I went on a date with my wife last week.

Not like that new movie, Date Night, which looks horrible, but at 1 p.m., when we have a babysitter. Anything later than that is too tiring to contemplate.

Being in Kansas, I ordered the mussels from Prince Edward Island (that’s in Canada) and the featured white wine from Australia, which, to our ultimate surprise, cost $15 a glass. The extent to which restaurants will go to rip people off, especially in a crappy economy, apparently knows no bounds. I take responsibility, but won’t be going back.

I’m also not alone.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the expensive "sheep's milk" cheese in a Manhattan market was really made from cow's milk. And a jar of "Sturgeon caviar" was, in fact, Mississippi paddlefish.

Some honey makers dilute their honey with sugar beets or corn syrup, their competitors say, but still market it as 100 percent pure at a premium price.

And last year, a Fairfax man was convicted of selling 10 million pounds of cheap, frozen catfish fillets from Vietnam as much more expensive grouper, red snapper and flounder. The fish was bought by national chain retailers, wholesalers and food service companies, and ended up on dinner plates across the country.

"Food fraud" has been documented in fruit juice, olive oil, spices, vinegar, wine, spirits and maple syrup, and appears to pose a significant problem in the seafood industry. Victims range from the shopper at the local supermarket to multimillion companies, including E&J Gallo and Heinz USA.

Such deception has been happening since Roman times, but it is getting new attention as more products are imported and a tight economy heightens competition. And the U.S. food industry says federal regulators are not doing enough to combat it.

Charleston is an awesome city. I've only been there once (to check out the location of The Real Estate Pros/Flip This House, hoping to run into Richard and Ginger) but I’d go back to visit anytime. One of the draws is that it’s a really cool old town that would be cool to hang out in either before or after a cruise (I can drive there in a few hours and take a cheap, last minute vacation to the Caribbean).

Ships departing the Charleston port have, according to AP, been hit hard with norovirus outbreaks, with the CDC reporting three straight cruises being linked to hundreds of illnesses.

The norovirus sickened almost 420 people aboard Celebrity Mercury, which returned to Charleston on March 18. Norovirus symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps.

The Mercury then underwent three days of extensive cleaning. There were no problems when the ship sailed on a fourth cruise last week.

The Celebrity was back in Charleston on Monday preparing to board another cruise.

On two previous cruises this year, hundreds of passengers were sickened by norovirus on the same ship. The norovirus can spread quickly in close quarters.
 

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority is doing something exceedingly proactive: it somehow got the publisher of The Happy Baby Cookbook to initiate a voluntary recall – not of a food but of the cookbook -- because it contained bad food advice for pregnant women.

Or NZFSA is following what New South Wales, Australia, did a couple of months ago for a book that has been available since Aug. 2009. Regardless, it seems extraordinary that government agencies are calling people on their food safety bullshit.

A recall is underway for a cookbook containing recipes for pregnant women made with ingredients the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) considers could be harmful in pregnancy.

NZFSA principal public health advisor Donald Campbell says while it is vital for expectant mothers to eat a nutritious and varied diet, it is important that they know which of the foods they might normally eat may require extra care or be avoided altogether during pregnancy.

“Hummus for example is packed with protein, but because most hummus is made with tahini which has been associated with Salmonella outbreaks, we recommend that pregnant women don’t eat it.”

Other foods that are unsuitable for pregnant women to eat include soft cheeses, ready-to-eat foods from delicatessens or smorgasbords, raw fish and shellfish, cold cuts, deli salads, sushi and foods containing raw eggs.

I can’t wait for my copy of The Happy Baby Cookbook to arrive. Will any other regulatory bodies take action against food safety silliness that can harm people?

I’m told everyone experiments in university.

My experiments consisted of getting married, having kids, and reading The Atlantic and Harper’s magazine. There were other experiments, like with that girl from Kitchener I met on the train from Toronto one time, the girl from Brazil who stalked me, Alison the model, Jo the squash player and Jo the vet, but they’re not fit to discuss in this family publication.

At some point, both magazines wrote about something I had studied, and I thought the articles were terrible. I don’t read those magazines anymore.

This is why: The Atlantic offers the Weston Price school of home dentistry up as an expert on whether to experiment with bi-curious raw eggs, stating that if you’re going to eat raw eggs, Rocky Balboa style,

“the egg MUST be organic and fresh, and you MUST know its origin. Ideally, it comes from your backyard hen house. Alternately, you procure it from a farmer you trust. Salmonella is a serious illness, but it is rarely found in the organic eggs of well-fed, free-range happy hens. Final warning: do not eat commercially-produced, grocery store eggs raw. Ever.”

The author, Carol Ann Sayle, has no microbiological basis for any of these statements. She also says chickens are in a Zen-state when they lay eggs, which may be like living in a Red State. And she writes with all-caps to emphasize points because her writing alone sucks.

In this piece of microbiological fantasy, Sayle states

“Glistening with antiseptic moisture, the egg pops out and falls a couple of inches to the straw. … As the moisture changed to chalk-dry "bloom" (the bloom protects the insides of the egg from bacteria), Jean Luc cracked open the egg, opened his mouth, and tossed in the yolk and white."

Salmonella can enter directly into the egg, long before it pops out. And will soon be coming out your other end, Jean Luc.

I'm not really a fan of oysters, raw or otherwise. The texture kind of bothers me, which is kind of weird because I love clams and mussels (a couple of years ago I toured around parts of New Zealand and sampled some of the green-lipped steamed mussels at a café in a tiny fishing community, right exactly as shown).

If I did like oysters and wanted to avoid risks associated with the raw type (see here, here and here – note bonus points for happening in months that have an ‘r’ in them), I probably would have leaned towards ordering the steamed variety. Not so much anymore.  A norovirus outbreak (over 280 ill) associated with steamed oysters occurred at a popular Raleigh restaurant, the 42 Street Oyster Bar in December 2009. It has been known for a while (check this 1996 paper out) that steaming oysters (even if the steamers are working properly and get meat temperatures above 160F or so) may not really impact the hardy norovirus.

Heath officials have found in some incidents that steaming oysters did little for pathogen protection. Depending on the thickness of the shell; density of the meat; and, the length of steam, internal temperature might only be raised to 80F-140F. Steamed oysters may essentially be raw oysters in disguise.

