Food Poisoning, Foodborne Illness Information and Research : International Food Safety Network : BarfBlog

The editor of Nieman Watch at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University tracked me down in Florida a couple of weeks ago -- it's not hard, I'm always plugged in, zing -- and asked me to pen the following, which he greatly improved with some editing. Below, Powell's take on the top-5 food-safety questions journalists should be asking.

Food safety is not a trivial issue. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that up to 30 per cent of individuals in developed countries acquire illnesses from the food and water they consume annually. Active disease surveillance by U.S., Canadian and Australian authorities suggests this estimate is accurate.

WHO has identified five factors of food handling that contribute to these illnesses: improper cooking procedures; temperature abuse during storage; lack of hygiene and sanitation by food handlers; cross-contamination between raw and fresh ready-to-eat foods; and acquiring food from unsafe sources.

There has been some excellent media coverage of microbial food safety issues since the 1993 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to Jack-in-the-Box that killed four and sickened over 600; there has also been some terribly misleading coverage.
Reporters interested in covering this important story should be asking these five questions:

1. Will more government involvement mean fewer sick people?

While the Internet and the mainstream media were all excited about the potential passage of new food safety legislation by the U.S. House in early August -- it passed -- I was hanging out with some food safety dudes at Publix supermarkets HQ in Lakeland, Florida. And I saw far more in Lakeland that would impact daily food safety than anything the politicians, bureaucrats and hangers-on were talking about.

When it comes to the safety of the food supply, I generally ignore the chatter from Washington, as well as the Internet commentaries and conspiracy theories. If a legislative proposal does emerge, such as the creation of a single food inspection agency, or the bill that passed the House – and just the House –  I ask, Will it actually make food safer? Will fewer people get sick?

As the Government Accountability Office pointed out in a report a year ago, “The burden for food safety in most … countries lies primarily with food producers, rather than with inspectors, although inspectors play an active role in overseeing compliance. This principle applies to both domestic and imported products.”

Publix, with over 1,000 supermarkets, its own processing plants, and thousands of food products moving through its shelves, can’t afford the luxury of chatter. After a  visit to headquarters in Lakeland, Fla., I went to the local Publix in St. Petersburg Beach to verify what I’d heard at HQ. Sure, the bosses know food safety, but do the front-line staff?

I ordered some shaved smoked turkey breast from the deli, and the sealable bag the meat was delivered in bore the following message:

“The Publix Deli is committed to the highest quality fresh cold cuts & cheeses; Therefore we recommend all cold cuts are best if used within three days of purchase; And all cheese items are best if used within four days of purchase.”

This was the first time I’d seen a retailer provide information to consumers on the accurate shelf-life of sliced deli meats. It didn’t require Congressional hearings; it didn’t require some hopelessly-flawed consumer education campaign; it required the company’s food safety officials to say, this is important, let’s do it.

Same thing with fresh fruits and vegetables -- the leading cause of foodborne illness in the U.S. for the past decade.

Late last month, U.S. regulators announced plans to strengthen safety protocols for fresh fruits and vegetables -- except those plans are simply extensions of plans published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1998. Plans and guidelines don’t make food safe: people do.

It’s nice that food safety is once again a priority in Washington and that politicians are trying to set a tone. But chatting doesn’t mean fewer sick people -- actions do.

Journalists can hold politicians, producers and industry accountable. There are lots of plans and proposals, but will any of them translate into fewer sick people?

2. Is local/natural/sustainable/organic/raw food really any better than other types of food?

A U.S. government extension agent with a PhD and at a prominent university e-mailed the other day to ask if I had any data on foodborne illness from farmers’ markets because she was preparing for a presentation and was, “trying to make the case that there are very few cases of foodborne illness from local foods relative to our globally based food system.”

But the idea that food grown and consumed locally is somehow safer than other food, either because it contacts fewer hands or any outbreaks would be contained, is the product of wishful thinking.

Barry Estabrook of Gourmet magazine recently invoked the local-is-pure fantasy, writing: “There is no doubt that our food-safety system is broken. But with the vast majority of disease outbreaks coming from industrial-scale operations, legislators should have fixed the problems there instead of targeting small, local businesses that were never part of the problem in the first place.”

But whenever you hear someone say there’s “no doubt” in this field, you should be filled with doubt. Foodborne illnesses are vastly underreported. Someone has to get sick enough to go to a doctor, the doctor has to be bright enough to order the right test, the state has to have the known foodborne illnesses listed as reportable diseases, and so on. For every known case of foodborne illness, there are an estimated 10 to 300 other cases, depending on the severity of the bug. Most foodborne illness is never detected. It’s almost never the last meal someone ate, or whatever other mythologies are out there. A stool sample linked with some epidemiology or food testing is required to make associations with specific foods.

Maybe the vast majority of foodborne outbreaks come from industrial-scale operations because the vast majority of food and meals is consumed from industrial-scale operations. To accurately compare local and other food, a database would have to somehow be constructed so that a comparison of illnesses on a per capita meal or even ingredient basis could be made.

Then there are the whoppers that are repeated daily, somewhere, like this one by raw milk advocate Sally Fallon, who said, “Raw milk is like a magic food for children. … Without the green grass, you're missing a lot of vitamins. Also, it's much safer. When cows are eating green grass, you don't find pathogens in their milk.”

With such statements, public advocacy becomes public health risk.

The natural reservoir for E. coli O157:H7 and other verotoxigenic E. coli is the intestines of all ruminants, including cattle -- grass or grain-fed -- sheep, goats, deer and the like. The final report of the fall 2006 spinach outbreak identifies nearby grass-fed beef cattle as the likely source of the E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 200 and killed four.

A table of raw dairy outbreaks is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/articles/384/RawMilkOutbreakTable.pdf. Kids are often the ones that get sick.

And be wary of claims that food is local.

3. Is that food safety advice really accurate?

Everyone eats, so everyone’s an expert when it comes to food. Food, Inc. may be a popular movie among the foodies, but has some terrible food safety advice. Microorganisms that make people sick exist in whatever kind of food production and distribution system we smart humans come up with. But government, industry and academic advice can often be of limited use -- or wrong. Do people really need to wash their hands for 20 seconds -- or will 10 seconds suffice? It will.  Does the water have to be warm? No. Are paper towels better than blow driers at removing pathogens? Yes, it’s the friction that counts. Food safety types argue about these things all the time. If someone says, “food safety is simple, just follow this advice,” don’t believe it. Question everything.

4. With all of the attention, resources and talk, why hasn't there been a reduction in the estimated incidence of foodborne illnesses in the past five years?

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported in April 2008 that foodborne illness remains a significant public health issue in the U.S., with Salmonella infections increasingly problematic: “Although significant declines in the incidence of certain foodborne pathogens have occurred since 1996, these declines all occurred before 2004,” the CDC reported.

“Outbreaks caused by contaminated peanut butter, frozen pot pies, and a puffed vegetable snack in 2007 underscore the need to prevent contamination of commercially produced products. The outbreak associated with turtle exposure highlights the importance of animals as a nonfood source of human infections. To reduce the incidence of Salmonella infections, concerted efforts are needed throughout the food supply chain, from farm to processing plant to kitchen.”

The CDC data show existing efforts to reduce foodborne illness have stalled. Signs stating “Employees must wash hands” may not be the most effective way to compel good food safety behavior. New messages using new media should be explored to really create a culture that values microbiologically safe food.

5. Why don’t producers, processors, and retailers market microbial food safety directly to consumers?

There’s lots of marketing of food safety, but it is done indirectly. One of the reasons people buy organic/natural/local/whatever is they perceive such food to be safer -- in the absence of any microbiological data. Grocery stores say all food is safe, yet the weekly outbreaks of foodborne illness -- the ones that consumers hear about -- suggest otherwise. The best farms, processors, retailers and restaurants should brag about their microbial food safety efforts and accomplishments. With so many sick people each year, there’s an attentive audience out there.

Dr. Douglas Powell is an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University. He also runs barfblog.com, a blog about food safety.
 

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When to go public remains a difficult question for public health types, but us mere mortals were offered a glimpse yesterday.

"To wait until one has evidence beyond doubt . . . is often too late to protect the public," McKeown said.

In front of a parliamentary subcommittee Wednesday, the medical health officers for Ontario and the City of Toronto chastised the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for its handling of last summer's listeriosis outbreak.

"This was a national outbreak, but it wasn't clear that the national public health dofficer had a mandate for leadership at the federal level," Dr. David Williams, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, told the committee.

Williams, along with Dr. David McKeown, Toronto Public Health medical officer, testified at a special parliamentary probing the state of food safety in Canada.

The committee was called after people consumed contaminated meat last summer from a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto, resulting in the death of 22 Canadians.

That death toll was exacerbated by "a lack of effective communication" among health agencies, Williams said, along with what the health officers suggest are differences in reporting procedures between the federal health authorities, and their local and provincial counterparts.

Public health officials should act when there are "reasonable and probable grounds to believe food products poses a health hazard," McKeown explained, adding this "standard" is included in Ontario's public health legislation. But the CFIA generally waited for "conclusive evidence" a specific product is responsible for documented human illness before taking action, he said.

