N.Y. students suspended for raw-meat hazing
These girls probably failed biology.
The existing members of the girls' varsity soccer team at a high school in Lewiston, New York thought they would say hello and congratulations by hurling raw meat at the new team members and covering their hair in flour and eggs.
Besides being a waste of perfectly good meat, the risks of cross-contamination with E. coli or Salmonella or something is fairly large.
Lewiston is about 25 miles north of Buffalo.
Raw seafood should not be packed and sold with fresh produce
It’s the biggest thing to happen in Manhattan (Kansas) grocery shopping … at least since we went away a few weeks ago.
The Hy-Vee opened.
And the Kroger-owned Dillon’s where we usually shopped is making some changes.
The first time we visited our usually bustling Dillon’s after the Hy-Vee opened, the place was a ghost town. Row after row of marked down products and a sense of malaise. We asked an employee why it was so quiet and he said, “It’s quiet?”
By yesterday, however, the pace at Dillon’s had picked up, and some new products had been added as well as a small demonstration kitchen near the meat aisle.
One of the new products was this (above right). Raw (previously frozen) scallops, packed with cherry tomatoes and lettuce. This seems like an exceedingly bad idea – microbiologically.
New hand dryer eco-friendly, food safe
I’ve waited a whole month for this Saturday to roll around. For weeks, I’ve been rinsing, drying, crushing, and collecting our cans, bottles, and boxes in anticipation. This Saturday is the day the county picks up our recycling. I have to drive my tubs to the library parking lot, but I don’t mind. I’m happy to be counted among those who choose to waste less. This reflects one particular side of my personality.
Another side is evident when I wash my hands: I soap up my palms and fingertips. I get between my fingers and up my wrists. After I rinse away the soap, I dry them thoroughly.
And this is the point where the two collide: When I go to dry my hands (and am not at home where clean cloth towels are available), I always reach for the paper towels over a blow dryer.
I know many trees are felled in the making of single-use paper towels, but blow dryers are disgusting: They collect microbes that may have been aerosolized when the toilet was flushed and then blow them onto your hands.
At least, most blow dryers do. HACCP Australia thinks the Dyson Airblade hand dryer can effectively dry hands without recontamination.
Australia Food News reports that the Dyson Airblade is the first hand dryer to be approved for use in food handling areas. AFN explains,
“Using high velocity sheets of unheated air, hands are dried in just ten seconds while, at the same time, 99.9% of bacteria and mould is removed from the air using HEPA filtration…The dryer, unlike conventional warm air hand dryers, does not blow bacteria back onto freshly washed hands nor use a heating element that can induce bacterial growth.”
As an added ecological bonus, the Dyson Airblade uses up to 80 per cent less energy compared with conventional hand dryers.
“Recently unveiled in Australia, the Dyson Airblade hand dryer has already had local success by receiving a New Product Award at its first public launch. It has now been introduced in food manufacturing areas at Cargill’s, Kellogg’s, Fletcher’s International, KFC, Tabro Meats, Wingham Beef and George Weston Food’s Tip Top bakeries, as well as a number of kitchens at McDonalds Restaurants.”
Until these are available in all the kitchens and public bathrooms I visit (and the data shows up on their microbial safety), I try to strike a balance between food safety and eco-friendliness: I use one paper towel to its fullest (two, if necessary), and avoid grabbing a handful out of assumption that they’ll be needed.
I hate assumptions.
Where to get germs while on vacation
I've walked down Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Chinese Theatre. I bought a $2 map of the stars' houses and photographed the "foot prints" of Star Wars' R2D2 and C3PO in the cement. But I didn't touch anything.
That sidewalk made the list of the five germiest tourist spots in the world as determined by editors at TripAdvisor.com this summer:
1. Blarney Stone in Blarney, Ireland - Last year, about 400,000 people hung upside down to kiss this stone in their quest for the gift of eloquence.
