its insurers, experts and legal advisers only received a copy of this report a few hours before its publication and have only now had time to consider its contents. This meant that until all these parties had had the opportunity to review it and take expert advice it wasn't appropriate or indeed possible to comment in detail on its contents or respond fully to our customers.”

Of course, that didn’t stop  Blumenthal from issuing his own delusional statement on Sept. 10, 2009, as soon as the Health Protection Agency report was released:

“We are glad that the report has finally been published and draws a conclusion to the closure of the Fat Duck and more importantly that the norovirus has been identified as the cause and not due to any lapse in our strict food preparation processes. We were affected by this virus during a national outbreak of what is an extremely common and highly contagious virus. The restaurant has been open as normal since March 12 and I would like to reassure our guests that they can continue to visit us with total confidence.”

All apologies aside, the report clearly stated that the norovirus outbreak – linked to the consumption of raw oysters -- continued for at least six weeks because of "ongoing transmission at the restaurant” through "continuous contamination of foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners or a mixture of both." The report also identified poor reporting and sick staff showing up and working as factors in making the outbreak far worse than it should have been.

Saying sorry is nice but never enough. The Fat Duck should be judged on its food safety actions.

Todd Furnell (right), a two-year-old boy who suffered kidney failure following an E.coli outbreak at a petting farm was discharged from hospital after two weeks. Unfortunately his brother was still on a drip and too unwell to be released.

The Health Protection Agency said yesterday that a fifth farm has partially closed after identifying a further five cases of E. coli O157 in people who had visited Big Sheep and Little Cow Farm.
 

Gemma Weaver, 24, of Bramley Close, has vowed to "never forgive the farm" after her three-year-old son, Alfie (right), suffered kidney failure following a visit to Godstone Farm.

“We are taking legal advice at the moment. I will never, ever be setting foot in a farm with my children again. Not just Godstone Farm but any farm."

Mrs Weaver said she still hadn't heard from (farm manager) Mr Oatway, who added,
 
“We will definitely be opening again. There are still ongoing investigations but we are sure we will open again."

Three more cases of E.coli linked to a children's petting farm have been confirmed - taking the number of people affected to 79.
 

Petting zoos, farm visits and local fairs are all settings for pathogen risks, especially for kids. Scott Weese at wormsandgerms detailed some of the risks in action that he saw recently at an Ontario site. Media reports out of the UK suggest that in the wake of the recent farm visit-linked outbreak with over 60 children ill with E. coli O157, agritourism business is down. Another 13 kids are also ill in outbreak linked to the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver.

Handwashing can reduce the risk of E. coli O157, but signs and sinks do not make people wash their hands. Operators and volunteers need to be diligent in promoting the importance of handwashing as infection control with patrons and staff and compel folks with creative messages.

CDC has a publication that operators should check out on managing public-animal contact risks (scroll down to the bottom of the page). We've combined some of that information and added our barfblog flare to come up with this week's food safety infosheet, which is downloadable here.

Solicitor Jill Greenfield said she was instructed by relatives of the "seriously ill" youngster to pursue a negligence claim against Godstone Farm in Surrey.

But she would not disclose her clients' names or the age of the child involved.

"We need to establish what went wrong and who if anyone is at fault. I would hope that the farm representatives and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) will agree to meet with me as soon as possible in order that I can establish the facts as quickly as possible.
"I have contacted both the farm and the HPA today suggesting a meeting this week and I wait to hear."

The HPA said eight children remained in hospital and 67 cases of E.coli have been linked to Godstone farm.
 

London Informer reports that health officials are investigating an outbreak of Salmonella poisoning linked to a Hammersmith and Fulham kebab shop which has left at least 41 people ill.

Of those 14 people have been confirmed as suffering from the potentially deadly infection.

Investigators from the North West London Health Protection Unit (HPA) are tracing the source of the infection and after early enquiries the Shahi Nan Kebab house in Uxbridge Road has voluntarily closed its doors.

Unfortunately, and no disrespect to the victims of either foodborne illness or choking on food, I can’t help but continue with the Kids in the Hall theme because it’s all I think of when I hear the word, kebab.
 

Last Friday the family and I embarked on a journey from Raleigh, NC to Port Hope, ON (Canada) to visit with our folks and celebrate our son Jack's 1st birthday. Dani and I had a strategy to limit the potential baby-craziness aspect of the 14-hour trip: leave mid-day and drive late into the night to perhaps let Jack's internal schedule take over and allow him to sleep for the majority of the ride.

Surprisingly, that plan worked perfectly.

Jack fell asleep around 7pm and did not wake until Dani abruptly woke him up with some spectacular barfing somewhere around Scranton, PA. She had been feeling car sick since about 30 minutes after we left and had fought it for a few hours, in her words, it "just came up". It surprised her enough that she felt she didn't have time to roll down the window, or even open the door. Sitting in the passenger seat, she turned to her left and decided to try to catch the barf in an empty cup she had sitting in the console. Bad idea. She filled the cup, and then both cup holders on the console. And then all over my leg and shoes.

Reminiscent of Lardass Hogan (see Stand By Me clip, below) I had a sympathy puke.

This ranks pretty high in my all-time vomit memories. It's up there with puking in Doug's flower bed; trying to catch vomit in my hands while sitting in a car and throwing it out the window (didn't work); deep-sea fishing induced illness and another Dani car story where she opened the window but decided to puke on the inside of the door instead. The most recent has made the top-5.

Jack fell back asleep soon after we stopped to clean up. But the car still smells like barf.

Washing your hands everyday, year round, regardless of the week is important, but since it is International Clean Hands Week, I am reminding all barfblog readers to wash their hands. It is essential to wash your hands before and after food preparation, after bathroom use, after coughing or sneezing, and once just because it’s International Clean Hands Week.

With 64 kids now stricken with E. coli O157 related to visits at the Godstone farm in Surrey, the responses from the folks who run petting zoos could be a little more sympathetic, a little more reflective.

Instead, as reported by the Guardian tonight (tomorrow in the U.K.), Geoff Ford, who runs Docker Park farm in Lancashire, where children can feed pygmy goats (see 1999 Ontario Western Fair outbreak, below) by hand and stroke rabbits, said any ban would affect "children's environmental education” stating,

"It's going to get hyped up out of all proportion. It does away with children's environmental education. It's important that children realise what a chicken is, what a calf is – often they come here and ask 'is that a horse?'… We have run our farm for 20 years with no problems. But there is only so much you can do if people don't listen. The farm at the source of the outbreak in Surrey had big signs all over the place telling people to wash their hands, but some people don't give a damn."

The U.K. Department of Health responded today by announcing that the advisory committee on dangerous pathogens would be reviewing the current guidance on open farms and will advise on the need for additional precautions "in the light of the current outbreaks of E coli O157."

A Department of Health spokesman told the Telegraph,

“The risk of infection from E-coli O157 through petting farm animals can be prevented by following everyday good hand hygiene measures.”

All of these statements have serious problems.

• 64 kids sick with E. coli O157 is not hysteria, it sucks;

• anyone who says, “we have run our farm for 20 years with no problems” is unwilling to learn and a hazard to public health;

• telling people to wash their hands is insufficient – proper handwashing requires access to proper tools;

• even with proper tools, signs are not enough, as we showed with our recent handwashing compliance study at a university residence when everyone was barfing and awareness was high; and,

• the best handwashing may not be enough -- 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.

Scott Weese, a clinical studies professor at the University of Guelph (Canada) and colleagues reported in the July 2007 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.