So, all these people died, the president of Maple Leaf thinks he's a food safety hero cause he's learned so much about listeria, and the food safety types at various levels are still talking bullshit.

The locals were left hanging by the omnipotence of the single food inspection agency.
 

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Two weeks ago, the U.S. Grocery Manufacturers Association came out with a whopper that no one seems to have noticed.

In a press release intended to highlight private sector initiatives to bolster food safety – which I’m all for, they make the profit, they should shoulder the burden when they make their customers barf – GMA said,

“Ultimately, wider use of third party certification/audits will reduce the risk of food-borne illnesses.”

There is absolutely no evidence to support that statement.

In case there is some confusion, here is the statement in full:

Third party audits are an important part of America’s food safety net.  To ensure rigor and integrity in third party certification, policymakers and industry leaders should encourage the engagement of auditors employed by certification bodies accredited to international standards by recognized organizations such as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). … By increasing the number of well-qualified auditors and developing universal food safety auditing criteria, industry leaders and policymakers will ensure that auditors are competent to review a particular facility, discourage duplicative audits, reduce auditing costs, and encourage wider use of third party certification/audits throughout the food industry. Ultimately, wider use of third party certification/audits will reduce the risk of food-borne illnesses.

I’ve been hearing such statements for 15 years, and while it sounds good, I’ve seen little evidence to back such proclamations. As I’ve written before,

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.

If someone barfs, they’re going to go after the biggest name they can find, whether it’s a retailer or a processor. So protect that brand. Have your own people and some institutional expertise to assess food safety risks. And avoid unsubstantiated statements.
 

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At what point did the language of sustainability get co-opted by organo-local business types?

I ride my bike around town (which is a health hazard in Manhattan), we had a fabulous salad of greens grown in our own garden last night for dinner along with the tuna steak (which wasn’t grown in Kansas), yet when I speak at a local panel or read something, it’s all these folks falling over themselves to be declared green.

Chipotle Mexican Grill will expand its local produce program this summer, purchasing at least 35 percent of at least one bulk produce item in all of its restaurants from local farmers when it is seasonally available. This represents a 10 percent increase over last year's program, the first of its kind for any national restaurant chain.

"Our commitment to cooking and preparing food with more sustainable ingredients has always been about doing the right thing; the right thing for better tasting food, the right thing for the environment, and the right thing for farmers," says Steve Ells, founder, chairman, and co-CEO of Chipotle.

As a lowly consumer, I can only hope that Chipotle holds its local suppliers to some sort of microbiological standards for food safety – maybe they cook the poop out of everything.

I don’t want to hear about how sustainable it is – unless Chipotle or anyone else is going to provide data on water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and microbiological loads on local produce versus the produce provided by the big ‘ole big guys. Do farmers get pissed that anyone thinks they can grow food to feed a bunch of people? Or do they just smirk, bemused?

Once again, Chipotle is the douchebag of fast food.

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Television’s The Simpson’s on Sunday began with a nice riff about foodborne illness loosely based on the Peanut Corporation of America Salmonella-fest, then quickly moved on to immigration and shared cultural values.

There was lots of aquavit.

I was first exposed to aquavit as a 16-year-old when I spent my first of five summers as a carpenter’s helper for two Danish homebuilders in Brantford, Ontario. I learned how to hammer nails efficiently using my 20-ounce Estwing, and I learned the Danish custom of drinking Aalborg aquavit – Danish schnapps, 45 per cent alcohol, I prefer the dill, above, right, over the caraway flavor – while eating pickled herring, and liver pate and beet open-face sandwiches.

Homer says, Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Amy and I still indulge occasionally, especially during losing Kansas State football games.

Ben Chapman first started working in my lab in the summer of 2000. I didn’t know he existed until I invited him and the other lab-types over to the house in September. I brought out the Danish schnapps, and Chapman, eager to make an impression, decided to go drink-for-drink with me. About an hour later, he vomited in my ex’s rose bush.

But, no shame. Homer got hammered by the Norwegians and their aquavit (see the second video below, reminds me of Ben), my friend John Kierkegaard, one of the Danish builders, could drink me under the table.
 

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I don’t really know Mike Doyle, other than the brief chats we have at meetings where our paths cross a couple of times a year and talk about our kids’ hockey-playing ambitions, or the time Amy and I ran into Mike and his wife at the local Orlando supermarket in 2006 cause I guess we were all too cheap to buy hotel food and went to stock up.

I have no idea if Doyle, the Director of the Center For Food Safety at the University of Georgia, is even interested in the job of director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (although I know others who have had the job and it’s not a dream posting) but his name is getting slogged through the mud that is the Intertubes in a manner that does nothing but confirm that journalism shouldn’t be dead just yet. Sometimes it’s important to check things.

Obama Foodorama, a blog apparently set up to fascinate on all things foodie about the new President, says that,

“Dr. Mike Doyle is Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack's leading contender to head USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. … Those in the know on the pick say the choice of Doyle is a step backward for Sec. Vilsack, who has so far put together a swell team at USDA. … The word "shill" has been used frequently in e mails about Doyle.”

If shill means talking straight about microbial food safety, sign me up.

“How invested is Doyle in the economics of food safety? He actually holds patents on a number of microbiological solutions for disease outbreaks.”

Uhm, professors are supposed to get outside funding. And patents. And speak their mind in a way that can be validated. Doyle has published about 500 peer-reviewed journal articles, which is 500 more than any of his critics

I don’t really know the dude, but I know Doyle’s consistent on food safety.
 

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Megan K. Kelly-Hardigree, soon-to-be handwashing guru and latest barfblogger (right, pretty much exactly as shown), writes:

After being rightfully fired from a Dominos Pizza in North Carolina, Kristy Hammonds apologized to the public on ABC's Good Morning America this morning. Hammonds admits that the video she and co-worker, Michael Setzer, posted was meant to be a joke. And it was hilarious, what with the disgusting video of cheese in the nose and wiping of the rear with a sponge meant for cleaning pizza pans.

Unfortunately for Kristy and her two kids, the joke's on her.  She is having a hard time (along with thousands of other non-pranking Americans) finding a job.  Ironically, her applications are being rejected from other fast-food restaurants like McDonalds and Taco Bell.

I believe this is called karma. Or a bad Alanis Morissette song. She's Canadian even.
 

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Elizabeth Weise of USA Today once again goes to the food safety frontlines to report about the mobile testing laboratory being used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this time at the border crossing between Mexico and Nogales, Arizona.

Seventy percent of the fruits and vegetables Americans consume in winter are imported from Mexico, a total of 7 billion pounds, says Allison Moore, communications director for the Nogales-based Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. About half comes through Nogales.

The road that leads to the border begins to fill with trucks carrying fruits, vegetables and manufactured goods at 6:30 a.m. By noon there can be a line of trucks up to 7 miles long snaking through the low desert hills waiting to make the crossing (right ,photo from USA Today).

The lab represents a new era for the agency in keeping the food supply safe, says Michael Chappell, FDA acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. It is a tool that can be suited up and rolled out to anyplace in the country facing the danger of contaminated food, whether at the hand of terrorists or Mother Nature.

In the three weeks the trailers were based in Nogales before heading to their next assignment, the FDA estimates that direct contact with the truckers shaved tens of thousands of dollars in testing costs and spoiled produce. The mobile unit also may help repair the agency's reputation, which has been battered by public frustration with the contamination of such popular foods as peanuts and spinach.

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Celebrity blog TMZ reports that celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck is being sued over a restaurant bathroom.

A woman claims she just wanted to take care of some toilet business during a lunch at Puck's most famous Beverly Hills restaurant, Spago back in 2007. But according to the lawsuit, filed in L.A. County Superior Court, the bathroom floor was covered in "standing pools of urine and feces" -- and the only usable toilet didn't have a lock on the door.

The woman also claims she had to use one of her hands to hold the door closed while she took care of business on the throne. But mid-squat, with her hand stuck firmly on the handle, another woman allegedly yanked the door open causing Linden to fall "face-first onto the tile floor."

Reps for Spago claim the woman is completely full of crap when it comes to the cleanliness of their bathrooms -- "In our 27 years of business we've never had an issue close to this ... that portion of the claim is totally without merit."

Wolfgang had some hepatitis A problems back in 2007.

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He may ooze empathy and smooth, but Canadian politicians on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food’s Subcommittee on Food Safety beware: Michael McCain (below, not exactly as shown) really isn’t that into you.

Sure he got dressed up for the committee appearance last night, prefaced it with a little foreplay at a luncheon for business types, and said I’m sorry, it was all me, but when a guy says that, he really means, it’s all you.

McCain just wants to get into your pants, or pants pockets, in the form of public tax dollars for inspections to ensure a future food safety façade so the profits at Maple Leaf Foods won’t be further inconvenienced by death and illness from deli meats.

McCain of Maple Leaf Foods has become the latest corporate type to ask for government help in the form of increased inspection. The dude from Kellogg’s did the same thing in the U.S., as did the growers of lettuce and spinach in California, and tomatoes in Florida. They all said the same thing: we can’t figure out how to provide a safe product while sucking in profits, so government, please, do it for us (that way, when there is an outbreak, we can at least say we met enhanced government standards). If anyone wants to know why government at best sets a minimal standard, read the testimony of Carole Swan, President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Dr. Brian Evans, Executive Vice-President of CFIA.

