Food safety culture means employees don't contaminate food with brooms or forklift tires
If a company making ready-to-eat refrigerated deli-meats has a “strong culture of food safety,” would an employee shake a broom over a line of processed product?
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If more inspectors are the answer to safer food, why would the inspectors need publicly reported accounts of foodborne illness and death to try harder?
And if the company and inspectors are doing lots of tests to ensure enhanced food safety, why aren’t they bragging about it instead of requiring an Access to Information request by a media outlet to discover that inspectors continue to find problems with Maple Leaf Foods infamous Bartor Road plant in Weston, Ontario.
Last night, Steve Rennie of The Canadian Press reported that Canadian federal food safety types found a troubling lack of hygiene at Maple Leaf Foods’ Toronto facility just weeks after it reopened last year from a temporary shutdown for cleaning – after 22 people were killed and 53 sickened with listeria linked to deli meat.
A Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspection report dated Oct. 10, 2008, found:
• slime on part of the meat-trimming table in the curing room;
• meat debris on two steel container bins and unidentified debris on the brine tank in the curing room;
•a moist and mouldy cardboard sheet on the base of a skid in the curing room that holds bags of salt;
•mouldy caulking on the walls of the meat-defrosting room;
•a stack of dirty, mouldy and broken skids left in the frozen packoff room during cleaning;
• food debris on knife holders, floor and meat containers in the formulation room; and,
• rust on equipment used to process mock chicken.
The Canadian Press obtained that inspection report and others under the Access to Information Act.
Another report says during visits on Oct. 20 and 21, an inspector watched as "an employee in a grey jacket lifted a floor broom over a finished food product conveyor belt during operation to sweep in between the conveyors." (No additional information as to whether the product was packaged or not).
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Then on Oct. 22, the inspector saw a worker using a forklift to move ready-to-eat link sausages from the cooler to a line for packaging. The report notes the meat at the bottom part of the lift "was not protected for the potential wheel over spray or splash cross contamination."
That part is gross. And unacceptable.
On Aug. 23, 2008, (barfblog.com passim ad nauseum) Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain took to the Intertubes to apologize for an expanding outbreak of listeriosis that would eventually kill 22 people. As part of his speech, McCain said that Maple Leaf has “a strong culture of food safety.”
On Aug. 27, 2008, McCain told a press conference,
“As I've said before, Maple Leaf Foods is 23,000 people who live in a culture of food safety. We have an unwavering commitment to keep our food safe, and we have excellent systems and processes in place.
Dr. Randy Huffman, Maple Leaf’s chief food-safety officer, took to his company’s Journey (worst band ever)-inspired Journey to Food Safety Leadership blog to say today,
“The average reader must be wondering how this plant could have so many issues only a month after re-opening from causing one of the worst food safety crises in Canada.”
I’m not sure what he means by average. I consider myself dull and below-average; does that mean I won’t be able to understand what he is saying?
Huffman: Over the past 12 -14 months- since these inspections were conducted - we have invested over $5 million in upgrades at the Bartor Road plant. This includes repair of floors and wall surfaces, air handling systems, caulking, better separation of raw and cooked areas of the plant, new pallets and new slicing and packaging equipment. We have implemented over 200 new operating procedures.
Why did it take 22 deaths and 53 illnesses to make this food safety investment?
Huffman: CFIA generates these reports and so does Maple Leaf, through our own inspections across all our plants. We welcome this government scrutiny. Canadians hold us to a higher standard, as they should.
So why did the reports have to be obtained through an Access to Information request, and why doesn’t Maple Leaf just sidestep the government and make the reports public, along with other data, as it becomes available, to build trust with the buying consumer?
Would more inspectors have helped? Maybe if they were looking. Federal food inspection union thingy Bob Kingston said,
"In a normal operation that had not been through what they had been through, that might be a common occurrence. But in this facility, it's very surprising that that would still be there. Because you would expect it to be spotless."
The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants will go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
And the best cold-cut companies may stop dancing around and tell pregnant women, old people and other immunocompromised folks, don't eat this food unless it's heated
Food safety doesn't just happen in English - so why aren't restaurant inspection disclosure results available in other languages?
You’d figure that getting stuff translated into other languages would be a breeze, since I have an in with the modern languages department. But to do it in real-time is a bit messy.
Whether it’s a recall, an inspection report or a warning label, not everyone who eats in the U.S. is fluent in English. That’s why our food safety infosheets are now available weekly in French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Debbie Pacheco of blogTO writes today that the garbage disposal calendar Toronto distributes has sections in various languages, so why, then, is something as important as Toronto's DineSafe guidelines only available in English?
One restaurateur told Pacheco he's interpreted food preparation instructions for his staff before. "If you want that traditional food, it's usually the older people who don't necessarily speak English that cook it." He manages his kitchen and is certified in food handling. The city requires that someone with a food handling certificate supervise the kitchen at all times while it's operating.