This week’s food safety infosheet talks all about oyster-related risks, you can download it here.

Americans don't get The Tragically Hip, but they seem to like the pop-oriented tunes of Nova Scotia's Sloan when introduced - although no one down here has heard of them.

The 1996 Sloan song, Autobiography, often comes to mind when I read dribble from the blog, Defending Food Safety, written by some lawyers somewhere.

When you find you're a conformer
Take pride and swallow whole
But if you're trying to climb the ladder
Don't let people walk over you
Because that's just what they'll do

The latest swallow had to do with an entry that begins,

“It's no secret that virtually all foods are safe if handled properly. Indeed, according to FDA, most food-borne (sic) illnesses are avoidable if consumers follow proper food handling techniques. This is true whether consumers are shopping for products, transporting them home or preparing them in their kitchen."

I’m not sure what consumers have to do with contaminated peanut butter, pet food, pot pies, frozen pizzas, bagged spinach, carrot juice, lettuce, tomatoes, canned chili sauce, hot peppers and white pepper.

And I’m not sure where such lawyerly assertions about the source of foodborne illness come from – we’ve written a peer-reviewed article about where foodborne illness happens and argue it’s the wrong question.

A young mum has revealed how a veggie burger and portion of chips consumed in Aug. 2009 and contaminated with E. coli O157 almost killed her.

Abby Alford of Wales on Sunday writes that days after enjoying the chip shop takeaway, desperately ill Karen Morrisroe (right, exactly as shown) had a seizure that temporarily stopped her heart.

Doctors warned her husband she had a less than 10% chance of survival as she slipped into a coma that was to last for five weeks.

The recovering 32-year-old has now revealed to Wales on Sunday that she is unable to sue the chip shop that almost claimed her life because the owner was not insured.

The librarian, who lives with her husband Paul Clutton and baby son Oliver, almost one, in Rhosnesni, Wrexham, said,

“There’s nothing I can do. He did not have professional liability insurance, but I’ve been told he wasn’t required to have it anyway. Environmental health are looking into legal proceedings, but we don’t know if they can do anything.”

Karen said her brush with death has had such a deep psychological effect on her that she compulsively checks restaurants’ food hygiene ratings on the Internet before eating out.

Karen and Paul are also fighting to raise awareness of how dirty premises like the Llay Fish Bar, which was identified as the likely source of the potentially deadly bug, can cost lives.

“The mind boggles as to how many establishments have zero star ratings but are still allowed to operate,” said Paul.

Star ratings from zero, the lowest, to five are a hygiene score awarded by environmental health inspectors. The Llay Fish Bar had been awarded zero stars in August 2008 and was due for another inspection when Karen and other customers, including toddler Abigail Hennessey, fell ill.

Premises given zero stars are generally allowed to remain open while they take steps to improve cleanliness.

"We just don't see that as an issue.”

That’s what Kathy Kramer, a so-called nutritionist and office manager at the Weston A. Price Foundation in Washington, D.C., told Mike Nichols of the Wisconsin Journal Sentinel Online when he asked, what if people get sick from drinking raw or unpasteurized milk?

I don’t really care what adults choose to do. I care about what they impose on their kids, and my role is to provide information that may result in fewer people barfing from the food and water they consume. That’s why it’s called barfblog.

Lots of foods make people sick. Some of these illnesses are easily preventable. For an organization such as Weston Price that is often quoted or cited as some sort of authority on raw milk (or dentistry) to publicly state that people getting sick isn’t an issue demonstrates their priorities – and it doesn’t have much to do with you.

A three-year-old girl living in North Point, Hong Kong, was diagnosed with E. coli O157:H7, the first case of the year, so the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health decided, without providing any details of the how the infection may have happened, that if people cook their food, they could avoid the bug. And they should wash their hands.

That’s all good, but does little to address cross-contamination issues once the bacterium gets into a residence – if that’s where she contracted the bacterium – and once again sends the message that foodborne illness of the nastiest kind can simply be prevented by consumers.

It’s a lot more complicated than that, and why everyone should be seeking to reduce pathogen loads from farm-to-fork.

Basketball is interminably dull.

The first college game I ever went to on Jan. 30, 2008, Kansas State beat the University of Kansas – who went on to win the national crown – for the first time in 24 years.

All games should be like that. They’re not.

But I’ll watch tonight as K-State goes up against Xavier in a sweet-16 showdown, the first time K-State has been to that particular dance since 1988.

What would be a great storyline is if West Virginia met K-State for the final. Bob Huggins was rescued from career oblivion when they hired him as coach a few years ago. Huggins repaid K-State’s generosity by leaving after one year.

Locals are still upset.

But he left behind assistant coach Frank Martin, who’s turned K-State into a national competitor. The prodigy going up against the mentor. It would be like me and Chapman going on an all-nerd food safety Reach for the Top (trivia note: Chapman was actually on Reach for the Top or whatever the Ontario version was called when he was in high school).

In other NCAA news, the start of the Men's Swimming and Diving Championships has been delayed 24 hours to Friday after 18 student-athletes and a coach were treated for a possible gastrointestinal illness since arriving in Columbus, Ohio.

K-State’s Bramlage Coliseum would make an excellent hockey arena.
 

The Louisiana state Department of Health and Hospitals has closed a large section of east bank Plaquemines Parish waters to oyster fishing through at least mid-April, after 11 people in Mississippi – at a seafood conference, repeat, at a seafood conference -- became sick after eating oysters believed to be traced to that area.

The Times-Picayune reports the state has also issued a recall of any oysters harvested from that area since March 6, meaning wholesalers must review their records and contact any restaurants, brokers or other buyers who bought oysters from those waters. Under Food and Drug Administration and state health guidelines, oyster dealers are required to have a recall plan in effect.

Risk comparisons can be risky: they usually offend the target audience and make the author sound like a jack-ass.

James Wesson, oyster scientist with the Virginia Marine Resource Commission, told the Daily Press that the overwhelming majority of oysters sold in the United States are not contaminated, adding,

"More people die each year from eating Cheetos than from eating oysters.”

No data was provided.