All of this is tragically embarrassing.

And this ain’t rocket surgery.

Opposition MPs praised McCain for taking responsibility for the tragedy and questioned whether the government should do more to accept part of the blame.

No. Stop being taken in by the fabulously handsome McCain. The best food producers and processors will go far beyond government standards to provide a safe product; they make the profit; they should make it safe. They should brag about it.

McCain told business leaders earlier on Monday, perhaps after a lunch of liquor and delicious deli meats, that the food industry "has to raise its game" because it doesn't take food safety seriously enough.

“This industry has to raise its game. It has to take food safety more seriously, it has to invest more in food safety, and it has to improve its record of delivering safe food to consumers."

Wow. Sixteen years after Jack-in-the-Box and McCain and his $5.5 billion a year company discovers food safety after killing 21 people. He also felt it necessary to lecture parliamentarians and others that ‘poke and sniff’ methods of inspection were outdated. That rhetoric is at least 20-30 years outdated.

You know (a listener said my overuse of ‘you know’ on a Baltimore phone-in show yesterday was appalling and that as a professor lecturing to ‘glasses’ I should know better; I told him I had a voice for print and he should watch his spelling) Amy and I need people to help out with baby Sorenne. I’m not sure we need a village, but babysitters and friends are handy a few hours a week so we can slog through some work. Or shower. Sorenne is 4-months-old.

I’m somewhat baffled, however, when the so-called leaders of multi-billion dollar corporations or producer groups ask for babysitters in the form of government inspectors. Are your managers 4-month-olds that need someone to play ga-ga with? Help to get in their walker?

Canadian parliamentarians, stop being swooned by this guy. NDP MP Malcolm Allen said, “The only way you can get trust back with the public is through third-party verification.”

Apparently the star-struck Mr. Allen, thinking he was asking a tough question, showed himself as the star-struck girlfriend, who knows nothing about food safety, like the shitfest of third-party (non)verification at the Peanut Corporation of America plant which led to nine dead and 600 sick from Salmonella.

Here’s what is appalling about all this: no one, or at least me, expects anything but the bare minimum from government. The CFIA types can say they’re sorry all day, they’ll still have jobs and still go off for six-months of French lessons to move up in the Canadian government bureaucracy.

Michael McCain (above, exactly as shown), who runs that $5.5. billion a year company manufacturing products identified for decades at high risk of listeria, could stick with, yeah, we screwed up, we should have learned from all these past listeria outbreaks, we should have paid attention to the positive test results sitting in our filing cabinets, we’re sorry.

As Steve Martin once said, ‘But Noooooooooooo.’

Instead, McCain makes a big deal out of hiring a food safety dude after the fact, and lectures the rest of the industry and the country on what should be done; instead it’s like dating the worst kind of reformed smoker or born-again addict preaching to everyone else: forget minimal government regulations, forget the preaching, sell safe food. Listeria didn’t just come along 10, 20, 30 years ago, or yesterday, as you would have Canadians believe.

McCain, take care of your own shop, the one that happily makes money. Then maybe we can talk about another date.

Until then, I’m just not that into you.

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Domino’s Pizza posted a youtube response last night and has moved quickly to douse the Internet-fanned yuckiness of poop in its pizza.

But when Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre told USA Today today the company is considering banning video cameras in stores, I wonder if they actually understand this social networking stuff – and that anyone can have a video camera on their cell phone.

The USA Today piece explains that two Domino’s employees in Conover, N.C. — fired and facing charges — posted a video on YouTube on Monday that shows one of them doing gross things to a Domino's sub sandwich he is making, such as sticking cheese pieces up his nose and passing gas on the salami.

Although Domino's is getting fairly high marks from social-networking and crisis-management types about its response, McIntyre told the N.Y. Times today that company executives initially decided not to respond aggressively, hoping the controversy would quiet down.

Scott Hoffman, the chief marketing officer of the social-media marketing firm Lotame, said in social media, “if you think it’s not going to spread, that’s when it gets bigger.”

That’s actually traditional media 101, but sure, dress it up with terms like new and social media.
 
By Wednesday afternoon, Domino’s had created a Twitter account, @dpzinfo, to address the comments, and it had presented its chief executive in a video on YouTube by evening (see below).

Yet more than one commentator has said the video may make things worse.

Domino’s CEO Patrick Doyle fails to look into the camera. Instead his eyes peer at 45 degrees, presumably in the direction of a script. The effect is not reassuring. What is even more unfortunate for Domino's is that the posting of the video apology has caused even more YouTube commentary about the company, some of it extremely unflattering.

However, marketers are getting an instant lesson in the dangers of an online world where just about anyone with a video camera and a grudge can bring a company to its knees with lightning speed.

Here are key things experts say marketers can do to quickly catch and respond effectively to similar social-networking attacks:

• monitor social media;

• respond quickly;

• respond at the flashpoint (Domino's first responded on consumer affairs blog The Consumerist, whose readers helped track down the store and employees who made the video);

• educate workers about social media;

• foster a positive culture; and,

• set clear guidelines.

We covered many of the same points in our Food Technology paper about food safety blogging that appeared earlier this year.

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Pistachio growers probably won’t agree, but the New York Times says in an editorial this morning that  the recent blanket warning from the Food and Drug Administration about salmonella in pistachios was one of the most encouraging events in years and sent a powerful signal to those in the food business that the F.D.A. planned to focus more urgently on the safety of consumers.

The editorial concludes that even though the Obama F.D.A. appears to be doing a better job, Congress needs to beef up the agency’s staff and broaden its recall authority. Longer term, Congress and the White House need to keep promises to take a deeper look at food safety. It is time to think seriously about establishing one federal agency to coordinate and enforce food-safety regulations — and give consumers the protections they need and deserve.
 

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An Algerian-born chemist who contaminated food and wine in Gloucestershire supermarkets with his own urine and faeces has been sent to prison for nine years.

The BBC reports that Sahnoun Daifallah, 42, of Bibury Road, Gloucester, (right, sorta as shown from the BBC) was found guilty of four counts of contaminating goods at four businesses in May 2008.

The court heard shoppers and staff in both stores saw Daifallah with a black laptop computer with a vapour coming from the bag being sprayed on the shelves.

The cost of damaged products and lost business due to resulting store closures was estimated at £700,000.
 

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Authorities are investigating what made more than 70 people attending a Passover event in Franconia, N.H., ill after eating at a potluck event.

State health officials said 150 people were attending the event when the illness broke out Saturday night, WMUR-TV of Manchester, N.H., reported Monday.

The New Hampshire Health and Human Services Public Health Lab was conducting tests to determine if the illness was salmonella, the report said.
 

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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.’
 

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After the warm-up gig in Raleigh, three days of golf with some of the Guelph mafia in North Carolina, a night at Hilton Head, S.C. and hanging on the beach in Ponte Vedra, Florida, the tour goes into rock mode tomorrow.

I may suck at golf, but I am entertaining. Unfortunately, golf is not why I got invited to the Sawgrass Marriott at the Tournament Player’s Club in Ponte Vedra. Apparently it has something to do with food safety, so I’ll try to at least be entertaining.
 

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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.
 

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Environmental health officials found 190 items of "mouldy, slimy, putrescent or expired foodstuffs" and immediately closed the Rose and Crown pub in Thaxted, Essex, U.K. after a surprise inspection on Dec. 9, 2008.

Work surfaces and utensils were smothered in thick grease, floors littered with rotting detritus and fridges covered in mould and dozens of dirty food containers (right, photo from The Telegraph).

The kitchen did not even have any running hot running water meaning staff could not wash up or clean their hands properly.

Inspectors found the owner was still preparing food in the rancid conditions.

The owner of the pub, Nicholas Marchetto, pleaded guilty to 23 food and hygiene offences at Harlow Magistrates' Court.

He was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay another £1,000 towards the council's costs.
 

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Daughter Courtlynn spent her spring break with daughter Sorenne in Manhattan (Kansas).

Which is the only lede I got into foodborne illness, conspiracies and shameless exploitation of children.

The conclusion is this: Michelle Obama should use the White House garden to endorse microbiologically safe food, from around the corner or around the globe.

Phillip Brasher wrote in The Des Moines Register yesterday,

“In recent years, the federal government and the food industry have taken some significant steps to improve the safety of fresh produce. Those measures include stringent inspection standards for farms that supply schools and supermarket chains. The standards sometime restrict the use of compost and manure to fertilize crops and restrict how close cattle can be to fields.”

Stringent standards is not the descriptor to be used in the wake of the Peanut Corporation of America-AIB auditing fiasco. Worse, associations representing small-scale farmers have taken to the Intertubes to whine and conspiratorize about the end of family farming; that somehow standards for producing safe produce shouldn’t apply to small farms, or my garden.

The group that keeps getting cited for its threatening analysis of proposed food safety legislation is the ponderous Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which is run by the folks pushing raw milk. And some of those folks have, uh, interpretations of food safety that are not only wrong but dangerous to public health. Epidemiology does work, but not everyone likes the results.

