Bathrooms in Japan
Michelle Mazur has been working with me for several months. She's starting vet school in the fall and came up with the cryptosporidium-in-pools infosheet.
Michelle just returned from two weeks in Japan. I asked her to take some pictures of Japanese hand washing facilities and the like. In her own words,
"I'm a bit embarrassed at how many pictures I took during the trip. At first my group members made fun of me taking photos of bathrooms, but by the end of the trip they would walk out of the bathroom saying "Cool, Michelle, you've got to go in and take a picture of that awesome bathroom!"
Michelle's photo odyessy is available at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27779935@N05/sets/72157605689172182/
Her commentary is quite funny.
Michelle just returned from two weeks in Japan. I asked her to take some pictures of Japanese hand washing facilities and the like. In her own words,"I'm a bit embarrassed at how many pictures I took during the trip. At first my group members made fun of me taking photos of bathrooms, but by the end of the trip they would walk out of the bathroom saying "Cool, Michelle, you've got to go in and take a picture of that awesome bathroom!"
Michelle's photo odyessy is available at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27779935@N05/sets/72157605689172182/
Her commentary is quite funny.
America's worst bathroom contest
Received an email from a company running a contest for the Scott Paper and White Cloud toilet paper today asking about a previous barfblog post on dirty bathrooms:
We are running an online contest for Scott Paper and White Cloud toiler paper in an effort to find America’s Worst Bathroom. We have been notified by several entrants about an entry with a photo that appeared on your blog. The link to the entry is here. Could you please contact me either via e-mail or; better yet, by phone as soon as possible? I am trying to find out who owns the copyright for the image in question. Did you take the photo? If so, I have to remove this entry and replace it with another. If not, the entry stays in the contest and I don’t have to make any changes.
Sounds like a serious contest. I didn't take the original picture, found it somewhere on the interwebs using Google Image Search (like a lot of the barfblog photos). Go check out the contest and vote for the dirtiest bathroom.
We are running an online contest for Scott Paper and White Cloud toiler paper in an effort to find America’s Worst Bathroom. We have been notified by several entrants about an entry with a photo that appeared on your blog. The link to the entry is here. Could you please contact me either via e-mail or; better yet, by phone as soon as possible? I am trying to find out who owns the copyright for the image in question. Did you take the photo? If so, I have to remove this entry and replace it with another. If not, the entry stays in the contest and I don’t have to make any changes.
Sounds like a serious contest. I didn't take the original picture, found it somewhere on the interwebs using Google Image Search (like a lot of the barfblog photos). Go check out the contest and vote for the dirtiest bathroom.
Are bathrooms a good indicator for food safety practices?
I don't believe they are. I think there are lots of food businesses that have spotless toilets and bad food safety practices. Ron Pelger of the Produce News suggests they are a good indicator:
The next time you go into a restaurant, I highly recommend that you visit the restroom first to check out the sanitation conditions of the establishment before ordering and eating your meal. Give it the old once-, twice- and three-times-over inspection. If it passes your examination, the restaurant must have high cleanliness standards.
Really? Pelger sounds pretty trusting. There is some great literature that suggests that inspection scores are not a good indicator of whether a restaurant is going to make someone ill. Should consumers also ask to see the conditions of the bathrooms and port-a-potties on farms and make decisions based on that? I don't think so. I think we should be basing our decisions on what a produce distributor (grower/packer/shipper) can prove about the food safety practices on the farm, not what is possible to clean-up in preparation for a planned audit.
Pelger also writes:
There are many scenarios in the produce industry that can lead to product contamination. Through a sophisticated trace-back process, product can be traced to its original source. In the recent past, foodborne illness outbreaks were linked to spinach, lettuce and tomatoes. These cases have been traced back to their sources and the problems corrected. But what about areas other than farms? Could contamination be happening in other links of the food chain as well?
Pelger is right that food safety is a farm-to-fork, food system issue -- but he unfortunately comes across as whining about how it's not always farms (true) without suggesting how the entire supply chain should get together and address it. If an industry truly believes in the everyone-has-a-role-to-play mantra, they should help their partners (upstream and downstream) in producing safe food. And tell everyone about it.
The next time you go into a restaurant, I highly recommend that you visit the restroom first to check out the sanitation conditions of the establishment before ordering and eating your meal. Give it the old once-, twice- and three-times-over inspection. If it passes your examination, the restaurant must have high cleanliness standards.
Really? Pelger sounds pretty trusting. There is some great literature that suggests that inspection scores are not a good indicator of whether a restaurant is going to make someone ill. Should consumers also ask to see the conditions of the bathrooms and port-a-potties on farms and make decisions based on that? I don't think so. I think we should be basing our decisions on what a produce distributor (grower/packer/shipper) can prove about the food safety practices on the farm, not what is possible to clean-up in preparation for a planned audit.
Pelger also writes:
There are many scenarios in the produce industry that can lead to product contamination. Through a sophisticated trace-back process, product can be traced to its original source. In the recent past, foodborne illness outbreaks were linked to spinach, lettuce and tomatoes. These cases have been traced back to their sources and the problems corrected. But what about areas other than farms? Could contamination be happening in other links of the food chain as well?
Pelger is right that food safety is a farm-to-fork, food system issue -- but he unfortunately comes across as whining about how it's not always farms (true) without suggesting how the entire supply chain should get together and address it. If an industry truly believes in the everyone-has-a-role-to-play mantra, they should help their partners (upstream and downstream) in producing safe food. And tell everyone about it.