The comment was made as part of a story about Virginia regulators requiring stiffer rules to prevent the sale of contaminated oysters harvested from the Chesapeake Bay during warm-water months.

Each year about 15 people die from eating contaminated oysters, according to the agency. Most of the problem oysters come from the Gulf of Mexico, but at least one has been linked to Virginia waters since 2000, said Robert Croonenberghs, director of the state Health Department's shellfish sanitation division.

If the FDA finds another contaminated oyster sold by Virginia seafood suppliers, the agency could prohibit shipping raw oysters outside state lines, he said. Such a ban could stifle the industry and cause thousands of dollars in losses to suppliers, watermen, and oyster farmers.

The number of deaths may be statistically trivial – unless it happens to you or someone you know. And this risk can be managed.

The spirit of a crazed Glenn Beck has been transferred to the Sacramento Bee where the paper reports how 10-year-old Diego Bartolome just wanted to start a salsa business to help his mom after she lost her job and instead got a crash course in red tape.

The story says that Bartolome co-founded a hot little salsa company, grossing $1,000 from his Diego's Awesome Salsa by December and landing accounts at grocery stores. The salsa boy also got a taste of the media spotlight, with a profile in The Bee and an appearance on Channel 31's "Good Day Sacramento."

Then the food police paid him and his mom a visit. An inspector from the state Department of Public Health noticed in a TV segment that Diego's Awesome Salsa wasn't labeled properly, and there were possible temperature-control issues.

Diego's Awesome Salsa got accounts at grocery stores? Who was the third-party auditor that approved a supplier that hadn’t passed even basic health code requirements?

WRAL in Raleigh reported today that the Shereton Hotel (at right, exactly as shown, with ambulances taking kids away), the focus of an outbreak investigation about a month ago (150+ teenagers ill at a statewide YMCA youth leadership conference) was not likely the source of the illnesses, nor was norovirus likely the pathogen of concern.

The updated information released by Dr. Megan Davies, , state epidemiologist,  was that students who ate at a banquet on Feb 12 were more than 3 times more likely to have symptoms than those who didn't attend. Best guest of investigators conducting a follow-up study reviewing all the symptoms, is that a foodborne toxin (likely due to temperature abuse) was the likely culprit.

“The timing of the outbreak and the fact that most sick attendees had only diarrhea and not vomiting make it unlikely that norovirus was the main cause of the outbreak,” Dr. Megan Davies, state epidemiologist, said in a statement. “Still, some students might have had norovirus when they arrived at the conference in Raleigh.”
The short time between the dinner and the onset of illness makes it more likely that bacterial toxins, a common cause of food poisoning, were to blame, officials said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conducting tests to pinpoint the toxin that caused the illnesses.

Convention Center Director Roger Krupa was quoted as saying "At this point, it's hard to accept the report. All of the evidence is statistical and circumstantial. There are no lab results, no food samples, nothing factual."

Epidemiology and statistics are pretty powerful; science isn't used to prove or disprove anything, but to provide best guesses. And the best guess in this situation, with the current info, was that the banquet facilities were the likely source.
 

New York Chinatown legend, Great NY Noodletown, was forced to close on Friday night.

A February inspection turned up evidence of insects, roaches and mice in the Noodletown's food and/or non-food areas, and, according to Eater NY, pinged the restaurant for its storage of delicious meats that hang behind the counter.

Where the DOH finds fault, Noodletown's devoted customers find flavor. The 50 violation points from February required a follow-up visit, which apparently didn't go so well, and the restaurant remains closed. Luckily, the shut down is happening now and not during soft-shell crab season, one of Noodletown's specialties.

I find fault. Shut them down.
 

Professor Hugh Pennington is apparently unstuck in time, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

In November 1996, over 400 fell ill and 21 were killed in Scotland by E. coli O157:H7 found in deli meats produced by family butchers John Barr & Son. The Butcher of Scotland, who had been in business for 28 years and who was previously awarded the title of Scottish Butcher of the Year, was using the same knives to handle raw and cooked meat. That's a food safety no-no.

In a 1997 inquiry, Prof. Pennington recommended, among other things, the physical separation, within premises and butcher shops, of raw and cooked meat products using separate counters, equipment and staff.

In 2008, Prof. Pennington heard in a new inquiry how John Tudor and Son, the Butcher of Wales, used the same machine to vacuum package both raw and cooked meats, leading to an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak beginning in Sept. 2005, which sickened some150 children in 44 schools in southern Wales and killed five-year-old Mason Jones.

This morning, a consumer watchdog said food hygiene services in Wales need an extra £2.5m a year to help prevent a repeat of a fatal 2005 E. coli outbreak.

I’m not sure extra money is going to change anything. If someone wants to clearly skirt with food safety, as butcher William Tudor did, bad things will happen. And the local councils were already turning a blind eye to Tudor’s most egregious actions.

The Butcher of Wales was shown to have:

• encouraged staff suffering from stomach bugs and diarrhea to continue preparing meat for school dinners;
• known of cross-contamination between raw and cooked meats, but did nothing to prevent it;
• used the same packing in which raw meat had been delivered to subsequently store cooked product;
• operated a processing facility that contained a filthy meat slicer, cluttered and dirty chopping areas, and meat more than two years out of date piled in a freezer;
• a cleaning schedule at the factory that one expert called "a joke;"
• falsified crucial health and safety documents and lied about receiving hygiene awards; and,
• supplied schools with meat that was green, smelly and undercooked.

Professor Chris Griffith, head of the food research and consultancy unit at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, told the inquiry the culture at the premises was “dominated by saving money.”

So who allowed Tudor to operate under such conditions?

Government inspectors.

Prof. Pennington heard that Tudor and Son was visited several times in the months leading up to the Sept. 2005 outbreak, that inspectors knew there was only one vac-pac machine being used for both cooked and raw meats but, despite Pennington's 1997 recommendation, inspectors decided the business did not pose "an imminent risk" to human health.

"There was a failure in the series of inspections to identify poor hygiene and working practices and a failure to take action."

The inspectors also took on "face value" explanations offered by Tudor and his staff for various food safety failures.

Among the recommendations in the report issued this morning is that,

The Food Standards Agency should issue clear guidance to inspectors that the use of the same equipment to process raw and ready-to-eat foods is totally unacceptable.