Back to my kids. Or Mason Jones, the five-year-old who died in the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in Wales. Or Barack’s kids, since he cited them in a food safety chat. The food safety goal, for me, is to have fewer people barfing and dying. There is some microbiology and food science available to help achieve that goal. There is a lot of speculation, fairytales and unknowns about the providence of nature and immunology which can get in the way of that goal.

Michelle Obama, you are embracing local and fresh and natural foods and whatever that means. As I asked March 11, 2009, use the White House bully garden to embrace microbiologically safe food.

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When I was about 13-year-old, my attempts at writing included starting sentences with, “Well, …”

At some point I received some direction from knowledgeable editors, and I read Strunk and White, The Elements of Style.

Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter (Kern County), the majority leader in the California state Senate wrote in the The San Francisco Chronicle yesterday that,

“Short of raising our own vegetables and meats, a worthy but impractical goal in a nation now more urban than rural, how can each of us ensure that what we eat is not only nutritious but safe?

"Well, we can begin by adopting the mantra of the Slow Food movement and make a habit of buying from our local farmers. … To make our food safer, we need to begin with the soil itself. We know that the modern factory farm is to blame for more and more virulent strains of microbes. All that corn and grain fed to cows have changed the chemistry in their guts, allowing harmless microbes to evolve into the deadly ones.”

Anyone raising their own food is equally capable of poisoning that food. Buying local does not mean safe. And to say that dangerous bacteria like E. coli O157:H7 evolved from factory farms and corn is to ignore science and hop on the most populist of bandwagons.

Dick.

Sen. Florez also uses the ubiquitous “we” as in “We know …”

Who are these we? I wrote an entire book with a dude who I had to break of the “we” habit. And looks like I need to revisit my own rules about using “air fingers” or “dick quotes.”
 

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The New York Times continues the fascination with all things Obama this morning as it reports on First Lady Michelle’s focus on fresh produce.

“You know, we want to make sure our guests here and across the nation are eating nutritious items. Collect some fruits and vegetables; bring by some good healthy food. We can provide this kind of healthy food for communities across the country, and we can do it by each of us lending a hand.”

In a speech at the Department of Agriculture last month, Mrs. Obama described herself as “a big believer” in community gardens that provide “fresh fruits and vegetables for so many communities across this nation and world.”

I am too. Brought the seedlings in yesterday as a temporary cold snap hit Kansas, but the greens and asparagus will soon be sprouting from the family garden. I also know fresh produce is also the biggest source of foodborne illness today in the U.S. That’s because it’s fresh, and anything that comes into contact has the potential to contaminate.

So, yeah Michelle, promote the produce, but organic and local do not mean safe. Play up those producers who responsibly manage microbial risks. And if you’re going to put your kids dining habits front and center, you really don’t want them barfing.

Kristen Schaal, otherwise known as Mel from Flight of the Conchords, offered her take on First Lady Michelle last night on the Daily Show.
 

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Spring has sprung in Kansas. We all worked in the yard yesterday, and after a couple of cool nights later in the week, the first leafy greens will be going into the garden.

With spring comes the mantra, local is safer.

The idea food that is grown and consumed locally is somehow safer than other food, either because it contacts fewer hands or any outbreaks would be contained, is sorta soothing, like a mild hallucinogen, and has absolutely no basis in reality.

Foodborne illness is vastly underreported -- it's known as the burden of reporting foodborne illness. Someone has to get sick enough to go to a doctor, go to a doctor that is bright enough to order the right test, live in a state that has the known foodborne illnesses as a reportable disease, and then it gets registered by the feds. For every known case of foodborne illness, there are 10 -300 other cases, depending on the severity of the bug.

Most foodborne illness is never detected. It’s almost never the last meal someone ate, or whatever other mythologies are out there. A stool sample linked with some epidemiology or food testing is required to make associations with specific foods.

Robert Brackett, senior vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and a darn fine scientist, told USA Today most foodborne illnesses don't get noticed because not enough people get sick to alert officials that an outbreak is underway. Undetected outbreaks are more likely with "local" products delivered in small quantities and sold in a small area.

Comparing local with all that other food brings in more tenuous links and numerous erroneous assumptions. To accurately compare local and other food, a database would have to somehow be constructed so that a comparison of illnesses on a per capita meal or even ingredient basis could be made.

But the absence of data doesn’t stop doctrine. JoLynn Montgomery, director of the Michigan Center for Public Health Preparedness at the University of Michigan told the Detroit Free Press today that one solution that is catching on is buying locally grown foods.

"The less distance the food has to travel, the fewer people who touch the food, the less risk you have.”

Local can be microbiologically safe. But repeating ‘local’ while in some sorta peyote buzz doesn’t take care of the dangerous bugs. So wherever food is purchased or even grown, ask some questions:

• how are pathogenic microorganisms managed;
• is wash and irrigation water tested for dangerous bacteria;

• how is fresh produce protected from animal poop;
• what kind of soil amendments are being used and are they microbiologically safe; and,
• are you or your suppliers practicing great handwashing?

That’s a start.
 

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Baby Sorenne is three-months-old today. She slept eight-straight hours last night. Awesome.

Whole Foods Market figures I’m part of their demographic, and is rolling out a Whole Baby promotion.

Throughout the month, in-store lectures by Whole Body experts will provide shoppers with information on such topics as prenatal top priorities, natural baby care choice, tips and concerns for breastfeeding mothers and top 10 "first food" facts.

I checked out Whole Foods' food safety expertise, which they claimed they were really good at. Maybe they were using the same nutritionists and dieticians as in all those Canadian seniors’ homes who thought it was OK to feed listeria-laden cold cuts to the immunocompromised elderly. Nowhere in the Whole Foods literature is there any statement that pregnant women should avoid refrigerated ready-to-eat foods like soft cheeses, smoked salmon and deli meats.

But Whole Foods, like so many other groups, does manage to blame consumers for the bulk of foodborne illness, in the absence of any data to support such a claim.

Food safety is pretty high on everyone's list of "things to be aware of," especially in light of the food recalls and poisoning scares that seem to happen all too frequently. But believe it or not, the ones you hear about on the TV news aren't the most common — a good deal of food poisoning is caused by improper food handling in home kitchens.

Whole Food customers are paying a premium for foodstuffs, only to be told that 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.”

Whole Baby is going nowhere near baby Sorenne.
 

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Mansour, I couldn’t have said it better myself:

“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education,” said Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle consultant who has worked with companies nationwide to improve food safety.

The Ponzi scheme that is third-party food safety audits is starting to collapse. Watching Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last night, the questions he asked to a N.Y. Times reporter about the financial mess could have easily been mapped to the food safety mess (see video below).

The N.Y. Times will report in tomorrow’s editions that the American Institute of Baking auditor who gave the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Georgia a superior rating before the peanut-salmonella shitstorm, was an expert in fresh produce and was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella poisoning — which he was not required to test for anyway. Oh, and PCA paid for the audit which Kelloog’s then blindly accepted.

The auditor even wrote in a Jan. 20 e-mail after the salmonella outbreak became public, that, “I never thought that this bacteria would survive in the peanut butter type environment. What the heck is going on??”

That’s why there’s FSnet and barfblog and hundreds of other food safety resources out there; he never heard of Peter Pan and salmonella in 2007?

In 2007, Keystone Foods, the Pennsylvania plant that makes Veggie Booty, received an “excellent” rating from the American Institute of Baking. But the audit did not extend to ingredient suppliers, including a New Jersey company whose imported spices from China were tainted with salmonella.

“The only thing that matters is productivity,” said Robert A. LaBudde, a food safety expert who has consulted with food companies for 30 years, adding that “you only get in trouble if someone in the media traces it back to you, and that’s rare, like a meteor strike.”

Dr. LaBudde said a sausage plant hired him five years ago to determine the species of bacillus plaguing its meat. But the owner then refused to complete the testing. “I called them ‘anthrax sausages,’ and said they could be killing older people in the state, and still they wouldn’t do it,” he said, declining to name the company. ...

Before the salmonella outbreak, Costco had rebuffed repeated proposals by the organization to inspect all its food suppliers. “The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top food safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”

Costco, Kraft Foods and Darden Restaurants are among a group of food manufacturers and other companies that use detailed plans to prevent food safety hazards. They also supplement third-party audits with their own inspections and testing of ingredients and plant surfaces for microbes.

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University campuses are often the first mainstream pressure point to be hit with food fads. So it’s no surprise the Los Angeles Times reports this morning that a growing number of colleges are finding that campus farmers markets are a great fit, tapping into students' interest in sustaining the planet with an appealing combination of food, music and lots of people hanging out.

The University of Southern California held its first market in February 2008, the result of meetings between students and university officials that began in fall 2007.

Scott Shuttleworth, the university's director of hospitality said that having at least one farmer at the market was important to give shoppers a chance to talk with someone about "eco-friendly agriculture and organic and natural farming practices."

I’m not sure at what point only local, natural types who hang out at farmers markets cornered the language on “sustaining the planet” but it happened a while ago – and without discussion. As usual, what was lacking from the coverage was any discussion of microbial food safety standards; even suggesting such basics can bring the wrath of a tyrannical religion.

The author of the blog, Conkey’s Tavern, who’s a fan of local, as am I, agreed the other day with the idea of data: water quality results, data on soil amendments, evidence of compliance with handwashing and safe handling.



