Nova Scotia

  • No one has gotten sick from Nova Scotia meat?

    Posted: March 30th, 2012 - 5:15am by Doug Powell

    Uh-huh.

    Members of the Nova Scotia Agriculture Department (that’s a province in Canada) told the public accounts committee no one in Nova Scotia has become ill because of problems in the province’s meat inspection program.

    The Herald News reports the health types were there to give an update on their response to a report from the auditor general in November that said the department wasn’t doing a good job keeping watch over the province’s slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

    In the report, Jacques Lapointe said, among other things, there was a lack of monthly inspections and inconsistent followups when deficiencies were found, and there didn’t seem to be any enforcement action taken when deficiencies weren’t corrected.

    Mike Horwich, the director of food protection with the department, told the committee, "We’ve accepted all the recommendations (of the auditor general) and we’re working toward each and every one of them. Some are further along than others, but we hope to implement them by at least the end of next year."

    He described the system that prevents bacteria from getting through the slaughter process and into the consumer food supply as a series of fences along a track, and said that even if something happened that allowed the bacteria to get past one barrier, it would be stopped by another.

    He said the department is working toward having regular monthly inspections. "We strive to achieve those, but again, those monthly inspections are just one barrier, they’re not the be-all and end-all. We are confident that the system that we have now and the process that we have now, with inspectors on site, ends up being part of a system that produces a really good product."

     

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    food safety, Illness, inspection, Meat, Nova Scotia
  • 9 children sick; E. coli outbreak contained at Nova Scotia daycare

    Posted: October 8th, 2011 - 12:57am by Doug Powell

    CBC News reports Crystal Daycare in Dartmouth, N.S., believes it has stopped an outbreak of E. coli, but doesn’t bother to report what kind of E. coli sickened seven children and two of their siblings since the middle of August.

    Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, the medical health officer for the capital region, said there hasn't been a new case since last week.

    "It's the children that are the ongoing source and catching up with them and their disease can be a challenge. An outbreak like this can go on for several weeks for that reason. It's been exhausting for the parents, it's been exhausting for the daycare staff."

    More than 90 children use the facility and public health officials say the E. coli was brought in by one of them.

     

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    Children, Daycare, e. coli, Illness, Nova Scotia
  • Sheep suspect in Colorado cantaloupe outbreak

    Posted: October 5th, 2011 - 8:02pm by Doug Powell

    Follow the poop to find the listeria.

    I keep getting asked about confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs as the cause of the listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak that has killed at least 18 and sickened 100.

    I say, all animals poop.

    The deer that caused E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks in Odwalla juice in 1996 that killed a 16-month-old child, or local Oregon strawberries in 2011 that killed one and sickened 14, had nothing to do with CAFOs.

    Neither did the sheep in 1981, which were used to crapping on a cabbage field in Nova Scotia (that’s in Canada) and led to a listeria outbreak linked to coleslaw that sickened seven adults and led to 34 perinatal infections, according to a report on the outbreak published in 1983 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

    Lisa Schnirring of CIDRAP cites Dr. Lawrence (Larry) Goodridge, a food microbiologist in the department of animal sciences at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, as saying all potential sources of contamination are being considered, including irrigation water, soil, "biosolids," and contamination from animal incursions.

    Goodridge said in the region of Colorado where cantaloupes are grown—though not necessarily at the farm implicated in the outbreak—sheep are often grazed on cantaloupe fields following harvest.

    "If that practice was followed at Jensen Farms, then there is the possibility of sheep manure contaminating the cantaloupe with L monocytogenes," he said. A similar scenario occurred in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1981 when a listeria outbreak caused by tainted cabbage was traced to the use of sheep manure as fertilizer, Goodridge added.

    Goodridge said another puzzling aspect of the cantaloupe Listeria outbreak is that four different pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) profiles have been identified, falling into two distinct serotypes, which could suggest multiple contamination events or a contamination event from multiple sources, such as different animals.

