The sick person lede was buried, again, and I didn’t realize from a CFIA press release someone had gotten listerosis from eating Clic brand cheese and/or butter in Canada.

That’s how government types roll.

Worse, the expanded recall issued yesterday was a month after an initial limited recall, yet product was still sitting on shelves.

Canadian Food Safety Inspection Agency (CFIA) recall specialist Garfield Balsom told FoodQualityNews.com, “During a review of the company’s voluntary recall it was discovered that several products had been missed. The manufacturer has ceased production at its facilities and the CFIA working with them to make sure other products manufactured by the company are safe to consume.”

Did the one identified individual get sick from consuming Clic products that were previously recalled? In the original Nov. 11, 2011 recall notice, no one was sick.

The following cheese products, bearing establishment number 1874, and any Best Before dates up to and including those listed below, are affected by this alert:

Brand Product Size UPC Last Best Before date
Clic Moujadalé 300 – 400 g None 11 MAR 2012
Clic Riviera 300 – 400 g None 11 FEB 2012
Clic Tressé 300 – 400 g None 11 NOV 2012
Clic Vachekaval 300 – 400 g None 11 MAR 2012

The following dairy products bear establishment number 1874. These products have a four digit lot code. If the last 2 digits of the lot code are 45 or lower, e.g. xx-45, xx-44, etc, they are affected by this alert:

Brand Product Size UPC
Clic Desi Butter Ghee 454 g (1 lbs) None
Clic Desi Butter Ghee 907 g (2 lbs) None

These products have been distributed in Quebec and Ontario. These products may also have been distributed to other provinces.
 

In Aug. 2010, Veron Foods, LLC of Prairieville, La. recalled approximately 500,000 pounds of “ready to eat” sausage and hog head cheese products that ‘may have been’ contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

The problem was discovered through a foodborne illness investigation that resulted in a product sample testing positive for Listeria monocytogenes, but, like crappy food safety agencies here and there, the Louisiana types wouldn’t say how many got sick.

And everyone went back to sleep.

Until today, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued its report about an outbreak of listeria associated with eating hog head cheese in Louisiana in 2010.

I’m guessing it was the same outbreak.

During January--June 2010, a total of 14 cases of laboratory-confirmed invasive listeriosis were reported to the Louisiana Office of Public Health (OPH). Isolates of Listeria monocytogenes from the blood samples of eight patients were identified as serotype 1/2a and had pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) pattern combinations that were indistinguishable from one another. …

In-depth epidemiologic and environmental investigations of the cluster were initiated on July 26, including food history interviews of four patients. Three patients reported eating hog head cheese (a meat jelly made from swine heads and feet); the product was purchased at two grocery stores in Louisiana. A traceback investigation determined that a single brand of hog head cheese was common between the two grocery stores. L. monocytogenes serotype 1/2a was cultured from one of three product samples and from two of 16 environmental samples collected by LDAF at the processing establishment; the product and one of the two environmental samples yielded isolates with PFGE pattern combinations that were indistinguishable from the patient isolates. On August 14, LDAF coordinated a voluntary recall of approximately 500,000 pounds of hog head cheese and sausage because of possible contamination with L. monocytogenes.

This is the first published report of an invasive listeriosis outbreak associated with hog head cheese, which is a ready-to-eat (RTE) meat. USDA-FSIS has a "zero tolerance" policy for L. monocytogenes contamination of RTE food products (1), requesting recall of such products at any detectable level of L. monocytogenes contamination. LDAF imposes and enforces equivalent requirements in state-inspected establishments.

Louisiana OPH epidemiologists noted that 14 cases of invasive listeriosis had been reported during January--June 2010, which exceeded the state's average of five cases reported during each January--June period during the previous 3 years. For this investigation, a cluster-associated case was defined as isolation of L. monocytogenes serotype 1/2a from a normally sterile site (e.g., blood or cerebrospinal fluid) or from placental or fetal tissue (in the setting of miscarriage or stillbirth) since January 1, 2010, and PFGE pattern combination GX6A16.0001 and GX6A12.0001.

Eight patients had illnesses that met the case definition. Their median age was 64 years (range: 38--93 years). Six patients were men; no patients were pregnant. Six patients had one or more underlying medical conditions (i.e., human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] infection, alcohol abuse, cancer, and diabetes mellitus). Illness onsets occurred from February 18 to June 16. Signs and symptoms included fever (n = 6 patients), altered mental status (n = 3), diarrhea (n = 3), vomiting (n = 3), and weakness (n = 2). Seven patients were hospitalized; two patients died. …

The implicated brand of hog head cheese originated from a small, state-inspected processing establishment in Louisiana, which produces approximately 600 pounds of hog head cheese per week. This establishment was under federal inspection until January 2007. Routine FSIS microbiologic testing of products at the establishment detected L. monocytogenes contamination in October and December 2006; the company voluntarily recalled 290 pounds of hog head cheese in January 2007. Four L. monocytogenes isolates from USDA-FSIS samples collected in 2006 did not match the 2010 outbreak-related PFGE pattern combination. In addition, Listeria contamination was not detected in any of the 12 product samples collected by LDAF since 2007; analysis of routine environmental samples collected by the management of the processing establishment during January--July 2010 also did not detect Listeria. However, the outbreak strain was identified in environmental samples collected during the investigation, which was several weeks after the manufacture of the outbreak-associated products (Figure), suggesting that persistent environmental contamination in the processing establishment was responsible for product contamination and resulting illnesses.

