That’s Sorenne (right, pretty much as shown) enjoying a duck egg omelet made with duck eggs from our friend, Kate the vet. Kate is exceedingly conscientious about cleanliness and I take pains to avoid cross-contamination in the kitchen.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) today reissued its advice on the safe consumption of duck eggs, following the confirmation of five new cases of Salmonella Typhimurium DT8.

The FSAI states that these five cases are in addition to the thirteen cases associated with duck egg consumption during an outbreak earlier in the year.

It is reiterating its advice to consumers to only consume duck eggs that have been thoroughly cooked and to cease using raw duck eggs in any dishes that will not be cooked thoroughly prior to eating. It continues to recommend that good hygiene practices are followed, such as washing hands and preparation surfaces after handling or using duck eggs.

In light of these new cases, the FSAI advises caterers to be particularly strict in adhering to best hygiene practices and to only serve duck eggs or duck egg products that have been thoroughly cooked prior to consumption. It also reiterates the need for strict procedures to be followed at all times to avoid cross contamination between raw and cooked foods.

I have a friend who was a dairy farmer for decades and he refused to eat at McDonald’s.

He likes hamburgers and all, he just couldn’t stand the thought of his spent Holsteins being served as a Big Mac.

Some types in the Australian beef industry feel the same way.

The Courier Mail in Brisbane reports that backers of truth-in-labeling legislation aimed at ensuring old cow meat is clearly labeled as such are concerned industry representatives will succeed in destroying the intent of the legislation.

They are worried that a register being drawn up in response to the legislation will only make buying beef in the supermarket even more confusing for consumers.

Once passed, the terminology would apply to meat sold in supermarkets and butchers around the country.

Consultant to the truth-in-labelling legislation, Norman Hunt, said vested industry interests who did not want consumers to realize they were buying beef from old cows were to blame.

The Aus-Meat domestic retail beef register, drawn up earlier this month, is proposing to change the much-maligned "budget" label, used to describe beef from cattle 10 years old, to "economy".

Under existing law in Queensland, abattoirs must label old cow meat "manufacturing" grade but retailers are then able to market it as prime cut under the "budget" grading.

Government adviser, Red Meat Advisory Council secretary Justin Toohey said it was impossible to provide a guide to eating quality of meat to consumers based on a whole of animal approach, adding,

"The trouble is every muscle has to be graded individually for this sort of thing to be a success. An eye-fillet from an eight-tooth cow could be beautiful eating, for example."

A small deli in Long Island City, Queens, will go down in local history as being the first business to earn a Grade A from the city's health department, which implemented its new restaurant inspection grading system on Tuesday.

Crain’s New York Business (photo from Crain's) reports the agency is holding a press conference Wednesday morning at Spark's Deli on 2831 Borden Ave., where health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley will laud the small business's accomplishment.

Co-owner Jose Araujo said,

“We serve a lot of hard-working people, construction crews and mechanics. And now they'll know for sure that I provide good food. … We've done well in past inspections. There's always something to fix or be done better, but we've never failed an inspection.”

On Tuesday an inspector visited his business, awarding him with a score of 10.

According to the new letter grading system, in which restaurants receive either an A, B or C grade (or fail the inspection altogether), a score of 0 to 13 qualifies as an A.

Other restaurants were inspected on Tuesday and earned A's, but Spark's was the first, according to health department officials.

Until three years ago, Kenneth Maxwell enjoyed Banquet chicken and turkey pot pies so much he ate them three or four times a week. They were easy to prepare, and Maxwell could eat one for lunch and quickly return to work as an electrician.

When cases of salmonella poisoning led the pies' manufacturer, ConAgra Foods, to issue a product recall in the fall of 2007, Maxwell did not hear about it and continued to eat them. He bought several pot pies about two weeks after the recall was launched, when they should have been pulled from store shelves, and became violently ill, he said.

Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune reports this morning that Maxwell's experience reflects common problems with food recalls: They routinely fail to recover all of the product they seek and, according to experts, sometimes even leave tainted foods in stores, putting consumers at risk of becoming ill from potentially deadly foodborne pathogens.

If consumers are suffering from recall fatigue, what about retailers who are supposed to get potentially contaminated product off the shelves?

Communications about recalls with both the public and retailers, must be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant, and that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how recall stories were being told on Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs.

The Tribune story says a spokesman for Jewel-Osco's corporate parent said relying on the media, posting shelf notices and making sure store employees are prepared to answer customers' questions all have worked with recalls in the past.

