It’s one of those throwaway catch phrases that people promoting some food safety information campaign just can’t help themselves from using: most foodborne illness is from improper handling and cooking of food at home.

In one of those throwaway blurbs in the Vancouver Sun this morning (that’s in Canada), Mia Stainsby reports:

“A doctor (Dr. John Carsely, Vancouver Coastal Health medical health officer) and a chef (David Robertson, of Dirty Apron Cooking School) will be giving a talk on how to prevent food-borne illnesses at home. Some 700,000 cases of food-borne illnesses are reported in B.C. each year and most are from improper handling and cooking of food at home.”

Show me the data. We’ve reviewed most of the data and seen estimates of the home as the source of foodborne illness vary from 11-84 per cent. And most of the data sucks. If a person eats peanut butter or spinach at home, they might get sick at home, but the contamination was beyond the control of the consumer.

As we’ve written before, while some occurrences of foodborne illness result from unsafe practices during final preparation or serving at the site where food was consumed, others are consequences of receiving contaminated food from a supplier, or both. Data gathered on instances of contamination that lead to illness make greater contributions to the development of programs that reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses, than data or assumptions that describe locations where contaminated food is consumed.

The talk will apparently share the importance of using cooking and fridge thermometers to help prevent food poisoning. Great. Foodservice needs that message as well, so why throw in a throwaway comment about the home?

And how ironically ironic that the talk takes place at 11 a.m. at Dirty Apron Cooking School. Take some swabs of those dirty aprons at the cooking school; it’s not a home.

Jacob, C.J. and Powell, D.A. 2009. Where does foodborne illness happen—in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere—and does it matter? Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, 6(9): 1121-1123.

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2008.0256

Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.
 

A Pacific National Exhibition employee – that’s like the state fair they have in Vancouver, which is in Canada -- was hospitalized Thursday night after buying and drinking a bottle of water at the fair tainted with what is thought to be ammonium chloride.

The Vancouver Sun reports that just after 11 p.m. Thursday, the PNE employee experienced dizziness and muscle weakness and was taken to hospital 30 minutes after drinking a bottle of water from Hunky Bill’s concession inside the fair, Vancouver Police spokeswoman Jana McGuinness said in a press release.

Upon later inspection, it was apparent that the bottle of Dasani water contained small holes where a syringe had apparently been inserted and the substance injected in what PNE spokeswoman Laura Ballance called a single isolated incident.

The Vancouver Police Department is investigating the incident and, according to Vancouver Coastal Health spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo, there have been no other reports of similar illnesses to Vancouver Coastal Health at this time.

I’m going to the doctor’s for my annual check-up on Tuesday. I know I don’t exercise enough anymore, so I have high blood pressure; I’m old; I’m tired; having babies at 47 doesn’t keep one young, it keeps one old and tired. I’ve got other issues, like some form of motion sickness that makes me barf, but we won’t get into that. And I’m not sure there’s much the doctor can tell me. My problems are trivial.

The Oregonian reports that Bonnie Wilson took her sick 4-year-old, Ronan (right) , to the pediatrician on Monday, March 29. She says she told the doctor that another child in Ronan's day care had been hospitalized with the potentially deadly bacteria E. coli O157:H7. But Ronan's symptoms didn't fit that diagnosis.
The doctor suspected the sandy-haired, hazel-eyed boy had the flu and sent Wilson home with instructions to keep a close eye on him.

Guess Bonnie was supposed to use those magic goggles that let her see bacteria.

Ronan improved briefly, but that Thursday he was back at Evergreen Pediatric Clinic in Vancouver, dehydrated, constipated and so weak he needed help sitting up. The clinic sent him to Southwest Washington Medical Center for tests, and just as he arrived, his symptoms took a horrifying turn -- one that, in the end, changed the lives of everyone who knew Ronan Allen "Ro-Ro" Wilson.

On Saturday, a week after their boy's funeral, Bonnie and Anthony Wilson told their story. They want others to know the loving, curious, ambitious child they lost and to learn from their experience. They don't want another family to ever endure what they did.

The story goes on to say that a thousand questions remain, including: How did the E. coli outbreak start? Should doctors and public-health officials have done anything differently when children became ill? Will they do anything differently in the future? ...

The Wilsons hope that sharing their story will raise awareness about E. coli. They hope doctors and public-health officials will always act swiftly to inform the public about outbreaks. And they wonder whether Ronan might be alive if he'd been diagnosed sooner.
 

More than 90 restaurants in Metro Vancouver were told to close their doors after they were found with rodent infestations, unsanitary conditions, or a failure to store food properly, according to an investigation of restaurant inspection histories for the past three years by CTV News.

And many more were repeatedly cited -- but not closed -- for other violations, the most common of which were leaving food out that should be refrigerated, failure to wash surfaces, and not providing hand washing stations to employees.

"We're looking for any signs that might lead us to believe there might be an outbreak of food poisoning," said Nick Losito, Vancouver Coastal Health's director of health protection.

One of those restaurants that was shut down was a Vancouver legend -- The Only Seafood Restaurant on Hastings Street.

Once a bustling destination for seafood since it opened the 1920s, The Only is now filled with rat feces and dead insects.

The health department closed The Only last year -- not just because inspectors said the food was a public health hazard, but because inspectors discovered it was a crack den as well.

CTV will be running a week-long series on food safety. Last night’s video is available here.