Does anyone need extra money to clearly state food safety basics?

I started picking people up about 7 p.m. Amanda, Sarah, Janis, Lynn and Marty.

Marty was last and not ready, as usual.

Marty had no reason going to the first food safety educators conference in Washington, D.C. in 1997. He was working as a student life advisor or something but, I had gotten in the habit of taking Marty along on the 12-hour D.C. road trip from Guelph –got lost once in some New York mountains in the middle of the night and thought we were going to die – for fun and driving chores.

The 1996 Nissan Quest minivan still had the new car smell, and as a new prof with a carload of students, I decided driving all night was better than dishing out non-existent cash for an extra night of hotel rooms.

We arrived in Georgetown about 7:30 a.m., ate at a dive, and found the on-campus conference room. People looked at us like we had just rolled out of a vehicle and been driving all night.

We had.

Most of us went and changed into fresh clothes, while Marty crashed somewhere until the room was available.

The conference started and we were pumped.

I may have fallen asleep.

I remember that Peter Sandman gave a keynote and was treated like a rock star – I thought he was ineffectual, especially when it came to the hazard and outrage around foodborne illness.

There were descriptions of many food safety education programs but the evaluation components were either non-existent or sucked.

There was a big deal about social marketing, presented to the attendees like we had all arrived on the short bus.

I remember going out to a Georgetown bar later that night, watching The Truth About Cats and Dogs in the hotel room while Marty farted, and commenting that Janis looked like Janeane Garofalo. I remember the drive home.

I don’t remember much about the conference.

Which is why I haven’t gone back.

Tomorrow, the International 2010 Food Safety Education Conference kicks off in Atlanta and its focus is to identify “communication and education strategies to increase the public’s knowledge of the causes of foodborne illnesses and improve food safety practices.”

Admirable goals. But what has happened since 1997?

I’m all for providing food safety information in a compelling, creative and critically-sound manner. However education is something people do themselves. Lewis Lapham wrote in Harper’s magazine in the mid-1980s about how individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. Oh, and it’s sorta arrogant to state that others need to be educated; to imply that if only you understood the world as I understand the world, we would agree and dissent would be minimized.

These may be subtle semantics – to communicate with rather than to; to inform rather than educate – but they set an important tone.

At least it’s not a consumer food safety education conference. With outbreaks in pizza, pot pies, pet food, peanut butter, bagged spinach, carrot juice, lettuce, tomatoes, canned chili sauce, hot peppers, cookie dough, and white pepper, I’m not sure what consumers have to do with it.

Chapman is going, apparently as part of a southeast IKEA tour for his wife, and also to present a paper we wrote entitled, I updated my Facebook status to ‘I just got food poisoning:’ using social networking services (SNS) to communicate food safety risks. The abstract is below.

Bill Marler says he’s gong to educate consumers by handing out refrigerator magnets at the conference.

Me, I’ll be hanging out somewhat east of the 100th meridian, wondering why Americans don’t understand The Tragically Hip (especially the early stuff). 

Chapman, B. and Powell, D. 2010. I updated my Facebook status to “I just got food poisoning”: using social networking services (SNS) to communicate food safety risks. FSIS/NSF Food Safety Education Conference. March 24, 2010. Atlanta Georgia.

Up to 30 per cent of individuals in developed countries become ill from the food and water they consume each year. Recent outbreaks of foodborne illness involving produce, peanut butter and potpies have further elevated the public discussion of microbial food safety risks. With the expansion and ease-of-use of non-traditional, Internet-based communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube and blogs, individuals are discussing high-profile food crises online. As an estimated 60 per cent of online American adults use SNS, an opportunity exists to utilize these communities to engage individuals around foodborne risks by providing information and establishing relationships, to prepare for or mitigate potential catastrophic incidents. The rapid dialogue between individuals with common food safety interests can impact belief formation and affect food decisions. Using case study methodology and media analysis of the coverage of recent outbreaks of E. coli O157 linked to spinach and Salmonella linked to fresh tomatoes and peppers, a catalogue of mediums and will be presented. Through examples gleaned from barfblog.com and bites.ksu.edu an online food safety communication template and strategies for food safety communicators will also be presented. Understanding target audiences, using communication technology while providing rapid messages can enhance both risk management awareness and trust with stakeholders.  Communicators developing food risk behavior change programs can be more effective by monitoring and utilizing diverse media to adjust strategies and maintain message relevance.

In a new take on faith-based food safety, Jeff Brown, owner of the Dungeness creamery in Washington state which produces raw milk and was linked to three cases of E. coli illness in Dec. 2009, was quoted as telling the Seattle Times this morning,

"Everything God designed is good for you."

I don’t know who designed small pox, but I don’t want it.

Not sure who designed aflatoxins in food, but don’t want that either.

And I don’t want pathogens in milk, especially when there is an easy technological fix – pasteurization.

The story cites the state Department of Health as saying between 2005 and 2009, 395 Washingtonians with lab-confirmed cases of foodborne pathogens reported consuming raw-milk products shortly before getting sick.

Brown maintains the government has unfairly damaged his farm's reputation.

"You know how you can tell they're lying? Their lips are moving. … God designed raw milk; man messed with it. You draw your own conclusions."

A long-time barfblog.com reader -- first-time commenter -- writes in with the following restaurant experience from Olathe, Kansas:

I literally just got home from one of my favorite casual dining restaurants here in Olathe. I ordered my favorite sandwich -- the Avocado Turkey Burger. The server took my order first as my girlfriend was still deciding what to order. She ordered a different turkey burger (copy cat). As the server wrote her order down I jokingly called my girlfriend a "Copy Cat" out loud at the table for ordering the same (almost the same) sandwich. So to be different, I told the server "Hey, can I get my turkey burger medium rare"....she said "sure no problem sir", took her pad back out, wrote it down and walked off. I called her back to the table to explain I was just joking and that turkey had to be cooked "all the way."

She just stared at me, then the light went off in her head...."oh, ya, I knew that."

I was afraid to eat...but I did and it was still tasty as usual.

On the drive home all I could think about was this could totally have been a story I read on barfblog.com with some picture of bloody rare turkey or something -- or not.

Ask your server to stick it in.