Safeway, the parent of Dominick's food stores, contacts shoppers directly in some recalls — typically smaller ones, said spokesman Brian Dowling. But in larger recalls, he said the company's stores rely on other methods to get the word out, such as notices on store shelves and stories in newspapers and on TV and radio.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released the Government's Products Recall app for the Android smartphone at USA.gov website.

And it will be the same boring message. Marshall McLuhan famously said “The medium is the message” (that’s him above, right, in a scene from the movie, Annie Hall). With food safety recalls, it’s the medium and the message, if you want to get people’s attention.

The Maxwells said they have not eaten a Banquet pot pie since the recall.
 

The New York City health department unveiled a new Web site today to go along with the beginning of its A-B-C restaurant inspection disclosure system of more than 24,000 restaurants in the five boroughs.

Daniel Kass, a deputy commissioner, told The New York Times,

“There is no shortage of sources of information on restaurants, but there is no other central source to find information about restaurants’ hygiene practices. We hope that this Web site will help spread the food safety message.”

The Web site displays restaurants’ current A, B or C letter grades and the specifics of their violations, and is designed to allow searches by restaurants’ first names or even first letters, by letter grades in specific ZIP codes, by boroughs and by dates of inspection. It also offers maps of restaurants’ locations, and Google street views of the restaurants’ exteriors.

John La Duca, the department’s director of online editing said a widget on the home page will permit readers to type in restaurants’ names for their latest inspection results. This widget can be installed on other Web sites or home pages — for example, on the Zagat Survey’s online version, or on bloggers’ sites, or Facebook and other social media platforms — to permit quick access to the inspection ratings from places other than the department’s home page.

Inspection results on the site were formerly updated weekly, Mr. Kass said. “Now, in most cases, it will be updated daily, when it is uploaded overnight from the inspectors’ hand-helds,” he said, referring to the portable computers in which inspectors enter restaurants’ cleanliness scores.

Associated Press commemorated the beginning of the new letter grades by recycling old arguments – the same ones heard when Los Angeles started it’s a-B-C system in 1998 and Toronto started its red-yellow-green system in 2002.

Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York State Restaurant Association, which vehemently opposes the letter grades, said,

"Some will undoubtedly close if they get a B or a C."

Others say they accept the new system and will strive for an A.

David Chang, whose hotter-than-hot restaurants include Momofuku Noodle Bar and Momofuku Ko, said,

"It is our goal always to get an A," said. "If we don't get an A, we fail."

Chang said he has sent his sous chefs to city Health Department workshops to get up to speed on the new system.

That’s a much better approach. The best restaurants will not only embrace the letter grades and provide critiques to improve the system, they will brag and promote their A grades. It’s a form of marketing food safety, which helps enhance the overall culture of food safety.

Madelyn Alfano, who owns nine Maria's Italian Kitchen restaurants, said Los Angeles restaurateurs still are not fond of the system, adding,

"If you don't have hand towels in your restroom that's points off. We don't like it but we've learned to live with it."

That’s because paper towels should always be available. And what about a sticker on the dispenser that says,

“No towels? Please tell a server immediately. Yours in hand cleanliness, the owners.”

I just made that up.

Larry Michael, head of food protection for North Carolina's Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said letter grade systems also are in effect in North and South Carolina, and the system works well, adding,

"Consumers really pay attention to the rating cards. The A, B, C system is familiar and it's easy to interpret."

For those still wondering, here’s a review paper discussing the pros and cons of disclosure systems.

Filion, K. and Powell, D.A. 2009. The use of restaurant inspection disclosure systems as a means of communicating food safety information. Journal of Foodservice 20: 287-297.

Abstract

The World Health Organization estimates that up to 30% of individuals in developed countries become ill from food or water each year. Up to 70% of these illnesses are estimated to be linked to food prepared at foodservice establishments. Consumer confidence in the safety of food prepared in restaurants is fragile, varying significantly from year to year, with many consumers attributing foodborne illness to foodservice. One of the key drivers of restaurant choice is consumer perception of the hygiene of a restaurant. Restaurant hygiene information is something consumers desire, and when available, may use to make dining decisions.

Mice Direct is an on-line provider of reptile food including frozen rats, mice and chicks with the motto, ‘direct to your door, cheaper than the store.’

Mice Direct may have to modify its other motto, ‘Frozen means added animal safety’ because the human lizard owners are possibly getting sick from handling the frozen critters, like mice hoppers, left, at $28 a bag.