Mebrak, who's been with Cleopatra restaurant for nine years, put it best. "It's important people really understand how to handle food. It's about safety for everyone."
Powell food safety culture video available at bites.ksu.edu
People often say to me, Doug, I get 10 e-mails from you each day. How can I get more of the Doug?
The talk I taped for the Australian HACCP conference a few weeks ago is now available on-line.
Be kind.
Restaurant inspection changes in Philadelphia
Restaurant inspectors in Philadelphia have abandoned the "floors, walls, ceilings" focus and instead are phasing in a more scientific, "risk-based" approach that emphasizes food workers' knowledge and behavior - do they know how contamination is spread and how to prevent it? - and calls for more frequent inspections of eateries that pose greater risks.
Don Sapatkin of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes this morning that Philadelphia is playing catchup in adopting changes that most counties around here have already made, in some cases many years ago. Yet the city's new approach is expected to mean more inspections of the 12,621 establishments that sell or serve food - four times a year at institutional kitchens, for example - than most places.
Still, this region is hardly progressive compared to places like Toronto, which posts red, yellow or green signs in restaurants, or Los Angeles (A-B-Cs), or Denmark (smiley faces). No county in the Philadelphia region requires restaurants to post full inspection reports on location.
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It's not clear that food is any safer when there is greater transparency or even more frequent inspections, "but it does get people to think about food safety," said Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University who operates barfblog.
Don Schaffner, a professor of food microbiology at Rutgers University, said inspections traditionally have focused as much on appearance as on cooking temperatures. And they often made little distinction between sushi bars that serve raw fish and drug stores that sell prepackaged food.
"What we've learned over time is, not everything is equal.”
Ben Chapman, a food-safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University and a contributor to barfblog said prevention is really about "the culture of the restaurant”
Meaning, says Powell,
"If two workers are from the same restaurant (and go to the bathroom) and (only) one washes his hands, I want one to say to the other: 'Dude, wash your hands.' "
Food safety culture more fashion than fact for posers
On Aug. 23, 2008, Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain took to the Intertubes to apologize for an expanding outbreak of listeriosis that would eventually kill 22 people. As part of his speech, McCain said that Maple Leaf has “a strong culture of food safety.”
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On Aug. 27, 2008, McCain told a press conference,
“As I've said before, Maple Leaf Foods is 23,000 people who live in a culture of food safety. We have an unwavering commitment to keep our food safe, and we have excellent systems and processes in place.”
As laid bare in the Weatherill report on the 2008 listeria shit-fest, McCain’s invocation of food safety culture was as credible as the politicians and bureaucrats who lauded the workings of Canada’s food safety surveillance system, when it didn’t actually work at all.
Andre Picard, the long-time health reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail, picked up on this theme today when he wrote,
“the root of the listeriosis outbreak in Canada in 2008 was not two dirty meat slicers but rather a culture – in government and private enterprise alike – in which food safety was not a priority but an afterthought.”
Picard says Ms. Weatherill's most important recommendation – one that has been largely glossed over in media coverage of the report – is for a culture of safety or, as is stated bluntly in the report: “Actions, not words.”
Really, Canada, this is nothing new. There is a long history in developed countries of negligence, followed by remorse, promises to do better and … minimal changes. Didn’t Canada go through all this after E. coli O157:H7 entered the municipal water supply in Walkerton, Ontario in 2000, killing 7 and sickening 2,500 in a town of 5,000?
In 1985, 19 of 55 affected people at a London, Ontario, nursing home died after eating sandwiches infected with E. coli O157:H7. On Oct. 12, 1985, in response to an inquest, the Ontario government announced a training program for food-handlers in health-care institutions, “stressing cleaning and sanitizing procedures and hygienic practices in food preparation.” That training apparently didn’t include the food safety basic – don’t give unheated cold cuts to vulnerable populations, like old people, ‘cause they may die from listeria.
These days, food safety culture is the buzz. The same recommendation – to embrace and enhance food safety culture -- was embraced by the U.K. Food Standards Agency last week following an inquiry into the death of 5-year-old Mason Jones and the illness of 160 other schoolchildren who consumed E. coli O157:H7 contaminated cold cuts in Wales in 2005.
Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously?
Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of Western meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.
Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.
Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his 2008 book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.
The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales.
I’ve maintained for 16 years that, despite high-profile outbreaks and unacceptable loss of life, food safety in Canada is, as Weatherill stated, an afterthought.
Forget government. Michael McCain, you want to be a leader, lead, don’t just talk about it by throwing around words like food safety culture because they are suddenly fashionable.
The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants will go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
And the best cold-cut companies may stop dancing around and tell pregnant women, old people and other immunocompromised folks, don't eat this food unless it's heated.
Weatherill says, action not words.
Tragic food safety stories and teaching moments
This is what happens when doing interviews at 6:30 a.m. while feeding Sorenne some mush of peach and pear.