Oil from China’s drains and gutters treated to look like edible cooking oil in a lucrative night-time operation is being used in “1-in-10” restaurant meals in China.

The swill oil is apparently loaded with aflatoxin.

China Youth Daily reported Wednesday a recent student investigation in Wuhan found 2-3 million tons of ‘swill oil’ makes its way back to rice boxes and meals out each year. It is usually sold as pig feed.

He Dongping, a professor on oil and toxin with central China's Wuhan Polytechnic University, and also a leading specialist with China's Food and Oil Standardization Administration, said the conspiracy starts at night when swill-fishers hollow out the stinking hogwash from urban sewages, followed by filtrating, heating, subsiding, dividing, and then in the morning comes out the clear-looking "edible" oil for unwitting customers.

Each fisher could fetch up to four barrels at a time, nearly 300 yuan ($44) easy money every night or over 10,000 yuan ($1,465) a month, a lucrative deal too tempting to resist, especially so when the business was in a trouble-free "anarchy" state,.

Wash your damn hands so you don’t serve poop. That’s usually the key message when a shigella outbreak happens, although it could also be fresh produce grown in human poop.

Public health officials said Wednesday the number of people with confirmed cases of shigella associated with a franchised Subway restaurant in Lombard, Ill., has climbed to 78, with 11 of those individuals requiring hospitalization.

Dave Hass, public information officer for the DuPage County Health Department, said the Lombard Subway remains closed after two weeks, as his agency and the Illinois Department of Public Health continue to investigate the cluster of shigella illnesses. Ten of the 11 people hospitalized as a result of their illness have been discharged, he said.

Les Winograd, a spokesman for Doctor’s Associates Inc. of Milford, Conn., franchisor of the 32,502-unit Subway chain, said the franchisee at the Lombard store voluntary closed the restaurant after learning of the outbreak of illnesses.

Public health officials said shigella is spread through fecal contamination and that most people who are infected with the toxin develop gastrointestinal illness, such as diarrhea, vomiting, fever and stomach cramps, one to two days after being exposed.
 

The problem with associations is, they strive for the lowest common denominator. Whether it’s state growers, regional restaurateurs or national retailers, there’s too many members to keep happy – too many dues paying members.

Robert Bookman, legislative counsel for the New York City chapters of the New York State Restaurant Association — the operators’ trade group — told the New York Times this morning the NYC Board of Health decision to mandate prominent letter grades be displayed in the city’s more than 24,000 restaurants “will be more misleading than helpful,” adding that “it will be unfair and a black eye to this industry in the restaurant capital of the word.”

I’m not sure what that’s based on. Yes, inspectors can be malicious, callous, unreasonable and unscientific. So can customers who can effectively kill a restaurant with a strategic blog attack. It’s a tough business.

There are also many inspectors who are devoted to public health and fewer people barfing because of the food they eat. When restaurant spokesthingy Geoff Kravitz told the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce last month that the grades would be “a scarlet letter that will keep people from eating out,” and that restaurants posting anything less than an A would be treated by the public like Hester Prynne at a public shaming, he was absolutely right. The available research has shown that the percentage of B, or yellow or whatever restaurants decreases significantly as soon as the eateries are asked to publicly up their game.

Michael White, chef and owner of Alto, Convivio and Marea, got it right when he told the Times,

“I think it’s great, because it will keep everyone on their toes. Customers have high expectations. No one wants to have a B in their window.”

The best restaurants will go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help enhance trust with the buying public. And the best restaurants will proudly proclaim their A.

The Department of Justice, in an action initiated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is seeking a permanent injunction against A Chau Sprouting Co., a sprout grower in Gretna, La., company owner and manager Quang “Mike” Trinh, and Hue Nguyen, the company production manager.

The complaint, filed on March 16, 2010, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, charges the defendants with violating the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by preparing, packing, and holding sprouts under insanitary conditions, where they may have become contaminated with filth.

“The agency has repeatedly warned the company over several years that corrective actions need to be taken in this facility,” said Michael Chappell, acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs at the FDA. “While no illnesses have been reported to date, this action is necessary to ensure that it remains that way.”

The ready-to-eat sprouts are distributed to wholesale suppliers, who in turn distribute them to customers located in Gulf Coast states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Texas.

Five FDA inspections over the past nine years, including an inspection conducted between August 2009 and September 2009, revealed that the defendants failed to implement basic food sanitation principles and practices for their sprout growing operation, according to the complaint.

The Digital Journal reports a 3-year-old had a fun birthday celebration with relatives and friends, gifts and pizza on March 13 at Caesarland pizzeria. Everyone left about 7 p.m.; the manager of the restaurant noticed the little boy alone around 9 p.m. (no accounting for those 2 hours after the family left).

The police were called and they took the child to headquarters and called Child Protective Services. They took the boy and he was temporarily placed into foster care.

Warren Police Commissioner Bill Dwyer said, "It’s pretty bizarre. … There were about 20 people that were there at the party, including the mother and father, the grandmother, and some relatives and friends. … The father is indicating... that he thought that the mother had picked up the three-year-old. They're separated, but they live in the same apartment complex. The mother is telling us that she thought that the father or grandmother had taken the three-year-old home. … How can they forget or assume that the other parent for two days has their son? I mean, there's no excuse for this."

The boy remains in foster care.

Maybe New York Yankees baseball player Derek Jeter should stick with the High Liner fish sticks after missing a day of spring training last week due to “bad fish.”

The same day, Nova Scotia-based frozen seafood giant High Liner Foods Inc. said it wants to "bulletproof" its supply chain, stating in a corporate document,

"Becoming ‘bulletproof’ on food safety will allow us to continue to use China for primary processing and manage the risk to our businesses and brands. An important aspect of food safety is traceability in the supply chain — an area we remain keenly focused on continuing to improve. …

“Consumers are focused on food safety and have expressed concerns about food labelled ‘Product of China.’ We do a lot of primary processing in China because the costs are substantially lower than anywhere else. We have worked hard in establishing a procurement structure that allows us to be confident in our quality, no matter where the primary processing is done.

"In many cases, moving the primary processing to another developing country does not solve the problem, and moving it to North America or industrialized Europe would increase costs significantly at a time when consumers are searching for value."