The company announced a recall of the frozen rats, mice and chicks Tuesday, saying that human illnesses possibly related to the frozen reptile feed have been reported in 17 states.

The company says the recall is based on Food and Drug Administration sampling of the frozen mice.

Check out the Mice Direct experience through the video below.
 

A west London restaurant owner was criticized for an "appalling catalogue of offences" after health inspectors saw a mouse jumping from a bowl of sweet and sour sauce in the kitchen.

Press Association reports that inspectors visiting the Kam Tong, Hung Tao and Kiasu restaurants in Queensway, Bayswater, found mouse droppings all over the kitchens and cockroach eggs in the dim sum and baskets of prawn crackers.

One rodent was photographed scampering along a kitchen drainpipe in the Kam Tong restaurant after jumping from a bowl of sweet and sour sauce which was about to be served to customers.

Owner Ronald Lim, of Barnet, north London, admitted 17 counts of breaching food hygiene regulations at Southwark Crown Court.

Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC ordered him to pay fines totaling £30,000, plus £18,131 costs, and handed him an eight-month jail term suspended for two years.

A bunch of us went to the Riley County Fair Sunday morning (that’s in Manhattan, Kansas) so we could wander around the animals without too many people around.

We’ve done this before, but now there are a couple of public health students interested in doing some formal work to decrease the risk of dangerous bugs passing from animals to humans, or humans to animals, so we introduced them to the petting zoo/fair concept, and the hygiene measures available.

KWTX.com reports that Derek Scott “Bubba” Kirby, 3, of Goldthwaite, Texas (above, right), has been fighting for his life for several weeks at Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, will be transferred Monday or Tuesday to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston where he can receive more specialized care.

The story says that Bubba contracted E. coli from the floor of a rodeo arena after he ended up with a mouthful of dirt when he was thrown from a sheep during a mutton-busting event and then developed serious complications that caused his kidneys to shut down and led to a stroke.



In 1999, 159 people, mainly children, were sickened with E. coli O157:H7 traced to goat and sheep at the 1999 Western Fair in London, Ontario (that’s in Canada). Scott Weese, a clinical studies professor at the University of Guelph (that’s also in Canada) and colleagues reported in the July 2007 edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases that in a study of 36 petting zoos in Ontario between May and October of 2006, they observed infrequent hand washing, food sold and consumed near the animals, and children being allowed to drink bottles or suck on pacifiers in the petting area..

Weese noted that risk can be significantly reduced by locating hand-washing stations at the exit of a petting zoo, posting signs promoting good hygiene and educating people about the risks of bringing food, beverages or items that may end up in a child’s mouth into the zoo.

Such measures echo recommendations issued in 2001 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unfortunately these reports and recommendations do not offer advice on how to ensure that fair operators are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing.

In 2003, U.S. researchers, in a study of livestock at 29 county and 3 large state agricultural fairs, found E. coli O157:H7 in 13.8 per cent of beef cattle, 5.9 per cent of dairy cattle, 3.6 per cent of pigs, 5.2 per cent of sheep, and 2.8 per cent of goats. Over seven percent of pest fly pools also tested positive for E. coli O157:H7.

The bad bugs are there and handwashing may not be enough to get rid of them.

The E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 82 people in 2002 at the Lane County Fair in Oregon appears to have spread through the air inside the goat and sheep expo hall. In a case-controlled study, health investigators found that the percentage of sick people who washed their hands after leaving the Lane County animal barns -- 31 percent -- was only slightly lower than the percentage of healthy people who washed their hands -- 36 percent. In other words those who washed their hands were at almost the same risk of contracting E. coli, O157:H7. One child sickened at the fair, 23-month-old Carson Walter of Eugene, spent a month at Doernbecher Children's Hospital before coming home.

So, how best to motivate fair managers to provide petting zoos that are microbiologically safe? Should the urban public be allowed to interact with livestock at all? Should petting zoos be inspected, as restaurants are, and the results displayed? We’ll be looking, and hoping that Bubba improves. Bubba has his own Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/BUBBAS-ANGELS/141182275896304.

A table of petting outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks-1988-2009.
 

AOL Travel reported on how those airplane flights that still serve food actually go about preparing the food (especially after the lousy inspection reviews compiled by USA Today).

AOL decided to track a single airline meal, from the time it is planned and placed on an airline's menu to the moment it arrives at the passenger's seat.