After blogging about how the U.K. Food Standards Agency was embracing food safety culture, I turned the post into an opinion piece and sent it to a newspaper in Wales.
The next morning, while feeding Sorenne, a reporter e-mailed me with some questions, and I replied, “call me.”
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So she did.
The article, by Abby Alford, appeared this morning in Wales under the headline, Tragic E. coli death used to teach US students food hygiene.
The tragic story of E. coli victim Mason Jones is being used by an American professor as a graphic illustration of what unsafe food can do.
Dr Douglas Powell also shows his students at Kansas State University a picture of the five-year-old as he teaches them about food safety.
“We are always trying to come up with new ways of getting the food safety message across. We have to have a compelling story and there’s no more compelling story than Mason Jones,” he said.
I talked about food safety culture, what FSA was proposing, and questioned how they were going to measure effectiveness.
The FSA has announced a culture change is needed in all parts of the food supply chain if the UK is to avoid another E.coli outbreak.
Dr Powell also suggested UK firms could follow the example of a factory in North Dakota, USA, which uses webcams to stream its activities live on the Internet.
Apparently I dreamed that part. There is a turkey processing plant in South Dakota that uses video cameras to constantly monitor operations and the videos can be accessed by auditors or USDA inspectors at any time – but not on the Internet. And not in North Dakota.
'Change culture to avoid E. coli'
Amy’s father and stepmom came for a visit and yesterday we went to a local eatery for a late lunch.
When Amy’s dad ordered a burger, the server asked how he would like the burger cooked.
He said medium-well.
The server said he could get the burger as rare as he wanted.
Amy said really, and started asking, just what was a medium-rare burger.
The server said it all had to do with color, and after some back and forth with the cooks, said the beef they get has nothing bad in it anyway.
Color is a lousy indicator.
During the same meal, a reporter called to ask, why do companies – big companies, huge chains and brand names -- knowingly follow or ignore bad safety practices? (that story should appear Sunday).
It comes down to culture – the food safety culture of a restaurant, a supermarket, a butcher shop, a government agency.
Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.
Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously?
Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of American meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.
Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.
The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales that killed 5-year-old Mason Jones and sickened another 160 school kids.
Yesterday, the board of the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA), in response to Pennington’s report, approved a five-year plan that will push food businesses to adopt a food safety culture and comply with hygiene laws, and urge stricter punishments for those that do not. The FSA will also ensure health inspectors are better trained.
A report put before FSA board members in London stated “culture change in all of the relevant parts of the food supply chain” is necessary.
Mason Jones’ mum Sharon Mills said she is pleased with the action being taken by the FSA.
“This sounds promising and shows they are moving in the right direction. … Things are slowly changing and hopefully we will all see the benefits sooner rather than later.”
Maybe. I’m still not convinced FSA understands what culture is all about. And how will these changes be evaluated. Is there any evidence that social marketing is effective in creating food safety behavior change? Those issues get to the essence of food safety culture, yet are glossed over with a training session – more of the same.
And why wait for government. The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
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Food safety culture and marketing go together
I’ve been writing and talking for a couple of years about the importance of food safety culture from farm-to-fork, and that companies should become more aggressive about marketing their food safety efforts.
Turns out, the two ideas can feed each other, in a synergistic manner (Chapman made the pic).
Those companies that promote food safety culture can market their activities, and then consumers have a way to choose at the check-out aisle, providing feedback to those companies that make food safety a public priority.
Third-party audits are no replacement for skilled staff, food safety culture: Bite Me '09
As the odometer hit 2,000 miles, Amy asked what it was like to travel when my kids were young. I said when they were 4-months-old like Sorenne, they just slept all the time.
Sorenne didn’t sleep all the time.
And then it occurred to me that when my eldest, the 21-year-old, was 4-months-old, I didn’t have a car. I was a student and didn’t drive anywhere. Those other kids who slept all the time had a sister in the backseat to help take care of them.
About 3,000 miles, I told Amy to slap me upside the head the next time I suggested such a road trip.
Bite Me ’09 – five talks, 3,600 miles in 12 days, some golf and some beach – wrapped up with a fury of talks and mileage, Monday in Florida, Tuesday in Nashville, Wednesday in Springdale, Arkansas, with an encore at Wal-Mart HQ in Bentonville and a lovely drive home through the back roads of Kansas with the prairie on fire (ranchers burn grasslands in Kansas for weed control and to encourage new growth).
My short message in various forms was this:
The third-party food safety audit scheme that processors and retailers insisted upon is no better than a financial Ponzi scheme. The vast number of facilities and suppliers means audits are required, but people have been replaced by paper. Audits, inspections, training and systems are no substitute for developing a strong food safety culture, farm-to-fork, and marketing food safety directly to consumers rather than the local/natural/organic hucksterism is a way to further reinforce the food safety culture.
Thanks for all the great hospitality from the various folks along the way and the engaging conversations.
‘Back home, sit down and patch my bones, and get back truckin on.’
