New Food Safety Infosheet: Five students ill from outbreak linked to Campylobacter at school in UK
The newest food safety infosheet, a graphical one-page food safety-related story directed at food handlers, is now available at www.foodsafetyinfosheets.com and http://bites.ksu.edu/infosheets (with multiple language translations of past infosheets)
Food Safety Infosheet highlights:
- Environmental health officers focus on cross-contamination practices of food handlers.
- Infections often are a result of cross-contamination, cooking to unsafe temperatures or contact with animals; Campylobacter is not often passed person-to person.
- Clean and sanitize all surfaces (cutting boards, counters) between raw and ready-to-eat food preparation.
- Use different utensils such as knives, tongs and lifters for raw and ready-to-eat foods, if cleaning and sanitizing between use isn't practical.
Food safety infosheets are created weekly and are posted in restaurants, retail stores, on farms and used in training throughout the world. If you have any infosheet topic requests, or photos, please contact Ben Chapman at benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.
You can download the food safety infosheet here.
British school headmaster channels John Cleese in response to campylobacter outbreak
My favorite John Cleese movie is not one of the Monty Python things, or a Fish Called Wanda, or the Faulty Towers TV bits. It is the rarely seen and vastly underappreciated 1986 effort, Clockwise. It is so … British.
“Brian Stimpson (John Cleese) is the headmaster of a comprehensive (high) school in England. He sets himself, his staff and pupils very high standards. On the way to a conference at which he is to talk, all manner of disasters strike."
Brian Stimpson came to mind after This is Croydon Today reported that Cumnor House School, in Pampisford Road, South Croydon, has been hit by an outbreak of campylobacter.
Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt, who I am totally envisioning as John Cleese, insists there is no proof that the bug came from the school kitchen.
"We have had five confirmed cases of campylobacter which is a type of food poisoning.
“The recommendation that the environmental health and independent food hygiene consultant made are all very minor and by minor I mean temperatures of fridges. But there is nothing sinister.
"We're talking about food storage, temperatures of fridges not being too high or too low, making sure we don't prepare raw meat alongside salads.”
Yes, John-Cleese-in-Clockwise character: don’t prepare raw meat alongside salads.
Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt also said,
"In terms of tracing this back to the kitchen that will never be proved one way or the other."
How reassuring.
UK: It's a bummer heights high
Doug and Amy introduced me to what is now one of my favourite TV shows, up there with The Office, Arrested Development and Flight of the Conchords. Summer Heights High is an Australian mockumentary following the lives of highschool students. One of the main characters, Ja'mie (not to be confused with Jamie) has transferred for a year from a private school to attend Summer Heights High public school. On multiple occasions Ja'mie refers to how povo (poor) the public school is.
Students at a UK private school may have been better off attending a povo public school after five pupils became ill this past week, reports This is Croydon Today.
Cumnor House School, in Pampisford Road, South Croydon, has been hit by an outbreak of campylobacter - a bacteria that causes food poisoning.
Headteacher Peter Clare-Hunt insists there is no proof that the bug came from the school kitchen. But nevertheless environmental health officers who were called in to carry out an inspection have "reminded" the school about good hygiene practice.
Headteacher Hunt explained,
"We have had five confirmed cases of campylobacter which is a type of food poisoning. As soon as that was confirmed we underwent a visit from the food hygiene consultant and environmental health..."
"There is no safety issue with regards to school lunches. I would say 99 per cent of the boys, if not more, are having school lunches and can do so without any fear of risk whatsoever.
Continuing,
“In terms of tracing this back to the kitchen that will never be proved one way or the other."
All the boys who fell ill at the school, which takes pupils aged between four and 13, are now back in class "healthy and doing fine". Campylobacter is the most common cause of food poisoning and symptoms can include stomach cramps and severe diarrhoea. Anyone who contracts the bug is normally ill for two days to a week and infection can come from inadequate cooking of food to handling domestic pets. Infection from person to person contact is, however, uncommon.
Headteacher Hunt should focus on apologizing to the sick students rather than insisting his cafeteria couldn't possibly be the source of illness.
Cross-contamination is a huge risk, at home and in food service; 65% of UK chickens contain campylobacter
Food safety is not simple.
And because food safety is hard, it’s important to reduce the number of pathogens entering a home or food service kitchen.
The Food Standards Agency today published the findings of a new survey testing for campylobacter and salmonella in chicken on sale in the U.K.
The survey showed that campylobacter was present in 65% of the samples of chicken tested. Salmonella was in 6% of samples, 0.5% of these samples contained S. enteritidis and S. typhimurium.