He observed similar failures yesterday.

So 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 eight years after all Canadian fairs were urged to adopt 46 recommendations to enhance petting zoo safety, many are still doing a lousy job.

Bill Marler has compiled a list of outbreaks related to petting zoos. We’ve previously reported at least 29 petting zoo related outbreaks in North America alone.

These petting zoo 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?

If 64 sick kids is hysteria, conversation is useless and regulation required.
 

While attending K-State as a veterinary student, I’ve had the chance to observe many clinical cases in the teaching hospital ranging from a broken puppy leg to a zebra exam. That’s right, a zebra. Last fall a zebra from a zoo came into the hospital, and upon hearing about it, I quickly went down to its stall to take a look at the animal up close. I quickly found out that ‘close’ was a relative term when it comes to zebras, as the animal was in a very secure pen with a large sign that read: “Caution: zebra is aggressive.” Who would’ve thought that a wild animal would be… wild? I left the hospital that day without any injuries, but unfortunately a little girl (right) in North Carolina found out how wild zebras really are when she left a petting zoo without half a finger.

According to the news story, nine-year-old Elizabeth was hand feeding a zebra at a petting zoo when it took off nearly all of her right pinkie finger. "It actually grabbed onto my hand and took it back a little bit. My papa had to smack it a few times to get my hand back. I was really scared," she said. Elizabeth is recovering with her bandaged half-pinkie and she’s also receiving a series of seven rabies shots.

"I still couldn't believe it happened. It's not something you hear every day that your daughter's finger has gotten bitten off by a zebra," explained Elizabeth's mom, Kristy Ross (left). "I just assumed if they're giving me the food to feed them it will be OK. It's going to be safe."

Unfortunately those assumptions didn’t protect the little girl from the zebra. I can see the appeal of feeding goats and sheep, but zebras?! They’re unpredictable animals and have been known to rear up and kick or bite attackers when cornered. In the case of Elizabeth in NC, there’s not just one person to blame. The petting zoo owner admitted that two kids and one volunteer have been bitten in the last couple of years at his zoo, yet he didn’t remove the zebra from the exhibit. Maybe the owner should replace it with a Tijuana zebra.  And as Elizabeth’s mom incorrectly assumed, being given food to feed a zebra doesn’t automatically make the zebra safe.

Animal behavior problems aside, I wonder how many of the petting zoo animals are infected with E. coli?  Are there hand washing stations nearby? 

To the right is a picture I took at the state fair last year.  Luckily I wasn't bit.

The BBC reports that 47 people who visited a cafe in Portsmouth have been confirmed as suffering from salmonella infection.

NHS Portsmouth, the Health Protection Agency and Portsmouth City Council are investigating the cases associated with the Tenth Hole Tea Rooms in Southsea.

All became ill in August and four went needed hospital care, but there have been no new cases since 1 September.

The tea rooms have co-operated with the probe and implemented preventative measures, the city council said.

Paul Edmondson-Jones, director of public health for both NHS Portsmouth and the city council, said,

"While an initial investigation was begun by the council on 25 August, it was stepped up to other agencies on 1 September when the scale of the incident became apparent. It was only in the last couple of days that we have been able to accurately confirm the Tenth Hole as the source of the outbreak, which is now over."
 

Julie, my youngest sister, started her first year at Fanshawe College in London (Ontario) this fall. Like many first years she’s staying in residence, and like many first years she’s having a great drunken time – likely followed by painful mornings hovered over the toilet.

Although many a pukey morning could be attributed to alcohol overconsumption, Courier-Journal reports ways to avoid foodborne illness while living in dorms (or residence halls).

Food-related illnesses, such as E. coli and salmonella infection, can creep into a dorm — or any setting where people gather. But students aren't always alert to the risks…

The article identifies a few problem areas for this demographic.

Eating pizza that's been left out all night: In general, perishable food shouldn't be left out more than two hours at room temperature or no more than one hour in 90-degree weather, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But as Doug explains, there are exceptions,

“If it's the kind of pizza that most people usually get, which is like cardboard and completely dry, it's probably going to be all right. But when in doubt, throw it out.”

Relying solely on a food's color or smell to tell whether it's safe to eat:

“If something smells gross, toss it,” said Doug Powell.

But while your nose and eyes may lead you right sometimes, they're not foolproof. For example, that hamburger or chicken you just cooked may look done, but you won't know for sure whether it's safe to eat unless you stick a food thermometer in it to check the temperature. You can pick one up at the nearest big-box store.

Your tongue can mislead you, too. A product can be contaminated with bacteria, such as salmonella, without tasting or looking odd.

That’s Julie, right, with the college staple food pizza.

That's one of the responses Brae Surgeoner, Doug and I received when we asked University of Guelph students how they got information that a norovirus outbreak was happening on campus a couple of years ago. The kids were getting information through non-official channels and rumours were high. A lesson that was learned from the outbreak was to communicate with the target audience (whether it be college students or folks in a long-term care facility) with mediums they are already comfortable with.

I got an email from a couple of folks at Guelph this morning saying that our recently published Journal of Environmental Health article where the above results and conclusions were shared is making the rounds on campus. Here are some of the highlights from the interview I did with Katie Mangan at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"We couldn't follow students into the bathroom, because that leads to ethical problems," Mr. Chapman says. So the researchers focused on whether students were using a plastic bottle of hand-sanitizing gel placed at the entrance of a cafeteria that had been described to them as "ground zero" of the outbreak.

"What people do and what they say with regard to hand hygiene are two different things," Mr. Chapman reports.

He says health officials should aim their messages at specific audiences, such as students living in a particular residence hall. Instant messaging and other social-media tools should be used as well.

"It really hits home," he notes, "when their classmates start changing their IM names to something like Puking Veronica."

Gotta know how to reach the kids with health messages; make it relevant and compelling. Check out www.foodsafetyinfosheets to see how we attempt to do that.

Earlier this week on Jon and Kate plus 8, or whatever it’s called, newly single Kate took to the grill for apparently the first time and was terrified of poisoning her brood.

“Dear chicken, please do not give us sammonella. Love Kate.” (Salmonella -- dp)

Cara gets bloody chicken. Kate laughs this off and says “oops” in the interview chair. … Ashley confirms the raw chicken. ??????

Stick it in. And don’t poison your kids.
 

I first went to London in 1993. I was once again a graduate student, someone looked after the older two girls, and we took 6-week-old Braunwynn.

I loved to get a morning coffee – which cost about $895.58 pounds or something outrageous -- and reading the broadsheet newspaper, The Independent.

About that time I also realized, The Independent sorta sucked.

Rob Sharp writes in today’s Independent that Robin Hancock – not the musician, but the proprietor of Wright Brothers, an oyster wholesaler which supplies top restaurants – says the risks are overblown. In fact, he says, oysters should be enjoyed because they are full of vitamins, iron, calcium and are low in cholesterol.

"I would like to set the record straight," he says. "food poisoning from oysters is something from the past. We sell four to five tonnes of oysters a week – that's nearly 60,000 or 2.5 million a year – and we get maybe four or five cases of food poising in that time. What happened at the Fat Duck was somewhat of a freakish occurrence." Several thousand fishermen breathe a sigh of relief.

Fat Duck was 529. That’s more than four or five.

Hancock recommends the old adage of "checking to see if the toilets are clean" when venturing into a restaurant; general levels of hygiene can be a useful clue.

Not useful.

