Doug Ohlemeier of The Packer revisits an early Feb. 2012 meeting of tomato growers, shippers, repackers, buyers, regulators and auditors in Florida to pull out a few golden quotes.

Billy Heller, chief executive officer of Pacific Tomato Growers Ltd., Palmetto, Fla., expressed disappointment with what he calls “shower science,” the protocols auditors and customers come up with that may not be practical.

“The differentiation is that someone as a customer says they’re going to be different and will say if there’s a cow within the next galaxy, they’re not going to buy. I can live with almost all of it, but not the ‘shower thoughts.’ It shouldn’t be in there if they’re not supported by science. Opinions don’t work.”

In a discussion about birds roosting on electric poles near tomato field bins, Heller said Florida growers must deal with a variety of wildlife, including lizards and alligators.

If auditors regulate how close wildlife can be to fields, it should be a science-based rule, he said.

Drew McDonald, Salinas, Calif.-based vice president of quality and food safety for Danaco Solutions LLC, Highland Park, Ill., said each circumstance is different.

“What we don’t want to do is throw the baby out with the bath water and remove all poles and eliminate all birds. I’m not exaggerating when I say we had a customer saying there’s too much dirt (in the field). We can get a little crazy here but these are common-sense things. People agree they don’t want bird droppings on fresh produce, but what they disagree on is ways to prevent that.”

For Sushi Yasuda, the exalted Midtown shrine to the pristine purity of raw sliced fish, posting anything less than the top grade of A from the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene would seem like a skull and crossbones in the window.

But every time they pick up a knife, the restaurant’s chefs ignore the health code and risk seven inspection points — halfway to a B grade — by preparing food the way they believe it must be.

They make sushi bare-handed (washing their hands 40 times during the average dinner service) even though the city requires food handlers to wear gloves at all times.

“Of course we want diners to be protected, and we know the department of health has a monumental challenge,” said Scott Rosenberg, one of the restaurant’s owners. “But the craft of sushi requires a degree of precision and exactitude in making thousands of cuts — microslicing with speed, and in quantity — and the use of gloves makes that impossible.”

“We can get cited for it,” said Mr. Rosenberg, whose restaurant has an A despite a July demerit for barehanded slicing, “but we don’t use gloves.”

Glenn Collins of the New York Times writes that even as chefs and operators strive to avoid the stigma of earning less than an A rating, they navigate a gray area, balancing fidelity to their training and culture with adherence to health regulations. Many veterans of the city’s food wars find that the most intractable, agita-provoking problems are not such egregious violations as rodents, insects and filth, but subtler matters like handling food properly, or keeping and serving it at the required temperature.

Andrew Carmellini’s SoHo restaurant the Dutch has an A, and he cooks chicken the way he thinks is right, though the city specifies an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

“The formal temperatures are too high and make for a dry product,” Mr. Carmellini said. “You get a piece of cardboard that way. For chicken and pork, 165 degrees is too much, and I would prefer to cook it at a lower temperature for a longer time.”

And so he does, legally, when customers specify that it not be well done, and he has not received any 10-point violations for doing so. “But not every inspector is aware of the regulations,” he said.

Daniel Kass, a deputy health commissioner, said that the department’s regulations are based on “independent analysis regarding the state of the science, federal guidance and state rules, and then a determination is made about what is safe.”

Mr. Kass said the health department adhered to the New York State sanitary code, which specifies 165 degrees for poultry and pork, but “does not prevent a restaurant from serving undercooked meat to patrons who request it.”

He added: “When the department’s review of the science shows that lower temperatures are safe, it works with the state to try to change the rules.”

Science is only now catching up with the late 1970s wisdom of Herbert “Herb” Ruggles Tarlek, Jr.

During one episode, Herb, the outrageously dressed salesthingy on the awesome television series, WKRP in Cincinnati, proclaims that tasteless sells. That’s why he’s so good at advertising.

USA Today reports a five-year study to be released Tuesday by Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business found that, again and again, advertisements that try to simply "scare" consumers into actions — such as buying protective sunscreens or avoiding dangerous drugs — are far less effective than ads that also "disgust" consumers into taking the action. The best way to elicit disgust: Display totally gross images (see our infosheets).

"If you really want to get people to act, disgust is much more powerful than fear," says Andrea Morales, an associate marketing professor at Arizona State University who oversaw the study to be published in the June issue of the Journal of Marketing Research. "It may seem counterintuitive, but it works."

Perhaps that's why consumers have seen a recent slew of commercials with high gross-out factors.

A TV spot from the New York City Department of Health featured images of a soft drink turning into gobs of fat as a guy gulps it down. (Department officials say sugar-rich beverage consumption dropped 12% after the campaign.) A recent Febreze TV spot shows blindfolded volunteers sitting in an ultra-filthy room — but fooled into thinking that they smell something pleasant, thanks to the household odor killer. And a commercial for Colgate Total toothpaste shows a mouthful of icky-looking germs.

From 2006 to 2011, Morales and her colleagues oversaw five different studies. In each case, ads with the highest gross-out factor elicited far more cases of viewer willingness to take action than those without.

In one study, 155 undergraduate students viewed an anti-methamphetamine print ad showing a young man whose face is covered with open sores. It scored far more consumer interest than an ad with the same written copy, but which replaced the photo of the pock-marked young man with one of a coffin.

While consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow agrees with the premise — disgust attracts attention — she's not sure it always works. "Disgust is a hard-wired self-preservation emotion designed to keep us from doing things like eating spoiled food," she says. But, she asks, "Will our protective reaction against assaults of any kind cause us to avoid paying any attention to the ad?"

A small dead rodent in a bag of bananas; a bolt complete with nut and washer in meatballs; food contaminated with live and dead insects; a tooth; a false nail; pieces of metal; plastic rubber tubing; and a plaster.

Those were some of the 2,415 consumer complaints lodged with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland in 2011, compared to 2,126 in 2010.

Other complaints ranged from suspected food poisoning, to poor hygiene standards, to food workers handling money and not washing their hands before handling food. All complaints received by the FSAI were individually followed up and investigated by environmental health officers throughout the country.

FSAI Information Manager Edel Conway said the increase in complaints is a positive indication of people's heightened awareness of their right to expect high standards of hygiene and food safety.

Last year saw the FSAI launch its first digital communications campaign entitled ''See Something, Say Something!'' which aimed to raise awareness among consumers of its advice line service.

Those were among the 82 Enforcement Orders served for breaches in food safety legislation in Ireland in 2011, up from 73 in 2010, a 12 per cent increase.

There were also two instances in 2011 whereby the breach of Closure Orders led to High Court action being taken by the FSAI. The High Court’s decisions to uphold the Closure Orders were welcomed and should serve as a warning that non-compliance with enforcement orders will not be tolerated.

The onus is on each individual food business to ensure that all staff handling and preparing food are uptodated on best safety and hygiene practices. If any food business operator is unsure of what is required of them by law, they can contact our advice-line on 1890 336677, visit our website, www.fsai.ie or our facebook page www.facebook/fsai.

I don't know exactly what RadCon is, (it makes me think of the fanboy scenes from Kevin Smith's finest work, Chasing Amy) but it sounds, uh, rad. The gathering of Sci-Fi fans held in Pasco, WA, had gonzo movie making, a zombie nerd shoot and, less rad, a norovirus outbreak.

According to KVEWTV and TriCityNews Tribune, 40-50 of the 2000 attendees came down with norovirus.

Samples from ill attendees tested positive for norovirus, Benton-Franklin Health District officials said Friday. Some of RadCon's more than 2,000 attendees complained of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and came down with the symptoms and recovered rapidly.

One of the ill attendees, Laurel Anne Hill, commented on the TriCity Herald website about some of the discomfort:

"My husband and I weren't hit with the disaster until we reached our home in California on Monday evening.  At least we could share our misery in a multi-toilet residence.  If the bug turns out to be a Norovirus, I suspect it tagged us together on Sunday around dinnertime, when we were together and not in our room.  I think Norovirus can survive for 24 hours on surfaces and resist some sanitizing agents.  Did it wait for us on an elevator button or on that table in the bar?  David is fine now.  Alas, I'm not."

KTXS News reports that what started out as a good deed could have potentially bad consequences – after 40,000 pounds of contaminated chicken was mistakenly donated to charities in the Brownwood area two weeks ago.

After a rollover accident in Mills County, Texas, on February 10, 2012, Brown County Health Department received a report that 40,000 pounds of partially thawed and potentially contaminated chicken was being given away in Brown County.

Texas Department of Public Safety worked the accident scene until approximately 9:30pm and condemned the trailer load of chicken due to its partial thawing and possible health risks said Brownwood/Brown County Health Inspector Paul Coghlan. He explained that the chicken posed a hazard with consumption of either salmonella or food poisoning, both of which can be life threatening to anyone with a compromised immune system.

After the insurance company released the contents of the trailer to be disposed of on February 15th, someone from the company decided to take the chicken, not knowing of the health risk that it posed, to non-profit agencies such as Good Samaritan Ministries and the Salvation Army in Brownwood, according to Coghlan. Both of these agencies refused the donation because they are required to only buy or accept raw meats from licensed distributors. The man then went to local churches and donated many cases of chicken which were then passed on to individuals in need, Coghlan said.

As soon as Coghlan received the report about the man possibly donating the contaminated chicken, he and Dr. James Hays began trying to find where the chickens were distributed. They also notified the Brownwood Regional Medical Center emergency room so that cases of food poisoning or salmonella could be tracked. The man who donated the chicken was located and he gladly cooperated, giving officials a list of places he left the chicken, Coghlan said. Brownwood Police were also called in to assist in the search and interview of possible recipients of the tainted meat.

“The man was trying to do a good deed, unfortunately some people don’t know how to handle meat safely,” said Coghlan. “I feel like we would have seen something by now if anyone was going to get sick from the meat; however it does still have potential to be dangerous.”

Coghlan stated that some of the people who received the chicken would not give the meat back; however, they were warned of the possibility that they may become ill if they consumed it. They were also given tips on how to tell if chicken is contaminated, to look for air in the packaging which signals decay, a slimy feel to the meat, or a foul odor when the packaging is opened.

Of the 40,000 pounds of chicken on the trailer, less than 3000 pounds have been accounted for and the public is still urged to dispose of this chicken if received.

The risk of cross-contamination seems grossly underestimated.

(although imperfect)

Those words, in parentheses, are the most important in a paper by CDC-types about self-reported consumption of pink beef, and impair the conclusions.

Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control used FoodNet data from a 2006-2007 survey of 8,543 respondents to conclude 75.3% reported consuming some type of ground beef in the home, and of those respondents who ate ground beef patties in the home, 18.0% reported consuming pink ground beef.

That’s a high number, but is pink hamburger correlated with cooking temperatures of less than 165F? Not always.

For purposes of the paper, pink hamburger is equated to undercooked and therefore potentially dangerous hamburger, except for the acknowledgement that color is an “imperfect” indicator for the consumption of undercooked ground beef.