Andrew Wadge, Director of Food Safety at the Food Standards Agency, said,
"The continuing low levels of salmonella are encouraging, but it is disappointing that the levels of campylobacter remain high. It is obvious more needs to be done to get these levels down and we need to continue working with poultry producers and retailers to make this happen. Other countries like New Zealand and Denmark have managed to do so, we need to emulate that progress in the UK."
FSA is to be commended for undertaking the retail survey, but should be slapped on the wrist for terrible risk communication, once again asserting that, “cooking chicken properly all the way through will kill the bug, so consumers can avoid the risk of illness.
“Taking simple measures in the home can reduce the risk of food poisoning. If food is prepared, handled, and cooked properly, avoiding cross-contamination with other food, then food bugs will not have a chance to spread and cause harm.”
Food safety is not simple. Piping hot is not an end-point cooking temperature.
The video below accompanying a terrific N.Y. Times feature on E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef demonstrates how easy it is to cross-contaminate, and they don’t even use a thermometer to ensure delicious 160F hamburgers.
This is why we got married at city hall: 29 ill with campylobacter after UK reception
A brewery has been fined £5,100 after guests at a wedding reception were struck down with a serious outbreak of food poising.
Young & Co's Brewery plc, who operate the Bull's Head in Chislehurst, admitted to three food hygiene offences that caused 29 guests at a wedding to be ill.
The officers found that the wedding reception menu contained homemade chicken liver pate and a soft-centred chocolate pudding made from un-pasteurised eggs.
The paté had been cooked the previous day using a new cooker and was probably undercooked as cooking times and temperatures had not been reassessed for the new cooker.
A faulty fridge was also found to be in use in the kitchen.
Fresh whole chicken leaking bacterial-infested blood onto fresh produce - this is how people get sick
This is my fridge. This is my fridge on Salmonella and Campylobacter. This is how cross-contamination occurs. This is why it is important to lower pathogen loads before foods enter the home or a food service kitchen. Because foods can be a mess.
I bought a whole, fresh chicken a couple of days ago, but got some cheap lamb in the discount bin (the best time to go to Dillion’s grocery in Manhattan, Kansas, is between 10 and 11 a.m., lotsa foods discounted) so it sat in the back of my fridge for two days.
After two days in the back of my fridge I noticed fresh chicken blood had dripped into both the produce and fresh fruit crispers. Who designs fridges, engineers? Those drawers should be on top.
That red spot in the picture, that’s Salmonella- and Campylobacter-laden blood; it was also throughout the crispers. Those apples are in the pie we’re having tonight – whole wheat pie crust, love it. The rest has been cooked or tossed, and a full cleansing took place.
But food safety’s so simple; sure, without the chicken blood everywhere.
And this is my pie.
Parking lot cheese sickens three in Illinois
Don’t buy cheese in a parking lot.
That should probably apply to raw seafood as well.
Winnebago County Health Department Administrator J. Maichle Bacon said at least three people have been sickened and four more cases are being investigated after buying cheese from parking lot vendors.
The Rockford Register Star reports that samples of the cheese are still being tested at the Illinois Department of Public Health laboratory in Springfield, but had been found positive for fecal coliform and Listeria.
The three confirmed cases were positive for the bacteria Campylobacter jejuni. Bacon said,
“This, of course, is a product that would never be approved for sale.”
6 cases of campylobacter linked to raw milk in Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Department of Health is warning consumers who purchased raw milk from Dean Farms in New Castle, Lawrence County, doing business as Pasture Maid Creamery, LLC, to immediately discard the raw milk due to potential bacterial contamination.
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Recently, individuals who consumed raw milk purchased from Dean Farms were found to have gastrointestinal illness due to Campylobacter, a bacterial infection. Since January 23, a total of six confirmed cases of Campylobacter infection have been reported among raw milk drinkers in four unrelated households in western Pennsylvania. The investigation is ongoing.
The Department of Health today recommended the owner stop selling raw milk for human consumption, and the owner has agreed to stop selling at this time. In cooperation with the Department of Agriculture, the dairy is providing raw milk samples to be tested for bacterial pathogens.
Fowl findings surprise Swiss veterinary officials
As many as nine-out-of-ten chickens in Switzerland are infected with campylobacter, prompting the Federal Veterinary Office to call a crisis meeting of food and health experts, as well as poultry producers, for December 18.
According to a report in the Sunday newspaper, SonntagsZeitung, the veterinary office was surprised by the results of the unpublished study, expecting only half as many chickens to have been infected with the bacteria.
Most cases of campylobacteriosis are associated with eating raw or undercooked poultry meat or from cross-contamination of other foods by these items.
