11 hospitalized, 125 sick from South Carolina fundraiser
At least four more people who ate food sold last week at a fundraiser at a Conway church have been hospitalized as of today, said Jim Beasley, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.
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A total of 11 people have been hospitalized, and DHEC officials believe there are about 125 people who sought physician care for gastro-intestinal illness symptoms in the area, Beasley said.
Conway Medical Center performed tests on three samples from patients and it appears that salmonella is expected, Beasley said.
People started becoming ill with symptoms such as abdominal cramping, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, after buying and eating food sold at the Cedar Grove Baptist Church in Conway to raise money to benefit the family of an ill child, said Dr. Covia L. Stanley, director of DHEC's Region 6 public health office, which serves Horry, Georgetown and Williamsburg counties, said in a news release Tuesday.
The meals, which included barbecue pork, baked sweet potatoes, cole slaw and rolls, were prepared at a local hunting club, Stanley said.
DHEC officials are asking that anyone who purchased any of the roughly 1,450 plates of food sold at the fundraiser to throw leftovers away and to contact their private healthcare physician if they are experiencing any symptoms.
South Carolina fundraiser linked to foodborne illness outbreak
The Sunnews.co reports from South Carolina that at least seven people who ate food sold Friday at a fundraiser at a Conway church have been hospitalized, officials with the state Department of Health and 
Environmental Control said Tuesday.
DHEC officials are asking that anyone who purchased any of the roughly 1,450 plates of food sold at the fundraiser to throw leftovers away and to contact their private healthcare physician if they are experiencing any symptoms.
Food safety in schools sorta sucks
Today’s USA Today has a great feature about food safety and school lunches in the U.S.
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Students at Starbuck Middle School stumbled through the halls just after lunch on Oct. 31, 2007, holding their bellies and moaning. When the vomiting began, teachers knew that it wasn't a Halloween prank.
By midafternoon, almost 70 children waited outside the nurse's office at the school near Milwaukee. "There were so many kids there, it was like, 'Holy cow!' " recalls Michael Hannes, then a seventh-grader who felt "like someone kept punching me in the stomach."
During the Racine outbreak, the scene at Starbuck was so striking that photos of a hallway full of sick kids memorialize the day in the school yearbook. In the foreground sit trash barrels; the school ran out of bags to catch the vomit.
Much about the following days typifies what happens after such outbreaks. Worried that a virus might be to blame, officials closed the school and custodians disinfected every surface; meanwhile, health and school officials tried to learn all they could about what the children ate.
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Days would pass before local health officials determined that the tortillas served at Starbuck and four other schools in Racine were to blame for 101 illnesses. An Internet search showed them the stunning particulars: The company that supplied the tortillas had a long history of making children sick.
The feature has lots more details. And is why I always helped pack the kids a lunch.
Most Australian restaurants serve 'crap:' critic
Matthew Evans is a food critic for The Sydney Morning Herald.
In September 2003, the paper published a review by Evans of the now defunct restaurant Coco Roco at Sydney's King Street Wharf, in which Evans said the dishes were "unpalatable" and that the restaurant's overall value was "a shocker," scoring it 9/20 - in the "stay home" category.
The restaurant went under in March 2004, and is suing both the paper and Evans for defamation and damages.
Under cross-examination, Evans, a former chef, said while he believed a bad review could have some impact on a restaurant, it was not enough to cause its demise, and was asked if he still held the opinion he wrote in his 2007 book which said "most restaurants in this country still serve crap food."
Evans stood by that opinion, adding that he was "not too happy" with most food he was served in restaurants.
Me neither. I had an artsy friend do this recreation of a New Yorker cartoon some 25 years ago (right); still hangs in our kitchen.
The lawyer defending Coco Roco referred Evans to a December 2003 review of Coco Roco by Ray Chesterton, who "thought everything was great."
"He says he never met a meal he didn't like," the barrister also noted.
Justice Ian Hamilton then quipped: "That emerges from the photograph."
Hearty guffaws all around.
Colts win in stunner; stadium food service company denies media access to witness food safety improvements
Maybe it was the stadium food that somehow lifted the Indianapolis Colts to a stunning come-from-behind 35-34 victory over the New England Patriots in another chapter of the U.S. football rivalry of 
the decade, Peyton Manning (right) versus Tom Brady (below, left).
After being hammered by local health types, the folks who run the food concessions at Lucas Oil Stadium swooped into town and promised to set things straight. WISH went out to ask some tailgaters to see how confident were about buying food inside the stadium.
Tailgater Glen Vigar reacted to the news,"(It's) a little scary. I mean it's a brand new building. I wouldn't expect it."
Vigar said that he wouldn't eat the food there anymore.
Centerplate said it planned to have 15 of its own food safety inspectors inside the stadium Sunday to make sure conditions are clean.
24-Hour News 8 had asked to be inside the stadium to see how that was going, but a Centerplate spokesperson denied that request.
Gratuitous food porn shot of the day - oven baked salmon, squash soup, garlic bread, strawberries and melon
Farmed salmon fillets with oil, lime, garlic, rosemary and white wine, baked in a 400F oven. Roasted butternut squash soup with apple, cinnamon, nutmeg potato and carrot, pureed, and using a homemade 
chicken stock (the stock makes the soup). Cheap whole wheat buns I picked up at Dillion’s at 7 a.m. after dropping Chapman off at the airport, topped with roasted garlic in butter, rosemary and some shredded Italian cheese (the bread, not the Chapman).
She’s also eating whole strawberries and chunks of melon. Her six teeth are helping with that.
Filth cuisine -- 5 edible things borne from crap you'd never eat
Ian Fortey reports for the Asylum blog on the 5 edible things borne from crap you’d never eat. The edited list is below.
• Tilapia
Tilapia are little fish found pretty much all over the world at this point in farms and in freshwater, swimming about innocent as you please and occasionally winding up on the menu at Red Lobster. In countries like Vietnam, tilapia is a great crop for fish farmers as it is what is known as a "value added" crop, meaning not only can the fish be raised and sold for food, they also eat poo.
Like your strange cousin whom you were never allowed to be alone with, tilapia will put anything in their mouths. People exploit that by using tilapia for sewage treatments, where they clean up crap as they grow before getting sold to some lucky diner to eat with a side of mashed potatoes and a biscuit.
Research has shown that fish raised on poop will have significantly higher levels of fecal choliform bacteria in their tissue than fish raised in treated water, but the bacteria doesn't seem to affect the muscle tissue, meaning the fish is more or less safe for you to eat. And, if it was raised in your neck of the woods, or at least where your toilet drains, it may even taste familiar.
• Citric Acid
If you've ever licked the walls under a sink in a condemned building, you have issues. But it's also likely you've been horribly exposed to Aspergillus niger, one of the most common molds known to man, strains of which supply the bulk of our citric acid supplies.
• Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut is a pretty necessary ingredient of any Oktoberfest celebration. It's fermented cabbage and it belongs on sausage, because if you're sucking back beer you can't taste it anyway. And in some cases that's likely a good thing as some sauerkraut has an unwholesomely close relationship with human urine.
Apparently in blind taste tests, seven in 20 people prefer the taste of sauerkraut that has been made from urine-fertilized cabbage. Which is to say someone peed on the cabbage and then later you ate it, and 35 percent of people think it tastes better than stuff no one peed on.
• Lutefisk
A Norwegian dish made from whitefish and lye, Lutefisk is one of the few foods you can eat that is made from an ingredient that can melt you. If you remember that scene in "Fight Club" when Brad Pitt kisses Ed Norton's hand and pours powder on it to give him a chemical burn, you have a bit of an idea of what lye in action looks like.
Apparently some industrious Norseman at some point in time ventured to soak fish in water for six days, then soak it in lye to the point where it turns to jelly and would melt your insides out if you ate it, then soak it in water again to decrease some of that horrifying meltiness, and voila. Edible! Seems like such an easy recipe it's a wonder it's not served all over the world.
• Pruno
You can't really expect a prison to offer up the finest in wines, but even by prison standards pruno is kind of disgusting and, according to Wikipedia, is occasionally described as tasting like a "vomit-flavored wine cooler."
Because pruno is made in facilities where alcohol is not allowed and none of the tools to produce it are afforded to anyone, its production is a little more slapdash than your average bottle of Thunderbird. Basically, pruno is made from the remnants of whatever biomatter a felon can get his hands on -- fruit salad, oranges, bread or anything that has the ability to ferment.
Once everything is smashed into a bag together, it needs to be kept warm for a few days, and then sugar has to be added. This can be real sugar, ketchup, honey, whatever is handy again, because this recipe is going to be disgusting no matter what. A few more days of being kept warm and voila, you have fermentation. Filter out the chunks of pulp and mold (because there will be mold), perhaps through an old sock, and there you have it, your own glass of awful, awful pruno. Enjoy as you try not to go blind.
The Slammin Salmon: new movie puts food porn in its place?
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Hopefully. It’s from the creators of Super Troopers and Beerfest, two quality, underrated flicks, and the trailer for the film, opening Dec. 11/09, shows promise.
The wiki entry says,
The Slammin' Salmon is a 2009 film by Broken Lizard. The film is about the owner of a restaurant initiating a contest to see which of his waiters can earn the most money in a single night, with a prize of $10,000. For the loser, a beating by the owner, Cleon Salmon (played by Michael Clarke Duncan). Kevin Heffernan will be directing the film; it is his first time directing a Broken Lizard film. "Salmon" was filmed in 25 days at the beginning of 2008.
Top-10 gross food scenes from the big screen
Westword, the Denver Foodblog, offers their take on the top-10 movies scenes that may cause the viewer to lose their lunch. Edited below.
10. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1997)
The turkey is nearly carbonized, the chewing noises are atrocious, Uncle Eddie calls dibs on the neck, and Aunt Bethany puts cat food in the green Jell-O
9. Alive (1993)
A plane carrying a Uruguayan soccer team crashes in the Andes, and in an attempt to survive, the players end up eating the corpses of those who have already perished.
8. American Pie (1999)
Who wouldn’t want to do an apple pie?
7. Animal House (1978)
"I'm a zit, get it?"
6. The Great Outdoors (1998)
The Old 96er," a 96-ounce prime beef that guarantees you and yours a free dinner. Canadians John Candy and Dan Aykroyd shine.
5. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Another Canadian. Mike Myers as Fat Bastard and that stool sample.
4. Waiting (2005)
The restaurant biz viewed from the kitchen. With Canadian Ryan Reynolds. There’s a pattern here.
3. The Exorcist (1973)
Split pea soup was never the same after little Regan MacNeil and her demons.
2. Hannibal (2001)
Hannibal Lecter's Silence of the Lambs dinner of liver, chianti, and fava beans sounds downright edible after watching this follow-up flick ten years after he first meets Clarice Starling.
1. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
It’s just a wafer-thin mint, Mr. Creosote.
25 Chicago students arrested for a middle-school food fight
The cafeteria food fight, as immortalized in the 1978 film, Animal House, has become a high school rite of passage.
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Except in Chicago (home to John Belushi, right)
The New York Times reports this morning that 25 students, ages 11 to 15, were rounded up, arrested, taken from school and put in jail on charges of reckless conduct, a misdemeanor, after a food fight at the middle-school campus of Perspectives Charter Schools, in the Gresham neighborhood on the South Side.
That was last Thursday afternoon. Now parents are questioning what seem to them like the criminalization of age-old adolescent pranks, and the lasting legal and psychological impact of the arrests.
“My children have to appear in court,” Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, said Tuesday. “They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals.”
Direct video observation of adults and tweens cooking raw frozen chicken thingies
One of the first things I did after officially joining Kansas State University in 2006 was try and figure out some novel research. Chapman flew in from Guelph, we had a beer with Phebus at a local bar and sketched out a proposal on the back of a napkin, to observe people cooking chicken.
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Sarah Wilson, my composed colleague from the Guelph days, drafted the proposal and it got funded by the American Meat Institute.
The observational research was conducted in 2007 and the results were published this week by the British Food Journal.
Chapman created a novel video capture system to observe the food preparation practices of 41 consumers and the press summary is below, as is the abstract.
A Kansas State University study has shown that when preparing frozen foods, adolescents are less likely than adults to wash their hands and are more susceptible to cross-contaminating raw foods while cooking.
"While half of the adults we observed washed their hands after touching raw chicken, none of the adolescents did," said Casey Jacob, a food safety research assistant at K-State. "The non-existent hand washing rate, combined with certain age-specific behaviors like hair flipping and scratching in a variety of areas, could lead directly to instances of cross-contamination compared to the adults."
Food safety isn't simple, and instructions for safe handling of frozen chicken entrees or strips are rarely followed by consumers despite their best intentions, said Doug Powell, K-State associate professor of food safety who led the study.
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As the number and type of convenience meal solutions increases — check out the frozen food section of a local supermarket — the researchers found a need to understand how both adults and adolescents are preparing these products and what can be done to enhance the safety of frozen foods.
In 2007, K-State researchers developed a novel video capture system to observe the food preparation practices of 41 consumers – 21 primary meal preparers and 20 adolescents – in a mock domestic kitchen using frozen, uncooked, commercially available breaded chicken products. The researchers wanted to determine actual food handling behavior of these two groups in relation to safe food handling practices and instructions provided on product labels. Self-report surveys were used to determine whether differences exist between consumers' reported food handling practices and observed behavior.
The research appeared in the November 2009 issue of the British Food Journal. In addition to Jacob and Powell, the authors were: Sarah DeDonder, K-State doctoral student in pathobiology; Brae Surgeoner, Powell's former graduate student; Benjamin Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University and Powell's former graduate student; and Randall Phebus, K-State professor of animal science and industry.
Beyond the discrepancy between adult and adolescent food safety practices, the researchers also found that even when provided with instructions, food preparers don't follow them. They may not have even seen them or they assume they know what to do.
"Our results suggest that while labels might contain correct risk-reduction steps, food manufacturers have to make that information as compelling as possible or it will be ignored,” Chapman said.
They also found that observational research using discreet video recording is far more accurate than self-reported surveys. For example, while almost all of the primary meal preparers reported washing hands after every instance in which they touched raw poultry, only half were observed washing hands correctly after handling chicken products in the study.
Powell said that future work will examine the effectiveness of different food safety labels, messages and delivery mechanisms on consumer behavior in their home kitchens.
Self-reported and observed behavior of primary meal preparers and adolescents during preparation of frozen, uncooked, breaded chicken products
01.nov.09
British Food Journal, Vol 111, Issue 9, p 915-929
Sarah DeDonder, Casey J. Jacob, Brae V. Surgeoner, Benjamin Chapman, Randall Phebus, Douglas A. Powell
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=6146E6AFABCC349C376B7E55A3866D4A?contentType=Article&contentId=1811820
Abstract:
Purpose – The purpose of the present study was to observe the preparation practices of both adult and young consumers using frozen, uncooked, breaded chicken products, which were previously involved in outbreaks linked to consumer mishandling. The study also sought to observe behaviors of adolescents as home food preparers. Finally, the study aimed to compare food handler behaviors with those prescribed on product labels.
Design/methodology/approach – The study sought, through video observation and self-report surveys, to determine if differences exist between consumers' intent and actual behavior.
Findings – A survey study of consumer reactions to safe food-handling labels on raw meat and poultry products suggested that instructions for safe handling found on labels had only limited influence on consumer practices. The labels studied by these researchers were found on the packaging of chicken products examined in the current study alongside step-by-step cooking instructions. Observational techniques, as mentioned above, provide a different perception of consumer behaviors.
Originality/value – This paper finds areas that have not been studied in previous observational research and is an excellent addition to existing literature.
Peyton Manning, call an audible on the mice at your football field
A worker at Lucas Oil Stadium, home to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League, told WXIN she’s blowing the whistle on continual food safety issues at the stadium.
"The pictures are actually showing mice droppings in the food pantry, on the floor, on the shelves, on the counters, there's been some on the carts. I brought these pictures forward because I felt people should know where their food's coming from. It's not safe."
Fox59 contacted Centerplate, the caterer for the stadium, but they did not respond.
Centerplate Catering and Lucas Oil Stadium have been cited for food safety violations dating back to 2008. In January 2009, health investigators found dead rodents hadn't been removed from food service areas. In March, investigators found mice feces by coffee urns. In April, a report showed mice running through a Stadium Kitchen. In September, there were violations for improperly storing toxic materials and for "unsafe food" that wasn't being kept cold or hot enough at Lucas Oil.
Food safety culture means employees don't contaminate food with brooms or forklift tires
If a company making ready-to-eat refrigerated deli-meats has a “strong culture of food safety,” would an employee shake a broom over a line of processed product?
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If more inspectors are the answer to safer food, why would the inspectors need publicly reported accounts of foodborne illness and death to try harder?
And if the company and inspectors are doing lots of tests to ensure enhanced food safety, why aren’t they bragging about it instead of requiring an Access to Information request by a media outlet to discover that inspectors continue to find problems with Maple Leaf Foods infamous Bartor Road plant in Weston, Ontario.
Last night, Steve Rennie of The Canadian Press reported that Canadian federal food safety types found a troubling lack of hygiene at Maple Leaf Foods’ Toronto facility just weeks after it reopened last year from a temporary shutdown for cleaning – after 22 people were killed and 53 sickened with listeria linked to deli meat.
A Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspection report dated Oct. 10, 2008, found:
• slime on part of the meat-trimming table in the curing room;
• meat debris on two steel container bins and unidentified debris on the brine tank in the curing room;
•a moist and mouldy cardboard sheet on the base of a skid in the curing room that holds bags of salt;
•mouldy caulking on the walls of the meat-defrosting room;
•a stack of dirty, mouldy and broken skids left in the frozen packoff room during cleaning;
• food debris on knife holders, floor and meat containers in the formulation room; and,
• rust on equipment used to process mock chicken.
The Canadian Press obtained that inspection report and others under the Access to Information Act.
Another report says during visits on Oct. 20 and 21, an inspector watched as "an employee in a grey jacket lifted a floor broom over a finished food product conveyor belt during operation to sweep in between the conveyors." (No additional information as to whether the product was packaged or not).
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Then on Oct. 22, the inspector saw a worker using a forklift to move ready-to-eat link sausages from the cooler to a line for packaging. The report notes the meat at the bottom part of the lift "was not protected for the potential wheel over spray or splash cross contamination."
That part is gross. And unacceptable.
On Aug. 23, 2008, (barfblog.com passim ad nauseum) Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain took to the Intertubes to apologize for an expanding outbreak of listeriosis that would eventually kill 22 people. As part of his speech, McCain said that Maple Leaf has “a strong culture of food safety.”
On Aug. 27, 2008, McCain told a press conference,
“As I've said before, Maple Leaf Foods is 23,000 people who live in a culture of food safety. We have an unwavering commitment to keep our food safe, and we have excellent systems and processes in place.
Dr. Randy Huffman, Maple Leaf’s chief food-safety officer, took to his company’s Journey (worst band ever)-inspired Journey to Food Safety Leadership blog to say today,
“The average reader must be wondering how this plant could have so many issues only a month after re-opening from causing one of the worst food safety crises in Canada.”
I’m not sure what he means by average. I consider myself dull and below-average; does that mean I won’t be able to understand what he is saying?
Huffman: Over the past 12 -14 months- since these inspections were conducted - we have invested over $5 million in upgrades at the Bartor Road plant. This includes repair of floors and wall surfaces, air handling systems, caulking, better separation of raw and cooked areas of the plant, new pallets and new slicing and packaging equipment. We have implemented over 200 new operating procedures.
Why did it take 22 deaths and 53 illnesses to make this food safety investment?
Huffman: CFIA generates these reports and so does Maple Leaf, through our own inspections across all our plants. We welcome this government scrutiny. Canadians hold us to a higher standard, as they should.
So why did the reports have to be obtained through an Access to Information request, and why doesn’t Maple Leaf just sidestep the government and make the reports public, along with other data, as it becomes available, to build trust with the buying consumer?
Would more inspectors have helped? Maybe if they were looking. Federal food inspection union thingy Bob Kingston said,
"In a normal operation that had not been through what they had been through, that might be a common occurrence. But in this facility, it's very surprising that that would still be there. Because you would expect it to be spotless."
The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants will go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
And the best cold-cut companies may stop dancing around and tell pregnant women, old people and other immunocompromised folks, don't eat this food unless it's heated
It was the Methomy in the salsa: Kansas couple charged in mass poisonings
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.
Roy Costa to star on Dr. Oz Tuesday; Powell dresses up and gets in a couple of zingers
In the beginning there was Oprah, and all was ideal.
Oprah begat Dr. Phil, and all was ideal, at least until his ratings started to fall.
Then Dr. Oz appeared – 55 times on Oprah – and Oprah eventually begated Dr. Oz.
The Dr. Oz show started in September 2009 and is syndicated throughout the U.S.
After hours of providing material to Dr. Oz producers about supermarket food safety, I got the call – be in New York City, Studio 6A where Conan used to shoot, we want you on the show.
On Monday, Oct. 19, 2009, Amy, Sorenne and I (I don’t like to travel without my family, that aging thing) drove from the Little Apple of Manhattan (Kansas) to Kansas City and then flew to the Big Apple of Manhattan (New York).
We got picked up by a big car and stayed at a nice hotel in Gotham.
Cool.
The next morning, Amy, Sorenne and I ventured off to 30 Rock – Rockefeller Center – for the taping. My friend Roy Costa was also there, and they gave us a dressing room with muffins and water.
It soon became apparent that 10-month-old Sorenne was not going to be comfortable waiting around for the excess of television –lots of waiting around for a couple of minutes of screen time – so Amy and Sorenne went back to the hotel.
Roy got to share the stage with Dr. Oz because of his experience as an inspector and he did a great job bobbing and weaving, trying to keep the show on track. I got to be the expert in the audience with a couple of pithy statements.
Our supermarket food safety bit is competing with the National Sex Experiment -- a 50-state, 90-day incentive challenging you to have the best sex of your life -- and a bunch of D-list celebrities who need the help of Dr. Oz. It is scheduled to be broadcast Tuesday, Nov. 3.
And, as in TV, the show was done with us just like that. We walked around Times Square a bit, took in the sideshow, and then went home.
Rats, mice and cockroaches, oh my - UK KFC needs to clean up
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.
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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.
Foodborne illness? There's an app for that. Using new methods and messages to communicate about food safety
With the expansion and ease-of-use of non-traditional, Internet-based communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube and blogs, individuals are discussing high-profile food risks .jpeg)
through various mediums. Because up to 60 per cent of adults use on online social networking site, an opportunity exists to utilize these communities to engage individuals around foodborne risks by providing information and establishing relationships tailored to specific audiences. The rapid dialogue between individuals with common food safety interests can impact belief formation and affect food decisions. Using case studies of recent outbreaks and observational studies, a catalogue of mediums and audience strategies will be presented.
Ben Chapman somehow received his PhD from the University of Guelph in 2009 under the supervision of Doug Powell. He is now an Assistant Professor and Food Safety Specialist in the Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family & Consumer Sciences at North Carolina State University, and part of NC Cooperative Extension. He will be speaking during Randy Phebus’ food science class on Friday, Nov. 13, 2009, from 12:30-1:20 in Weber 123 at Kansas State University. This talk is open to the public so any and all can attend.
For further information or to arrange a chat, contact
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
From the douchebag files
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.
Hinting at food safety - marketers play games but invoke consumer concerns
I shop at Dillons in Manhattan (Kansas), owned by Kroger. I’ve gotten to know the staff, we talk food safety stuff, and I’ve really enjoyed the few times I’ve chatted with Gale Prince, who used to be head of food safety at Kroger.
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But I don’t understand the press release Kroger sent out today about its new line of salads which includes new technology on the packaging that enables customers to learn where the produce was grown as part of Kroger's "Quality You Can Trace" program.
I don’t really care where it was grown. I do care if it was grown in cow shit.
The Kroger's Fresh Selections are the only salads with HarvestMark technology sold in the U.S. today. Each bag carries a 16-digit code shoppers can enter at HarvestMark.com to learn more about the salad's origin, packing location, ingredients, date and time the product was packed. Customers can also offer their feedback on the product.
The PR BS goes on to say,
"Kroger continues to be a leader in offering customers innovative food safety tools and resources," said Joe Grieshaber, group vice president of Kroger's meat, seafood, deli and produce departments. … Food safety is a top priority at Kroger. Our partnership with HarvestMark makes it easy for customers who are interested to learn more about the food they purchase for themselves and their families.
This has nothing to do with food safety. A food safety program for leafy greens would provide at retail – or at least through a url – practices on irrigation water testing, soli amendments and human hygiene programs for the workers. Market food safety directly and stop dancing.
Left, is a bag of Dole spring mix, purchased at Dillons. Included on the package is a salad guide that says taste, 4, on the mild to bold scale, and texture is 2 on the tender to crunchy guide.
The label also says the spring mix pairs well with balsamic vinaigrette, crumbled goat cheese, julienne sliced sun-dried tomatoes and a pinch of Mediterranean herbs. It’s thoroughly washed, preservative free and all natural. And Kosher certified and has a recipe for Balsamic vinaigrette.
I want to know if it has E. coli and is going to make me barf. Don't eat poop. And if you do, cook it.
Automated hand sanitizer - Chicago, Illinois
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.
Safe food shouldn't just be for the affluent - and they're sorta clueless when it comes to food that makes them barf
Market research sucks. With food, people vote at the checkout counter with their wallets. Sitting at home, talking to some annoying survey person who only calls when dinner is about to be served reveals … nothing, except the potential buying patterns of pissed off shoppers, wondering why they can’t just eat dinner without the phone ringing.
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A new national survey of more affluent consumers from strategic marketing communications firm Context Marketing, “Beyond Organic -- How Evolving Consumer Concerns Influence Food Purchases,” has found that most respondents are highly concerned about the safety of the food they buy and would pay more for food they believe to be safer or healthier.
The research also found that assurances about what a food doesn’t contain, such as pesticides or antibiotics, matter a great deal to these consumers, along with ethical claims that reinforce quality and safety perceptions. …
While respondents confirmed that low price is a major influence on most food purchases, 60 percent said they would pay up to 10 percent more for food they think is healthier, safer or produced according to higher ethical standards, and 14 percent said they would pay a premium greater than 10 percent.
But right now, all that is available at retail is products that hint at enhanced microbial food safety and offer ... nothing.
Market microbial food safety so consumers can choose.
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I'm bona fide. I'm the paterfamilias. I have a residency card and can leave the U.S. and get back in
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.
Gratuitous food porn shot of the day - rib eye steak and all the fixins
Sorenne eating dinner with mom and dad, 6:00 p.m., Oct. 25, 2009.
Should have taken the picture last night with seafood surprise (in Manhattan Kansas?) and grandma here, but tonight will have to do:
Grilled rib eye steak with rosemary and garlic, grilled sweet potato fries, grilled Portobello mushrooms and red pepper, garlic-lime butter on home-made whole-wheat baguette, and sugar snap peas.