The story goes on to say, and I’m not making this up, the tagline for the iconic Captain High Liner, a seafarer who introduces a young boy to frozen fish in the company’s ads, would likely be stuck in the collective conscious of a generation of Canadians now approaching middle age.

A 1997 outbreak of cyclospora in fresh basil prepared at a Washington, D.C. restaurant sickened hundreds. Additional outbreaks have been associated with parsley, cilantro and pepper, among others.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that in the middle of a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness linked to black and red pepper -- and after 16 separate U.S. recalls since 2001 of tainted spices ranging from basil to sage -- federal regulators met last week with the spice industry to figure out ways to make the supply safer.

Jeff Farrar, the FDA's associate commissioner for food safety, said the government wants the spice industry to do more to prevent contamination. That would include use of one of three methods to rid spices of bacteria: irradiation, steam heating or fumigation with ethylene oxide, a pesticide.

"The bottom line is, if there are readily available validated processes out there to reduce the risk of contamination, our expectation is that they will use them," Farrar said. But the FDA cannot currently require it.

Cheryl Deem, executive director of the American Spice Trade Association, said contamination of raw ingredients has long been a problem in the spice industry, adding,

"The vast majority of spices are cultivated outside of the U.S., where processing methods often result in contamination."

Linda Harris, a microbiologist at the University of California at Davis, said,

"In the last 15 years, food safety is just at an increasingly higher level of awareness. We've got increased testing, increased detection methods. I don't think what we're seeing is necessarily a true increase in prevalence. I think it's an increase in our ability to detect."

Steve Markus, director of food safety and commercial products at Sterigenics Inc., the biggest food irradiation company in the country, said about half of the nation's spices are irradiated, but that nearly all companies using irradiation sell to industrial customers. No retail spice company uses irradiation because federal law requires disclosure of irradiation on the label, and the industry thinks consumers will not buy those products.

I’d buy irradiated spices and so would others. No one has tried selling the stuff, so conjectures about consumer behavior based on surveys are meaningless. But, that’s the way many retailers are. Market food safety at retail.

Robert Cribb of the Toronto Star is reporting tonight that two Ontarians were hospitalized — and another two deaths are being investigated — in relation to a listeria outbreak traced to a Toronto deli meat manufacturer.

Its part of a dramatic spike in listeria cases in Ontario since January that has renewed concerns about the country’s food safety system 18 months after 22 Canadians died in the Maple Leaf tragedy (fiasco – dp).

Packages of prosciutto cotto cooked ham and mild cacciatore salami made by Siena Foods Ltd. have been targeted as a possible cause in the outbreak.

The company’s salami was recalled in December and the ham was recalled early Friday. Both were sold to delis, grocery stores, specialty food stores and supermarkets after January 11.

“We are using a variety of different methods to ... prevent any further exposure to this product by the public,” said

Siena officials did not respond to interview requests Friday.

Since January, the province has had 14 confirmed listeria cases (six in Toronto) — well beyond the eight that is typically expected for this point in the year, said Dr. Arlene King, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.

Two Torontonians were sickened by a strain of the pathogen that matches with the Siena meat, hospitalized and are now recovering, she said. At least seven people across the province have been hospitalized since January from listeria.

Two Ontarians died during the same time the tainted Siena meat was in the marketplace, she confirmed. But provincial officials are still investigating whether there is a direct connection between those deaths and the company’s products.

Rick Holley, a microbiologist and food safety expert at the University of Manitoba and a consultant with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said,

“I haven’t seen improvement. We haven’t seen any reduction, in my view, of the risk. We’re not doing foodborne illness surveillance the way we should. I’m not encouraged that, materially, we’ve got the kind of buy-in by industry we need to move forward with confidence.”

Doug Powell, a Canadian food safety expert at Kansas State University, said,

“There’s clearly some bad stuff going at that plant. I would like (health officials) to be clear about what they know, what they don’t know and what they’re doing about it. I don’t know how these Canadian health types are allowed to operate the way they do and not say anything.”

Timeline:
December 21, 2009: The CFIA recalls Siera salami
March 3: The ministry began a detailed investigation with local health units to identify source of the illness
March 5: The ministry released an “enhanced surveillance directive” to health units to identify any other cases
March 9: The ministry was notified of the test results of food samples taken from one of the two cases of hospitalized victims. The genetic fingerprint from the prosciutto was an exact match to the salami and a sample taken from one of the infected people.
March 11: The CFIA recalls Siera cooked ham

All these stories about local health code violations rarely get to the real issues – what is a critical violation, how is it defined, who decides and why is food safety training so apparently ineffective?

Health inspectors nailed at least 1,900 area restaurants and food vendors — including the swanky Palm and Georgia Brown's -- for violations ranging from rat infestations to "slime"-covered water spigots during a three-month period, according to health department records obtained by The Washington Examiner.

Health inspectors in Virginia, Maryland and the District closed at least 116 area food establishments as a result of major health code infractions.

But hundreds of other restaurants were allowed to remain open, despite racking up critical violations such as expired food and preparing dishes with open wounds. All the violations occurred between Nov. 1 and Feb. 1.

A health inspector observed 11 critical health code violations at Gordon Biersch, which tied Georgia Brown's for the most among D.C. restaurants during one inspection.

A hand-written report described one barehanded cook "preparing desserts with cuts/sores on fingers," and said employees were cleaning dining utensils and dishes with dirty rags between servings, and using the same pair of tongs to handle cooked and raw food.

And in Virginia, Alexandria's upscale Brabo by Robert Wiedmaier was cited for 10 critical health code violations during one inspection.

However, Brabo owner and Executive Chef Wiedmaier said the violations -- which included kitchen employees drinking from uncovered containers and handling toasted bread with bare hands -- did not endanger customers' health, and the use of the word "critical" was misleading.

"No one's ever been sick here," he said. "I run clean, professional restaurants, and I pride myself on how people see my kitchens."

How would he know? He wouldn’t.

It’s a mystery, how various health agencies decide when to issue public warnings about particular food products.

On Wednesday, Ontario health officials announced they were investigating two cases of listeriosis that appear to be linked to salami recalled from stores in Ontario and Quebec about three months ago.