Language, culture and Salmonella
Amy’s a French professor so I get to hang out with a bunch of folks in Modern Languages. And she speaks French to baby Sorenne, who probably understands more than I do. I’ve taught Amy how to use a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer when cooking all kinds of meat, and she’s taught me to be more sensitive to the cultural nuances of communication.
The intersections of food safety, language and culture are ripe for study. And action. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, yesterday launched a Spanish language Food Safety at Home podcast series. That’s good. But what’s going on in Oregon is better.
There is an outbreak of Salmonella associated with white pepper that has so far sickened at least 42, including 33 in California, four in Oregon, four in Nevada and one in Washington state. Some excellent epi work led William Keene, senior epidemiologist for the Oregon state Public Health Division, and colleagues to test ground white pepper from an Asian restaurant on the east side of Portland. Sure enough, it was positive for salmonella.
According to a report in this morning’s Oregonian, the spice was imported as peppercorns from Vietnam and then ground, packaged and distributed by Union International Food to distributors and manufacturers in the West. It was packaged under the Lian How and Uncle Chen brands.
The Food and Drug Administration has printed warnings about the recall in both English and Mandarin while Oregon's Public Health Division has added an additional Vietnamese version.
Dr. David Acheson, the FDA’s associate commissioner for foods, said,
"This issue illustrates an important area for food safety in that we are dealing with a relatively small facility. Getting the appropriate information out to small facilities who may not necessarily have English as their first language" is a challenge.
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service invites consumers to subscribe to the free podcast service by visiting http://www.fsis.usda.gov/News_&_Events/Feeds/index.asp. Once subscribed to the RSS feed, new broadcasts will be downloaded automatically to the feed reader used by the subscriber.
Technology in the classroom - anything goes
Every year I provide an intro food safety culture/stuff lecture to the veterinary students at Kansas State University. Always a good time in Pat Payne’s class, and the students have usually worked in food service and have stories to tell. This morning, the students even applauded when I trashed Chipotle for advertizing about the hypothetical risks associated with hormones rather than the things that make people barf – E. coli, salmonella, hepatitis A and norovirus.
The students all have computers, wireless access, cell phones, blackberries – there is no way to BS anyone; they are checking in real time.
I put up the slide below that Ben made a few weeks ago, to illustrate where food safety ranks in overall food culture concerns, and a student came up to me after class and said,
“I called the number. They don’t have anything about Phelps anymore. Your slide is out of date.”
Well played, sir.
At least they seemed to get a kick out of my line,
“Subway didn’t drop Phelps cause they know a lot of stoners eat subs.”
Times food safety editorial is nutty
An editorial in Tuesday’s N.Y. Times about the now bankrupt Peanut Corporation of America and its Salmonella shitfest is long on outrage but short on imagination.
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“While most successful food producers are far more diligent — big name-brand peanut butter is considered safe, for example — American consumers have faced far too many food-supply emergencies in the last few years.”
Is ConAgra a big food company? Wasn’t Peter Pan peanut butter the source of a huge Samonella outbreak in 2007?
“Congress needs to find more money for inspectors, especially at the Food and Drug Administration.”
Maybe, but lots of federal and state inspectors, along with the best and brightest the Ponzi scheme of food safety auditing had to offer all seemed to miss the problems at PCA. If someone wants to break the law and ship Salmonella-contaminated product, it’s going to happen.
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“President Obama promised during the campaign to create a government that does a better job of protecting the American consumer. The nation’s vulnerable food supply is a healthy place to start.”
Government has a role. But nowhere did the Times editorial mention the power of consumer choice that would be unleashed if food producers would truthfully market their microbial food safety programs, coupled with behavioral-based food safety systems that foster food safety culture from farm-to-fork. The best producers and processors will go far beyond the lowest common denominator of government and should be rewarded in the marketplace.
Market food safety so consumers can choose
The news this morning is full of features and editorials seeking to explain the shit storm of Salmonella produced by Peanut Corporation of America.
Chapman and I tried to take it a step further and focus on effective, long-term steps to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness from farm-to-fork. At this point in time, promoting food safety culture coupled with marketing and a series of carrots and sticks is the best we can come up with.
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In 1204 in Montpellier, France, a butcher selling a substitute meat in place of the advertized beast was required by statute to reimburse the customer twice the amount paid. In Narbonne, regulations dictated a whipping “with sheep tripe” in front of the food stall for unscrupulous sellers. China routinely executes its biggest food frauds.
During a hearing before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee looking into a salmonella outbreak linked to a Georgia peanut processing plant, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Thursday that food producers responsible for widespread, deadly outbreaks of disease should face jail time, not just fines, to get food makers to take food safety seriously.
Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously?
Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of American meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.
The politicos in Washington are focused on legislative fixes, maybe creating a single-food inspection agency, maybe increasing inspections, insisting microbiological test results be submitted to government, maybe mandating jail time for the most audacious executives. Such moves may send a signal of hope and change, but will do little to reduce the carnage contaminated food and water wreak on the American public each year – 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths.