Supermarket Guru says stickers on clamshells a good food safety idea to go
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.
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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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Faith-based food safety? Market microbial food safety directly at retail so consumers can choose
Most food purchases are based on faith. That’s why an extensive series of rules, regulations and punishments emerged beginning in 12th century Mediterranean areas.
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Faith-based food safety systems are prevalent from the farmer’s market to the supermarket, especially in the produce section. And almost anything can, and is, claimed on food labels – except microbial food safety.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced they are going to examine the growing number of nutrition claims found on the front of food packages after complaints the labels promote health fairytales.
In the U.K., the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has encouraged diners to boycott restaurants that cannot answer questions about the origin of their food.
British chefs Raymond Blanc, Peter Gordon, Martin Lam, Paul Merrett and Antony Worrall-Thompson issued a joint statement saying:
“The British public need to stop being so reticent in restaurants and start asking where their food comes from. It’s your right to know the origin of the food you are served and what types of farms are being used - and the mark of a good restaurant is one that is proud to tell you.”
In response to this news Freedom Food has launched a new long-term campaign called ‘Simply Ask’ which aims to get people asking about food provenance when eating out. This is in a bid to encourage restaurants, pubs and cafes to start sourcing products from higher welfare farms such as Freedom Food, free-range or organic.
Americans are questioning nutrition claims, Brits are questioning allegedly animal-friendly sources of food, maybe there’s room to ask for microbiologically safe food – the stuff that sickens up to 30 per cent of all people everywhere every year (so says the World health Organization).
Lots of companies and retailers are taking baby steps in the direction of empowering consumers to hold producers accountable, but lots aren’t.
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Maple Leaf Foods, whose listeria-laden cold-cuts killed 22 Canadians last year, is continuing on its bad Journey to Food Safety Leadership by announcing today that, “Industry and government come together to make food safer for Canadians.”
Invoking the two groups shoppers distrust the most – industry and government – and proclaiming they are working together to better things may not be the best communication strategy to build trust and confidence.
Dr. Randall Huffman, Chief Food Safety Officer for Maple Leaf Foods, stated,
"The Canadian food industry is united that food safety not be used as a competitive advantage. Every member at every step in the production process is a steward of food safety. This spirit of cooperation heralds a new beginning for our industry, and together we will make Canada the gold standard for food safety. This symposium is the first in a series to ensure we share experiences and knowledge, and gain insights into emerging risks, technology advances and cutting edge science that can deliver safer food for Canadians."
That’s nice. Computer companies share technology all the time but that doesn’t stop them from marketing their individual technological advantages.
Stop pandering. Companies that are serious about food safety will go beyond the trust-me approach of faith-based food safety systems and provide public access to food safety test results, provide warnings to populations at risk, and market food safety at retail, to enhance the food safety culture back at the producer or processor level, and to build consumer confidence. May even make money.
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Food safety doesn't just happen in English - so why aren't restaurant inspection disclosure results available in other languages?
You’d figure that getting stuff translated into other languages would be a breeze, since I have an in with the modern languages department. But to do it in real-time is a bit messy.
Whether it’s a recall, an inspection report or a warning label, not everyone who eats in the U.S. is fluent in English. That’s why our food safety infosheets are now available weekly in French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Debbie Pacheco of blogTO writes today that the garbage disposal calendar Toronto distributes has sections in various languages, so why, then, is something as important as Toronto's DineSafe guidelines only available in English?
One restaurateur told Pacheco he's interpreted food preparation instructions for his staff before. "If you want that traditional food, it's usually the older people who don't necessarily speak English that cook it." He manages his kitchen and is certified in food handling. The city requires that someone with a food handling certificate supervise the kitchen at all times while it's operating.
Mebrak, who's been with Cleopatra restaurant for nine years, put it best. "It's important people really understand how to handle food. It's about safety for everyone."
Eat Me Daily: Creepy Chinese food safety ads
The folks over at Eat Me Daily have unearthed three food safety advertisements produced by the Beijing Women & Children's Development Foundation.
“(They) are nicely executed but super-creepy: Kids enjoying themselves in playgrounds built out of giant food, etc. But on closer inspection, the pizza slices are topped with shards of glass, the hamburger is a scorpion-burger, sushi is infested with bugs, the jello is spiked with thumbtacks, a beehive stands in for a lollipop, and a landmine is disguised as a melon. The tagline, as translated by Ads of the World, "Do you really know about his food?"
I have asked a Chinese language colleague to try and translate the text in the adverts.
Addendum, from a Chinese instructor at Kansas State University:
The direct translation does sound like something else going on behind the scene (worries under line)
First one: His world is really safe?
Second: His world is really worry free?
Third: His world did you see/watch carefully?
I could eat a horse
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.
Cats shouldn't hang out in supermarket meat cases
Cats like meat.
Even though we live in central Manhattan (Kansas), there’s a small greenbelt behind the house and we’ve had visitors such as deer, turkeys, and yesterday, a fox.
The raccoons, squirrels, birds and rabbits are everywhere.
My two black cats have had happy hunting since our 2006 arrival, and left me a pair of lucky rabbits feet the other day (the two black ones, as kittens in this pic, from 2003; the other one, named Lucky, wasn’t so lucky).
Because cats like meat, it’s a good idea to keep them out of supermarkets, especially those with a butcher shop, or a meat case with open doors.
A colleague sent along this video of a cat in a meat case in a supermarket, apparently, according to readers’ comments, in St. Petersburgh, Russia. Not good supermarket food safety practices.
bites, barfblog and food safety need your continued support
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
Consumer groups, industry, lots of others, misuse food safety data for political gain
Chapman already commented on some of the, uh, failings of the recent top 10 (PR stunt) allegedly most dangerous foods issued by the poorly named Center for Science in the Public Interest – there wasn’t much science or public interest in that last report.
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The produce industry types responded with the blame-the-consumer routine, which is (incredibly dumb) unfortunate given that many outbreaks involving fresh fruits and vegetables clearly need to be prevented on the farm and have nothing to do with consumers.
“Consumers and other food handlers play a huge role in preventing illnesses, and they do need more information on safe handling.”
Neither approach is helpful. Casey Jacob and I tried to contribute to the public conversation about foodborne illness, where it happens and who’s to blame, with the appropriately titled paper, Where Does Foodborne Illness Happen—in the Home, at Foodservice, or Elsewhere—and Does It Matter? in the journal, Foodborne Pathogens and Disease.
The paper has been published online ahead of print. We conclude,
While some occurrences of foodborne illness result from unsafe practices during final preparation or serving at the site where food was consumed, others are consequences of receiving contaminated food from a supplier, or both. Data gathered on instances of contamination that lead to illness make greater contributions to the development of programs that reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses, than data or assumptions that describe locations where contaminated food is consumed.
The abstract is below.
Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.
Gratuitous food porn shot of the day - Canadian Thanksgiving edition
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).
Gratuitous food porn shot of the day - scrambled eggs with veggies and toast
Sorenne eating breakfast with dad, Oct. 9, 2009, 7:00 a.m.
Saute fresh rosemary, garlic, red pepper and garden-fresh tomato (the nighttime temperatures are cooler, but not quite freezing yet, when what’s left of the herbs and tomatoes will move inside). Add scrambled eggs, salt and pepper, cooking the salmonella out of the eggs. Serve with whole grain toast.
That’s toast. I like … toast.
Local is better mantra
Jim Romahn wrote a column for a newspaper in Waterloo, Ontario, which dared to question the blind support of local produce.
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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.
Horse meat increasingly on the menu in Florida
I still miss my hockey friend Steve. His tales were – and still are -- so outrageous, his job with the provincial government so boring, and his life with four kids on the farm near Guelph so … comical?
I know he misses me because he can’t find reliable goaltending – and the faculty team hasn’t won the annual tournament since my shattered nerves backstopped the team to victory in 2005, despite Naylor’s total lack of defense.
He was defense in name only.
At one point Steve and his wife had 19 horses. He used to say that it started out, every time they had another kid, the wife got another horse.
Steve had four kids, not 19.
He’s been cutting back on the horses over the past few years, but not in the way they are doing it in Florida,
Today’s USA Today reports that South Florida is seeing a jump in the horse meat market as restaurants quietly serve up the illicit fare, butchers provide it to trustworthy customers and police officers find slaughtered horse carcasses on roadsides.
At least 17 butchered horse carcasses have been found in Miami-Dade County this year, the highest annual number ever recorded in the county and the year is not over, said Detective Edna Hernandez.
Richard "Kudo" Couto of the South Florida Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. – and I have no idea why his handle is Kudo -- said there has long been an underground market for illicit horse meat, mostly in the rural areas of South Florida. In recent years, sales have become more widespread, he said.
He said some butchers in Miami have stolen frozen horse meat in their stores for trustworthy customers. Sometimes the meat is sold in neighborhoods out of coolers.
Safe food handling labels on take-out containers can help restaurants stand apart in the marketplace
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.
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"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.
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"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.
Gratuitous food porn shot of the day - grilled salmon and sweet potato fries
Sorenne eating lunch with dad, Oct. 1, 2009.
Marinate farmed salmon fillets (I prefer aquaculture because it is more sustainable) in lime juice, garlic, olive oil and fresh rosemary.
Microwave 2 sweet potatoes, cool, cut into fry-like segments; baste in oil and rosemary.
Turn grill to high. Put fries on upper rack, salmon on direct heat; cook until an internal temperature of 120F.
Marketing food safety: Maple Lodge Farms deli-meat edition
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.
Gratuitous food porn shot of the day - boiled eggs in a piggy
Sorenne eating (second) breakfast with dad, Oct. 1, 2009, about 7:15 a.m. (first one was about 4:45 a.m.).
Boiled eggs in a piggy, with whole grain toast and cantaloupe.
They’re called eggs in a piggy because the egg holders are ceramic pigs.
Bring salted water to a boil, carefully add eggs so they don’t crack, leave at slow boil for 5 minutes.
Remove and place in piggy. Let sit for 1 minute. At this point the egg yolk will just be transitioning from runny to solid. Dip the toast.
The dog is still there. Always.
'I'm gonna educate you' - or so says FDA
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 .jpg)
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.
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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.
Is that a Vegemite or an iSnack 2.0 sandwich, or are you just happy to see me?
In one of the most bizarre marketing decisions – ever, even for Australia – Kraft Foods decided to name its second generation Vegemite the iSnack 2.0.
I first heard the term Vegemite near the beginning of the worst decade of music ever, in the 1981 song, Down Under, by Men at Work.
Vegemite is made from leftover brewers' yeast extract, a by-product of beer manufacturing, and various vegetable and spice additives. The taste may be described as salty, slightly bitter, and malty - somewhat similar to the taste of beef bouillon. The texture is smooth and sticky, much like peanut butter.
Helen Razer, a Melbourne writer, says in today’s (tomorrow’s) The Age, that the chief element in Vegemite's new product is cream cheese. A secondary ingredient appears to be abject failure. No one likes the name of this new yeast product, except at least six Harvard MBAs at Kraft Foods who adore it.
The winning name was announced during the telecast of the AFL grand final. In an effort ''to align the new product with a younger market - and the 'cool' credentials of Apple's iPod and iPhone'' Kraft chose iSnack 2.0 from a field of 48,000.
This raises many questions. Chief among them is how very terrible were the other 47,999 competition submissions that Kraft was left with iSnack 2.0?
Razer says the label is every bit as hip as a polka convention and every bit as convincingly ''now'' as parachute pants.
Sounds like the wardrobe for a 1981 video shoot.
Razer also says, on Monday, the global noticeboard Twitter was jammed with disgust. Comments that included ''I said do you speaka my language? She just smiled and gave me an iSnack 2.0 sandwich'' and ''What's the matter, was the name Crap Paste already trademarked?''
Gratuitous food porn shot of the day - buttermilk pancakes
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.
Fat Duck criticizes health types at chef conference
From the this-guy-just-can’t-shut up file, Heston Blumenthal whined, err, told a conference in London yesterday that the Health Protection Agency (HPA) should do more to support the industry, stating,
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“There is a real lack of support to restaurants from the HPA when it comes to handling something like a norovirus outbreak and it is only because of the status of the Fat Duck that we survived this. If we were a small independent restaurant, we would have been forced to close as a result of this. Our industry is so fragile and there is so little support.”
The HPA released a report on its investigation into the norovirus outbreak at the Fat Duck, which affected more than 500 diners, earlier this month stating the official cause was contaminated shellfish. Among the findings:
• oysters were served raw;
• razor clams may not have been appropriately handled or cooked;
• the outbreak continued for at least six weeks (between January 6 and February 22) because of ongoing transmission at the restaurant - which may have occurred through continuous contamination of foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners or a mixture of both
; and,
• 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
Blumenthal went on to tell the conference that both the experts appointed by the Fat Duck and those by its insurers believed that there were a number of flaws in the HPA report, including its criticism of the restaurant’s staff sickness policy and its use of anti-bacterial cleaning agents.
“Some of the elements in the report were supposition,” he said.
Blumenthal also criticized HPA for the way it released the report, arguing he and his team of insurers and legal experts were given no time to analyse its findings before it was released to the public.
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“We were told we would be given 24 hours to analyse the report before it would be released to the public but in fact we were only given three hours,” he said.
That’s more warning than the 529 people who were barfing on widely expensive food porn received.
And Heston, there’s nothing that builds consumer confidence more than have a government agency in tight with the industry it regulates. It’s the Health Protection Agency, not the Boost Restaurant Revenues Agency. HPA is to protect human health, and encourage places like restaurants to do the same. Making 529 customers sick is bad for business, but not the fault of the HPA.
This guy provides so much material I don’t have to resort to calling him the love child of Alton Brown and longtime Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player Mats Sundin.
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New Food Safety Infosheet:Over 70 children ill from E. coli O157:H7 in two separate petting zoo outbreaks
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.
Recent food poisoning to blame for Leonard Cohen collapse on stage in Spain
One of my favorite Kids in the Hall lines – they were a comedy troupe from Toronto – and one I use often is that the music of Leonard Cohen is the soundtrack for hell (or something like that).
But I wouldn’t wish food poisoning on anyone.
BBC News reports the 74-year-old singer is recovering after collapsing on stage during a concert in Valencia, Spain.
Cohen was taken to hospital as a precaution. He has been discharged and is said to have had food poisoning.
A band member told the crowd Cohen had suffered stomach cramps and vomiting fits.
57 kids sick in UK from petting zoos; one owner says risk is overblown; lawsuits pending; problems in Vancouver and Ontario too
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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
UK Food Safety Agency is now the sustainability agency; serve it piping hot
The U.K. Food Standards Agency has decided it is now the deciderer of sustainability. I’m not sure what that has to do with food safety, or the agency’s mission.
But, in addition to telling British consumers to cook their turkey until it is piping hot, FSA has now entered the sustainability word barf fest:”
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“… the advice is being set more firmly in the wider sustainability context and consumers are now being asked to think about the choices they make when they choose which fish to eat.”
The Food Standards Agency is now encouraging consumers to:
try to choose fish that has been produced sustainably or responsibly managed
look for assurance scheme logos
be adventurous and eat a wider variety of fish species
The Agency worked with Defra, the Department of Health, the Scottish Government and other Government departments, responding to recommendations from stakeholders such as the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the Sustainable Consumption Roundtable.
That's a lot of government salaries sitting around the table. And nothing to do with food safety.
No food safety in Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food
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.
E. coli backlash as UK health type apologies for delay in closing farm
With 13 kids in hospital and 37 sick after visiting a UK farm, Health Protection Agency chief executive Justin McCracken has phoned parents of the children most seriously affected to apologise to them.
"If this information had been taken into account on 27 August, then the advice given and the steps taken on 3 September would have been introduced earlier and the farm might have been closed earlier.
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"I wanted to speak personally to the parents of those children who are most seriously ill in hospital to explain what has happened and, however inadequate under the circumstances, to apologise.
"The position they find themselves in is unbearable and it is of course worse that what has happened might have been avoidable."
The farm was closed on Saturday - although the first E.coli case was reported on 27 August.
A pair of two-year-old twins, from Paddock Wood in Kent, have suffered acute kidney failure.
Initially, the HPA said the first case came to light on 27 August.
It later emerged that the agency had received a report of two cases in the previous week.
Sarah Reasoner: Enhancing food safety distance education
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
Another E. coli O157 outbreak, again in Wales, linked to seaside restaurant, no one told the public
Madeleine Brindley of Wales Online reports this morning that five people have contracted E.coli O157 after eating at a restaurant in Tenby.
Two children from the same family, who live in West Yorkshire, have been confirmed with the potentially lethal bug.
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A further two men from Newport, in South East Wales and Pembrokeshire, and a woman from Carmarthenshire also fell ill.
It is understood all five people ate at the same food premises, which has not been named, between July 31 and August 15.
It is understood that the restaurant closed voluntarily but has now reopened.
Food safety infosheets now available in French, Spanish and Portuguese
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.
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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.
Petting zoo terrors: another UK child treated for E.coli; twins affected
Another child is being treated in hospital following an outbreak of E.coli at a farm in Surrey.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said there were now 13 youngsters being treated, of which four were seriously ill and six were in a stable condition.
Three are improving in hospital, with the total number of cases of E.coli 0157 linked to Godstone Farm now at 37.
The farm, near Redhill, was closed on Saturday - although the first E.coli case was reported on 27 August.
Parents upset at U.K. petting zoo and farm visit; dozen kids in hospital with E. coli
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. .jpg)
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.
$75 million Canadian tax dollars to keep cold-cuts safe
Canadian Minister of Agriculture and wannabe listeria comedian Gerry-isn’t-my-moustache-awesome Ritz announced today the government will spend $75 million Canadian taxpayer dollars to make sure Maple Leaf Foods products don’t make people barf or kill them.
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"The Government of Canada's highest priority is the safety of Canadians. We are making significant investments to hire more inspectors; update technologies and protocols; and, improve communication so that Canadians have the information they need to protect their families."
The government will:
• hire 166 new food safety staff with 70 focusing on ready-to-eat-meat facilities;
more inspectors with listeria-vision goggles won’t make a difference
• provide 24/7 availability of health risk assessment teams to improve support to food safety investigations;
the half-dozen people in my lab used to do that
• improve coordination among federal and provincial departments and agencies;
more meetings
• improve communications to vulnerable populations before and during a foodborne illness outbreak;
could do that now, have produced nothing
• improve tracking of potential foodborne illness outbreaks through a national surveillance system;
yawn, been saying that for years
• improve detection methods for Listeria monocytogenes and other hazards in food to reduce testing time and enable more rapid response during food safety investigations, as well as expanding the Government's ability to do additional Listeria testing; and
a few researchers get money for their testing protocols
• initiate a third-party audit to make sure Canada's food inspection system has the right resources dedicated to the right priorities.
Maybe they could hire the American Institute of Baking, from Manhattan (Kansas) the same third-party auditor geniuses who said Peanut Corporation of America was doing a bang-up job, that is until over 4,000 products were recalled.
How on-farm food safety programs get developed - it's the people, and data
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.
Harold and Kumar avoid Ohio prison with unique sandwich
A running gag in the movie, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, is avoiding a certain kind of sandwich served up by prison guards.
Life imitates art.
A former Ohio deputy accused of feeding an inmate a bologna sandwich that been rubbed against another inmate's genitals has pleaded guilty to two health code violations. In a Columbus courtroom on Wednesday, 38-year-old Joseph Cantwell also apologized for the shame and embarrassment that he said he had caused.
A judge fined him $500 plus court costs, and Cantwell also received a 90-day suspended jail sentence and five years' probation.
Health agency reports Fat Duck was slow to report food scare; celebrity chef says everything's fine; 529 barfing diners disagree
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.
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“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.”
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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.
Food safety is a Clear and Present Danger, best policy wonks can do is the Potomac two-step
A survey and a relaunched web site. That’s the best the policy wonks in Washington can do when it comes to food safety leadership.
“The old Potomac two-step, Jack."
"I'm sorry, Mr. President, I don't dance."
That’s what Jack Ryan as played by Harrison Ford said in the movie, Clear and Present Danger. And that’s why I repeatedly ignore what comes out of Washington.
I prefer the CAKE version of 'I Will Survive' over the E. coli O157 version
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."
India: 400 pilots out with food poisoning on same day (not); 20,000 passengers stranded
If the president of the newly formed Jet Airways pilots' union is to be believed, the reason for some 400 of its members falling "sick" Tuesday, perhaps, was food poisoning.
"We are not on strike. This is an individual decision by each pilot," said Girish Kaushik, president of the National Aviators Guild, after member pilots reported sick and inconvenienced some 20,
Asked if it was not too much of a coincidence that so many pilots reported sick at the same time, Kaushik told IANS,
"We could all have had food poisoning. That's why we all could have become ill."
The civil aviation ministry has taken strong exception to what it calls a "wildcat" strike.
Evan Henke: For the Jucy Lucy and stuffed burgers, the food safety jury is still out
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.
11 sick in Japan with E. coli O157; steakhouse chain closes all 187 outlets
Pepper Food Service Co said Monday it has closed all of its 187 Pepper Lunch steakhouses in Japan the same day after at least 11 customers developed food poisoning to clean each outlet and ensure hygiene controls are in place.
At least 11 customers have been stricken with E. coli O157 in seven prefectures including Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, according to the restaurant chain operator and local governments.
Kunio Ichinose, the company president, apologized, saying,
‘‘We will reopen the restaurants as soon as we are fully prepared to do so.’’
Simply Recipes explains how to use fingers to test if meat is cooked (total BS)
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.
Yahoo Food sucks at food safety advice
Among the six most common ways to ruin a burger, which Yahoo Food is promoting ahead of Labor Day, is this nose-stretcher:
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Overcooking: This should be a crime recognized by the federal government. For the popular medium-rare, grill the meat exactly three minutes on one side (keeping the grill lid closed) and two minutes on the other. If you're going to add cheese, let it melt on top for another minute (and keep that cover closed!). We like our burgers medium rare, so much we've even sent them back at restaurants when they go beyond medium.
Nonsense. Using time make no allowances for variation in grill temperature, thickness of the hamburger patty and composition of the hamburger. A tip-sensitive digital thermometer is the only way to get a burger to the correct temperature of 160F, without overcooking.
Thanks to the barfblog reader who sent along the tip.
Michelle Marcotte: Working in Romania while dodging foodborne illness
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
Powell food safety culture video available at bites.ksu.edu
People often say to me, Doug, I get 10 e-mails from you each day. How can I get more of the Doug?
The talk I taped for the Australian HACCP conference a few weeks ago is now available on-line.
Be kind.
Lamenting the end of food safety month
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.
French and Spanish food safety infosheets now available at bites.ksu.edu
Amy is a French professor. Her influence on me has been profound – and has even involved some language awareness stuff.
That’s why we have don’t eat poop shirts in French, Chinese and Spanish.
You’d figure that getting stuff translated into other languages would be a breeze, since I have an in with the department. But to do it in real-time is a bit messy. The first time I tried to upload a French infosheet, last week, I crashed the entire bites.ksu.edu site.
Damn you, France.
We’ve been messing around but are reasonably confident we’ve got the people and technology in place to at least translate food safety infosheets on a weekly basis. The Spanish food safety infosheets are available at http://bites.ksu.edu/infosheets-sp, and the French food safety infosheets are available at http://bites.ksu.edu/infosheets-fr.
Duck and Cover: It's Food Safety Education Month
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.
The failure that is Food Safety Education month
Linda Rivera (right, pic from Washington Post) is the face of everything that is wrong with Food Safety Education month.
As The Washington Post reports this morning:
In Room 519 of Kindred Hospital, Linda Rivera can no longer speak.
Her mute state, punctuated only by groans, is the latest downturn in the swift collapse of her health that began in May when she curled up on her living room couch and nonchalantly ate several spoonfuls of the Nestlé cookie dough her family had been consuming for years. Federal health officials believe she is among 80 people in 31 states sickened by cookie dough contaminated with a deadly bacteria, E. coli O157:H7.
The impact of the infection has been especially severe for Rivera and nine other victims who developed a life-threatening complication known as hemolytic uremic syndrome. One, a 4-year-old girl from South Carolina, had a stroke and is partially paralyzed.
In a baffling waste of resources, groups like the International Food Information Council, have decided that food safety education month – that apparently starts today – is all about educating consumers with sanitized messages; that if consumers were only made aware they had a role to play in food safety, outbreaks related to contaminated peanut butter, produce and cookie dough would be reduced.
Whenever a group says the public needs to be educated – in this case about food safety -- that group has utterly failed to present a compelling case for their cause.
I cringe, and remember a Lewis Lapham column I read in Harper’s magazine in the mid-1980s about how individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. Oh, 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.
Given all the outbreaks – produce, pet food, peanut butter, that have nothing to do with consumers, any food safety information – not education -- campaign should include what the World Heath Organization has been advocating since 2002: source food from safe sources. An evaluation of message effectiveness should also be a bare minimum and rarely happens.
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.
But judge for yourselves in what I am sure is a completely spontaneous and unscripted video from IFIC on why ordinary consumers feel they should be doing more.
Food, sex and porn - new magazine, and how it's done
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.
Food safety defined -the how to avoid bears definition
Stephen Colbert’s fear of bears – usually listed as the biggest threat to America in his Threat Down segment – has made it to the blogsphere.
I’ve made it a point to say in my talks lately, when I talk about food safety, I’m talking about food that doesn’t make people barf. Food safety means lots of things to lots of people, but I’m focused on the microbes that sicken up to 30 per cent of all citizens of all countries every year (that’s what the World Health Organization says).
“If you plan on venturing into the wilderness on a camping or hiking trip, you need to be prepared to deal with potentially dangerous wildlife. Bears in particular need to be respected and avoided. One of the easiest ways to avoid bears is to be careful with storing and preparing food.”
It’s not just Colbert. On a family trip when I was, oh, about 13-years-old, we spent a couple of nights in Banff, Alberta, and were visited by a bear that emptied the cooler.
"Be aware of the necessary food storage and cooking precautions while camping. Do everything you can to keep food odors away from your camp. Taking these precautions is the easiest way to prevent a bear encounter."
So respect the bears (especially in the video below, which involves Canadians, kids, hockey and bears).
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| ThreatDown - Bears | ||||
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Eating Well bonus question: how best to improve food safety
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.
If food safety is so simple why do the so-called experts disagree? And who's an expert?
It’s food safety month in September, so expect to hear lots of sanctimonious statements about how simple food safety is if only the people would do things the right way.
But what’s the right way?
Food safety is not simple.
Anyone who says so is full of it.
And any food safety nerd knows there are major disagreements about all levels of food safety minutia.
Eating Well magazine asked 10 questions of some food safety types earlier this year and a bunch of stories are now on-line.. The differences in the answers reveal how un-simple food safety is, and how different people talk with journalists.