The authors do mention in the paper that “color is not a reliable indicator of ground beef doneness, and thermometer use was not assessed so self-reported consumption of pink ground beef may not truly represent consumption of undercooked beef.

A series of studies beginning in the 1990s and led by Melvin “Hunter” Hunt of Kansas State University concluded that color is a lousy indicator of whether hamburger has reached a microbiologically safe internal temperature of 160F with something like 30 per cent of burgers browning prematurely, based on levels of different forms of myoglobin within hamburger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture agrees, and has a thorough summary of the problems with color at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/Color_of_Cooked_Ground_Beef/index.asp.

So why base a consumer study on color, which research concludes and U.S. and Canadian governments agree in the form of consumer advice, is unreliable? Guess it was easier.

The survey did further verify a long-standing observation that is apparently ignored by every local, state or federal agency that says rates of E. coli O157:H7 increase in summer months because more people barbeque: there’s no correlation with cooking. Instead, the correlation is with microbial loads in cattle, which increase in spring and summer.

“We noted a distinct lack of seasonality in the consumption of ground beef or pink ground beef patties in the home. This contrasts with the marked seasonality reported for E. coli O157:H7 infections in humans, which peaks in the summer months. These data suggest that factors other than seasonality in ground beef consumption, such as differences in food handling practices or increases in the amount of bacterial contamination on meat and other foods or environmental sources during warmer months, are responsible for the seasonal increase in E. coli O157:H7 infections. Shedding of E. coli O157:H7 by cattle peaks during the spring and summer months, corresponding to the period of the highest incidence of human infections. Others have suggested that fluctuations in E. coli O157:H7 prevalence in cattle may be linked to human infections. Our data support this hypothesis and suggest that further attention to pre-harvest food safety interventions may be warranted to decrease the numbers of organisms shed in cattle feces and, ultimately, decrease the number of human infections."

For those who think consumers need to be better educated to reduce incidence of foodborne illness, the survey found yet another link to trash such a notion.

“Although persons with higher education and income reported consuming pink ground beef patties in the home more often, this group consumed ground beef overall less frequently. These findings do not explain these patterns, but we speculate that the increased level of risky behavior among more highly educated and higher income respondents may be due to several factors. These persons may not prepare food at home as often as other groups and
therefore may be less practiced in appropriate safe food handling and cooking practices or they may prefer pink ground beef. Higher income persons have been shown both to have more confidence in the safety of the national food supply and to be more likely to use unsafe food practices than lower income persons. Persons that are more educated may also perceive themselves to be at less risk for foodborne illness and consequently be more likely to engage in risky behaviors. The increased willingness among this population to engage in unsafe food-related behaviors has been suggested to rise from more prevalent beliefs that they understand and can control food safety risks.”

Or, smart people can be dumb. Certainly applies to me (the dumb part).

The abstract of the paper is below.

Ground beef consumption patterns in the United States, FoodNet, 2006 through 2007
Journal of Food Protection®, Volume 75, Number 2, February 2012 , pp. 341-346(6)
Taylor, Ethel V.; Holt, Kristin G.; Mahon, Barbara E.; Ayers, Tracy; Norton, Dawn; Gould, L. Hannah
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2012/00000075/00000002/art00016/
Infection resulting from foodborne pathogens, including Escherichia coli O157:H7, is often associated with consumption of raw or undercooked ground beef. However, little is known about the frequency of ground beef consumption in the general population. The objective of this study was to describe patterns of self-reported ground beef and pink ground beef consumption using data from the 2006 through 2007 FoodNet Population Survey. From 1 July 2006 until 30 June 2007, residents of 10 FoodNet sites were contacted by telephone and asked about foods consumed within the previous week. The survey included questions regarding consumption of ground beef patties both inside and outside the home, the consumption of pink ground beef patties and other types of ground beef inside the home, and consumption of ground beef outside the home. Of 8,543 survey respondents, 75.3% reported consuming some type of ground beef in the home. Of respondents who ate ground beef patties in the home, 18.0% reported consuming pink ground beef. Consumption of ground beef was reported most frequently among men, persons with incomes from $40,000 to $75,000 per year, and persons with a high school or college education. Ground beef consumption was least often reported in adults ≥65 years of age. Men and persons with a graduate level education most commonly reported eating pink ground beef in the home. Reported consumption of ground beef and pink ground beef did not differ by season. Ground beef is a frequently consumed food item in the United States, and rates of consumption of pink ground beef have changed little since previous studies. The high rate of consumption of beef that has not been cooked sufficiently to kill pathogens makes pasteurization of ground beef an important consideration, especially for those individuals at high risk of complications from foodborne illnesses such as hemolytic uremic syndrome.

The former big cheese at CFIA says the most significant food safety development in the last decade has occurred outside public law — the extraordinary growth in the role of private-sector traceability systems characterized by third-party audits.

Ron Doering, a past president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency who practices food law in the Ottawa offices of Gowling Lafleur Henderson, LLP, writes in his monthly column for Food in Canada that large processors and retailers are requiring their suppliers to undergo regular inspections by third-party auditors. Producers, ingredient suppliers and processors must no longer simply have their own quality systems and meet government regulations; now they have to sign onerous supplier warranty agreements and open up their businesses to multiple audits. But these systems and their audit schemes have gone through some significant growing pains that have served to seriously undermine their credibility.

Doering says part of the problem seems to be confusion about the role of the auditor.

David Rideout, Canadian food safety expert, SQF auditor and trainer, says,
“Third-party auditors have to identify objective evidence of compliance or non-compliance and understand that they are not doing second-party audits. My job is not to provide guidance and advice to the company; if I do, my manager rejects my audit, as SQF auditors must draw a clear line between third-party (non-consultative) audits and providing advice to the company, which is the role of second-party audits.”

The largest international effort to bring greater rigor and standardization to third-party audit systems is the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), started 10 years ago, but only with improved training, more rigorous certification and systems that audit the auditors can third-party audits regain the public’s confidence.

And, as food safety expert Doug Powell of Kansas State has said, “Third-party audits are only one performance indicator and need to be supplemented with microbial testing, second-party audits of suppliers, and the in-house capacity to meaningfully assess the results of audits and inspections.”

NATO has dismissed a claim by the Taliban that it killed five ISAF soldiers by poisoning their food.

While there was evidence of a "suspected attempt to tamper with food items" at a base in eastern Afghanistan, it was discovered before any troops could be affected.

An investigation is now underway to establish what exactly happened and whether the Taliban did indeed have any involvement.

A dining facility employee at a base run by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force alerted his supervisors to the possibility of tampering and they immediately took steps to shut down the facility before anyone was affected, FOX News Channel reported.

Earlier, AFP quoted an ISAF spokesman as saying lab tests discovered "traces of bleach" in fruit and coffee at the base in Nangarhar Province.

"There were no injuries, no fatality. The investigation is ongoing," Master Sergeant Nicholas Conner said, adding that NATO staff, Afghans and nationals from a third country worked at the dining facilities.

The Taliban claimed Monday that they had poisoned soldiers at a U.S. base in Afghanistan by recruiting a cook who worked there.

A NATO press release Monday said, "While there is a suspected attempt to tamper with food items that is under investigation, the suspected tampering was discovered before any troops could be affected."

"No one got sick," said Lt. Col. Chad Carroll, a spokesman for international forces in the east. He said that a dining facility worker told his superiors that food might have been tampered with, and when they ran tests they found "traces of bleach in a couple of foods."

"We do not know if this was intentional, if it was what the local worker was referring to, or whether it was simply spillage from cleaning," Carroll said.

Replace the term “amphibian and reptile” with “Jersey Shore cast member” and this advisory from the Jefferson Health Dept. in North Jersey is still accurate.

Contact with amphibians (such as frogs and toads) and reptiles (such as turtles, snakes, and lizards) can be a source of human salmonella infections.

• Small turtles, with a shell length of less than four inches, are a well-known source of human Salmonella infections, especially among young children. Because of this risk, the Food and Drug Administration has banned the sale of these turtles since 1975.

• Amphibians and reptiles can carry salmonella germs and still appear healthy and clean.

• To prevent contamination, keep amphibians and reptiles out of kitchens and other areas where food and drink is prepared, served, or consumed.

• Don't let children younger than 5 years of age, older adults, or people with weak immune systems handle or touch amphibians or reptiles.

• Don't let reptiles and amphibians roam free in your home.

The Daily Telegraph reports cockroaches, food past its use-by-date and filthy cooking equipment have been found in the kitchens of some of Sydney's popular eateries.

The NSW Food Authority has "named and shamed" 13 restaurants and food suppliers since December 1 for putting their customers at serious risk of food contamination.

According to the Office of State Revenue, 836 food suppliers have been fined $601,480 for food safety breaches in the six months from July 2011.

At Na Ju Gom Tang in Strathfield, food inspectors found uncovered meat defrosting in a bowl on the floor, cockroaches and general poor hygiene.

Macksville Quality Meats in Macksville was fined $2640 in December for four safety breaches including storing raw meat with ready-to-eat meat, poor hygiene, incomplete monitoring records and poor temperature control.

"I'm a small business. I got into trouble, I'm very sorry and I've fixed it all up. That's what I've got to say," manager James Wilkes said.

Coolabah Tree manager Sharon Eaton copped an $800 fine in December for repeated cleanliness-related offences.

"It doesn't matter what we'll do, the health inspector passes something one visit and then jumps on something else the next," she said.

Inspectors slapped repeat offender Jeme's Fish Market in Ashfield with a $880 fine in January for leaving fish hanging in a yard. A manager could not be reached.

The Liverpool Rd outlet was added to the Food Authority's name and shame list in 2009 after crabs were found stored in the restaurant's toilets. Then primary industries minister Ian Macdonald said at the time it was one of the "most outrageous cases of food storage" he had ever heard about.

Chase-Topping et al. report in the current issue of Emerging Infectious Disease that Escherichia coli O26 and O157 have similar overall prevalences in cattle in Scotland, but in humans, Shiga toxin–producing E. coli O26 infections are fewer and clinically less severe than E. coli O157 infections.

To investigate this discrepancy, we genotyped E. coli O26 isolates from cattle and humans in Scotland and continental Europe. The genetic background of some strains from Scotland was closely related to that of strains causing severe infections in Europe. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling found an association between hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and multilocus sequence type 21 strains and confirmed the role of stx2 in severe human disease. Although the prevalences of E. coli O26 and O157 on cattle farms in Scotland are equivalent, prevalence of more virulent strains is low, reducing human infection risk.

However, new data on E. coli O26–associated HUS in humans highlight the need for surveillance of non-O157 enterohemorrhagic E. coli and for understanding stx2 phage acquisition.

The complete report is available at http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/3/11-1236_article.htm.