Mud with sheep poop sickens mountain bikers
Hundreds of mountain bikers competing in separate races in British Columbia and Wales in the past year were stricken by campylobacter, apparently from contact with feces-laden mud.
Now, the National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) and Environmental Health officers at Powys County Council have concluded the Welsh outbreak was probably caused by campylobacter, spread to the cyclists by mud which was contaminated with sheep feces.
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The report acknowledged that, given the nature of mountain bike events, it would be impossible to eliminate the risk of catching such an infection, but made the following recommendations:
* Participants should avoid using soiled drink and food containers
* Pre-packaged food should be eaten out of the wrapper
* Where possible, hands and utensils should be washed before consuming food and drinks
* No open food should be served at events.
* Drinks produced in large volumes for consumption by participants should be dispensed using a method which does not require the repeated immersion of utensils.
* Organisers should consider providing facilities to wash hands and water bottles with clean, running water
* Wherever possible, courses should be re-routed to avoid areas which are heavily contaminated with animal faeces
* Mountain bikers, particularly those who are vulnerable to infection, should be alerted to the potential risk of acquiring zoonotic illnesses from participation in events which cross land used by agricultural and other animals.
To comment on the report, email bikes.outbreak@nphs.wales.nhs.uk..jpg)
When handling meat, it's 'turd to tongue' or -'manure to mouth'
Hugh ‘Groundhog Day’ Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, wrote in a column for the BBC earlier this week,
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“The kitchen has the potential to be most dangerous room in the house. Making it safe is easy. When handling raw meat mutter the mantra ‘turd to tongue’ or - if you have squeamish tendencies – ‘manure to mouth.’”
The good Dr. Pennington was talking about how Campylobacter is the most common cause of foodborne illness and that it “is an embarrassing fact that Campy is a natural bug of birds.”
It’s not easy. Food safety isn’t simple. That’s why up to 30 per cent of everyone gets sick from the food and water they consume each year. And as Jorgen Schlundt, director of food safety at the World Health Organization said the other day,
“The notion that you can deal with it at the end of the food chain is clearly wrong.”
Confirmed: birds poop on peas in field, sicken 99 with campylobacter in Alaska
Sarah Palin, look at what is going on in your own backyard while you’re getting people all excited with your Katie Couric interviews.
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New molecular laboratory findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide a firm link between an outbreak of Campylobacter diarrhea that occurred in Southcentral Alaska this summer and eating uncooked peas grown in Alaska.
"Molecular studies demonstrated that there was a match between Campylobacter bacteria obtained from sick people and those obtained from pea and Sandhill Crane samples taken from the farm in Palmer," said Dr. Tracie Gardner, an epidemiologist with the Alaska Division of Public Health.
To date, the investigation has identified 99 people sickened by the bacteria who reported eating raw peas within 10 days of illness onset. Fifty-four had laboratory confirmation of illness. Five were hospitalized. None have died.
Investigation revealed a lack of chlorine in the water used to wash the peas at the farm. State officials are working with the farm to implement future control measures.
Yes, chlorinated water could be part of the economic bailout to boost health-care reform. Over to you, Sarah.
Raw milk with campylobacter sickens at least seven across Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Department of Health is warning consumers who purchased raw milk from Hendricks Farm & Dairy of Telford, Montgomery County, to immediately discard the raw milk and any items made with the raw milk due to potential bacterial contamination. Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized.
Recently, individuals who consumed raw milk purchased from the dairy were found to have gastrointestinal illness due to Campylobacter, a bacterial infection. Since September 1, a total of seven confirmed cases of Campylobacter infection have been reported among raw milk drinkers in seven unrelated households in Pennsylvania and a neighboring state. Other individuals in these households have also experienced similar gastrointestinal illness. The investigation is ongoing.
The Department of Agriculture today suspended the farm's raw milk permit and instructed the owner to stop selling raw milk for human consumption until the permit is reinstated. The Department of Agriculture will require two raw milk samples drawn at least one day apart to be tested negative for bacterial pathogens before raw milk sales may resume.
For more information about Campylobacter, visit the Department of Health at www.health.state.pa.us or call 1-877-PA-HEALTH.
In addition to showing up in Sarah Palin’s Alaskan peas via bird poop, campylobacter was found in a sample of Grade A raw cream produced by Organic Pastures in California. Fortunately, no illnesses have been associated with the poop in raw California cream.
Sarah Palin: what will you do about sandhill cranes pooping on peas and giving Alaskans campylobacter?
We can’t kill all the birds. That’s my usual response when talking about the practicality of on-farm food safety systems for fresh produce. Yes, birds are salmonella and campylobacter factories. But, as a farmer, you do what you can to reduce risk.
