Shopping for food is competitive sport in Brisbane.

There are bargains to be had, but limited by geography – I’m on a bicycle – time and seasonality.

And the prices change almost daily for no apparent reason other than supply and demand.

The majority of Australians hate the megalomart duopoly of Coles and Woolworths but within a 2-mile radius, I can choose amongst five fruit and veg places, three butchers, three bakeries, the ubiquitous Coles and Woolworths, and my favorite, the Dutton Park Fish Market.

Dutton Park is a suburb adjacent to the University of Queensland and the fish market is literally a non-descript hole in the wall down and around from a semi-popular restaurant on the way to the uni. They don’t advertise because they have trouble meeting demand. But they do send e-mails saying what’s in and what’s on special.

That gets back to the competitive sport of shopping.

Two days ago the price of oysters went from $15 a dozen to $20 for two dozen. I told Amy we were having oysters, and she invited over a colleague for dinner last night.

We went through 48 oysters, two blue swimmer crabs and some homemade Napoletana leek pizza.

As a man of large appetites, I wanted more. So after early morning swimming lessons for the daughter, Sorenne and I biked off again to visit with Paul the fishmonger (Sorenne likes the live mud crabs, and the fishheads).

Saturday lunch was more oysters, more blue swimmers, and some Hervey Bay scallops, served with a grated, marinated carrot and beet salad.

All this is on my mind because of the recent death of a South Bend, Indiana, man from vibrio after eating raw frozen shrimp.

Health officials interviewed the man's wife and determined that he had eaten shrimp from a 16-ounce bag of frozen, raw, peeled and cleaned shrimp sold under the Harvest of the Sea brand. Testing on a second bag of the same brand of shrimp found in the man's freezer determined that it contained the bacteria afflicting the man.

Felger said that bag of shrimp came from a Martin's Super Markets store in South Bend. The supermarket chain voluntarily pulled the shrimp from its freezers in during the weekend of Feb. 17-18 after learning that it could possibly be contaminated. But the store didn't issue a voluntary recall to customers until March 3 because they didn't have all of the information they needed until then, the company's advertising manager, Dave Mayfield, told WSBT.

He said that once they got the facts, they issued the recall.

Test results confirming the bacteria were in the shrimp were received last Friday, and the next day Martin's Supermarket emailed its recall notice to South Bend-area media.

Felger said he believes Martin's Super Markets acted appropriately by pulling the product once they were notified.

I buy the crabs cooked. The oysters and scallops I grill for about 90 seconds, along with a (small) dollop of garlic butter loaded with homegrown basil and rosemary, and a dab of hot sauce. I temped a scallop today because I’d never grilled fresh ones before – 140F. Probably a bit high but tasted great.

Paul can talk lovingly about his product, I can write food porn about the preparation, but neither of us – nor anyone else – knows which raw seafood might be carrying a dangerous bacterium, virus or parasite. I pay attention to cross-contamination. And I cook seafood, verified using a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

Hockey goon and budding academic Kevin Allen of the University of British Columbia says there’s lots of listeria in ready-to-eat seafood in British Columbia (that’s in Canada).

According to a new paper in Food Microbiology, Allen along with Lili Mesak and Javana Kovačevic found lots of anti-microbial resistant Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat salmon, but none in RTE deli meats. The paper offers a thorough microbiologial and genomic description of the listeria strains isolated but what this means for consumers is less clear.

But Kevin, describing listeria-vulnerable populations as “the really young and the elderly?” What about the really, really young? Or the super-young. The uber-young?

Abstract below.

Occurrence and characterization of Listeria spp. in ready-to-eat retail foods from Vancouver, British Columbia
02.jan.12
Food Microbiology
Jovana Kovačević, Lili R. Mesak, Kevin J. Allen
Abstract
The occurrence of Listeria spp. and L. monocytogenes in retail RTE meat and fish products in Vancouver, British Columbia (B.C.) was investigated. To assess potential consumer health risk, recovered L. monocytogenes isolates were subjected to genotypic and phenotypic characterization. Conventional methods were used to recover Listeria spp. from deli meat (n=40) and fish (n=40) samples collected from 17 stores. Listeria spp. were recovered only from fish samples (20 %); 5 % harboured L. innocua, 5 % had L. monocytogenes and 10 % contained L. welshimeri. Listeria monocytogenes isolates serotyped as 1/2a and 1/2b, possessed dissimilar PFGE patterns, and had full-length InlA. Three 1/2a clonal isolates encoded the 50 kb genomic island, LGI1. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) profiling showed all Listeria spp. possessed resistance to cefoxitin and nalidixic acid. Listeria monocytogenes were resistant to clindamycin, two were resistant to streptomycin, and one to amikacin. Reduced susceptibility to ciprofloxacin was seen in all L. monocytogenes, L. innocua and three L. welshimeri isolates. Reduced susceptibility to amikacin and chloramphenicol was also observed in one L. monocytogenes and three L. welshimeri isolates, respectively. Recovery of L. monocytogenes in fish samples possessing AMR, full-length InlA, LGI1, and serotypes frequently associated with listeriosis suggest B.C. consumers are exposed to high-risk strains.
Highlights
► Listeria spp. were frequently recovered from RTE salmon samples, but not deli meat. ► High risk strains of L. monocytogenes were present in BC retail RTE seafood. ► This is the first report of the LGI1 genomic island from retail RTE seafood. ► AMR was observed in all Listeria, and included clinically relevant antimicrobials

Finfish, shrimp, and seafood products are some of the most widely traded foods and about 85 percent of seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. A new study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that testing of imported seafood by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is inadequate for confirming its safety or identifying risks.