The Eating Well piece poses some questions, but doesn’t address the hard ones: Who is an expert (a word I hate)? Who is competent to offer advice about anything? Who am I to answer anything, to offer an opinion?
At bites.ksu.edu and barfblog.com, we actually have a policy on how to answer questions, how we provide advice, and it’s being updated.
The magazine has its 10 commandments of food safety, but like fallen angels, commandments are open to interpretation. Judge for yourselves.
Your contestants are:
Ming Tsai, owner, Blue Ginger, his award-wining East-meets-West restaurant in Wellesley Massachusetts.
Bill Marler, managing partner and personal injury lawyer at Marler Clark.
Linda Kender, an associate professor in the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I.
Richard Vergili, a professor in hospitality management at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA)
Catherine Donnelly, a professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont.
Donna Rosenbaum, co-founder and executive director of Safe Tables Our Priority (S.T.O.P.).
Marion Nestle, professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University.
Scott Donnelly, a product safety authority with more than two decades of food industry experience.
Douglas Powell, Ph.D, associate professor, food safety, Kansas State University.
Try to distinguish the wordy from the brief, the fact-based and the faith-based approaches to food safety. Match up the bios with the responses and spot the hypocricy.
Eating Well asked, do you always:
1. Use a “refrigerator thermometer” to keep your food stored at a safe temperature (below 40°F).
Tsai: At Blue Ginger, yes, and [a thermometer] is built in the Sub-Zero fridges we use at home.
Marler: Yes.
Kender: I check the temperature of my refrigerator once a week, especially during the summer months.
Vergili: Yes, unless I plan to use the food within a couple of hours.
Donnelly: Yes. I consider my refrigerator to be my most important food-safety device. Knowing the temperature of the refrigerator you use to store food is critical to keep food safe. Many refrigerators in the U.S. operate at unsafe temperatures, and the warmer foods are stored, the more quickly bacteria, including pathogens, can grow.
Rosenbaum: Yes. Appliance thermometers are easy to find in hardware stores. I recommend using one in the freezer as well. It is especially important to check the internal temperatures of secondary refrigerators/freezers kept in basements, garages or other places of more extreme room temperature.
Nestle: No. I live in a tiny apartment in New York and have a small refrigerator. Nothing stays in it that long.
Donnelly: No.
Powell: Fridges fluctuate and thermometers are the only way to acquire accurate data.
2. Defrost food in the refrigerator, the microwave or in cold water, never on the counter.
Tsai Yes.
Marler: Yes.
Kender: Mostly I defrost in the refrigerator, but there have been occasions that I had to resort to the cold running water method.
Vergili: No, I will occasionally let something begin to defrost on the counter when I am home. For example, today I had some frozen wrapped spare ribs sitting out for a little over [an] hour that [were] still partially frozen. [I] then seasoned and refrigerated [the ribs] for dinner tonight.
Donnelly: Yes. When defrosting any potentially hazardous food, particularly meats or poultry, it is important to make sure juices are contained by using sealed bags or containers. Juices can contain harmful pathogens which can contaminate surfaces and people coming into contact with these juices. Again, the warmer potentially hazardous foods are stored, the more potential growth for dangerous bacterial pathogens to levels which can cause disease.
Rosenbaum: Yes. This is especially important with meat, poultry & seafood. When defrosting meat, poultry or seafood in the refrigerator, however, it is important to make sure that it is on a platter or tray and cannot drip raw juices as it defrosts onto or into foods stored below.
Nestle: Not exactly. I don’t have much counter space so I’m most likely to leave it out in a bowl.
Donnelly: I rarely defrost. When I do, I leave the food out on the counter for less than 4 hours.
Powell: I defrost on the counter. I just don’t leave it there very long.
3. Always use separate cutting boards for raw meat/poultry/fish and produce/cooked foods.
Tsai: Definitely—especially because of food allergies, too, on cross contamination.
Marler: Yes.
Kender: No. I always wash, rinse, and sanitize my cutting board when switching proteins or going to a no cook product.
Vergili: No, I will thoroughly clean the same cutting board and use the same board for both raw and cooked products.
Donnelly: Yes, and I make sure to regularly clean and sanitize these boards after use.
Rosenbaum: I do, but this isn’t always practical. It’s more important to clean and sanitize cutting boards thoroughly between uses, even if you only use it for one type of item. Also, inspect your cutting boards from time to time. When they develop deep knife grooves it may be harder for cleaning solutions to reach and kill any bacteria present and then it’s time to replace the board.
Nestle: No. I wash the one I have in between [uses].
Donnelly: Yes. Or I clean and sanitize the same board.
Powell: No, but I clean cutting boards thoroughly.
4. Always cook meat to proper temperatures, using a calibrated instant-read thermometer to make sure.
Tsai: No, I love my burgers rare and my lamb and steak medium rare. I will be struck by lightning or chomped by a great white before undercooked meats get me!
Marler: Yes.
Kender: No. In my house we like our steaks medium rare and our burgers pink in the middle. No one in the high-risk category lives in my home.
Vergili: I have a preference for many grilled foods to be undercooked such as tuna and pasture-raised porterhouse pork chops.
Donnelly: Most of the time. When grilling, I purchase low-risk products (intact muscle meats as opposed to ground beef) and insure that the outsides of these products (where contamination resides) are well cooked. For poultry and roasts, I always use a meat thermometer.
Rosenbaum: Yes, I always use a thermometer. In regards to beef, it is impossible to tell when it is safe to eat without using a thermometer. The color of the cooked meat is a very inaccurate indicator for safety. Different types of beef require different cooking temperatures and the type of thermometer used may also vary. Very thin beef patties, for instance, are best checked with a thermocouple (a type of temperature sensor) while roasts and steaks can use a larger-gauge thermometer.
Nestle: I cook it hot enough but don’t use a thermometer.
Donnelly: No. I use visual cues based on experience.
Powell: Yes. Color is a lousy indicator. I feel naked without a thermometer.
5. Avoid unpasteurized (“raw”) milk and cheeses made from unpasteurized milk that are aged less than 60 days.
Tsai: No, I love the flavor of unpasteurized. See above for lightning and shark.
Marler: Yes!
Kender: Yes, absolutely. I also avoid unpasteurized cider and fruit juices as well.
Vergili: As a rule yes, but I have gone out of my way to buy “certified” raw milk on rare occasions and tasted cheese from a known cheese maker as well. Frankly, there are some questions surrounding cheese made from raw milk and listeriosis despite 60 days of aging.
Donnelly: I do not consume raw milk as I know this is a high-risk product, and most producers are exempt from requirements specified in the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance which greatly enhance milk safety. For raw milk cheeses aged for less than 60 days, if they are AOC or PDO cheeses which I am purchasing and consuming in Europe, I have great confidence in the regulations and production procedures/processes which include stringent microbiological criteria, thus I know these cheeses pose a low food-safety risk. Cheeses made by unlicensed manufacturers and distributed illegally pose a great public health risk and I would not consume such products.
Rosenbaum: Yes. I believe the risk inherent in any raw dairy product far outweighs any potential benefit. This is especially important for pregnant women to avoid as they are at risk for contracting Listeriosis from raw dairy products, which carries a high rate of premature labor and spontaneous abortion.
Nestle: Not always. If I know the supplier, I’ll take the small risk.
Donnelly: Raw milk cheese is safe; raw milk is not.
Powell: Yup. Not worth the risk, especially for pregnant women, and my wife had a baby six months ago.
6. Never eat “runny” eggs or foods, such as cookie dough, that contain raw eggs.
Tsai: No, again, shark and lightning. But at BG, we do use pasteurized eggs and egg whites for desserts (like sabayon and in the hollandaise we make once a year for the Greater Boston Food Bank's Super Hunger Brunch).
Marler: Correct.
Kender: I never eat runny eggs or anything that contains raw eggs. I even prepare my own Caesar salad dressing using pasteurized egg yolks.
Vergili: No, I will eat classic scrambled eggs which are a bit runny, as well as a poached egg cooked less than the 145ºF [that] the codes call for.
Donnelly: Yes. I avoid consumption of raw eggs. There are excellent pasteurized egg products available to consumers which substantially reduce risks posed by pathogens such as Salmonella, Campylobacter and Listeria.
Rosenbaum: This is difficult to answer with the word “never” in it. My answer would depend on whether or not pasteurized eggs were used. When dining out, I always ask whether raw eggs were used in dishes such as sauces, mousses, tiramisù and dressings. If so, then I would avoid these foods unless I knew the facility was using pasteurized eggs. At home, pasteurized-in-shell eggs have become available in my area and I use these whenever I want to enjoy foods that would be risky if using regular eggs and not cooking thoroughly. Interested consumers can request that their grocers carry in-shell pasteurized eggs.
Nestle: Don’t be silly. I’m human.
Donnelly: Eggs should be cooked.
Powell: Nope.
7. Always wash your hands in warm soapy water for at least 20 seconds before handling food and after touching raw meat, poultry or eggs.
Tsai: Yes, definitely!
Marler: Yes.
Kender: I must admit that at my home I may not get through “Happy Birthday” twice before working with some food items, but absolutely always after working with raw meats and poultry!
Vergili: Yes, this is one of the easiest ways to prevent the spread of both pathogenic bacteria and viruses without compromising the culinary preference for a food.
Donnelly: Yes, and I prefer to use antibacterial soaps after handling these products.
Rosenbaum: Yes, or use hand sanitizer. It’s important to thoroughly clean the faucet handle if you’ve touched it after handling raw foods, too. Also, take along hand sanitizers when going to picnics and barbecues away from home where soap and warm running water would be hard to find.
Nestle: Wash hands, yes, but I don’t count seconds.
Donnelly: Yes.
Powell: Nope. 20 seconds is too long and water temperature doesn’t matter; but I do wash my hands routinely.
8. Always heat leftover foods to 165ºF.
Tsai: Yes.
Marler: Yes.
Kender: Never have leftovers at my home.
Vergili: No, as stated, this is one of the most misunderstood regulations. The recommendation basically pertains to leftover items in large volumes like chili or thick soups that need to be reheated slowly to ensure quality. A piece of beef previously cooked, such as a serving of prime rib, need not be reheated to 165ºF (it becomes more like pot roast).
Donnelly: Yes.
Rosenbaum: I do not generally use a thermometer for leftovers. I do re-cook soups and liquids until they boil, and heat other leftovers until they are steaming. It’s important to stop midway and stir food reheated in the microwave due to cold spots and uneven heating.
Nestle: I get them steaming hot, but don’t measure.
Donnelly: No. I use common sense.
Powell: Nope. 140ºF is sufficient if it has already been cooked.
9. Never eat meat, poultry, eggs or sliced fresh fruits and vegetables that have been left out for more than 2 hours (1 hour in temperatures hotter than 90°F).
Tsai: Fruits and veggies, fine. Meat and seafood, no! At BG, we are always very cognizant of the temperature danger zone; everything is refrigerated and/or cooled down properly.
Marler: Yes.
Kender: Never….especially during summer here in New England. I insist that all our outdoor activities, such as cookouts, have ice, and lots of it, that is used to keep the salads and other food items cold.
Vergili: No, if [it’s] at a group gathering, I would consider eating a raw vegetable or fruit that has been served unrefrigerated (assuming it hasn’t become oxidized, [which I find] unappealing).
Donnelly: Yes, Adherence to proper storage temperatures and the 2-hour rule are proven food-safety measures.
Rosenbaum: Yes. The rule in our house is, “If in doubt, throw it out!” I try to have several trays of the same food prepared when I entertain so they can be rotated and refrigerated in between.
Nestle: You don’t say whether these are cooked or uncooked or what the ambient temperature might be. Microbial growth rates depend on those factors.
Donnelly: No. I use common sense. 4 hours is the limit
Powell: did not offer a response (shurley sum mistake – dp)
10. Whenever there’s a food recall, check products stored at home to make sure they are safe.
Tsai: Yes.
Marler: Yes.
Kender: Yes. I receive recall notices at work and take that information home with me and always double check what I’ve purchased
Vergili: Yes, I would do that.
Donnelly: Yes. In fact, I just returned some cookie dough to a retail outlet for a refund.
Rosenbaum: Yes, and since recall information on food products is very difficult for consumers to obtain, my organization constantly looks for recalls and sends them in daily e-alerts to email inboxes. Anyone can sign up to receive them by sending a request to mail@safetables.org or go to our website daily at www.safetables.org to view them. Some stores post food recalls, while others send text messages or mailed notices. It is important for consumers to throw away or return for refund any product subject to a recall, as these products have either already made people sick or have a high likelihood of being contaminated. If you believe someone in your family has already eaten the product and/or gotten ill, you should keep the product and safely wrap and store it for the health authorities to test.
Nestle: I’ve never had a product involved in a recall except the can of recalled pet food given to me as a research gift for my book, Pet Food Politics.
Donnelly: I purchase locally grown, fresh foods.
Powell: Sure.
Maple Leaf listeria vp sucks as comedian
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.
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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?
Can I eat leftover pizza that stayed out all night?
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As thousands of American college students prepare for their first classes this morning, Doug makes pizza and tries to answer the question: can I eat that pizza I left out last night?
Evan had fun editing and that’s not my baby sneezing (and falling out of the chair).
Plans and guidelines don't make food safe. People do
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.
Woman's Day: Top-10 foods on a stick
While ironic that a magazine called Woman’s Day would feature the top-10 surprising foods on a stick – there’s probably an app for that – here they are:
Deep-Fried Spam (right)
Deep-Fried Bacon Cheddar Mashed Potatoes
Octopus Tempura
Deep-Fried Tootsie Roll
Deep-Fried Mac-n-Cheese
Pizza
Deep-Fried Bacon and Fries
Deep-Fried Chocolate Cake (left)
Livermush
Deep-Fried Cheese
New Zealand cricketers felled by food poisoning
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.
Common sense, freshness, not enough for inspectors - UK pub fined
The owners of the Green Man Public House in Stanford, UK, were fined more than £6,000 after failing to comply with food safety laws.
One of the pub owners said,
"We were not aware that we weren't complying with the law, but feel the council could have helped us more.
"When the bloke who did the inspection came into the kitchen that morning, we had two chefs in there which left it messy and he took it to the extreme in my opinion.
"Our business has always been based on common sense. Everything that comes in here is fresh and we are always stringent with food.
"The kitchen is cleaned all the time, it's an ongoing thing. After a busy weekend, the kitchen doesn't usually get bleached until the middle of the week.”
I wouldn’t want to eat there on Monday.
ConAgra spends a fortune on advertizing - how about food safety?
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).
Obama wants White House farmers market: buy liability insurance, try not to make people barf
U.S. President Obama said on Thursday that he and the First Lady are looking into setting up a farmers market just outside the White House, which might sell food from the White House garden or from local farmers.
The President said it could give the city of Washington, D.C., “more access to good, fresh food, but it also is this enormous potential revenue-maker for local farmers in the area.”
Obama mentioned the idea while answering a citizen question at a health-care forum.
I’d ask the same questions I’d ask any other purveyor of fresh produce: how often is your water tested and what are the results? What soil amendments are used? And what is the sanitation and handwashing program for the employees and anyone else who may have handled the produce?
What would Brian Boitano do? What would Brian Boitano make?
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.
Faith-based food safety
Michael Batz sent me a link to a story that took me on a magic carpet ride to the past (Batz also says he coined the term, ‘faith-based food safety’ but maybe he’s on his own magic carpet).
As an undergraduate university student some 25 years ago, I would read the N.Y. Times and Harper’s magazine, and marvel at the sentence structure and the issues that were exposed by hard-hitting journalists.
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But over time, my own knowledge increased, and I realized that several of these exposes were really just literary clichés, citing a few sources here and there, usually to validate a pre-existing ideal.
The initial realization was sorta gross (and yes, Michael Pollan was an editor of Harper’s back then, developing the skill set of a committed demagogue rather than investigative journalist).
The same techniques are on full display at the Atlantic Food Channel in a piece by Josh Viertel entitled, Why small farms are safer.
The author offers absolutely no evidence why small farms are safer, but does drop that he studied philosophy, his educated customers may be dumb, rides barefoot in buses and that Subway subs smell of industrial food.
If wannabe farmer Josh wanted to convince anyone that small farms were safer, he would present outbreak data, and rather than saying what his farm isn’t – sorta like organics isn’t GE, isn’t synthetic pesticides, isn’t whatever – he’d state what his farm did to ensure food safety, specifically water quality and testing, soil amendments and employee sanitation.
The author even whines that in 2006, he had trouble moving his spinach crop “all because Cargill's cows pooped in Dole's lettuce. It didn't seem right then. It doesn't now.”
Except it was poop from a grass-fed cow-calf operation that contaminated the transitional organic spinach in 2006 that sickened over 200 and killed 5.
Data often interferes with demagogues.
Make customers barf, score a perfect rating
Food safety culture is miniscule compared to food porn culture.
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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.
Oregon: Live dangerously with dogs; lose a sandwich
Oregon seems like a lovely place. Never been, although the sense of dopiness in the state has apparently gotten so bad that the state Department of Agriculture has to allocate resources to a public awareness campaign to remind Oregonians it's illegal for dogs to enter grocery stores - unless it's a service dog.
Vance Bybee, administrator of the agency's Food Safety Division, told the Charleston Daily Mail,
"There's a trend, a growing trend, for people to treat their pets like a member of the family, but they forget we still have to draw the line between our furry children and those without paws.”
Is he talking about my hairy baby? Is he discriminating against children with paws? This is probably the worst attempt at being cute in a quote -- ever.
"Interestingly enough, we get more complaints in Bend and in the Pearl District of Portland where people are more affluent and have the opportunity to pamper their pets and feel this pet is a part of my family so I am entitled to do with it what I like."
Bybee said the division gets more than 100 complaints a year about dogs doing inappropriate things in grocery stores, from urinating in the aisles to sniffing and licking food. The Portland Farmers Market banned dogs earlier this year because vendors and shoppers complained about sanitation, safety and crowding. One vendor lost a sandwich to a dog, and one customer who got tangled in a leash had to be taken to the hospital.
Top 5 food-safety questions journalists should be asking
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.
Orthorexia nervosa: I don't have it
22-hour road trips from Florida to Manhattan (KS) make for many McDonald’s Egg McMuffin breakfasts, KFC lunches and no dinner, cause I’ve already blown the daily 5,000 calorie limit.
So it’s good to know that an obsession with eating healthily could also be bad for one’s health.
Experts have reported a rise in such extreme behaviour, known as orthorexia nervosa.
Sufferers or orthorexia nervosa tend to be over 30, middle-class and well-educated.
While anorexia patients restrict the quantity of the food they eat, sufferers of orthorexia, named after the Greek for 'right or true', fixate on quality.
The 'rules' vary from person to person, but the drive to eat only the healthiest foods can lead to sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods being eliminated from the diet. …
Sufferers tend to spend hours reading the latest food research, trawling health food stores and planning menus.
Deanne Jade, founder of the National Centre for Eating Disorders, said,
“I see people around me who have no idea they have this disorder. I see it in my practice and I see it in my friends and colleagues.'”
She believes the rise of the condition is linked to society's tolerance of food fads and those who promote them, from gym instructors to naturopaths, who prescribe changes in diet to treat illnesses.
Perhaps like whatever the U.K. National Centre for Eating Disorders is.
Salmonella and shigella: trying times for British tourists
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.”
Groundhog Day continues for E. coli prof
Harold Ramis, right, the famed director of Groundhog Day – and writer of dozens of hit comedies, beginning with Animal House -- must be involved in this.
Professor Hugh Pennington (left, below), who authored reports following outbreaks of E.coli, in Scotland, in 1996, and in South Wales nine years later, yesterday told the Western Mail,
“It’s almost ‘Here we go again’.”
The professor, a member of the World Food Programme technical advisory group, said he hoped his last report on the outbreak in South Wales that killed five-year-old Mason Jones would reduce the incidence of E.coli.
But just four years on the bug has left 32-year-old Karen Morrisroe-Clutton seriously ill in hospital. Three-year-old Abigail Hennessey is recovering at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
Professor Pennington, now 71, and living in Aberdeen where before his retirement he was a specialist in bacteriology at the city’s university, said,
“One was hoping that the recommendations would see an end to those food-borne outbreaks or lead to a very significant reduction. A lot of the things we had talked about, people had already started to do on the back of the outbreak of 2005 because it was pretty obvious what had gone wrong. Now it’s almost ‘Here we go again’, unfortunately.”
Greens and melons and tomatoes - oh my. Will new guidelines make produce safer?
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Ben Chapman profiled at NC State (this time with notes)
Chapman got his obligatory profile as new faculty in one of the North Carolina State University publications this week; this is the bites/barfblog version.
When Ben Chapman arrived at N.C. State University in January as the new food safety specialist in the Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences, he hit the ground running. …
Since arriving in North Carolina, Chapman has converted from a former Toronto Maple Leafs hockey fan to a Carolina Hurricanes fan.
Carolina has a good hockey team and tickets are easy to get. Toronto sucks and tickets are impossible to get. Carolina has also won the Stanley Cup once in the past 42 years. Toronto has not.
He says that he spends much of his free time discussing the virtues of hockey with his wife and son (that's Jack, below, left, at a Hurricanes game in about 4 years)..
Those who can, do. Others teach. Others talk. Others bore their families.
A player himself since age 4, he has even started playing hockey here in North Carolina with a group in Wake Forest.
If he’s been playing since 4 he really should be better.
Chapman has focused on finding the best ways to communicate food safety risk to the people who need to know. He is interested in how social media like Facebook and rapid communication technologies like Twitter might improve public safety around the issue of food risk.
It also helps to stay current on all the social media for fantasy baseball/football/hockey/cycling tips.
Chapman had a sense that the bathroom posters proclaiming that “employees must wash hands before returning to work” might not produce the desired results.
It was probably the sense of smell, coming from his hands.
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Chapman even spent a semester working as a dishwasher in a restaurant to get a better sense of what the work climate was like.
I didn’t pay him enough as a graduate student and he had to moonlight.
Chapman noted that during busy times, employees tended to forget safe food-handling practices. “When it’s busy in a food-service operation, it gets really crazy,” he said.
That’s when the Pink Floyd is cranked.
In his new position, Chapman continues his quest to find the best ways of reaching food-service workers and consumers.
Go to a restaurant? A supermarket? It’s not like searching for a Holy Grail.
“We have a responsibility to get that information out there,” Chapman said. “The kind of things we’re doing here would have been hard to do in Canada — moving food safety forward.”
That’s what she said.
One way that Chapman has been moving food safety forward is helping agents develop training programs on home food preservation. Once a hallmark of extension programming through tomato clubs for girls, canning and other home food preservation techniques had largely fallen out of favor with consumers in recent years.
Ben Chapman: Defender of the can.
Tainted plane food linked to listeriosis increase in Australia
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.
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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.
Teenagers can use thermometers for food safety
Food safety type and barfblog.com fan Valerie Hannig of Wilmington, Delaware, sent me a picture of hope this morning.
For all those government agencies who say people won’t use thermometers, so they have to be told to cook burgers until the juices run clear, or until the food is piping hot, or something equally useless, here is Valerie’s son, Alex, temping a chicken thingy (below).
Valerie says, “It makes me feel great that after all these years I have been in food safety, it is nice to see good habits passed down to the next generation of foodies.”
Stick it in.
Local food is not inherently safer food
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.
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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.
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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.
Leftovers should not be left outside - or you may barf
Nine children and three women from a village in the Galilee who attended a wedding celebration Sunday ended up Monday evening at the emergency room with diarrhea, fierce stomachache and vomiting. The Jerusalem Post reports that seven of the children and two of the women had to be hospitalized for observation.
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They were diagnosed with food poisoning tracked back to the "doggie bags" taken and eaten at home. Amil Aga, epidemiological supervisor at the hospital, reached the conclusion that the leftovers had been left outside rather than in refrigeration for several hours until the extended family got home.
Hospital director-general Dr. Masad Barhoom warned people that during the hot summer months, store raw and prepared food under proper conditions to reduce the risk of food poisoning.
(The sticker, right, was a prototype; phone number and web site won't work; but we can come up with a new one -- dp).
Shurly some mistake: Whole Foods to offer health advice, healthier foods
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.
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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.
Stickers source watermelons to California farm
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that at a farm in Manteca, in San Joaquin County, workers smack labels onto watermelons freshly cut from the vine, each sticker bearing a unique string of letters and numbers that identifies where they were harvested.
Ryan Van Groningen of Van Groningen & Sons Farms, which sells watermelons under the Yosemite Fresh brand, said,
"With food safety as big as it is, we can give each watermelon its own code so a consumer can check on the Internet to see where it is grown.”
This new code, called the HarvestMark, is being developed by the Redwood City startup YottaMark Inc. at a time when Congress is considering food-safety legislation that could make some type of tracking system mandatory.
In advance of any legal mandate, a few growers have started putting HarvestMark codes on products like plastic-packaged grapes and strawberries, as well as watermelons.
The idea is to enable a consumer to type the 16-digit tracking code into a locator field at HarvestMark.com to learn where the product was grown. Depending on the grower's records and what the farm chooses to reveal, the system could detail the date and part of the field where the product originated.
Great idea.
A decade ago, I advised the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers – whose cluster tomatoes still dominate supermarket shelves in Florida in the middle of summer – to do something similar, to market their food safety efforts directly to the concerned consumer.
For other produce producers, forget government babysitters and the non-niceties of offending other growers … growers who maybe aren’t so good at food safety.
Go further. Put a url on the sticker so concerned shoppers can check out a web site with video, not just about where a commodity was grown, but about food safety standards, and real-time test results for water quality and product sampling.
And then market it.
Stickers for takeaway food a hit in Dubai
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.
Blowing (food) chunks on vacation
Amy, Sorenne and I are hanging out in Venice, Florida, and I do most of the cooking. Lots of fresh fruits and veggies from the neighborly Publix supermarket, and I even bought a digital, tip-sensitive meat thermometer from Target because I just feel naked cooking without one.
Others aren’t so fortunate, I guess.
A group called HolidayTravelWatch, somewhere in the European Union, has just published its top-20 appalling holiday complaints and problems. Included in this year’s list:
1. Family holiday to Egypt where a child was struck down by severe food poisoning, hospitalization and subsequent scalding in the hotel restaurant.
2. Family holiday to Turkey found that most of their group were ill, they were diagnosed as suffering with Salmonella and Cryptosporidium.
12. One family reported that they had returned from Turkey and their daughter had been diagnosed with Salmonella - they report that many people were ill at the hotel.
15. Holidaymakers to one hotel in Egypt reported sewage smells on the complex, gardens irrigated by stagnant water, food lukewarm, drinks served through a hatch and not via sealed bottles - they suffered severe gastric illness which still continues.