21 clients qui ont déjeuné dans un restaurant ont eu la diarrhée et des vomissements.
La toxine due à Clostridium perfringens a été isolée chez quelques clients.
Le pathogène a été retrouvé dans du jambon et un plat contenant plusieurs aliments qui ont été servis pendant le déjeuner.
Un restaurateur amateur opérant sans licence a été impliqué comme étant à l’origine d’une éclosion d’intoxications due à une entérotoxine de Clostridium perfringens. Les aliments du restaurateur sont liés au moins à 21 cas de personnes malades.
Les enquêteurs pensent que l’éclosion a été due à des aliments incorrectement réchauffés dans des fours à micro-ondes.
Les spores Clostridium perfringens survivent souvent à la cuisson mais ne sont pas un problème sauf si l’aliment est conservé à une température incorrecte.
La meilleure pratique est de réchauffer l’aliment à 75°C et de le maintenir au chaud au-dessus de 57°C, si vous préparez des aliments pour un nombre important de personnes sur un lieu donné et ensuite transportez-le pour le service. Cela détruira toutes les cellules végétatives présentes et préviendra la germination et la croissance des spores pour former d’autres cellules.
Les micro-ondes chauffent souvent imparfaitement les aliments ; prenez la température avec un thermomètre digital sensible en plusieurs endroits.
Utilisez un équipement approprié (pas de four à micro-ondes qui a une activité calorique inconstante) et un thermomètre digital sensible pour vous assurer que l’aliment est cuit et conservé à des températures sécuritaires.
Pour plus informations : Ben Chapman benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu ou Doug Powell, dpowell @ksu.edu

Click here to download the infosheet.

 Most folks who wake up feeling crummy will sit down with a computer or smartphone before they sit down with a doctor.

They might search the Web for remedies or tweet about their symptoms. And that's why scientists who track disease are turning to the Internet for early warning signs of epidemics.

Philip Polgreen, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa, told NPR’s Adam Cole, "Surveillance is one of the cornerstones of public health. It all depends on having not only accurate data, but timely data."

The current system requires the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to compile reports about from physicians and labs all over the country — and that can take a while. There's typically a week-long delay between an outbreak and the release of an official report.

To get an early read on things, epidemiologists look for the first clues of illness — a rise in thermometer sales or increased chatter on hospital phone lines. Now, they're tapping into the Internet.

A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins wanted to see if Google's estimates would prove accurate and useful in the everyday operation of a hospital.

They compared Google searches originating in Baltimore to the number of patients who showed up with flu-like symptoms at a local emergency room.

"It seems like a stretch, but what we found — amazingly — is that there's a really high correlation between these searches in the community and what we're seeing in hospitals," says Richard Rothman, the study's co-author.

Online disease surveillance — or "Webidemiology" — is a cool new tool, and researchers are eagerly testing it out and double-checking the data they collect. But it won't be used by itself to make important public health decisions anytime soon.

"The Internet is just one additional stream of information," Polgreen says. "It's certainly not going to replace traditional forms of surveillance."

While the Internet may not be a perfect predictive tool, researchers and public health officials agree that it is great for one thing: communication.

Social networking allows officials to easily reach the public and enter into a conversation. Tweets, searches and Facebook posts can give officials a sense of public reaction to vaccines, or their attitude towards an epidemic.

"It's a quick and easy barometer for public anxiety," Polgreen says.
And in a public health emergency, that can be just as useful as cold, hard numbers about cases.

A total of 14 people have been infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli O26 from 6 states in the fifth outbreak involving sprouts served on Jimmy John’s sandwiches in the past four years

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control report the number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Iowa (5), Missouri (3), Kansas (2), Michigan (2), Arkansas (1), and Wisconsin (1).

Two ill persons have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.

Preliminary results of the epidemiologic and traceback investigations indicate eating raw clover sprouts at Jimmy John's restaurants is the likely cause of this outbreak. Preliminary traceback information has identified a common lot of clover seeds used to grow clover sprouts served at Jimmy John's restaurant locations where ill persons ate. FDA and states conducted a traceback that identified two separate sprouting facilities; both used the same lot of seed to grow clover sprouts served at these Jimmy John's restaurant locations. On February 10, 2012, the seed supplier initiated notification of sprouting facilities that received this lot of clover seed to stop using it. Investigations are ongoing to identify other locations that may have sold clover sprouts grown from this seed lot.

Based on previous outbreaks associated with sprouts, investigation findings have demonstrated that sprout seeds might become contaminated in several ways. They could be grown with contaminated water or improperly composted manure fertilizer. They could be contaminated with feces from domestic or wild animals, or with runoff from animal production facilities, or by improperly cleaned growing or processing equipment. Seeds also might become contaminated during harvesting, distribution, or storage. Many clover seeds are produced for agricultural use, so they might not be processed, handled, and stored as human food would. Conditions suitable for sprouting the seed also permit bacteria that might be present on seeds to grow and multiply rapidly.

Earlier this week, William Keene, senior epidemiologist at Oregon Public Health Services, told The Packer that problems with sprouts originate with how they’re produced.

“It’s a generic problem, not a this-guy-was-doing-something-wrong problem. The conditions for generating sprouts commercially are almost like designing a process to grow bacteria. It’s wet, it’s not too cold. The sprouts grow luxuriantly and so do the bacteria.”

Trevor Suslow, an extension research specialist at the University of California-Davis, said it’s critical for regulators, industry representatives and academics drafting the FDA rule on sprouts to address seeds.

“I am not sure it will include seed production. Based on an outline, they were starting at the seed distributor, which is not adequate to protect the public. I hope they’ll put this back in….It appears to be very difficult to keep seed that has some low level of contamination from being introduced into the sprout production stream.”

Larry “Larry” Goodridge (right, exactly as shown) got it right when he said farmers bear primary responsibility for food safety and they shouldn’t rely on third-party audits, but should retroactively fail my risk analysis course for saying Colorado’s response to the listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak that killed 36 people "was as close to perfect as we are going to see" and that "Our food supply is one of the safest in the world, if not the safest."

Goodridge, an associate professor of food microbiology at Colorado State University, did follow up by telling the Governor's Forum on Colorado Agriculture yesterday, “But if you were to ask that question of family members who had someone die, they would tell you our food supply is not safe." Lots of people would say the food supply is not safe. Maybe about 48 million of them. Best to keep meaningless rankings out of the equation.

He also said the state could improve by creating a team that activated within hours of an outbreak, and that the government should target spending on high-risk produce — in particular, by educating farmers who grow high-risk produce. More focus on food inspectors isn't likely to significantly improve the system. Larry urged farmers to focus on sanitary practices such as keeping equipment and storage areas clean. He also urged them to educate the public on ways to safely handle produce in the same manner as consumers are advised how to safely handle meat.

As usual, no details were provided on how best to do this so-called education, for farmers or consumers.

Farm Fresh Direct chief executive Jim Knutzon, said he expects the federal government will write more specific regulations for growing cantaloupe and other produce. Then third-party auditors — hired by farms to inspect their operations — will have to check for specific standards called for by the Food and Drug Administration.

Captain Kirk told the ladies of The View on Monday that his one-man Broadway show, Move out of your parent’s basement and get a life Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It, was spoiled by food poisoning.

The armchair epidemiologist figured it was a Klingon hamburger.

The veteran’s one-man show was met with a standing ovation and rave reviews but his night of celebrations were cut short after he fell ill.

Shatner previously appeared on U.S. breakfast show Good Morning America Friday to recount his magical evening, saying, “Opening night on Broadway… Well I’d love to say I absorbed every second of it but I got food poisoning. So the lack of absorption was really good.”

Braunwynn, the 19-year-old daughter who is a second-year university student, got so excited about her calorie-dense breakfast she posted a pic on facebook (right, exactly as shown, looks great).

At least she cooked in her own kitchen, unlike 52-year-old James Summers, who claimed to be the new manager of a Denny's restaurant in Wisconsin and then cooked himself a cheeseburger and fries.

Police say Summers, wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase, claimed he was sent by Denny's corporate office on Wednesday to be the new manager at the restaurant in Madison.

The current manager told him he must have the wrong restaurant.

Mr Summers told her she apparently had not received the memo about the change in leadership.

Authorities say the manager called her supervisors while Mr Summers helped himself to a meal.

A local television report says police were summoned and took Mr Summers into custody.

Officers say they found a stun gun on his belt.

Mr Summers is charged with disorderly conduct, drug possession and possessing an electric weapon.

Four cases of salmonella are being investigated by Hamilton’s public health department (that’s the Hamilton in Canada).

Public health says it believes the cases are connected to Eat a Pita restaurant on Main Street East at Kenilworth Avenue. The restaurant remained open after it took corrective measures following an inspection, and is being inspected again Thursday.

 A friend in Ontario (that’s in Canada) sent along this recipe from a can of Campbell’s Cream of Asparagus soup.

I have a soft spot for the asparagus soup, because that’s how my grandfather Homer, asparagus baron of Ontario, got his start in the fresh asparagus business, growing to 100 acres in the 1970s, selling almost all of it fresh at the door. What was left went to Campbell’s for cream of asparagus soup.

On the recipe for lemon asparagus chicken, the instructions state, cook chicken “… until chicken is no longer pink.”

Not good enough. If consumers are expected to be the critical control point, then food producers must at least provide clear and evidence-based instructions. Cook chicken until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 F as measured using a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

Stick it in.

Canberra continues to take babysteps toward restaurant inspection disclosure by setting up a name-and-shame website after new food safety legislation was passed by the Legislative Assembly yesterday.

Under the new laws, which were supported by all three parties, businesses will have to display their registration certificates, and a closure notice if the government issues them with a prohibition order.

Eateries will also be required to have a trained food safety officer on site to ensure businesses are meeting hygiene regulations.

The new laws come 12 months after an investigation by The Canberra Times revealed restaurants that had breached food safety laws would not be named publicly on the grounds it might jeopardise their commercial viability.

The protection was offered despite ACT Health issuing dozens of warnings to ACT businesses urging them to clean their unhygienic kitchens and banning businesses from selling meals on seven occasions because of fears customers might be poisoned.

Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said the passage of the food amendment bill yesterday was ''a pivotal step forward in improving food safety and regulatory transparency''.

''Unfortunately over the past year gaps in the knowledge of the people who work in the industry have been discovered,'' Ms Gallagher said.

Ms Gallagher said food businesses would be given 18 months to train and implement their food safety supervisors.

She added that a dedicated food safety directorate had been formed at the Health Protection Service to improve the management of food safety in the ACT.

Greens MLA Amanda Bresnan said the next step to improving food hygiene in the ACT was to implement a system similar to the Scores on Doors scheme in NSW, where businesses display a food safety rating in their windows.