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    Cantaloupe, coleslaw, Colorado, food safety, Listeria, Nova Scotia, Sheep
  • Restaurant inspection disclosure: Build it and they will come

    Posted: January 15th, 2009 - 6:57am by Doug Powell

    Baseball is sooooooooo boring.

    But I’ll use any metaphor and pop culture reference to get people to pay attention to food safety stuf.

    Even if it involves baseball.

    The restaurant inspection disclosure web site in Nova Scotia – that’s in Canada – has been overwhelmed with hits since going on-line.

    That’s normal. From Sydney to Scranton, the provision of restaurant inspection results is always a big hit with the public.

    What’s not normal is the response from Luc Erjavec, of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, who said it’s no biggie and that the $325,000 the province spent to create the online database could have been used to stimulate the restaurant sector.

    "Maybe we could spend a half million dollars stimulating our industry. Stimulating our industry would be a better way to do it."

    OOOOOhhhhhhhh. Such sexy talk.

    But, as the Herald Chronicle reports this morning, millions of people went to the Agriculture Department’s website in the days following its launch in October, Leo Muise, executive director of regulation and compliance for food safety, said Wednesday.

    "The first week was what we consider to be an almost unbelievable response. It seems to be going over well."

    On the second day alone, about 1.5 million people checked out the food-safety inspections of restaurants and other businesses. The numbers gradually dropped over the next few months and now about 1,000 people a week use the site to look up the records for several eateries at a time.

    The Chronicle Herald published a series of stories in 2006 and 2007 that exposed deficiencies in Nova Scotia’s system of inspecting restaurants. The inspection reports obtained by this newspaper noted infractions such as rodents, unsafe meat and cross-contamination of food.

    At the time, the department wasn’t in favour of creating public online access to a database of inspections and cited concerns that such a practice might be bad for business at some restaurants.

    Now, substitute “hockey” for “baseball” in the video clip below.
     

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    Nova Scotia
  • Restaurant inspection results finally on-line in Nova Scotia (it's in Canada)

    Posted: October 29th, 2008 - 10:56am by Doug Powell

    Jessica Simpson can now find out the results of the latest inspection should she go dining in Nova Scotia – but only via the Internet (and not in the window like these pics of L.A.).

    A database of food establishment inspection reports was launched Oct. 28    , by Agriculture Minster Brooke Taylor.

    Reports will be posted within two or three days of inspections. They will show deficiencies, the action taken, warnings issued and closure notices for facilities.

    Luc Erjavec of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association welcomed the new online system as something that will benefit restaurateurs and their customers.

    "It’s a system that’s going to be open and transparent. With all that’s been going on in the world with food safety, I think the public is sensitive to food safety issues and this is one more thing that could help ease any concerns."

    Costa Elles, president of the Restaurant Association of Nova Scotia, said restaurateurs have nothing to fear and the system will probably improve food safety.

    "It sets a standard and I think we should be accountable for what we do and that’s just giving us some accountability.”

    The inspection reports are available on the Department of Agriculture's website at www.gov.ns.ca/agri/foodsafety/reports/.
     

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    Nova Scotia
  • Nova Scotia, Canada, to release restaurant inspection reports

    Posted: May 6th, 2008 - 7:30pm by Doug Powell

    Almost two years after the Halifax Chronicle-Herald started pushing for restaurant inspection disclosure, Nova Scotian Agriculture Minister Brooke Taylor said this week he expects his department will complete a project during the summer to make restaurant inspections results available.

    Taylor hasn't released details on what will be included in the online information, but says it will be similar to what's already done in other provinces.

    Taylor says the cost to establish the database is about $500,000.

    He says the plan is to post a restaurant's records for up to three years.

    In Sept. 2006, I told the Chronicle-Herald,

    ”Everyone has been rushing for the last 10 years to figure out how they’re going to disclose this information because the overall goal is the public’s right to know. But Nova Scotia’s not even at that point now.”

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    Nova Scotia