It isn’t about local, small or big. It’s about what will make folks barf. And that requires control of dangerous microorganisms, regardless of politics.
 

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Nebraska health officials say more than 80 people fell ill from food poisoning after a choir competition Feb. 21 at Papillion-La Vista High School.

Food served at the competition came from a range of sources, including vendors and parents who had donated baked goods for a fundraiser. 



State epidemiologist Tom Safranek says the illnesses have been traced to improperly handled meat, which was cooked at a family's home. 



The illnesses are not linked to a recent outbreak of salmonella that's sickened at least 14 people in eastern Nebraska. State health officials are still investigating the source of those illnesses. 

 

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There’s no ice hockey in Manhattan (Kansas) but we do get the NHL channel, and a hockey game can make some fine background while editing.

Saturday nights around 6:45 pm (CST), if I remember, it’s off to Hockey Night in Canada for seven minutes of Don Cherry, the 75-year-old former coach and commentator know for his “outspoken manner, flamboyant dress, and staunch patriotism.”

Cherry also lended his trademark staccato yelling to the Quiznos sandwich chain in Canadian ads, and the “Toasted tastes better” tagline.

So I thought of Don today, as I pined for hockey and read that Quiznos has adopted a new animal-welfare policy regarding its purchases of eggs, pork and turkey, developed in conjunction with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

That’s sweet. I wonder if Quiznos modified its buying patterns after tomatoes on its sandwiches in Rochester, Minnesota, sickened at least 10 people with Salmonella in 2007. Maybe Quiznos modified its policies on raw sewage on the floor in its restaurants after a Chicago outlet was closed in 2008. And maybe Quiznos has instituted sensitivity training for its managers after a Toronto spokesthingy said in response to the Canadian listeria outbreak in deli meats which killed 20 last year that, “People are hypochondriacs.”

This video is aptly titled, Don Cherry is crazy.
 

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“They called me crazy at Masters and Johnson. But I’ll show them.”
The demented Dr. Bernardo from Woody Allen’s 1972 film, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask).

A week ago I asked, with all the recalled products related to Samonella in peanut paste, what problems did the third-party auditors uncover and what was done about such problems?

A few weeks ago, Chapman and I wrote that,

Third-party audits are an incomplete form of verification that provide a limited view of a producer’s facilities and documentation but do not effectively reduce risk. …At some point, folks will figure out that all these outbreaks of foodborne illness – like Salmonella in peanut butter – happened at places that passed so-called independent audits.

Ten years ago, I told the Ontario greenhouse tomato growers they should have their own in-house food safety expertise to help farmers produce safe product and to market the program, with test results, to buyers and consumers.

They said I was crazy.

This morning, the N.Y. Times and USA Today are reporting that Peanut Corporation of America, the Blakely, GA firm at the epicenter of the Salmonella shit storm, had “regular visits and inspections” of its Blakely, Ga., plant in 2008, not only by federal and state regulators but by independent auditors and food safety companies that made “customary unannounced inspections.”

Kellogg's auditor, the American Institute of Baking checked out Peanut Corp. of America's Blakely, Ga., plant in 2007 and 2008 and gave it superior ratings both times.

"That's frightening," says Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

Andrew Martin of the Times writes that,

Peanut Corporation of America’s statement was released as food manufacturers and public health officials tried to determine how so many inspectors missed what some have said were obvious problems at the plant, including improper sanitation procedures, live roaches, mold and slimy residue on floors and equipment.

Kris Charles, a spokeswoman for Kellogg, said,

Had Kellogg known of the problems at the plant that the Food and Drug Administration detailed recently, “we would have discontinued the relationship with P.C.A. immediately and would not have accepted any ingredients from them.”

Jim Munyon, president of AIB International, based in Manhattan, Kan., said the company would not have received a superior rating if his auditors had seen the filth the federal government described.

“It would mean that we didn’t see it on the day we were there. What goes on the rest of the time, we don’t know.”

He did say that AIB wouldn't see internal test results unless PCA shared them. "They show us only what they want to show us," he says.

Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University, said the salmonella outbreak at Peanut Corporation of America showed the “fallacy” of independent audits, which are commonly used to verify food safety, animal welfare claims and organic production methods. While the intent might be good, he said, the results are usually withheld from the public.

“Companies say they do all this testing. Great. Show us the data. They won’t. Given all the outbreaks, why should we believe them?”
 

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During the production of Kitchen Crimes, a television series that dealt with food safety in the home as opposed to restaurants, there were a number of reoccurring themes that kept popping up.  So I developed my top 10 list of Kitchen Crimes to reflect my observations from the television show.

Tops was a severe lack of handwashing or inadequate handwashing. Handwashing typically involved a quick 2 second rinse with water and drying with a dirty tea towel. Family members would pet their dogs, cats, and even in one case a pet turtle, then go and prepare food without handwashing. So, number one on my list is:

1. Wash hands thoroughly before and after preparing food. Lather with soap and water for at least 15 seconds. Rinse well and dry with a clean towel.

A number of families were aware that their refrigerator should be kept at 4-5°C, but it was never checked.  Families were questioned on why they should maintain this temperature and the typical answer was that it would kill bacteria. The “danger zone” (4°C- 60°C) is conducive to rapid bacterial multiplication and at 4°C, bacterial multiplication is reduced, not stopped.

2. Invest in a fridge thermometer to ensure your fridge is at the right temperature. Cold foods should be kept below 4°C. Hot foods should be at a temperature greater than 60°C.

Throughout the filming of the series, families did not use thermometers to ensure food was properly cooked.  Visual inspection seemed to suffice.

3. Invest in a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer to ensure food is properly cooked.

It always bugs me when I see open packages of meat dripping bacterial laden juices on ready to eat foods, like vegetables or fruit.

4. In your refrigerator, meats should always be placed on the bottom shelves or in meat drawers in case of leakage and vegetables should be kept above to prevent cross contamination. All open or partially consumed foods should be packaged in airtight plastic storage containers.

In one episode, I dressed up in some sort of a space suit equipped with facial gear and so on (more for effect than anything else), but it was to prove a point. Mice like to eat food so if food is left on the floor, uncovered, mice will be there.

5. All dry goods need to be stored off the floor and sealed properly to prevent entry of rodents or insects.

To ensure food is adequately cooled in the fridge,

6. Do not over-pack the refrigerator or freezer. This restricts proper air flow and prevents the appliances from functioning efficiently.

This next one always gives me a headache, happens very frequently in restaurants. Vegetables and fruit typically do not undergo a subsequent cooking process which leads me to number

7 on my list: Prevent cross-contamination when preparing food by designating one cutting board for raw meats and another for vegetables or any ready-to-eat foods.

8. When cleaning surfaces, wash first with soap and water then sanitize with a mild solution of chlorine bleach and water.

If one is looking for the highest bacterial counts in the household, look no further.

9. Replace dishcloths and sponges on a daily basis.

10. After dishwashing, all utensils and dishware should be air dried to prevent cross-contamination from towels.

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The New York Times reported yesterday that the Internet has made it much easier to connect for sexual hookups. In response, public health officials have been exploring ways to harness the online world for conducting safe-sex education and preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases by alerting people exposed to them.

The e-card, which allows the sender to select the disease involved and includes links to public health sites and services, is part of that strategy.

So when I read this morning that the European Food Safety Agency reported that food-poisoning cases are on the rise across the 27-nation bloc, I thought, why not e-cards to warn of foodborne illness.

e-cards: they’re not just for sexual hookups anymore.
 

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Chuck Dodd, a veterinarian and PhD student at Kansas State University, writes:

I grew up in rural Missouri eating meat and potatoes, mostly meat, and quite a bit of it.

But my carnivorous mantra doesn’t match the advice of Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food—An Eaters Manifesto (right). He says:

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

Most of the world already follows Michael Pollan’s advice—out of necessity.

Approximately 4.7 billion people, or over two-thirds of the world’s population, live in lower income countries where safe food and water is limited. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) now reports that rising food prices have contributed to a global increase in malnourishment and hunger. For people living in areas of poverty or conflict, it isn’t about food choices, it’s about simply eating. My wife, Lisa (with neighbor, left), and I lived among the poor in East Africa for six years. We’ve seen hunger, malnourishment, and the effects of diarrheal disease in children--not from the safe distance of a TV screen, but among our friends.  We strived to help transform lives in difficult places.       

Many of us who live in affluent societies enjoy abundant food choices. In the U.S., we have the luxury of being able to pick our diet based upon personal preference, individual nutrients, food production systems, origin, brand, and price. For those of us who have these abundant food choices, Pollan provides additional advice:

●don’t eat anything that your great grand-mother wouldn’t recognize as food;

●avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup;

●avoid food products that make health claims;

●shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle. (processed food products dominate the center aisles); and,

●get out of the supermarket whenever possible.

Pollan’s recommendations are clever. But some of his other recommendations, like “pay more, eat less,” would offend our African friends, like Olendorrop (right).  Olendorrop faces daily challenges in feeding his family.  In the semi-arid savannah of the Rift Valley in northern Tanzania, he struggles to raise sheep and goats, grow corn, and survive.  He has learned how to use dewormers to keep his livestock healthy.  When he uses an antibiotic to treat a sick animal, he doesn’t care about organic food.  All of his animals are grass-fed because corn is people food.  He can’t go to the supermarket because there isn’t one.  He isn’t worried about health claims and ingredients because his food doesn’t have labels.  If Olendorrop paid more and ate less, his family wouldn’t survive.