“We should not make too much of the viral thing; it is exceptionally rare. Again, I think the staff at the Fat Duck – where they are obsessed with a clinical, almost scientific preparation of food and are more than aware of these processes – were incredibly unlucky."

Or incredibly sloppy.

Does knowing your farmer make food safer?

Absolutely not.

Maybe if you ask the right questions, and get honest answers, but even then, only a maybe.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new youtube vid has lots of stuff about local and regional, economics but no evidence of why local is better. And nothing about food safety

The 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative, chaired by Deputy Secretary Merrigan, is the focus of a task force with representatives from agencies across USDA who will help better align the Department's efforts to build stronger local and regional food systems. This week alone, USDA will announce approximately $65 million in funding for 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiatives.

To be fair, USDA did announce nearly $10,000 in funding for the University of Minnesota to bring together experts on food safety and regulations for a discussion of marketing to institutions like K-12 schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other health care facilities.

Leave it to the academics to ask for money to meet. Foods safety needs to be front and center of any food initiative.

And this was my farmer near Guelph, Jeff Wilson (above, right). He had outstanding food safety, long before others started talking about it.
 

Daughter Courtlynn is going to visit for American Thanksgiving in late November. Got her plane tickets last night. But even with the new flights from Dallas, getting to Manhattan (Kansas) just isn’t that easy.

That’s one of the reasons folks at Kansas State University went big into distance education. It’s just too much time spent on travel. My mother even figured out Skype last week so she could see granddaughter Sorenne.

But is there a better way to deliver food safety information by distance? And who better to answer that question than a food safety distance education person who wants to get an advanced degree?

Sarah Reasoner (right, with her hubby) had to watch and film me so much for distance education, I figured, maybe it’d be useful to actually figure out what works and what doesn’t for distance ed. So she’s been doing a part-time Masters degree while having more babies. And now she gets to tell her academic department, Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology at Kansas State University, all about it.

Sarah writes:

Distance education has experienced rapid growth in recent years in enrollment and technological advancements. These advancements have created a unique opportunity for instructors to implement emerging technologies into distance education courses and enhance student’s learning experiences. This presentation explores food safety distance education at Kansas State University, emerging web tools and how to affectively implement such tools into existing food safety distance education courses. Future research possibilities regarding the enhancement of distance education are also discussed.

Sarah talks at 8:30 Friday morning in Mosier 202. That’s in the vet college. In Manhattan (Kansas). Her slides are below. We’ll tape the talk, because how can you not tape a talk about distance education. And put it on the web. Students hate seeing themselves talk, and so do I, but it’s a useful learning tool. I’ve learned to dress better after seeing myself on video.
 

barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/uploads/file/Enhancing Food Safety Distance Education.pptx

Two-year-old twins Aaron and Todd Furnell went to visit the farm and in this picture, from the Mirror, lie motionless on their stomachs in adjacent hospital cots.

Todd underwent a second blood transfusion yesterday - the day a 13th child was hospitalised - after the brothers had suffered acute kidney failure.

Ms Mock said: "They're much the same, but now they are eating a little bit, rather than having it done for them through a feeding tube. When Aaron isn't asleep, he seems a bit more alert, but Todd is struggling a little."

Tracy Mock is among a group of parents calling on health officials to explain why they were able to visit Godstone Farm, Godstone, near Redhill, Surrey, after the first case of E.coli was brought to manager's attention there on August 27.

Ms Mock, from Kent, and her sons visited the farm four days later.

Four young children remained seriously ill in hospital last night following the outbreak on the popular petting farm.

Twenty four adults fell ill after visiting. Yesterday the Health Protection Agency (HPA), which faced calls for a public inquiry into its handling of the outbreak, confirmed there were a total of 37 cases of E.coli infection linked to the farm, including another child who had been recently diagnosed.

Another toddler, Alfie Weaver, was being monitored by doctors at East Surrey Hospital in Redhill, where he also had blood transfusions.

The little boy was left screaming in agony when his kidneys shut down following the outbreak. He was cared for in an isolation ward but is now understood to have begun talking.

His grandfather, from Redhill, who did not want to be named, said the three-year-old has since shown signs of improvement.

"It was like a dream come true, he has been in agony for nine days," he said.

The child and his six-year-old sister were taken to Godstone Farm on the August bank holiday – several days after the first case of E.coli was reported.

His mother, Gemma Weaver, said: "We deserve answers from the farm and the Health Protection Agency about this horrific bug. This farm should have been shut down earlier in August if kids tested positive for the bug then."

In Vancouver, where another dozen kids got sick from the petting zoo, the local paper can’t decide whether it was the food or the petting zoo.

Mark Neale writes in the Belfast Telegraph this morning that those who have investigated E. coli O157  "know the risk it poses on open or petting farms. A quick scan of the literature suggests one outbreak a year can be associated with open or petting farms. E.coli, particularly the virulent 0157 variant, has always been associated with farms and farm animals. Hand-washing, alcohol gels and all manners of materials used to remove the bacteria ultimately will prove useless."
 

Tragically following the mother country, the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver (that’s Canada) is reporting that 11 children and two adults came down with E. coli days after visiting the petting zoo at the PNE this summer.

The story triumphantly declares that it was the first time the PNE has been linked to cases of E. coli since the agricultural fair opened in 1910.

One child remained in hospital Tuesday in fair condition and two children have been sent home. The ages of the victims ranged from 21 months to 69 years.

Vancouver's PNE and its petting zoo with sheep, goats, horses and a donkey were open from Aug. 22 to Sept. 7.

Dr. John Carsley, a medical health officer with Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, said officials did not announce the outbreak of E. coli.

“An announcement would have been pointless. No one was at risk to be infected after the PNE closed and, if someone was exposed to the germ but has not yet fallen ill, there is nothing that could be done to prevent an outbreak of the illness. If you have nothing to offer people, what are you going to tell them?”

The majority of people who went into the barn and were exposed to the germs were at no risk, he also said. “So you are basically scaring an enormous amount of people and telling them, you might have been exposed to a potentially fatal illness about which you can do nothing.”

Tell them to be careful when going to petting zoos. Inform them of the risk. Try not to be a tool.
 

Dining centers across the U.S. are finding new ways of saving money by ditching cafeteria trays.  Trayless policies have become trendy because of a win-win situation it creates, according to Joseph Spina, the executive director of the National Association of College and University Food Services in an LA Times article.

Cafeterias save money – cutting on food wastes, water and energy usages – and students avoid the freshman 15. The director Kramer Dining Center at K-State, Sheryll Klobasa, acknowledges these benefits, but going trayless would require a mayor rearrangement of cafeteria equipment.

“We've talked about it but we are not even close to making the decision despite the advantages,” Klobasa said. “Most of our operations are not set up for that to work well with us.”

The advantages include saving in water and energy bills, since trays don’t need to be washed. Food bills are also reduced because students usually take more food on their trays then what they are going to eat, Klobasa added. For this reason, going trayless could also help students stay away from overeating.

There are also negative aspects to the trayless trend, according to Klobasa. Aside from the inconvenience, they are worried that students would leave more plates and utensils on the tables, because they might need to make more than one trip to return all of them. That would add to the cafeteria's labor costs.

“The physical arrangement is the biggest barrier for us,” said Mark Edwards, the director of Derby Dining Center at K-State. “We have to use the trays to get plates downstairs to the dishwashing room.” He also believes going trayless would benefit K-State cafeterias.