It now appears that the 18 people in Alaska sick with campylobacter got it from eating raw peas from a farm, where apparently sandhill cranes were crapping all over the peas.
The Anchorage Daily News says that Joe McLaughlin, state epidemiologist with the state health department, said Thursday afternoon the likely culprits in spreading the illness in Mat-Su are sandhill cranes.
Apparently the migratory birds love the peas in Mat-Valley Peas' fields. And what geese can do to a sidewalk, cranes do to a field.
"The farmer thinks that's the likely scenario," McLaughlin said. "He has another field with cattle nearby, but it's highly plausible that the cranes' poop is the cause."
Duane Clark, who markets the peas for longtime grower John Hett, said, "They don't have proof we're the ones, and we don't have proof we're not."
"I've been farming for over 30 years," Hett said, "and never had a problem."
Shayne Herr, Hett's son-in-law and manager of the farm, said, "If DEC's concerned, we're concerned." He said his family eats raw peas all the time, "and we never get diarrhea. We wash them and we're fine. If we don't like them, we don't sell them."
It's a new marketing slogan: our food is fine cause we don't get diahhrea.
What would Sarah Palin do? Peas in Alaska source of campylobacter, 18 sickened
My mom was a hockey mom. She and dad drove me all around Ontario to play hockey. I still remember the brawl between some of the hockey moms when we played Galt (before it was Cambridge). The cops were called. I may have been 13. My mom wasn’t involved (at least she won’t admit she was involved).
I coached and helped out with my four girls playing hockey, so I guess I was a hockey dad. I’m not a pit bull and don’t wear lipstick.
Sarah Palin may be a hockey mom who thinks the Flintstones are an accurate representation of human-dinosaur co-habitation and is open to war with Russia, but what I’d really like to hear about is how the vice-presidential candidate responds to foodborne illness in her own backyard.
The Anchorage Daily News reports that a farm in the Matanuska Valley has been called the focal point of a campylobacter outbreak that has sickened at least 18 people in Southcentral Alaska after they ate raw peas.
Mat-Valley Peas in Palmer sells the peas in 5- and 10-pound bags with cooking instructions that would have prevented the outbreak, but some retailers and sellers at farmers markets have repackaged the peas in smaller quantities and left out the cooking instructions, said Joe McLaughlin, state epidemiologist with the health department.
The first of the 18 cases, including one person who was hospitalized, occurred Aug. 1.
And my mom, she never had to brag about being a hockey mom. She was the real deal.
Another campylobacter outbreak from mud at a mountain bike race
From Canada to Wales, if you’re racing mountain bikes, try not to swallow the mud – apparently there’s a lot of shit in mud.
In June 2007, hundreds were stricken and 18 tested positive for campylobacter during the annual Test of Metal mountain bike race in Squamish, B.C.
Dr. Paul Martiquet, the chief medical officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said,
"This was an outbreak with a high attack rate. Our future advice to the race organizers is to inspect the route prior to the race to ensure it is not littered with animal feces, and not end the race at the horse ring. If there is any horse poop, they have to remove it."
Now, a preliminary report by the National Public Health Service for Wales estimates that up to 160 people who attended the Merida Bikes mountain bike Marathon July 5-6, 2008, based on Builth Wells, fell ill, and 10 of the riders tested positive for campylobacter.
The report described the course as,
“very muddy and contaminated with sheep slurry in certain areas, leading to significant amounts of mud splashing over participants and their equipment. … The most statistically significant risk was the inadvertent ingestion of mud. The nature of this sport means that riding through muddy, agricultural land is unavoidable. The risk of infection from zoonotic organisms such as campylobacter will therefore always be present. Clearly the weather conditions on the day of this event compounded the problem by making contamination by mud inevitable.”
Mom says raw milk made kids sick
"What began as a two-night getaway at a farm in Lancaster County, Pa., turned into a calamity of nightmarish proportions for me and my two kids when we drank raw milk.
My friend and I took our children to a working farm during spring break. They milked cows, fed bottles of milk to calves and ran free on acres of land - a rarity for these city kids.
They also drank the milk that was on the breakfast table, a milk I might add, that was the most silky and delicious any of us had ever tasted. We were told it was unpasteurized, but made to believe it was safe. (I assumed it was at least boiled).
A day after returning home, we knew we had made a terrible mistake. The first to fall ill was my five-year-old daughter, who had a high fever, then stomach flu symptoms, then my four-year-old son, then me.
My friend and her family had become violently ill as well. We spent seven days worried that our kids could dehydrate and forced them to drink gallons of Gatorade. My friend did get dehydrated and needed intravenous fluids in order to return to her job as a nurse.