Industry – the folks that process peanuts and all those companies that make some of the 1,550 different peanut butter crackers, ice cream, energy bars and dog treats that have been recalled – is equally void of ideas. The system to ensure safe food relies largely on so-called third-party audits of suppliers, a system that glowingly approved Peanut Corporation of America and its leaky roof, filthy floors and rat-infested storage areas.
Other peanut butter manufacturers like Unilever and ConAgra Foods say they have “stringent food safety and quality control standards.” But neither will say what it is they do better than PCA; neither will say how often the plants test their finished product for foodborne illnesses or other contamination. Maple Leaf Foods in Canada, whose deli meats killed at least 20 Canadians last fall, says it has done 42,000 tests for listeria across 24 packaged meat plants in the past three months, but will not make the results publicly available for scrutiny.
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Even Whole Foods, where consumers pay a hefty premium for basic foodstuffs, said the company carefully checks the paperwork for all the products it sells, but can do no better than the minimal standard of government. “For the thousands of products we sell, that’s the extent we can go to. The rest of it is up to the F.D.A. and to the manufacturer.”
Like a fiscal house of cards, the Ponzi scheme of inspection and verification for food safety is collapsing with merely the mention of consumer scrutiny. Sort of like an eighth grade party with chaperones -- just pop and chips. But when the inspector or auditors leaves, the party turns exciting (read all about it on Facebook).
A cultural shift is required for everyone, from the farm through to the fork, to take food safety seriously. Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart has taken an initial stab in his new book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System.
Yiannas says that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture. At Peanut Corporation of America, former employees are now coming forward to tell of filthy conditions in the Blakely, Georgia, processing plant. A company with a strong food safety culture would have encouraged those employees to speak up while they were employed, not because the manager or auditor or inspector was watching, but because it was the right thing to do.
The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
Here’s what consumers can do: at the local market, the stop-n-shop or the supermarket, ask someone, how do I know this food won’t make me barf? While such talk may be socially frowned upon, it’s time to put aside the niceties and bureau-speak and talk directly about safe food.
The more customers ask, the more food providers will be encouraged to market their food safety efforts.
Just like in 13th century France.
Doug Powell is an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University and the publisher of barfblog.com. Ben Chapman is a food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University.
A nation fed on local food?
The political power of the U.S. president just sets the stage for the presidential family to influence American culture. 
I think one of the most interesting galleries at the Eisenhower Museum--dedicated to our 34th president who hailed from Abilene, Kansas (about an hour from where I write)--is the gallery filled with outfits worn by his wife Mamie. Plaques near the outfits describe the impact the former First Lady had on women’s fashion during her husband’s presidency--like many First Ladies before and after her.
Purpose-minded people everywhere hope that their cause will be picked up by a member of the presidential family and instantly regarded as fashionable.
This, of course, includes proponents of local food.
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As reported by the New York Times,
“The nonprofit group Kitchen Gardeners International wants to inspire people to grow their own food in home gardens. More recently, its “Eat the View!” campaign has targeted the ultimate home garden — the White House lawn.”
According to the group’s website,
Kitchen Gardeners “are self-reliant seekers of "the Good Life" who have understood the central role that home-grown and home-cooked food plays in one's well-being.”
Across the pond, the Japan Times reports that, “public trust in food, packaging and labeling [is] 
crumbling across the nation,” and it’s leading consumers to “tak[e] a healthy interest in vegetables and other locally made produce.”
The article asserts,
“The vegetables and fruits are not necessarily cheap compared with supermarket prices, but people are apparently buying them because they feel safer eating products made by farmers who aren't afraid to be identified.”
It can’t hurt to know who supplies your food. However, without microbiological evidence of the safety of products and processes, there’s really no guarantee that food produced nearby—or even in your own yard—will be safer to eat than food that’s been in transit for a while.
Sick people just get the comfort of knowing who it was that let the poop get on their food.
N.Y. Times food safety editorial misses the point
The New York Times wrote in an editorial Saturday that the Food and Drug Administration is right to focus on imported foods and it is encouraging that the agency has already hired staff for new offices in China and India that will try to ensure the safety of food products before they are exported.
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Yes, imported foods can be problematic. But so can homegrown foods. The silence surrounding California lettuce as a possible source of E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks in Michigan and Ontario is beyond disturbing. And the more fingers are pointed to imports, the fewer questions are asked about domestic supplies.
The Times did get this part of their editorial right:
“The goal is to root out tainted food — whether produced abroad or in this country — at the earliest stages of the production and distribution process while being ready to respond quickly if pathogens start reaching consumers.”
They just couldn’t follow through with a meaningful statement and say, providing safe food actually depends on a culture of food safety from farm-to-fork, wherever that food comes from.