Regarding safety, trayless policies would probably not increase any already existing food safety risks for the students, according to Edwards. In a self service setting, where hundreds of students are handling the same utensils to help themselves with salads, desserts, and cereal, there is always a risk of contamination. This risk would exist with or without cafeteria trays, Edwards said.

Thinking of the benefits of going trayless, I would say to our cafeteria directors at K-State, just do it!

I’ve had pawpaw when in Australia. It’s yummy. And like other fresh produce, can be an excellent source of Salmonella.

The West Australian Department of Health issued a statement on Tuesday saying seven cases of salmonella poisoning linked to the tropical fruit had been uncovered over the past six weeks.

WA environmental health director Jim Dodds said,

"Wash all pawpaws with running tap water immediately before eating, this includes pawpaw that has been cut prior to purchasing. After cutting pawpaw at home thoroughly wash hands, cutting boards and knives."

That's nice. And prevent Salmonella from gettiing on the pawpaw on the farm.
 

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in her Sept. 11 address to the United Fresh Produce Association’s Washington Public Policy Conference that FDA’s intent is to keep unsafe foods from reaching the market and part of that new push will be accomplished by expanding outreach.

Guess it didn’t reach all the lettuce growers. Or the consuming public.

That’s because The Oregonian reports today that federal and state health authorities are investigating a salmonella outbreak that peaked in Oregon in August.

This is the middle of September. This is not prevention. Or good news.

The good news is that it is over, said William Keene, senior epidemiologist at the Public Health Division in Oregon.

He said the first cases surfaced nationwide in mid-July and trailed off a month later.

At least 124 were sickened across the country, with a clustering of cases in the West.

Two people got so sick they had to be hospitalized, and one had severe symptoms, Keene said. They have now been released from the hospital. He said no one died in Oregon or elsewhere in connection with the outbreak.

Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration still do not know exactly what poisoned people, though shredded lettuce is a leading suspect, Keene said.

The silence of the Salmonella. It would help, as with the Salmonella in produce outbreak last summer, or the listeria in Canadian cold cuts last fall, if public health types would clearly articulate, when they go public and why. And let everyone see those guidelines.
 

In the fall of 1998, I accompanied one of my five daughters on a kindergarten trip to the farm. After petting the animals and touring the crops --I questioned the fresh manure on the strawberries --we were assured that all the food produced was natural. We then returned for unpasteurized apple cider. The host served the cider in a coffee urn, heated, so my concern about it being unpasteurized was abated. I asked: "Did you serve the cider heated because you heard about other outbreaks and were concerned about liability?" She responded, "No. The stuff starts to smell when it's a few weeks old and heating removes the smell."

I’m all for farm visits, local markets, petting zoos, but I want the operators to have a clue about the dangerous bugs that make people – especially little kids – sick.

The Brits are particularly pissed that Godstone Farm in Surrey, which appears to be the source of 36 E. coli O157 illnesses, including 12 kids in hospital, stayed open as long as it did.

The Telegraph reports this morning,

As many as 18,000 people were allowed to visit the farm, where children are allowed to touch and feed animals including geese, goats and llamas, in the nine days after health protection officials became aware of a possible risk.

A total of 36 people have been taken ill with the potentially lethal bacterial infection including 12 children who are in hospital.

Four of the children are said to be in a serious condition after developing complications such as kidney failure as well as diarrhoea.

Among those being treated in hospital are Tracy Mock's two-year-old twin sons who visited the attraction on Aug 31 while her five-year-old daughter is also ill.

"If they had just shut the place down to investigate, my sons would not be in hospital on kidney dialysis machines," Miss Mock, from Kent, told the BBC.
"They are still in hospital, my partner and I are taking turns to be there with them. One has had a blood transfusion.

Neil Wilson’s six year-old nephew Tommy contracted E-coli after visiting the farm and is now in hospital in Sidcup suffering from kidney failure.

Mr Wilson said: "I can’t understand why they didn’t shut down that area of the farm until they found out exactly what the problem was.

"I just think they kept it open because it was the school holidays.”

Richard Oatway, the farm’s manager, said he had complied with everything officials had asked him to do and would not reopen until given the all-clear.

Dick, I want to ask you a few questions about verotoxigenic E. coli and ruminants.

Here’s a video about petting zoo safety we did a couple of years ago.

It’s like people in the U.K. had never heard of E. coli O157. Despite outbreak after outbreak – often involving children at nurseries -- public inquiries and a single food safety agency, the Brits just seem oblivious when it comes to dangerous pathogens that send kids to the hospital.

This morning, the London Times reported that

“Thousands of children across the South of England may be at risk from the E. coli bug in what looks to be the largest UK outbreak linked to transmission from farm animals."

Godstone Farm in Surrey, a popular family attraction where children are encouraged to stroke and touch animals, is closed while the Health Protection Agency (HPA) conducts tests to find out the cause of the outbreak which has left 12 children in hospital, four of them in a serious condition.

About 1,000 children, mainly from South London, Surrey, Kent and Sussex, visit the farm every day during the school holidays and at weekends. It is feared that 30,000 children could be at risk of infection.

It has emerged health officials knew about the outbreak among people who visited the farm days before it was closed to the public.

The Health Protection Agency became aware of the outbreak in late August after cases were traced to the farm.

One parent has expressed her anger, saying the decision for the farm to remain open was an "absolute disgrace".

But farm manager Richard Oatway said the farm had acted responsibly and was co-operating with the investigation.

Richard, please share with us your knowledge of natural reservoirs of E. coli O157, and the steps you’ve taken to control such dangerous pathogens from infecting children who visit your farm. Handwashing isn’t enough.
 

This week's food safety infosheet, directed at foodservice staff is attached here. The infosheet focuses on an outbreak at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant which happened earlier this year. While norovirus illnesses were initially linked to patrons who ate shell???sh, health authorities believe that ill staff members handling other food also contributed to the length and scope of the outbreak.

Michelin Stars don't mean anything when it comes to food safety culture.

Download the Fat Duck food safety infosheet here.

Canadian Minister of Agriculture and wannabe listeria comedian Gerry-isn’t-my-moustache-awesome Ritz announced today the government will spend $75 million Canadian taxpayer dollars to make sure Maple Leaf Foods products don’t make people barf or kill them.

"The Government of Canada's highest priority is the safety of Canadians. We are making significant investments to hire more inspectors; update technologies and protocols; and, improve communication so that Canadians have the information they need to protect their families."

The government will:

• hire 166 new food safety staff with 70 focusing on ready-to-eat-meat facilities;

more inspectors with listeria-vision goggles won’t make a difference

• provide 24/7 availability of health risk assessment teams to improve support to food safety investigations;

the half-dozen people in my lab used to do that

• improve coordination among federal and provincial departments and agencies;

more meetings

• improve communications to vulnerable populations before and during a foodborne illness outbreak;

could do that now, have produced nothing

• improve tracking of potential foodborne illness outbreaks through a national surveillance system;

yawn, been saying that for years

• improve detection methods for Listeria monocytogenes and other hazards in food to reduce testing time and enable more rapid response during food safety investigations, as well as expanding the Government's ability to do additional Listeria testing; and

a few researchers get money for their testing protocols

• initiate a third-party audit to make sure Canada's food inspection system has the right resources dedicated to the right priorities.

Maybe they could hire the American Institute of Baking, from Manhattan (Kansas) the same third-party auditor geniuses who said Peanut Corporation of America was doing a bang-up job, that is until over 4,000 products were recalled.
 

There was this time, we thought we’d killed Chapman.