The salami was sold by Siena Foods based in Toronto and was voluntarily recalled by the manufacturer on Dec. 21, 2009, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Wednesday. The best before date on the packaged meat is May 4, 2010.

Last night, CFIA and Siena Foods Ltd. warned the public not to consume certain Siena brand Prosciutto Cotto Cooked Ham below because it may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

The affected product Siena brand Prosciutto Cotto Cooked Ham, was sold to delicatessens, grocery and speciality food stores in large wholesale packages for further slicing bearing Best Before dates of March 8 and March 22, 2010.

The affected product would have been sold to consumers after January 11, 2010. However, the original brand and/or best before dates may not have been transferred at the deli counters to consumer packages. Persons who may have purchased cooked ham after January 11, 2010 and do not know original brand and code are advised to check with their retailer or supplier to determine if they have the affected product.

So much for traceability.

This recall is based on positive test results for Listeria monocytogenes in product samples and CFIA's investigation of these findings.

The CFIA is aware of reported listeriosis illness in Ontario and is collaborating with the Province of Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada to investigate these illnesses. At this time, no confirmed linkage has been made between the subject recalled products and the reported illnesses.

That’s CFIA-speak for ‘we haven’t found the same Listeria in an unopened package. But we found enough links to go public and cover ourselves.’

I hate myself for being able to interpret CFIA-speak.

The Marriage Ref is a terrible show, even with A-lister guests Madonna, Larry David and Ricky Gervais, some of my personal favorites.

The scene of the couple sharing pretty much everything with a giant salmonella-shedding iguana brought no complaints, and while Entertainment Weekly has already have called the episode much better than the previous, it still sucked.
 

Kevin Allen (right, pretty much as shown), an assistant professor of food microbiology at the University of British Columbia who used to focus on perfecting his hockey skills through food microbiology graduate education but has more recently shifted his focus to preventing foodborne illness, writes:

As details of the Salmonella enterica serovar Tennessee contamination of hydrolysed vegetable protein (HVP) recall associated with Basic Foods Inc. (BFI), Nevada unravel, it is clear that many issues have played a role in this escalating and pervasive recall.

The finding of S. Tennessee on processing equipment at the BFI production facility demonstrates serious deficiencies in their sanitation program; the delay in reporting and back-dating of the recall show a lack of proper risk communication and management; and the continued manufacture and shipping of potentially contaminated HVP product to food producers shows a serious lack of risk-based decision making. Together, this has the potential to result in a large number of continued recalls and smacks similar to the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) recall in which S. Tennessee contaminated peanut products (2008) led to over 4,500 affected food products.

In both recalls, there appears to be a lack of responsibility associated with the food producers using these contaminated products. Because traditional microbiological testing requires highly-skilled laboratory technicians and an abundance of laboratory equipment, cost-cutting measures have routinely focused on decreased in-house testing of raw materials. Rather than microbiologically verifying the quality of individual raw materials which, admittedly, is a time-consuming process, food producers have increasingly relied on the vendor’s provision of a certificate of analysis stating that the product is microbiologically safe. In theory, this process of relying on vendor (i.e. BFI, PCA) assurances of microbiological acceptability should work providing that the vendor is producing the product hygienically and subsequently testing it appropriately. However, based on these two examples alone, food producers need to start verifying the microbiological quality of their raw materials, and stop relying on vendor’s assurances.

A food producer who used HVP in a product should be able look back at that lot to see that yes, our company used it, we tested it prior to use and found no pathogen contamination. Based on this approach, all production lots that were associated with production would also be tested and shown pathogen-free prior to retail distribution. However, cost-cutting, production requirements, and a simple willingness to assume microbiological safety of raw materials based on third-party assurances have once again severely impacted the food industry in a negative manner. Maybe it’s time food producers go back to the basics, and realize that microbiological testing of raw materials is not a waste of time and money, but rather a critical step in providing microbiologically safe foods to the public.

Sorenne and I only got through the start of The Colbert Report this morning before it was off to vaccinations, so this post is somewhat late.

But Stefan did take an excellent shot at more food wackiness being peddled on the Internet and insisted on his home herb garden, because, “I refuse to live in a world where I can’t garnish.”

My seeds are germinating in the Kansas spring, including my garnish garden, but I get my seeds at Home Depot or several other places. I want hybrids. Genetic modification is good. That’s why hybrid corn has been around since the early 1900s.

Not so for the Survival Seed Bank, which says it’s more valuable than silver or gold in a real meltdown.

Remember, our hand-picked seeds are not genetically modified in any way. You simply save some of your harvest seeds from year one and have more than enough to plant in year two. You'll never need to buy seeds again! You just can't do that with man-made hybrid seeds.

Most seed companies are now selling only "terminator" seeds which have been genetically modified and will not reproduce themselves.

This is nonsense. And for government-paranoias here in the Midwest,

"Indestructible Survival Seed Bank Can Be Buried To Avoid Confiscation."

It’s all BS to make a buck.

Ontario health officials are investigating two cases of listeriosis that appear to be linked to salami recalled from stores in Ontario and Quebec about three months ago.

The salami is sold by Siena Foods based in Toronto and was voluntarily recalled by the manufacturer on Dec. 21, 2009, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Wednesday. The best before date on the packaged meat is May 4, 2010.

Ontario health officials say they've been told two men became ill and are recovering at home. The officials wouldn't say where the men live.

I understand the right to privacy, and the investigative angst regarding cases 3-months-old, but not releasing hometown information does little to jeopardize privacy and a lot to make sure others don’t come forward. And is this really the best various Canadian health bureaucrats can do in releasing timely information that may prevent others from barfing?

Canada: strive for mediocrity.

More corporate douchebags who talk a good food safety game but could care less have been caught endangering people and losing huge piles of money for their owners.

The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are reporting this morning that Basic Food Flavors Inc., the Las Vegas company at the center of a recall of more than 100 food products containing hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP, continued to make and distribute food ingredients for about a month after it learned salmonella was present at its processing facility, according to a Food and Drug Administration report.

Managers at Basic Food Flavors of Las Vegas learned on Jan. 21 that samples taken a week earlier from their Nevada facility tested positive for salmonella, but they kept shipping their product to foodmakers, according to FDA inspection records.