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17. One family to Egypt suffered with food undercooked, poor chef hygiene practices (one chef was seen to handle bloody meat then touch other food), flies on the food in the pool bar, sewage smells in bathroom, cracks on the balcony and they are suspected as suffering with Cryptosporidium.
20, One couple’s trip to Egypt was marred by building work, diarrhoea on the public toilet walls, diarrhoea in the restaurant. They both suffered severe illness and weight loss - they are still ill.
Food safety Bill passes House - will it mean fewer sick people?
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.
Once again: No nutritional difference between organic and regular food
Organic food is not safer than conventional food. Organic food is not more sustainable than regular food. Organic food is not more nutritious than other food.
Organic is more expensive than other food, and verification of organic production practices is specious at best.
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Russ Parsons of the Los Angeles Times figured this out a few weeks ago and wrote a column that began,
"I don't believe in organics."
This morning he revisited the topic, noted that organics is an article of faith for a lot of people, highlighted some hate mail, and most surprising, revealed that mail supporting Parsons’ column was overwhelmingly positive by a ratio of 5 or 6 to 1.
This afternoon, the U.K. Food Standards Authority released results of a review it commissioned which found,
no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food.
The focus of the review was the nutritional content of foodstuffs.
Gill Fine, FSA Director of Consumer Choice and Dietary Health, said,
“Ensuring people have accurate information is absolutely essential in allowing us all to make informed choices about the food we eat. This study does not mean that people should not eat organic food. What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food.”
The FSA commissioned this research as part of its commitment to giving consumers accurate information about their food, based on the most up-to-date science.
A paper reporting the results of the review of nutritional differences has been peer-reviewed and published today by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Dr Dangour, of the LSHTM’s Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit, and the principal author of the paper, said:
“A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced crops and livestock, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”
The Times’ Parsons got it right in his original column when he said,
farming is a complicated enterprise and there is a huge gray area between certified organic and the stereotypical heavy-duty use of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
Furthermore, a lot of the best farming practices of the original organic philosophy -- composting, fallowing, crop rotation, the use of nonchemical techniques for controlling most pests -- have been adopted by many nonorganic growers, even though they still reserve the right to use chemicals when they think it's best.
The complete U.K. report is available at http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/organicreviewreport.pdf
Don't try to be Rachel Ray if you're canning
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.
Egypt and Kansas - food brings us together
I’ve been hanging out with the visiting Egyptians since Thurs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has this Cochran Fellows program that provides U.S.-based agricultural training opportunities for senior and mid-level specialists and administrators from public and private sectors who are concerned with agricultural trade, agribusiness development, management, policy, and marketing.
After spending over 30 hours to reach Kansas from Egypt, with a variety of travel headaches, the three food scientists and one professor have been taking in the best Manhattan has to offer: dinner at the Little Apple Brewing Company, viewing the animals at the Riley County Fair, shopping, taking in the Kaw Valley Rodeo Saturday night, and my lectures.
Sunday, the Fellows came to our house for some American-style BBQ and hospitality. I showed them how to cook a hamburger with a tip-sensitive digital thermometer, they told me about cooking and hospitality in Egypt.
Baby Sorenne was the star attraction.
And it's been a huge honor hanging out with the accomplished gentlemen and learning.
'Multiple little failures add up' and cause outbreaks
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."
Food safety culture more fashion than fact for posers
On Aug. 23, 2008, Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain took to the Intertubes to apologize for an expanding outbreak of listeriosis that would eventually kill 22 people. As part of his speech, McCain said that Maple Leaf has “a strong culture of food safety.”
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On Aug. 27, 2008, McCain told a press conference,
“As I've said before, Maple Leaf Foods is 23,000 people who live in a culture of food safety. We have an unwavering commitment to keep our food safe, and we have excellent systems and processes in place.”
As laid bare in the Weatherill report on the 2008 listeria shit-fest, McCain’s invocation of food safety culture was as credible as the politicians and bureaucrats who lauded the workings of Canada’s food safety surveillance system, when it didn’t actually work at all.
Andre Picard, the long-time health reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail, picked up on this theme today when he wrote,
“the root of the listeriosis outbreak in Canada in 2008 was not two dirty meat slicers but rather a culture – in government and private enterprise alike – in which food safety was not a priority but an afterthought.”
Picard says Ms. Weatherill's most important recommendation – one that has been largely glossed over in media coverage of the report – is for a culture of safety or, as is stated bluntly in the report: “Actions, not words.”
Really, Canada, this is nothing new. There is a long history in developed countries of negligence, followed by remorse, promises to do better and … minimal changes. Didn’t Canada go through all this after E. coli O157:H7 entered the municipal water supply in Walkerton, Ontario in 2000, killing 7 and sickening 2,500 in a town of 5,000?
In 1985, 19 of 55 affected people at a London, Ontario, nursing home died after eating sandwiches infected with E. coli O157:H7. On Oct. 12, 1985, in response to an inquest, the Ontario government announced a training program for food-handlers in health-care institutions, “stressing cleaning and sanitizing procedures and hygienic practices in food preparation.” That training apparently didn’t include the food safety basic – don’t give unheated cold cuts to vulnerable populations, like old people, ‘cause they may die from listeria.
These days, food safety culture is the buzz. The same recommendation – to embrace and enhance food safety culture -- was embraced by the U.K. Food Standards Agency last week following an inquiry into the death of 5-year-old Mason Jones and the illness of 160 other schoolchildren who consumed E. coli O157:H7 contaminated cold cuts in Wales in 2005.
Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously?
Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of Western meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.
Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.
Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his 2008 book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.
The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales.
I’ve maintained for 16 years that, despite high-profile outbreaks and unacceptable loss of life, food safety in Canada is, as Weatherill stated, an afterthought.
Forget government. Michael McCain, you want to be a leader, lead, don’t just talk about it by throwing around words like food safety culture because they are suddenly fashionable.
The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants will go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
And the best cold-cut companies may stop dancing around and tell pregnant women, old people and other immunocompromised folks, don't eat this food unless it's heated.
Weatherill says, action not words.
'Food safety in Canada is on the upper end of mediocre'
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.
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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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FDA's food safety czar Acheson off to consulting
David, we hardly knew ye.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s most public food safety face since the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach, assistant commissioner for foods and barfblog.com fan, David Acheson (right, exactly as shown), is leaving to join a new consulting firm, headed by former Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.
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Jane Zhang of the Wall Street Journal reported today that Acheson said, in an email to FDA employees,
“I wanted to let you know that Friday, July 31st will be my final day of service at the FDA. I have accepted a position with Leavitt Partners, a consulting firm, who are starting a new focus on food and import safety and have asked me to head the new activity.”
The firm, based in Salt Lake City, where Leavitt served as governor, already has hired a number of former HHS officials, including Medicaid chief Dennis Smith.
Acheson said in an interview he will remain in Washington and will use his “strong public-health perspective” to help food companies address food safety issues.
Acheson spoke in a July 2007 interview with the Washington Post about his passion for public education and his commitment to making the wobbly global food-safety system work better -- even though he's acutely aware that, in his new position, a food-related outbreak has as much potential to break his career as to make it.
Tragic food safety stories and teaching moments
This is what happens when doing interviews at 6:30 a.m. while feeding Sorenne some mush of peach and pear.
After blogging about how the U.K. Food Standards Agency was embracing food safety culture, I turned the post into an opinion piece and sent it to a newspaper in Wales.
The next morning, while feeding Sorenne, a reporter e-mailed me with some questions, and I replied, “call me.”
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So she did.
The article, by Abby Alford, appeared this morning in Wales under the headline, Tragic E. coli death used to teach US students food hygiene.
The tragic story of E. coli victim Mason Jones is being used by an American professor as a graphic illustration of what unsafe food can do.
Dr Douglas Powell also shows his students at Kansas State University a picture of the five-year-old as he teaches them about food safety.
“We are always trying to come up with new ways of getting the food safety message across. We have to have a compelling story and there’s no more compelling story than Mason Jones,” he said.
I talked about food safety culture, what FSA was proposing, and questioned how they were going to measure effectiveness.
The FSA has announced a culture change is needed in all parts of the food supply chain if the UK is to avoid another E.coli outbreak.
Dr Powell also suggested UK firms could follow the example of a factory in North Dakota, USA, which uses webcams to stream its activities live on the Internet.
Apparently I dreamed that part. There is a turkey processing plant in South Dakota that uses video cameras to constantly monitor operations and the videos can be accessed by auditors or USDA inspectors at any time – but not on the Internet. And not in North Dakota.
Safest food in the world: American cattlemen's edition
It’s been awhile, but Dr. Sam Ives, director of veterinary services and associate director of research at Cactus Feeders, Ltd., testified today on behalf of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) at a U.S. House Agriculture Committee Hearing on food safety that the U.S. has the safest food in the world.
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“There is no question that the United States has the safest food supply in the world and other countries consider the U.S. the 'gold standard.' Cattle producers support the establishment of realistic food safety objectives designed to protect public health to the maximum extent possible.
“…The U.S. has the safest food supply in the world, which is an achievement worth noting. Science is a critical component of the beef industry and through science-based improvements in animal genetics, management practices, nutrition and health, beef production per cow has increased from 400 pounds of beef in the mid 1960s to 585 pounds of beef in 2005. … The beef industry will continue to dedicate time and resources to ensure the safety of beef.”
But that doesn’t mean the U.S. has the safest food supply in the world. For a group so dedicated to science, perhaps they could provide some science to substantiate the claim?
E. coli and Salmonella found on goat penis in Vietnam; not fit for human consumption
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.
'Change culture to avoid E. coli'
Amy’s father and stepmom came for a visit and yesterday we went to a local eatery for a late lunch.
When Amy’s dad ordered a burger, the server asked how he would like the burger cooked.
He said medium-well.
The server said he could get the burger as rare as he wanted.
Amy said really, and started asking, just what was a medium-rare burger.
The server said it all had to do with color, and after some back and forth with the cooks, said the beef they get has nothing bad in it anyway.
Color is a lousy indicator.
During the same meal, a reporter called to ask, why do companies – big companies, huge chains and brand names -- knowingly follow or ignore bad safety practices? (that story should appear Sunday).
It comes down to culture – the food safety culture of a restaurant, a supermarket, a butcher shop, a government agency.
Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.
Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously?
Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of American meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.
Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.
The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales that killed 5-year-old Mason Jones and sickened another 160 school kids.
Yesterday, the board of the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA), in response to Pennington’s report, approved a five-year plan that will push food businesses to adopt a food safety culture and comply with hygiene laws, and urge stricter punishments for those that do not. The FSA will also ensure health inspectors are better trained.
A report put before FSA board members in London stated “culture change in all of the relevant parts of the food supply chain” is necessary.
Mason Jones’ mum Sharon Mills said she is pleased with the action being taken by the FSA.
“This sounds promising and shows they are moving in the right direction. … Things are slowly changing and hopefully we will all see the benefits sooner rather than later.”
Maybe. I’m still not convinced FSA understands what culture is all about. And how will these changes be evaluated. Is there any evidence that social marketing is effective in creating food safety behavior change? Those issues get to the essence of food safety culture, yet are glossed over with a training session – more of the same.
And why wait for government. The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
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Do Master Gardeners know food safety?
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.
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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.
Jaw Wired Shut blog
I had a broken jaw once – wired shut for six weeks. Filled up on soup, shakes and various forms of slop.
That was a long time ago. Today, people with broken jaws can go to the Jaw Wired Shut blog.
Frank Bruni writes in the New York Times,
Jaw Wired Shut is one of those when-God-gives-you-lemons things, and it really does capture the glory of the Internet, which allows people in very particular situations, with very particular needs, to find guidance and company. To connect.
But it also has an amusing dimension, with a cultural-commentary side. As the blog’s author approaches her latest appointment with the blender, she muses on flavors and food rituals much the way any other recipe writer or tester would, never mind that her end result will invariably be … mush.
The posts play as a simultaneous homage to, and parody of, food porn today.
“Fresh lettuce reminds me of childhood summers,” begins one recent post. “I loved going next door to play in the dirt in our neighbor’s garden.”
Another foodsafetyathome website - as bad as Journey
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?
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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.
Food safety in French: Le Blog d'Albert Amgar
I’m not sure how I would have figured stuff out when I moved to Manhattan (Kansas) if Amy wasn’t with me.
Especially the American university administrative hoops. And the French. I’m Canadian but, like many other Canadians, don’t speak French. Fortunately, Amy’s a French professor so I can now understand all the food safety stuf Albert Amgar sends me from France – it’s usually in French.
Albert has just retired and has started his own blog, Le Blog d’Albert Amgar. It sounds classy, cause it’s French.
“Among the subjects reviewed are the recall of food in France, Europe and the rest of the world, food hygiene, HACCP, management of microbial risks, food safety policy, food microbiology through microorganisms of interest and those that make problems (emergent or not), chemical risks of different natures, problems arising in food safety and security as well as some elements in nutrition, and some simply in security.”
Albert also has this quote at the top of his blog from Pierre Darmon’s, “L’homme et les microbes” (The Man and the Microbes):
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“Hygiene, before Microbiology, is only hygienic in its intentions. It’s a Science of appearances that rests in the hands of the blind: what’s healthy is beautiful, good, and doesn’t smell bad.”
Best wishes for the blog, Albert. And after three years I’m starting to understand the Tour de France – or at least the scenery.
Andrew Stormer: stick it in for safety (a thermometer)
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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How many food poisoners can you spot on this list?
As Eddie Murphy said in the movie, 48 Hours, “A badge and a gun goes a long way. … There’s a new sheriff in town.”
That’s the impression the Obama Administration is trying to project with a spate of announcements to enhance food safety, which makes me feel it’s 1994 all over again … and look, there’s Michael Taylor back as a food safety advisor at the Food and Drug Administration (good choice, BTW).
For all the various announcements and endorsements today, the list of invitees to the White House is the most telling. How many food poisoners can you spot on this list, the ones who profit from selling food, have proven themselves incapable of providing safe food, and now have to ask for a babysitter?
Below is a list of expected attendees at today's Food Safety Announcement, including representatives from consumer, industry, producer associations, public health, and academic organizations.
ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS:
* Vice President Joe Biden
* Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius
* Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
* Dr. Peggy Hamburg, Commissioner, FDA
* Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Deputy Commissioner, FDA
* Melody Barnes, Director, Domestic Policy Council
* Dr. John Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy
MEMBERS OF CONGRESS:
* Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
* Representative John Dingell (D-MI)
* Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI)
OTHER EXPECTED ATTENDEES INCLUDE
(in alphabetical order by last name)
* Brent Baglien, ConAgra Foods
* Andrew Bailey, National Turkey Federation
* Scott Becker, Association of Public Health Laboratories
* Georges Benjamin, American Public Health Association
* Ellen Bloom, Consumers Union
* Abigail Blunt, Kraft Foods
* Melane Boyce, Confectioners Association
* Thomas Bradshaw, American Frozen Food Institute
* David Buck, Center for Foodborne Illness, Research & Prevention
* Christine Bushway, Organic Trade Association
* Jonathan Cantu, Government Accountability Project
* Barry Carpenter, National Meat Association
* Anthony Corbo, Food and Water Watch
* Jo Ellen Deutsch- United Food & Commercial Workers International Union
* Caroline DeWaal, Center for Science in the Public Interest
* Orlo Ehart, NASDA
* Cathleen Enright, Western Growers Association
* Sandra Eskin, Georgetown University, Health Policy Institute
* Scott Faber, Grocery Manufacturers of America
* Gregory Ferrara, National Grocers Association
* Anthony Flood, International Food Information Council
* Molly Fogarty, Nestle
* Randall Gordon, National Grain and Feed Association
* Robert Green, United Egg Producers
* Sally Greenberg, National Consumers League
* Lisa Griffith, National Family Farm Coalition
* Robert Guenther, United Fresh Produce Association
* Margaret Henderson, National Fisheries Institute
* James Hodges, American Meat Institute
* Katherine Houston, Cargill, Inc.
* Jonathan James, Allen Family Foods, Inc
* Alice Johnson, ButterBall
* G. Chandler Keys, JBS
* Lonnie King, CDC
* Barbara Masters, Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Bode Matz PC
* Margaret Mellon, Union of Concerned Scientists
* Joel Newman, American Feed Industry Association
* Donna Norton, Mom's Rising
* Erik Olson, Mars
* H. R. Bert Pena, Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP
* Robert Pestronk, National Association of County and City Health Officials
* Adam Reichardt, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
* Tanya Roberts, Center for Foodborne Illness, Research & Prevention
* Welford Roberts, National Environmental Health Association
* Donna Rosenbaum, S.T.O.P. - Safe Tables Our Priority
* Marianne Rowden, American Association of Exporters and Importers
* Ruth Saunders, International Dairy Foods Association
* Bryan Silbermann, Produce Marketing Association
* Brian Snyder, Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
* Steven Steinhoff, Association of Food and Drug Officials
* Michael Taylor, George Washington University, School of Public Health and Health Services
* Mary Toker, General Mills, Inc.
* Omar Vargas, Pepsi-Cola North America
* Christopher Waldrop, Consumer Federation of America
* Deborah White, Food Marketing Institute
* Heather White, Environmental Working Group
* Andrea Yabulonsky, ConAgra Foods
Food poisoning strikes Birmingham police
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.
On Saturday, July 4, 2009, more than 40 police officers in Birmingham, U.K., were stricken with food poisoning after consuming a boxed lunch of a sandwich, packet of crisps, chocolate bar and piece of fruit, as they prepared to police a demonstration which passed off peacefully.
Dozens of fireman, police and ambulance staff rushed to the scene as British Transport Police shut the station at about 5pm on the advice of health agencies.
The station re-opened 50 minutes later.
Lizard droppings may have poisoned Bangladesh students
Lizard droppings or similar contamination may have been the cause for scores of students falling ill after eating at a girls' hostel of Bagerhat Government PC College, civil surgeon Subhash Kumar Saha said on Sunday.
Saha was making an inspection of the hostel's kitchen after 63 students, who had taken lunch there on Saturday, underwent treatment for food poisoning at Bagerhat Sadar Hospital.
Of them, 31 were admitted in critical condition, said doctors, but all were treated and out of danger.
Fireworks, food safety and bad, bad stuf
As the fireworks continue in the background, Amy and I are working in bed and put on a terrible, 1972 movie, 1776, which turns out to be a musical about American Independence starring Ken-The-White-Shadow Howard as Thomas Jefferson and William-I-was-on-St.Elsewhere-and the-voice-of-Kit-on-Knight-Rider Daniels as John Adams.
It’s so bad it reminded me of a song we think Oprah commissioned called, America is Beautiful, written by Canadian David Foster.
Truly bad (below).
Amy and I would like to dedicate this song to Canadians Ben and Dani and Jack, who are enjoying their first Independence Day in the fireworks capital of North Carolina, and ex-pat Katie who is in New Zealand, but had the misfortune of watching this song when it aired on Oprah (always something on in the background).
America’s great, but this song is horrible. So are Americans running around with fireworks, which have been going off for three days. And the food safety … it can be improved.
Organic crap gets crappier
One of the reasons I don’t buy organic – besides being on a professor’s salary, which I have no complaints about but I’m certainly not going to waste it on organic – is that the so-called claims and rules are followed about as thoroughly as Peanut Corporation of America can pass an audit and end up having 4,000 products recalled because Salmonella makes people barf. Every time someone says, “Organic has strict rules for composting …” I chuckle and wonder about verification.
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The Washington Post reports this morning what many have been saying for over a decade – that the sham of organics would eventually be found out.
Three years ago, U.S. Department of Agriculture employees determined that synthetic additives in organic baby formula violated federal standards and should be banned from a product carrying the federal organic label. Today the same additives, purported to boost brainpower and vision, can be found in 90 percent of organic baby formula.
Grated organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be made from non-organic hops. Organic mock duck contains a synthetic ingredient that gives it an authentic, stringy texture.
Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest growing segment of the food industry. Half of the country's adults say they buy organic food often or sometimes, according to a survey last year by the Harvard School of Public Health.
But the USDA program's shortcomings mean that consumers, who at times must pay twice as much for organic products, are not always getting what they expect: foods without pesticides and other chemicals, produced in a way that is gentle to the environment.
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The argument is not over whether the non-organics pose a health threat, but whether they weaken the integrity of the federal organic label.
Don’t care about a label. I’m more interested in food that doesn’t make people barf. As far as baby food, I don’t feed any of that organic crap to baby Sorenne, although making such a statement is essentially an invitation to family services to check out my terrible parenting techniques.
My colleague Katija Blaine covered this thoroughly back in 2003.
An episode of the popular U.S. television show, 20/20 in 2000, sparked a fierce debate over the microbial safety of organically grown fresh fruits and vegetables. Are organic foods safer than conventional foods? On the show, correspondent John Stossel concluded that organic produce was no safer than conventional produce and might in fact be more dangerous because of the heavy use of manure in organic farming (Ruterberg & Barringer, 2000). Such statements have been supported by several prominent food scientists (Tauxe, 1997; Forrer et al., 2000) while the organic industry has argued that their strict standards on manure usage reduces such risks (DiMatteo, 1997). The organic industry has refrained from making direct claims of improved microbial food safety. Katherine DiMatteo, president of the Organic Trade Association has stated publicly that "Organic is not a food safety claim" (Juday, 2000)
According to the most recent expert report from the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT, 2002) "the available scientific information is insufficient to ensure that food-borne pathogens are killed during composting and soil application."
Since organic growers already have a certification and inspection system, the CGSB organic standards could be expanded to better incorporate food safety concerns. Specific additions would include ensuring adequate facilities and training to ensure worker hygiene and recommendations for processing and processing water. The documentation, monitoring and regulation of high-risk inputs give organic growers a head start over conventional growers who may be trying to implement an on-farm food safety system from scratch. It is also the responsibility of food producers to use knowledge to aggressively reduce the risk of food and waterborne illness, whether conventional or organic or somewhere in between. And with both conventional and organic systems, verification through microbial testing is required to demonstrate that actions match words.
This is not about organic and conventional. Food safety goes far beyond ideology. As has been stated elsewhere, poor farming and processing practices are the product of poor farmers and processors.
As I said in 2007, the production of safe food is the responsibility of everyone in the farm-to-fork chain -- conventional or organic -- and food safety, especially with fresh produce, must begin on the farm.
References
Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB). 1999. Organic Agriculture. National Standard of Canada. CGSB. CAN/CGSB-32.310-99.
DiMatteo KT. 1997. Does Organic Gardening Foster Foodborne Pathogens? To the Editor. JAMA. 277(21):1679-80.
Juday D. 2000. Are organic foods really better for you? Natural grown killers in organic food make it no safer than produce grown in pesticides. BridgeNews Service (Knight Ridder) February, 14.
Ruterberd J and Barringer F. 2000. Apology highlights ABC reporter's contrarian image. The New York Times August 14. C1.
Tauxe RV. 1997. Does Organic Gardening Foster Foodborne Pathogens? In Reply. JAMA. 277(21):1679-80.
BBQ safely with Douglas Powell
Look, I’m goofy. Probably the Brantford, Ontario, water, cause hometown pal Wayne Gretzky sure looked goofy on The Young and the Restless in 1981.
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I don’t want to be on video. But if that’s what it takes to get the message out about how to safely grill burgers this holiday weekend, then why not.
As I wrote the N.Y. Times today in response to their July 1, 2009 piece, The Perfect Burger and All Its Parts, Chef Seamus Mullen’s recommendation to use any thin piece of metal into the side of a burger, and “if it’s barely warm to the lips, it’s rare. If it’s like bath water, it’s medium rare” only demonstrates the divide between food safety and food pornography.
The only thin piece of metal that should be stuck into the side of a hamburger is a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.
Color is a lousy indicator of burger safety, as is the taste of metal sticks. Rather than putting E. coli O157:H7 on precious testing lips – stick a thermometer in.
Roadkill burgers banned in Newfoundland
"I've been involved in getting moose for over 30 years from wildlife, and I have never heard of anyone ever getting sick from eating a moose burger."
So says Dave Barker, who works for the Knights of Columbus in Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland.
I hear similar sentiments all the time. It’s completely meaningless.
If someone got sick from a past practice, they would probably not accurately link it to a specific food; if they died, they wouldn’t be around to complain.
But perhaps the bureaucrats in the Canadian province of Newfoundland have gone a bit too … bureaucratic.
The provincial government recently discontinued the donation of roadkill moose meat, and charity groups say the decision strips them of a vital source of fundraising.
For decades, wildlife officers have offered charities moose killed in road collisions. The charities had butchers mince the meat into burgers, a very popular treat in the province, and held community barbecues and other events to raise money for their various causes.
"It depends on how much moose is actually destroyed in the accident, but normally you get at least two moose burger sales out of one moose, so you're looking at anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000," said Shane Budgell, president of the Lions Club in Grand Falls-Windsor.
The government's decision comes after the province's auditor general flagged problems earlier this year about the department's donations of wild game meat.
"The department did not always track where all of the meat from a particular animal was sent," John Noseworthy wrote in his annual report.
After a review, the government decided to stop donating roadkill moose meat, saying the practice would expose them to liability if any health or safety risks arose.
Moose are ruminants, and there have been outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 associated with moose meat (it’s not just corn-fed feedlot cattle; I'm talking to you, Michael Pollan and Food Inc.).
But rather than ban the use of roadkill, why not have better training for butchers and food service types and teach them how to not cross-contaminate and use tip-sensitive thermometers to ensure the meat is prepared safely?
Whole Foods porn
If you’re a retailer as big as Whole Foods, how hard is it to provide accurate information?
For their July 4 “perfect burgers” the food porn emporium says, “Grill meat to desired doneness; about 4 to 6 minutes per side over a medium hot fire. Be careful not to overcook, which will dry out the meat.”
This means nothing, but as a smart food science prof once told me, processing is all about adding air and water and charging more; Whole Foods adds swarmy words and charges more.
Color is a lousy indicator of safety. Use a tip-sensitive thermometer, and use food porn for titillation, not safety.
New food safety infosheet -- Harvey's E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak Report Released
The newest food safety infosheet, a graphical one-page food safety-related story directed at food handlers is also now available at foodsafetyinfosheets.ksu.edu. Infosheets are created weekly and are posted in restaurants, retail stores, on farms and used in training throughout the world.
This week's food safety infosheet focuses on a Fall 2008 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak inked to a Harvey's restaurant in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. 
Food safety infosheet highlights:
- Health authorities point to Spanish red onions as most likley source of the outbreak
- Poor sanitation of onion dicer may have prolonged the outbreak
- Equipment should be fully disassembled to allow for cleaning and sanitizing of hard to reach areas
Food safety infosheets are created weekly and are posted in restaurants, retail stores, on farms and used in training throughout the world. If you have any infosheet topic requests, or photos, please contact Ben Chapman at benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu
You can follow food safety infosheets stories and barfblog on twitter @benjaminchapman and @barfblog.