Ben and I went along with Uncle Denton to the Canadian Horticulture Council meeting in Montreal in Feb. 2003. I had chaired a national committee on on-farm food safety program implementation – and the advice was completely ignored – Chapman and I had done years of groundwork with Denton and the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, and we agreed to share a room at the annual meeting to cut down on expenses.

There was a couple of receptions and I still remember Ben and I asking Uncle Denton for drink tickets. We then retired to a hotel lounge and I knew trouble was ahead when Chapman asked for a cigarette.

He then went to the bathroom.

He didn’t return.

He showed up a few hours later, seemingly intact.

Denton had forgotten that story (Denton's on the right in that pic with my grandfather, Homer) when I called him a couple of weeks ago, to thank him for the opportunity to develop on-farm food safety stuff back in 1998 with the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers. I’ve been using those anecdotes (not the ones about Chapman) and lessons learned a lot lately – seems like too many people are in a food safety time warp.

Guess it brought up a few memories for Denton, who wrote this in Sept.’s issue of The Grower:

As you journey through life you meet the occasional person who makes a real difference.  Dr. Douglas Powell is one of those – to say the least.

Doug called me recently to talk about the early years.  He was new in the On Farm Food Safety business when I was working with the Ontario Greenhouse vegetable group.  Doug was at the University of Guelph and I would talk to him about the phone call I didn’t want to get.  This would be the imaginary call from a senior’s residence wondering why all the occupants were very sick after consuming a fresh salad, and if the cause may have been the greenhouse tomatoes. I never got that call—thank God--but I wanted to be ready.  And that readiness included a strong response indicating we had an On Farm Food Safety program and proof we were capable of tracing our greenhouse product. We’ve seen several incidences in the past few years with certain fresh veggies and berries that almost ruined the industry and certainly crippled those markets for a year or so.

From the University of Guelph and the beginning of the On Farm Food Safety program, Doug has moved to Kansas State University where he is associate professor of food safety. He is still very much in the industry – just relocated to a different university -- and still writing newsletters, hence the reputation of “the guru” of On Farm Food Safety.

Doug has remained a good friend over all these years. We developed a bond as we developed an On Farm Food Safety program for greenhouse vegetables and more.  Doug’s philosophy was to keep it simple.  He could relate to growers, and had an uncanny ability to make the complicated science of bacterial contamination simple and understandable. Early on, he received a little help from Dr. Gord Surgeoner.  These were the seeds of the On Farm Food Safety program in Canada, spreading from Ontario Greenhouse to CHC and to most vegetable growers across Canada.

I can still see Doug in an old T-shirt and jeans, holes in both, and running shoes--that was his fashion statement. Of course, his description of toilet paper “slippage” resulting in fecal contamination on your finger was priceless, but his crude description helped to break down the mystery of bacterial contamination by food handlers with dirty hands. Seems to me I got a T-shirt from Doug with “Don’t Eat Poop” written on the front.  Doug continues to be a great communicator, a fair goalie, poor at politics but great at On Farm Food Safety and raising little girls.

Thanks, Doug.  I am proud to say I knew you back when.

And I knew Chapman, way back when.
 

A running gag in the movie, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, is avoiding a certain kind of sandwich served up by prison guards.

Life imitates art.

A former Ohio deputy accused of feeding an inmate a bologna sandwich that been rubbed against another inmate's genitals has pleaded guilty to two health code violations. In a Columbus courtroom on Wednesday, 38-year-old Joseph Cantwell also apologized for the shame and embarrassment that he said he had caused.

A judge fined him $500 plus court costs, and Cantwell also received a 90-day suspended jail sentence and five years' probation.
 

Celebrity chef, molecular gastrologest and Alton Brown-Mats Sundin love child, Heston Blumenthal may be delusional. Or illiterate. He certainly didn’t read the report from the U.K. Health Protection Agency which was released this morning.

“Several weaknesses in procedures at the restaurant may have contributed to ongoing transmission including: delayed response to the incident; staff working when they should have been off sick and using the wrong environmental cleaning products. Delays in notification of illness may have affected the ability of the investigation to identify the exact reason for the norovirus contamination.”

Blumenthal responded in an e-mailed release:

“We are glad that the report has finally been published and draws a conclusion to the closure of the Fat Duck and more importantly that the norovirus has been identified as the cause and not due to any lapse in our strict food preparation processes. We were affected by this virus during a national outbreak of what is an extremely common and highly contagious virus. The restaurant has been open as normal since March 12 and I would like to reassure our guests that they can continue to visit us with total confidence.”

Sourcing food is the chef’s job; serving raw oysters is silly; delaying the reporting of illnesses is dumb; sick employees working and furthering the spread of the virus is stupid. No confidence at all.
 

Chapman occasionally comes up with a good line. Usually, I do all the work on a piece (at least in my mind), and he’ll put in one sentence, but it will be the one that is remembered.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Chapman described celebrity chef and molecular gastrologest Heston Blumenthal (below, right) as the love child of Alton Brown and longtime Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player Mats Sundin (right).

Why didn’t I think of that.

Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant – which is consistently rated as the best in the U.K. – was the source of over 500 illnesses in early 2009. At the time, Blumenthal said, “tests for viral infections and food poisoning have proved negative and there is speculation that the winter outbreak of norovirus could be the real reason why they became sick.”

Way to blame the consumer, those paying hundreds of pounds for the privilege of barfing.

The U.K. Health Protection Agency published a report on the outbreak today that concluded:

*       There was a large outbreak of food poisoning among diners at the Fat Duck Restaurant in January and February 2009, with more than 500 reporting illness - over 15% of those dining there during this period

*       The organism responsible was norovirus which was probably introduced via shellfish (more diners who ate shellfish dishes reported illness). Oysters were served raw; razor clams may not have been appropriately handled or cooked; tracing of shellfish to source showed evidence of contamination and there have been reports of illness in other establishments associated with oysters from the same source

*       The outbreak continued for at least six weeks (between January 6 and February 22) because of ongoing transmission at the restaurant - which may have occurred through continuous contamination of foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners or a mixture of both

*       Several weaknesses in procedures at the restaurant may have contributed to ongoing transmission including: delayed response to the incident; staff working when they should have been off sick and using the wrong environmental cleaning products

*       Delays in notification of illness may have affected the ability of the investigation to identify the exact reason for the norovirus contamination

It’s the chef’s responsibility to source food from safe sources. And if the chef thinks raw shellfish is a smart thing to serve, and to have sick workers working, then, customers get what they pay for.

 

 With publicly available inspection data comes media reporting on dirty diners; and with poor media coverage comes threats, Andrew Gilligan at Greenwhich Online reports.

So there I was, standing in the Somerfield checkout queue, when the phone rings. “I’m gonna f*** you,” says a voice. Now, as it happens it’s not the first time I’ve had a threatening phone call, so I wasn’t all that bothered. “Who is this?” I said. “You’ve always had it in for me,” said the mystery caller. “You and your little blog, you c***. I’m gonna sue you.”

The cause of the latest food-fight was a column I did for greenwich.co.uk about three weeks ago, listing the local restaurants and takeaways which had failed the council’s hygiene awards inspection - meaning, in the council’s words, that they were “not up to standard” for cleanliness.
Among them were three of Frank [Dowling’s – mystery caller, restaurant owner] - the Coach and Horses in the Market (pictured right), plus Inc Brasserie and Union Square. I highlighted them as well-known places which charge quite fancy prices but which have all failed the hygiene test…

The phone call ended with Frank promising to sue and demanding the documentation for my story. I pointed out that the piece contained a link to the council’s food hygiene awards report, which is carried on its website.

