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

A couple who were upset at the owner of a Mexican restaurant were charged today with deliberately sickening dozens of patrons by spiking the salsa with an insecticide.

The Capital-Journal of Topeka (Kansas) reports today that Arnoldo Bazan, 30, and his wife  Yini De La Torre, 19, both of Shawnee (Kansas) and both in clear violation of the half-your-age-plus-7-rule for relationships, have been charged with mixing Methomyl into salsa served to patrons at Mi Ranchito restaurant in Lenexa (Kansas),.

That’s good for one count of conspiring to recklessly endanger other people by conspiring to tamper with a consumer product and two counts of tampering with a consumer product.

U.S. Attorney Lanny Welch explained Thursday that Bazan was employed at a Mi Ranchito restaurant in Olathe until June 27. De La Torre was employed at the Mi Ranchito in Lenexa until Aug. 30.

The indictment alleges Bazan perceived the owner of Mi Ranchito restaurants was responsible for Bazan losing his job and his vehicle. Bazan and De La Torre devised a plan to use a Methomyl-based pesticide to poison patrons of the restaurant in hopes the owner of Mi Ranchito would be blamed and suffer financial harm.

In July, Bazan followed the owner of the Mi Ranchito restaurant, Welch said. An anonymous notice was sent to the Mi Ranchito Web site threatening harm if Bazan's vehicle wasn't returned. On Aug. 10, De La Torre is accused of placing Methomyl into the salsa at the Mi Ranchito restaurant in Lenexa. On Aug. 11, 12 patrons immediately suffered nausea, abdominal cramps, weakness, sweating and discomfort.

On Aug. 28, Arnoldo Bazan sent word to the owner of Mi Ranchito by way of another person that "the worst" was yet to come, Welch said. On Aug. 30, De La Torre again placed Methomyl into salsa at the Mi Ranchito restaurant in Lenexa. On that day, 36 patrons immediately suffered nausea, abdominal cramps, weakness, sweating and chest discomfort.

On Sept. 8, Bazan reportedly told De La Torre not to speak with law enforcement investigators or she would suffer physical harm.

Welch said the following agencies took part in the investigation: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigation, the Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigation Division, the Lenexa Police Department, the Johnson County District Attorney's Office, the Kansas Department of Agriculture, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and the Johnson County Health Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Rask is prosecuting.
 

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KFC may be dabbling with marketing food safety (see the lid from a bucket of chicken), but marketing has to be backed up with data. And having a lousy restaurant inspection report will turn anyone’s stomach, no matter how many checkmarks are on things.

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is being prosecuted after environmental health inspectors reported finding cockroaches, mice and flies at one of its busiest UK restaurants.

Officials from Westminster Council said that a cockroach scurried across a counter when they visited the fast food outlet in Leicester Square, central London.

They claimed a mouse was seen running across the floor and flies buzzed around their heads at the Coventry Street premises, Press Association reports.

In total, KFC faced 13 charges brought under food hygiene regulations following an inspection on August 15 last year. It has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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Some people are lawyers and specialize in rhetoric. It’s that Plato thing.

Some of us submit our opinions to cat scratching peer review, take our lumps and get better.

There’s this bunch of lawyers who say they’re Defending Food Safety.

Probably the worst blog name since Maple Leaf’s “Our Journey to Food Safety Leadership.”

One of them, Shawn Stevens (stevens@gasswebermullins.com) wrote on Oct. 22/09 that each year, American families eat somewhere in the neighborhood of 328.5 Billion safe meals – and countless more safe snacks. While any illness or death linked to the consumption of food is one too many, the fact remains that (at three meals a day) you and I are 20 times more likely to die this year from pneumonia or drowning than from a food-borne illness. Although not perfect, the statistics are quite impressive.

As the Sloan song says

When you find you're a conformer
Take pride and swallow whole

Stevens goes on to say,

As consumers, we are inundated by media “fear-mongering,” and made to believe that with each meal consumed, we draw closer to the precipice of some fathomless tragedy. We are also taught to be suspicious and wary of the people who have dedicated their lives to ensuring that our families are fed, and that our food is wholesome.

You see, food safety is a complicated and dynamic issue. It is easy to be a cynic. It is easy to attack others with the benefit of extended hindsight. It is easy to simplify things to a level that a third grader would find devoid in both substance and fact. The real challenge, however, lies in embracing a reasoned and proactive approach that not only recognizes the limits of technology and science, but, at the same time, within these limits, best reduces the risks most likely to occur to the greatest extent possible.

Dude, you just failed my intro class for most horrible and unsubstantiated metaphors.

But why not reference  our paper, Where does foodborne illness happen--in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere -- and does it matter? Because that would conflict with your world-view?

In any event, for those who continue to ignore science and reason, who contend that food safety is the responsibility of food producers alone, and who wrongly proclaim that food safety is only as simple as “not eating poop,” I say this: given the statistics, what goes into one mouth is often far less harmful than what comes out of another.

I e-mailed the lawyer in question on Friday about the don’t eat poop line, and he decided not to answer. Seriously I don’t want to know what is coming out of his mouth.

 

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The newly married  Gonzalo Erdozain, one half of the Erdozain news pulling siblings and a pre-vet student at Kansas State, writes in a state of marital bliss:

As I walked down an aisle in Chicago's Navy Pier, I couldn't help but notice a nice little automated hand sanitizer dispenser in the middle of the wall, which just happened to be right in between both exits of the restrooms.

I didn't actually used the bathroom, but this fancy machine answered a longstanding question – more of a concern actually – I've always had: Washing my hands is pretty much useless if the guy that exits the bathroom before me doesn't and goes and touches the door's knob or handle. So, by having this on the other side, I feel a little better about having clean hands.
 

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Or something like that from George Clooney in the 2000 movie and Courtlynn favorite, O Brother Where Art Thou.

As far as the U.S. government is concerned, I am indeed somewhat more bona fide, having received my permanent residency (below), so let the food safety world tour begin.

First stop – the motherland, U.K., in early January. Amy has a conference in Manchester, so thought we’d see some of my relatives in Newport, some friends in Cardiff, and visit the statue of my now confirmed great-great-great-great grandfather, William ‘The Tipton Slasher’ Perry, bare-knuckle boxing champ of England in 1850 and 1856, in Birmingham.

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Supermarket Guru picked up on our food safety stickers for takeout food and suggested it was one way retailers could turn food safety into a competitive advantage, and wrest takeout business from nearby restaurants.

Which was exactly one of our thoughts when we began experimenting with food safety stickers about five years ago.

While SupermarketGuru.com doesn’t know the full details of their proposed label, we suggest that besides basic date and serving information, it also clearly states whether a food might contain allergens like peanuts or gluten. In our opinion, supermarkets have failed so far to truly differentiate themselves in prepared foods and easy takeout. This is one value-added step that could help food stores retain the takeout volume that fell in their laps when the economy cratered, and people curbed their restaurant visits. They didn’t really earn the windfall, but they got it, and now they have to address consumer concerns about food safety in order to burnish their image as takeout sources.

Perhaps a special opportunity for this approach is in the small-format stores modeled after Tesco’s Fresh & Easy, which emphasize takeout offerings, and are already battling convenience stores, which are stepping up their meal programs. Safe food-handling stickers could add professionalism to the displays and confidence in consumers, and make the prepared foods section a more frequent destination.

We'll work with anyone who is interested in developing the sticker concept for their own food business -- large or small. Any new sticker would have a different phone number and website than those depicted (below) and would be based on research tailored to a specific operation.

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You’d figure that getting stuff translated into other languages would be a breeze, since I have an in with the modern languages department. But to do it in real-time is a bit messy.

Whether it’s a recall, an inspection report or a warning label, not everyone who eats in the U.S. is fluent in English. That’s why our food safety infosheets are now available weekly in French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Debbie Pacheco of blogTO writes today that the garbage disposal calendar Toronto distributes has sections in various languages, so why, then, is something as important as Toronto's DineSafe guidelines only available in English?

One restaurateur told Pacheco he's interpreted food preparation instructions for his staff before. "If you want that traditional food, it's usually the older people who don't necessarily speak English that cook it." He manages his kitchen and is certified in food handling. The city requires that someone with a food handling certificate supervise the kitchen at all times while it's operating.

Mebrak, who's been with Cleopatra restaurant for nine years, put it best. "It's important people really understand how to handle food. It's about safety for everyone."
 

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In the wake of news that some in south Florida are taking to butchering horses, here are some tips from Australia on how to eat horse.

Horse Steaks
The world’s most famous horse steak eaters, the French, have only gained that reputation since the 1789-1799 revolution simply because the horses of aristocrats were an easy source of protein for a country in turmoil. Its popularity was reinforced during food shortages post World War II. Traditionally, horse meat is sold from boucheries chevalines (horse butchers), although now it can also be bought from supermarkets. In French-speaking Quebec, in Canada, horse meat is also popular (above, right, a horse butcher at the Toulouse market, 2007).

Chips Cooked in Horse Fat

Horse with Noodles

Pastissada de Caval
In northern Italy, the traditional horse meat stew from Verona known as Pastissada de caval is made with wine and paprika. Legend has it that the dish originates from the town’s inhabitants marinating the meat from dead horses in the local Valpolicella wine and herbs and spices after a battle between the Ostrogoths and Barbarians in AD489. In Italy, horse - and donkey - meat has traditionally been cured to make bresaola or carpaccio.

The Original Steak Tartare
Needless to say with horses being central to life on the central Asian steppes, so it is central to their diet. For those magnificent horsemen the Tartars, the most famous being Genghis Khan and his army, the horse was also a living meal. They would slice meat from the horses' hindquarters for sustenance, sewing-up the wound, and continuing on their rampage. Another legend has it that the Tartars tenderized their meat under their saddles, the origins of the classic French raw meat beef dish steak tartare.