Click here to download a pdf of the food safety infosheet.
New Canadian organic logo is pornographic?
Raise a butter tart and Molson Export – or Labatt Crystal if you’re into the skid stuff – it’s Canada Day, the celebration of the July 1, 1867 enactment of the British North America Act, which united Canada as a single country of four provinces.
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The N.Y. Times has a fun piece of famous ex-pats saying what they miss most about Canada – original Coffee Crisp chocolate bars seems to be the best thing folks can conjure up – but more importantly to some, the new Canadian organic food logo went into effect (below, left, exactly as shown).
Organic is a production standard. Doesn’t mean anything about quality, taste or safety. It’s a marketing concept, but now they have their own label.
All produce will have to be completely organic to be stamped with the logo, while products with multiple ingredients must have 95 per cent organic content.
Farmers who want their produce to carry the new "Canada Organic" label have to apply in writing for certification. The application must include:
* The name of the agricultural product.
* The substances used in its production.
* The manner in which those substances are used.
The logo will also be used on USDA-certified organic products imported from the United States.
Between 70 and 80 per cent of all organic products available in Canada are imported primarily from the U.S., according to government figures.
My group has written extensively about organic and conventional food safety – it’s just not on. There are good farmers and bad farmers, conventional, organic and otherwise.
But this logo? I sent it to a few of my colleagues and asked them what they thought – all the results were too pornographic to publish here. Maybe on twitter.
N.Y. Times sucks at food safety: stick a piece of metal in a burger and lick it, rather than a thermometer, to tell if it's done?
In the continuing saga of bad food safety advice in the N.Y. Times – and the elevation of food pornography over food safety – the Times today ran a piece about the perfect burger.
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In interviews with dozens of so-called chefs around the U.S., not one mentioned the use of a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure a final, safe temperature of 160F, or that color is an exceedingly lousy indicator of doneness or food safety (that's Ben, right, exactly as shown, grillin' up some Canada Day burgers)
The story does say, “testing for doneness is always a challenge for the home cook. Seamus Mullen, the chef and an owner of the Boqueria restaurants in the Flatiron district and SoHo, uses a wire cake tester. (Any thin, straight piece of metal will work as well.)
“We stick it in the middle through the side. If it’s barely warm to the lips, it’s rare. If it’s like bath water, it’s medium rare. The temperature will never lie. It takes the guesswork out of everything.”
Rather than putting E. coli O157:H7 on your precious testing lips, stick a thermometer in. You’re already sticking a piece of metal in so why not a thermometer?
Ben has just added to the Mark Bittman history of spewing out food safety nonsense that I have been tracking for at least two years.
The Times also published the whopper by Nina Planck, who at the height of the fall 2006 E. coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak, wrote in the Times that E. coli O157:H7 "is not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. … It's the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms."
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This falsehood is routinely repeated, most recently in the entertaining but factually-challenged movie, Food Inc.
The natural reservoirs 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 4.
In my own unique version of how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people, I called Bittman and celebrity food porn doofus Jamie Oliver idiots for their advice on how to cook chicken and their ability to cross-contaminate an entire kitchen within seconds.
N.Y. Times, you are furthering your descent to irrelevancy.
Investigative journalists still required for food safety - even if newspapers disappear
Toronto city councillor Brian Ashton said yesterday,
"I was stunned that the Toronto Star was able to – for the second time – expose a problem that the Board of Health seemed to be unaware of," referring to the newspaper's "Dirty Dining" series in 2000, which prompted public health to release restaurant inspection records. "The Toronto Star is becoming more like a board of health than the Board of Health."
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Food safety stories are increasingly the fodder of investigative journalists, regardless of media. We all eat, so we’re all interested to a point, although not everyone wants to go politico with every bite – sometimes it’s enough to not barf.
The recent Toronto Star series on the filth of soft-serve ice cream machines is an example of media setting the public health agenda.
Toronto Public Health is cracking down on more than 100 ice cream vendors after a Star investigation revealed hazardous levels of bacteria in soft-serve cones across the city.
Consumers can do the same thing – with pictures and video that can readily be captured by most cell phones. Send it to your local health unit.
Otherwise, D-listers like Tori Spelling (above, right, exactly as shown) set the agenda.
How to greenwash food packaging; market food safety instead
Eat Me Daily is fast becoming one of my go-to sites. They write today:
This illustration by Lunchbreath is basically a checklist for corporate greenwashing: Earth tones, sans serif type, unbleached paper, and emotional messaging are essential components of the deceptive marketing techniques employed by corporations that rebrand their products.
We liked the customer benefit: "Be selfish while appearing progressive."
Market food safety instead. People are interested in not barfing.
Source food from safe sources - the missing component in food safety communications
Tomorrow is Canada Day, the celebration of the July 1, 1867 enactment of the British North America Act, which united Canada as a single country of four provinces. Saturday is Independence Day in the U.S., commonly known as the Fourth of July, a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Both occasions have turned into annual orgies of bad food safety advice on both sides of the 49th parallel.
OK, bad is a strong word. But the advice is certainly incomplete; and puts the blame for any outbreaks of foodborne illness squarely on the shoulders of consumers.
For example, “The government of Canada reminds Canadians about the importance of food safety during the summer months.” Compelling reading. And then a $5.5 billion-a-year company, Maple Leaf, can do no better than parrot government advice, which is convenient, since it says nothing about buying cold-cuts that won’t make people barf.
Maple Leaf’s so-called blog, which is updated about once-a-week, is entitled, Our Journey to Food Safety Leadership. What PR genius thought up this blog name? Shouldn’t they already be food safety leaders? I don’t want to be on a journey with them (and Journey is a terrible band) while Maple Leaf figures out food safety.
The U.S. is no better with its “Independence Day: Drills for the grill.” Seriously, who comes up with this stuf? Oh, and the U.S. Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education has a new leader, but the same incomplete messages (and same terrible title).
But change may yet happen. Given all the outbreaks – produce, pet food, peanut butter, that have nothing to do with consumers, it’s time any food safety messaging campaign included what the World Heath Organization has been advocating since 2002 – source food from safe sources (an evaluation of message effectiveness should also be a bare minimum and rarely happens).
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The U.S. National Restaurant Association encourages restaurant and foodservice operators to begin planning for the 15th annual National Food Safety Education Month, held every September and focuses on the importance of food safety education for the restaurant and foodservice industry.
This year's theme is "Food Safety Thrives When You Focus on Five."
Each week will focus on one of the five barriers:
Purchasing food from unsafe sources
Failing to cook food adequately
Holding food at incorrect temperatures
Using contaminated equipment
Practicing poor personal hygiene
Finally, a group starts to get it right. Now, about that evaluation …
K-State food safety types contribute to new book on causes, solutions to produce contamination
Anyone can bitch. My colleagues and I try to provide solutions.
So Ben, Casey and I jumped at the chance to write the concluding chapter for a new book, "The Produce Contamination Problem: Causes and Solutions," slated for release July 15 from Academic Press.
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"We should eat fresh produce because it's good for us, but it's also a significant cause of foodborne illness," said Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that when leafy vegetables are counted with fruits and nuts, they account for the majority of foodborne disease outbreaks in 2006. Together, these types of produce are blamed for 33 percent of outbreaks. In comparison, poultry was the culprit of 21 percent of outbreaks that year.
One of the main things the authors convey is that the tomato grown in your home garden is as likely to make you sick as is the tomato purchased at a big-box grocery store or discount chain.
"Everyone is big on their local garden, but it's no different whether I have a thousand acres or a little plot in my backyard," Powell said. "You have to keep dog, cat and bird poop out of the product you eat."
Although factory farms often take the blame for outbreaks, Powell points out that the contaminated spinach circulating in 2006 came from a farm with a 70-head cattle operation.
"It was nothing near to being a factory farm, but cattle were kept next to the spinach," he said.
"With produce, anything that comes in contact with it has the potential to contaminate, whether it's people's hands, irrigation water or manure.”
The authors suggest that changes in food safety practices have to begin with producers.
"Other than asking questions about food safety practices, there isn't much consumers can do," Powell said. "Contamination has to be prevented on the farm."
Waste not, want not: food safety, discarding food, and tough times
Whenever I think of leftover pizza, I recall my teenage years listening to Rolling Stones on vinyl at George’s apartment, I wonder whatever happened to that stray puppy one of the visitors brought home until the fleas were discovered, and I wonder how long the pizza would be good. I’ve probably eaten pieces of pizza that spent the night on the turntable.
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So when Susan Reef, president of US Food Safety Corp., says eating pizza that has spent a few hours at room temperature is a no-no, I sorta scoff (low water activity, no epidemiological history of outbreaks from morning-after pizza consumption, she probably doesn’t like the Stones).
Kim Painter reports in USA Today tomorrow that if Maribel Alonso, a food safety specialist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Meat and Poultry Hotline, brings home a broken egg, she discards it.
Doug Powell, a food safety person at Kansas State University, says he would cook with the egg, probably into a batch of pancakes, adding,
"It's just messy, but if it's been kept cold, it should be OK.”
(Messy means, be careful of cross-contamination).
Travel agents: if people are barfing at a resort, don't keep sending more tourists
A 48-year-old teaching assistant from Crayford, and a family from Broadstairs are among more than 500 British tourists who won compensation for a nightmare Caribbean holiday at the Bahia Principe Hotel in the Dominican Republic (below, left) in 2007.
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According to media accounts, the holiday companies continued sending guests to the hotel despite a major outbreak of Shigella and Salmonella which lasted for months.
"My husband couldn't reach the toilet when we were there. I went down to reception to tell them to call a doctor and they said put a nappy on him to take him to the medical centre. … Some people had to have new mattresses because they hadn't made it to the toilet in time. There were children screaming all over the place and pregnant women."
Tracey Chambers, 43, said,
“People were being sick in the swimming pool and the toilets were all blocked up. Lots of people were being sick. We were told to watch what we ate because there was bug going round. … My dad had to be put on a drip because he was dehydrated and couldn’t take on enough water. They were charging 40 dollars for a trip to the hospital.”
Other guests were diagnosed with shigella, giardia, salmonella and E coli, thought to have come from food dressings.
A spokesperson for Thomas Cook said,
"We are pleased that the majority of legal cases have now been settled and we want to be able to reassure all our customers that we work with our hotel partners to continually monitor the hygiene standards in their properties."
Urban Hens promotes chicken poop for kids' gardens in Colorado
A public health student at Kansas State passed along this story from 9NEWS.com about Urban Hens, a Boulder, Colorado-based group that is working with the Children, Youth and Environments Center for Research Design at CU and a private grant to supposedly help teach sustainability to children by placing chickens near neighborhood and school gardens.
Wynn Martens, the co-founder of Urban Hens, said,
"How can you be truly sustaining and that is by reusing the waste in any system and keeping it inside the system instead of continuing to consume and throw it off. People become interested for different reasons. Some people are concerned with the humane treatment of the chickens. Other people are interested in the nutritional value. Other people really are interested in the educational component, so we want to support all those."
The children go to the Blossom Pre-School across the alley from Shawnee Gardens. Their curriculum will include responsibilities such as feeding and partly taking care of the chickens. Many of their lunch and dinner scraps will go to the chickens. The chickens' waste meanwhile will help fertilize the Shawnee Gardens garden. That garden's products will be eaten by both parties as will the eggs the chickens lay.
Wow. I thought American maternity leave policies were sorta barbaric – six weeks versus a year in Canada – but to make pre-schoolers clean up chicken shit, compost it and then make them eat the food with chicken poop. Hey, maybe I got it wrong, but there is nothing mentioned about microbial food safety in this situation, no details in the story or on the websites as to what constitutes proper composting.
Food porn over food safety. It'll be a public health person who gets to clean up the mess.
Washington's Breadline sandwich shop has food safety issues
barfblog.com fan Jessica said I should do something on famed Washington, D.C. sandwich shop, Breadline.
I checked it out, and yeah, a number of D.C. outlets reported on the establishment’s closing, but the detailed inspection reports in the Washington City Paper were the best.
There’s a bunch of somewhat mundane inspection issues but the interesting food safety reading is near the end. Among the more disgusting infractions:
• a “display deli case maintaining a temperature of 82° F;”
• a dirty meat slicer (”old food particles present”) and a dirty potato chopper (ditto) as well as “debris throughout prep tables and prep table shelving;”
• improper cooling of chicken, chick pea spread, tuna salad, curry chicken salad, sliced turkey, ground beef, and cole slaw, all above the required 41° Fahrenheit threshold; and,
* a bread rack or other equipment blocked access to hand sinks. “Handsinks,” must be accessible at all times for proper handwashing.”
Face of food safety: Tennessee boy loses battle with E. coli
The Daily Times reports that an eight-year-old Blount County, Tennessee boy, who loved more than anything spending time with his identical twin, lost his fight for life at 6:31 a.m. Monday after contracting E. coli and suffering the after-effects of the disease.
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Joseph Coning, 8 (right), and his twin, Jesse, were looking forward to a family vacation on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. …
The family does not know where Joseph contracted E. coli and an autopsy will be done to try and find answers.
Food is the new fur for the celebrity with a conscience
Jay Rayner writes in the U.K. Observer today that, really bad food, is hot.
Greta Scacchi, who is pictured clutching a cod to her naked body (right, exactly as shown), will doubtless come to be seen as the seminal image for a particular moment, when the gruelling, knotty business of campaigning around food issues finally became sexy.
Where celebrities are concerned, it seems, food is the new fur. … Tomorrow, Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary are launching a campaign to convince the public to go meat-free for one day a week. Another movie, Food Inc, which looks at the excesses and foul side-effects of industrial food production has just been released in the US and will shortly arrive here. Plus there is a major investigation by environmental campaigner Tracy Worcester into the dark underbelly of the global pig-rearing business which is about to be screened on digital channel More4.
What marks out these campaigns is their sophistication. It began a couple of weeks ago with the news that Nobu, the global high-end chain of Japanese restaurants favoured by the glitterati, was still serving bluefin tuna despite it being an endangered species.
Jack Black vomiting mystery
Dude, the urine sample ain’t going to tell anyone anything. It’s a poop sample you need to give the doctor. Because, as they correctly say on the TV show Scrubs, Everything Comes Down to Poo (see below).
Jack Black, who’s been in a gazillion movies but is best remembered by me for his scene-stealing effort in 2000’s High Fidelity (right, exactly as shown) has been bedridden for a week - after contracting a mystery vomiting virus.
"Just last weekend, I thought I was knocking on death's door. I have never had this thing before where it has to go out of you in all directions. I'm not going into the grisly details, but it was explosive. Simultaneous explosions. I was wondering whether it was the sushi I ate or whether I caught it from someone and the doctor said it was the latter."
Black, who was at home with his wife and two young sons, was terrified he might pass on his condition to little Sam, three, and Thomas, 12 months: "It's harder when you've got two babies, because you're exploding, then you're washing your hands 'cause you don't want to get them sick either. It's a constant battle to stay clean."
And the star admits the most embarrassing incident came after he had seen a doctor, who ordered him to hand over a urine sample for testing.
PBS provides terrible advice for cooking hamburgers
This is why I don’t give money to PBS, or as Stephen Colbert refers to them, State-sponsored Jazz. Reminds me of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: they’re morons.
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Maybe not about everything, but about stuff I know about, they’re morons.
PBS is broadcasting this video about how to cook moist, well-done hamburgers. The cross-contamination is awesome, way to go cooks. These people have no clue, even though they talk about bacteria, they still contaminate the rest of the kitchen with their bacterial-laden hands, and then go on to tell viewers that color is a good indicator for food safety.
Color is a lousy indicator for food safety. Use a tip-senstive thermometer.
You want a moist burger? Cook to about 150F, let sit for 5 minutes while the temperature rises to 160F
Anyone can criticize Wal-Mart; can you provide microbiologically safe food? Food, Inc. version
I have a lot of respect for my friend Frank.
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Anyone can be a poser and critic; Frank actually tries to make change.
Frank’s the head of food safety at Wal-Mart. He used to be head of food safety at Walt Disney in Orlando, and when I visited with Frank and his staff in Bentonville, Arkansas a couple of months ago, he was enthusiastically telling me about the challenges of providing safe food – that’s food that doesn’t make people barf – to millions of people on a daily basis.
“Disney was a challenge. This is a lot bigger.”
Frank’s even put his thoughts on paper, in a book called, Food Safety Culture, published last year.
Unlike Food, Inc., the movie version won’t be opening at theatres any time soon.
As far as I can tell, because I haven’t seen the movie and won’t until it comes on my cable movie channels, Food, Inc. is a little about food safety, and only because Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser figured out that if you mention food safety a bunch of times, it sells more books or movies (see the Colbert clip below). The rest is about all things perceived to be bad about food, like genetic engineering, animal welfare, and whatever else.
Frank has to provide safe food to millions of people every day … or he gets sued.
Some people, like Michael Pollan, are journalism professors at Berkeley and can reiterate bullshit like grass-fed cattle have lower levels of E. coli O157:H7.
Dude, just cause it’s written a bunch of times on the Internet doesn’t make it true.
Some people are biology professors, like Dave Renter at Kansas State, who doesn’t make movies but does know that E. coli O157:H7 and friends are complicated, and show up in lots of places. Oh, and it was a grass-fed cow-calf operation that was responsible for the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in transitional organic spinach in 2006 that sickened 200 and killed four. There are many more outbreaks linked to biology rather than the politically convenient factory farming. Some people, like Frank, are actually responsible for delivering safe food.
Frank writes in his book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.
Consumers at the local market, the stop-n-shop or the supermarket, can ask someone, how do I know this food won’t make me barf? While such talk may be socially frowned upon, it’s time to put aside the niceties and bureau-speak and talk directly about safe food. Ask at Wal-Mart; ask at your local market. I know if Frank were there, he’d be able to answer.
Schlosser comers across as an idiot.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Eric Schlosser | ||||
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More testing, not inspectors may have prevented listeria says McCain; will test results be made public?
Micahel McCain, the president of Maple Leaf Foods, was correct yesterday when he told a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce event that adding more food inspectors to the plant floor would not have made a difference in preventing last August's listeria outbreak at one of its Toronto plants that caused 22 deaths.
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"What is very important to recognize about bacteria is that you cannot see it. We wish you could visually inspect for bacteria, but it can't be seen with the eyes, tasted or touched."
The head of the $5.2-billion-a-year Toronto-based food giant was adamant that more testing was the only effective way to address the issue and that Maple Leaf has doubled the number of tests being undertaken.
Thank you for that lesson in microbiology, Mr. McCain. Yes, the inspectors’ union in Canada has been shamelessly exploiting the deaths of 22 people to get more shifts for its workers. Good of you to call them on it.
Now to the harder questions, which McCain continues to avoid.
Why didn’t Maple Leaf do more extensive testing prior to the outbreak? It’s not like there haven’t been listeria outbreaks in ready-to-eat refrigerated foods like cold cuts before.
Why won’t Maple Leaf make all of its listeria test results public, especially since it wants to build consumer confidence.
Will Maple Leaf put warning labels on its cold cuts to advise pregnant women and older folks that such products shouldn’t be eaten raw?
And to all the dieticians running the menus at the elderly folks homes where the 22 people died: what were you thinking serving cold cuts? How hard is it to heat a sandwich? Have any of you had any decent food safety training?
CDC speaks: Surveillance for U.S. foodborne disease outbreaks, 2006
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports in tomorrow’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that foodborne illnesses are a major health burden in the United States . Most of these illnesses are preventable, and analysis of outbreaks helps identify control measures. Although most cases are sporadic, investigation of the portion that occur as part of recognized outbreaks can provide insights into the pathogens, food vehicles, and food-handling practices associated with foodborne infections.
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In 2006, CDC reported 1,270 foodborne disease outbreaks (FBDOs) from all states and territories through the Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (FBDSS), resulting in 27,634 cases of foodborne illness and 11 deaths. Among the 624 FBDOs with a confirmed etiology, norovirus was the most common cause, accounting for 54% of outbreaks and 11,879 cases, followed by Salmonella (18% of outbreaks and 3,252 cases). Among the 11 reported deaths, 10 were attributed to bacterial etiologies (six Escherichia coli O157:H7, two Listeria monocytogenes, one Salmonella serotype Enteritidis, and one Clostridium botulinum), and one was attributed to a chemical (mushroom toxin).
Among outbreaks caused by a single food vehicle, the most common food commodities to which outbreak-related cases were attributed were poultry (21%), leafy vegetables (17%), and fruits/nuts (16%). Public health professionals can use this information to 1) target control strategies for specific pathogens in particular foods along the farm-to-table continuum and 2) support good food-handling practices among restaurant workers and the public.
Hockey finals, immigration and graduation
I’m exhausted. The National Hockey League championship is going to a deciding game 7 Friday night (7 p.m., our house, Manhattan, KS). I finally filed my permanent U.S. citizenship stuff, which means I can’t leave the U.S. for a couple of years until this gets settled – I can leave, just won’t be allowed back in – and Chapman is in Guelph today getting his PhD degree all formal and everything.
There’s been so many opportunities over the years when Chapman has embarrassed himself, but, true to my word, I will stop using this picture of Ben’s butt cleavage and vomit now that he’s got his degree. But really, stop dicking around and publish those damn papers.
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Campbell's boss smoking ... soup? Calls for Canadian-style food safety regs
Campbell Soup boss Doug Conant told the Canadian Embassy in Washington last night that the U.S. should abandon its two-regulator format for food and adopt a one-agency model like Canada’s, which would be more effective than product-label laws, adding,
“If the government of Canada can monitor the safety of its food products with one single food-inspection agency, why can’t the United States?”
There are probably other reasons Conant would like to clone the Canadians. If there’s ever an outbreak of foodborne disease, the public will hear about it last from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. In last year’s listeria shitfest in which 22 died, the Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Ontario, Dr. David Williams, complained that CFIA waited nearly a month to inform health officials that contaminated ready-to-eat meats were being distributed to grocery stories -- a dangerous delay in issuing a product recall.
But Dr. Brian Evans, executive vice president and Chief Veterinary Officer of Canada, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, wrote in the Ottawa Citizen that CFIA acted promptly once they were informed of a food source associated with two illnesses in a nursing home. Scientific evidence of contaminated meat products was confirmed on the evening of Aug. 16, 2008 and the CFIA issued a public advisory and recall eight hours later in the early morning hours of Aug. 17, 2008.
Apparently, only positive product tests count as real science at CFIA. Epidemiology, dead bodies, these are mere distractions. Is that really what the Campbell’s dude is endorsing?
The Food Taster
I’ve been working my way through Peter Elbling’s 2003 novel The Food Taster, for about a year. It’s sorta always there but I just can’t get that excited about the main character, Ugo, and his struggle to survive as he tastes countless dishes to protect a much loathed but important 16th Century Italian Duke (Federico).
Amy has written while at this point in history simply having food was a luxury, the formerly starving peasant, Ugo, learns that he can no longer enjoy his food. Although now an expert at identifying ingredients and seasonings (right up there with today’s top food pornographers) he is constantly afraid of being struck by a mystical potion. His backwards, yet perhaps scientifically accurate, strategy is to slowly expose himself to all sorts of potions and poisons to build up (immuno) resistance should he actually be struck.
The N.Y. Times reported in 2006 that Saddam Hussein once sentenced his elder son, Uday, to be executed after he beat Mr. Hussein’s food taster to death in front of scores of horrified party guests, but later rescinded the order.
In Medieval times men of power had tasters who valiantly sampled their food in case an enemy tried to poison them. This practice was built on a myth that survives today – if you get food poisoning, it’s from the last thing you ate, and the symptoms will commence rather immediately.
Last week, reports surfaced that U.S. President Obama had his own food taster present to sample dinner in a French restaurant. Not so, said Presidential spokesthingy Robert Gibbs, but a Secret Service dude may have been watching things.
I hope so. Most people, including chefs, know nothing about food safety. A couple of years ago, Amy and I had the privilege of an after-hours chat with some FDA-types who spoke of the precautions they would take when preparing safe salmon for Laura Bush and any other meal fit for a President. They had thermometers. And knew how to use them.
Ramsay an 'arrogant narcissist'
Fresh off a bout of viral food poisoning that was miraculously cured by a penicillin shot to the butt, food buffoon Gordon Ramsey told a cooking session at the Good Food and Wine Show in Melbourne that a doctored picture of a woman with the features of a pig and multiple breasts was similar to television journalist Tracy Grimshaw. Ramsey called her a pig woman and a lesbian.
"I had an interview with her yesterday - holy crap. She needs to see Simon Cowell's Botox doctor."
Grimshaw, an interviewer with A Current Affair, said,
"I'm not going to sit meekly and let some arrogant narcissist bully me. … Obviously Gordon thinks that any woman who doesn't find him attractive must be gay. For the record I don't and I'm not.”
Food fight: Massachusetts school cafeteria inspections suck
Sara Brown, Husna Haq, and Hannah McBride, journalism students at Boston University, got their feature on school cafeteria food safety inspections published in the Boston Globe this morning. They’d been working on it for much of last semester, and I spent some time on the phone with Sara and provided some background. Good for them; glad the Globe is still around to publish such features. Highlights below.
At an elementary school in Billerica, the sewage smell was so strong it forced a nauseated health inspector to leave after 15 minutes. During a five-week period in Framingham, 17 mice were caught in an elementary school's kitchen storage area. And in a Foxborough middle school, a complaint of hair in the food prompted an inquiry by a local health inspector.
School cafeteria inspections in communities throughout Greater Boston last year found problems ranging from expired milk and rotting meat to disposable utensils and a meat slicer stored in employee bathrooms.
But, in many ways, that was the good news.
Those cafeterias were inspected, their problems identified for correction. Cafeterias in 7 percent of private and public elementary and secondary schools across Massachusetts were never inspected at all in the 2007-2008 school year, according to state records. And 38 percent were inspected just once, though federal law requires two health inspections annually.
The Massachusetts data gathered from school districts tell only part of the story.
A closer look at more than 1,000 schools in 157 communities in Greater Boston reveals a slipshod system of local enforcement with virtually no state or federal oversight. …
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In Massachusetts, school cafeteria inspections fall under the jurisdiction of local boards of health, typically small groups that are either elected or appointed, depending on the community. There are no minimum education or experience requirements to be a health inspector; candidates need only pass a state-approved performance test and a written exam, which can be taken online through the Food and Drug Administration. The state also sets no minimum qualifications for directors of local boards of health.
"The guy who inspects your car has more training" than some health inspectors, said Michael Moore, food safety coordinator at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. …
In August, Lynn health inspector Frank McNulty was called to Lynn English High School to investigate a foul odor. When he opened the cafeteria freezer, a puff of steam reeking of rotting meat gushed out. "I nearly passed out," McNulty said. "I've never dealt with something like that before."