Duke University (located in Durham, NC), is home of the Blue Devils, Mike Krzyzewski and now norovirus.
Duke prides itself on medical research, but can't get preventative infection control on their campus right - and their housekeeping department's policy on water conservation might be a factor in norovirus spread.
A student I know, who is taking a class at Duke, sent me a picture from a restroom (at right, exactly as shown) detailing Duke's Housekeeping's recent message on water conservation:

"PLEASE HELP US SAVE WATER! (is the yelling really necessary? -ben) Instant Hand Sanitzer - No Rinse Required. Thank You University Housekeeping."

While sanitizer has its uses, reducing norovirus spread isn't one of them. Pretty much all commercially available hand sanitizers suck when it comes to reducing norovirus viability.

About three weeks ago NC Division of Public Health announced investigating a bunch of norovirus outbreaks and had issued an advisory for the state.

The picture was taken two days after the advisory was released (I tweeted the picture with the comment "Not great advice with an increase of noro outbreaks in NC."

Today, according to the Examiner, Duke University is dealing with a norovirus outbreak of their own with several illnesses.

Irony is pretty ironic sometimes.

In a Duke news release Monday, Dr. George Jackson, co-director of Employee Occupational Health and Wellness said in light of the reported infections, "All students, faculty and staff are advised to practice effective hand hygiene to limit the spread of the virus. The best way to prevent infection is by washing hands with soap and warm water for at least 15 seconds. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers may not be effective against noroviruses."

Having a good culture of food safety or disease control (including norovirus) means that folks all throughout the system, including internal policy decision makers, know about hazards and how to control them. A good culture includes knowing the best practices, which should be based on the best available evidence, to address risks. Folks within an organization, whether commercial or institutional, need to be on the same page when it comes to risk reduction; it seems like Dr. Jackson and Duke University housekeeping weren't.



 

TMZ reports Elton John had a crappy weekend after the Rocket Man came down with a nasty case of food poisoning.

E.J. was supposed to perform at Caesars Palace in Vegas this past Friday and Saturday night, but the singer had to back out when something he ate backfired.

No details on suspect food or drink or symptoms.

The translation is rough and details sketchy, but Focus is reporting a 6-year-old girl from Hamburg died over the weekend from the effects of EHEC, which probably means some strain of shiga-toxin producing E. coli.

A spokesman for the Health Authority of the City of confirming the news agency on Sunday evening, a case of illness with the pathogen.According to the newspaper "Die Welt" on Monday, the child died in the early hours of Sunday. The first grader had shown since the beginning of last week, symptoms of infection with the aggressive food germ, the head of a primary school in Hamburg-Blankenese said on Sunday. She was treated at a hospital. Apparently it was an isolated case

"This is an isolated incident," said the spokesman. "It is not at all comparable to the situation last year" (meaning sprouts and E. coli O104, in which 53 people died).

I had grilled whole grouper during my Dubai dinner with Bobby the other night. Amy and Sorenne had frozen pizza in Brisbane.

Ever the safe food partner, Amy sent me the cooking instructions from the Emilia pizza mediterranea frozen pizza box which included:

“For food safety, bake to an internal temperature of 75 C as measured with a food thermometer.”

Such labels have become commonplace, at least in the U.S., after numerous outbreaks involving frozen, not-ready-to-eat foods.

In Nov. 2007, frozen pizza made headlines as all Totinos and Jenos pizzas with pepperoni were recalled due to contamination of E. coli O157:H7. The recall affected nearly 5 million pizzas and was linked as the cause of 21 confirmed illnesses throughout Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Five of the 21 ill required hospitalization.

The recall hit the Pillsbury USA ranges particularly hard, as net sales for the division fell two per cent.

At the time, I speculated, “People were probably cooking these in their toaster ovens or microwaves.” The manufacturer has a note on the cooking instructions discouraging the idea of cooking the pizza in a microwave. The advice, located next to the instructions was the smallest print on the box and might be easily ignored by consumers.

And just because something is written on a label doesn’t mean anyone follows the advice; research shows that labels are sorta lousy as a risk communication vehicle, but it’s there for those who care.

If some frozen pizza provider can recommend thermometers, why is it the best taxpayer-funded agencies like the UK Food Standards Agencies is to cook things until they’re piping hot?

 Matt Sigur of The Daily Advertiser writes that six months after an investigation detailed a series of broken promises and a culture of putting business interests ahead of the consumers it is charged with protecting, little has changed at the state Department of Health and Hospitals.

Louisiana remains one of the weakest states in the nation when it comes to making restaurant inspections understandable, relevant and accessible.

A website hastily launched during the final days of the paper's original investigation sits largely unknown and unused.

At a press conference in August, DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein proudly debuted Eat Safe as a commitment to transparency and public safety and promised that this was just the beginning, that a more complete and robust site was less than three months away.

Now six months after that promise, nothing has changed.

The site remains, but because of its limited usefulness and DHH's decision not to promote it, the numbers argue it is dying a slow death. In August, the site recorded more than 560,000 page views. In October, the number fell to 52,000. In January, the number fell again, to 19,837. The Louisiana Restaurant Association, a powerful lobby in the state and a group whose mission is to look out for the best interests of restaurants, was granted multiple "stakeholder" meetings on what information the site would make available, and in Greenstein's own words has a "collaborative and close relationship" with DHH.

Greenstein brushes off critics who argue he has no interest of making the site useful or successful and accuse him of just going through the motions to dodge pressure on the issue.

Stu Gonsoron, project manager for Bailey's Catering, a full service offshore and inland catering company, says there's no reason for the update delays or lack of marketing of Eat Safe.

"There's nothing to it, but to do it," Gonsoron said. "I don't know if there's too much red tape. There's no excuse for them to not have made this more accessible and given consumers more awareness about this program. It is upsetting."

For Tyler Thigpen Cochran, a member of Acadiana Food Circle, which works to help consumers connect with local producers and educate the public on healthy, local food choices, the tardiness "doesn't bode well" for DHH.

"It seems like the website should get priority," Cochran said. "If you want people to know about it, you put it on the web."

Doug Powell, a Kansas State professor and food safety expert, said the lack of promotion for Eat Safe is questionable.

"It's a reflection of how serious the whole process is taken by elected officials and public servants," Powell said. "Some states and municipalities actively promote their disclosure systems. Others quietly put it up on the web, and those with a vested interest go digging."

There are lots of food safety myths floating around like color is a good indicator of safe temperatures or the 3-second rule. One that popped up last week in a class I was guest lecturing in: freezing food kills things. I think this comes from some old parasite-reducing practices (fish especially) but someone asked specifically about shellfish - and whether freezing things like oysters, shrimp or clams does anything. Depends on the target pathogen, the risks with oysters specifically are viral (Noro or Hep A). So freezing might do something for the worms, but it's not going to do much of anything to reduce viruses.

In this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (still my favorite publication title) investigators discuss a Washington State outbreak associated with frozen raw oysters.

Some highlights:

On October 19, 2011, Public Health – Seattle & King County was contacted regarding a woman who had experienced acute gastroenteritis after dining at a local restaurant with friends. Staff members interviewed the diners and confirmed that three of the seven in the party had consumed a raw oyster dish. Within 18–36 hours after consumption, the three had onsets of aches, nausea, and nonbloody diarrhea lasting 24–48 hours. One ill diner also reported vomiting. The four diners who had not eaten the raw oysters did not become ill.

An inspection of a walk-in freezer at the restaurant revealed eight 3-pound bags of frozen raw oysters, which the restaurant indicated had been an ingredient of the dish consumed by the ill diners. The oysters had been imported from South Korea by company A and shipped to a local vendor, which sold them to the restaurant. All eight bags were sent to the Food and Drug Administration's Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory for norovirus testing and characterization by real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR).

A stool specimen from one of two ill diners collected 17 days after symptom onset tested positive for norovirus; sequence analysis identified GI.1 and GII.17 strains. Sequence analysis of the oysters identified a GII.3 strain. Because oysters can harbor multiple norovirus strains that are unequally amplified by rRT-PCR, discordance between stool specimens and food samples in shellfish-associated norovirus outbreaks is common and does not rule out an association. On November 4, 2011, company A recalled its frozen raw oysters.

The frozen oysters implicated in this outbreak were distributed internationally and had a 2-year shelf-life.
Such contamination has potential for exposing persons widely dispersed in space and time, making cases difficult to identify or link through traditional complaint-based surveillance

Beginning in Dec. 2010, people started getting sick from eating raw sprouts on Jimmy John’s sandwiches, primarily in Indiana. After some 140 confirmed cases, the sprouts were linked to Tiny Greens Organic Farms, a producer based in Urbana, Illinois.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a 6-page inspection report of Tiny Greens in Feb. 2011, and found the company grew sprouts in "soil from the organic material decomposed outside" without using any monitored "kill step" on it.

Other findings included:

• An "amphibian/reptile" was kept in the reception room of the firm, which adjoined the production area.
* The firm couldn't show that its antimicrobial treatment for seeds, which was not specifically described in the report, was equivalent to the recommended treatment with a bleach solution.

• Employees stored their lunches, including such items as raw bacon, in the same cooler where finished sprouts were stored.
* Organic matter was seen on a table where sprouts were packaged, and a "biofilm-like buildup" was seen on sprouting trays after they were cleaned.
* What looked like mold was seen on walls and ceiling in a mung-bean sprouting room.
*

• Condensation dripped from the ceiling in production areas throughout the inspection period, which lasted close to a month.
* An outside lab that the firm used to test its water and sprouts used a method that was not validated for detecting Salmonella in those items.


• FDA found a Salmonella isolate matching the outbreak strain, known as I 4,[5],12:i:-, in a sample of runoff water from the company.

In the midst of the German-centered E. coli O104-in-sprouts outbreak in May 2011, Tiny Greens owner Bill Bagby, said the nutritional benefits outweigh the risk.

"Sprouts are kind of a magical thing.”

"That's why I would advise people to only buy sprouts from someone who has a (foodsafety) program in place" that includes outside auditors, Bagby said. "We did not have (independent auditors) for about one year and that was the time the problems happened. The FDA determined that unsanitary conditions could have been a potential source of cross-contamination and so we have made a lot of changes since then."

Independent auditors? Like the ones who said everything was cool, everything was OK, at Peanut Corporation of America (7 dead, 700 sick) and DeCoster eggs (2,000 sick)?

Auditors aren’t going to do much for sprout safety. But the optimism of the Magic Man is shared by the International Sprout Growers Association, which launched a campaign earlier this year to “make sprouts part of your healthy eating in 2012” and promoted the idea of sprouts as a “wonder food.”

Then another Jimmy John’s outbreak – E. coli O26 linked to raw sprouts in sandwiches favored by college kids – and the same actors surface on the social stage.

Bagby said this week, "We are not involved in any way, nor are we associated in any way with this current outbreak.”

The CDC website said the clover spouts used at the affected restaurants all came from two sprouting facilities using the same lot of clover seeds provided by International Specialty Supply, also known as ISS, in Cookeville, Tenn.

Bagby said, "I don't buy from that company because it doesn't have a sufficient decontamination procedure for the seeds.”