The N.Y. Times reports this morning that federal regulators are considering whether to tighten food safety rules for cheese made with unpasteurized milk — and the possibility has cheesemakers and foodies worried that the result will be cheese that is less tasty and not much safer.

The new proposals, which are expected in the next several months, come after a very tough year for this country’s fast-growing gourmet cheese industry, marked by recalls and two multistate E. coli outbreaks that sickened nearly 50 people.

The debate focuses on a federal rule that requires cheese made from raw milk to be aged for 60 days before it is deemed safe to eat. Raw milk has not been heated to kill harmful bacteria, a process known as pasteurization. So aging allows the chemicals in cheese, acids and salt, time to destroy harmful bacteria.
Scientists have found, however, that 60 days of aging is an overly simplistic guideline, in part because there are so many types of cheese and different ones may require different safeguards.

The Food and Drug Administration began a comprehensive review of the 60-day aging rule in 2009. Officials said the review was done and was awaiting approval before release.

Cheesemakers say pasteurizing milk destroys enzymes and good bacteria that add flavor to cheese. Raw milk cheese, they say, has flavors that derive from the animals and the pastureland that produced the milk, much as wine is said to draw unique flavors from individual vineyards.

Cheese made with pasteurized milk can also present food safety hazards if it becomes contaminated after the pasteurization step — during production or aging, for example. Last year, at least nine domestic cheesemakers issued major recalls. Five used pasteurized milk and four used raw milk.

But two of the raw milk cheese recalls came after the cheese was linked to outbreaks of a highly toxic form of E. coli bacteria.

In one outbreak, 38 people in five states became sick from raw milk gouda made by Bravo Farms of Traver, Calif., and sold through Costco. In another outbreak, eight people in four states were sickened by bacteria traced to soft cheeses made by Sally Jackson, a pioneering cheesemaker in Oroville, Wash.

In Ms. Jackson’s case, investigators documented unsanitary conditions that could have played a role in making the cheese unsafe. And in the Bravo case, investigators charged the company with packaging cheese for sale before the required 60-day aging was complete.

The aging rule was created in the late 1940s in response to outbreaks of typhoid fever linked to cheese.

Scientists knew then that hard cheeses, like cheddar, dried out as they aged, making them less hospitable to bacteria.

So regulators decided that if cheese was not made with pasteurized milk, it should be aged. But the choice of 60 days as the necessary threshold was a fairly arbitrary one, according to Dennis J. D’Amico, senior research scientist of the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese of the University of Vermont.

“The 60-day rule wasn’t based on real science,” Dr. D’Amico said. “The pathogens have changed and the cheeses have certainly changed. But the rule has not.”

Dr. D’Amico and Catherine W. Donnelly, co-director of the Vermont institute, published a paper late last year showing that toxic E. coli could survive in cheese for more than a year.

Another study, which they published in 2008, showed that listeria levels increased in soft cheeses, like brie, as they aged, making them potentially more dangerous. Those cheeses have a higher moisture content and become less acidic as they age, conditions that can favor bacterial growth.

Dr. D’Amico said that aging could be effective as a safeguard in hard cheeses if it were combined with careful control of milk quality, improved sanitation and testing in cheese plants.
 

There is a disconnect between people who produce food, and those they sicken.

Three months after she sampled gouda cheese at a Costco and got sick, a Colorado teenager and her family have decided:

• no more ground beef;
• no more sharing friends' lunch food at school; and,
• no more tasting cheese, salmon or any other morsels that food stores offer to entice customers.

Madisyn Kirby, 15, who lives in Castle Rock, said the illness that doubled her over in October "was the scariest, worst time of my life. I never want it to happen again."

Madisyn's family has filed a lawsuit in Douglas County Court claiming Bravo Farms-brand Dutch Style Gouda Cheese she sampled at a Costco store near Park Meadows mall was contaminated by E. coli.’’

Federal and state health authorities linked Bravo Farms cheese to an E. coli outbreak last fall that caused 38 illnesses in Colorado and other Western states.

Yesterday, Bravo Farms co-owner Jonathan Van Ryn said the company’s back in business and last fall's E. coli outbreak apparently resulted from "an isolated instance of one day's production."

Madisyn probably doesn’t feel like an isolated case.

Alicia Cronquist, director of foodborne illness investigations at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said a state health team detected "way too many E. coli cases being reported in the Denver metro area. … One thing that stood out was that many had sampled cheese at a large warehouse store. Home visits and lab tests pin-pointed gouda and other cheese samples as the source.

Jon Van Ryn estimated shutdown and recall costs at around $1.5 million and that Bravo, which has specialized in making raw-milk cheeses, is now pasteurizing its milk.

Duh.