The freezer had shut down, but the condenser was still operating, drawing in hot summer air and cooking hundreds of pounds of meat for weeks. McNulty and food service employees called dozens of cleaning services, but none would take the job. Finally, he contacted a company that cleans up crime scenes.
"They must do dead bodies," he said, "so I figured they'd do this."
Acheson writes: FDA plans bold safety effort for food safety
David Acheson M.D., associate commissioner for foods with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, Md., (right, pretty much exactly as shown) took to the letters page of The Contra Costa Times this morning to say,
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“… we recognize that recent problems in food safety represent a clear need for change and a modernization in approach.
That's why we're working more closely with state and local officials to quickly respond to food-borne dangers, such as the recent problems with contaminated pistachios.
The FDA is increasing the number of audits of state inspection programs. Looking forward, the agency is developing a bold new approach that will support states as full partners, not as contractors.
President Barack Obama's budget request for this year includes historic increases for food safety. As a lead participant of the President's Food Safety Working Group, the FDA's focus is on the development of a new national system focused on prevention.”
Gordon Ramsey says he got food poisoning from a virus; penicillin fixed him
Food buffoon Gordon Ramsey has once again demonstrated why celebrity chefs may be entertaining but really know nothing about biology – especially food and food safety.
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The Daily Telegraph reports that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, the face of Melbourne's Good Food and Wine Show this weekend, was forced to spend his first night in Melbourne after the 16-hour flight barfing in his hotel room because of food poisoning.
"I have had a severe food virus and I was constantly vomiting. But I had a jab in the butt and had some penicillin and I felt a lot better at three this morning."
Penicillin is an antibiotic, and completely useless against a food virus or whatever Ramsey thinks made him barf.
Thanks to the food safety dude in Dubai who forwarded the story, one of the tens of thousands of inspectors around the world who actually do know what they’re talking about.
FDA chief lauds food safety bill as the 'right direction'
In her first appearance before Congress as commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (below, right) told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health that a safety overhaul sponsored by several leading Democrats was “a major step in the right direction,” but that her agency would need more money to carry it out."
The New York Times reports that legislation, still in draft, blends provisions from bills offered by several top Democrats and includes requirements that all food manufacturers write and carry out safety plans, pay an annual registration fee of $1,000 to the F.D.A. and keep track of the distribution of all food products.
The agency would be required to inspect every food facility in the country at least once every four years, with high-risk ones being inspected every 18 months.
Despite her support for the legislation, Dr. Hamburg said the registration fees “will, sadly, not be enough to implement those targets.”
Pamela G. Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, in what appeared to be some kind of Orwellian-speak, told the committee,
“Our industry is ultimately responsible for the safety of its products,” Ms. Bailey said in a written statement, “but securing the safety of the food supply is a government function which should be largely financed with government resources.”
Are self-serve buffet restaurants in hospitals a good idea?
Some employees at a U.K. hospital are saying the only buffet in a hospital should be named Jimmy (with an extra ‘t’ right, exactly as shown).
A new self-service buffet is making a pig’s breakfast of infection control at Coventry’s University Hospital, angry staff claim.
The help-yourself spread was unveiled at the hospital’s main restaurant last week and is open to workers, patients and visitors.
Shocked hospital workers say they were only warned about the change days earlier when a sign went up.
They claim the self-service system is a hygiene disaster waiting to happen.
Allowing sick patients to handle the food could quickly spread infections, such as the highly contagious norovirus sickness bug, staff say.
One angry worker told the Coventry Telegraph,
“I think it is disgusting. Patients have been coming in with catheters and drip tubes in and rummaging through the piles of toast. Who knows what infections they are bringing down from the wards.”
Craig Smith, spokesman for contractor ISS, said the self-service breakfast buffet was launched to offer its customers more choice after consultation with staff and visitors.
“It is not unusual to have a self-service restaurant in a hospital – it is in place in hospitals up and down the country.”
Oregon man calls 911 to protest missing juice box
In keeping with the storyline of idiots who think 911 is their babysitter, a man who called 911 to complain that McDonald's left a juice box out of his drive-through order was arrested on Monday, Portland television station KPTV reported.
Raibin Osman appeared before a Washington County judge Tuesday on a charge of misusing emergency services. He said he called emergency dispatchers after the drive-through employee wouldn't come back to the window to give him a juice box.
What's in your fridge? Smell from leftover food in unplugged fridge sends 7 to hospital, sickens 28
Ever had leftover food loitering in your fridge for so long it made you yack?
Anyone who has worked or lived in an area with a communal fridge has a tale of grossness. Amy’s mom recalled yesterday about a fridge in one of their rental units that had been left full of food and unplugged – apparently for some time. The chicken was particularly interesting.
Amy and I found some grossness when we moved into our current house which previously was a fraternity drinking house – although the turkey carcass in the driveway was the grossest.
In San Jose, California, an enterprising office worker discovered an unplugged fridge full of rotting food, so decided to move the food into a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess.
The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.
Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday after the fumes led someone to call emergency services. A hazardous materials team was called in.
Authorities say the worker who cleaned the fridge didn't need treatment — she can't smell because of allergies.
bites.ksu.edu: food safety news, and more
The new web site is sorta ready to go.
I say sorta because it’s a work in progress that can be continuously updated and improved. The beta-version, warts and all, is now available.
The fastest way to receive food safety news is to subscribe to barfblog.com. If something’s happening, we try to blog it, rapidly, and with analysis. barfblog can also be followed on twitter.
bites.ksu.edu is continuously updated throughout the day and night and other times. When sufficient news exists, I will send out a summary, much like the current FSnet listserv. You can subscribe to receive this daily (or more) summary on the front of bites.ksu.edu, and can choose between html (pretty pictures and hyperlinks) or text-only formats. Or you can visit the website and see how it changes throughout the day.
If you only want to receive specific news, use RSS feeds.
RSS (Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
If you only want stories about animal welfare, or norovirus, go to bites.ksu.edu and click on that section. Then click on the RSS symbol, and add to your reader. If you want to receive everything, click on the RSS feed on the homepage for bites.ksu.edu.
I will continue to send out news via the FSnet listserv for the immediate future while you all decide what news you want and how best to receive such news. The old site, foodsafety.ksu.edu, will remain alive as a repository and archives will be archived there, but otherwise will not be updated.
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New food safety infosheet: Hepatitis A in staff member at Littleton, CO grocery store
This week's food safety infosheet focuses on a Hep A incident that arose over the weekend. A staff member responsible for handling and preparing produce in a Colorado Albertson's was found to have Hepatitis A.
Food safety infosheet highlights:
-Albertsons shoppers may have been exposed to virus between April 6 and April 21, 2009.
-Transmission of Hepatitis A happens through the fecal-oral route.
-Virus-containing poop remaining on hands after using the toilet is a risk.
You can download the food safety infosheet here.
Food safety infosheets are created weekly and are posted in restaurants, retail stores, on farms and used in training throughout the world. If you have any infosheet topic requests, or photos, please contact Ben Chapman at benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.
You can follow food safety infosheets stories and barfblog on twitter @benjaminchapman and @barfblog.
Food auctions: new trend in a down economy
While canning, freezing and growing food at home are increasing, so are discounted food sales. Sean Gregory writes in this week's Time that food items are now appearing at auctions across the U.S.,
As the stock market headed south last fall, Ron Peterson, owner of Elmer Auction, LLC, added grocery items like cereals and cleaning supplies to his ledger. And they've sold, to the cash-strapped ladies and gentlemen sitting in each and every row. "People are skipping the decorative items," says Peterson, "and buying what they need."
The story goes on to give a couple of examples of what is being sold at these auctions:
Clyde DeHart, owner of DeHart's Auction Service in Carlisle, Pa., takes "scratch n' dent" items from a nearby BJ's Wholesale Club store. Since BJ's sells in bulk, if one can of corn gets smashed in the truck, the whole case can't be displayed in the store. So DeHart takes the case, throws out the bad can, and auctions off the rest.
Some items are near or slightly past their sell-by dates, but these days, expiration won't keep shoppers from a discount. Other stuff is just sitting on the shelves, and will go to waste if it's not auctioned off.
At a grocery auction in early April, [Randy Zimmerman, mother of seven] bought hot dogs, frozen pizzas and an Easter ham, among other items. Zimmerman figures all the stuff she bought would have cost $300 in the grocery store. She paid $100.
Ripped bulk packaging isn't that much of a risk, but anything where the integrity of the direct packaging has been comprimised (such as a dented can) would be something to avoid.
It's not surprising that alternative (and cheaper) sources for food are popping up -- and that folks are seeking them out. The biggest issue with some of the items mentioned would be temperature control -- hard to trust that foods like Easter hams and hot dogs were held at the refrigeration temperatures after leaving (or being set aside) by the retailer. Handling of bulk fruits and vegetables by auctioneers and their staff could also lead to food safety problems.
Could video games be a key to food handler training effectiveness?
Food handler training, required or encouraged in various jurisdictions across North America has been demonstrated by multiple studies to have various results. Most of the published research has focused on looking at inspection results, but in 2000, researchers in Oregon (April 2009 issue of Foodborne Pathogens and Disease) explored food handler food safety knowledge.
During April–September 2000 researchers administered a 28- question survey distilled from a longer 
survey obtained from the Oregon Food Handler Certification Program with 407 food handlers from 67 randomly-selected restaurants.The researchers found that their participants averaged 68% on the test. Significant differences were observed between managers’ average test scores and those of line staff: 74% versus 67%, respectively, and those with Oregon food handler training scored 69%, while those without one scored 63%.
Meatloaf sang that two out of three ain't bad, but in food safety training, retention-wise, it's not great.
The researchers conclude that survey demonstrates a limited level of knowledge among foodhandlers about food safety and that analyzing knowledge and comparing concurrent restaurant inspection scores would strengthen the understanding of food safety in restaurants. The results of the survey also emphasize the need for educational programs tailored to improve foodhandlers knowledge of foodborne diseases.
I'd add that it's not like knowledge translates automatically into practice. Demonstrating knowledge change is interesting, but not nearly as important as behavior change.
Food handlers need some sort of basic training, but it's up to their managers and organization to make sure they stay up-to-date and that they have some sort of ongoing reminders (like food safety infosheets.
Reuters reports on a strategy for training that might have some applications with food handlers -- video game simulations.
Many businesses use serious videogames designed for the PC but Hilton Garden Inn (HGI) has taken the virtual training concept portable for the first time with "Ultimate Team Play".
Working with North Carolina-based game developer Virtual Heroes, HGI has created a videogame for Sony's PSP (PlayStation Portable) that allows employees to practice their jobs before they have to interact with customers.
It has the potential to be pretty cool and useful especially if used to demonstrate the team-like nature of foodservice and risk identification, but if it's pulled off cheaply it could look like Duck Hunt.
Does it matter if people are disconnected from food?
I used to be physically fit from playing hockey and squash and golf with friends in Guelph, Ontario. A lot of them worked in agriculture – for the feds, province, university, industry, and farm groups – and a lot of them insisted that people were disconnected from how food was produced and so support for agriculture sucked. If people were better educated about growing and preparing food, problems with food safety would be largely resolved and an Age of agricultural Aquarius would be achieved (Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding …)
So it was hardly surprising to read this morning that the best and brightest in Guelph told some federal politicians that people are disconnected from the food they eat.
Vern Osborne, assistant professor of animal and poultry science at the University of Guelph, said Canadians, especially young ones, are disconnected from the food they eat. A policy, he suggested, should include educational components that teach kids where their food comes from and how to actually prepare it. Kids have largely lost the ability to cook, he and others said.
Rickey Yada, professor of food science at U of G, agreed that young people have lost the ability to prepare even simple dishes, a fact that is contributing to widespread indifference towards food issues.
Such generalizations are of little use. My kids know how to cook; so do lots of others. Lots of people drive but don’t know how their cars work. Lots of people use computers and know little about integrated circuits. I recognize it’s trendy to say people are disconnected from food production, but so what? Where’s the evidence that having a connection with food –however that is defined -- will make people fitter, healthier and safer?
Australian state to require food safety training for staff
To coach little girls playing ice hockey in Canada requires 16 hours of training. To coach kids on a travel team requires an additional 24 hours of training.
So it seems reasonable to have some minimal training for those who prepare food for public consumption.
The Australian state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, has decided to agree, and will insist that every restaurant have at least one staff member who has completed a certified course in food handling.
NSW Primary Industry Minister Ian Macdonald said the State Government is introducing the laws after a spate of outbreaks, adding,
"Thirty-six per cent of food-borne illness outbreaks in NSW are the result of poor food handling. We believe that this is costing in effect $150 million in terms of lost productivity."
Unfortunately, what constitutes a certified course is often crap. The next step is to evaluate what works and what doesn’t – what kind of training actually translates into food service staff practicing safe food prep.
190 kinds of rotting food found at pub
Environmental health officials found 190 items of "mouldy, slimy, putrescent or expired foodstuffs" and immediately closed the Rose and Crown pub in Thaxted, Essex, U.K. after a surprise inspection on Dec. 9, 2008.
Work surfaces and utensils were smothered in thick grease, floors littered with rotting detritus and fridges covered in mould and dozens of dirty food containers (right, photo from The Telegraph).
The kitchen did not even have any running hot running water meaning staff could not wash up or clean their hands properly.
Inspectors found the owner was still preparing food in the rancid conditions.
The owner of the pub, Nicholas Marchetto, pleaded guilty to 23 food and hygiene offences at Harlow Magistrates' Court.
He was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay another £1,000 towards the council's costs.
Microbiologically safe food - regardless of farm size
Daughter Courtlynn spent her spring break with daughter Sorenne in Manhattan (Kansas).
Which is the only lede I got into foodborne illness, conspiracies and shameless exploitation of children.
The conclusion is this: Michelle Obama should use the White House garden to endorse microbiologically safe food, from around the corner or around the globe.
Phillip Brasher wrote in The Des Moines Register yesterday,
“In recent years, the federal government and the food industry have taken some significant steps to improve the safety of fresh produce. Those measures include stringent inspection standards for farms that supply schools and supermarket chains. The standards sometime restrict the use of compost and manure to fertilize crops and restrict how close cattle can be to fields.”
Stringent standards is not the descriptor to be used in the wake of the Peanut Corporation of America-AIB auditing fiasco. Worse, associations representing small-scale farmers have taken to the Intertubes to whine and conspiratorize about the end of family farming; that somehow standards for producing safe produce shouldn’t apply to small farms, or my garden.
The group that keeps getting cited for its threatening analysis of proposed food safety legislation is the ponderous Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which is run by the folks pushing raw milk. And some of those folks have, uh, interpretations of food safety that are not only wrong but dangerous to public health. Epidemiology does work, but not everyone likes the results.
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Back to my kids. Or Mason Jones, the five-year-old who died in the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in Wales. Or Barack’s kids, since he cited them in a food safety chat. The food safety goal, for me, is to have fewer people barfing and dying. There is some microbiology and food science available to help achieve that goal. There is a lot of speculation, fairytales and unknowns about the providence of nature and immunology which can get in the way of that goal.
Michelle Obama, you are embracing local and fresh and natural foods and whatever that means. As I asked March 11, 2009, use the White House bully garden to embrace microbiologically safe food.
Farmers -- organic, conventional and otherwise - need to focus on microbial food safety
Organic is an industry, just like any other industry. While the organic folks may have cornered the language involving sustainable, natural and healthy, they use the same promotional BS that any big food company would use.
That’s why they use pictures like the one, right, to portray the organic industry. I look at the picture and wonder where those hands have been and what kind of poop is being spread on that fresh produce.
The same organic folks who criticize industry for putting out promotional brochures and information are guilty of … putting out promotional brochures and information.
Taste the Change: How to Go Organic on Campus, is described as “the nation’s first guide for students who want to bring organic dining to campus is now available for download. This ground-breaking student guide is dedicated to feeding the organic revolution on campus.”
I have no idea why a guide that includes “Media Outreach” and “Free Food Never Fails” is considered ground-breaking, but the new brochure does follow the equally abysmal, Organic: It’s Worth It. And once again, the organic folks explicitly state that organic is a production standard, not a food safety standard.
“Organic production is based on a system of farming that maintains and replenishes soil fertility without the use of toxic and persistent pesticides and fertilizers.”
The N.Y. Times pointed out the same thing a few days ago: organic does not mean safer; it’s a lifestyle choice. But the organics industry keeps hinting at health benefits.
“Organic agriculture minimizes children’s exposure to toxic and persistent pesticides in the soil in which they play, the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the foods they eat.”
As Katija and I pointed out in our 2004 paper, Microbial Food Safety Considerations for Organic Produce Production: An Analysis of Canadian Organic Production Standards Compared with US FDA Guidelines for Microbial Food Safety,
“The production of safe food is the responsibility of everyone in the farm-to-fork chain. With established relationships between growers and regulatory infrastructure, the CGSB organic standard would be an ideal vehicle for providing organic growers with information and guidelines on identifying and controlling microbial hazards on their produce.”
Would be. All growers – organic, conventional and otherwise – need to focus on microbial food safety. There’s just too many people getting sick from the food they eat..
Third party food safety audits are like mail-order diplomas
Mansour, I couldn’t have said it better myself:
“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education,” said Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle consultant who has worked with companies nationwide to improve food safety.
The Ponzi scheme that is third-party food safety audits is starting to collapse. Watching Jon Stewart on the Daily Show last night, the questions he asked to a N.Y. Times reporter about the financial mess could have easily been mapped to the food safety mess (see video below).
The N.Y. Times will report in tomorrow’s editions that the American Institute of Baking auditor who gave the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Georgia a superior rating before the peanut-salmonella shitstorm, was an expert in fresh produce and was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella poisoning — which he was not required to test for anyway. Oh, and PCA paid for the audit which Kelloog’s then blindly accepted.
The auditor even wrote in a Jan. 20 e-mail after the salmonella outbreak became public, that, “I never thought that this bacteria would survive in the peanut butter type environment. What the heck is going on??”
That’s why there’s FSnet and barfblog and hundreds of other food safety resources out there; he never heard of Peter Pan and salmonella in 2007?
In 2007, Keystone Foods, the Pennsylvania plant that makes Veggie Booty, received an “excellent” rating from the American Institute of Baking. But the audit did not extend to ingredient suppliers, including a New Jersey company whose imported spices from China were tainted with salmonella.
“The only thing that matters is productivity,” said Robert A. LaBudde, a food safety expert who has consulted with food companies for 30 years, adding that “you only get in trouble if someone in the media traces it back to you, and that’s rare, like a meteor strike.”
Dr. LaBudde said a sausage plant hired him five years ago to determine the species of bacillus plaguing its meat. But the owner then refused to complete the testing. “I called them ‘anthrax sausages,’ and said they could be killing older people in the state, and still they wouldn’t do it,” he said, declining to name the company. ...
Before the salmonella outbreak, Costco had rebuffed repeated proposals by the organization to inspect all its food suppliers. “The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top food safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”
Costco, Kraft Foods and Darden Restaurants are among a group of food manufacturers and other companies that use detailed plans to prevent food safety hazards. They also supplement third-party audits with their own inspections and testing of ingredients and plant surfaces for microbes.
Harmonizing food safety audits - 10 years too late
Does anyone else notice the sanitized crap that spews forth from various industry associations? I know that being in an association means striving for the lowest common denominator, but why, in 2009, 11 years after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first proposed Good Agricultural Practices for fresh produce, and hundreds of outbreaks later, is the United Fresh Retail-Foodservice Board patting itself on the back for endorsing the importance of efforts to harmonize produce food safety audits to reduce cost and duplication of efforts, while enhancing overall safety?
Maybe I’m missing something but shouldn’t this have been initiated about 10 years ago? I’m all for exposing the Ponzi scheme that is food safety audits and the burden that repeated and replicated audits place on individual growers. I fought for audits that make sense to buyers when I chaired a Canadian Horticulture Council committee on the topic back in 2002ish. They didn’t like the recommendations of my committee because they wanted money from the federal government.
How’s that working out for ya?
At some point, the folks growers elect to represent them will ask, why would I pay hundreds of dollars to attend a conference that should have happened at least 10 years ago? How did we growers get into this mess of multiple audits? Why didn’t you tell the retailers what they needed to know, instead of the retailers imposing some stupid standard on growers?
Thanks for the leadership.
Food safety education failures
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.
I cringe, and remember a Lewis Lapham column I read in Harper’s magazine in the mid-1980s about how individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. Oh, 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.
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What nonsense.
Yet millions are wasted weekly on such campaigns.
Industry, government, academia, activists, they all resort to the same language when it comes to providing information: them folks need to get edumacated.
In the past year:
• the American Ag & Energy Council said it believed in promoting all the good the industry does through education;
• Shell Malaysia chairman Datuk Saw Choo Boon told Malaysians efforts should concentrate on educating the public to become twice as efficient in energy use by 2050;
• an industry type said food irradiation is safe, but its adoption by the industry would require a massive consumer education campaign;
• the U.S. beef checkoff supported the efforts of federal agencies in promoting beef safety through educational activities;
• the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education has it right in their horribly bureaucratic name;
• as does the U.S. Partnership for Food Safety Education, dedicated to improving public health through research-based, actionable consumer food safety education; and,
• retailers are joining the group effort to educate millions of consumers about food safety.
A long time ago, I wrote,
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 that is characteristic of scientists and engineers in general. Further, 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. ... Effective communication
“Too often, risk communicators are more concerned with educating the public, rather than first listening to them and then developing communication policies.”
So it’s not surprising that the organic industry is also lacking in imagination and has launched a national consumer education and marketing campaign.
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The Organic Agriculture and Products Education Institute (Organic Institute) has launched "Organic. It's worth it."
"The mission of this campaign is to answer consumer questions about organic with the clear message that organic is worth it in every way from health care and economics to farming and the environment. It will increase consumer trust, knowledge and purchase of organic products," said Christine Bushway, president of the Organic Institute and executive director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the sponsor of the campaign.
Designed to be of service to families with young children at home, the campaign especially seeks to reach new mothers, the primary gateways to organic, according to OTA Marketing Director Laura Batcha, who developed the campaign with Haberman, the Minneapolis brand public relations firm, on behalf of the Organic Institute.
"Helping mothers make the connection between the personal health of their families and the health of the environment is key to this education and marketing initiative," explained Batcha. "It gives them the rationale they need to make the organic purchase."
Of course, as the N.Y. Times points out this morning, organic has nothing to do with food safety. It’s a production standard, and a porous one at that. But consumers believe that organic is healthier and safer, according to surveys. The organic industry will never come out and say it’s safer, but they hint at it through marketing (see above).
So it’s a shock to some that Peanut Corporation of America plants in Virginia and Texas were certified organic, revealing the same Ponzi scheme of inspection and auditing that failed to catch Salmonella problems in the plants.
As the Times states,
Although the rules governing organic food require health inspections and pest-management plans, organic certification technically has nothing to do with food safety. …
A private certifier took nearly seven months to recommend that the U.S.D.A. revoke the organic certification of the peanut company’s Georgia plant, and then did so only after the company was in the thick of a massive food recall. So far, nearly 3,000 products have been recalled, including popular organic items from companies like Clif Bar and Cascadian Farm. Nine people have died and almost 700 have become ill.
The private certifier, the Organic Crop Improvement Association, sent a notice in July to the peanut company saying it was no longer complying with organic standards, said Jeff See, the association’s executive director. He would not say why his company wanted to pull the certification.
A second notice was sent in September, but it wasn’t until Feb. 4 that the certifier finally told the agriculture department that the company should lose its ability to use the organic label.
To emphasize that reporting basic health violations is part of an organic inspector’s job, Barbara C. Robinson, acting director of the agriculture department’s National Organic Program, last week issued a directive to the 96 organizations that perform foreign and domestic organic inspections that they are obligated to look beyond pesticide levels and crop management techniques.
Potential health violations like rats — which were reported by federal inspectors and former workers at the Texas and Georgia plants — must be reported to the proper health and safety agency, the directive said.
Wow. Organic inspectors have to be told by the feds that rats may pose a health risk and should be reported.
Arthur Harvey, a Maine blueberry farmer who does organic inspections, said agents have an incentive to approve companies that are paying them.
“Certifiers have a considerable financial interest in keeping their clients going,” he said.
OMG. Organic, like other food systems, is about making money.
Is there a better way? Yes, market microbial food safety and hold producers and processors – conventional, organic or otherwise – to a standard of producing food that doesn’t make people barf. That’s something shoppers will support, instead of being told they have to become better educated about someone else’s limited perspective.
McNuggets are not a 911 emergency
In yet another example of America’s slide toward Idiocracy, a Florida woman called 911 after paying for 10 Chicken McNuggets and told that no deep-fried chicken bits were available and would she like something else because all sales are final.
She called 911 three times.
"This is an emergency, If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one. This is an emergency."
Once police arrived, the woman told police,
"I called 911 because I couldn't get a refund, and I wanted my McNuggets.”
The police report states the woman,
"maintained the attitude 'this is an emergency, my McNuggets are an emergency.'"
And why do these food-related 911 calls keep recurring in Florida?
Dean Cliver responds to Rachael Ray 20 years earlier
Rachael Ray (right, sampling goods in Florida last weekend) offered up some suggestions for so-called healthier cooking in that annoying USA Weekend insert to many local newspapers, including this gem:
"Look at labels. ... If you can't read an ingredient, chances are you should not be putting it in your body."
Dr. Dean Cliver, who officially retired October 1, 2007 and is winding down from 46 years in academia, battling infectious agents in food and water, realized that he had come up to the solution to this very problem some 20 years ago and decided to once again share his thoughts with barfblog.com. Dr. Cliver’s proposed label is left, bottom.
The following was originally published in University of Wisconsin-Madison AG LIFE LINES, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 2, page 6, and republished in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol. 34, No. 4, Mar-Apr 1989, page 18.
A subtle and probably pernicious trend in the U.S. food supply seems to be occurring virtually unnoticed. If one reads the information on a food package, as it seems few do, one finds that many food in the U.S. today are composed almost entirely of ingredients. The use of ingredients in foods has become so widespread and flagrant that one can hardly guess what will appear next on the growing list of polysyllabic horrors printed on packages. Through insouciance or ineptitude, we have let the situation get quite out of hand.
Labels seem to be intended rather to obfuscate than to inform. Aside from water, which evidently abounds in these products (though who knows where it has been before it goes into the food?), hardly any of the names that appear on these lists are comprehensible to the average consumer or even pronounceable. The acronyms are even worse. It is not enough to know that “BHA” stands for “butylated hydroxyanisol.” How are we to know where and by whom the hydroxyanisole we are about to ingest was butylated or whether the hydroxyanisole itself was natural or synthetic?
Though most consumers apparently do not read labels at all, those who do seem to have become jaded. My son asked me recently whether the “regular”-flavored generic toothpaste we had just purchased contained natural or artificial regular. And what about the blind — should lists also appear in Braille?