Alcoholica Mare's Milk
This reliance on the horse on the central steppes also means a reliance on mare’s milk. Fermented, mare’s milk becomes a mildly alcoholic yoghurt-like drink known as Kumis or Airag. When visiting Mongolia in 2005  President Bush was apparently offered Kumis although there is no record as to whether or not he actually consumed it.

Horse Jerky
Commercially produced packets of horse meat jerky is an easy introduction to horse meat for squeamish tourists in Kazakhstan. For the locals though, horse flesh is a real treat and made into sausages including Kazy and the smoked sausage Shuzhuk.

Horse Sashimi
In Japan, barbecued, horse is simply called horse meat: baniku; or skewered horse: bagushi. But raw horse meat is poetic, named after its cherry-red colour and known as sakura (cherry blossom) or sakuraniku (cherry blossom meat). Sakura served sashimi-style with soy sauce and ginger is known as basashi.
 

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There’s no shortage of food safety news; there is a shortage of evidence-based, incisive approaches that challenge food safety norms and may eventually lead to fewer sick people.

The International Food Safety Network evolved into bites.ksu.edu over the past year as a way of consolidating and making food safety news delivery more efficient. In addition to the web repository, the bites-l electronic newsletter is distributed 2-3 times a day to a dedicated subscriber base of some 10,000 in 60 countries; a list that has been focused and refined by offering continuous, daily food safety news since 1994. barfblog.com – averaging well over 10,000 unique hits a day -- along with weekly food safety infosheets (available in multiple languages), and videos, are now prominent food safety resources.

Sponsorship opportunities are now available for bites.ksu.edu, barfblog.com, and the bites-l listserv (as well as the infosheets and videos; how about a movie?).

In addition to the public exposure – why not stick your company logo on the bites-l newsletter that directs electronic readers to your home site or whatever you’re flogging that week -- and reaching a desired audience, you can receive custom food safety news and analysis. We’ve also resurrected the food safety risk analysis team – assessment, management and communication – and offer 24/7 availability and insanely rapid turnaround times. If your group has a food safety issue -- short-term or long-term -- work with us, rather than having us write it up in barfblog.com, book chapters and scholarly papers as another case study of what not to do.

The money is used to support the on-going expenses of the news-gathering and distribution activities, and to develop the next generation of high school, undergraduate and graduate students who will integrate science and communication skills to deliver compelling food safety messages using a variety of media. Research, training and outreach are all connected in our food safety world.

If you have a sponsorship idea, let’s explore it. Feeling altruistic? Click on the groovy new donate button in the upper right corner of bites.ksu.edu. Want to just send a check? Make it out to:

K-State Olathe Innovation Campus, Inc.
18001 W. 106th St., Ste 130
Olathe, KS 66061
913-541-1220
913-541-1488 Fax
tbogina@kstateoic.ksu.edu
http://kstateoic.ksu.edu
and send to the attention of Terri Bogina

Here’s some additional information.

bites.ksu.edu is a unique comprehensive resource hosted at Kansas State University for all those with a personal or professional interest in food safety. We find credible, current, evidence-based information on food safety and make it accessible to domestic and international audiences through multiple media. Sources of food safety information include government regulatory agencies, international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), peer-reviewed scientific publications, academia, recognized experts in the field and other sources as appropriate.

All bites activities emphasize engaging people in dialogue about food-related risks, controls and benefits, from farm-to-fork. bites strives to provide reliable, relevant information in culturally and linguistically appropriate formats to assist people in identifying, understanding and mitigating the causes of foodborne illness.

bites LISTSERV
The bites.ksu.edu listserv is a free web-based mailing list where information about current and emerging food safety issues is provided, gathered from journalistic and scientific sources around the world and condensed into short items or stories that make up the daily postings. The listserv has been issued continuously since 1995 and is distributed daily via e-mail to thousands of individuals worldwide from academia, industry, government, the farm community, journalists and the public at large.
The listserv is designed to:
•    convey timely and current information for direction of research, diagnostic or investigative activities;
•    identify food risk trends and issues for risk management and communication activities; and
•    promote awareness of public concerns in scientific and regulatory circles.
The bites listserv functions as a food safety news aggregator, summarizing available information that can be can be useful for risk managers in proactively anticipating trends and reactively address issues. The bites editor (me – dp) does not say whether a story is right or wrong or somewhere in between, but rather that a specific story is available today for public discussion.

barblog.com
barfblog.com is where Drs. Powell, Chapman, Hubbell and assorted food safety friends offer evidence-based opinions on current food safety issues. Opinions must be evidence-based – with references – reliable, rapid and relevant. The barfblog authors edit each other – viciously.
 

TWITTER
Breaking food safety news items that eventually appear in bites or barfblog are often posted on Twitter (under barfblog or benjaminchapman) for faster public notification.

INFOSHEETS
Food safety infosheets are designed to influence food handler practices by utilizing four attributes culled from education, behavioral science and communication literature:
•    surprising and compelling messages;
•    putting actions and their consequence in context;
•    generating discussion within the target audiences’ environments; and
•    using verbal narrative, or storytelling, as a message delivery device.
Food safety infosheets are based on stories about outbreaks of foodborne illness sourced from the bites listserv. Four criteria are used to select the story: discussion of a foodborne illness outbreak; discussion of background knowledge of a pathogen (including symptoms, etiology and transmission); food handler control practices; and emerging food safety issues. Food safety infosheets also contain evidence-based prescriptive information to prevent or mitigate foodborne illness related to food handling. They are now available in French, Spanish and Portugese.

bites bistro videos
A nod to the youtube generation, but we don’t really know what we’re doing.

These are the various information products we deliver daily, in addition to research, training and outreach. If you or your group is interested in sponsoring any or all of these food safety activities, please contact me directly.
dp

Dr. Douglas Powell
associate professor, food safety
dept. diagnostic medicine/pathobiology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS
66506
cell: 785-317-0560
fax: 785-532-4039
dpowell@ksu.edu
bites.ksu.edu
barfblog.com
 

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Sorenne eating dinner with mom, 7:30 p.m., Oct. 10, 2009.

The second Monday in October is Canadian Thanksgiving. In the U.S., it’s the fourth Thursday in November.

Why the difference?

Thanksgiving is a celebration of the harvest, and the harvest happens a lot earlier in cold Canada. But the annual gathering felt particularly Canadian last night, with plants being brought inside as the first frost hung in the air – ridiculously early for Manhattan, Kansas – and Don Cherry of Hockey Night in Canada on the tube as the Kansas State 66-14 football loss was too embarrassing to watch.

It especially felt like Canada because the Toronto Maple Leafs sucked – like they have for the past 42 years.

On the menu: turkey breast (overheard? Doug, how do you get it so moist? use a meat thermometer), stuffing (more vegetables than bread and used up all the sage before the frost), acorn squash stuffed with pecans, apple, lime juice and brown sugar (got the most raves); rosemary garlic mashed potatoes (thanks for the prep help, Jen) fat-free gravy via my coolio decanter, fruit salad (thanks Peter and Yasmin) and chocolate mousse (thanks, Jen).

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Jim Romahn wrote a column for a newspaper in Waterloo, Ontario, which dared to question the blind support of local produce.

Specifically, Romahn said,

“I have been pleased to watch the development of the movement to buy local food. It is, however, not without its flaws. Farmers need to understand that they must satisfy their customers. Simply marketing their food as local is far from sufficient.”

Romahn provided several examples of local foods that sorta sucked, and several examples of superior product.

“The take-take home message is that the buy local campaigns will fail, and even back-fire, if farmers fail to provide customer-satisfying quality and value.”

Then the letters arrived.

One local produce grower cited Canadian icon Joni Mitchell, “Hey, farmer, farmer, put away the DDT now, give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees.”

Another said “it’s more fun to shop at farmers’ markets than the big chain grocery stores, anyway. Buying local is a win-win-win situation,” with another chiming in, “I remember when eating locally was the norm and not an option. I don’t profess that it is the perfect solution, but one thing I do know is that when you looked at the horizon it was blue not brown like it is today, and there were fewer people with asthma.”

Romahn didn’t even raise food safety concerns.  That would have generated some real hate mail.

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As take-out food continues to increase in popularity, new research from Kansas State University has found that safe handling labels can help restaurants and food providers distinguish themselves in a competitive marketplace.

"With leftovers, people need information the moment they pull that container or clamshell package from the fridge," said Doug Powell, a K-State associate professor of food safety. "How long has it been in the fridge? Is it still safe? Our approach was to provide practical information, right on the container."

Powell, along with former graduate student Brae Surgeoner and Tanya MacLurin of the University of Guelph in Canada, designed a safe food handling label for take-out food after consulting numerous experts and consumers (right; phone number and url don't work anymore -- dp). They then worked with 10 restaurants in Ontario to provide food safety stickers for take-out food and subsequently interviewed managers about the utility of the stickers.

For the purpose of this research, takeout was defined as food procured from a casual dining restaurant -- in other words, a sit-down restaurant -- but eaten elsewhere, including food ordered as takeout and leftover food packaged to be taken home.

The researchers concluded that such a safe food handling label for take-out food was a promising value-added investment for restaurant operators as long as the stickers were used consistently and employees supported the initiative.

"We strive to provide the right food safety message in the right setting," Powell said. "Hand washing information should go over sinks and the back door of toilet stalls. Food preparation information should go in the back kitchen. Stickers with safe food handling information should go on the clamshell containers that people take home and put in the fridge. That's where the learning moment is."

The results are published in the October 2009 issue of Food Protection Trends.

The abstract is below.

