Veterinary student, masters of public health student, newspuller and occasional blogger Gonzalo Erdozain writes:

As a veterinary student at Kansas State, I get a lot of free food – pizza, BBQ, even fully catered meals. This past Tuesday, at our Bovine Club meeting, we had our food catered by Hy-Vee here in Manhattan, KS. To my surprise, and delight, I observed the delivery chef test each one of the lasagna platters with a digital thermometer, and write down each temperature on a temp. sheet. Our club’s president then signed the sheet and we went about our business. Today, I called Hy-Vee to ask a few questions. Here’s the scoop.

Everything they cook is up to par with the recommendations made by the Kansas Department of Health. I specifically asked about poultry, and the manager quickly answered, “we cook all our poultry to 165 ºF.” He explained that all hot foods must be over 141 ºF at the time of delivery, while cold foods must be bellow 41 ºF. If they are out of that range, they ask the customer whether to reheat it or make a new batch. They fill in the temp. sheet, have it signed by the customer and leave printed instructions to discard any leftover food within 4 hours due to food safety risks past that timeframe. Now that I don’t have to worry about food poisoning from these events, I can focus on not contaminating my food with formalin.
 

There’s no shortage of food safety press releases, repeated and regurgitated using funky new media tools; there is a shortage of evidence-based, incisive approaches that challenge food safety norms and may eventually lead to fewer sick people.

barfblog.com is the fastest way to stay current on food safety issues. Powell, Chapman and assorted food safety friends offer evidence-based opinions on current food safety issues. Opinions must be reliable – with references -- rapid and relevant.

Anyone can subscribe directly to barfblog.com and receive an e-mail immediately when something new is posted. Go to barfblog.com and click on the ‘subscribe’ button on the right side of the page.

Food safety infosheets are designed to influence food handler practices by utilizing four attributes culled from education, behavioral science and communication literature:
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• using verbal narrative, or storytelling, as a message delivery device.

Food safety infosheets are based on stories about outbreaks of foodborne illness. Four criteria are used to select the story: discussion of a foodborne illness outbreak; discussion of background knowledge of a pathogen (including symptoms, etiology and transmission); food handler control practices; and emerging food safety issues. Food safety infosheets also contain evidence-based prescriptive information to prevent or mitigate foodborne illness related to food handling. They are available in several languages.

The bites.ksu.edu listserv is a free web-based mailing list where information about current and emerging food safety issues is provided, gathered from journalistic and scientific sources around the world and condensed into short items or stories that make up the daily postings. The listserv has been issued continuously since 1994 and is distributed daily via e-mail to thousands of individuals worldwide from academia, industry, government, the farm community, journalists and the public at large.

The listserv is designed to:
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• promote awareness of public concerns in scientific and regulatory circles.

The bites listserv functions as a food safety news aggregator, summarizing available information that can be can be useful for risk managers in proactively anticipating trends and reactively address issues. The bites editor (me – dp) does not say whether a story is right or wrong or somewhere in between, but rather that a specific story is available today for public discussion.

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If you only want stories about food safety policy, or norovirus, go to bites.ksu.edu and click on that section. Then click on the RSS symbol, and add to your reader. barfblog.com is also available as a RSS feed.

Breaking food safety news items that eventually appear in bites-l or barfblog.com are often posted on Twitter (under barfblog or benjaminchapman) for faster public notification.

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Basketball is interminably dull.

The first college game I ever went to on Jan. 30, 2008, Kansas State beat the University of Kansas – who went on to win the national crown – for the first time in 24 years.

All games should be like that. They’re not.

But I’ll watch tonight as K-State goes up against Xavier in a sweet-16 showdown, the first time K-State has been to that particular dance since 1988.

What would be a great storyline is if West Virginia met K-State for the final. Bob Huggins was rescued from career oblivion when they hired him as coach a few years ago. Huggins repaid K-State’s generosity by leaving after one year.

Locals are still upset.

But he left behind assistant coach Frank Martin, who’s turned K-State into a national competitor. The prodigy going up against the mentor. It would be like me and Chapman going on an all-nerd food safety Reach for the Top (trivia note: Chapman was actually on Reach for the Top or whatever the Ontario version was called when he was in high school).

In other NCAA news, the start of the Men's Swimming and Diving Championships has been delayed 24 hours to Friday after 18 student-athletes and a coach were treated for a possible gastrointestinal illness since arriving in Columbus, Ohio.

K-State’s Bramlage Coliseum would make an excellent hockey arena.