There is little doubt that most of these ingredients are harmful, at least at some level, in foods. Why, for example, would salt be listed as “sodium chloride” if there were nothing to hide? Would any of us willingly be called “The Sodium Chloride of the Earth"? Sugar now comes in enough forms to confound the ablest pancreas. Fats are listed as though they were all polyunsaturated, without any indication of the degree of polity. Plain, American English is nowhere to be found.
Not only are we consuming ingredients ourselves, but we are inflicting them on our unsuspecting children, mindless of potential harm to all future generations. Small wonder that behavioral problems abound in the society whose children have been fed ingredients virtually from birth! For example, many young people today are probably essentially addicted to calcium propionate in their bread. What becomes of them if their supply is cut off? Packages marked “no preservatives” should probably be viewed with extreme caution.
Time and the press have made it clear that the predominance of ingredients in U.S. foods is largely due to the greed of profit-hungry food manufacturers. There is little doubt that this is true: if one travels to parts of the world where the profit motive has been outlawed, one finds that foods are virtually free of ingredients. This has such a favorable effect on quality that people are willing to stand in long lines for food every day. By contrast, hardly anyone stands in line to get food in the U.S. — with all those ingredients why bother?
I submit that the time has come for action on this matter. Consumer groups and enlightened members of the general public must bring pressure to bear on Congress and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to mandate reduced levels of ingredients in foods, probably with a view to an eventual complete ban. Nowadays, virtually the only food one can buy that is almost certainly free of ingredients is an egg in its original shell, and we are now being told not to eat more than one of them per week. How are we to survive on such a diet?
American food manufacturers, in their cupidity, must not be allowed to continue perpetrating this sesquipedalian atrocity on the indifferent or benighted public. Let us speak out now, so that those in government will recognize their duty to regulate, reduce, and eventually eliminate ingredients from the US food supply! Let's get the American public back on real, ingredient-free food, before accumulated subtle deficiencies and abnormalities put us all under the table to stay. Our posterity and their posterity demand this of us.
Market food safety so consumers can choose
The news this morning is full of features and editorials seeking to explain the shit storm of Salmonella produced by Peanut Corporation of America.
Chapman and I tried to take it a step further and focus on effective, long-term steps to reduce the incidence of foodborne illness from farm-to-fork. At this point in time, promoting food safety culture coupled with marketing and a series of carrots and sticks is the best we can come up with.
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In 1204 in Montpellier, France, a butcher selling a substitute meat in place of the advertized beast was required by statute to reimburse the customer twice the amount paid. In Narbonne, regulations dictated a whipping “with sheep tripe” in front of the food stall for unscrupulous sellers. China routinely executes its biggest food frauds.
During a hearing before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee looking into a salmonella outbreak linked to a Georgia peanut processing plant, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Thursday that food producers responsible for widespread, deadly outbreaks of disease should face jail time, not just fines, to get food makers to take food safety seriously.
Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously?
Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of American meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.
The politicos in Washington are focused on legislative fixes, maybe creating a single-food inspection agency, maybe increasing inspections, insisting microbiological test results be submitted to government, maybe mandating jail time for the most audacious executives. Such moves may send a signal of hope and change, but will do little to reduce the carnage contaminated food and water wreak on the American public each year – 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths.
Industry – the folks that process peanuts and all those companies that make some of the 1,550 different peanut butter crackers, ice cream, energy bars and dog treats that have been recalled – is equally void of ideas. The system to ensure safe food relies largely on so-called third-party audits of suppliers, a system that glowingly approved Peanut Corporation of America and its leaky roof, filthy floors and rat-infested storage areas.
Other peanut butter manufacturers like Unilever and ConAgra Foods say they have “stringent food safety and quality control standards.” But neither will say what it is they do better than PCA; neither will say how often the plants test their finished product for foodborne illnesses or other contamination. Maple Leaf Foods in Canada, whose deli meats killed at least 20 Canadians last fall, says it has done 42,000 tests for listeria across 24 packaged meat plants in the past three months, but will not make the results publicly available for scrutiny.
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Even Whole Foods, where consumers pay a hefty premium for basic foodstuffs, said the company carefully checks the paperwork for all the products it sells, but can do no better than the minimal standard of government. “For the thousands of products we sell, that’s the extent we can go to. The rest of it is up to the F.D.A. and to the manufacturer.”
Like a fiscal house of cards, the Ponzi scheme of inspection and verification for food safety is collapsing with merely the mention of consumer scrutiny. Sort of like an eighth grade party with chaperones -- just pop and chips. But when the inspector or auditors leaves, the party turns exciting (read all about it on Facebook).
A cultural shift is required for everyone, from the farm through to the fork, to take food safety seriously. Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart has taken an initial stab in his new book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System.
Yiannas says that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture. At Peanut Corporation of America, former employees are now coming forward to tell of filthy conditions in the Blakely, Georgia, processing plant. A company with a strong food safety culture would have encouraged those employees to speak up while they were employed, not because the manager or auditor or inspector was watching, but because it was the right thing to do.
The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
Here’s what consumers can do: at the local market, the stop-n-shop or the supermarket, ask someone, how do I know this food won’t make me barf? While such talk may be socially frowned upon, it’s time to put aside the niceties and bureau-speak and talk directly about safe food.
The more customers ask, the more food providers will be encouraged to market their food safety efforts.
Just like in 13th century France.
Doug Powell is an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University and the publisher of barfblog.com. Ben Chapman is a food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University.
Websites on stickers so consumers know where their food is from: still a cool idea 10 years later
Eat Me Daily looks like a decent enough food blog that found a chicken producer doing what I told the Ontario greenhouse vegetable growers they should be doing 10 years ago: if not marketing food safety directly, 
at least provide information for those who care, in the form of a url that the inquisitive type could follow up on at home.
So we were at the grocery store this weekend, and came across a Murray's Chicken with a sticker on it with a Farm Verification code, offering to let us "find out where this chicken came from and learn more about the family that raised it." … It even hooks into the Google Maps API to show you exactly where the farm is on a map. … Our code, 0289, revealed that our chicken was raised at 1020 Alvira Rd in Allenwood, PA 17810 by David Bowers. Hats off to you Mr. Bowers, that was one tasty chicken.
I agree with Eat Me Daily. Awesome. And one day, I will be cool.
Top Chef Super Bowl
The Super Bowl of football (at least in the U.S.) is Sunday so Top Chef on Wednesday decided to do a football-themed challenge that was probably taped 6 months ago.
The football metaphors used in the show were as corny as the ones in a recent press release -- USDA gives food safety advice to kick off your Super Bowl party – but at least USDA provided accurate cooking advice:
“Color is not a reliable indicator of safety -- internal temperature is. Use a food thermometer to be sure meat and poultry are safely cooked. Steaks should be cooked to 145 °F, ground beef should be cooked to 160 °F and all poultry should be cooked to 165 °F.”
On Top Chef, Jeff and his excessively complex meals were sent packing, although the always entertaining Fabio should have lost for overcooking venison.
Judge: The deer was already dead. You didn’t have to kill it again.
Fabio: It was still bleeding when I sliced it; it was beautifully pink.
Judge: That’s medium-rare?
Fabio: Yes
Use a thermometer, Fabio. It will make you a better cook.
Oh, and Carla (below) won, and proclaimed, “Hands up, whoa. Touchdown Carla”
Top 5 American counterfeit foods
Elizabeth Weise of USA Today writes that foods masquerading as something else — a more nutritious something else — have been big news in the past two years.
Chinese food companies in particular have been blamed for making deadly alterations to dairy, baby and pet foods by adding melamine. The chemical makes it appear that the food or beverage has the required level of protein.
But what about food producers in this country? What fraudulent foods do U.S. consumers have to fear from American companies?
Seafood
Fish is the most frequently faked food Americans buy. In the business, it's called "species adulteration" — selling a cheaper fish such as pen-raised Atlantic salmon as wild Alaska salmon.
Olive oil
This luxury oil, touted for its heart-health properties and taste, has become a gourmet must-have. Americans consumed about 575 million pounds of the silky stuff last year, according to the North American Olive Oil Association. Sixty-three percent was the higher-grade extra virgin, which comes from the first pressing of the olives. It's also one of the most frequently counterfeited food products, says Martin Stutsman, the FDA's consumer safety officer for edible oils.
Honey
An expensive natural product that's mostly sugar, honey is easily faked. "If you can substitute a less expensive source of sugar for the expensive one, you can save some money and gain market share," says the FDA's Stutsman.
Vanilla
A product of the tropics, vanilla pods can be soaked in milk or stored in sugar to impart a delicate vanilla scent to foods. More commonly, they're soaked in alcohol that is then used as a flavoring.
Maple syrup
Maple syrup is another high-value item that can be adulterated. In these tough economic times, Vermont, the USA's largest supplier to flapjacks everywhere, may up its testing programs.
But Quebec is the world’s largest producer of maple syrup. And I am not from Quebec.
Mark Bittman and Jamie Oliver: Idiots speak
I have no use for food porn.
I have less use for alleged food celebrities who cross-contaminate everything they touch and don’t know shit about how to determine if they’ve cooked the shit out of their meat.
Use a digital, tip-sensitive thermometer next time.
What does Obama eat?
In a fantastic combination of celebrity and food porn, the Globe and Mail reports on U.S. President-elect Obama's favorite foods -- sort of.
There was a lot of guessing that went into this hard-hitting investigative journalism:
Early last year, when the Obamas said pizza from Italian Fiesta Pizzeria in Chicago was their favourite, co-owner Patti Harris-Tubbs says people called her up to say, "I'll have whatever Obama likes." But Ms. Harris-Tubbs isn't sure which pie that is.
"Our most popular is cheese and sausage," she tells them. "I guess I would have to go with that."
Eddie Gehman Kohan, the Los Angeles freelance writer behind the Obama Foodorama blog, says she doesn't know, either.
She points to a New York Times interview with Reggie Love, Mr. Obama's right-hand man, who was quoted as saying the boss's favourite foods are Dentyne Ice, Nicorette, pistachios and MET-Rx chocolate-roasted peanut protein bars.
"Part of the fascination with food is trying to pinpoint who is he? How can we define him, how can we understand him?" Ms. Gehman Kohan says.
One thing the food paparazzi does know is that Obama likes his hot sauce. Ms. Gehman Kohan was cited as saying, "He puts it on everything, he carries a bottle with him.He's shown he can handle the heat. At least so far."
Here's a nice clip of food critic Barack from a 2001 local TV food show in Chicago.
Australian food has bacteria: don't tell consumers 'till after Christmas
Food Science Australia found in a survey of Australian food that E. coli was present in 69 per cent of poultry, 29.7 per cent of beef and 18.1 per cent of pork, but only 1 per cent of lettuce.
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Poultry also tested positive for campylobacter (40 per cent) and salmonella (21.9 per cent).
The Australian reports the results were written into a report for the Department of Health and Ageing that was expected to have been released by the end of November.
But when The Australian requested and paid for a copy under Freedom of Information laws, the department advised that it would be delayed. The Food Regulation Standing Committee had agreed to a food industry request to hold off releasing the report until after the lucrative Christmas period.
In a laundry list of safe-food handling practices, the story says that authorities recommend consumers “cook chicken, minced or boned meats, hamburger, stuffed meats and sausages right through until juices are clear, and serve hot food steaming hot.”
Sigh.
Color is a lousy indicator. Use a digital tip-sensitive thermometer. It makes people better cooks.
Local can be safe - prove it
Food safety lawyer Bill Marler got verbally beaten up a bit by daring to say that local food needs to be safe food.
Devra Gartenstein, the owner of Seattle’s Patty Pan Grill and the author of two cookbooks, Local Bounty: Vegan Seasonal Produce and The Accidental Vegan, wrote on something called The Green Fork yesterday that,
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“It’s certainly true that food purveyors at every level should be scrupulously clean and conscientious about how they handle their food. But it’s patently untrue that farmers’ market prepared foods are unsupervised, at least here in Seattle, where both Mr. Marler and I live. Prepared food vendors are permitted and inspected by the health department. When health inspectors aren’t personally on site, the market managers act as their proxies, checking temperatures and handwashing stations. We’re also required to take classes in proper food handling procedures.”
That’s great. But what about local food that isn’t prepared or processed? The author seems to be playing semantics, jumping from prepared foods – which are clearly under local health folks supervision – to other local foods, like produce that isn’t processed.
The author recites the usual food porn about how she knows the grower so it’s safer, but I’m looking for data: water quality results, data on soil amendments, evidence of compliance with handwashing and safe handling.
It isn’t about local, small or big. It’s about what will make folks barf. And that requires control of dangerous microorganisms, regardless of politics.
Is Diet Coke Plus really a plus?
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It’s no secret. The obesity epidemic is still raging in the United States. Documentaries such as Super Size Me and TV shows like Big Medicine have helped to bring the public’s attention to the obesity problem in the US, but there is still a long way to go to encourage consumers to adopt proper eating habits and exercise regiments.
There have been quite a few fad diets out there that guarantee the latest “quick fix” for a spare tire around the waist or love handles. The health food market has also exploded with new products offering few calories and added vitamins and minerals. Consumers are also looking for products not only to help them lose weight, but also stay healthy by consuming products, like functional foods, to help prevent cancer. Functional foods, any fresh or processed food claiming to have a health-promoting and/or disease-preventing property beyond the basic nutritional function of supplying nutrients, are also being researched and developed by many scientists.
Functional foods are fast becoming a part of everyday life. Two-thirds of adults made an effort to buy more fortified foods in 2006 - up 17% over 2005. One-third of young adults age 18–24 regularly drink energy beverages, and more than half of mothers of preteens bought organic foods last year.
With the majority (69%) of Americans pursuing a preventive lifestyle and 27% taking a treatment approach, not surprisingly, products that offer specific health benefits that make it easier for consumers to address their individual needs are enjoying explosive sales growth.
How does the market classify whether or not a food is considered functional food? The FDA regulates food products according to their intended use and the nature of claims made on the package. Five types of health-related statements or claims are allowed on food and dietary supplement labels:
http://www.ific.org/nutrition/functional/index.cfm
* Nutrient content claims indicate the presence of a specific nutrient at a certain level.
* Structure and function claims describe the effect of dietary components on the normal structure or function of the body.
* Dietary guidance claims describe the health benefits of broad categories of foods.
* Qualified health claims convey a developing relationship between components in the diet and risk of disease, as reviewed by the FDA and supported by the weight of credible scientific evidence available.
* Health claims confirm a relationship between components in the diet and risk of disease or health condition, as approved by FDA and supported by significant scientific agreement.
Could junk food be advertised with health claims? Diet Coke Plus was introduced in 2007 by The Coca-Cola Company as an alternative to Coca-Cola Classic. The ingredient list includes the following added vitamins and minerals: magnesium sulfate (declared at 10% of the Daily Value (DV) for magnesium in the Nutrition Facts panel), zinc gluconate (declared at 10% of the DV for zinc), niacinamide (declared at 15% of the DV for niacin), pyridoxine hydrochloride (declared at 15% of the DV for vitamin B6), and cyanocobalamine (declared at 15% of the DV for vitamin B12).
Diet Coke Plus has just come under fire for using the word “plus” in their product name. According to the FDA, Diet Coke Plus is “misbranded … because the product makes a nutrient content claim but does not meet the criteria to make the claim.” Muhtar Kent, the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Coca-Cola Company received a warning letter from the FDA last week detailing regulations for using the word “plus” and Diet Coke Plus’ abuse of the word, along with the statement that the “FDA does not consider it appropriate to fortify snack foods such as carbonated beverages.”
I’ll be honest; I’ve bought Diet Coke Plus at the grocery store. I might’ve been trying to rationalize my caffeine addiction. It said Plus, it must be ok to drink. If they ever come out with an Organic Coke I’m sure people will be clamoring to buy it, supposing that it will be “all natural”.
The FDA has allowed Coke 15 days to prepare a letter detailing the actions that Coke plans to take in response to the warning letter, including an explanation of each step being taken to correct the current violations and prevent similar violations. “We take seriously the issues raised by the FDA in its letter,” Coke spokesman Scott Williamson said in a prepared statement. “This does not involve any health or safety issues, and we believe the label on Diet Coke Plus complies with FDA's policies and regulations. We will provide a detailed response to the FDA in early January."
Top 10 food safety issues 2008 - the PR version
Researchers at Kansas State University's International Food Safety Network use blogs, YouTube videos, food safety info sheets and other means to remind people about food safety hazards. The researchers are among more than 150 K-State faculty and staff active in the food safety and animal health arenas. Since 1999, K-State has dedicated more than $70 million to related research.
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"During an outbreak, food safety is at the top of many people's minds," said Doug Powell, scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at K-State, where he is an associate professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology. "The real challenge is to compel everyone, from farm to fork, to practice safe food habits before an outbreak occurs. It's sort of boring, but it reduces the number of sick people."
Casey Jacob is a research assistant working with Powell. A May 2008 K-State bachelor's graduate in food science and industry, Jacob compiled a list of the top 10 food safety issues of 2008 available at http://tinyurl.com/4q4efw
Salmonella-laden tomatoes and/or peppers topped Jacob's list, highlighting the importance of being able to trace fresh produce to its source.
"Companies that can provide efficient traceability systems for their products provide an advantage to the retail food service sector during recall and outbreak situations," Jacob said.
Other top food safety issues on the list were melamine in Chinese infant formula, listeria in deli meats and soft cheeses, and E. coli O157:H7 linked to negligent butchers in the United Kingdom. Jacob said that these incidents demonstrated the importance of knowing one's food suppliers, warning vulnerable populations of food safety hazards associated with certain foods, and establishing a culture of food safety among food handlers.
The list includes signs that restaurant inspection disclosure systems are on the rise.
"The food service sector should recognize that certain diners are interested in the information provided by inspection reports and summaries," Jacob said. "This increase in transparency highlights the importance of maintaining -- or improving -- compliance with food safety regulations during inspections."
The list also recalls how patrons are using cell phone cameras to document food safety issues. In Toronto, a passerby took a photo of rats on a countertop at one of the most prominent restaurants in the city's Chinatown. Public health authorities shut the restaurant down.
"Everyone eats, and in a networked world, consumer experiences can really impact what people know about food safety," Powell said. "At the International Food Safety Network, we try to develop tools to help consumers share their wisdom with everyone in the farm-to-fork food chain and hope that leads to fewer people getting sick."
More information about the International Food Safety Network is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/
Obama: Forget the fashion and focus on food safety basics
Baby Sorenne woke up around 4 a.m. and, after nursing, hung out with daddy and watched Mallrats until she went back to sleep.
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Daddy – that’s me – started prepping for the Christmas meal: boneless leg of lamb marinated in fresh rosemary – the one herb that seems to flourish indoors – and lime-garlic sauce. And some other stuff, which I could describe in pornographic detail, but will instead call side dishes.
As I prepare the lamb, I’ll keep in mind the World Health Organization’s factors that contribute to foodborne illness:
• improper cooking procedures;
• temperature abuse during storage;
• lack of hygiene and sanitation by food handlers;
• cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat foods; and,
• foods from unsafe sources.
Yet increasingly, food safety is used as a catch phrase to encompass whatever political goals some group wants to achieve
The N.Y. Times yesterday encapsulated what has been circulating on the Interwebs for weeks, stating that,
“From the moment it was clear that Barack Obama was going to be president, people who have dedicated their lives to changing how America eats thought they had found their St. Nicholas. It wasn’t long before the letters to Santa began piling up.
“Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet magazine, wants a new high-profile White House chef who cooks delicious local food. Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, wants policies requiring better treatment for farm animals. …
“Not only does (Obama) seem to possess a more-sophisticated palate than some of his recent predecessors, but he will also take office in an age when organic food is mainstream, cooking competitions are among the top-rated TV shows and books calling for an overhaul in the American food system are best sellers.”
Running through all of this is some kind of food snobbery that assumes whatever is fashionable is somehow safer.
Even the groups advocating more food safety are reeking of political ambition rather than focusing on the things that make people sick.
Like Brody in Mallrats, no one wants a stink palm.
Jim Romahn: It's time for general Canadian public to speak up
I’ve know Jim Romahn for about 15 years. His writing drives a lot of bureaucrats ballistic, which is why he’s recognized as one of Canada’s best journalists writing about food and agriculture.
Jim just sent me this column about food, protectionism and hypocrisy. The South Koreans went somewhat nuts about American beef earlier this year, with riot police called to quell the protests of tens of thousands.
Six months later and the Washington Post reported, what was the big deal?
“Low-priced U.S. beef has appeared in supermarkets here in recent days, after a decision by three major retailers to start selling it again, and the reaction has been brisk business and no political fuss. Fifty tons of U.S. beef disappeared from shelves the first day it was offered for sale."
That’s usually the way things work. Politicians worried about particular constituencies will make outrageous claims on behalf of all Canadians or Koreans or consumers in general, in the absence of any data. Yet when people are allowed to vote at the grocery store, with their wallet, conventional wisdom becomes political nonsense.
So here’s Jim’s take on Canada, South Korea, trade and BS.
Pity the beef and pork producers eager to increase exports to South Korea.
Trade talks have been dragging on for years.
For sure, the beef and hog producers of South Korea oppose dropping tariffs on Canadian products.
But there’s also a big problem in our own back yard.
The Koreans want to sell us cars, but Chrysler, Ford and General Motors are lobbying hard to maintain the 6.1 per cent tariff. So is the Canadian Autoworkers Union.
There is another big problem – our dairy industry.
The trade talks have expanded to bring in other countries to make a deal more attractive, especially to increase exports.
So far those talks involve Singapore, Chile, Brunei and New Zealand.
New Zealand wants to export its dairy products. And everybody knows Canadian dairy farmers won’t budge one iota.
So, after 13 rounds of negotiations with South Korea, and a few with the so-called P4, Canada’s special interests are blocking trade deals that would quite obviously benefit beef and hog farmers and all Canadian consumers.
It’s one thing to stonewall at the World Trade negotiations. It’s even more upsetting when our politicians stonewall on country-specific negotiations, and this P4 group of minor countries.
What are the chances our politicians will agree to trade terms that will increase competitive pressure on our auto industry?
What are the chances they will undermine supply management for the dairy and poultry farmers?
What hope, then, that Canadians will be able to heed the advice of Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he says the current economic crisis calls for free trade.
Harper reminds world leaders that protectionism gets blamed for some of the depth of the Great Depression.
It’s not world leaders who need a lecture. It’s our own Canadian protectionists.
What’s more, Harper has the tools to back his talk with action.
If he could make a deal with the P4, it would set the stage for him to take a far more aggressive position in the World Trade negotiations.
And there the goal from the beginning of the Doha round has been to benefit poor nations. And among the poorest people in those nations are farmers.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture and a series of agriculture ministers have pretended we can take a “balanced” position in trade negotiations, winning market access for our exporters and continued protection for the marketing boards.
It’s obviously not true.
The Doha round talks have repeatedly stalled. Thirteen rounds of negotiations with South Korea have failed to yield a deal. And Canada is unlikely to stay at the negotiating table with the P4 because it won’t compromise with New Zealand.
It’s time for the general Canadian public to speak up and demand an end to political pandering to special interests. We can’t afford to waste our money and resources, especially as the rest of the world moves to capture the benefits of freer trade.
Paraguay, cockroaches, and food safety
I arrived to Paraguay yesterday, escaping the freezing rain from Kansas right on time. It was close to 90 °F (around 30° C). A lot of my friends back in Kansas were jealous, but with 50% humidity, the heat is almost unbearable.
This weather is also perfect for disease-transmitting mosquitoes and cockroaches. I have almost substituted body lotion with bug spray. And just yesterday, a dandy cockroach was climbing the curtains beside my bed (picture to the right).
I cannot even imagine how many of these are roaming the restaurants that I normally go to. Actually, I’m not even sure if there is a governmental agency dedicated to food safety or anything of the sort. If there is, I probably wouldn’t trust it.
Paraguay is one of the poorest nations in South America, with poverty levels of up to 50 percent and rising. Our government is a fiasco; corruption is institutionalized. We have lots to worry about.
The culture of food safety that Doug is all over about is not often one of these worries. I didn’t know what that meant until I became a news puller. It will be interesting to ask around and see what people think.
I will introduce my dad to the meat thermometer the next time he cooks an asado – typical barbecue of the region pic bellow – and I will report my findings. So keep tuned.
Paraguay, cockroaches, and food safety
I arrived to Paraguay yesterday, escaping the freezing rain from Kansas right on time. It was close to 90 °F (around 30° C). A lot of my friends back in Kansas were jealous, but with 50% humidity, the heat is almost unbearable.
This weather is also perfect for disease-transmitting mosquitoes and cockroaches. I have almost substituted body lotion with bug spray. And just yesterday, a dandy cockroach was climbing the curtains beside my bed (picture to the right).
I cannot even imagine how many of these are roaming the restaurants that I normally go to. Actually, I’m not even sure if there is a governmental agency dedicated to food safety or anything of the sort. If there is, I probably wouldn’t trust it.
Paraguay is one of the poorest nations in South America, with poverty levels of up to 50 percent and rising. Our government is a fiasco; corruption is institutionalized. We have lots to worry about.
The culture of food safety that Doug is all over about is not often one of these worries. I didn’t know what that meant until I became a news puller. It will be interesting to ask around and see what people think.
I will introduce my dad to the meat thermometer the next time he cooks an asado – typical barbecue of the region pic bellow – and I will report my findings. So keep tuned.
Food handlers don't have time
Researchers at Kansas State published the results of a study of the barriers to food safety practices of food handlers. Conducting focus groups with 159 food handlers, split into 2 groups, the researchers report that food handlers not only have a lack of food safety knowledge but also often a lack of understanding why employees should comply with food safety guidelines.
Yep. Totally. So what do we do about it?
The recommendations the researchers provide are:
-Provide regular food safety training to their foodservice employees;
(sure, except training for knowledge change on it’s own doesn’t do much, as they state in their press release)
-Educate employees about the consequences of improper food handling to improve attitudes toward food safety; (we prefer to use “compel” instead of educate, education is too limiting).
-Place signs about consequences of improper food handling in food production areas; (kind of like our food safety infosheets?)
And three food safety culture ideas -- (at barfblog we’ve been talking about food safety culture for a while, as have Frank Yiannas and Chris Griffith):
-Encourage food safety compliance with verbal reminders and praise;
-Be good role models;
-Incorporate food safety practices into employees' daily routines to eliminate the perceptions that they do not have time to perform them.
Hey this is great -- but what’s missing is the how. Just telling managers to make more time for food handlers isn’t very realistic. Food safety communications types, us included, need to get out and start testing food safety culture and measure behavior. And share the results so everyone can build on it.