The findings, published this month in Environmental Science and Technology, highlight deficiencies in inspection programs for imported seafood across four of the world's largest importing bodies and show which types of aquatic animals, and from which countries, are most often failing inspection. The study identified a lack of inspection in the U.S. compared to its peers: only 2 percent of all seafood imported into the U.S. is tested for contamination, while the European Union, Japan and Canada inspect as much as 50 percent, 18 percent, and 15 percent of certain imported seafood products. When testing in the U.S. does occur, residues of drugs used in aquaculture, or "fish farms," are sometimes found; above certain concentrations, these drugs are harmful to humans.

Imports to the U.S., E.U., Canada and Japan with the highest frequency of drug violations were shrimp or prawns, eel, crabs, catfish or pangasius, tilapia and salmon. Vietnam, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, India, and Malaysia were identified as the exporters to the U.S., E.U., Canada and Japan with the most drug violations.

Last week, a west Australian egg wholesaler was fined $50,000 in federal court for misleading the public by labeling cartons of eggs as "free range" when they knew a substantial proportion of the eggs were not free range.

Last month, two Arizona residents plead guilty to 13 felony offenses for their roles in purchasing and then re-selling farm-raised Asian catfish and Lake Victoria perch falsely labeled as grouper, sole or snapper; selling foreign farm-raised shrimp falsely labeled as U.S. wild caught shrimp and selling shrimp that falsely claimed to be larger and more expensive than they actually were; and for buying fish they knew had been illegally imported into the United States. Some of the fish tested positive for malachite green and Enrofloxin, both of which are considered health hazards and banned from U.S. food products.

Last fall, the Washington Post reported expensive sheep's milk cheese in a Manhattan market was really made from cow's milk, a jar of "Sturgeon caviar" was Mississippi paddlefish, and some honey is diluted with sugar beets or corn syrup, but still market as 100 percent pure at a premium price.

Last year, an NBCLA undercover investigation revealed that some farmers at southern California markets are making false claims and flat-out lies about the produce they're selling.

NBCLA's investigation began this summer, when we bought produce at farmers markets across the LA area, and then made surprise visits to farms where we were told the produce was being grown.

We found farms full of weeds, or dry dirt, instead of rows of the vegetables that were being sold at the markets. In fact, farmers markets are closely regulated by state law. Farmers who sell at these markets are supposed to sell produce they've grown themselves, and they can't make false claims about their produce.

We did find plenty of vendors doing just that, like Underwood Farms, which sells produce at 14 markets, all grown on a family farm in Moorpark.

But our investigation also uncovered vendors who are selling stuff they didn't grow, like Frutos Farms, which sells at seven different farmers markets in LA and Orange counties.

Frutos Farm's state permit to sell produce at farmers markets says their farm is in Cypress.

NBCLA asked owner Jesse Frutos, "Everything you sell at farmers markets is grown in your Cypress field?"

Jesse responded, "Correct...everything."

But when NBCLA made a surprise visit to the Cypress field listed on its permit, Frutos couldn't show us most of the produce he was selling, such as celery, garlic, and avocados.

So NBCLA asked, "Do you grow avocados here?"

"Avocados? No, not here on the lot. … That I'll be honest. That stuff came from somewhere else," Frutos said.

Somewhere else? NBCLA's undercover cameras followed Jesse's trucks on farmers market days, and saw him going to the big wholesale produce warehouses in downtown LA.

We saw him loading up his truck, with boxes of produce from big commercial farms as far away as Mexico. He bought many of the types of items we saw him selling at the farmers markets.

After documenting this, NBCLA asked Jesse, "You are selling some things at farmers markets that you didn't grow, that you got at wholesale produce markets?"

Jesse admitted, "Yes."

By the end of our investigation, we found vendors who make false claims selling at more than two dozen farmers markets.

Food fraud has been around a long time.

A recent paper in the British Food Journal reinforces the idea despite scientific sophistication, rules to control food fraud are only as good as the enforcement that backs them up.

In the egg case, Justice Tony North found the conduct involved a high level of dishonesty and was very difficult to detect because once the eggs were in the cartons it was impossible to determine if they were free range or not.

As today's society grapples with how best to validate that food is indeed what it says it is -- and safe -- and as the huskers and buskers emerge with cure-alls, I turn to the words of Madeleine Ferrières a professor of social history at the University of Avignon, France, in Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, first published in French in 2002, but translated into English in 2006:

"All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates. … And we are often too blinded by this amnesia to view our present food situation clearly. This amnesia is very convenient. It allows us to reinvent the past and construct a complaisant, retrospective mythology."

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