As ratings for broadcaster CNN continue a free-fall to nowhere, they’ve come out with a new insight: the 2011 listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak that killed 32 was preventable.
So are 99 per cent of all outbreaks.
CNN Presents on Sunday will feature an in-depth look into the outbreak which, based on a text version appearing on the Intertubes today, is a cut-and-paste job with no new analysis or insight.
“After a months-long investigation surrounding the outbreak, CNN has found serious gaps in the federal food safety net meant to protect American consumers of fresh produce, a system that results in few or no government inspections of farms and with only voluntary guidelines of how fresh produce can be kept safe.”
Those gaps have always been there and are still there.
Dr. James Gorny, the FDA chief investigator who led a team to Jensen Farms in Colorado said, "We had melons from the grocery stores which were positive for Listeria, with the exact same genetic fingerprint as we found in all of the ill individuals. We had ill individuals with that same genetic strain of Listeria. We had food contact surfaces at the packing house of Jensen Farms with the exact same, genetically matched strain of Listeria. So we had lots and lots of evidence that this was ... as definitively as possible, a smoking gun, that this was the source of the contamination. ... The evidence is very, very strong in this case. Some of strongest I've ever seen.
"What turned the operation upside-down was some significant changes they made. It was a very tragic alignment of poor facility design, poor design of equipment and very unique post-harvest handling practices of those melons. If any one of those things would have been prevented, this tragedy probably wouldn't have occurred."
But the story of what happened at Jensen Farms, and why no one stopped the sale and shipments of the cantaloupes, also sheds light on serious problems in the nation's fresh produce food safety net, and a voluntary system created by businesses to ensure a quality product, known as third-party audits.
No kidding.
Just days before the Listeria outbreak, Jensen Farms paid a private food inspection company called Primus Labs to audit their operation. Primus Labs subcontracted the job to another company, Bio Food Safety, which sent a 26-year-old with relatively little experience to inspect Jensen Farms.
The auditor was James DiIorio, and he gave Jensen Farms a 96% score, and a "superior" grade. On the front page of his audit at the farm, DiIorio wrote a note saying "no anti-microbial solution" was being used to clean the melons.
Dr. Trevor Suslow, one of the nation's top experts on growing and harvesting melons safely, was shocked to see that on the audit at Jensen Farms.
"Having antimicrobials in any wash water, particular the primary or the very first step, is absolutely essential, and therefore as soon as one hears that that's not present, that's an instant red flag," Suslow said. The removal of an antimicrobial would be cause for an auditor or inspector to shut down an entire operation, he said.
"What I would expect from an auditor," Suslow said, "is that they would walk into the facility, look at the wash and dry lines, know that they weren't using an antimicrobial, and just say: 'The audit's done. You have to stop your operation. We can't continue.'"
But why just blame the auditors. Who bought these cantaloupes, and where was their internal expertise to assess the audit reports arriving on their desks before, presumably, the melons arrived on their retail shelves.
"These so-called food safety audits are not worth anything," said Dr. Mansour Samadpour, president and CEO of IEH Laboratories, one of the nation's largest food safety consulting labs for industry. "They are not food safety audits. They have nothing to do with food safety,"
Samadpour said consumers should have no faith in the current system of farm audits, because farms pay for their own inspections.
"If this industry is sincere and they want to have their products be of any use to anyone, they should be printing their audit reports on toilet paper," Samadpour said. "People who are commissioning these audits don't seem to understand that they are ... not worth the paper that they're written on."
So how best to improve the system? Legislation will do little or nothing, the auditing route has regular problems, and food safety is an afterthought in much of the commercial market in the absence of an outbreak. Suggestions? That’s a show I might be interested in watching.
Posted: November 23rd, 2011 - 2:47pm
by Doug Powell
"You can make these audits useful by writing them on toilet paper. Then someone would at least use them. They're worthless. They give a false sense of security."
That’s what the usually colorful Mansour Samadpour, president of Lake Forest Park, Wash.-based IEH Laboratories and Consulting Group, told Stephanie Armour of the Daily Herald in a story about the Jensen Farms linked listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak that has killed 29 and sickened 139.
But not everyone agrees.
Jim Prevor, a food industry analyst in Boca Raton, Fla., says, "The auditing system has helped improved food safety a great deal. Critics are too ready to dismiss the whole system."
Jensen Farms' packing house achieved a score of 96 percent, high enough to be ranked "superior," according to a copy of the July 25 audit by Primus Group Inc., which does business as PrimusLabs in Santa Maria, Calif., and subcontracted the review to another party.
The facility achieved total compliance for having "floor surfaces in good condition with no standing water," according to the audit. Deficiencies found included no hot water at hand- washing stations and no documented record of training on food- security issues.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration review of Jensen Farms after the outbreak concluded the building "allowed for water to pool on the floor near equipment and employee walkways" creating conditions that might spread listeria. The agency also found widespread contamination and unsanitary practices.
There are no generally accepted standards for the private audits and criteria may vary from inspector to inspector, said David Theno, chief executive officer of Del Mar, Calif.-based Gray Dog Partners Inc., which provides senior-level food safety and quality consultants.
Costco, based in Issaquah, Wash., sends its own auditors as well as third-party inspectors to suppliers and has in cases refused food products because problems were uncovered, said Craig Wilson, head of food safety at the warehouse club chain, in an interview. The rejected food included a seven-layer dip, eggs, dog biscuits and a hummus product, he said.
The audit at Jensen Farms was required by Edinburg, Texas- based Frontera Produce, which arranged buyers for the cantaloupe, Jim Mulhern, a spokesman for Frontera, said in an interview. Jensen Farms selected the auditor and paid for the review, he said.