Bagby said Tiny Greens gets all its seeds from the Caudill Seed Co. in Louisville, Ky., because it uses a system to decontaminate the sprouting seeds.

"They use a process involving heat and a vacuum," Bagby said.

Bagby said he was notified that Jimmy John's has removed sprouts from its menu following this week's finding by the CDC.

"It is ironic because sprouts have a high vitamin content, are rich in enzymes and phyto nutrients and strengthen one's immune system.”

Not so much ironic as a painfully delayed recognition by Jimmy John’s that after 5 outbreaks related to sprouts on their sandwiches since 2008, maybe something should be done. A table of sprout-related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.

 Jimmy John's spokeswoman Mary Trader said on Thursday that the company is not releasing a statement at this time.

Others, however, aren’t waiting.

Erbert and Gerbert’s Sandwich Shops, based in Eau Claire, Wis., has taken alfalfa sprouts off its menus at all outlets. The company has 53 locations.

“The decision to pull the sprouts from our menu system-wide is being made to protect the health of our guests,” Eric Wolfe, chief executive officer at E&G Franchise Systems, Inc., said in the release. “We value the well-being of our customers and felt removing all sprouts from our menu and sandwich line was the best way to eliminate the risk.”

WalMart stopped selling sprouts in North America in Oct. 2010.

NPR’s Nancy Shute chatted with Bob Sanderson, president of the International Sprout Growers Association, who talked about a number of possible sanitary treatments while concluding, “I'm hoping that the new rules [that are part of the Food Safety Modernization Act] will say, here's what you have to do to be acceptable. That would free up the industry to come up with solutions.”

With repeated outbreaks, acceptable is a long way off.

As Americans grapple with the public health implications about going public either too early or too late, the Italians have added an unique variation: a company issued a public warning, then prohibited people from speaking or writing about it.

A food safety friend based in Italy who has followed the machinations of Taco-Restaurant-A-Bell and a recent salmonella outbreak, noted that going public with a food safety recall is an exception in Italy. Companies have plans for disseminating information to the public in their recall procedures, but are reluctant to put them into practice. National authorities don't insist on much. A recall for foreign bodies is also exceptional as officials don't mind foreign bodies much. What is typically Italian is the threatening message at the end: we tell the public because we have to, but we will sue you if you talk about it to anyone, or you link to our page.

The press release, translated from Italian, says, “Leaf Italia informs its consumers of the possible presence of foreign bodies inside some boxes of chocolate pralines "Sperlari Granperle plain chocolate with crushed nougat" gr. 160 which belong only to production lots L11284 - L11285 - L11287 - L11294 - L11296 - L11300 as indicated on the package.

“As a precautionary measure, it is therefore recommended not to consume the product in the image and to call the toll free number 800829008 for more information.

“This information is owned by LEAF. The information is intended for exclusive use for the purposes covered by this statement and any different use must be authorized in writing by LEAF: in the absence of such authorization, any dissemination and reproduction is forbidden."

Those Jimmy John’s clover sprouts that have sickened at least 12 people in the Midwest with E. coli O26 may have been grown on a farm in Kansas.

I can’t wait to find out who the third-party auditor was.

Missouri’s News-Leader reports the restaurants in Springfield had obtained the sprouts from a farm in Kansas, but neither the restaurants or the farm appeared to be the source of the contamination.

But the restaurant chose to sell raw sprouts.

John Hershberger, the owner of Sweetwater Farms in Inman, Kansas, said federal investigators have not conclusively linked the seeds to the outbreak. He said an investigator from the U.S. Department of Food and Drug Administration was at his farm last week but didn’t find any contamination at the farm.

“They don’t know that for a fact,” Hershberger said of a possible link to the seeds.

Hershberger said he had voluntarily withdrawn clover sprouts from the market.

A paper in Arkansas, home to one of the illnesses, said, “In most sprout outbreaks the restaurant is not to blame for the contamination itself. Contamination usually happens when the seeds are grown or harvested and is often impossible to wash off.”

It’s true sprouts are often contaminated at the seed level but absolute nonsense that whoever serves those raw sprouts on sandwiches isn’t responsible, especially when raw sprouts have been the source of four previous outbreaks since 2008 at the same sandwich chain – Jimmy John’s.

Can food service learn anything from past sprout outbreaks – and there have been a lot, see http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.

Eurosurveillance, reported yesterday that a bunch of experts who gathered in Nov. 2011 concluded the outbreak showed the landscape of foodborne infections is in flux, that multi-national outbreaks are a reality and that they can occur everywhere, irrespective of food safety standards.

Nothing was said about whether people should eat raw sprouts or even if raw sprouts were a high-risk food.

On June 12, 1996, Dr. Richard Schabas, chief medical officer of Ontario (that’s a province in Canada), issued a public health advisory on the presumed link between consumption of California strawberries and an outbreak of diarrheal illness among some 40 people in the Metro Toronto area. The announcement followed a similar statement from the Department of Health and Human Services in Houston, Texas, which was investigating a cluster of 18 cases of cyclospora illness among oil executives.

Turns out it was Guatemalan raspberries, and no one was happy.

The initial, and subsequent, links between cyclospora and strawberries or raspberries in 1996 was based on epidemiology, a statistical association between consumption of a particular food and the onset of disease. The Toronto outbreak was first identified because some 35 guests attending a May 11, 1996 wedding reception developed the same severe, intestinal illness, seven to 10 days after the wedding, and subsequently tested positive for cyclospora. Based on interviews with those stricken, health authorities in Toronto and Texas concluded that California strawberries were the most likely source. However, attempts to remember exactly what one ate two weeks earlier is an extremely difficult task; and larger foods, like strawberries, are recalled more frequently than smaller foods, like raspberries.

By July 18, 1996, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared that raspberries from Guatemala -- which had been sprayed with pesticides mixed with water that could have been contaminated with sewage containing cyclospora -- were the likely source of the cyclospora outbreak, which ultimately sickened about 1,000 people across North America. Guatemalan health authorities and producers vigorously refuted the charges. The California Strawberry Commission estimated it lost $15-20 million in reduced strawberry sales.

The California strawberry growers decided the best way to minimize the effects of an outbreak – real or alleged – was to make sure all their growers knew some food safety basics and there was some verification mechanism. The next time someone said, “I got sick and it was your strawberries,” the growers could at least say, “We don’t think it was us, and here’s everything we do to produce the safest product we can.”

That was essentially the prelude for FDA publishing its 1998 Guidance for Industry: Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. We had already started down the same path, and took those guidelines, as well as others, and created an on-farm food safety program for all 220 growers producing tomatoes and cucumbers under the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers banner. And set up a credible verification system.

In Aug. 2011, Oregon health officials confirmed that deer droppings caused an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak traced to strawberries that sickened 14 people and killed one. William Keene, senior epidemiologist with Oregon Public Health, said the outbreak strain turned up in samples from fields in three separate locations.

So, in the same way spinach, lettuce and tomato growers have reinvented their food safety pasts, commissions representing berry growers in Oregon, Washington and California have banded together to promote good food safety practices.

The efforts begin this spring with education and training of growers and farm workers on proper handling of fresh fruit, according to a news release.

The best producers or manufacturers can do is diligently manage and mitigate risks and be able to prove such diligence in the court of public opinion; and they’ll do it before the next outbreak.

From the I’m-not-sure-they’ve-thought-this-through category, a cardiologist and two public-health professors from Alberta argue in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology that junk food and its ingredients are such major health hazards that products with excessive amounts of sugar, salt and saturated fats should be labelled as “pathogens” — a word normally applied to viruses and other disease-causing bugs.

The National Post reports that authorities and the media grab public attention now when they report the spread of traditional pathogens — like listeria or E. coli — in contaminated food or water, and should similarly highlight food ingredients that are responsible for killing vastly more Canadians, says the article.

“It’s really just a nomenclature to attract attention to the fact we have a problem here and something needs to be done about it,” said Dr. Norm Campbell, a University of Calgary cardiologist and co-author of the paper. “It will hopefully … result in an evolution of our food so it’s again a source of health, not a source of disease.”

A combination of two Greek words, pathogen literally means producer of illness, though most often refers specifically to a bacteria, virus or other infectious agent.

Dr. Campbell, a specialist in hypertension and the effects of sodium on it, denied that his idea amounts to nanny-state interference in the marketplace, arguing there is as much or more reason to regulate food as to control highway speed limits or air traffic, government interventions that Canadians tolerate. Some evidence suggests that salt in food alone contributes to 14,000 deaths and 40,000 hospitalizations yearly, he said.'

“Why regulate crime? ‘Oh, it’s a murder, they shouldn’t be allowed a second chance.’ Well, the food industry kills many thousands more than that murderer ever had a hope of doing.”

Beginning in Nov. 2010, raw sprouts served on Jimmy John’s, sandwiches sickened 140 people, primarily in Indiana, with salmonella.

In January, 2011, Jimmy John’s owner Jimmy John Liautaud said his restaurants would replace alfalfa sprouts, effective immediately, with allegedly easier-to-clean clover sprouts.

This was one week after a separate outbreak of salmonella sickened eight people in Washington and Oregon in Jan. 2011 who had eaten at a Jimmy John’s that used clover sprouts. That’s a week after the salmonella-in-clover sprouts was publicly reported, yet the head of a large food franchise like Jimmy John’s was absolutely clueless about microbial risks associated with sprouts.

A year later, it’s happened again.

Raw clover sprouts served on Jimmy John’s sandwiches have sickened at least 12 people with E. coli O26; at least two people were sickened in my home state of Kansas, where I tell anyone who will listen why they might want to reconsider sprouts on sandwiches at Jimmy John’s, which are often catered in for meetings.

I won’t touch them.

A table of sprout-related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported today that preliminary results of the epidemiologic and traceback investigations indicate eating raw clover sprouts at Jimmy John's restaurants is the likely cause of this outbreak.

The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: Iowa (5), Missouri (3), Kansas (2), Arkansas (1), and Wisconsin (1).

Two ill persons have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.

FDA's traceback investigation is ongoing. Traceback information on sprouts has identified a common lot of clover seeds used to grow clover sprouts served at Jimmy John's restaurant locations where ill persons ate.

The type of bacteria responsible for this outbreak are referred to as shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC). STEC bacteria are grouped by serogroups (e.g., O157 or O26). The STEC serogroup found most commonly in U.S. patients is E. coli O157. Other E. coli serogroups in the STEC group, including O26, are sometimes called "non-O157 STECs." Some types of STEC frequently cause severe disease, including bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). Others, such as common strains of STEC O26, typically cause milder illness. Currently, there are limited public health surveillance data on the occurrence of non-O157 STECs, including STEC O26; therefore, STEC O26 infections may go undiagnosed or unreported. Because non-O157 STEC infections are more difficult to identify than STEC O157, many clinical laboratories do not test for them. The STEC O26 PFGE pattern in this outbreak has rarely been seen before in PulseNet.
Initial Case Count

Among persons for whom information is available, illness onset dates range from December 25, 2011 to January 15, 2012. Ill persons range in age from 9 years to 49 years old, with a median age of 25 years old. One hundred percent of ill persons are female. Among the 12 ill persons, 2 (17%) were hospitalized. None have developed HUS, and no deaths have been reported.