Assessing management perspectives of a safe food-handling label for casual dining take-out food
01.oct.09
Food Protection Trends, Vol 29, No 10, pages 620-625
Brae V. Surgeoner, Tanya MacLaurin, Douglas A. Powell
Abstract
Faced with the threat of food safety litigation in a highly competitive industry, foodservice establishments must take proactive steps to avoid foodborne illness. Consumer demand for convenience food, coupled with evidence that consumers do not always engage in proper food-safety practices, means that take-out food from casual dining restaurant establishments can lead to food safety concerns. A prescriptive safe food-handling label was designed through a Delphi-type exercise. A purposive sample of 10 foodservice managers was then used to evaluate the use of the label on take-out products. Semi-structured in-depth interviews focused on the level of concern for food safety, the value of labelling take-out products, perceived effectiveness of the provided label, and barriers to implementing a label system. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed, and the data was interpreted using content analysis to identify and develop overall themes and sub-themes related to the areas of inquiry. It was found that labeling is viewed as a beneficial marketing tool by which restaurants can be differentiated from their competitors based on their proactive food safety stance.
 

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Maple Lodge Farms is often confused with Maple Leaf Foods, the latter of the listeria mess in Canada a year ago that killed 22 people.

In an effort to protect their brand, Maple Lodge has taken to marketing food safety. And I’m all for it.

These full-page advertisements are from a couple of Canadian magazines, the Sept. 2009 issue of Today’s Parent (right), and the Oct. 2009 issue of Canadian Living (below, left).

There’s far too many sick people, and far too much bureau-dancing around foodborne illness: The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

Those companies that promote food safety culture can market their activities, and then consumers have a way to choose at the check-out aisle, providing feedback to those companies that make food safety a public priority.

Maple Lodge isn’t so much promoting a food safety culture as a technological fix. But at least they’re out there. A case could be made that the tomatoes, lettuce and sprouts pictured in these sandwiches also pose a significant food safety risk. That’s why buyers have to source food from safe sources.
 

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Whenever a group says the public needs to be educated about food safety, biotechnology, trans fats, organics or anything else, that group has utterly failed to present a compelling case for their cause. Individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. And it’s sorta arrogant to state that others need to be educated; to imply that if only you understood the world as I understand the world, we would agree and dissent would be minimized.


On the same day the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its Strategic Plan for Risk Communication, which outlines the agency’s efforts to disseminate more meaningful public health information and has lots of pretty words about “two-way communication through enhanced partnerships,” FDA said its “new web videos educate consumers about food and medical product safety.”

No evidence is provided that anyone found the videos educational. And the language in the headline is not consistent with ”two-way communication.” What’s with the dualities? Good and bad, heaven and hell? How about multiple communications with a variety of audiences, to use bureau-speak; and chew gum at the same time.

It’s important to tell people how information is developed and released. We updated the bites.ksu.edu information protocol last week. But actions speak louder than words.

One of the tenets of effective risk communication to inform, discuss and participate in give and take when it comes to information, rather than educate. I co-wrote a book about it, 1997’s Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk. And people learn through stories, not facts.

There is a dearth of scientific studies applying proven risk communication concepts to issues of microbial food safety. There is, however, an abundance of academic, industrial and government pronouncements on how to improve communications activities related to food safety, based on anecdotal evidence and almost always citing the need for “educated consumers” or “a better-educated public.”

Such proposals invoke a one-way, authoritarian model of communication; and exactly how this mythical consumer will become better educated remains a mystery. What is known is that the traditional approach of scientists clearly explaining the facts is “naive—and probably a recipe for failure. ... 
Too often, risk communicators are more concerned with educating the public, rather than first listening to them and then developing communication policies.”

Food Safety Education Month, whatever that is, ended yesterday. People are still eating this morning. I wonder if they got educated?

An honest Food Safety Education month would include food safety stories, tragic or otherwise, and a rigorous evaluation of what has worked, what hasn’t worked and what can be improved, rather than a checklist of ineffective and often inaccurate food safety instructions with the cumulative effect of blaming consumers. Telling people to wash their hands isn’t keeping the piss out of meals. 


 

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Sorenne eating breakfast with dad, Sept. 29, 2009, about 7:15 a.m.

Buttermilk pancakes with berries, bacon and fruit

Dry

2 cups buckwheat flour
1tsp. baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
dash salt
 

Wet

1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
vanilla
frozen berries

Mix wet and appropriate amount of dry, heat in frying pan, top with Canadian maple syrup (not that Vermont stuff) serve with bacon, fresh cantaloupe and pineapple.

The dog waits like a parasite every time Sorenne eats; does make cleanup easier.
 

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Petting zoos, farm visits and local fairs are all settings for pathogen risks, especially for kids. Scott Weese at wormsandgerms detailed some of the risks in action that he saw recently at an Ontario site. Media reports out of the UK suggest that in the wake of the recent farm visit-linked outbreak with over 60 children ill with E. coli O157, agritourism business is down. Another 13 kids are also ill in outbreak linked to the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver.

Handwashing can reduce the risk of E. coli O157, but signs and sinks do not make people wash their hands. Operators and volunteers need to be diligent in promoting the importance of handwashing as infection control with patrons and staff and compel folks with creative messages.

CDC has a publication that operators should check out on managing public-animal contact risks (scroll down to the bottom of the page). We've combined some of that information and added our barfblog flare to come up with this week's food safety infosheet, which is downloadable here.

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With 57 children sick with E. coli O157 linked to petting farms in the U.K., and 10 still in hospital, farm owners said they would oppose a ban on small children visiting the attractions, and one of the owners said the risk is being greatly overblown.

The U.K. government has rightly decided to ignore such statements and is preparing to upgrade E. coli O157 to a "notifiable disease" – on a par with infections like smallpox and measles – to speed up detecting outbreaks.

With a half-dozen foodborne illness outbreaks of E. coli and Salmonella throughout the U.K. being reported in the past week, yes, maybe they should be notifiable disease(s).

Maybe I’m losing something in translation.

Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen and Groundhog Day enthusiast has seen all this before.

Pennington told The Times E coli O157 was prevalent in cows, sheep and goats, with research showing about one in 10 cows carried the bug and 40% of herds. He called for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidelines on petting farms to be reviewed and a minimum age introduced.

“There will have to be a look at the guidelines to see if they need tightening and a review of whether they are being properly followed.”

This is the problem: there are plenty of guidelines out there to manage all sorts of risks, food-related or otherwise, but do people really do what they say they do? Or do they  really think, it's no biggie.

In the wake of the outbreak, the U.K. has closed four such petting farms, either linked directly to the outbreak or, their standards sucked.

My friend Scott Weese, a veterinarian researcher at the University of Guelph and host of the Worms and Germs blog, wrote earlier today that:

Considering all of the outbreaks that have been attributed to petting zoos, including an outbreak in the UK this month that has sickened dozens and another in Vancouver has affected at least 13 people, you would think that people who operate petting zoos would start to get the clue. Unfortunately, that's clearly not the case.

My family and I went to the Fergus (Ontario) Fall Fair today. Apart from the petting zoos, it was a great day, but the potential for ending up in hospital with a life-threatening infection shouldn't have to be a concern for fair attendees.

This fair has two petting zoos. One is in association with a pony ride. We went there first and while my kids were looking at the animals, I noticed there was a table and a sign saying to use a hand sanitizer after touching the animals, but there were not actually any hand sanitizers present. I asked the attendant and he immediately started looking. They eventually found some but we gave up after waiting a few minutes and went to the other petting zoo location because a handwashing station was present there. Despite a large crowd around the first petting zoo, I didn't see anyone following our actions so presumably almost no one washed their hands after petting the animals. The good thing about this first petting zoo was they had a clean facility, appropriate animals and no major problems apart from the forgotten sanitizers.

Petting zoo number 2 was not as good. There were numerous problems, some of them very major.

* Inappropriate animals #1: As we walked in, someone held out a baby chick and tried to give it two my 2-yr-old daughter to handle. Standard guidelines are that children under 5 should not handle young poultry, so these animals are inappropriate for any petting zoo.

* Inappropriate animals #2: The next thing we passed was a young calf. Calves are also considered a high-risk animal and should not be present in petting zoos.

* Inappropriate animals #3: The calf had diarrhea (see the diarrhea staining and hair loss probably associated with prolonged diarrhea in picture). It's very likely that this calf was shedding one or more infectious agents in its diarrhea, such as Cryptosporidium.

* Food for sale: Food was being sold and consumed inside the tent where the petting zoo was. This is inappropriate.

Petting zoos can be great events for kids. They can also be sources of large and serious outbreaks.

Hopefully nothing bad will come from this and we won't hear reports of illness in petting zoo participants. But, as I've said before, hope is not a proper infection control program.

Anyone having a petting zoo must know the issues, risks and proper measures. Reading the Compendium of measures to prevent disease associated with animals in public settings would be a good start.

A leading personal injury lawyer, Jill Greenfield, a partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse in the U.K., told The Independent that she has received instruction from a family involved and expects a class action. In 2001, she represented Tom Dowling, who was awarded damages of £2.6m after he contracted E. coli as a four-year-old during a school trip to a north London farm in 1997, which resulted in his becoming quadriplegic and brain damaged. His was the third case of E. coli at the farm within a few months.
 

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Does knowing your farmer make food safer?

Absolutely not.

Maybe if you ask the right questions, and get honest answers, but even then, only a maybe.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new youtube vid has lots of stuff about local and regional, economics but no evidence of why local is better. And nothing about food safety

The 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative, chaired by Deputy Secretary Merrigan, is the focus of a task force with representatives from agencies across USDA who will help better align the Department's efforts to build stronger local and regional food systems. This week alone, USDA will announce approximately $65 million in funding for 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiatives.