I’ve only gotten profane emails, Doug deals with the profane calls.

Best award for original song remake has to go to Cake’s 1996 version of the Gloria Gaynor disco classic, I Will Survive. Searing guitar solos, an infectious bass line, and the spoken word singing of John McCrea combine to make this an iPod workout favorite. And CAKE was the first concert Amy and I went to in Kansas City and was unexpectedly good.

Dr Karin Heurlier and colleagues at the Universities of Nottingham and Birmingham in conjunction with Biolog Inc of California told the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, today that pathogenic strains of E. coli could survive in different conditions compared to the standard laboratory, non-pathogenic strain.

Contamination by foodborne E. coli occurs in processed foods such as ready prepared salads, fermented sausages (e.g. salami), dairy products and fruit juices as well as more usually in raw and partly cooked meat products, indicating that the bacteria are able to survive modern food processing techniques. The researchers found differences between strains in how they responded to antimicrobial compounds, and in their reactions to oxygen availability, acidity and chemical stresses. They could also use different constituents in foods for their nutrition compared to standard laboratory E. coli strains.

"The laboratory E. coli strain K-12 is one of the best understood organisms on Earth," said Dr Heurlier, "But because it has become so used to being grown in laboratory conditions, it may not react to stresses in the same way as pathogenic strains – such as E. coli O157:H7 can. Our research shows that there are definite growth and nutrition differences between E. coli strains and therefore results obtained with laboratory strains may not be typical of what happens in the 'real' world."
 

Evan Henke, a student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (right, sorta as shown), writes in this guest barfblog.com post:

During a recent trip to a Minneapolis restaurant, I ordered what is perhaps Minneapolis’s most significant contribution to the culinary world: the “Jucy Lucy.”

Legend has it that the Lucy, a hamburger with cheese stuffed inside of the beef patty before cooking (right, not exactly as shown), was invented in Minneapolis, although debate still rages as to which burger joint was the first to offer the Lucy to its customers. As I bit into the Lucy, I noticed that the center of the burger was quite undercooked, and I did not notice the use of a thermometer on the nearby grill. I immediately wondered what effect stuffing the cheese inside of the patty had on the survival of foodborne pathogens during the cooking process.

Maybe the added weight of the cheese would better insulate the side of the burger exposed to the surface grill compared to cooking a normal patty of equal thickness without flipping. Maybe any added moisture in the cheese would help kill any pathogen present in the beef, as long as the moisture was present.

But the true food safety implications of stuffing a ground beef patty with cheese or other ingredients are not well documented (left, not exactly as shown). The amounts of fat and water that escape from the cheese during cooking are not documented, and how those amounts affect the survival of foodborne pathogens present in the patty is unclear. It has been documented that E. coli O157:H7 shows increased resistance to heat in patties with higher fat and lower moisture contents[1]. It is possible that the composition of a stuffed burger, depending on the stuffing and fat and moisture content of the ground beef, could favor the survival of foodborne pathogens relative to a burger with no stuffing.

In a world of foods that taste delicious but can be deleterious to your health, the Jucy Lucy and stuffed burgers sizzle in mystery. How the addition of cheese to the center of the patty affects the survival of foodborne pathogens ought to be documented, not just for the health of my fellow Minneapolitans, but for the health of burger eaters everywhere. And of course, thermometer use is recommended whenever preparing ground beef.

The Make Your Own Jucy Lucy video is included below http://heavytable.com/make-your-own-jucy-lucy/. Warning: Conventional safe cooking technique not displayed in video.

Evan Henke is a student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health pursuing a Master’s degree in Environmental Health. An avid fan of foodborne disease epidemiology and food safety, he spends most of his free time angering his friends with his knowledge of the food chain and careful scrutiny of food safety practices.

1. Ahmed, Nahed M., Donald E. Conner, and Dale L. Huffman. "Heat-Resistance of Escherichia Coli O157:H7 in Meat and Poultry as Affected by Product Composition." Journal of Food Science 60.3 (1995): 606-10.

 

Making Your Own Jucy Lucys from The Heavy Table on Vimeo.

This weekend during a mini-adventure an hour north I got to tick two things off my Things to do in New Zealand list: drive on the left side of the road and pet a lamb. While the former turned out to be easier than initially presumed (aside from roundabouts), it was the latter that had me giddy.

Hills covered in sheep were everywhere and I couldn’t resist the temptation to hop a fence (despite the electrical shock endured) and cartwheel the fields (right), scaring sheep and likely placing my hands in sheep poo. I didn’t wash them, though I really should have.

Sheep, like cows and goats, are ruminant mammals and therefore can carry E. coli O157:H7. If you cartwheel in [sheep] doo doo, wash your hands.

Pepper Food Service Co said Monday it has closed all of its 187 Pepper Lunch steakhouses in Japan the same day after at least 11 customers developed food poisoning to clean each outlet and ensure hygiene controls are in place.

At least 11 customers have been stricken with E. coli O157 in seven prefectures including Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, according to the restaurant chain operator and local governments.

Kunio Ichinose, the company president, apologized, saying,

‘‘We will reopen the restaurants as soon as we are fully prepared to do so.’’
 

South Florida Sun-Sentinel analyzed hundreds of thousands of grocery store inspection reports between 2005 and 2008 and found a 22 per cent increase in food safety violations.

About one in five food retailers failed at least one inspection from 2005 through July 1 of this year, and some failed as many as nine, the reports showed.

Vermin infestations rose 35 percent, with more than one in four stores having signs of rodents or roaches last year…A growing number of markets were cited for the high-risk practices of letting foods get too warm or too cool, employees coming to work sick or not washing their hands, and raw animal products contaminating other food.

John Fruin, chief of grocery inspections at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, explained the increase on a change in inspection format.

"There has been a shift in our inspection philosophy. We're looking harder for those things that are more apt to cause food-borne disease. And we're finding more."

The story continues,

No one contends food stores are a major health risk. Cases of consumers getting sick from food sold in grocery stores are rare. The large majority of supermarkets, convenience stores, bakeries, seafood shops and other retailers regulated by the state scored the highest ranking of "good" or passed with "fair" ratings, the reports show.

How anyone can contend that consumers don’t get sick from grocery stores is beyond me. Most cases of foodborne illness go unreported, and if they are reported it may be difficult to track the source back to a food retailer. Whether the increase in food safety violations at grocery stores translates to an increase in foodborne illness cases? Maybe, maybe not. I’m more interested in whether consumers want grocery stores to publicly display inspection scores like food service operations in many districts.
 

When I first opened the Kansas State Collegian yesterday morning, the following headline popped out: “Green, pet-friendly bar opens in Aggieville.” The story started:

“Tail wagging, mouth drooling, riled up with excitement stands Tank the dog, welcoming bar patrons this Saturday to the newly renovated the Loft Bar and Grill.”

The owner added,

“We will be having many different types of animals outside the Loft — dogs, goats and even miniature Clydesdales.” Jacobson said. “Our bar is very pet-friendly.”

Actually, the Kansas Food Code prohibits animals on food establishments, unless they are assistance animals, according to code reference 6-501.115 found here.

Did Jackson read over the Food Code before opening his restaurant? Maybe he’s a rebel, or is he just playing it dumb?