Epidemiologic and traceback investigations conducted by officials in local, state, and federal public health, agriculture, and regulatory agencies have linked this outbreak to eating raw clover sprouts. Among the 11 ill persons with information available, 10 (91%) reported eating at a Jimmy John's sandwich restaurant in the 7 days preceding illness. Ill persons reported eating at 9 different locations of Jimmy John's restaurants in 4 states in the week before becoming ill. One location was identified where more than one ill person reported eating in the week before becoming ill. Among the 10 ill persons who reported eating at a Jimmy John's restaurant location, 8 (80%) reported eating a sandwich containing sprouts, and 9 (90%) reported eating a sandwich containing lettuce. Currently, no other common grocery stores or restaurants are associated with illnesses.

Preliminary traceback information has identified a common lot of clover seeds used to grow clover sprouts served at Jimmy John's restaurant locations where ill persons ate. FDA and states conducted a traceback that identified two separate sprouting facilities; both used the same lot of seed to grow clover sprouts served at these Jimmy John's restaurant locations. Preliminary distribution information indicates that sprouts grown from this seed lot were sold at a number of restaurant and grocery store locations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin, and were likely distributed beyond these states. On February 10, 2012, the seed supplier initiated notification of sprouting facilities that received this lot of clover seed to stop using it. Investigations are ongoing to identify other locations that may have sold clover sprouts grown from this seed lot.

Based on previous outbreaks associated with sprouts, investigation findings have demonstrated that sprout seeds might become contaminated in several ways. They could be grown with contaminated water or improperly composted manure fertilizer. They could be contaminated with feces from domestic or wild animals, or with runoff from animal production facilities, or by improperly cleaned growing or processing equipment. Seeds also might become contaminated during harvesting, distribution, or storage. Many clover seeds are produced for agricultural use, so they might not be processed, handled, and stored as human food would. Conditions suitable for sprouting the seed also permit bacteria that might be present on seeds to grow and multiply rapidly.

In 1999, FDA released guidance to help seed producers and sprout growers enhance the safety of their products. Specific measures recommended in the guidelines include a seed disinfection step and microbiologic tests of water that has been used to grow each lot of sprouts. The microbiologic tests currently recommended under this guidance would not identify the presence of STEC O26.

Jan Mei Soon, Louise Manning, Paul Davies and Richard Baines write in the British Food Journal that a desktop study of recent outbreaks and recalls that have occurred in the US and EU was undertaken with a view to determining the produce items implicated and factors causing the emergence of outbreaks. The question, ‘A call for HACCP on farms?’ is explored.

Minimally processed fresh-cut produce, represents a particular challenge to food safety. The research has highlighted the need to mitigate risk at all stages but with specific emphasis at the pre-farm gate stage. A more comprehensive and integrated approach to risk management is arguably needed. A call for HACCP on the farm or farm food safety management system may be warranted in future if fresh produce outbreaks continue to rise. However, further research is needed to establish the guidelines of HACCP adoption at the farm level. At present, the rigorous adoption of GAP as a pre-requisite and the practice of HACCP-based plans is a good indicator of the importance of pre-harvest safety.

KING 5 Investigators have learned that federal inspectors complained for years about significant food safety violations at a Yakima plant but their superiors didn’t put a stop to it.

"I thought it was terrible because I have never seen anything like that in my life," said Jerry Pierce, a recently retired U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector who was assigned to the Snokist Growers plant in 2008. He said he watched Snokist employees “reprocess” and sell applesauce that belonged in the garbage bin.

“It's appalling that the company would take those measures just to make a few dollars," said Wendy Alguard, the USDA inspector who worked at Snokist from 2009 until the summer of last year.

Snokist Growers is a century-old cannery that processes and packages 50,000 tons of cherries, apples, pears and plums each year. The inspectors say that leaks in the packaging would cause 300 gallon bags of applesauce to spoil. Snokist would scrape thick mold off the top of the spoiled applesauce, heat-treat the remaining product and then send it down the production line for sale to the public.

The KING 5 Investigators obtained public records showing Snokist reprocessed more than 23,000 gallons of moldy applesauce in the year 2010 alone. Other records show Snokist's own consultant concluded in 2009 that the mold in applesauce "would not be eliminated by your firm's thermal process." Records show the company continued selling it to customers.

The inspectors say they repeatedly told their boss about the moldy applesauce.
"I guess they promised my boss they wouldn't do it again and within a week they were doing it again,” said Pierce.

"I had contact with my boss many times and he basically told me to mind my own business," said Alguard.

It was another government agency that finally put a stop to Snokist’s recycling of fruit products. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came to the Yakima plant after 18 North Carolina school children got sick from eating Snokist applesauce. The FDA determined that packaging defects caused the applesauce to spoil, not reprocessing of moldy applesauce.

The Canberra Times reports three food stalls at the National Multicultural Festival breached food safety regulations, resulting in health authorities having to destroy ''potentially contaminated'' foods.

A team of seven public health officers were sent to the weekend's festival in a crackdown on food stalls that saw roughly 100 inspections over Friday and Saturday.

The Health Protection Service treats the festival as a ''high risk event'' for food safety, and regularly sends officers to make sure the festival's huge range of food stalls comply with health standards.

The breaches found at this year's multicultural festival were focused on food storage, temperature control and hand washing, an ACT Health spokeswoman told The Canberra Times.

Authorities were forced to destroy food from a number of stalls, and immediately resolved a number of hygiene breaches.

Canberra Multicultural Community Forum chairman Sam Wong said he hadn't heard any concerns from stallholders about the food safety crackdown.

''I only praise the work of the health protection service, and we are happy to work with them and also work with the community to make things right. We are happy to listen to any concerns of any sort from all parts of the festival, not just the food.”

If Walmart can figure out that raw sprouts are too risky to sell in their stores, why are fancy food service providers, like Emirates airlines still serving sprouts?

Rebekah Denn of the Seattle Times reports Walmart U.S. quietly stopped selling raw sprouts in October of 2010.

"This decision was made because of our commitment to our customers' safety as well as our knowing of the inherent microbial risks associated with sprouts," said spokeswoman Dianna Gee. "Over the past year, we have been working with sprout growers within the industry to research enhanced food safety controls and microbial intervention strategies that would result in safer sprouts, before re-introducing them for sale in our stores and clubs."

Don't look to Macpherson's Produce on Beacon Hill either, which pulled the health food after an E. coli outbreak linked to sprouts sickened thousands and killed 53 people in Europe and a salmonella outbreak linked to Northwest sprouts sickened 21 people last summer, including some in our state. The crunchy garnish is slipping off the menu at other outlets nationwide, says NPR.

I checked in with one of my favorite food-safety sources, Professor Doug Powell of Kansas State University, who brings blunt talk and scientific rigor to outbreaks and scares. He mentioned to me that sprouts were no longer available at Walmart, the first I'd heard of that move -- and noted that plenty of others have taken that route. They're one of the few foods he won't touch himself.

"They are a hazardous food, and a lot of food service companies stopped serving them years ago..." Powell said.

"The industry is working on it, and my hat goes off to them, but...any industry is only as good as its worst producer."

So. How to decide if you want to eat them yourself, and how to do it safely?

As Dr. Raj Mody, an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control, puts it in an online article, some people think of sprouts as the ultimate healthy food. But Mody also calls them "a perfect vehicle for pathogens," and suggests cooking them if you're going to eat them at all.

The big problem. The seeds themselves can be contaminated, and they're sprouted in a wet, warm medium that's perfect for spreading contamination no matter where it originated.

Sometimes when we write about food safety, producers of the affected products can come off as extremely defensive, sure that their food cannot be at fault. But talking with Bob Sanderson, president of the International Sprout Growers Association, I found a guy who is both proud of what he grows and very concerned about finding ways to make sure it's safe industry-wide. The association started as a way to promote the nutritional value of sprouts, he said, but food safety has become more of its focus.

"(The sprout) has never been a big item in the produce world, and it's always had a very dedicated customer base. But there have been a number of outbreaks, and they've caused a lot of concern. The best way to try to rebuld confidence in the product is to standardize the best practices for minimizing that kind of situation," he said.

The association is working with the FDA and, in particular, with the Institute for Food Safety and Health, figuring out the best practices to follow. A current project is designing an audit for sprout production, looking at all the most critical areas. Some of the bigger companies are doing their own research as well, he noted.

For sprouts to return to Walmart, for instance, Sanderson said the rigorous list of requirements growers are working on includes items such as having the growers show documentation on their seed sourcing and sanitizing, showing that they have tested their spent irrigation water, undergoing this "extremely detailed third-party audit...it covers absolutely everything", and being able to trace any problem sources.

"A lot of these things the industry for the most part is already doing," he said. There are not a lot of seed suppliers, but "the main ones are certainly doing a lot of testing and they won't accept a seed lot if anything comes up in their tests," he said. That said, it's not a complete guarantee, and they would like to see better sanitizing treatments for seeds than the chlorine-based one the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended years back. Testing the spent irrigation water is is something that he thinks almost all the commercial growers are doing. "It's been designed so you'll get the results back before the product goes out the door," he said.

A table of sprout-related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.

Arab News reports that inspection teams from the Yanbu municipality shut down 10 eateries for various violations last year. Many restaurant staffers who were found working in unhygienic conditions had been subjected to medical tests.

A total of 45 bacteria contamination cases were detected during the inspection, and there were 18 workers infected with bacteria, including E.coli.

Speaking to Arab News, Abdul Aali Al-Sheikh, head of the Ya nbu municipality, said inspection teams collected about 890 samples from restaurants, cafeterias, bakeries and outlets for soft drinks during 2011. The affected workers were barred from working at eateries until they recovered from infections. They were allowed to resume duty only after producing a fitness certificate from the Ministry of Health.

“The municipality is giving top priority to ensure environment health, as it is directly related to public health. Subsequently, we will intensify raids on restaurants, food warehouses, and candy stores to ensure that they are preparing dishes and keeping foodstuffs in hygienic conditions,” he said while urging citizens and foreigners to extend cooperation to the municipality in this regard through informing about those eateries that violate health and hygienic regulations.

Magic glove syndrome, the phenomenon where food service workers think they are immune to cross-contamination because they're wearing protective gloves, is rampant on reality TV. Even our own butcher here in Brisbane touches everything from raw meat to money with his gloves on. It's just one of those things I never would have thought about before I met Doug, but now I find it disgusting.