I presented some similar findings of food handler barriers at IAFP 2007 and some qualitative data on food safety practices at food service (highlighting time pressures especially) at IAFP 2008. I don’t think the solution to time pressures is telling the industry to slow down, or more "education". I think we need to engineer processes and equipment (like self sanitizing knives), look to new tools (like using sanitizer during busy times, instead of handwashing) -- and test them. If they work, and they don’t slow the kitchen down, it’s an easy sell.
Our research in food safety culture needs to move to show me, don't tell me.
Local food isn't safer; so what does local mean?
Never underestimate the ability of industry – and that includes farmers, processors, retailers and food service -- to co-opt that which is trendy for marketing purposes. Hucksterism is alive and well and flourishing (see the Hellmann’s campaign below).
Julie Schmit of USA Today writes that the "locally grown" label is part of retailers' push to tap into consumer desires for fresh and safe products that support small, local farmers and help the environment because they're not trucked so far.
Just how do some retailers define locally grown?
• Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest retailer, considers anything local if it's grown in the same state as it's sold, even if that's a state as big as Texas and the food comes from a farm half the size of Manhattan, as in the case of the 7,000-acre Ham Produce in North Carolina.
• Whole Foods, the biggest retailer of natural and organic foods, considers local to be anything produced within seven hours of one of its stores. The retailer says most local producers are within 200 miles of a store.
• Seattle's PCC Natural Markets considers local to be anything from Washington, Oregon and southern British Columbia.
And while there is a perception that local, like organic food, is safer, such assumptions are made in the absence of any evidence.
Robert Brackett, senior vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said most foodborne illnesses don't get noticed because not enough people get sick to alert officials that an outbreak is underway. Undetected outbreaks are more likely with "local" products delivered in small quantities and sold in a small area.
Matt Regusci, head of business development for PrimusLabs.com, a leading produce food-safety auditor, said small producers are also less likely than big ones to have had food-safety audits, which grocers often demand of big suppliers, adding,
"The vast majority of food safety is common sense. Are there a few small idiots out there messing things up for everybody? Yes. But there are big idiots out there messing things up, too."
Tampa Bay is in the World Series cause they let fans bring their own food to the ballpark
Baseball is incredibly boring. Anytime someone gases on about the mathematics and how literal it all is, I’m reminded of the time Homer Simpson was sober for a month and agreed that watching baseball was the most boring thing ever. At a hockey game in Sweden last night the crowd littered the ice with dildos. Hockey’s a great game.
But I’m forced to write about baseball because the World-Series bound Tampa Bay Rays did something somewhat astute: as reported in the New York Times, “The Rays are here (in the World Series) because of the outstanding good karma of allowing fans to bring their own food into the dome.
“In the vast majority of sports arenas and stadiums in this great land of freedom and opportunity, anybody caught transporting edible contraband through the turnstiles is immediately taken under the stands and beaten with rubber hoses.”
Tell me about it.
A pregnant Amy and I went to a Kansas State football game a few weeks ago. The dude doing the bag check found a wrapped energy bar and confiscated the offending carbs. I said, ‘She’s pregnant, she needs food.”
He grunted, which was as persuasive as K-State’s terrible football defense.
And unlike airport security, where an empty water bottle will be allowed through, K-State only allows full bottles of water. No one would ever fill a water bottle with vodka.
Back in Tampa, the Times reports that,
“Under this sane policy, fans can actually bring carrots and apples and cereal to the ball park and not have them wrestled away by gristly guards. I know what you are thinking: “There’s no healthy eating in baseball,” what with the mandatory calories and salt and sugar laced into the junk food sold in the corridors of American arenas.”
Cooking a Thanksgiving turkey... and side dishes
Thanksgiving is coming up (11/27/08), and just recently passed in Canada (10/13/08). Both have common foods and in this video a few different recipes are prepared keeping in mind food safety practices. Turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing are featured.
Contaminated food for resale found during Michigan traffic stop
Driving the long stretches of big sky country in Kansas, the mind can wander. I wonder what’s in that rental truck up there, the one I may pass in the next hour. Maybe it's a load of fresh produce in a truck that was moving chickens the week before; maybe it's a widely popular Canadian band tyring to break into the U.S. where they are unknown; maybe it's a crystal meth lab.
The Grand Rapid Press reports that during a routine traffic stop at the eastbound Int. 96 weigh station near Ionia this week, motor carrier officers discovered a large quantity of perishable food being transported in a nonrefrigerated rental truck.
Inspectors discovered a case of Biofeel, a yogurt drink included in a nationwide import alert on dairy products originating from Asia because of the melamine contamination of baby food and milk products in some Asian countries.
Inspectors seized and destroyed more than 2,000 pounds of food products, including tofu, dairy, meat, seafood and noodles. They also seized 200 pounds of beef that had not passed USDA inspection.
And since that video of the Canadian band I like is no longer available on youtube, here's a different version, circa 1999.
Georgetown University dining hall closed; dozens of students barfing and crapping show up at Emergency last night
Amy and I went for lunch today in the student union. Nothing fancy, the salad fixin’s were reasonably priced, and the food selection was a lot better than when I was a student – way back in the old days, like on the Flintstones, with humans and dinosaurs playing together.
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Any food service operation is vulnerable to foodborne illness, but the university ones have been popping up regularly of late – Guelph, Michigan State, and now, Georgetown in Washington, D.C.
Georgetown University closed its dining hall today after dozens of students went to the emergency room last night with symptoms of severe vomiting and diarrhea.
A call from an emergency room doctor at Georgetown University Hospital at about 12:30 a.m. today alerted campus officials that many students were being treated for symptoms that could indicate a foodborne illness, said university spokeswoman Julie Bataille.
She said officials are not sure yet of the number of students, but it could be dozens. About 5,000 students participate in the campus meal plan and eat at the Leo J. O'Donovan Dining Hall, which most students call Leo's. The dining hall serves about 3,000 meals daily.
In an e-mail to the campus community today, Todd A. Olson, vice president for student affairs, announced that as a precaution the university had decided to close the dining hall and that breakfast would be served in a lounge on campus and that lunch and dinner would be served at the student center.
New food was delivered this morning, Bataille said, and health officials are now on campus taking samples and investigating the situation.
Bad idea: using air conditioned hotel room for food storage
Pennsylvania state inspectors said the Holiday Inn on Greenfield Road, east of Lancaster, was using a guest room to store perishable food because a refrigerator in the restaurant had stopped working.
Bill Chirdon, Director of Food Safety for the State Agriculture Department said,
“Yes. We did have an unusual situation."
The agency got a tip last week from an employee at the Holiday Inn on Greenfield Road, just off Route 30, east of Lancaster.
The employee said perishable food from the restaurant was being stored in a guest room because a commercial refrigerator broke.
Chirdon said that means the food was stored at around 65 degrees, not nearly cold enough to be safe.
He said the commercial refrigerator at the hotel was repaired and the poorly stored food was thrown out. He said follow-up inspections will be done.
Don Schaffner, guest barfblogger: Looking for ugly in the food industry
One of my favorite books of all time is "Out of Control" by Kevin Kelley. It's a non-fiction book that deals with understanding complex systems. Kelley is a bit of a polymath. He was a hippie, who edited the hippie bible, the whole earth catalog. He was there at the beginning of the internet with the creation of the Whole Earth 'Lectric Linkup. I've starting reading his blog recently, and he always has something interesting to say... like how to build foam robots.
Anyway, he recently blogged about "Looking For Ugly" where he writes "Preventing errors within extremely complicated technological systems is often elusive. The more complex the system, the more complex the pattern of error". He's writing generally, but I immediately thought about the food system. 
Kelley goes on to write specifically about the airline industry, saying "The safety of aircraft is so essential it is regulated in hopes that regulation can decrease errors. Error prevention enforced by legal penalties presents a problem, though: severe penalties discourages disclosure of problems early
enough to be remedied. To counter that human tendency, the US FAA has generally allowed airlines to admit errors they find without punishing them."
Hmmm. "severe penalties discourages disclosure of problems early enough to be remedied". Sounds to me like he's talking about a "zero tolerance" vs. regulatory limit for Listeria.
Of course the counter argument (for the airline industry) also maps well to the food industry, as Kelley writes "The general agreement in the industry is that a policy of unpunished infractions encourages quicker repairs and reduces the chances of major failures. Of course not punishing companies for
safety violations rubs some people the wrong way."
Yup. He's nailed it. This idea dovetails nicely with Doug's call to "make all data of Listeria testing in plants public so others in the industry can improve and consumer confidence can be enhanced with data not just words."
Clean the damn car once in a while and stop leaving food on the dashboard
I drove a Nissan Quest for about 8 years. Put on a lot of miles driving to Florida, saw a lot of vomit with four kids.
So for 6 a.m. hockey practices – and I was often the coach so I and whatever lucky kid was on that specific team had to be there at 5:30 or something stupid – I would often microwave an egg or two, slap it between some bread and away we’d go. I even sometimes put it on the dashboard.
Apparently I wasn’t alone. A poll by insurance.co.uk of 1376 car owners found that British motorists spend more than three years of their lives behind the wheel and over a quarter eat en route every week.
The poll also (...) revealed some startling hygiene calamities some drivers have faced.
Some motorist admitted finding dead mice, dog poo, fishing maggots, a three-year-old sandwich, a joint of beef, a partner's [or] ex's knickers, a used condom, child's vomit in a door pocket, and mushrooms growing in the floor.
My van wasn’t that bad.
Restaurant sinks are not bathtubs
An Ohio man is in hot water for taking a hot bath in a Burger King bathtub. The video shows a man sitting in the sink, while other employees look on laughing. At one point the employee with the camera goes to ask the manager if she wants to come watch. The manager declines, but also fails to take any action. The video was then posted on Myspace. The fast food restaurant has fired all employees involved. They added that the sink was sanitized twice and all utensils were thrown out. Health officials are working with prosecutors to see if charges will be filed. However the health department has declined to issue any fines. If bathing in a kitchen sink isn’t worth a fine, what is?
The video contains some not safe for work language.
Burger King Employee Takes Bath In Sink - Watch more free videos
Employee guilty of spitting, urinating in food; cop wins $40K
The employee accused of urinating and spitting in the family's food pleaded guilty last year to violating the Nebraska Pure Food Act and fined $100, according to court records.A jury on Friday found the restaurant negligent. The family's attorney said of the restaurant owner,
"I'd advise them to get a better class of employees."
Consumers looking for antioxidants in food to control aging
According to the Arizona Republic, these are the ingredients for a more youthful appearance, and restaurants are jumping on the trend by offering antioxidant-rich dishes.Annika Stensson, spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association, said the association recently conducted a survey asking more than 1,200 professional chefs in the United States to list the trendiest items on their menus. Out of almost 200 items, pomegranate finished 16th, fresh fruits were 61st and scallops were 100th. All are foods rich in antioxidants.
The interest in antioxidants also has been transforming beverage lists. Trudy Thomas, director of beverages for Camelback Inn, said the resort created an antioxidant-rich margarita, the Frozen Sangria Rita, after guests expressed interest in red wine's antioxidant qualities.
Since its debut in February, the concoction of red wine, pomegranate and blueberry has been one of the most popular drinks on the menu, she said.Diane Aiello, owner of Glam Lounge in Scottsdale, said,
"I am a huge believer in antioxidants. … When we do an oxygen facial, we can see the person's skin actually changing. The skin is more hydrated, more plump, and lines are softer."
Madonna is said to be a fan.
Don Schaffner, guest barfblogger: Biking for food security
Today's intersection relates to the good folks at Barf Blog, and the cross-country adventures of a fellow food safety microbiologist.
Many professional food safety scientist readers of this blog may know Dr. Tom Montville. He's the coauthor of Food Microbiology: An Introduction and co-edited the first two editions of Food Microbiology: Fundamentals and Frontiers.
But the reasons for this post don't have too much to do with food safety, although they do have a lot to do with food, more specifically food security. And when I say food security, I don't mean defending the food supply against bioterrorism, although this is also one of Dr. Montville’s research interests. No, when I say food security, I mean it in the original sense, "availability of food and one's access to it".
Tom, you see, has managed to combine two of his passions: food, and riding his bicycle. He is currently riding his bicycle across the county (west coast to east coast) to raise funds for Elijah's Promise, which began as a small soup kitchen and has since become a multi-service agency that moves people out of poverty.
And (here’s the intersection) he's about to pass within 30 miles of Manhattan, Kansas!
I find his efforts very inspiring, and I hope you will too. Check out his blog to learn more.
Entomophagy -- it's all the rage
The New Zealand Herald reports that scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have catalogued 1,700 different species and found that bugs are eaten in at least 113 countries worldwide.
David George Gordon, a Seattle-based naturalist and author, said,
"Insects are the most valuable, underused and delicious animals in the world," and the West "is one the few cultures" that doesn't eat them. "Maybe we are the weirdos."A plate of maguey worms - larvae of a giant butterfly - sell for NZ$31.50 in smart Mexican restaurants (right).
Sago grubs wrapped in banana leaves are a delicacy in Papua New Guinea.
Large leafcutter ants are popular in Colombia.
Ensuring safe local produce
That’s according to a blog post at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which also notes the hospitals signed a Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge.
Holly Freishtat, Sustainable Food Specialist for Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, says,"Hospitals are changing the culture of food in healthcare by sourcing local produce, hormone-free milk, meat without hormones or antibiotics, sustainable seafood and through hosting farmers' markets, community- supported agriculture boxes for employees."
What's missing is any discussion about the microbiological safety of, especially, fresh local produce.
As more producers and suppliers adapt to meet the demand for local produce, here are some basic questions:
• where is the farm located
• what type of fertilizer is used;
• what is the water source and how frequently is it tested; and,
• is the produce harvested, stored and transported safely, by staff who practice outstanding personal hygiene.?
Beyond the questions, the real challenge, as I've said many times before, is,
"Whether your food comes from down the street or around the globe, you want to verify that producers and processors are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing."
How about sourcing food from the place that can boast the fewest number of sick patrons?
Food handlers linked to outbreaks of Salmonella -- New food safety infosheet
These outbreaks are also the stories we have concentrated on in today's iFSN food safety infosheet. Click here to download the infosheet.
UK foodies going nuts about squirrel -- tastes like chicken
At Ridley's Fish and Game shop in Corbridge, Northumberland, owner David Ridley said he has sold 1000 - at 3.50 ($8.89) a squirrel - since the beginning of the year.
"I wasn't sure at first, and wondered would people really eat it. Now I take every squirrel I can get my hands on. I've had days when I have managed to get 60 and they've all sold straight away."
Some say squirrel tastes like wild boar. Others think it is more a cross between duck and lamb.
Amy says squirrel tastes like chicken -- if you add ketchup.
Foodborne illness forces Pistons' Hamilton to miss practice
Hamilton is in Atlanta, and the Pistons will re-evaluate his condition before today's 7 p.m. game against the Hawks.
U.S. Olympians will bring food to China
The N.Y. Times reports that in preparing to take a delegation of more than 600 athletes to the Summer Games in Beijing this year, the United States Olympic Committee faces numerous food issues. In recent years, some foods in China have been found to be tainted with insecticides and illegal veterinary drugs, and the standards applied to meat there are lower than those in the United States, raising fears of food-borne illnesses.USOC has made arrangements with sponsors like Kellogg’s and Tyson Foods, which will ship 25,000 pounds of lean protein to China about two months before the opening ceremony, but will hire local vendors and importers to secure other foods and cooking equipment at the Games.
Why? Frank Puleo, a caterer from Staten Island who has traveled to China to handle food-related issues, went to a supermarket in China last year, and encountered a piece of chicken — half of a breast — that measured 14 inches.
"Enough to feed a family of eight. We had it tested and it was so full of steroids that we never could have given it to athletes. They all would have tested positive.”The protein from Tyson is one of the few food products that will be shipped from the United States. Kellogg’s has been asked to supply cereals like Frosted Flakes and Mini-Wheats, as well as Nutri-Grain bars, because those products are not readily available in China.
Frosted Flakes and little chocolate donuts. Breakfast of champions.
Cajuns fete carnival with pig slaughter
Associated Press reports that hundreds of people watched at least part of the ritual Saturday, though most have seen it before. The pig's skin was being shaved for cracklins, a Cajun snack, while the carcass was being prepared for transport to a butcher shop.
Every year, Catholic Cajuns in this community about 140 miles west of New Orleans hold ''La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns'' the weekend before Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent.Stephen Hardy, 38, who leads the group organizing the event, said,
"This is a celebration that was started out of necessity. Before refrigeration, they had to share the slaughter. One family could not consume a whole hog before it would go bad. They would have family and friends over to help, and everyone would leave with something."
With meat readily available at any grocery store today, the boucherie is simply a celebration of an old tradition, bringing family and friends together once a year for one last hoorah before the Catholic season of fasting begins.
Federal health code regulations prevent attendees from eating what is slaughtered during the celebration, Hardy said. So the butcher, after showing what is done traditionally, will take the carcass and byproducts to his shop to finish preparing the meat.
United Egg Producers to launch new website
I've always been a fan of Marshall McLuhan and read all his stuff 25 years ago. The cameo he did in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, where McLuhan tells some pompous professor that he doesn't understand his theories at all and is not qualified to teach, is so … apt.So after 10 years of urging agriculture and food groups, really anyone who wants to get out there -- to stop complaining and get out there -- they're starting to do it. The American Meat Institute posted its first youtube video a few months ago.
Now, United Egg Producers is getting ready to launch the new website USA Egg Farmers.
This website, available in February, will allow consumers online access to information about egg production and the UEP Certified animal welfare program, which covers ethics and science-based standards to deliver good hen welfare.
The new website will also include live broadcasts of UEP animal welfare conferences, as well as farm tours and interviews with producers.
Sure, people will take shots at you, but that's what happens when you stick your head up. Better than bitching in backrooms.
From Seinfeld to science: Dip once or dip twice?
It was conducted as part of a Clemson University program designed to get undergraduate students involved in scientific research. Prof. Paul L. Dawson, a food microbiologist, proposed it after he saw a rerun of a 1993 “Seinfeld” show in which George Costanza is confronted at a funeral reception by Timmy, his girlfriend’s brother, after dipping the same chip twice.“Did, did you just double dip that chip?” Timmy asks incredulously, later objecting, “That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” Finally George retorts, “You dip the way you want to dip, I’ll dip the way I want to dip,” and aims another used chip at the bowl. Timmy tries to take it away, and the scene ends as they wrestle for it.
Peter Mehlman, a veteran “Seinfeld” writer, wrote the episode, and said,
"At the time I was living in Los Angeles, in Venice. There was a party on one of the canals, and apparently someone dipped twice with the same chip. And a woman flipped out. ‘You just dipped twice! How could you do that? Now all your germs are in there!’ I thought, this is just too good not to use on the show.”
The story says that on average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.
Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.
You can say organic is safer, we just won't push it
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"[Consumers] perceive that organic food is going to be safer. Whether that's true or not is a whole other issue. We don't make food safety claims."No kidding. Katija and I wrote a paper about this in 2004.
Joseph Odumeru, food science professor at the University of Guelph, said although a reduction in pesticides can eliminate some health issues, the most common food safety problems have nothing to do with chemicals, adding,
"Whether you have an organic product or not, all products are susceptible to risks. Where you grow a product, it can become contaminated with bacteria like salmonella."
Canada's organic industry has been growing from 15 to 20 per cent each year, growth that is being fuelled mainly by consumers who are becoming increasingly health-conscious.
GAO: FDA should be clearer on food safety plan
The GAO report also noted that FDA must better leverage its existing resources "as staffing levels and funding have not kept pace with the agency's growing responsibilities" to oversee the food supply.
GAO noted that even as food imports surge, FDA inspectors of foreign food firms has dropped from 211 in fiscal year 2001 to fewer than 100 in 2007. About 15 percent of the overall U.S. food supply is imported.
Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said,
"Our constituents are growing weary of these events. They are losing confidence in this agency's ability to protect them from the products they use daily."
Naughty Nigella -- food and sex
It was -5 F this morning.
They may be disappointed.
But the sun is shining, things are warming, and by the time they hit southern Texas next week there are supposed to be highs in the 70s.
My father was the inspiration for our 2004 cooking show paper which documented the food safety failures of the high-profile chefs on The Food Network, including Nigella Lawson.Marieke Hardy of Melbourne, Australia's The Age newspaper wrote a column yesterday that took aim at Nigella, including,
"We like food, certainly. Some of us are also partial to boobies, and innuendo, and ladies with big. round bottoms, but even then Nigella seems to make selected members of the wymmyn's network slightly suspicious.
Perhaps it's the chocolatey vowels and habit of rolling herself all over the preparation space in a fashion that would be considered deeply unhygienic by most food and safety officers."
How about sexy and safe food?
Farmer Jeff: Raccoons love sweet corn -- Bt or not
Use a meat thermometer
Bouchard blames it on the media, "with its glorified tales of salmonella we've been scared into thinking that illness, disease and toxins lurk in every package."
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There's nothing glorious about salmonella.Bouchard says always keep a box of disposable latex or plastic gloves in the kitchen. Put them on whenever you handle any raw meats or fish. And immediately sterilize your cutting board and knife with a commercial disinfectant or a solution of diluted chlorine bleach before going on to any other task.
OK.
Bouchard also says the answer to the problem of overcooking is to use the sear-and-bake method of cooking.
"In 15 minutes, we had perfectly cooked chicken, with the meat cooked through but still tender and juicy. The same cooking technique could be applied to cuts of pork, beef, turkey or even fish."
Wrong. The only way to tell if meat like chicken is properly cooked is to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer. And it will make you a better executive chef cause you won't overcook meat.
Stick it in.
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Really, wash your damn hands
"We need a national handwashing campaign. We need it on hand towels and billboards. We need to market it on video games and commercials. We need to have rock songs about handwashing."
Couldn't agree more. Wash your hands. And if a restroom doesn't have the proper tools -- soap, water, paper towel -- be sure to let someone know. Proper handwashing requires access to proper tools.
Don't eat poop. Wash your hands.
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Wash your damn hands (and don't eat poop)
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Dr. Regina Ejemot of the University of Calabar in Nigeria, who led the study, said, "This is a huge benefit. For people in low-income areas this effect is comparable to providing clean water. The challenge is to find ways of promoting handwashing, as well as to set up long-term trials that test whether good practice has become part of a person's way of life."
Don't eat poop.
The long-term effects of food poisoning
Those officers have shown, over the years, that a touch of the flu -- as foodborne illness is often mistakenly called-- is more than a couple of days praying at the porcelin goddess of foodborne illness. Some 5-10 per cent of those police officers have developed reactive arthritis that will plague them for life.
Lauren Neergaard of Associated Press writes today about foodborne illness: the gift that keeps giving, sometimes years later.
Donna Rosenbaum of the consumer advocacy group STOP, Safe Tables Our Priority, said,
"We're drastically underestimating the burden on society that foodborne illnesses represent."
The story says this month, STOP is beginning the first national registry of food-poisoning survivors with long-term health problems - people willing to share their medical histories with scientists in hopes of boosting much-needed research.
Food poisoning fells Thai badminton star
Coach Udon Luangphetcharaporn said Boonsak's condition was not serious but he was weak and not in a good condition to play in the season-opening Super Series tournament at the Putra Stadium, adding, "It's unfortunate he is unable to play as he needs to fight for points to improve on his world rankings."The 25-year-old law student enjoyed a memorable season last year, winning the Singapore Open and the World University Games gold medal. He is the highest ranked Thai at number 12 in the world rankings.
Blame consumers -- German style
Food News reports that the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) is presenting its work so consumers can find out more about the risks lurking in their kitchens.
The story says,
around 200,000 food infections are reported every year in Germany. Experts believe that the actual number is far higher since by no means everyone who is affected goes to see a doctor. Most of the infections with Salmonella, Campylobacter or other germs are not contracted in canteens or restaurants but in the home.
BfR President Professor Dr. Andreas Hensel said,
"Many consumers have never learned how to store and cook food properly in the home. By following simple rules it is possible to avoid unpleasant food infections."
Like Bill Marler wrote about the Chinese this morning, maybe the Germans are on to something as well. I'll stick with a farm-to-fork approach to food safety. There are outbreaks everywhere. Stop blaming consumers.
After baring your butt at Dairy Queen, " Oh man, you gotta wipe that now"
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That's apparently in a video from a St. John's, Canada, Dairy Queen franchise."Oh man, you gotta wipe that now," a co-worker advises him, apparently in vain. The employee continues about his work, without — at least immediately — washing his hands.
CBC News reports that the video also shows a snowball fight behind the counter, where food orders are prepared and served. Christmas decorations are visible in the video.
Messages posted by former and current employees also made comments about the questionable handling of food at the restaurant.
Franchise owner Albert Buott was quoted as saying, "Good God almighty. Where's my managers? Who's allowing this to happen?"
A provincial food inspection official said dropping one's pants behind a restaurant counter is a health-code violation.
Golfer felled by food poisoning; loses money cause of "stupid" rule
As a result, he received less money than 18 guys who finished behind him, even though he qualified for the weekend and they didn't.Under tour regulations, anyone who withdraws or is disqualified for any reason after making the cut is paid last place, unofficial prize money. Ferrie was given $8,798, but it will not be applied to the money list, and he received no FedEx Cup points.
Fan favorite John Daly was quoted as saying, "It's a stupid rule, I'm sorry."
What to do if food has made you poop or barf
She wasnt sickened by the food, but if you think a specific food has made you sick, here's what to do:
• go to the doctor if necessary;
• keep the food, in the fridge or freezer if necessary; and,
• contact your local health department.
Bill Marler's got some more specific guidelines here.
Still raving about kosher food: It's not safer, it's marketing
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The report said, "4,719 new kosher items were launched in the United States last year—nearly double the number of new "all natural" products, which placed second in the report."
Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior research analyst at Mintel, said,
"It's the belief among all consumers that kosher food is safer, a critical thing right now with worries about the integrity of the food supply."
I really dislike people who speak on behalf of all other people. It usually means they know shit.
Moshe Elefant, a rabbi and chief operating officer of the Orthodox Union KOSHER, a kosher certification organization based in New York, said,
"Jews aren't allowed to ingest bugs, so produce must go through a thorough washing and checking to ensure that no bugs are found within the leaves or on the surface of the fruit or vegetable."
Remarkably, the story notes that bacteria can remain even after this type of washing, so consumers can't assume they're less likely to get food poisoning with bagged spinach marked kosher than with a conventional bag.
I understand there are religious reasons for choosing kosher, halal or anything else. For me, I'll focus on microbiologically safe food.
May the force be with you -- leafy greens edition
I've heard variations of that from a lot of organic growers over the past decade -- yet there is no evidence that such claims are true.
But there is lots of evidence that people get sick from fresh produce -- organic, conventional, or otherwise.It's all about the bugs.
Ian Davidson of BioLogic Systems