My advice: if you can afford to choose what you eat, be thankful. Being able to consider what you eat is a luxury in itself. 

Our eater’s manifesto should be to help others simply eat.  Have we, the affluent with abundant food choices, finally arrived, or have we lost touch with global reality?  Do we really need to defend our food from food science and food production systems, as Pollan writes, or do we need to defend the 923 million undernourished people in the world  who don’t have food and help transform their lives?

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Baby Sorenne woke up around 4 a.m. and, after nursing, hung out with daddy and watched Mallrats until she went back to sleep.

Daddy – that’s me – started prepping for the Christmas meal: boneless leg of lamb marinated in fresh rosemary – the one herb that seems to flourish indoors – and lime-garlic sauce. And some other stuff, which I could describe in pornographic detail, but will instead call side dishes.

As I prepare the lamb, I’ll keep in mind the World Health Organization’s factors that contribute to foodborne illness:

• improper cooking procedures;

• temperature abuse during storage;

• lack of hygiene and sanitation by food handlers;

• cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat foods; and,

• foods from unsafe sources.

Yet increasingly, food safety is used as a catch phrase to encompass whatever political goals some group wants to achieve

The N.Y. Times yesterday encapsulated what has been circulating on the Interwebs for weeks, stating that,

“From the moment it was clear that Barack Obama was going to be president, people who have dedicated their lives to changing how America eats thought they had found their St. Nicholas. It wasn’t long before the letters to Santa began piling up.

“Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine, wants a new high-profile White House chef who cooks delicious local food. Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, wants policies requiring better treatment for farm animals. …

“Not only does (Obama) seem to possess a more-sophisticated palate than some of his recent predecessors, but he will also take office in an age when organic food is mainstream, cooking competitions are among the top-rated TV shows and books calling for an overhaul in the American food system are best sellers.”

Running through all of this is some kind of food snobbery that assumes whatever is fashionable is somehow safer.

Even the groups advocating more food safety are reeking of political ambition rather than focusing on the things that make people sick.

Like Brody in Mallrats, no one wants a stink palm.

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Casey Jacob’s been working full-time with me for the past six months. We got  a bunch of papers coming out and she’s developing into a fairly decent writer. So here’s Casey’s version of the Top 10 food safety stories of 2008.

1. Salmonella in tomatoes/peppers – problems with tracing sources of produce
Companies that can provide efficient traceability systems for their products provide an advantage to the retail food service sector during recall and outbreak situations.

2. Melamine in Chinese infant formula – know your suppliers
Buyers need to know their suppliers, the risks that might be associated with their products, and how they should be managed. Suppliers should be able to demonstrate the safety of their products and processes, and have programs in place to manage risks.

3. Listeria in deli meats and soft cheeses -- should vulnerable populations be warned?
Beginning in July, 20 Canadians were killed and dozens were sickened by an outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes in deli meats produced by Maple Leaf Foods.
Most of the deaths were related to the consumption of deli meats in places like nursing homes that were unaware of the recommendation that immunocompromised individuals avoid deli meats to reduce the risk of Listeria, unless they are thoroughly heated. Pregnant women are also advised to avoid unheated deli meats, soft cheeses, and other refrigerated ready-to-eat foods that can foster the growth of Listeria. Warnings for vulnerable young, elderly, ill, or pregnant. people on product labels or menus may provide information for those populations to make informed choices.


4. Restaurant inspection disclosure systems on the rise
The food service sector should recognize that certain diners are interested in the information provided by inspection reports and summaries. This increase in transparency highlights the importance of maintaining or improving. compliance with food safety regulations during inspections.

5. Downer abuse in California –poor animal welfare can impact business
It’s not enough for a producer or processor to say they are doing the right thing; they will have to be able to prove it using techniques like video surveillance. It is expected that proof of actions will become increasingly demanded and adopted over the next year.

6. Patrons use cell phone cameras to document food safety issues
Public health authorities in Toronto, Canada, shut down one of Chinatown’s most prominent restaurants after a passerby took a photo of rats on a countertop in February.

7. E. coli O157:H7 linked to UK butchers – no food safety culture and lax inspection
Creating a culture of food safety within an organization where all members from executives to front-line staff. have a set of shared values around risks will be come increasingly important for the foodservice sector.

8. Pot pies and chicken thingies – the danger of microwave use and the difficulties of consumer communication
USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a public health alert in March advising the public of a salmonellosis outbreak associated with frozen, stuffed raw chicken products in Minnesota—the sixth of its kind since 1998.
 It may be prudent to blatantly inform consumers through product package labeling that if products contained are raw and should, therefore, not be prepared in the microwave.

9. Outbreaks at several universities -- outbreak communication strategies
Several outbreaks of illness occurred at university campuses where communication departments were slow to take responsibility.

10. Sourcing locally – don’t make assumptions about safety
Organizations and individuals are making commitments to utilize local food sources. However, there is little discussion surrounding the microbiological safety of such food.  All foods, regardless of the location, should be sourced from trusted sources that provide evidence of safe practices, and claims regarding the safety of food should made in conjunction with sound data.

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The Brits and their piping hot. The Canadians and their 185F.

No one knows where this advice comes from, yet every holiday, the soundbites are trotted out like a recurring nightmare. It’s like a song by Journey or Styx or Bryan Adams – Don’t Stop Believing, I’m Sailing Away, Summer of ’69 -- it keeps playing and it’s horrible.

The UK Food Standards Agency came out with a computer screen saver yesterday that I couldn’t get to work, and just as well – it says “cook your turkey properly until the juices run clear.”

Color is a lousy indicator: use a digital tip-sensitive thermometer and stick it in.

Nevertheless, the communication experts at the Food Standards Agency say:

“These are the three main ways to tell if poultry is cooked:

* the meat should be piping hot all the way through

* when you cut into the thickest part of the meat, none of the meat should be pink

* if juices run out when you pierce the turkey, or when you press the thigh, they should be clear.”

Piping hot reminds me of Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Provide some scientific validation for these statements. And is it really so hard to recommend using a thermometer?

In Canada, where the laws of physics are somehow different, Health Canada continues to recommend cooking all the crap out of the bird until 185F. The U.S. changed its advice to 165F years ago. When asked why, Canadian government types won’t talk. It’s a secret. But then again, Canada has no Parliament. It goes away. Just keep on believing.
 

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I don’t really know Bob Brackett other than an annual chat when we run into each other at meetings. Years ago I started calling him the best-dressed man in food safety ‘cause he always wore a sharp suit.

Bracket started out in academia, established himself at the University of Georgia, then went to government as director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and then to industry as senior vice president and chief science and regulatory affairs officer of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. That’s a lot of titles. And gives Bracket a credibility others can only talk about. This guy walks the talk, and has done it in various shoes.

Bracket writes in this morning’s N.Y. Times that the Grocery Manufacturers Association agrees with the Dec. 6, 2008 Times editorial that that the Food and Drug Administration should be given more resources and authority to prevent contamination of the nation’s food supplies.

Once in office, President-elect Barack Obama and his administration should commit to increasing annual food-related spending to $900 million by 2012 and should work with Congress to quickly modernize our food safety laws.

Specifically, the F.D.A. should be allowed to set and enforce safety standards for fruits and vegetables; require every food manufacturer to adopt, regularly update and make available for F.D.A. confirmation a food safety plan; and require food importers to document the steps they are taking to police their foreign suppliers.

By doing much more to prevent contamination — and by expanding and better targeting inspections — the next administration can immediately address the challenges of rising food imports and changing consumer preferences.

Good on ya.

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The manager of Stromboli Pizza in Allentown says a customer saw one of the restaurant cooks carving up a deer Tuesday. John Okumus says the venison wasn't intended for the store. He says he shot a doe during a hunt and left the carcass in the store's kitchen for pickup by a friend.

Okumus says a customer complained to the city health department after seeing a cook mistakenly butcher the deer.

The department investigated the incident but did not issue a citation.

There are reasons animals are slaughtered in  slaughterhouses.  See the infosheet below.

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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.
 

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Guest barfblogger Michéle Samarya-Timm, a Health Educator for the Franklin Township Health Department in New Jersey, decided I could use some blogging relief while awaiting the birth of my fifth daughter. It’s been an emotional ride, and I greatly appreciate the help.

Michéle writes, as an educator, it’s always interesting to discover what people in my community know (or don’t know) about food safety. And what their kids pick up from the kitchen.

A common project in grade schools this time of year is having the students write directions on how to cook a turkey. Sometimes, they’re even more educated than their parents…and sometimes not. Here’s a sampling from the web:

Kids Turkey directions

By: Drew -- I put it in the oven at 100 degrees and cook it for 6 hours.

By: Doni – Put it in the oven and set it for 28 minutes at 388 degrees.
 
By: Brandon -- I think the temperature of the oven is 251 degrees. My mom puts it in there for twenty minutes.

