Food safety is about trust. Good processing, retail and food service companies choose suppliers that they trust - and sometimes that includes demonstrating they can manage risks during some sort of an audit or inspection.
Patrons choose food based on a whole bunch of things like price, taste, ethical philosophy and trust that they aren't going to get sick -- with not all that much safety information to go on.

In most jurisdictions, selling food means meeting some sort of licensing/inspection requirement. In better locales health authorities tell people about how individuals managed food safety the last time someone checked - and post the results online or in the window (even better if they have QR codes). I had coffee with a colleague last week and he asked me about North Carolina's grade posting system. I said I liked the dialogue and interest it generates but that it's hard to make a decision based on the sign - there are lots of limitations. I can't tell whether the business lost points because of a bunch of little things like broken tiles or no hot water in the handwashing sinks (that I don't really care about) or whether someone showed up to work barfing (which I do care about).

He just said, "I don't eat at Jersey Mike's because of the grade posting. They had a 94 (relatively low in NC -ben) for a couple of months."

Having poor inspection results can affect patrons' trust - so can outbreaks.

In Jersey, land of Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Snooki and Jwow and Princeton, NJ health folks have pointed to a Mercer County Panera Bread outlet as one of the potential spots where a January 2012 norovirus outbreak was spread. According to Samantha Costa of The Times, Panera was reported as a common spot that a bunch of the ill college kids ate.

During the peak of the norovirus outbreak at colleges here this winter, as many as 150 Princeton University students could have been exposed to the illness at a local eatery, public health officials said this week.The virus that sickened more than 400 students at colleges and universities throughout Mercer County may have been spread through many venues, but health officials in Princeton suspect many Princeton University cases originated at Panera Bread on Nassau Street. In late January, the health department removed five workers in the restaurant from food handling after discovering that many students with the illness had eaten there.

“There might have been upwards of 150 different students, and there was no realistic way to get a total number of food histories on those students,” Princeton Regional Health Department Director David Henry said. All of those students had eaten at Panera, but there were many other potential sources of the virus that also may have been involved, health officials said.

Jackie Brenne, a spokeswoman for Panera, said that despite the precautions, “no Panera associates were found to be ill. Panera managers did review safety and illness policies with all cafe associates.”The health department report said inspector Randy Carter spent about an hour at Panera Bread, tracking down the food histories of where students ate and listed common foods they ate at Panera Bread to rule out salmonella (not sure why Salmonella was focused on here? -ben).

However, the students’ eating habits pointed to many retail food establishments, the report said.“In those particular cases, we can’t label or narrow it down to one or two food establishments. It was a community outbreak and Panera and some of the other places just ended up being victims of the norovirus,” Henry said. “We don’t know the one place. All we know is when we have a situation we have to contain it.”Nassau Street is frequented by many Princeton University and Rider University students alike, the department said. Rider’s Westminster Choir College campus is in Princeton.


 

The Capital Press reported yesterday that an Oregon hazelnut packer has refused to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration a list of its farmer suppliers the agency requested as part of an investigation into an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that has sickened seven in the U.S. and apparently two in Canada.

The statements by the growers and packers involved with producing hazelnuts were textbook examples of what not to do when foodborne illness is linked to a food product.

Polly Owen, manager of the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board, said most producers would prefer not to be visited by regulators from the FDA, but the decision whether to turn over supplier lists is ultimately up to handlers, adding, "We're not going to try to tell any industry packer what they need to do.”

Isn’t that what producer organizations are supposed to do – provide decent advice to growers so they can limit their loses during an outbreak and use the attention to build consumer trust?

The FDA requested the information after hazelnuts packed by the George Packing Co. of Newberg, Ore., were voluntarily recalled in connection with several illnesses from E. coli bacteria, said Shaun George, a principal of the company.

"I think what they're really interested in is the farmers. They're concerned because they're picked up off the ground.”

The company has refused to turn over the supplier information because it's proprietary and because hazelnuts haven't been proven to be the cause of the E. coli outbreak, he said.

Now the hazelnuts have been proven to be the cause of the outbreak, with a standard of proof lacking in most other outbreaks of foodborne illness.

Yesterday, lab testing in Minnesota confirmed E. coli O157:H7 contamination of in-shell hazelnuts (also known as filberts) collected from the home of one of the seven people so far confirmed sick – same genetic fingerprint. The contaminated hazelnuts are part of a multi-state recall announced last Friday, March 4, by DeFranco and Sons, a California-based nut and produce distributor. DeFranco and Sons is a re-packing company in Los Angeles, Calif., said Jerry DeFranco, a principal in the firm. All of the hazelnuts were bought from George Packing Co., he said.

"It's not like we're chopping them up or doing anything with them here," said Defranco. "We're just passing them along."

Owen, of the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board, said E. coli O157:H7 is believed to originate in ruminant animals, so growers do their best to keep orchard floors clean, adding, "It's not economically feasible to keep deer out of every orchard."

Is that an indirect admission that deer could be the source of this latest outbreak and that hazelnuts are not immune to nature?

And though DeFranco says it just passes nuts on to others, their food safety program efforts earned a gold star on the forehead from the American Institute of Baking (AIB) based in Manhattan (Kansas). AIB also gave a big thumbs up to Peanut Corporation of America before the salmonella-in-peanut-crap outbreak that sickened 800 and killed nine beginning in 2008, and DeCoster Eggs, source of the salmonella-in-eggs outbreak of 2010 which sickened almost 2,000.