To be fair, USDA did announce nearly $10,000 in funding for the University of Minnesota to bring together experts on food safety and regulations for a discussion of marketing to institutions like K-12 schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other health care facilities.

Leave it to the academics to ask for money to meet. Foods safety needs to be front and center of any food initiative.

And this was my farmer near Guelph, Jeff Wilson (above, right). He had outstanding food safety, long before others started talking about it.
 

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Daughter Courtlynn is going to visit for American Thanksgiving in late November. Got her plane tickets last night. But even with the new flights from Dallas, getting to Manhattan (Kansas) just isn’t that easy.

That’s one of the reasons folks at Kansas State University went big into distance education. It’s just too much time spent on travel. My mother even figured out Skype last week so she could see granddaughter Sorenne.

But is there a better way to deliver food safety information by distance? And who better to answer that question than a food safety distance education person who wants to get an advanced degree?

Sarah Reasoner (right, with her hubby) had to watch and film me so much for distance education, I figured, maybe it’d be useful to actually figure out what works and what doesn’t for distance ed. So she’s been doing a part-time Masters degree while having more babies. And now she gets to tell her academic department, Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology at Kansas State University, all about it.

Sarah writes:

Distance education has experienced rapid growth in recent years in enrollment and technological advancements. These advancements have created a unique opportunity for instructors to implement emerging technologies into distance education courses and enhance student’s learning experiences. This presentation explores food safety distance education at Kansas State University, emerging web tools and how to affectively implement such tools into existing food safety distance education courses. Future research possibilities regarding the enhancement of distance education are also discussed.

Sarah talks at 8:30 Friday morning in Mosier 202. That’s in the vet college. In Manhattan (Kansas). Her slides are below. We’ll tape the talk, because how can you not tape a talk about distance education. And put it on the web. Students hate seeing themselves talk, and so do I, but it’s a useful learning tool. I’ve learned to dress better after seeing myself on video.
 

barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/uploads/file/Enhancing Food Safety Distance Education.pptx

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I’m OK at coaching hockey. Soccer, not so much.

Years ago, one of my girl’s needed a coach for a team, so I volunteered. One of the parents was from Portugal. By my third game he was screaming at me from the sidelines.

Translation sounds easy.

It’s not.

Everyone interprets stuff differently

But I’ve got some people, and hopefully the translation pics won’t continue to crash the main website, and we’ll see where it all goes.

French, Spanish and Portuguese. Check them out.
 

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In the fall of 1998, I accompanied one of my five daughters on a kindergarten trip to the farm. After petting the animals and touring the crops --I questioned the fresh manure on the strawberries --we were assured that all the food produced was natural. We then returned for unpasteurized apple cider. The host served the cider in a coffee urn, heated, so my concern about it being unpasteurized was abated. I asked: "Did you serve the cider heated because you heard about other outbreaks and were concerned about liability?" She responded, "No. The stuff starts to smell when it's a few weeks old and heating removes the smell."

I’m all for farm visits, local markets, petting zoos, but I want the operators to have a clue about the dangerous bugs that make people – especially little kids – sick.

The Brits are particularly pissed that Godstone Farm in Surrey, which appears to be the source of 36 E. coli O157 illnesses, including 12 kids in hospital, stayed open as long as it did.

The Telegraph reports this morning,

As many as 18,000 people were allowed to visit the farm, where children are allowed to touch and feed animals including geese, goats and llamas, in the nine days after health protection officials became aware of a possible risk.

A total of 36 people have been taken ill with the potentially lethal bacterial infection including 12 children who are in hospital.

Four of the children are said to be in a serious condition after developing complications such as kidney failure as well as diarrhoea.

Among those being treated in hospital are Tracy Mock's two-year-old twin sons who visited the attraction on Aug 31 while her five-year-old daughter is also ill.

"If they had just shut the place down to investigate, my sons would not be in hospital on kidney dialysis machines," Miss Mock, from Kent, told the BBC.
"They are still in hospital, my partner and I are taking turns to be there with them. One has had a blood transfusion.

Neil Wilson’s six year-old nephew Tommy contracted E-coli after visiting the farm and is now in hospital in Sidcup suffering from kidney failure.

Mr Wilson said: "I can’t understand why they didn’t shut down that area of the farm until they found out exactly what the problem was.

"I just think they kept it open because it was the school holidays.”

Richard Oatway, the farm’s manager, said he had complied with everything officials had asked him to do and would not reopen until given the all-clear.

Dick, I want to ask you a few questions about verotoxigenic E. coli and ruminants.

Here’s a video about petting zoo safety we did a couple of years ago.

 

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There was this time, we thought we’d killed Chapman.

Ben and I went along with Uncle Denton to the Canadian Horticulture Council meeting in Montreal in Feb. 2003. I had chaired a national committee on on-farm food safety program implementation – and the advice was completely ignored – Chapman and I had done years of groundwork with Denton and the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, and we agreed to share a room at the annual meeting to cut down on expenses.

There was a couple of receptions and I still remember Ben and I asking Uncle Denton for drink tickets. We then retired to a hotel lounge and I knew trouble was ahead when Chapman asked for a cigarette.

He then went to the bathroom.

He didn’t return.

He showed up a few hours later, seemingly intact.

Denton had forgotten that story (Denton's on the right in that pic with my grandfather, Homer) when I called him a couple of weeks ago, to thank him for the opportunity to develop on-farm food safety stuff back in 1998 with the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers. I’ve been using those anecdotes (not the ones about Chapman) and lessons learned a lot lately – seems like too many people are in a food safety time warp.

Guess it brought up a few memories for Denton, who wrote this in Sept.’s issue of The Grower:

As you journey through life you meet the occasional person who makes a real difference.  Dr. Douglas Powell is one of those – to say the least.

Doug called me recently to talk about the early years.  He was new in the On Farm Food Safety business when I was working with the Ontario Greenhouse vegetable group.  Doug was at the University of Guelph and I would talk to him about the phone call I didn’t want to get.  This would be the imaginary call from a senior’s residence wondering why all the occupants were very sick after consuming a fresh salad, and if the cause may have been the greenhouse tomatoes. I never got that call—thank God--but I wanted to be ready.  And that readiness included a strong response indicating we had an On Farm Food Safety program and proof we were capable of tracing our greenhouse product. We’ve seen several incidences in the past few years with certain fresh veggies and berries that almost ruined the industry and certainly crippled those markets for a year or so.

From the University of Guelph and the beginning of the On Farm Food Safety program, Doug has moved to Kansas State University where he is associate professor of food safety. He is still very much in the industry – just relocated to a different university -- and still writing newsletters, hence the reputation of “the guru” of On Farm Food Safety.

Doug has remained a good friend over all these years. We developed a bond as we developed an On Farm Food Safety program for greenhouse vegetables and more.  Doug’s philosophy was to keep it simple.  He could relate to growers, and had an uncanny ability to make the complicated science of bacterial contamination simple and understandable. Early on, he received a little help from Dr. Gord Surgeoner.  These were the seeds of the On Farm Food Safety program in Canada, spreading from Ontario Greenhouse to CHC and to most vegetable growers across Canada.

I can still see Doug in an old T-shirt and jeans, holes in both, and running shoes--that was his fashion statement. Of course, his description of toilet paper “slippage” resulting in fecal contamination on your finger was priceless, but his crude description helped to break down the mystery of bacterial contamination by food handlers with dirty hands. Seems to me I got a T-shirt from Doug with “Don’t Eat Poop” written on the front.  Doug continues to be a great communicator, a fair goalie, poor at politics but great at On Farm Food Safety and raising little girls.

Thanks, Doug.  I am proud to say I knew you back when.

And I knew Chapman, way back when.
 

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Celebrity chef, molecular gastrologest and Alton Brown-Mats Sundin love child, Heston Blumenthal may be delusional. Or illiterate. He certainly didn’t read the report from the U.K. Health Protection Agency which was released this morning.

“Several weaknesses in procedures at the restaurant may have contributed to ongoing transmission including: delayed response to the incident; staff working when they should have been off sick and using the wrong environmental cleaning products. Delays in notification of illness may have affected the ability of the investigation to identify the exact reason for the norovirus contamination.”

Blumenthal responded in an e-mailed release:

“We are glad that the report has finally been published and draws a conclusion to the closure of the Fat Duck and more importantly that the norovirus has been identified as the cause and not due to any lapse in our strict food preparation processes. We were affected by this virus during a national outbreak of what is an extremely common and highly contagious virus. The restaurant has been open as normal since March 12 and I would like to reassure our guests that they can continue to visit us with total confidence.”

Sourcing food is the chef’s job; serving raw oysters is silly; delaying the reporting of illnesses is dumb; sick employees working and furthering the spread of the virus is stupid. No confidence at all.
 

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Best award for original song remake has to go to Cake’s 1996 version of the Gloria Gaynor disco classic, I Will Survive. Searing guitar solos, an infectious bass line, and the spoken word singing of John McCrea combine to make this an iPod workout favorite. And CAKE was the first concert Amy and I went to in Kansas City and was unexpectedly good.

Dr Karin Heurlier and colleagues at the Universities of Nottingham and Birmingham in conjunction with Biolog Inc of California told the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, today that pathogenic strains of E. coli could survive in different conditions compared to the standard laboratory, non-pathogenic strain.

Contamination by foodborne E. coli occurs in processed foods such as ready prepared salads, fermented sausages (e.g. salami), dairy products and fruit juices as well as more usually in raw and partly cooked meat products, indicating that the bacteria are able to survive modern food processing techniques. The researchers found differences between strains in how they responded to antimicrobial compounds, and in their reactions to oxygen availability, acidity and chemical stresses. They could also use different constituents in foods for their nutrition compared to standard laboratory E. coli strains.