F.D.A. details its food safety campaign
Andrew Martin of the N.Y. Times has just reported on-line and in tomorrow’s print editions that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will release a report Monday that summarizes what officials call a “hugely ambitious” campaign to reshape its food inspection arm to root out safety hazards through things like sophisticated software and certifiers from the private sector.
“The goal is to radically redesign the process,” said Dr. David Acheson (right, exactly as shown), the agency’s associate commissioner for foods. For imported food, for instance, that means trying to detect tainted products during the production process rather than waiting until they enter the country.
“We cannot simply rely on picking the ball up at the point of entry,” Dr. Acheson said.
The changes were first outlined in the agency’s Food Protection Plan, which was released in November 2007. In June, the agency was criticized by the Government Accountability Office for failing to provide details on the costs or specific strategies for carrying out the plan. Some lawmakers have repeatedly called the agency’s food protection efforts inadequate.
Governments can only do so much, and auditors or other third-party certifiers have been sorta miserable – a lot of foodborne illness outbreaks are linked back to farms, processors and retailers that went through some form of certification. What’s needed are the proper mixture of carrots and sticks to foster a food safety culture at all points of the farm-to-fork food safety system. My friend, Frank, wrote a new book about food safety culture. But more about that tomorrow, or in a few days, depending on when this baby decides to arrive.
Cajuns fete carnival with pig slaughter
Associated Press reports that hundreds of people watched at least part of the ritual Saturday, though most have seen it before. The pig's skin was being shaved for cracklins, a Cajun snack, while the carcass was being prepared for transport to a butcher shop.
Every year, Catholic Cajuns in this community about 140 miles west of New Orleans hold ''La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns'' the weekend before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.Stephen Hardy, 38, who leads the group organizing the event, said,
"This is a celebration that was started out of necessity. Before refrigeration, they had to share the slaughter. One family could not consume a whole hog before it would go bad. They would have family and friends over to help, and everyone would leave with something."
With meat readily available at any grocery store today, the boucherie is simply a celebration of an old tradition, bringing family and friends together once a year for one last hoorah before the Catholic season of fasting begins.
Federal health code regulations prevent attendees from eating what is slaughtered during the celebration, Hardy said. So the butcher, after showing what is done traditionally, will take the carcass and byproducts to his shop to finish preparing the meat.
Language and cultural barriers in food safety communication
Crane writes about a city inspector relating an anecdote about cultural and language issues in a new restaurant:
After seeing some food-safety problems at Fiesta Time, a new Mexican restaurant in Clintonville, a city inspector realized he was facing a language barrier, came back to the office and talked to co-worker Vince Fasone.Fasone, known as "Vicente" to Spanish-speaking restaurant owners and workers, paid a visit to Fiesta Time. In Spanish, which he speaks fluently after four years living in Mexico City, he explained the violations.
Then he scheduled an early-morning visit last week for staff training.
Fiesta Time co-owner Wendy Hernandez said she and her partner, Jose Bravo, don't want to break rules and certainly don't want to find themselves before the Board of Health.
Sometimes, the instructions a manager gives employees sink in better once they're delivered by an outsider, especially one who speaks their language, Bravo said.
Working with food handlers of differing cultural and ethnic backgrounds can be a barrier in implementing food safety programs and practices. Not being able to relate what to do, how to do it and most importantly why to do it, makes food safety training ineffective. Understanding different cultures and being able to put food safety in context for a variety of food handlers can differentiate good communication from bad communication.
Many health departments across North America have inspectors and program coordinators who are adept at adjusting their activities to different cultures, but some I have talked to have related that it is sometimes difficult to convince health boards and local politicians of this need.
New report on safety of U.S. imports urges recall authority for FDA
The U.S. Interagency Working Group on Import Safety has issued its report to President Bush with the snappy title, Protecting American Consumers Every Step of the Way: A strategic framework for continual improvement in import safety.The report outlines an approach that can build upon existing efforts to improve the safety of imported products, while facilitating trade.
Approximately $2 trillion of imported products entered the United States economy last year and experts project that this amount will triple by 2015. … While we acknowledge it is not possible to eliminate all risk with imported and domestic products, being smarter requires us to find new ways to protect American consumers and continually improve the safety of our imports. We recommend working with the importing community to develop approaches that consider risks over the life cycle of an imported product, and that focus actions and resources to minimize the likelihood of unsafe products reaching U.S. consumers. …
Supporting this model are six building blocks: 1) Advance a common vision, 2) Increase accountability, enforcement and deterrence,
3) Focus on risks over the life cycle of an imported product, 4) Build interoperable systems, 5) Foster a culture of collaboration, and 6) Promote technological innovation and new science.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Food and Drug Administration would be granted power to require manufacturers and importers of "high risk" products to take steps to prevent contamination and other problems. The FDA could require producers and importers of such goods to certify they comply with FDA standards. The FDA could bar imports if it is given no access or only limited access to production records. The agency would also be able to mandate recalls on tainted products, something it can't do now.
