In a press release yesterday, Aunt Mid's Produce Company reported that  they hired an outside laboratory to test products and samples from their facility, and that the results from the tests "prove there is NO CONTAMINATION in Aunt Mid's products."

Strong words, especially since the outbreak has been linked to products that were consumed between September 8 and 19.

This outbreak is the focus of the newest Food Safety Infosheet, and can be found here.

Still nothing on the results from the 3000 annual samples though.

According to KFSM, Tests show at least one person at the tea, which was catered by Country Cottage, has E. coli O111. There are four additional probable cases and 10 suspected cases.

The Country Cottage outbreak was the inspiration for the latest iFSN infosheet, which you can download here.

What struck me about Pennington's comments was how he, like Doug and I have been doing through barfblog and food safety infosheets, was putting names and faces on the victims. Pennington is calling out the food safety professionals to make food safety personal.  Food safety communication isn't just about the statistics, it's about the stories.

We're not just making this stuff up.

Morgan and colleagues (2002) evaluated various safety messages targeted at farmers regarding the use of personal protective structures for vehicles, by presenting message combinations and surveying 433 members of the target audience. Although the researchers did not look at practices (self-reported or otherwise) of the target audience, and only measured what the respondents felt would have the highest impact with them, they found, that messages based on stories, and those that were meant to elicit fear about individual practices had more impact with than presenting consequence-based statistics alone.  Slater and Rouner (1996) investigated the effectiveness of a variety of messages containing a combination of narratives and statistics around the safety of alcohol consumption with a convenience sample of 218 undergraduate students. Slater and Rouner (1996) found that survey respondents who were non-believers prior to the presented information, rated messages with narratives as higher quality and perceived them as more effective.  Slater and Rouner (1996) also found that statistics alone only reinforced respondents who identified themselves as already believing in the messages. Psychologist Howard (1991) argues that narratives and storytelling are effective methods in conveying information and suggests that there is a better understanding of one's place in a system when individual sees himself or herself as an actor within the context of a story.

Our research supports this concept of storytelling: the most impactful infosheets (from a food handlers' point of view) are the ones which put a name and a face on victims, the food safety offenders and their establishments.  Food safety communications is about storytelling, and personalizing the outcomes for the front-line staff who are in control.

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Howard, G. S. 1991. Culture tales: A narrative approach to thinking, cross-cultural psychology, and psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 46: 187-197.

Morgan S.E., Cole H.P., Struttmann T. and Piercy L. 2002. Stories or statistics? Farmers' attitudes toward messages in an agricultural safety campaign. Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health. 8:225-39.

Slater, M. D., & Rouner, D. 1996. Value-affirmative and value-protective processing of alcohol education messages that include statistical evidence or anecdotes. Communication Research. 23: 210-235.

 

The best part of the interview wasn't the content (YouTube vid below) but was my huge head appearing over Janette Luu's shoulder as if I was going to eat her (right, exactly as shown).  Janette, probably sensing some impending doom appears to be leaning away from my picture as well. 

Below is the original pic where the headshot came from.  I think it is less creepy.

Message is: If you are looking after someone who has diarrhea or has been vomiting, it's really important to not introduce the pathogen into a food preparation or handling setting.  Wash your hands and make sure there aren't any virus aerosols on your clothes (that happens when you vomit with noro; maybe change them before you head into the kitchen).

You can download the infosheet here.

After posting on Sunday night about the confusion around Maple Leaf's multiple brands and differing packaging, and seeing consumer reaction to the same, I'm happy to see that Maple Leaf has stepped up with some better comminication. In the below clip from CBC Toronto, one concerned Canadian shopper shows her frustration by saying "it's kind of hard to tell... a lot of things you don't know if they come from the Maple Leaf thing". 

My favourite Maple Leaf thing has always been Doug Gilmour, circa 1993.

Maple Leaf foods has posted a viewer-friendly graphic (at the bottom of the notice) of how to determine if a product is part of the recall.  I especially like the inclusion of variances of the establishment code.

I'm not sure what Mr. McCain and his team has done in preparation for this outbreak, but in March  I wrote about Quaker Oats handling of a recall due to Salmonella in some of their Aunt Jemima products:

"Quaker Oats has great information on their website already [less than 4 hours after the recall], with a nice graphic on how to handle the recall.... Especially love that people can sign-up for ongoing info -- good preparation on Quaker Oats' part."

It looked like they were ready for a problem, and already had the resources in place to get information out to their customers.

The thing I liked the most about Quaker Oats' Aunt Jemima situation was that they had pictures of the recalled product. A company with a culture of food safety is ready for a recall, has a website with pictures and consumer-friendly information ready to go in anticipation, like Quaker Oats did.

Maple Leaf has a big list of recalled products (220, check it out here) but they don't have any pictures of them. It's not a superficial request to have some nice pictures to show folks what this stuff looks like, and where you can find the sometimes elusive codes/dates/establishment code.  It's just good communication.  The FDA realized this, and last year started including pictures on their recall notices for products that they have deemed to be high health risks (after the Castleberry's chili sauce recall). 

Sometimes I buy lunch meat.  Sometimes I even get the prepackaged stuff.  I don't always know what brand it is, and I don't know all the intricacies of the food system and get mixed up as to which parent company makes Shopsy's.  The list system is confusing.

The Globe and Mail is reporting tonight that:
Maple Leaf is working with distributors to track down all 220 products from the Toronto site, which Mr. McCain told reporters could be anywhere in Canada. That could take as long as three to five days, he said during a news conference at the firm's Toronto head office.

At about 7:50pm this evening I thought I'd take a look at whether I could find any of these recalled products at the grocery store and get some pictures to demonstrate where the codes can be found.

I found some.

About 2 minutes after entering Ultra Food and Drug in Guelph, I was able to find the recalled Maple Leaf's EZee Sub Dagwood products, with the establishment code (denoted, I assume, by the "EST. 97B" still on the shelves.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that I can use a real example of what one of the recalled products looks like and where the establishment code is.  Something that Maple Leaf hasn't done.

Mike Smith of the Atlanta Falcons said:  "When you change the culture, you have to change people's behaviors. And when you change behaviors, you change their habits."

I think this philosophy should be the same in fields, packing sheds, processing facilities, retail stores and kitchens:  Leadership that values food safety should have a goal of changing the culture of an organization, resulting in behavior and habit changes on on the front-lines.  And the organization doesn't have to be complicated or large, it could be an independent restaurant with 4 staff members or a church dinner committee with 20 volunteers.

Places I want to eat at or buy food from should be able to say that handling and producing food safely is what we do.  Just like Smith wants his team to have a shared belief that winning is what they do.