After a week of this torture, medical tests showed we had contracted campylobacter, a bacterial food poisoning that can be found in unpasteurized milk. The six of us were prescribed antibiotics.
Thankfully, we're all going to be OK.
To be fair, campylobacter can also be spread by contact with raw or undercooked poultry, as the farm owners later told us, but the likely culprit according to my doctor was the raw milk."
Pledges forced to eat raw poultry start barfing
Sally Morgan, UNR director of student conduct, said Thursday, "Their local alumni board owns the house and will be making provisions to close the house and determine how it will be used in the next two years," adding the hazing came to light in December after as many as 11 pledges became ill after eating uncooked chicken or turkey and sought treatment at the Student Health Center,
The center director determined they had campylobacter, a foodborne illness, required to be reported to the county health department.
Any pledge who wants to recount their story on barfblog, I'll send you a don't eat poop shirt. That's solid advice.
Got campylobacter?
The milk may be contaminated with Campylobacter jejuni and that local health departments are reviewing Campylobacter illness reports that may be related to the milk.
A table of outbreaks linked raw milk or cheese produced from raw milk is available at:
http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=1138
Raw milk sickens the unsuspecting -- again
A table of the outbreaks is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/articles/384/RawMilkOutbreakTable.pdf
49 News reports tonight that two separate outbreaks of campylobacteriosis made at least 87 people sick in Kansas.
Kansas allows raw milk to be sold within the state, but health officials want you to be aware of the health risks that come with consuming raw milk.
In the first outbreak in southwest Kansas, 68 people became ill after eating cheese made from raw (unpasteurized) milk donated by a local dairy for a community celebration. Nineteen people were ill enough to seek medical attention, and two people were hospitalized. Four of these persons tested positive for Campylobacter jejuni; no other food items served at the event were associated with illness.
The second outbreak is linked to a dairy in south central Kansas that sells raw milk directly to consumers. As of November 30, 2007, 19 cases of campylobacteriosis had been reported. Each person reported drinking raw milk purchased from the dairy.
These are rather large numbers of sick people; why is it only public now?
Don't eat cow poop
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The Billings Gazette reported that Kelly Weidenbach, a Wyoming Department of Health epidemiologist, said that the outbreak was probably caused by residents unknowingly ingesting feces from a sick calf.Weidenbach also said that stool samples from some residents and one calf from the ranch tested positive for the same strain of campylobacter, making it likely that a calf with a diarrheal illness was the source of the outbreak, and that tracking the source of the outbreak was "complicated by the fact that boys help prepare food for one another, and they were also working with cattle."
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She said there was no evidence that the bacteria was food-borne, and water tests came back negative.Don't eat poop.
Is it in my head?
UK and New Zealand researchers report in the current issue of the medical journal Gut that people who experience high levels of stress and anxiety appear to be more likely to develop irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) following a severe gastric infection.Dr. Rona Moss-Morris of the University of Southampton and Dr. Meagan J. Spence of the University of Auckland were cited as noting that a variety of studies have suggested that the cause of IBS has psychological and behavioral components.
Moss-Morris was quoted as telling Reuters Health that, "This study shows that various psychological factors, particularly stress, anxiety and a tendency to push oneself to keep going when ill and then collapse in response, interact with the physical illness in causing IBS."
According to Reuters Health, the researchers looked at 620 patients who tested positive for stomach inflammation from a bout of infection with Campylobacter. None of the participants had previously suffered from IBS or serious bowel conditions.
The subjects completed a questionnaire, covering aspects of personality and their behavior at the time of the initial infection. They were then checked 3 and 6 months later to see if they had developed IBS. The researcher found that 49 of the patients had the condition at both follow-up points.
Depression and perfectionism were not significantly associated with the onset of IBS. However, a variety of other factors were.
These included significantly higher levels of perceived stress and anxiety. IBS patients were also significantly less likely to rest in the face of their illness, and exhibited "all-or-nothing" behavior by continuing their activities despite their symptoms until they were forced to stop.
These patients were prone to view illness in a particularly pessimistic fashion. Being female was also an important risk factor.
Biking tip: Don't eat mud mixed with animal poop
Within days of the race, online mountain bike forums like NSMB.com began buzzing with participants reporting symptoms of campylobacter infection,Cliff Miller, the event organizer for the past 14 years, was cited as saying this is the first time anything like this has happened, and that this year's wet and rainy race day conditions were the worst he's seen, adding, "I think everybody had fun until they got home."
One potential source of the campylobacter was mud mixed with animal waste. Another was ground water.