At least the panel got this bit right:
"Americans benefit from one of the safest food supplies and among the highest standards of consumer protection in the world. Our task is to build on this solid foundation by identifying actions for both the public and private sectors that will help our import safety system continually improve and adapt to a rapidly growing and changing global economy."
Not the safest, which is difficult to substantiate, but one of the safest.
There's no real surprises in the report, it all sounds good, but really, government is limited in what it can do. And I'm not sure what they mean by focusing on high-risk products. Anything can be high-risk depending on how it was produced -- pot pies, peanut butter and pepperoni come to mind. And those were all foodborne illness outbreaks associated with domestic products. Food from around the corner or around the globe has the potential to be contaminated with dangerous microorganisms. Focusing on imports may detract from efforts at home. A strong food safety culture may translate to fewer sick people.
Will more inspectors make food safer?
No. An Associated Press story last night continues the fascination with all things political and the on-going, bureaucratic discussion about whether a single food inspection agency will improve food safety.
The story notes that in the two ConAgra contamination cases, it turns out that an FDA inspector hadn't been to the company's peanut butter plant in Georgia for two years before the recall, while a USDA inspector visits the Missouri pot pie plant daily.
If that's the case, then maybe inspectors are the wrong focus here.
Bill Marler got it right yesterday when he wrote about the same AP story that,
Frankly, I am not sure a single agency, or the government for that matter (remember how well it did in Hurricane Katrina), will solve the problem of companies selling poisoned products to customers. Perhaps when farmers, ranchers, shippers, middlemen of all sorts, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and restaurants all recall that customers could be their kid, they would put safety before profits.
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I expressed a similar notion this morning in the Baltimore Sun. "You can't inspect your way to a safe food supply," said Douglas Powell, scientific director at Kansas State University's International Food Safety Network. "You can't have an inspector on every site 24/7 to inspect every piece of food that goes to market. You have to create a culture where everyone from the farm to the processing facility, people at restaurants, consumers at home are more in tune with the culture of food safety. People need to get really religious about this. Food safety is everyone's responsibility."
How best to develop a food safety culture is where we're focusing much of our research activity.
It's certainly more than telling people,
"We have the safest food supply in the world,"
as Mindy Brashears, director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University, did in the same Baltimore Sun story.
Yum! A culture of food safety?
"
the key to growing is to be an eager learner. One cutting-edge difference in the best leaders I’ve been around is that they truly are avid learners."Novak also says that, "There’s no way you can achieve success without knowing your stuff."
Dude, you serve food in 5,000 KFCs, 5,000 Taco Bells and 7,000 Pizza Huts in the U.S.. You also stress the Yum culture. When you were asked, What can kill a culture? you responded,
"It’s people saying one thing and doing something different. That’s what’s death."
Especially when it comes to food safety. Taco Bell's performance in the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak last fall involving lettuce -- no, it wasn't the green onions -- raises questions about how well Taco Bell knew their food safety stuff, and restaurant inspection results like this Pizza Hut in Witchita, KS, wonder how much people are saying one thing and doing another.
Novak says,
"The biggest thing I think we did in making our company come alive was to train people on our How We Work Together Leadership Principles [customer focus, belief in people, recognition, coaching and support, accountability, excellence, positive energy and teamwork]. We developed a comprehensive training program that we rolled out around the world. We put process and discipline around culture."
How about food safety culture?
You Buy -- You Kill -- You Dress -- You Take Home
Amy has survival skills. She knows how to field-dress animals. And has pretty good bowstaff skills.At Tom Prince's farm 20 miles west of Indianapolis, a Muslim man kneels over a goat, says a brief prayer, then cuts the animal's throat. It's hard to imagine a greater cultural mishmash than the early morning gatherings that take place here every Friday and Saturday.
Tim Evans, who reports for The Indianapolis Star, writes in USA Today this morning that since 1999, Prince has operated a self-service slaughterhouse that specializes in providing goat meat to the Indianapolis area's growing international community. His card reads "You Buy — You Kill — You Dress — You Take Home," and business is booming. Prince also sells lamb and sheep, but goats are the big seller.
Prince, 80, runs the facility from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Friday and Saturday, selling an average of about 50 goats per weekend. In the weeks before Muslim and other religious holidays, he says, sales often double.
The story provides an excellent overview of several facets of the intersection between food, language and culture, something we at iFSN are beginning to explore in a more structured manner (really, I'm getting' some culture from Amy the French professor and outdoor survivalist).
Prince's slow Southern drawl stands out from the languages spoken by customers who have found their way to Central Indiana from Morocco, Yemen, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Mexico and other places around the globe where goat is a dietary staple.
For some, butchering their own meat helps maintain a link to cultures they've left behind in Africa, Central America and the Middle East. Others, including the large number of Muslims who buy from Prince, prefer to kill and butcher the animals themselves to ensure food preparation standards of their faith are followed.
Prince said he doesn't know a lot about Islam, but he is savvy enough as a businessman to make sure the slaughterhouse meets their needs — including situating the killing table so it faces east toward Mecca.