Or, given the bad press for Gate Gourmet and their bad food safety inspections, the story was a standard PR placement. But some elements of interest:

6 p.m. The passenger confirms her seat assignment – 31A – for tomorrow's flight from Chicago to London. She doesn't know it, but her meal choice is getting ready for takeoff, too.

She's going to select grilled chicken breast with orange sesame ginger sauce, served with jasmine white rice and a side of broccoli and carrots. It's taken a year of development for this dish to make it to the United menu, with three teams of 35 people considering menu items, procuring ingredients, testing and tasting food, and monitoring the quality of the product to the passenger.

Dishes for United's Flight 958, which departs in 18 hours, are getting washed at Gate Gourmet catering, right on O'Hare property. In a green effort to conserve resources and reduce waste, United doesn't have a lot of disposable products, according to Stuart Benzal, United's managing director of onboard global product. Instead, bowls, plates, cups and other utensils are hauled off the aircraft after each flight and sent to one of the 52 kitchens that United uses around the world.

Most kitchens operate 24 hours. "After 10 at night, it goes into equipment processing (mode)" says Benzal, which means cleaning hundreds of plates, bowls, cups, saucers, trays and utensils for the next day.

2 a.m. Alison Hough, director of product planning, planned and ordered chicken for this meal months ago. She knows, based on customer preferences and numbers, how many chickens to order and send to the caterers. Her team ensures that there is fresh, quality product for all the major components of the meal, while smaller detail items like seasonings are covered by the catering kitchen.

5:30 a.m. Chef Danielle Nahal and her team of eight to 12 cooks and food handlers, arrive at Gate Gourmet to begin the day's preparations. The kitchen will be making lots of meals today for flights to London, Asia, Amsterdam and Paris, so the prep work covers 250-300 servings of each entrée. Though the kitchen is very large, it is also very busy and crowded. Nearly 300 people work on a shift, and the kitchen runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It's very cold in the kitchens to ensure food safety and food integrity. "You can't just walk into a kitchen," Benzal says. "You fill out a health form, go to a wash station and wash your hands, use disinfectant, wear a lab coat; your hair and head are covered. There's even a face mask," he says. "You look more like a surgeon than someone preparing to chop salads." This chilled environment is maintained throughout the production.

6.00 a.m. Twelve hours before flight time, United delivers the final counts and order for meals, including the chicken with orange sesame glaze. Gate Gourmet accepts the order and begins processing to the count specifications. "We're producing in very large batches," says Chef Nahal. "Sauces are made by the gallon. Vegetables are done by the pound – about 500 pounds [for one day's meal preparation]."

Executive Chef Gerry Gulli started testing the flavors and sauces for his mandarin chicken nearly a year ago. Since United likes to change out the menus every three months, and needs to have at least two economy meal choices per flight, Chef Gulli is a busy guy. The chefs must also adjust recipes for the diminished taste buds people experience while in flight. "We compensate for that with cooking techniques, using bold flavors and marinades," says Chef Nahal.

9:00 a.m. The grilled chicken breast with orange sesame ginger glaze is being prepared according to recipe instructions. Color photos guide the preparers, so they know exactly how the plate should appear before it arrives at seat 31A.

11.00 a.m. The plated meal for the passenger in 31A, along with nearly 250 other entrées, gets loaded onto trays. Trays are inserted into trolleys, where they sit in a blast chiller until called for delivery to the aircraft.

2:30 p.m. The truck for Flight 958 delivers the meals for the flight, including the chicken with orange sesame glaze destined for seat 31A today. Each high-loader truck takes a trolley of trays, and the driver puts them onto the aircraft. The meals fit into a refrigerated compartment. It will take the driver about 30 minutes to get to the aircraft, then another 45 minutes to an hour to load the meals onto the plane.

6:00 p.m. Flight 958 takes off, bound for London. Flight attendants take economy class meal orders from the three selections: mandarin chicken, a pasta dish, and a beef meal. The passenger in seat 31A chooses the chicken with orange sesame sauce.

7:00 p.m. Flight attendants are busy heating the fully cooked but cold meals in a convection oven. The convection oven circulates the hot air and ensures meals are heated evenly and at the same temperature. It takes about 20 minutes to bring them to dining temperature, and then they are loaded onto carts to head down the aisle.

8:00 p.m. The orange chicken with sesame ginger glaze arrives at seat 31A, hot, colorful, and prepared to Chef Gulli's specifications.