"The laboratory E. coli strain K-12 is one of the best understood organisms on Earth," said Dr Heurlier, "But because it has become so used to being grown in laboratory conditions, it may not react to stresses in the same way as pathogenic strains – such as E. coli O157:H7 can. Our research shows that there are definite growth and nutrition differences between E. coli strains and therefore results obtained with laboratory strains may not be typical of what happens in the 'real' world."
 

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Evan Henke, a student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (right, sorta as shown), writes in this guest barfblog.com post:

During a recent trip to a Minneapolis restaurant, I ordered what is perhaps Minneapolis’s most significant contribution to the culinary world: the “Jucy Lucy.”

Legend has it that the Lucy, a hamburger with cheese stuffed inside of the beef patty before cooking (right, not exactly as shown), was invented in Minneapolis, although debate still rages as to which burger joint was the first to offer the Lucy to its customers. As I bit into the Lucy, I noticed that the center of the burger was quite undercooked, and I did not notice the use of a thermometer on the nearby grill. I immediately wondered what effect stuffing the cheese inside of the patty had on the survival of foodborne pathogens during the cooking process.

Maybe the added weight of the cheese would better insulate the side of the burger exposed to the surface grill compared to cooking a normal patty of equal thickness without flipping. Maybe any added moisture in the cheese would help kill any pathogen present in the beef, as long as the moisture was present.

But the true food safety implications of stuffing a ground beef patty with cheese or other ingredients are not well documented (left, not exactly as shown). The amounts of fat and water that escape from the cheese during cooking are not documented, and how those amounts affect the survival of foodborne pathogens present in the patty is unclear. It has been documented that E. coli O157:H7 shows increased resistance to heat in patties with higher fat and lower moisture contents[1]. It is possible that the composition of a stuffed burger, depending on the stuffing and fat and moisture content of the ground beef, could favor the survival of foodborne pathogens relative to a burger with no stuffing.

In a world of foods that taste delicious but can be deleterious to your health, the Jucy Lucy and stuffed burgers sizzle in mystery. How the addition of cheese to the center of the patty affects the survival of foodborne pathogens ought to be documented, not just for the health of my fellow Minneapolitans, but for the health of burger eaters everywhere. And of course, thermometer use is recommended whenever preparing ground beef.

The Make Your Own Jucy Lucy video is included below http://heavytable.com/make-your-own-jucy-lucy/. Warning: Conventional safe cooking technique not displayed in video.

Evan Henke is a student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health pursuing a Master’s degree in Environmental Health. An avid fan of foodborne disease epidemiology and food safety, he spends most of his free time angering his friends with his knowledge of the food chain and careful scrutiny of food safety practices.

1. Ahmed, Nahed M., Donald E. Conner, and Dale L. Huffman. "Heat-Resistance of Escherichia Coli O157:H7 in Meat and Poultry as Affected by Product Composition." Journal of Food Science 60.3 (1995): 606-10.

 

Making Your Own Jucy Lucys from The Heavy Table on Vimeo.

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In the expanding category of really bad food safety advice is this entry from Simply Recipes:

There are two basic methods to test for how done your meat is while you are cooking it - use a meat thermometer, or press on the meat with your finger tips. The problem with the meat thermometer approach is that when you poke a hole into the meat with a thermometer, it can let juices escape, juices that you would rather have stay in the meat. For this reason, most experienced cooks rely on a "finger test" method, especially on steaks (whole roasts are better tested with a thermometer).

For example, the story explains that to test for raw: Open the palm of your hand. Relax the hand. Take the index finger of your other hand and push on the fleshy area between the thumb and the base of the palm. Make sure your hand is relaxed. This is what raw meat feels like.

There’s more. This is what Johnny Cash and I think (below). Stick it in. Use a thermometer.

Thanks to another barfblog.com reader for the tip.

 

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My friend called from her temporary work assignment in Romania. She is trying to manage a large project under difficult conditions, including constantly dodging foodborne illness. With one crew member hospitalized for foodborne illness last week, and several others sick this week you might think they were working in a difficult, rural locale. But no, they are working in a government building and housed in a good hotel. So, how does she explain this? 

The government building has no toilet paper or soap. She and her crew bring those supplies every day now, and every day they are stolen. This weekend she is going to buy more toilet paper, hand sanitizer and liquid soap to fill the soap dispensers because she thinks liquid soap will be more difficult to steal. Poop is not good for you, even if it is your own.

After several crew members were sickened from pizza ordered in, she has begun bringing bagels and uncut fruit from the hotel for everyone. She wants to get this project done, so she’s wise to steer clear of catered food. Romanian researchers thoroughly examined the foods and bacteria implicated in outbreaks of foodborne illness from catered food (Ivana, et al, 2009). They main culprits were Staphylococcus aureus, (don’t eat food made by people with dirty hands) C. perfringens (don’t eat undercooked meat), C. botulinum (don’t eat home canned meat); and Salmonella spp (don’t eat runny eggs, don’t eat food that has been undercooked and don’t eat food that has been cooked and then reheated). 

The foods associated with outbreaks between 2003-2008 do not leave many safe choices: beef, poultry, milk, eggs, vegetables, ham, seafood, ice cream and cheese were all implicated. The illness in her crew is costing her company money and her colleagues are harming their health. The moral of this story is to bring your own hygiene supplies when travelling and working in Romania. And bring safe snacks from home such as packaged granola bars, almonds and dried fruit. Only eat cooked food when it is freshly prepared and still piping hot.

Reference: Simona Ivana, Alexandru Bogdan, Ipate Judith, Laurentiu Tudor, Bărăităreanu Stelian, Andrei Tănase, Alexandru Nicolae Popescu, Dana Magdalena Caplan, Mihai Daneş. 2009. Food Microbial Contamination – The main danger in catering type food in Romania. Romanian Biotechnical Letters, Vol 14, #2, pp 4260-4266
 

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Playing the calm, cool Danny Glover to Doug's crazed Mel Gibson, I wanted to contribute to the food safety month discussion.

I’m not a fan of causes of the month; either an issue is important year-round or it’s not. Food safety month, established sometime in the mid-90s (thanks Google news archives), is supposed to be an awareness-raising time. The goal is to focus consumer food safety communication efforts and coordinate messages.  But does this even work?

Liz Redmond and Chris Griffith published research in 2006 that showed even targeted, specific social media messages (which isn’t really what is seen in the many food safety month press releases) may impact practices right after the audience is exposed to them, but behavior changes were not sustained 4-6 weeks after being exposed:

Results suggested that “one-off” food safety interventions developed and implemented using a social marketing approach may result in a short-term improvement of consumer food safety behaviors.

The unfortunate part about food safety month is that messages get recycled from previous years (sometimes with updated temperatures, sometimes not). It appears that contrary to CDC’s FoodNet report suggestions on enhanced measures, folks are just throwing the same messages year after year. The majority of messages focus on what consumers can do in their home, but few stories exist about what industry, regulators and researchers are doing to address food safety risks. If food safety is a farm-to-fork problem (kind of what HACCP is built on, addressing risks at different points) then our food safety messages need to be farm-to-fork.

Over a decade of food safety months and we've got the same annual estimate of foodborne illness incidents. If there’s no measurable impact, why bother?

Let's get rid of the one-off consumer-focused message blitz that is food safety month.

The best campaign idea I have for food safety month 2009 is a funeral of sorts. The campaign would be focused on lamenting the demise of food safety month and the birth of “Every month is food safety month”.  We can have a New Orleans jazz-type funeral (because they really do them up right with the parade and all) with the cook, chill, clean, separate motto being pulled behind in an elaborate horse-drawn carriage. It will be a somber event for some, but others will rejoice in shedding the tactics that may result in only short-term behavioral changes. New messages and mediums are needed to really affect foodborne illness incidents.

 

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Watching the pronouncements and proclamations for Food Safety Education month makes me think about kids in the 1950s getting educated about nuclear bombs: Duck, Cover and Roll.

In the film, below, substitute foodborne illness for atomic bomb, and substitute consumers have a role, for duck, cover and roll.

In a month of foodborne illness, the signal of impending doom is not an air raid siren, but more likely explosive diarrhea; you might even be out playing when it comes.

The advice in Duck and Cover is as useful in protecting against radiation as the advice from various government, industry and advocacy types is in preventing foodborne illness.
 

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Eat Me Daily reports that Food + Sex, a new magazine (bottom) with claims to be "The New Aesthetic of Food" featuring articles about human-incubated yogurt and "Tripping Balls on the Magic Penis" about eating psychedelic mushrooms, has debuted.

Sounds like the culmination of food porn.

For those who want more than titillation, The Enthusiast reports on how it’s done:

That mouth-watering Dominos pizza pull-apart, the tumbling ice cube dive-bombing into a perfect splash of soft drink — hell, even Whiskas looks pretty damn tasty when it’s artfully forked apart on TV commercials. Just who is responsible for these flirtatious parades of food pornography?

Welcome to the unspoken world of food stylists, a niche industry responsible for producing attractive food and drink footage of almost otherworldly beauty. This critical weapon is vital in convincing you to purchase that greasy burger, which otherwise looks like a flaccid afterthought by a distracted teenage fry cook.

Robert Carmack, an Australian food stylist of 20 years experience., says, there’s a simple code of conduct when it comes to advertising the product with some honesty. “We use the actual product when we’re selling that product. I’m free to use anything else when it’s an auxiliary. In other words, selling cereal means I must use the actual corn flakes, but the sugar and milk – or white-coloured glue – can be faked.” Mmm, we always did love the taste of Clag as kids!

Robert notes that many food stylists begin their life at gourmet publications, which usually involve proving your worth with mottled lighting and suspiciously realistic props. You’ll work your way up the (ahem) food chain, to photographing products like Big Macs against white Formica without any props at all, but still generating the same appeal to appetite.