"In the wake of this experience, we are examining the role of audits and looking at possible changes," Mulhern said in an email. Frontera is looking into whether more steps are needed to validate findings, such as follow-up audits, he said.
Enough back and forth. How best to improve the overall food safety system, including audits, and especially in the wild west of fresh produce?
Mommies-to-be like their cantaloupe too. So the news of the first stillbirth linked to listeria-in-cantaloupe is expected, but nonetheless tragic.
The Des Moines Register reports tonight that a pregnant Iowa woman miscarried recently because of a listeriosis infection she apparently picked up from tainted cantaloupe, state health officials said today.
The unidentified northwest Iowa woman was infected with the same strain of listeria that has been spread via cantaloupe grown by Jensen Farms in Colorado.
The company’s Rocky Ford brand melons, which were recalled Sept. 14, have been tied to at least 18 deaths nationwide.
The woman told state investigators that she bought cantaloupe at an Iowa store a few weeks ago. Officials strongly suspect the melon came from Jensen Farms and caused her illness, but they haven’t proven the theory yet.
Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the department’s medical director, said that for some reason, listeria bacteria are particularly harmful to fetuses, and infections regularly cause miscarriages.
Quinlisk said about eight or 10 serious listeriosis cases are reported in Iowa each year. She urged Iowans to take precautions to reduce their risk, but she said occasional bacterial outbreaks should not scare people away from the produce aisle.
Posted: October 3rd, 2011 - 10:26pm
by Doug Powell
With 84 people confirmed sick from listeria in cantaloupe, including 15 deaths, some basic questions remain: where did the listeria come from, why was there so much that it affected so many people, and how did the listeria come into contact with the cantaloupe at Jensen Farms in Colorado?
Elizabeth Weise of USA Today writes that cantaloupe growers, packers and sellers are not unanimous in deciding the best way to reduce the risk of listeria contamination on cantaloupes.
"There are lots of places for bacteria to bind on the surface. It's like a mountain range under the microscope," says Doug Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University, Manhattan. But there's not much consumers can do. If the listeria is on the rind, when you cut it open "it's going to cross-contaminate."
About 85% of cantaloupe grown in the U.S.come from California and Arizona's arid high deserts, where they're watered using drip irrigation, which keeps them relatively clean. That means they don't need to be washed before being shipped, which experts say cuts down on the possibility of one contaminated melon tainting a whole vat of them as they're being washed.
The other 15% are grown in the South, where rain is more likely to splatter them with mud and make them impossible to sell without washing. In the winter season, November through April, cantaloupe come from Mexico and Central America, where they're also more likely to get wet.
Bringing cantaloupes into a packing shed, where they touch surfaces that have touched other melons and may be dunked in a tank of water to clean them, "has every opportunity to reduce risk, but equal or greater opportunity to contaminate," says Trevor Suslow, a food safety expert at the University of California, Davis, who has done extensive research on cantaloupes.
Washing "is certainly a good practice, but you need to do that in an area that you won't introduce contamination" into other melons.
Listeria is an especially problematic bacteria because it exists in the environment, in dirt and animals; once a colony starts growing on processing equipment, it can form biofilms that are difficult to remove. "They hide in the nooks and crannies," says Suslow. "You've got to go in with steam and stronger chemicals" to get rid of them.
Craig Wilson, Costco's food safety director, says his company does require sellers to wash their cantaloupes, but what he's really moving toward "in the very near future" is a test-and-hold program. Growers and packers that want to sell him melons will need to test them for a broad range of potential pathogens such as "E. coli, salmonella, listeria," and not ship to him until the results come back negative, a process that takes between eight and 48 hours.
"This not a bad industry, it's a good industry," Wilson says. "The cantaloupe folks are great, we just need to work together to get beyond this."
Expect those numbers to go up. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says listeriosis illnesses in several other states are currently being investigated by state and local health departments to determine if they are part of this outbreak.
Among persons for whom information is available, illnesses began on or after August 4, 2011. Ages range from 35 to 96 years, with a median age of 78-years-old. Most ill persons are over 60-years-old or have health conditions that weaken the immune system. Fifty-nine percent of ill persons are female. Among the 43 ill persons with available information on whether they were hospitalized, all were hospitalized. Eight deaths have been reported, 2 in Colorado, 1 in Maryland, 4 in New Mexico, and 1 in Oklahoma.
Collaborative investigations by local, state, and federal public health and regulatory agencies indicate the source of the outbreak is whole cantaloupe grown at Jensen Farms’ production fields in Granada, Colorado.
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inspections of farms and with only voluntary guidelines of how fresh produce can be kept safe.”
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improved food safety a great deal. Critics are too ready to dismiss the whole system.".jpg)
changes," Mulhern said in an email. Frontera is looking into whether more steps are needed to validate findings, such as follow-up audits, he said..jpg)
spread via cantaloupe grown by Jensen Farms in Colorado. 
But there's not much consumers can do. If the listeria is on the rind, when you cut it open "it's going to cross-contaminate."
program. Growers and packers that want to sell him melons will need to test them for a broad range of potential pathogens such as "E. coli, salmonella, listeria," and not ship to him until the results come back negative, a process that takes between eight and 48 hours..jpg)
California (1), Colorado (14), Illinois (1), Indiana (1), Maryland (1), Montana (1), Nebraska (4), New Mexico (10), Oklahoma (8), Texas (9), Virginia (1), West Virginia (1), Wisconsin (2), and Wyoming (1)..jpg)