The local health department inspectors would consider bringing pets to a restaurant a critical violation. Last year, Tanks Tavern, also in Aggieville, was cited two critical violations including: “live dog in bar and dog food stored under sink.”

As Amy and Doug wrote, “tripping, biting, dog fights, barking, allergies, and the transfer of dangerous microorganisms such as E. coli, salmonella and cryptosporidium” are some of the risks that come along with doggie dining.

Restaurants in Florida can apply for permits to allow dogs on their patio, if they meet certain conditions. Employees must not touch pets while handling food, and if they do, they must wash their hands. Customers should also wash their hands before eating and keep their pets off tables, chairs, and tables.

As far as I know, we are still in Kansas, where doggie dining is clearly prohibited.

These are my puppies:

Food safety researcher and talk-show host Jon Stewart got it right back in 2002 when he said,

“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.”

Instead, getting college students to wash hands, halt disease, requires giving them proper tools and spreading the word in ways that get attention: the path to poor hand sanitation is paved with good intentions, according to researchers from Kansas State and North Carolina State Universities.

As college campuses prepare for an expected increase in H1N1 flu this fall, the researchers said students' actions will speak louder than words.

"Many students say they routinely wash their hands," said Douglas Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University. "But even in an outbreak situation, many students simply don't."

In February 2006, Powell and two colleagues — Ben Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, and research assistant Brae Surgeoner — observed hand sanitation behavior during an outbreak. What was thought to have been norovirus sickened nearly 340 students at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Hand sanitation stations and informational posters were stationed at the entrance to a residence hall cafeteria, where the potential for cross-contamination was high. The researchers observed that even during a high-profile outbreak, students followed recommended hand hygiene procedures just 17 percent of the time. In a self-reported survey after the outbreak had subsided, 83 of 100 students surveyed said they always followed proper hand hygiene but estimated that less than half of their peers did the same.

The results appear in the September issue of the Journal of Environmental Health.

Powell said that in addition to providing the basic tools for hand washing – vigorous running water, soap and paper towels — college students, especially those living in residence halls, need a variety of messages and media continually encouraging them to practice good hand hygiene.

"Telling people to wash their hands or posting signs that say, 'Wash your hands' isn’t enough," said Ben Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. "Public health officials need to be creative with their communication methods and messages."

Most students surveyed perceived at least one barrier to following recommended hand hygiene procedures. More than 90 percent cited the lack of soap, paper towels or hand sanitizer. Additional perceived barriers were the notion that hand washing causes irritation and dryness, along with just being lazy and forgetful about hand washing. Fewer than 7 percent said a lack of knowledge of the recommended hand hygiene procedures was a barrier.

"Providing more facts is not going to get students to wash their hands," Powell said. "Compelling messages using a variety of media – text messages, Facebook and traditional posters with surprising images — may increase hand washing rates and ultimately lead to fewer sick people."

University students’ hand hygiene practice during a gastrointestinal outbreak in residence: What they say they do and what they actually do
01.sep.09
Journal of Environmental Health Sept. issue 72(2): 24-28
Brae V. Surgeoner, MS, Benjamin J. Chapman, PhD, and Douglas A. Powell, PhD
http://www.neha.org/JEH/2009_abstracts.htm#University_Students%92_Hand_Hygiene_Practice_During_a_Gastrointestinal_Outbreak_in_Residence:_What_They_Say_They_DO_and_What_They_Actually_Do
Abstract
Published research on outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness has focused primarily on the results of epidemiological and clinical data collected postoutbreak; little research has been done on actual preventative practices during an outbreak. In this study, the authors observed student compliance with hand hygiene recommendations at the height of a suspected norovirus outbreak in a university residence in Ontario, Canada. Data on observed practices was compared to post-outbreak self-report surveys administered to students to examine their beliefs and perceptions about hand hygiene. Observed compliance with prescribed hand hygiene recommendations occurred 17.4% of the time. Despite knowledge of hand hygiene protocols and low compliance, 83.0% of students indicated that they practiced correct hand hygiene during the outbreak. To proactively prepare for future outbreaks, a current and thorough crisis communications and management strategy, targeted at a university student audience and supplemented with proper hand washing tools, should be enacted by residence administration.

Among the six most common ways to ruin a burger, which Yahoo Food is promoting ahead of Labor Day, is this nose-stretcher:

Overcooking: This should be a crime recognized by the federal government. For the popular medium-rare, grill the meat exactly three minutes on one side (keeping the grill lid closed) and two minutes on the other. If you're going to add cheese, let it melt on top for another minute (and keep that cover closed!).  We like our burgers medium rare, so much we've even sent them back at restaurants when they go beyond medium.

Nonsense. Using time make no allowances for variation in grill temperature, thickness of the hamburger patty and composition of the hamburger. A tip-sensitive digital thermometer is the only way to get a burger to the correct temperature of 160F, without overcooking.

Thanks to the barfblog reader who sent along the tip.

Sadie (right) is an energetic dog. We found her as a 10-week-old pup, hiding underneath our vehicle, shortly after Amy and I moved into our Kansas compound in downtown Manhattan.

It happens, with the transient population of military and students, dogs, unfortunately, are abandoned routinely.

We followed procedure, ran ‘dog-found’ ads in the local paper, but no one claimed her. So we took her in.

I had a couple of Australian Shepherd-type-mutts back in Guelph (below, left), so was prepared for the, uh, high energy of Sadie. Which means she learned to run beside my bicycle. Quickly.

Sadie and I will sometimes bike to the grocery store in the morning and stock up for dinner, sometimes we’ll just bike, although we’re both moving a little slower 3 years later.

But the best is when we go to the bank.

Kansas State Bank has drive-through banking. My Canadian daughters still marvel at this when they visit. I still get paper cheques for this and that, so every couple of weeks, Sadie and I will bike to the drive-through bank. I’ll make a deposit using the pneumonic tubes, and the teller will send back a treat for Sadie, along with a deposit slip.

Oregon seems to be just figuring this out.

A couple of weeks ago, the state announced plans to crackdown on doggies in grocery stores. The N.Y. Times reported this as news this morning.

But the Los Angeles Times got it right. Kate Linthicum reported this morning that when Sarah Gilbert, a cyclist in Portland, Oregon, tried to order four cheeseburgers for her family at a Burgerville drive-through, she was denied.

Gilbert, a freelance blogger with thousands of online followers, went home and Twittered huffily about the experience ("burgerville on 26th/ powell turned me on my bike away from drivethrough. and not nicely at all."), and penned an open letter to Burgerville calling for more bike-friendly policies.

Many chain restaurants across America do not serve bicyclists at their drive-throughs, said Jeff Mapes, a Portland journalist who has written a book about bike culture. "In a lot of cities it doesn't make much of a splash at all," he said. "But here, it's a cause celebre."

Jonathan Maus, who publishes a blog called bikeportland.org said, "They expect a business to treat them the same whether they come in a car or on a bike."

Advocates have successfully persuaded many local businesses to include bicycle parking, he said. Persuading banks, pharmacies, fast-food chains and other businesses with drive-throughs to serve bicyclists is the next step.

Which is why Gilbert's complaints struck a nerve. There was talk of a boycott. The story was picked up by local news outlets. Finally, Burgerville yielded. The chain apologized to Gilbert (it said it had no formal policy dictating how -- or where -- bicyclists could be served) and announced that it would henceforth welcome cyclists at all of its 39 drive-through locations in Oregon and Washington.

Sadie would approve.
 