In the age of Photoshop, however, everything is usually graphically manipulated after the final shot. “It tends to make stylists lazy when it comes to wiping out marks and drops, but it’s essential,” laments Robert.

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What is the single most important thing that can be done (by food growers, producers, government, consumers – any, or all of the above) to improve food safety in the United States? (bios in previous post)

Tsai: It’s tried and true for a reason: wash your hands. And, in any language, say the ABC’s twice while you’re doing it. Also, when you leave a bathroom, use a paper towel to turn the handle, and use your foot to keep the door open while you throw the towel away.

Marler: Prepare food, from farm to fork, like you were preparing it for your 4-year-old child. Do it safely.

Kender: Education! There are numerous websites (even YouTube) and informational brochures, such as Fight Bac, that are specific on the topic of food safety. Clueing in the average consumer may be as simple as teaming up with your local grocer to display a series of food safety messages on the flat-screen televisions at the prepared foods and deli counters.

Vergili: Shorten the food chain. The foodborne outbreaks of recent years—when you consider the large number of victims and their wide geographical distribution—point toward buying local as a possible solution. In the case of the 2006 outbreak of E.coli in spinach, the source of the contamination was a centralized packer of leafy vegetables located in California that packages up to 80 percent of all spinach and lettuce mixes. The 2009 Salmonella outbreak that hospitalized 116 people in 46 states was the result of contamination from a single supplier of peanuts. This is not to suggest that there would be no problems if we bought local, but that they would be limited in scope.

Donnelly: We can revamp regulations and production practices in the meat and poultry industry. The numerous recent recalls and outbreaks prove that as our farms grow larger their operation becomes more unsafe. The dangers posed by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, agricultural facilities that house and feed a large number of animals in a confined area, or CAFOs, are many: animals in these operations harbor antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and runoff from these facilities has been implicated as a source of contamination in produce outbreaks. With regard to the environment, we have yet to define regulations which look at CAFOs’ handling of waste and runoff, and the long-term environmental impact when the “farms” cease to operate.

Rosenbaum: You cannot improve food safety in the United States without knowing exactly what is making people sick. Only 4 to 6 percent of those who fall ill from foodborne pathogens find out what caused their illness. The government must ramp up funding on a national and state level to improve the surveillance and diagnosis of foodborne illnesses. And consumers—when they suspect foodborne illness—need to seek medical care and demand answers and lab culture tests.

Nestle: We don’t have a food safety system in this country, so step one would be to create one. Combining the current food safety features of the USDA and the FDA, this food agency would oversee the production of all foods with science-based food safety procedures. This would include, most notably, pathogen reduction and HAACP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, a system that predicts possible problems in the flow of production and takes steps to prevent them from occurring).

Donnelly: We need to hold all producers and manufacturers to Safe Quality Foods (SQF) certification standards. SQF certification is an HAACP-based (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) system that manages food-safety risk instead of reacting to it, essentially foreseeing and taking steps to prevent future problems.

Powell:  Be the bug. Think about where dangerous bugs originate and how best to control them, whether it's dangerous E. coli in a spinach field, Salmonella carried by birds or rodents that contaminate peanuts after they've been roasted, or the pathogens on hands that can be transferred to fresh foods at a restaurant.
 

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The best Canadian comedians move to the U.S. The worst apparently stay and become Minister of Agriculture or a vp at some $5.5 billion a year corporation that discovers food safety after killing 22 people.

First it was Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry-isn’t-my-moustache-awesome Ritz joking that he was dying by a thousand cold cuts.

Now, a Maple Leaf Foods vp is shown on YouTube, yucking it up for Canadian policy wonks in Ontario cottage country on August 8, 2009.

Every year, the witty and urbane of Canada put on their best Berkenstocks and retreat to the Couchiching conference. A barfblog.com fan e-mailed me at the time, and said via a redirected twitter post, Rory McAlpine of Maple Leaf Foods “suggests an approach to food safety that takes in the accountability of the consumer.”

At the time I thought, what an asshole. Are consumers supposed to be deep-frying their deli meats? But I had no further information, no verification, so didn’t bother blogging the story.

The video has surfaced.

I first heard this joke about the Toronto Maple Leafs, listeria and the Leafs inability to win hockey’s coveted Stanley Cup, a futility streak going back to 1967, last year.

I thought it was tasteless and said so at the time.

Guess Rory stayed in Canada, where he still may be considered funny.

So here’s Rory McAlpine, vice-president, Government and Industry Relations, Maple Leaf Foods, and former British Columbia deputy minister of Agriculture, with his rendition of, hey, my own kid got listeria from my products, what’s the big deal?
 

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That’s what I told the Topeka Capital-Journal last week in a story published today.

Mike Heideman, KDHE spokesman, said the most common food-borne illnesses in Kansas are salmonella and E.coli, both transmitted by eating food contaminated with human or animal feces.

Don’t eat poop.
 

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I don’t understand cricket -- other than it may be as boring as baseball --  but I do understand barf.

Tillakaratne Dilshan achieved the milestone he narrowly missed in Sri Lanka's first innings to post an unbeaten 123 as New Zealand became increasingly dependent on rain to stave off defeat in the first cricket test in Galle last night.

New Zealand had little to enthuse about once it became apparent morning rain would not stall the start of play for the first time since a delayed toss.

Their mood darkened further when Brendon McCullum and Jesse Ryder called in sick at breakfast, the worst affected of eight players struck down by food poisoning.

Only Ross Taylor, Martin Guptill and Iain O'Brien were immune from the bug that provided Auckland wicketkeeper Reece Young with his first experience of test cricket.


 

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ConAgra CEO thingy Gary Rodkin is on a quest

A quest to find what he calls "the big, singular insight that will drive behavior change." If he can do that, he can boost the bottom line (which was $978 million on revenue of $12.7 billion in the fiscal year ended May 31). Rodkin is using theories about buying habits--backed by $399 million a year in advertising, marketing and in-store promotions--to convince grocery stores to provide ample shelves for its 45 consumer brands, which include Chef Boyardee, Healthy Choice, Hebrew National, Wesson and Swiss Miss.

I have a suggestion. Don’t make people barf, with your Banquet pot pies and your peanut butter. Seriously, $399 million in advertising, and you can’t promise people they won’t barf?

And the best guest speaker you can get is me naked in New Zealand (cost to ConAgra bottom line – nothing).

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In another triumph for food porn, uniting the world of figure skating with home cooking, 1998 Olympic gold medalist and South Park enthusiast, Brian Boitano has his own cooking show.

Boitano, now 45, has turned into a hard-core foodie.  … You'd certainly be hard-pressed to find another TV chef with his own "South Park" song. "What Would Brian Boitano Do?," a highlight of the 1999 animated movie, not only serves as the opening theme for Boitano's new show but provided the obvious inspiration for its title. In each episode, Boitano hosts a get-together at his home, creating a custom menu for his guests, who range from his single-and-ready-to-mingle friend and 20 bachelorettes to a bacon-loving all-girl roller derby. His take on mostly rustic home cooking is inventive, yet straightforward enough not to intimidate the casual cook. But the show's biggest revelation is Boitano himself. Known for his laser-like focus on the ice, he reveals an irreverent side in "What Would Brian Boitano Make?"

Terence and Philip are Canadian, eh.
 

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Food safety culture is miniscule compared to food porn culture.

How is it that Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant was rated as a perfect 10 in the new edition of the Good Food Guide 2010, despite being closed for a norovirus outbreak?

Making customers barf doesn’t seem to count in the scoring system.

Good Food Guide editor and food porn aficionado Elizabeth Carter, said

"It is the most extraordinary restaurant in Britain. … It’s a destination restaurant, a place you save up to go to, and you will remember it forever."

Especially the barfing.

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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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This isn’t a Chevy Chase-John Candy (right) kind of vacation.

The widow of an elderly British tourist who died after falling ill with salmonella poisoning at a luxury Italian hotel has called for better safety standards at holiday resorts.

The Birmingham Post reports that Jean Appleyard and her husband, Geoffrey, aged 71, were staying at the four-star Grand Hotel in the Gardone resort on the shores of Lake Garda last year when both began to suffer from fever and stomach pains.

An inquest at South Worcestershire Coroners’ Court yesterday recorded a verdict of misadventure after hearing evidence that the salmonella poisoning Mr Appleyard contracted contributed to his death.

Coroner Geraint Williams said:

“Although the hotel seemed very picturesque, there was a very dark side in the kitchen and cellars where there was a virulent contamination of salmonella in the foodstuffs. This was served to the guests and, as a consequence, a large number became ill. Mr Appleyard died because he was not able to withstand this infection.”

The Italian authorities confirmed that salmonella was detected at the hotel.

Mrs Appleyard said, 

“We went to the Grand Hotel for a luxury holiday. It is simply appalling that we fell ill and Geoffrey contracted something as serious as salmonella at a hotel like that. Tour operators have to ensure they are doing everything they possibly can to make sure holidaymakers are protected from outbreaks like this.”

Meanwhile, The Independent reports that 50-year-old Julian Hurley from South Yorkshire, U.K., said he was delighted today after being awarded nearly £300,000 compensation from tour operator First Choice following his diagnosis of shigella after eating "poor-standard" food at an all-inclusive hotel in Venezuela in August 2004.

Mr Hurley said.

"When we went to the hotel restaurant I tried a variety of different dishes, which included cooked meats. The food was of an extremely poor standard, a lot of the dishes were undercooked and some of them were almost cold. The impact that this hellish holiday has had on our lives has been devastating. I now struggle to walk long distances and find myself getting tired easily. I am still suffering from symptoms to this day and will do for the rest of my life, which has been very difficult to come to terms with.”