By: Quinn -- My mom sets the oven for 400 degrees and cooks it for 7 minutes.

By Seth: You cook a turkey for 10 minutes. Then wait for ten minutes. Then cook the turkey at 2500 degrees.

By Savannah: First get everything you need. That would be turkey, tinfoil, spray bottle, pan, thermometer, and stuffing. Turn on the oven to the right degrees. Cook it for 20 minutes.

By Spencer: Buy a turkey. Then, stuff it. Put it in the oven for all day and night at 100 degrees. Take it out of the oven and put it on the table. Make sure you take the little red thing out.

By: Johanna -- My mom bought a turkey. She put it in a pan and cooked it and cooked it. The temperature was 27 degrees. Hot! Then my mom cut the turkey's head off and feet and wings and ate it.

By Madison: Cook the turkey for 25 minutes. Get it out as soon as it is done. But before you put in the little red thing. When the red things pop out that means the turkey is done. Then take it out.

By: Dylan -- First you pull off the feathers. Next you clean it. Third, you put some seasoning on it. Next, you put a thermometer in. Fifth, you put it in a pan. Sixth, you put it in the stove. Next, you put it to 95 degrees. Next, you cook the turkey for sixty minutes.

I so appreciate the humor in Thanksgiving prep through a child’s eyes, but the handwashing advocate in me really wishes at least one mentioned soap and water as an important part of food preparation.

Hopefully, their parents will refer to the USDA Food Safety Education resource, http://www.fsis.usda.gov/food_safety_Education/Ask_Karen/#Question, the Butterball Turkey Talkline, http://www.butterball.com/tips-how-tos/turkey-experts/overview , FSnet and other experts for handwashing steps and other tips to ensure a foodsafe Thanksgiving.
 

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That’s what we’ve always said – safe food, from farm-to-fork.

Jorgen Schlundt, director of food safety at WHO, told Reuters today,

“The notion that you can deal with it at the end of the food chain is clearly wrong.”

Yet there continues to be an outpouring of advice for consumers – the end of the food chain. But more about that later.

Schlundt also said today that the number of foodborne diseases seems to be on the rise in both wealthy and poor nations.

Previously, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that up to 30 per cent of individuals in developed countries acquire illnesses from the food and water they consume each year. U.S., Canadian and Australian authorities support this estimate as accurate (Majowicz et al., 2006; Mead et al., 1999; OzFoodNet Working Group, 2003) through estimations from available data and adjustments for underreporting. WHO has identified five factors of food handling that contribute to these illnesses: improper cooking procedures; temperature abuse during storage; lack of hygiene and sanitation by food handlers; cross-contamination between raw and fresh ready to eat foods; and, acquiring food from unsafe sources.

Oh, and that logo (upper right) is going to be retired in January when we relaunch everything.

Majowicz, S.E., McNab, W.B., Sockett, P., Henson, S., Dore, K., Edge, V.L., Buffett, M.C., Fazil, A., Read, S. McEwen, S., Stacey, D. and Wilson, J.B. (2006), “Burden and cost of gastroenteritis in a Canadian community”, Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 69, pp. 651-659.

Mead, P.S., Slutsjer, L., Dietz, V., McCaig, L.F., Breeses, J.S., Shapiro, C., Griffin, P.M. and Tauxe, R.V. (1999), “Food-related illness and death in the United States”, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol. 5, pp. 607-625.

OzFoodNet Working Group. (2003), “Foodborne disease in Australia: Incidence, notifications and outbreaks: Annual report of the OzFoodNet Network, 2002”, Communicable Diseases Intelligence, Vol. 27, pp. 209-243.
 

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Being Canadian, I’d never really heard of White Castle, the burger joint, until I saw the 2004 film, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Much more than a stoner comedy, the film was an incisive depiction of race in America. Chapman came over to my house in Guelph in 2005 one afternoon to move some furniture and we had steaks and watched the movie.

A Canadian visiting, “beautiful Northern Kentucky, famously (mis)marketed as the South Side of Cincinnati” writes in a recent blog about dining at  Covington’s White Castle:

“I’ll tell you what: never have my sense of both food AND physical safety been so violated before 11pm. I walk in, and for a few minutes, could only stare. Back in the kitchen (fully open), I see a woman lay out maybe a hundred of White Castle’s trademarked bite-size burgers, or ‘Slyders’, on the grill, and, while still completely red, put buns over top the raw meat to warm. Once the meat turns an unnatural shade of grey, she throws them together with some cheese and onion to form a ‘burger’. I’m tempted to walk away and head to the (in my opinion) much safer McDonald’s. …
 
“I sit, take a few pictures, and prepare to savour. Oh wait, while I’m taking pictures (and getting ‘who the hell is this retard tourist and why is out after dark in such a dodgy area’) stares, I’m distracted by a small child whose mother is letting her eat fries (not hers) off the floor. …

“Well, thinking back (it has been two weeks–but don’t worry, I did jot down some notes), I can still taste the fear. The fear that I was likely going to end up spending a good portion of the night over the toilet. No part of the burgers felt or tasted safe. The cooking process, over a bed of onions, under a bed of buns, is just very, very circumspect. And the whole place was pretty dirty. But I ate them, grey and mushy as they were."
 

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I got up at 4:45 a.m. Sunday.

Just habit, how I roll, watching No Country for Old Men in the background, which really does improve with repeated viewings, like most Coen brothers movies.

While scouring the Internet I came across probably the worst infomercial ever. Bill Marler, your competition ain’t going to be knocking down the doors any time soon.

This Florida law firm has its own Internet infomercial. I’m thinking Dan Ackroyd selling a Bass-o-matic.

“What kind of bacteria do you hear about?

The most common is the E. coli virus.

The E. coli virus was linked to Taco Bell shredded lettuce …

Another bacteria that can cause foodborne illness is the salmonella virus.”

Douche alert: Lawyer host -- even I got my hair cut. And telling viewers to “shop at places with reputable reputations” is not a real mastery of the English language.
 

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This is a picture I got from Pete Snyder years ago. It’s a chicken leg, back attached and it’s fully cooked. The red stuff has to do with the age the chick was harvested at. The point is, the only way to accurately cook meat is using a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer. Color is a lousy indicator.

Not so says the Australian Chicken Meat Federation (ACMF), which highlights a host of BBQ food safety failings, yet inexplicitly insists,

“Consumers need to be encouraged to routinely adopt simple food safety practices. The best way to check your chicken is to pierce it and see if the juices run clear.”

If it’s so simple, why can’t the industry get it right? Stick it in, and use a thermometer.
 

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Three months after University of Guelph spokesthingy Chuck Cunningham said, "It seemed to me like it was business as usual," after an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak struck 20 people, the same bug has struck again.

The Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health unit says that four confirmed cases of E. coli O157 are all U of G students. To date, the only commonality among the four students is that they ate at the Pita Pit in the University Centre, so as a precaution, the University is voluntarily closing the UC Pita Pit until Public Health completes its investigation.

In Aug., Cunningham said, "It's a surprise and a shock to us that this has happened.”

So what is it now?

The great food safety school seems to have a lot of poop in their food.

In Aug., a  press release from the University said,

“Although health officials said it's unlikely that the source of the outbreak will ever be identified, they believe it's an isolated incident.”

How do they know it’s an isolated incident if the source of the outbreak is never identified?

For a self-proclaimed food safety school, Guelph really sorta sucks. Sorry for the sick kids.
 

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I’ve never gotten the Whole Foods thing.

They display the food in a loving manner, it’s enjoyable to hang out at the stores, but like most porn -- or food porn – it’s ultimately unfulfilling.

Two months ago, Whole Foods Markets Inc. “launched a revamped and more interactive Web site offering recipes, videos of cooking demonstrations and its Whole Story Blog that enables users to talk to one another about everything from food safety to prices.”

I subscribed to the RSS feed to stay current on all things Whole Foods. The blog they are blowing has nothing to do with food safety and everything to do with food porn.

I can just stay at home with a copy of Bon Appetit.

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I didn’t know C-store was short for convenience store – the kind at street corners and attached to gas stations. But that’s what you learn when you read Dean Dirks.

Dean says:

• In your weekly newsletters or communications with employees, post articles about other retailer’s misfortunes or law suits. The point isn’t to smear other retailers but to keep the fear in the minds of your team. Don’t let associates go a day without thinking about it. (check out our weekly food safety infosheets and subscribe for the free electronic distribution)

• Require your district managers, store managers and foodservice managers to become ServeSafe certified.

• Develop food safety audits to be completed daily at the store level and have regular audits completed at the district level. Record temperatures of refrigeration and product every four hours, date and rotate products, constant hand washing to name a few. All foodservice professionals know what needs to be done and inspected. The question being, are you doing it?

• Develop a food borne illness reporting procedure. Have a form on site that collects only contact information and train your associates to never comment other than to take the information. In addition, make sure the customer is given the corporate office’s contact information.

• Make it a policy that only the food service director or vice president (senior management) follows up on the call to the customer.

• If more than three customers call with the same symptoms then you legally have a food borne outbreak. The next step is to get the County Health Department involved. The worst thing you can try to do is hide it.

And as Sheetz discovered in a 2004 outbreak of Salmonella that sickened over 400 and was linked to tomatoes in ready-to-eat sandwiches, know your suppliers.
 