Goats, like all ruminants, are natural reservoirs for E. coli O157:H7. So be clean, be safe, unlike the employees of the Captains Galley's restaurant in China Grove, N.C., who earlier this year slaughtered a goat after hours, leading to an O157 outbreak that sickened 21 and killed an 86-year-old. Safety and culture can go together.
Russell, tell me a story
Spent yesterday driving to Oklahoma City and back to speak at the Food Industry Trends conference put on by Oklahoma State University. At one point, our contractor, Russell, called to review some plans and I asked him to tell me a story to pass the time. He did.Rod Walton reports in the Tulsa World this morning that I, Kansas State University professor Douglas Powell, told the meeting that,
"You've still got people out there who have no clue. It's mind-numbing."
The context of that quote is I was talking about the butcher using the same vac-pac for raw and cooked product which led to the death of 5-year-old Mason Jones in Wales.
Armia Tawadrous, a regulatory executive for the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was quoted as telling the group that,
"We have succeeded a great deal. We still have a long way to go. … You cannot run an unclean operation and expect to get away with it."
The story says that Joseph Baca, compliance director for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, was cited as providing an overview of the 2006 spinach E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, adding, "We did have a rapid response."
The story also says that Powell is head of the International Food Safety Network, which combines scientific information and, sometimes, celebrity reports to inform its audience about foodborne illnesses. For instance, his Web site has linked stories about famous people -- from Beyonce Knowles to My Chemical Romance -- getting food poisoning. Those links drive up the number of hits to Powell's food safety web sites.
Powell is passionate about reaching the MTV generation and thinks that way is better than government press releases and old-fashioned posters about washing hands, adding, "If you want to get a kid's attention, you have to put it on Facebook. They're likely the ones who are going to make your lunch."
Casey Wilkinson, guest barfblogger: Poop on your shoes...
I clicked on the headline and waited for the story to appear. I read in horror as each word confirmed my deepest fears: the entire story was absolutely true.
Apparently the worker at a Great China Buffet restaurant was using a very innovative technique to press garlic cloves: stomping them with his boots in a back alley. A passerby had noted him there with a horror similar to my own and snapped a photo.
The Rockland County Health Department was notified and quickly came for an inspection. The worker was fired for his act, and the restaurant will be re-inspected soon.
I wish I could rest easy now, but I’m afraid there may be more out there just like him: full of ignorance and disregard for the safety of our food.
Don’t eat poop, people: Wash your hands. And don’t stomp the garlic.
The devil wears Prada?
Food safety lawsuits continue to pile up, at home and abroad.In Jordan, the family of a man who died after falling ill from eating a shawarma in a restaurant in Jordan has filed lawsuits against the restaurant’s owner and a hospital doctor who dealt with him before his death.
Bilal Jarwan, 23, was one of hundred of people struck down with salmonella poisoning after eating chicken shawarmas from a restaurant in the Baqaa refugee camp near Amman.
Father Abu Ramzi was quoted as telling newspaper The Jordan Times,
"The Jordanian judicial system is known for its integrity and we trust it will hold to account whoever was responsible for the death of my son."
Over two hundred cases of food poisoning were reported in the salmonella outbreak, leading the Jordanian government to ban shawarmas across the kingdom. The restaurant from where the outbreak originated, located around 27 kilometres northwest of Jordan’s capital, has now been closed and its owner and staff arrested. The owner is facing up to three years in prison and a fine.
Hospital response
In Chicago, Joel Parker is suing Pars Cove Persian Cuisine after his 16-year-old son ate hummus alleged to be contaminated with salmonella at the Taste of Chicago event.
According to the Chicago Health Department, as of last week, 790 people claimed they got salmonella after consuming food bought from the Pars Cove booth. Following laboratory testing, 182 of those cases were confirmed. In the latest news release from the health department, 38 people are known to have been hospitalized.
Love them or hate them, lawsuits seem to be a tool to hold food producers, marketers and retailers accountable, and keeps food safety stories in the news, perhaps raising the overall level of awareness and contributing to a culture that values microbiologically safe food.
Food miles are fashionable; where's the safety?
Trying to include considerations of microbial food safety -- the things that make people barf -- when encountering the dogma of fervent foodies is an occupational hazard. Over the years I've been slandered, threatened with lawsuits and harm to my person. Taking on the natural-organic-local cabal -- including the Food Network which didn't like our analysis of food safety errors on cooking shows -- can be challenging.So James E. McWilliams should be prepared for lively correspondence. McWilliams, the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America” and a contributing writer for The Texas Observer, writes in a N.Y. Times op-ed this morning that reducing food miles — how far food has traveled before you buy it — is not necessarily better for the environment.
"There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption."
"As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must … be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness."
Brilliant. But once again, the notion of microbiological safety is absent from the discussion. How about sourcing food from the place that can yield the fewest number of sick people?