Tonight I'm catching up on missed episodes of Top Chef Just Desserts and have noticed some glove action going on. First, during a one-handed challenge, an opponent helped Chef Orlando put a sanitary glove on the one hand he was allowed to use. Then I did a happy double-take when I saw Chef Sally Camacho offer her elbow to Judge Hubert Keller at an event the cheftestants catered in L.A. She respected her gloved hands and diners by avoiding bringing potential clients' germs into her dishes. 

Last week, some 300 staff and students in San Francisco were sickened with norovirus believed to have been transmitted by someone barfing on a door handle.

It now appears a similar mode of transmission sickened 229 cheerleaders and cheeries at a Washington state competition.

JoNel Aleccia of msnbc cites Suzanne Pate, spokeswoman for the Snohomish Health District, as confirming Friday that norovirus was the cause, and the outbreak was likely precipitated by people who were ill in public.

"Somebody arrived at the event sick," said Pate, noting that janitorial crews were called to clean up vomit in a restroom and on an adjacent walkway. Those areas were likely exposure sites for the cheer and dance teams, she said.

Some 229 people were sickened and least 33 people sought medical attention for their illnesses, state health officials said late Friday. That number is expected to grow as the investigation continues.

A Comcast Arena spokeswoman said officials had sanitized the premises in accordance with federal health guidelines before a new event scheduled for Friday night. Tests of the arena's water supply showed no problems, Pate said.

"It's probably the best-scrubbed place in the county," she added.

Most of the 100-plus people infected with norovirus last month had eaten at a local Subway franchise.

The Star Press reports an investigation by the Blackford County Health Department (that’s in Indiana) was unable to determine whether a customer or an employee spread the virus, also known as a stomach bug and food poisoning.

"We don't know how it bounced in there," said Linda Briles, an environmental health specialist at the department. "We may never know. I use the term 'bounced in there,' either www.barfblog.com/blog/152553/12/01/14/eat-fresh-90-sick-norovirus-linked-indiana-subwaywith an employee or a customer, I don't know. But it bounced in and went from there."

She said the virus could have been spread by a customer who failed to properly wash his or her hands after using the restroom. "A customer could have left it on a door knob," Briles said. "It (transmission) is fecal-oral. Or an employee could have caused it by poor hand washing."

An outbreak investigation report from the state department of health won't be completed for several months, spokeswoman Amanda Turney said. A state epidemiologist will conduct a "hot wash" meeting today with the county health department staff to identify lessons learned from the outbreak.

"I want to do a final hot wash before I release my report (of the investigation to the public)," Briles said. "It should be available after I get down to the state health department and have it checked by the media (relations office)."

Briles said tests showed that more than one Subway employee was infected with the norovirus. "They were sick the same time everyone else was," Briles said. To her knowledge, the infected employees were not sick before the outbreak.

There has been an Indiana administrative code regulating food workers with diagnosed illnesses since 2000, but it wasn't being enforced in Indiana until 2008.

Under the code, any food employee who is diagnosed with one of the following illnesses must be excluded from the food establishment: salmonella, shiga toxin-producing E. coli, shigella, hepatitis A or norovirus.

From company headquarters in Milford, Conn., Subway public relations manager Kevin Kane said, "Upon learning of the norovirus investigation by the Blackford County Health Department, the franchisee in Hartford City voluntarily closed the restaurant and had an independent company come in to thoroughly clean and sanitize the restaurant. This was in addition to the stringent cleaning and sanitizing procedures practiced here on a daily basis.

Despite hiring an independent contractor to sanitize the restaurant, Subway was cited by Briles for mold, dirty floors and other violations after re-opening.

Nearly 200 people across the state have reported illnesses after attending a high school cheer and dance event in Everett earlier this month.

Preliminary survey results show at least 192 reports of illness from participants and adults who attended the event Feb. 4. Students and adults from Columbia River and Skyview high schools in Vancouver attended the event.

The Washington State Department of Health is investigating the cause of the outbreak.

As part of the investigation, questionnaires were sent to participants and their families and stool samples are being collected for testing at the state Public Health Laboratories.

More than 3,000 people attended the event and more than 1,000 competed in the State Cheerleading and Salute to Spirit in cheer and dance/drill.

Universities have a tough time with norovirus. Close quarters, not-the-best-personal-hygiene and cafeterias are all factors in spreading the pathogen around. Brae Surgeoner, Doug and I had a paper published in the September 2009 Journal of Environmental Health about some research we conducted in the Winter of 2006. The study came about because a whole bunch of kids in the University of Guelph's residence system started puking from an apparent norovirus outbreak. There were lots of handwashing signs up and we wanted to know whether they changed hygiene behavior (especially if kids were using the tools available when entering the cafeteria). Turns out that the kids weren't doing as good of a job at hand hygiene as they reported to us. According to our study, 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.

According to CNN Rider University in New Jersey is dealing with a noro outbreak that has sent students to hospital, which might be connected to repeat offenders Princeton.

About 40 students at a university in New Jersey have been taken to hospitals for treatment after an outbreak of what authorities believe is the norovirus. The Rider University students, at the school's campus in Lawrenceville, were brought to hospitals late Wednesday night, the school said Thursday. The suspected outbreak comes a week after an outbreak began at nearby Princeton University, which is still under way, officials said.

"We are coordinating treatment information with that university. We have also informed neighboring institutions," Rider said on its website.
Some of those taken to hospitals have been discharged and returned to campus.

Below in a food safety infosheet detailing another Princeton-related outbreak from 2008.

 

Most of the stuff I've worked on in the past ten years has something to do with evaluating and supporting food safety culture. bites, barfblog, infosheets and reality-based research are all about providing information to make risk-based decisions and assessing where there might be gaps.
The ultimate goal is less sick people.

But as one of my mentors Gord Surgeoner once told me, businesses wont pay attention to food safety unless it generates revenue or some how keeps them from losing money. Making people sick is bad business. So is spending money on training programs or handwashing signs if there isn't a measurable return on investment.

I've been to lots of talks where smart food safety folks were supposed to present about their food safety culture, but really have only shared their training program requirements. And while maybe they are measuring it, no one talks about their return on investment.

In a paper published in 2011,  Doug, Casey Jacob and I wrote:

Maintaining a food safety culture means that operators and staff know the risks associated with the products or meals they produce, know why managing the risks is important, and effectively manage those risks in a demonstrable way. In an organization with a good food safety culture, individuals are expected to enact practices that represent the shared value system and point out where others may fail.
Training is part of it. So is having some sort of verification that staff and supervisors are actually reducing risks. It's pretty easy to point to a poor food safety culture - it's more difficult to define a good one. But one of the indicators is the "dude wash your hands factor" - pointing out where others fail and modeling the right practice.

Conagra, one of the biggest food companies in North America, and source of a few foodborne illness outbreaks in the past few years, is trying to step up their internal assessment of food safety culture, and sharing it publicly.

In the January 2012 issue of Food Technology, the ConAgra food safety crew shared their approach to assessing their food safety culture (at least the self reported values part) and how they used the results to change the way they train and support good practices in their plants.

Administering a survey to all plant personnel—line workers as well as supervisors and management—is the first step in the assessment process. Having all employees take part in the survey is important, as it sets the stage for communicating that everyone contributes to the plant’s food safety culture and that food safety is everyone’s responsibility. The act itself of taking the survey increases awareness of the concept of food safety culture, gets people talking about food safety culture, and ultimately drives toward improvements.

Their main findings support the approach we use with much of our work - tell people about consequences (both positive and negative),  help staff learn from past mistakes and appreciate a community with shared values:

1. Employee desire
• Both employees and leaders want food safety held up as an equal to personal safety, with both groups talking about the need to inspire employees around food safety.
• Participants said they specifically wanted to know more about lessons learned from food safety issues and incidents and how they would prevent future problems.
2. Teamwork
• Employees want to be able to rely on one another.
• Employees felt that there needs to be a good balance of supervisor responsibility and their own responsibility, but felt that at the end of the day, they are personally accountable.
3. Recognition
• Employees were proud of the plant’s food safety performance and understood that it deserved recognition. Recognition breeds motivation.
• Suggestions were made to reinstitute food safety and recognition committees to help drive engagement from the floor.

Great stuff, especially the recognition that surveys and focus groups are just the start (people tend to lie), I hope Conagra continues on this path, publishes this stuff in a peer-reviewed journal, shares some of their further assessments and market it to their customers
It would also be nice for others to know what ConAgra's return on investment for food safety culture is.

Officials of a Mexican political party are apologizing to 650 indigenous people who suffered food poisoning after attending a campaign rally in southern Mexico.

Authorities in the indigenous town of Chilapa had to open an auditorium on Wednesday to treat people who became sick after eating rice tacos and eggs handed out by former mayor Sergio Dolores, who is running for congress.

Guerrero state civil protection officials said adults and children were fainting, throwing up and suffering from diarrhea.

A new report says Canadians suffer more foodborne illness than Americans, that most of it happens with restaurant meals, and that consumers are sorta dumb too.

Unfortunately, the report relies heavily on other reports that are not peer-reviewed, assumptions, and suffers from highly selective referencing to make a point – and I have no idea what that point is.

The report, Improving Food Safety in Canada: Toward a More Risk Responsive System, released by the Conference Board of Canada to coincide with their food safety conference and upstaged by Galen Weston Jr.’s comments that farmer’s markets were going to kill someone, says half or more of all cases of foodborne illnesses in Canada are picked up in restaurants or from other food service providers.

Daniel Munro, Principal Research Associate, said, “It is commonly assumed that farms and food processing companies hold the most responsibility for ensuring safe food, and their role is critical. But most foodborne illnesses are associated with the preparation and storage practices of restaurants, food service operations, and consumers themselves.”

I’m not sure who makes that assumption. It is estimated there are 6.8 million cases of food-borne illness annually in Canada.

Part of the problem can be traced to restaurant inspection systems that are seen as too sporadic to have an impact on restaurants’ day-to-day food safety practices.

Garth Whyte, president and CEO of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association dismissed the report describing it as "shockingly short on facts."

"This study did not even bother contacting us about what we are doing, and if they had, they would know that there are three government recognized food safety training programs that train tens of thousands food handlers per year," Whyte said.

Except training alone doesn’t do much for food safety behavior.

The report provides a number of recommendations to improve Canada’s food safety system including providing restaurants and other food service providers with timely information and advice on how they can minimize food safety risks.

We call them infosheets.

It also urges governments to build on current consumer awareness initiatives by engaging consumers directly in discussions about food safety in their households.

The report offers no advice on how to do that.

Norovirus is making the rounds in Madison, Wisconsin, with five food-related outbreaks since last November.

Dane County health officials are still waiting for test results from the most recent outbreak. It took place Jan. 29 when at least 16 people had vomiting and diarrhea after eating sandwiches and other food at the Mandrake Road Church of Christ in Madison.

Also last month, 28 people got sick after eating at Erin’s Snug Irish Pub in Madison. The other outbreaks took place at a drama-filming session at Madison West High School, the Pyle Center at U W Madison, and a Madison art show.