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Fluid leaking from a garbage truck in the streets of Tularosa, New Mexico, tested positive for E. coli a few days ago.

The vehicle was inspected after residents noticed the leak.

Tularosa Mayor Ray Córdova then inspected the vehicle and smelled something extremely foul coming from it.  That's when he told residents to take samples of the fluid so he could send it off to a lab for testing.

Those tests came back positive for the E. coli bacteria…

On Thursday Alamo Disposal owner Art Cardiel said the leak came from a crack in the truck.  However he also said believes the E. coli is coming from the bacteria in people's trash and not the truck itself.

"In this area, a lot of people grow their own fruit because there's a lot of water," Cardiel said.  "Now how am I supposed to have any control over what I put in my truck that comes out of their trash cans?"

The owner of the company, Alamo Disposal, has been given 10 days to fix the leak.

In the meantime, this fluid can continue to leak into people’s gardens, contaminating produce – “fresh and local” produce.

Local producers tend to be more careful because it is often their own families, friends and neighbors who will eat the produce.

Be on the safe side, stock up now on local tomatoes, peppers and other fresh produce and preserve them for the winter.

Be on the safe side? Really? What if there’s a truck with E. coli-contaminated fluids leaking around?

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Buying any sort of fresh produce is an act of faith. The Associated Press explains why in a story today.

At the end of a dirt road in northern Mexico, the conveyer belts processing hundreds of tons of vegetables a year for U.S. and Mexican markets are open to the elements, protected only by a corrugated metal roof.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects this packing plant, its warehouse in McAllen, Texas, and a farm in Mexico are among the sources of the United States' largest outbreak of food-borne illness in a decade, which infected at least 1,440 people with a rare form of salmonella.

A plant manager confirmed to The Associated Press that workers handling chili peppers aren't required to separate them according to the sanitary conditions in which they were grown, offering a possible explanation for how such a rare strain of salmonella could have caused such a large outbreak.

The AP has found that while some Mexican producers grow fruits and vegetables under strict sanitary conditions for export to the U.S., many don't — and they can still send their produce across the border easily.

Neither the U.S. nor the Mexican governments impose any safety requirements on farms and processing plants. That includes those using unsanitary conditions — like those at Agricola Zaragoza — and brokers or packing plants that mix export-grade fruits and vegetables with lower-quality produce. …

(There) is no public list of the chains that require sanitary practices, meaning there's no way to know whether the fruit and vegetables in any particular store is certified or not. …

Agricola Zaragoza is one of the uncertified plants, manager Emilio Garcia told the AP. He said the packing plant washes produce from both certified and uncertified producers, opening up the possibility for contamination. He refused to give details about his suppliers. …

Kathy Means, a vice president for the U.S. Produce Marketing Associations, said food safety is in the hands of the food industry, with most major produce buyers requiring both U.S. and foreign food producers to have third-party audit programs. However, Means said, not all buyers follow the same rules.

"It's not government-regulated, so it's up to the company to require it.”

I say, cut the BS and start deliberately marketing food safety. That way, someone has to back it up; not some dance with an auditor or certifier, or some other third party that has nothing to do with credibility and everything to do with providing distance when the shit hits the fan – or the produce.
 

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I have been following Hurricane Gustav closely on the news. I choke when I see images of the storm and people evacuating their homes, the same homes that were devastated by Katrina 3 years ago.

As reported by the New York Times:

“More than one million households in Louisiana were without power, with most of the outages — about 300,000 — concentrated in the greater New Orleans area, Gov. Bobby Jindal said at a televised news conference. As flood waters and tidal surges continued to subside, city and state officials struggled to get electricity to hospitals and sent thousands of emergency workers onto streets to clear debris and fix downed power lines.”

Residents who are left without power should take the following precautions to minimize risk of foodborne illness:

1 – The refrigerator and freezer doors should be kept closed as much as possible to keep the cold temperature longer. A refrigerator keeps food at safe temperatures for about 4 hours if unopened. Dry or block ice also helps maintain the proper temperature: at or below 40°F for a refrigerator and 0°F for a freezer. 

2 – If any meat, poultry, fish, or eggs, where left over 40°F for more than two hours, it is safer to discard it.  A thermometer in your refrigerator helps you determine the temperature (make sure it is working properly).

Residents who are in flood areas:

1 – The safest is to stick with bottled water. However, if you don’t have access to this, you can also filter (through clean cloths) and boil the water for at least a minute. Water can also be disinfected with household bleach, which kills some, not all, pathogens. Add 1/8 teaspoon (8 drops) of bleach per gallon.

2 – Discard food that has come in contact with floodwater, including anything in cardboard boxes, home canned foods, or damaged cans.

A more complete guide can be found here, and please, stay safe.

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On Thursday I spent a couple of hours with some visiting food safety types from Thailand, sharing our experiences with on-farm food safety and fresh produce.

Near the end of the talk, I put up a sample of a daily FSnet mailing for additional information. For policy analyst Thepchoo Sripoti, left, with Thailand’s National Food Institute, light bulbs went off. He said,

“I am a big fan of your FSNET for almost 7 years. It gives me new information on food safety around the world. Wish you have a great success all the way.”

Thanks for the kind words and the visit.

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U.S. college football kicks off Saturday. Time to put on your favorite school’s colors and brush up on that fight song. Thousands of students and alumni will be heading out to the stadium, tailgating, and firing up those grills. Hamburgers, chicken, ribs, or beans, there will be plenty of food on hand.

Use a food thermometer to make sure you aren’t serving your friends and family undercooked meats. Make sure to cook ground beef to 160°F(1), while chicken needs to reach 165°F(2). That way when your team takes the field, you aren’t puking or stuck on the toilet. And using a thermometer will make you a better cook. People are impressed by this. Good food safety will allow you to fully enjoy the tailgating atmosphere, so you can cheer your school onto victory.

It’s all on video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmyMmjfFo5Y

References

1: Ryan, Suzanne M., Mark Seyfert, Melvin C. Hunt, Richard A. Mancini. Influence of Cooking Rate, Endpoint Temperature, Post-cook Hold Time, and Myoglobin Redox State on Internal Color Development of Cooked Ground Beef Patties. Journal of Food Science. Volume 71 Issue 3 Page C216-C221, April 2006
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2621.2006.tb15620.x?prevSearch=authorsfield%3A%28M.C.+Hunt%29

2: Focus On: Chicken. Food Safety and Inspection Service. United States Department of Agriculture. April 4, 2006. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/chicken_food_safety_focus/index.asp
 

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An increasingly pregnant Amy and I were strolling along Venice Beach this morning, marveling at the complete lack of a storm – Fay fizzled – and Amy said she was hungry for bacon and eggs and French toast. She had eaten an hour earlier.

This is normal in pregnancy.

uber-Olympian Michael Phelps isn’t pregnant, but consumes 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day.

Serious Eats reports that Phelps' typical breakfast order from Pete's Grille in Baltimore, Maryland, as is recounted in autobiography Beneath the Surface, is:

“Start with three sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions, and mayonnaise; add one omelet, a bowl of grits, and three slices of French toast with powdered sugar; then wash down with three chocolate chip pancakes.”

Maybe the U.S. track team should have been hanging out with Phelps. The N.Y. Times reported Saturday that several members of the United States track team became ill at the team’s pre-Olympic training center in Dalian, about 300 miles east of Beijing, and food poisoning was the likely cause.

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“the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene inspected restaurants using the sous vide method, in which food is vacuum-sealed in plastic for slow cooking at low temperatures. Because of concerns about bacteria growth in the sealed pouches, restaurants were told to stop using vacuum-sealing machines until they filed plans detailing their processes. … Afterward, restaurants like Blue Hill, Per Se and WD-50 filed sous vide plans that were approved by the city as officials developed formal regulations.

“In March the Board of Health approved those regulations. They require restaurants that cook sous vide to have an approved Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plan. …

“Some chefs say the health department is overzealous in its regulation of sous vide, which is safe when properly practiced. But others agreed with officials who said it was important that correct procedures were clearly followed, because anaerobic bacteria can thrive in the airless environment of a vacuum bag if techniques are not done properly.

“Sous vide, which means ‘under vacuum’ in French, refers to a technique where foods are vacuum-sealed to carefully calibrated degrees of pressure so they can be suffused with flavors in a marinade or submerged in temperature-controlled water baths. …

“Bruno Goussault, the chief scientist at Cuisine Solutions, an industrial sous vide company, was one of the developers of sous vide and has trained many famous chefs in the technique. He said that he understood the need for health department oversight and that he consulted with the city to help draft the regulations. …

“It’s very easy to work with the top chefs, but when you are making regulations you need to take care of all the chefs, not just the top chefs,” Mr. Goussault said. “Perhaps sometimes it’s excessive, too much regulation for the top chefs, but I think it’s necessary.”

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"I really get frustrated, I've seen it so many times. They bring in the vegetables, they open the bag and they make the salad straight from unwashed vegetables. They do it for the sake of expedience, but these programmes are watched by millions of people.

"It's irresponsible. If they are going to do something that's not healthy they should say: 'We are in a hurry but please wash the salad and vegetables before you serve it'."

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