2. Market Theater Gum Wall in Seattle, Washington - This 15'x50' wall of gum began as a few sticky pieces discarded by college students waiting in line for movie tickets fifteen years ago.
3. St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy - For some reason, people love feeding the pigeons here, though city officials have been cracking down on the pooping menaces in recent years.
4. Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California - The celebrity handprints in the cement out front encourage bare-hand contact with a city sidewalk, which, according to a Theatre tour guide, is mopped daily and pressure washed once a week to support the trend.
5. Oscar Wilde's Tomb in Paris, France - Admirers of author and playwright Oscar Wilde don bright lipstick to kiss his tomb when they come to pay their respects.
CNN's report of the list states,
"Though it is unlikely to get sick from visiting one of these places, health experts say germs are always a gamble. The more people who touch and visit a spot, the more germs there are in the mix, they say.
"Their traveling advice? Travelers should load up on hand sanitizers and wash their hands often on their trips."
Good advice, baseless assumptions. Now, what about the kissing? And the pigeons?
TripAdvisor travel expert Brooke Ferencsik was quoted as saying, "These places are great attractions regardless of the fact that they are germy."
I'd say they were good for a photo, maybe. But I'm passing on the hands-on (or mouth-on) participation.
Evan finds Nestle refrigerated cookie dough; Doug cooks it (sorta)
During the evening of Thursday, June 18, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment urged Coloradans not to eat raw Nestle Toll House cookie dough because of possible contamination with E. coli O157:H7.
The next morning, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to the risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7. At the same time, Nestlé announced a voluntary recall of all Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products, “out of an abundance of caution.”
About 4:30 p.m. central time on Friday, June 19, 2009 (happy birthday, daughter Jaucelynn, avoid the raw cookie dough) colleague Evan reported that he had successfully obtained a package of Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough (above, right, exactly as shown). I say obtained because he didn’t have to pay for it. Evan went to a local supermarket, and saw, “a young kid, armed with a box cutter, standing beside a cart full of Nestle Toll House products.
“I asked if I could have one of them, to which he replied, 'you're not going to get a refund for it are you?' I told him no, but he said he had to cut open the package so I couldn't return it. The kid wasn't wearing any gloves and was sweating, so I'm guessing he was out there for a while handling a potentially contaminated product.”
And he gave Evan the raw cookie dough, which Evan triple-bagged and refrigerated until Saturday.
Amy and Sorenne and I went grocery shopping this morning, and observed that the Nestle refrigerated products had been dutifully cleared out (left, exactly as shown). We did, however, buy a couple of other raw cookie dough products. I never eat the stuff, but understand that many are quite passionate about their raw cookie dough.
There are at least two potential problems with raw cookie dough: eating it, and cross-contamination. Evan and I videotaped a cooking experiment and the cookies get plenty hot to kill off potential pathogens (we’ll post that later).
Bill Marler has written about the uh, inadequacies of the labels on Nestle raw cookie dough. Not that anyone reads labels, or that everyone speaks English, but maybe there shoud be more of a declaration of potential risk.
And bigger type: not to sound like ole-man-grouchy-Powell, but even with my reading glasses I could barely read a damn thing on the label. The Kroger private selection brand says,
Keep refrigerated
Use before date on package
Do not eat unbaked cookie dough.
The Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough says,
Do not microwave unbaked Poppin Fresh dough
Bake before enjoying
Do not use if unsealed.
It would seems with at least 66 people sick with a serious illness – E. coli O157:H7 – of which 25 had to be hospitalized and seven will suffer long-term kidney damage, these labels sorta suck.
Oh, and according to a story carried by Bloomberg,
“The Toll House cookie brand is named for the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, whose owner, Ruth Wakefield, is credited with inventing the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s."
Are self-serve buffet restaurants in hospitals a good idea?
Some employees at a U.K. hospital are saying the only buffet in a hospital should be named Jimmy (with an extra ‘t’ right, exactly as shown).
A new self-service buffet is making a pig’s breakfast of infection control at Coventry’s University Hospital, angry staff claim.