The FDA last week recommended companies recall products, from chips to soups, that contain a commonly used additive made by Basic Food Flavors that tested positive for salmonella. The additive is mixed into foods to give them a meaty flavor.

FDA officials inspected Basic Food's plant for about two weeks starting in mid-February and found the company didn't adequately clean equipment and store foods to protect against the growth of contaminants such as salmonella, according to the inspection report.

The inspectors noted that "light-brown residue" and "dark-brown liquid" was observed on or around where Basic Food makes flavor-enhancing ingredients used in foods. The inspectors said brown residue was also found in a plastic pipe used in making food ingredients.

Basic Food makes a flavor enhancer called hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP. The FDA report said the company first learned salmonella was present at its processing facility for HVP on Jan. 21. The company continued to distribute the ingredients until Feb. 15. A representative for the company wasn't immediately available to comment. The company hasn't responded to earlier requests for comment.

No illnesses have been reported related to the recall, said FDA spokeswoman Rita Chappelle.

But those who shipped out Salmonella-positive ingredients are still douchebags.

A list of affected products can be found at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/HVPCP/.

I get up early and start writing. Shortly thereafter, 1-year-old Sorenne gets up, and likes to start the day by taking in some milk and watching The Colbert Report from the night before.

I’m not making this up, she views Colbert as her other father.

Last night, Stephen opened with Salmonella in hydrolyzed vegetable protein which made its was to a certain variety of Pringles potato chips.

I was out with the family picking up some Chinese and wine last night and a woman waiting for her take-out said, “Oh, I’m glad to know you eat here.”

“Not usually, but it’s Chinese so everything’s cooked.”

She then introduced herself as a veterinary student at Kansas State University who’d seen me lecture a few weeks ago. And then she asked me if I’d seen the story about the fake U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian.

I said, “Slipped my mind.”

I don’t see everything so if barfblogcom readers see anything of interest, please send along.

The student did, and it concerns a story that aired in Feb. 2010 in Atlanta.

WSB TV reported that a man used fraudulent credentials to land a job as a veterinarian with the U.S. Department of Agriculture where he worked in Atlanta-based food safety and inspection service for the past four years.

I don’t know how much of this is true or why the story didn’t get much national play – so judge for yourselves.

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/22526579/

More than 90 restaurants in Metro Vancouver were told to close their doors after they were found with rodent infestations, unsanitary conditions, or a failure to store food properly, according to an investigation of restaurant inspection histories for the past three years by CTV News.

And many more were repeatedly cited -- but not closed -- for other violations, the most common of which were leaving food out that should be refrigerated, failure to wash surfaces, and not providing hand washing stations to employees.

"We're looking for any signs that might lead us to believe there might be an outbreak of food poisoning," said Nick Losito, Vancouver Coastal Health's director of health protection.

One of those restaurants that was shut down was a Vancouver legend -- The Only Seafood Restaurant on Hastings Street.

Once a bustling destination for seafood since it opened the 1920s, The Only is now filled with rat feces and dead insects.

The health department closed The Only last year -- not just because inspectors said the food was a public health hazard, but because inspectors discovered it was a crack den as well.

CTV will be running a week-long series on food safety. Last night’s video is available here.

There’s a website devoted to all things hamburglery that decided to tackle the question – is it better to only flip a hamburger once or several times on a grill?

Author J. Kenji Lopez-Alt purports to have tested the 1-flip-versus-multiple flip hamburger by preparing a dozen 1/2-pound burgers into equal-sized patties, seasoned them just before cooking with an equal amount of kosher salt and black pepper, then seared them in a steel skillet pre-heated to 450°F (which was temped with an infrared thermometer before adding the patties). The ambient air in the kitchen was at an unbearably hot 76°F. Each patty was cooked to an internal temperature of 125°F, and was then rested for five minutes at room temperature before being autopsied for examination.

The author then applied intact beef roast info to ground hamburger which is wrong and dangerous.

• 125°F (or 51.7°C) is the temperature at which beef is medium rare—that is, hot but still pink, cooked but still moist and able to retain its juices. Any higher than that, and muscle fibers start to rapidly shrink, forcing flavorful juices out of the meat, and into the bottom of the roasting pan.

Make my burgers a thermometer-verified 160F. They’re plenty juicy and won’t make your guest barf.
 

For the past week, people in Kansas have been asking me, did you love the Canadian men’s Olympic hockey victory?

I say, just glad it was a good game, great for hockey.

And then I say, the women’s hockey team really rocked.

Most people look at me and say, women play hockey?

The Canadian women defeated the U.S. for Olympic gold, 2-0, and then showed the men how to party.

I coached girls’ hockey for a number of years while my kids were growing up. To coach little girls playing ice hockey in Canada requires 16 hours of training. To coach kids on a travel team requires an additional 24 hours of training.

It seems reasonable to have some minimal training for those who prepare food for public consumption.

Not so in North Dakota, where the State Health Department says it will not seek charges against a rural Washburn woman for operating an unlicensed catering business linked to sickening 180 people last summer.

Aggie Jennings catered three separate events in June -- two wedding receptions and a family reunion -- that resulted in 76 people seeking medical attention with 10 hospitalized for salmonella Montevideo food poisoning.

A subsequent report found a total of 180 people met the case definition for Salmonella Montevideo.

The Bismark Tribune explains enforcement of regulations governing caterers falls under the jurisdiction of local health units.

Lisa Clute, executive officer for the First District Health Unit, said that board met Feb. 18 and voted not to recommend charges against Jennings, which would be Class B misdemeanors.

The strain of salmonella is one commonly associated with baby chickens, which Jennings raised on her rural residence.

The health department issued an order to Jennings to stop catering June 17, three days prior to the McClusky event, the report said.

The report also found there were four dishes that tested positive for salmonella and all had some type of preparation, storage or handling at Jennings' residence.

It said several people assisting in food preparation at her home may have provided a source of cross contamination.

Clute said the First District Health Unit wants to be consistent in how it deals with such cases and in this instance, she thinks it has.

"We are confident she will never do this again. We stopped it quickly and efficiently and at this point there is no public health threat.”

These people wouldn’t be allowed to sit on the bench and open the door at a little girls’ hockey game. I don’t want them to make food either.