 

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Last Friday, U.S. regulatory types announced plans to increase testing of beef trim for E. coli O157:H7 and to strengthen safety protocols for fresh fruits and vegetables. The former got lots of attention, especially with a new Salmonella outbreak that has sickened dozens and is linked to ground beef; the latter, not so much.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are one of, if not the most, significant sources of foodborne illness today in the U.S. – and it’s been that way for over a decade. As consumers increase per capita consumption of fresh vegetables, methods of handling, processing, packaging and distributing produce locally and internationally are receiving more attention in terms of identifying and controlling microbiological, chemical and physical hazards.

That was essentially the prelude for FDA publishing its 1998 Guidance for Industry: Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. We took those guidelines, as well as others, and created an on-farm food safety program for all 220 growers producing tomatoes and cucumbers under the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers banner. And set up a credible verification system.

So why did regulators and industry make such a big deal about commodity-specific guidelines for tomatoes, melons and leafy greens that were published in the federal register last Friday – in 2009?

I looked at the 2009 CSGs and the 1998 FDA guidance document – and I can’t see much of a difference in the on-farm stuf. Maybe I’m slow on the uptake; maybe guidelines are meaningless without implementation and verification; maybe growers keep asking for government babysitters so when the next outbreak happens, they can say, but we followed FDA guidelines (good luck with that). One of the notices said the draft guidances were FDA's first step toward setting enforceable standards for produce safety, so maybe it’s some lawmaking thing.

Tom Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, said in a statement released July 31,

“Our industry has worked hard since 2004 to develop commodity-specific guidance documents in each of these areas, and now strongly supports FDA taking these efforts to a new level.”

2004? Why not 1998? And do the new and supposedly improved guidelines mean fewer sick people? No. Not unless an individual grower or groups of growers, or associations, take serious steps to implement and verify, something could have been done in 1998 and does not need government oversight. We did it – how hard can it be?

It’s not, and lots of growers do it on a daily basis. So maybe the talk from Washington was rightly shrugged off as no biggie.

But why did Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in making the announcement, choose to highlight the “vital role” consumers play in ensuring the safety of the fresh produce they eat and offer a laundry list of questionable food safety advice that would do little to reduce contamination of tomatoes, leafy greens and melons that happened in the field? Especially with all the caveats featured in the introduction to the tomato commodity-specific guide, included below.

This guidance is intended to assist domestic firms and foreign firms exporting tomatoes to the United States (U.S.) by recommending practices to minimize the microbial food safety hazards of their products throughout the entire tomato supply chain. It identifies some, but not all, of the preventive measures that these firms may take to minimize these food safety hazards. This guidance document is not intended to serve as an action plan for any specific operation but should be viewed as a start­ing point. We encourage each firm from the farm level through the retail or foodservice level to assess the recommendations in this guidance and tailor its food safety practices to its particular operations by developing its own food safety program based on an assessment of the potential hazards that may be associated with its operations.

In addition, effective management of food safety requires that responsibility be clearly established among the many parties involved in the production of fresh produce. There may be many different permutations of ownership and business arrangements during the growing, harvesting packing, processing, and distribution of fresh and fresh-cut tomatoes. For this reason, it is important to identify which responsibilities rest with which parties, and to ensure that these responsibilities are clearly defined. For example, growers commonly contract with third parties to harvest their crops. Also, it is important that growers clearly identify which party is responsible for each applicable provision of this guidance, such as providing adequate toilet and handwashing facilities and worker training. Approaches to addressing responsibilities include delegating them to individuals within the firm and formally addressing them in contractual agreements when third parties are involved. Each party should be aware of its responsibilities to ensure microbial food safety hazards for tomatoes are minimized at each stage of the supply chain.

The commodity specific guidelines are available for leafy greens, tomatoes and melons. Guidance, however, does not mean responsibility. That’s up to industry, and it begins on the farm.

 

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Our friends are pregnant and recently returned from Australia; I hope they didn’t fly Virgin Blue.

The Australian reports tomorrow morning that two pregnant women gave birth prematurely after eating contaminated chicken wraps that were sold in their thousands on Virgin Blue flights from Brisbane and the Gold Coast, triggering a national public health alert.

The airline confirmed yesterday that up to 5000 flights in May and June could have carried the snacks laced with potentially deadly listeria bacteria.

Five Queenslanders are known to have contracted listeriosis food poisoning after consuming the wraps, including the two women who gave birth prematurely, a known complication of the illness.

Both women and their babies survived.

The Brisbane Times reported yesterday that Queensland Health has confirmed nine cases of listeriosis so far this year, compared to 56 cases nationally. Last year, 12 cases were recorded for the whole of 2008 in Queensland, compared to 68 nationally.

Virgin Blue today in a statement an outside contractor may have been to blame, adding,

"It appears the likely source of the contamination was an ingredient supplied to the manufacturers of the wraps and not Virgin Blue or other companies who received the affected products. Virgin Blue has removed the product from service at the end of June."

Brisbane-based solicitor Mark O'Connor stated what any company should know: Virgin Blue served the food, Virgin Blue is responsible.

"The airline in turn would have to make a claim against the supplier of the food but for passengers, it’s the airline that is liable.”

Virgin Blue should check on its suppliers rather than trying to cover their ass with (bad) PR.

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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 is the latest to invoke 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.”

As soon as someone says there’s “no doubt” I am filled with doubt about the quality of the statement that is about to follow.

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. 

Newsweek has an excellent article this week about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and its Disease Detective Camp, where teenagers learn how to form a hypothesis about a disease outbreak and conduct an investigation. The key lies only partly in state-of-the-art technology. At least half the challenge is figuring out the right questions to ask. Who has contracted the disease? Where have they been? Why were they exposed to this pathogen?

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. 


 

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Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, and offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Whole Foods chief John Mackey is now going to reposition the Austin, Texas, chain as a champion of healthy living in a return to its natural-foods roots.

"We sell a bunch of junk," he said, vowing to promote healthier lifestyles for its customers and employees. "We've decided if Whole Foods doesn't take a leadership role in educating people about a healthy diet, who the heck is going to do it?"

Given the track record outlined above, almost anybody and any group would be better qualified than Whole Foods. Besides, as soon as someone says they’re going to educate someone else, it’s propaganda rather than compelling, evidence-based information,

I look forward to the whoppers being offered up as educational material in Whole Foods' future.
 

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Food such as takeout or takeaway, that is initially prepared in a restaurant but is consumed in an individual’s home, may be a venue to target with safe-food handling messages. Earlier this decade, both Chicago-based Francesca Restaurants and Boston-based Buca Di Beppo Restaurants reported anecdotal success placing food safety labels on containers of takeout food.

In 2004, my group undertook research to:

• examine restaurant managements’ experience of using a safe food-handling label on takeout food;
• explore managements’ food safety concerns;
• determine the value of consumer safe-food handling labels to managers;
• establish perceived label effectiveness; and,
• identify challenges with implementation.

For our study, we defined take-out as food procured from a casual dining restaurant (i.e. sit-down restaurant) but eaten elsewhere, including food ordered as take-out and leftover food packaged to be taken home. The label we developed is right (above) and left (note, the phone line and web site don’t work anymore).

The research paper describing that work has been accepted by a peer-reviewed scientific journal and will be published in the near future.

However, the public health types in Dubai discovered over the weekend the same thing we found: most consumers and restaurateurs like the idea.

Our bites.ksu.edu Dubai correspondent contacted Ben and me about stickers on takeaway, and we sent along what we had developed. Today, the Khaleej Times reports,

The Dubai Municipality is planning to encourage all restaurants in the emirate to issue advisories to consumers on safe handling of takeaway food.

The decision follows a similar initiative by a popular south Indian restaurant group that attaches red stickers to its takeaway bags at its two outlets in Dubai. A municipality official applauded the group’s move and said the civic body intended to support such initiatives by other restaurants as well.

Director of Food Control Department, Khalid Mohammed Sherif, told the Khaleej Times,

“We are encouraging more and more food outlets to put such messages along with takeaway food to ensure that the customer handles the food properly. We will be providing all of them with modified instructions for customers to handle food taken away.”

He said the modified versions of the advisories will include the temperature at which food items have to be stored and the duration within which they have to be consumed, depending on the types of ingredients.

Below is a draft of the information intended for consumers.

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While the websphere, blogsphere and twittersphere were ejaculating electrons about the potential passage of new food safety legislation by the U.S. House– 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, hangers-on and chatting classes could ever come up with.

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

As the General Accounting Office pointed out in a report a year ago,

“The burden for food safety in most of the selected 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 my visit, I went to the local Publix in St. Pete Beach to check out what the food safety type said – sure, the boss knows 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 contained the following:

“Publix Deli
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”

(The picture isn’t very good. Note to Publix: The label warning about shelf-life is a great idea, but can’t read it if the price sticker gets slapped over some of the text.)

This is the first time I’ve 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 a food safety type to say, this is important, let’s do it.

I also went looking for some bread for turkey sandwiches tomorrow as we move down to Sarasota, and then Venice Beach. I asked an employee in the bakery for some whole wheat rolls, and she pointed out what was available, said packages of six were pre-packaged, but she could get me whatever number I wanted. I asked for four. There was no bin for me to stick my who-knows-where-they-have-been hands in to and retrieve a few rolls. The bins were turned so that only staff had access. The employee said it had been that way since she started three years ago, and that “there’s just too much stuff going around” to let consumers stick their hands into bun bins (most commonly found item in communal bun bins? False fingernails).

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

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Home food preservation is seeing a resurgence across North America. Some of this is due to economics, some is linked to eating local (and others are just curious what all the buzz is about). Earlier this year seed companies reported increases in home garden sales (potentially leading to more canning) and North Carolina extension agents have told me that canning inquiries have almost doubled over previous years.