The help-yourself spread was unveiled at the hospital’s main restaurant last week and is open to workers, patients and visitors.
Shocked hospital workers say they were only warned about the change days earlier when a sign went up.
They claim the self-service system is a hygiene disaster waiting to happen.
Allowing sick patients to handle the food could quickly spread infections, such as the highly contagious norovirus sickness bug, staff say.
One angry worker told the Coventry Telegraph,
“I think it is disgusting. Patients have been coming in with catheters and drip tubes in and rummaging through the piles of toast. Who knows what infections they are bringing down from the wards.”
Craig Smith, spokesman for contractor ISS, said the self-service breakfast buffet was launched to offer its customers more choice after consultation with staff and visitors.
“It is not unusual to have a self-service restaurant in a hospital – it is in place in hospitals up and down the country.”
Cross-contamination at checkout
Katie and I were craving hamburgers this weekend and Doug decided to indulge us. At the supermarket on Saturday he picked up some ground beef along with our normal cart full of produce and other proteins. As usual, I tried to separate the items in the cart so that the fresh produce was not touching the beef, pork, or salmon filets, even though all the meat was wrapped.
Checkout on Saturdays is always busy, and with a baby, a shopper’s plus card, a payment method, eco-friendly shopping bags, and chatter with the cashiers and baggers, there are plenty of distractions. On this particular day, the new store manager was bagging our items and complementing Doug on his culinary ability: “I can see you must be a good cook because those items require skill.” I chimed in with full-hearted agreement. Doug’s an awesome cook.
In the meantime, as the hamburger was being passed over the scale and scanner, juice poured out all over the place. I watched the cashier and was about to say something, but she pulled out a sanitary wipe and cleaned her hands. She then proceeded to pass every one of our produce items over the scale and through the hamburger juice. I felt like I should say something but wanted Doug to be the bad ass. And as I stood there stunned, not wanting the store manager to fire the woman, she completed our transaction and was on to the next person.
As soon as we exited the store, I declared we would have to wash every piece of produce in the bags. It didn’t even occur to me until later that the following person’s items were also going to pass over that potentially E.coli-laden scale. And maybe the same thing had already happened five times before we arrived. Maybe we were already at risk before our hamburger leaked all over.
It’s important to wash fresh fruits and vegetables to remove external contamination, because you never know where it’s been. Once your produce is exposed, it can contaminate other items in your bag or at home. Even if you are a careful consumer, it’s difficult to know just where that tomato has been.
(P.S. Doug cooked the burgers to a perfect 160F and they were delicious.)
Australian food has bacteria: don't tell consumers 'till after Christmas
Food Science Australia found in a survey of Australian food that E. coli was present in 69 per cent of poultry, 29.7 per cent of beef and 18.1 per cent of pork, but only 1 per cent of lettuce.
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Poultry also tested positive for campylobacter (40 per cent) and salmonella (21.9 per cent).
The Australian reports the results were written into a report for the Department of Health and Ageing that was expected to have been released by the end of November.
But when The Australian requested and paid for a copy under Freedom of Information laws, the department advised that it would be delayed. The Food Regulation Standing Committee had agreed to a food industry request to hold off releasing the report until after the lucrative Christmas period.
In a laundry list of safe-food handling practices, the story says that authorities recommend consumers “cook chicken, minced or boned meats, hamburger, stuffed meats and sausages right through until juices are clear, and serve hot food steaming hot.”
Sigh.
Color is a lousy indicator. Use a digital tip-sensitive thermometer. It makes people better cooks.
Doug Powell and Randy Phebus talk Salmonella in dog food
Or we try too. Look, we’re not the most photogenic, or brief, but there’s some decent info and pretty pictures of dogs.
Certain lots of Pedigree dog food and other pet food have been recalled after it was discovered that Salmonella could be present in the product. So here’s some considerations to prevent spreading Salmonella around your home if you have a pet or contaminated food and treats.
