I would be a pissed off parent.

I’ve seen a lot of dumbass things involving food and my kids over the years, especially through schools, and I’ve always spoken up, but this is beyond stupid.

Who serves raw milk to kids in grade 4?

Laboratory test results show that the Campylobactor jejuni bacteria that caused diarrheal illness among 16 individuals who drank unpasteurized (raw) milk at a school event early this month in Raymond was the same bacteria strain found in unpasteurized milk produced at a local farm, according to officials from the Department of Health Services (DHS) and Western Racine County Health Department (WRCHD). A parent had supplied unpasteurized milk from the farm for the school event.

The farm did not sell the unpasteurized milk and there was no legal violation associated with the milk being brought to the school event. The farm is licensed and in good standing with the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

And in an additional dumbass statement, Cheryl Mazmanian, director and health officer for the Western Racine County Health Department actually said, ‘As in similar cases, prevention comes down to washing hands and practicing good hygiene.’

How about don’t serve raw milk to little kids?

An updated table of raw-milk related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/rawmilk
 

That school in the U.K. that closed a couple of classrooms in response to an apparent outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 has now been completely closed until further notice.

Two four-year-olds and one five-year-old have so far been taken to hospital but were said to be recovering yesterday. One was treated and discharged, with the other two still in hospital.

This Is Bristol reports that in the past week, parents of 28 other children reported they had mostly milder symptoms, typically stomach ache and diarrhea, with some children experiencing more severe symptoms such as bloody diarrhea.

The HPA said all affected children were being tested for E. coli O157 and initial test results indicated there were probably three with the infection.

Dr David Hunt, consultant with the HPA's South West (North) Health Protection Unit, said: "We are working closely with Redfield Edge School and have now advised full closure of the school.

This is due to fact that the infection seems to have started to spread among older children, having started among year one and reception classes.”

A total of 346 children as well as seven teachers from Pat's Schoolhouse centers have now been reported to have fallen ill with food poisoning, up from the 218 previously reported (right, photo from Asia One).

The incident occurred on Tuesday and the affected were from eight out of the chain's 14 centres, reported the Straits Times.

Pat's Schoolhouse has also terminated the services of the caterer, Mum's Kitchen.

In a statement to the media yesterday, the chain said: 'Since May 12, all the meals for Pat's Schoolhouse centres have been prepared by their in-house cooks.
 

People who wash their hands with contaminated soap from bulk-soap-refillable dispensers can increase the number of disease-causing microbes on their hands and may play a role in transmission of bacteria in public settings according to research published in the May issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

"Hand washing with soap and water is a universally accepted practice for reducing the transmission of potentially pathogenic microorganisms. However, liquid soap can become contaminated with bacteria and poses a recognized health risk in health care settings," says Carrie Zapka from GOJO Industries in Akron Ohio, the lead researcher on the study that also included scientists from BioScience Laboratories in Bozeman, Montana and the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Bulk-soap-refillable dispensers, in which new soap is poured into a dispenser, are the predominant soap dispenser type in community settings, such as public restrooms. In contrast to sealed-soap dispensers, which are refilled by inserting a new bag or cartridge of soap, they are prone to bacterial contamination and several outbreaks linked to the use of contaminated soap have already been reported in healthcare settings.

In this study Zapka and her colleagues investigated the health risk associated with the use of bulk-soap-refillable dispensers in a community setting. They found an elementary school where all 14 of the soap dispensers were already contaminated and asked students and staff to wash their hands, measuring bacteria levels before and after handwashing. They found that Gram-negative bacteria on the hands of students and staff increased 26-fold after washing with the contaminated soap.

Zapka notes that all the participants' hands were decontaminated after testing by washing with uncontaminated soap followed by hand sanitizer. At the conclusion of the study, all the contaminated soap dispensers were replaced with dispensers using sealed-soap refills. After one year of use, not one of them was found to be contaminated.

A copy of the research article can be found online at http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/77/9/2898.