I've even been challenged to a pickle making throw-down (more on that later).

The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today have all recently covered home food preservation. My contribution to the coverage was reinforcing the importance of following tested recipes (and not messing around with them). Kim Painter of USA Today used my money-shot quote:

"This is one area where you don't want to be Rachael Ray. You don't want to add your flair" to recipes and techniques backed by good science and rigorous testing, says Ben Chapman, a food safety specialist at North Carolina State University.

Keep your flair out of home food preservation and stick to methods that have been evaluated for safety.

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This is a food safety story with no dead bodies, no sick people, and a company responding appropriately to questions raised by inspectors.

Mike Hughlett writes in tomorrow’s Chicago Tribune today that,

When food-safety inspectors called on Panera Bread Co.'s Chicago dough plant earlier this year, they found a host of manufacturing deficiencies.

For instance, a worker was spotted welding near a batch of bread dough -- a contamination risk -- while some dough was observed in dirty containers.

Panera's records also indicated that in just over a year, the Chicago plant, which makes bread dough for 124 outlets in four states, fielded 10 complaints from consumers who had found foreign objects, mostly metal, in their food, including a washer discovered in a whole-grain bagel. …

The lesson is: Deviations from good manufacturing practices, which are at issue at Panera's plant, often are at the heart of food-safety fiascoes. Companies either learn from the errors, as Panera said it did, or the risk increases that the next incident will be more serious.

Doug Powell, a food safety expert at Kansas State University, said,

"It's multiple little failures that add up; these are warning signs.”

Martin Cole, who heads the Illinois Institute of Technology's National Center for Food Safety and Technology agreed, adding,

such failures are "fairly common, I'm afraid."
 

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As a Canadian in America, watching the health-care advertisements, warning that any new U.S. system will be socialized like in Canada is as informative as watching a Michael Moore documentary.

Both are widely inaccurate.

Same with the orgy of listeria-in-Canada coverage following the release of the Weatherill report yesterday. Almost all of the commentary and analysis borders on the banal (the dictionary says banal means “so lacking in originality as to be obvious and boring,” so for once I used a word properly) but a few things stand out:

Weatherill zeroed in on a "vacuum in senior leadership" among government officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that caused "confusion and weak decision-making."

Like a risk communication vacuum; covered that in the 1997 book, Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk.

Rob Cribb of the Toronto Star got things right when he summarized things this way:

Twenty-two dead.
Hundreds sickened.
Six months of inquiry.
Nearly $3 million in public money.

That’s $3 million in addition to all the publicly-funded salaries of bureaucrats sitting around figuring out what not to do and how to cover their own assess. The Prime Minister could have called the bureaucrats on the carpet and said – stop messing around, come clean on who knew what when and fix this. Instead, stand-up comedian wannabe and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz got to make jokes about the 22 dead people. And he still has his job.

The front-line public health types at the local and provincial levels seemed to know what they were doing. The feds at three different agencies – Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada, and the Public Health Agency of Canada – continually got in the way and messed things up.

Of course that didn’t stop the politicians and bureaucrats from praising the Canadian food safety system in the early days of the outbreak – when they had no clue what they were talking about. Like health care, it seems that the Canadian model is to tell citizens repeatedly they have the best system in the world, and they believe it.

Or, as Cribb said this morning in the Star,

At virtually every stage of the outbreak, it seems things could have – should have – gone differently in a food safety system repeatedly hailed by government officials as "one of the safest in the world."

Rick Holley, a microbiologist at the University of Manitoba and member of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's external advisory panel, responded with,

"I get so annoyed when I hear them say that. The food safety system in Canada is on the upper end of being mediocre."

Like health care.

 

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This is what happens when doing interviews at 6:30 a.m. while feeding Sorenne some mush of peach and pear.

After blogging about how the U.K. Food Standards Agency was embracing food safety culture, I turned the post into an opinion piece and sent it to a newspaper in Wales.

The next morning, while feeding Sorenne, a reporter e-mailed me with some questions, and I replied, “call me.”

So she did.

The article, by Abby Alford, appeared this morning in  Wales under the headline, Tragic E. coli death used to teach US students food hygiene.

The tragic story of E. coli victim Mason Jones is being used by an American professor as a graphic illustration of what unsafe food can do.

Dr Douglas Powell also shows his students at Kansas State University a picture of the five-year-old as he teaches them about food safety.

“We are always trying to come up with new ways of getting the food safety message across. We have to have a compelling story and there’s no more compelling story than Mason Jones,” he said.

I talked about food safety culture, what FSA was proposing, and questioned how they were going to measure effectiveness.

The FSA has announced a culture change is needed in all parts of the food supply chain if the UK is to avoid another E.coli outbreak.

Dr Powell also suggested UK firms could follow the example of a factory in North Dakota, USA, which uses webcams to stream its activities live on the Internet.

Apparently I dreamed that part. There is a turkey processing plant in South Dakota that uses video cameras to constantly monitor operations and the videos can be accessed by auditors or USDA inspectors at any time – but not on the Internet. And not in North Dakota.
 

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Ho Chi Minh City destroyed nearly 1.5 tons of goat penis, imported from Australia and contaminated with bacteria.

Nguyen Thi Thu Nga, chief inspector of the HCMC Animal Health Agency, said the products were contaminated with bacteria, including Salmonella and E.coli, and also failed to meet other food safety criteria.

However, inspectors said 47 of the 72 boxes imported had been sold as food. The inspectors issued fines against the company for trading animal products contaminated with bacteria.

In addition to a reproductive organ and Asian meat, GoatPenis is also a heavy metal band from Brazil formed in 1991 and performing under the Satanic Skinhead label. Sounds as bad as Journey.
 

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This is why we go to Florida in summer. The heat and humidity – especially this year – is ridiculous in Kansas and the closest beach may as well be Florida.

Amy, Sorenne and I wandered the grounds earlier this evening to view the overgrowth, eat a few fresh blackberries, let the dogs tear around the yard and for me to once again observe how much I suck at gardening. I’m better at taking care of the seven-month-old.

Maybe I need to call one of them there U.S. Department of Agriculture Master Gardeners, a cadre of volunteers who provide free gardening tips and have a wealth of science-based research to answer questions

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, said the other day,

“Growing fruits and vegetables in your own garden not only promotes a healthier lifestyle, but helps communities develop a safe, nutritious and sustainable source of food."

Safety is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot, like sustainable. I didn’t see anything about microbial food safety in this release, nor have I seen any evidence that local is safer, more nutritious or more sustainable. It’s a fun hobby. But as Vilsack should know, farming isn’t a hobby, it’s a skill. Society needs professional farmers. And parents.
 

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If you ran a $5.5-billion-a-year corporation that made a variety of ready-to-eat deli meats, and those products killed 22 people and sickened another 53, causing the company to lose millions and trust in the food safety system to be further undermined, how would you go about rebuilding that trust, that brand?

Maybe make public all the listeria test results the corporation undertakes in the form of a live, continuously updated website; maybe have live video cameras that people could check out on the Internet to see how these delicious deli-meats are made; maybe market these food safety initiatives at retail.

Or blame consumers.

Maple Leaf Foods announced yesterday as part of their continuing Journey to Food Safety Leadership – I wish they were already there, but Don’t Stop Believin’ – they were launching a food safety at home website.

“In keeping with our mandate of becoming a leader in food safety education, we have launched a new website to help consumers understand the important role of food safety at Maple Leaf and in your homes.”

(I have this stupid Journey video on in the background that I’m about to paste below and I can’t tell whether it’s the music or that statement that just made me barf a bit in my mouth.)

If Maple Leaf believes they can be leaders in food safety education, why is there no mention that pregnant women shouldn’t eat Maple Leaf or any other deli meats or other refrigerated ready-to-eat foods?

More data; less Believin’.

And Journey still sucks.
 

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Andrew Stormer (right, exactly as shown), a Kansas State food science grad who used to work with me writes from Topeka:

Food is my career and a passion, so I often find myself in conversations with people regarding trendy food topics (organic, healthy, safe etc.).  Today I found myself in the midst of a debate about the doneness of burgers with a plant employee.

The other dude was talking about the burgers he had grilled on July 4th. I asked him if he used a tip sensitive digital thermometer to determine if it had been cooked to 160°F, and the debate ensued.  He proudly proclaimed that he could tell if they are cooked “just right” by looking at the color and pushing on them with his finger.  I countered, stating that both of his methods were terrible indicators of doneness and that temperature is the only way to tell for sure.  I mentioned premature browning and that 160°F was the necessary temperature to reach to ensure the death of the common patty-pathogen E. coli O157:H7.

He persisted, saying I was wrong, and that his method had always worked and he had never made anyone sick.  How did he know that for sure, I wondered, explaining that the incubation period for E. coli was usually anywhere from about 18 to 72 hours, and that a person won’t exhibit symptoms of the infection until well after leaving the BBQ. 

He didn’t have much of a response. 

I then offered to find and show him studies, books, articles etc. that supported my claim.  He wanted none of it, and wrapped up the debate nicely with, “I just know.”  I was left frustrated and dismayed. 

This is a dangerous and arrogant attitude to have towards food safety, but unfortunately I have come across countless others that share the same “I just know” train of thought.  That said; his method is still a step above the “put-a-thin-piece-of-metal-in-the-burger-and-taste” method.

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In 1984, the Pope visited the restored 350-year-old Jesuit mission of Ste. Marie-among-the-Hurons in Midland, Ontario. After departing, 1,600 hungry Ontario Provincial Police officers who had worked the ropes gathered for a boxed lunch. Of those 500 officers who chose ones with roast beef sandwiches, 423 came down with salmonella.