My friend called from her temporary work assignment in Romania. She is trying to manage a large project under difficult conditions, including constantly dodging foodborne illness. With one crew member hospitalized for foodborne illness last week, and several others sick this week you might think they were working in a difficult, rural locale. But no, they are working in a government building and housed in a good hotel. So, how does she explain this? 

The government building has no toilet paper or soap. She and her crew bring those supplies every day now, and every day they are stolen. This weekend she is going to buy more toilet paper, hand sanitizer and liquid soap to fill the soap dispensers because she thinks liquid soap will be more difficult to steal. Poop is not good for you, even if it is your own.

After several crew members were sickened from pizza ordered in, she has begun bringing bagels and uncut fruit from the hotel for everyone. She wants to get this project done, so she’s wise to steer clear of catered food. Romanian researchers thoroughly examined the foods and bacteria implicated in outbreaks of foodborne illness from catered food (Ivana, et al, 2009). They main culprits were Staphylococcus aureus, (don’t eat food made by people with dirty hands) C. perfringens (don’t eat undercooked meat), C. botulinum (don’t eat home canned meat); and Salmonella spp (don’t eat runny eggs, don’t eat food that has been undercooked and don’t eat food that has been cooked and then reheated). 

The foods associated with outbreaks between 2003-2008 do not leave many safe choices: beef, poultry, milk, eggs, vegetables, ham, seafood, ice cream and cheese were all implicated. The illness in her crew is costing her company money and her colleagues are harming their health. The moral of this story is to bring your own hygiene supplies when travelling and working in Romania. And bring safe snacks from home such as packaged granola bars, almonds and dried fruit. Only eat cooked food when it is freshly prepared and still piping hot.

Reference: Simona Ivana, Alexandru Bogdan, Ipate Judith, Laurentiu Tudor, B??r??it??reanu Stelian, Andrei T??nase, Alexandru Nicolae Popescu, Dana Magdalena Caplan, Mihai Dane??. 2009. Food Microbial Contamination – The main danger in catering type food in Romania. Romanian Biotechnical Letters, Vol 14, #2, pp 4260-4266
 

 Food safety month, has a nice ring to it, should be food safety year as more and more people are barfing from food related incidences and since we eat everyday. So, as I was perusing the streets of Winnipeg on my Vespa flying at a record fifty kilometers an hour, listening to the Flight of the Conchords for inspiration, first food safety tip dawned on me. Change your ragged dishcloth on a daily basis as they may harbor pathogenic bacteria. The dishcloth provides the perfect medium for bacterial growth which will eventually spread throughout the kitchen increasing the risk of foodborne illness. Analyses of these cloths have revealed extremely high bacterial loads coupled with significant numbers of mold and yeast. If you change your socks daily, shouldn’t you change your dishcloth?

In an attempt to harness and utilize the millions of tweeters, google searchers and bloggers in the U.S. into do-goodery, the Washington Post reports that folks are being encouraged to share details of flu-like symptoms and search for H1N1 information online if they believe they are ill. Informatics experts are mobilized to crunch data generated by webcrawlers in hopes that infections can be modeled geographically and lead to an early warning system:

Currently, most disease tracking is done through doctors reporting cases of illness they have seen. It's a reliable system but often involves a lag time of a week or more in reporting and does not account for people who don't go to the doctor.

Internet surveillance raises questions about privacy and confidentiality. But experts say it has the advantage of speed and can augment the current system by detecting sick people who might not see a doctor.

Singapore is going further by using cellphones in surveillance, and hoping to limit flu spread:

In Singapore, scientists have gone a step further, testing a system called FluLog that could use Bluetooth cellphone technology to locate people who had been in proximity to someone who has become infected.

Cool. The Singaporeans were also ahead of the rest of the world on posting restaurant grades in 1997. Go Singapore.

Mike Batz sent on an article from Wired about an iPhone app that is built to share info about outbreaks and find disease trends near the user:

Outbreaks Near Me is a location-aware application for the iPhone based on the free HealthMap epidemiological web service, which allows users to access disease-outbreak information. But the mobile version, released today, one-ups its cord-bound counterpart: Users can contribute signs that public health trouble is afoot in what the organization is calling “participatory epidemiology.”

Double cool. Go participatory epidemiology.

Going through the food safety press releases of Canadian bureaucracies for inconsistencies is like fishing with dynamite.

So many little tips that a bunch of $50-150K per year salaries sweated over.

Yesterday, the Public Health Agency of Canada said it was “working with provincial and local health authorities, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to investigate a small outbreak of Salmonella Cubana.”

I have no idea how the public health types distinguish a small from a large outbreak, but I bet it doesn’t feel very small to the 14 identified people who have been barfing from raw sprouts.

And I’m sure it’s comforting to those barfing that,

“For most people, the risk posed by Salmonella infections is low.  Salmonella is the most frequently reported cause of food-related outbreaks of stomach illness worldwide.”

Amy is a French professor.  Her influence on me has been profound – and has even involved some language awareness stuff.

That’s why we have don’t eat poop shirts in French, Chinese and Spanish.

You’d figure that getting stuff translated into other languages would be a breeze, since I have an in with the department. But to do it in real-time is a bit messy. The first time I tried to upload a French infosheet, last week, I crashed the entire bites.ksu.edu site.

Damn you, France.

We’ve been messing around but are reasonably confident we’ve got the people and technology in place to at least translate food safety infosheets on a weekly basis. The Spanish food safety infosheets are available at http://bites.ksu.edu/infosheets-sp, and the French food safety infosheets are available at http://bites.ksu.edu/infosheets-fr.

In Room 519 of Kindred Hospital, Linda Rivera can no longer speak.

Her mute state, punctuated only by groans, is the latest downturn in the swift collapse of her health that began in May when she curled up on her living room couch and nonchalantly ate several spoonfuls of the Nestlé cookie dough her family had been consuming for years. Federal health officials believe she is among 80 people in 31 states sickened by cookie dough contaminated with a deadly bacteria, E. coli O157:H7.

The impact of the infection has been especially severe for Rivera and nine other victims who developed a life-threatening complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome. One, a 4-year-old girl from South Carolina, had a stroke and is partially paralyzed.

But good news. Two weeks ago, Nestle announced, in breathless PR-speak,

After almost two months of being out of the U.S. marketplace, Nestle USA is pleased to announce that Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough is returning to stores this week.

To make it easy for both retail partners and consumers to identify the new batch of cookie dough, a blue "New Batch" label will appear on all new production cookie dough items. Nestle Toll House shipping cases also are marked in blue (rather than the previous black) to denote new production and will contain the statement: "Do not consume raw cookie dough." The adoption of this distinct labeling is the result of helpful discussions between Food & Drug Administration (FDA) officials and Nestle, following reports of E.coli O157:H7 illnesses that appeared to be related to the consumption of raw cookie dough.

I bet the discussions were helpful. Probably similar to the ones ConAgra had with the U.S. Department of Agriculture geniuses who said, safe cooking instructions for frozen $0.50 pot pies should tell consumers to use a thermometer to make sure the pie is safe. Food safety is a shared responsibility apparently means it’s the consumer’s responsibility, especially in foods that may be perceived as ready-to-eat.

This is what the new Nestle cookie label looks like, on a package I picked up at a local store on Saturday (front, above, right; back, below, left).

Labeling is a lousy way to provide information about food safety risks, but better than nothing. I’m sure Nestle and ConAgra, in the best interests of their consumers, will publicly release the evaluative data they (probably? maybe?) acquired to show that these particular labels have a positive impact on consumer food safety behavior.