U.K. pensioner Dorothy Wilson (right, photo from Chronicle Live) had to wait four weeks before medics identified the source of her ailment as E.coli in Dubai.

Chronicle Live reports that after medics repeatedly missed the bug, the pensioner had to be moved to a private hospital so she could get the treatment to save her life.

Doctors at the first hospital, where she had spent almost a month, in the United Arab Emirates, couldn’t work out what was wrong with her.

Charles Wilson, 75, has also thanked the private medics who came to their rescue when others had failed.

Maybe this was because Chapman and all those food safety types were in town, but four restaurants in Dubai were shut down two weeks ago following tips from customers and employees.

Ahmed AbdulRahman al Ali, the head of the municipality’s food inspection section, said the offenders were also slapped with a fine of more than Dh30,000, adding,



“The restaurants have been shut for a month. After finishing the penalty term, they have to convince us that the food being used is safe. They will also have to sign an agreement to not repeat the offence.”

The Canadian women’s hockey team celebrated their gold medal last night by returning to the ice after the television cameras went elsewhere to guzzle Molson Canadian beer, smoke cigars and compete in would-be drunk Zamboni driving contests.

I miss hockey.

The International Olympic Committee will be investigating, but the bonding displayed by the Canadian women is exactly what I imagine was going on last Friday as the aging Guelph professors’ hockey team finally broke the 5-year Powell curse and again won the annual faculty tournament, this time without me in net.

It’s been a week of nostalgia and new opportunities. Sold my house in Guelph (closes Tuesday) along with all the leftover crap and bad memories (after my friend Steve retrieves the good stuff this afternoon). Meanwhile, Chapman gave a talk in Dubai (see below) while I was giving a talk in New Zealand (by video) with students scattered around the globe and Amy about to embark on a year-long sabbatical. I like the global village stuff, with a solid base in Manhattan (Kansas).

Still miss hockey, especially the coaching.

Steve Keough, a spokesman for the Canadian Olympic Committee, said the COC had not provided the alcohol nor initiated the party, adding,

"In terms of the actual celebration, it's not exactly something uncommon in Canada.”

After Jon Montgomery won a gold medal for Canada in skeleton, he walked through the streets of Whistler guzzling from a pitcher of beer that he gripped with two hands.

Beyond Food Inspections- What Motivates Food Businesses to Ensure Food Safety
22.feb.10
Dubai International Food Safety Conference
Ben Chapman
Inspection has historically been the most prevalent performance measurement used by the food service industry. It is assumed by many that achieving positive inspection results provide motivation to business operators to implement foodborne illness risk-reduction practices. In reality, there are other factors driving risk reduction including risk of being linked to an outbreak; poor reputation; and, the threat of litigation. Weekly food safety infosheets (www.foodsafetyinfosheets.com), focusing on motivating factors are used as a practice-changing tool by many firms in the retail and foodservice industry. Food safety infosheets have been designed to impact the actions of food handlers by utilizing four attributes culled from education, behavioural science and communication literature: surprising messages in communication; putting actions and their consequence in context; generating discussion within the target audiences’ environments and using verbal narrative, or storytelling, as a message delivery device. While many training packages exist, seldom are evaluated for behavior change impacts. Of those that are evaluated, the majority of evaluations are based on self-reported data which are wrought with problems of reliability and literature shows that while food handlers may report the intent to perform safe food handling practices, actions are not always realized. Given the discrepancies between inspection results, individuals’ recall and actual behaviours, a focus on the results of observational studies will be provided. This workshop will provide you with tools to help identify and manage food safety risks in food service and support a culture of food safety in your business.

Food such as takeout or takeaway, that is initially prepared in a restaurant but is consumed in an individual’s home, may be a venue to target with safe-food handling messages. Earlier this decade, both Chicago-based Francesca Restaurants and Boston-based Buca Di Beppo Restaurants reported anecdotal success placing food safety labels on containers of takeout food.

In 2004, my group undertook research to:

• examine restaurant managements’ experience of using a safe food-handling label on takeout food;
• explore managements’ food safety concerns;
• determine the value of consumer safe-food handling labels to managers;
• establish perceived label effectiveness; and,
• identify challenges with implementation.

For our study, we defined take-out as food procured from a casual dining restaurant (i.e. sit-down restaurant) but eaten elsewhere, including food ordered as take-out and leftover food packaged to be taken home. The label we developed is right (above) and left (note, the phone line and web site don’t work anymore).

The research paper describing that work has been accepted by a peer-reviewed scientific journal and will be published in the near future.

However, the public health types in Dubai discovered over the weekend the same thing we found: most consumers and restaurateurs like the idea.

Our bites.ksu.edu Dubai correspondent contacted Ben and me about stickers on takeaway, and we sent along what we had developed. Today, the Khaleej Times reports,

The Dubai Municipality is planning to encourage all restaurants in the emirate to issue advisories to consumers on safe handling of takeaway food.

The decision follows a similar initiative by a popular south Indian restaurant group that attaches red stickers to its takeaway bags at its two outlets in Dubai. A municipality official applauded the group’s move and said the civic body intended to support such initiatives by other restaurants as well.

Director of Food Control Department, Khalid Mohammed Sherif, told the Khaleej Times,

“We are encouraging more and more food outlets to put such messages along with takeaway food to ensure that the customer handles the food properly. We will be providing all of them with modified instructions for customers to handle food taken away.”

He said the modified versions of the advisories will include the temperature at which food items have to be stored and the duration within which they have to be consumed, depending on the types of ingredients.

Below is a draft of the information intended for consumers.