Health department epidemiologist Amanda Kita-Yarbro says the five outbreaks in a three-month period are a first for her agency. She said it could have been spurred either by food workers or people attending the various events.

Dozens of cheerleaders are suffering from vomiting and diarrhea after attending a Washington-state tournament in Everett last week.

The cause and source of the illness are unknown, officials said. So is the total number of people affected. However, the Washington State Department of Health has received calls from 19 cheerleading squads all reporting at least one person sick. More than 1,000 cheerleaders competed in the event at Everett's Comcast Arena and more than 3,000 spectators attended.

The investigation being conducted jointly by the Washington State Department of Health and the Snohomish Health District. So far, it has included collecting samples for testing at a laboratory, and sending a questionnaire to participants.

People who attended the event and have severe symptoms are advised to contact a health care provider.

At least one person is sick, leading to a recall of finely ground beef sold at New Middleast Supermarket, Ottawa (that’s in Canada).

The affected ground beef is a finely ground raw beef known to be used for Kebbeh. This product was sold on December 28 and 29, 2011 (darn timely recall) from the New Middleast Supermarket, 1755 Bank Street, Ottawa, ON. This product was likely served from the fresh meat counter in plastic bags wrapped with paper. The packages may not bear a label identifying store name and other information. Consumers are advised to contact the retailer if you are unsure as to whether you have the affected beef product stored in your home freezer.

The Chicago Health Department has found critical food safety violations at the United Center, home of the Chicago Blackhawks and my personal hero, goaltender Tony Esposito, along with some basketball team.

After a CBS 2 investigation, the city began inspecting food vendors at sports venues during games — something they had not done before.

2 Investigator Pam Zekman has previously reported on the potentially dangerous food temperature violations at Wrigley Field, Soldier Field and U.S. Cellular Field.

Now the results of inspections at the United Center are in and violations found at eight different concession stands resulted in the United Center getting an F, a failed inspection.

The inspectors found 12 critical temperature violations similar to violations they found at other Chicago sports arenas.

Food safety expert Kantha Shelke reviewed the inspection reports and was alarmed at the findings.

“I’m surprised that the enterprises operating at United Center did not pay attention and follow the simplest rules of food safety.”

Dr. Bechara Choucair, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health,
said the unannounced inspections on game day have proven to be valuable, adding, “I am very happy with this program. We’re going to continue operating under this policy in 2012.”

Choucair added that with education of workers and continued spot inspections, they hope to end food temperature problems. All violations at the United Center were corrected at the time of the inspections.

A full report of health inspection results at the United Center is available at http://chicago.cbslocal.com/inspection-report/.

Note the Tony O jersey on the dude ordering at a game. Best goalie ever.

Those supermarket loyalty cards helped pin down an outbreak of salmonella in sausage in France last year.

Researchers reported in Eurosurveillance last week that an outbreak of the monophasic variant of Salmonella enterica serotype 4,[5],12:i:- occurred in November and December 2011 in France. Epidemiological investigation and food investigation with the help of supermarket loyalty cards suggested dried pork sausage from one producer as the most likely source of the outbreak. Despite the absence of positive food samples, control measures including withdrawal and recall were implemented.

Between 31 October and 18 December (week 44 to week 50), a total of 337 cases of Salmonella enterica serotype 4,[5],12:i:- were identified. The median age was 10 years (range: 0–90 years) with about 30% of children under five. A majority of women were affected (female to male sex ratio: 1.22). Cases were reported throughout France.

An epidemic of Salmonella enterica 4,[5],12:i:- was already observed about three months prior to this outbreak. Between 1 August and 9 October, 682 cases were reported (Figure 1), of whom 100 cases were interviewed at the time but no common vehicle of infection could be identified. In comparison, 212 cases with this serotype had been isolated during the same period in 2010.

Epidemiological investigations pointed to a dried pork sausage purchased principally at supermarket chain A and consumed after week 44, 2011. Therefore purchases of pork delicatessen at supermarkets A and B up to four weeks prior to symptom onset were investigated by the DGAL using data recorded through supermarket loyalty cards.

The use of the loyalty card from supermarket chain A was important to identify the vehicle of infection and the local producer involved in this outbreak. These cards are used more and more and prove helpful in the investigation of food-related outbreaks. Nevertheless we should keep in mind that they do not necessarily reflect the consumption of cases perfectly. For instance, the card may not be used systematically, the household can purchase foods in additional shops and markets for which they have no loyalty cards, many food products are consumed outside the household and not recorded on the card, and the central database of the supermarket does not always contain data on all foods sold such as foods directly purchased by the retailers. For these reasons the data have to be interpreted together with the results from epidemiological and microbiological investigations.

That the producer and microbiological analysis did not find Salmonella does not exclude contamination. The limited number of samples and the processing of the food (especially salting and drying) reduce the likelihood of isolating the bacteria. Implementing checks earlier in the process (before salting and drying) and using additional methods of testing such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) should be considered.

This is the second described outbreak in France involving dried pork sausage, and indicates that this food item might be a likely vehicle of infection and further outbreaks in humans may be expected.

Given the limitations to detect Salmonella in dried sausages, the ability of the standard reference method to detect of monophasic variant strains in dried sausages is questionable. Additional methods should be explored in order to improve monitoring protocols.

The complete report is available at http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20071.
 

Perpetually smirking Alberto Contador has been stripped of his 2010 Tour de France victory and banned from cycling for two years after the sport’s highest court found the Spanish cyclist guilty of doping.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended the three-time Tour champion after rejecting his claim that his positive test for clenbuterol was caused by eating contaminated meat.

CAS backdated Contador's ban and he is eligible to return to competition on Aug. 6.

Contador blamed steak bought from a Basque producer for his high reading of clenbuterol, which is sometimes used by farmers to fatten up their livestock.

CAS said both the meat contamination theory and a blood transfusion scenario for the positive test were “possible” but “equally unlikely.”

“The Panel found that there were no established facts that would elevate the possibility of meat contamination to an event that could have occurred on a balance of probabilities,” CAS said. “Unlike certain other countries, notably outside Europe, Spain is not known to have a contamination problem with clenbuterol in meat. Furthermore, no other cases of athletes having tested positive to clenbuterol allegedly in connection with the consumption of Spanish meat are known.”

Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, who finished second at the 2010 Tour, stands to be elevated to victory.

A warning for armchair epidemiologists: people who make unsubstantiated allegations about food poisoning in reviews on user-generated websites such as TripAdvisor could face legal action.

“It’s almost impossible to say with any certainty that food poisoning came from any one meal, so making these kind of threats could potentially be libellous,” said Mark Harrington, chief executive of Check Safety First, a company specialising in food hygiene checks.

Mr Harrington told The Telegraph that fake restaurant reviews are being used to blackmail hoteliers. “There have been many reports that customers have blackmailed hoteliers by threatening to post false food-poisoning claims on TripAdvisor. It is scandalous.”

The news follows the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) ruling that TripAdvisor can no longer claim or imply that all its reviews can be trusted.

Kwikchex, a reputation management company that brought the case to the ASA on behalf of hoteliers and restaurateurs, said there were thousands of such allegations of food poisoning in Britain and U.S.

“Almost none are reported to the proper authorities, let alone substantiated,” said a spokesman. “Sometimes the reviewer believes it is the truth, but has not reported it and has no understanding of gastro-intestinal infections.

“They usually just pick on the last place where they ate, when in fact the incubation period for such infections is usually one to two days and sometimes as long as a week.”

The spokesman added that this type of allegation can be used by competitors and disgruntled ex-employees to harm the business.

Fresh tomato supply chain leaders are – in 2012? -- sharpening food safety programs and auditing protocols with a goal of cutting foodborne illnesses linked to their product.

So says The Packer, but shouldn’t that have been done about 15 years ago as evidence accumulated that tomatoes were a frequent culprit in outbreaks of foodborne illness?

As Florida, California and other tomato types met in early Feb., audit fatigue, or numerous audits grower-shippers’ customers often require, remained central in discussions.

“How many standards can you audit to?” asked Billy Heller, chief executive officer of Pacific Tomato Growers Ltd., Palmetto. “Audit fatigue within our group at all levels is unbelievable. We have customers coming behind other customers checking the other audits because they each have their own specs.

Ed Beckman, president of the Certified Greenhouse Vegetable Producers Association of North America, Fresno, Calif., said the debate should be about how tomato food safety metrics reflect science. Beckman, until recently president of Fresno, Calif.-based California Tomato Growers, said the industry seeks collaboration with the FDA and the U.S, Department of Agriculture throughout the audit process.

“This is not growers and customers sitting in a room and defining what our future is,” Beckman said. “We don’t simply pull a number out of the air and throw it in that document and say it’s good.

“... This about bringing people together, sharing ideas, sharing our frustrations with existing audits, auditing and trying to come back with a solution that meets everyone’s needs in a single audit that is based on science.”

During the meetings, growers and buyers discussed customer expectations, additions to the standards and issues such as commingling at repacking operations.

A table of older, fresh tomato-related outbreaks is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=953.

In a 1993 episode of the television series, Seinfeld, George Costanza was confronted at a funeral reception by Timmy, his girlfriend’s brother, after dipping the same chip into the dip after taking a bite.

“Did, did you just double dip that chip?” Timmy asks incredulously, later objecting, “That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” Finally George retorts, “You dip the way you want to dip, I’ll dip the way I want to dip,” and aims another used chip at the bowl. Timmy tries to take it away, and the scene ends as they wrestle for it.

In 2008, food microbiologist Paul L. Dawson at Clemson University oversaw an experiment in which undergraduates found on average, that three-to-six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.

Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.

In anticipation of much dipping during Sunday’s Super Bowl, the Is It True video series af the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog presents this animation, and concludes it’s not like putting your whole mouth in the dip but could be compared to sharing a kiss with your fellow dippers.

Cleaning up vomit promptly is crucial to containing the spread of bugs like norovirus as 300 staff and students at a Jesuit high school in San Francisco discovered Wednesday.

The outbreak at Saint Ignatius College Preparatory school, initially believed to have been caused by a virus, sent a handful of the sickened students to hospital emergency rooms for treatment of dehydration, principal Patrick Ruff said.

School spokesman Paul Totah said roughly 300 pupils in all, out of the school's 1,360-member student body, were believed to have been affected in some way.

Extra maintenance staff were brought in to scour the entire school with a bleach-based solution, and the process will be repeated on Thursday, Ruff said.

The school consulted with San Francisco health inspectors, who visited the school Wednesday and ruled out cafeteria food or waterborne sources for the outbreak, he said. Further testing is needed to determine whether norovirus, a common cause of gastroenteritis, was the culprit.

Dr. Tomas Aragon, San Francisco's chief medical officer, said the outbreak may have originated from a single infected student who got sick in an often-used doorway.

"A student vomited on central doors, on the rods that open these big doors. Then the bell rang and a lot of students went through that door."

Aragon said the norovirus can survive on surfaces for days and is highly contagious.