'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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Can food safety culture be taught? UK Food Standards Agency responds to E. coli O157 report
Two days ago, the parents of 5-year-old E. coli victim Mason Jones called the Welsh government response to an inquiry into the 2005 outbreak, “a bit disappointing.”
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Today, the U.K. Food Standards Agency published its own response and, it’s a bit disappointing.
After a cursory reading, the FSA folks seem to acknowledge some of the major points raised by Prof. Pennington, but in the end promised more of the same (but gosh-darnnit, a bit tougher on enforcement).
Here are a few highlights:
This understanding of ‘food safety issues’ culture and ‘what works’ are core to the Food Hygiene Delivery Programme. This will be a particular challenge as local authorities’ regulatory services are facing declining resources, and increasing demands for their services. We must push more effectively in all appropriate national forums for food safety to be given more prominence by local political bodies and their officials. Our own project-based approach to delivering responses to this Inquiry, coupled with the restructuring of the Agency’s Food Safety Group, is designed to concentrate on a coordinated set of actions to achieve the desired outcomes in a holistic rather than piecemeal way.
Culture and holistic are nice words but the FSA says:
In May 2009 the FSA announced a new training course on social marketing and behavioural change for food enforcement officers. It aims to develop skills to acquire an insight into the behaviours of food business operators and consumers in order to successfully disseminate food safety messages.
What does disseminate mean in this context? What if the messages suck? How will this 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.
Welsh government responds to E. coli outbreak report; parents of Mason say it's not enough
After the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak which killed 5-year-old Mason Jones and sickened 160 schoolchildren in Wales, Professor Hugh Pennington led a public inquiry which revealed the futility of food safety training, government inspection, and pretty much anything to do with the so-called food safety system.
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Yesterday, First Minister Rhodri Morgan announced more of the same in responding to Pennington’s report in the Wales Assembly.
“We know already that the Food Standards Agency is to review the use of equipment such as vacuum-packing machinery for both raw and cooked products.”
Duh. It shouldn’t happen.
“The training of inspectors and their managers is also being examined, with the aim of making this more comprehensive, helping them develop a sixth sense of what is potentially catastrophic.”
So they can see dead people?
“Inspections will be unannounced unless there is a clear requirement otherwise.”
Just make the inspections unannounced.
Sharon Mills and Nathan Jones, the parents of Mason Jones (above, right) said they would like to see Mr Morgan take more direct action and impose measures on the authorities involved, instead of leaving them to correct their own mistakes, with Ms. Mills stating,
“It was a bit disappointing because there was nothing definite about what he said. I thought we were going to get some answers and there still aren’t any. I don’t think we are any further forward than we were before.”
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Somewhere, Prof. Pennington, who also headed the inquiry after the 1996 E. coli O157 outbreak in Scotland that killed 21 and sickened over 400, is wondering how to escape this Groundhog-Day-esque cycle of outbreak-illness-death-report-repeat.
E. coli report: lots of blame to go around in Wales
Five-year-old Mason Jones died a painful and unnecessary death.
Mason (right) died Oct. 4, 2005, from E. coli O157 as part of an outbreak which sickened 161 -- primarily schoolchildren -- in south Wales.
Mason’s mother, Sharon Mills, said in 2005 that her son's death was "avoidable" and that lessons "have to be learnt."
"There was nothing wrong with him, only that he ate a dinner - an innocent child eating a dinner. I never thought you could die from E. coli. Never. I had heard of E.coli and I just thought it was food poisoning. I never ever thought Mason would die from it."
Today, Professor Hugh Pennington concluded that serious failings at every step in the food chain allowed rogue butcher William Tudor to start the 2005 E.coli O157 outbreak, and that while the responsibility for the outbreak, “falls squarely on the shoulders of Tudor,” there was no shortage of errors, including:
• local health types did not sufficiently assess or monitor John Tudor & Son’s food safety management or HACCP plan;
• the abattoir was allowed to continue slaughtering despite longstanding and repetitive failures, in breach of legislative requirements and without significant improvements; and,
• the procurement process was “seriously flawed in relation to food safety”
Prof Pennington said he was disappointed that the recommendations he made more than 10 years ago, following the E.coli O157 outbreak in Wishaw, Scotland, which killed 17 people had failed to prevent the South Wales Valleys outbreak.
“I was very disappointed that the more we looked into what happened in South Wales, the greater the number of parallels between Scotland and Wales. That was disappointing for me personally because I had spent a lot of time coming up with the recommendations in 1996 and 1997 – they were implemented but somewhere things fell down in the way they were implemented. I am looking for these recommendations to be implemented as soon as possible because E.coli is as powerful a threat now as it was in 2005.”
When handling meat, it's 'turd to tongue' or -'manure to mouth'
Hugh ‘Groundhog Day’ Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, wrote in a column for the BBC earlier this week,
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“The kitchen has the potential to be most dangerous room in the house. Making it safe is easy. When handling raw meat mutter the mantra ‘turd to tongue’ or - if you have squeamish tendencies – ‘manure to mouth.’”
The good Dr. Pennington was talking about how Campylobacter is the most common cause of foodborne illness and that it “is an embarrassing fact that Campy is a natural bug of birds.”
It’s not easy. Food safety isn’t simple. That’s why up to 30 per cent of everyone gets sick from the food and water they consume each year. And as Jorgen Schlundt, director of food safety at the World Health Organization said the other day,
“The notion that you can deal with it at the end of the food chain is clearly wrong.”
Groundhog Day continues for Hugh Pennington; lashes out a delay in E. coli reporting -- again (and again and again)
“In November 1996, over 400 fell ill and 21 -- largely pensioners who had attended a church supper -- were eventually killed in Scotland from infection with E. coli O157:H7.
Health authorities quickly linked the outbreak to cooked meat sold by family butchers John Barr & Son in Wishaw, who had been in business for 28 years and in September was awarded the title of Scottish Butcher of the Year. … It was concluded by investigators that the contamination occurred probably because knives used to separate raw product were also being used to open packages of cooked product.”
Professor Hugh Pennington was called in to handle a public inquiry.
Then another E. coli O157 outbreak struck, this time in Wales in 2005, killing a five-year-old and sickening some 150 schoolchildren. Another public inquiry was held earlier this year, chaired again by Prof. Pennington.
Then another outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in Scotland killed one and sickened seven in Aug. 2007, again in cold cuts, and again Prof. Pennington said there was no excuse for allowing contaminated cold meat to be sold.
Yesterday, Prof Pennington told the Sunday Mail that a Scottish hospital taking three days to report three cases of E. coli O157 to the local public team was unacceptable, adding,
"I'd only find a delay of hours acceptable. Finding the source must be done quickly, especially after what happened in Wishaw years ago."
Maybe one day the good prof will awaken from this repeating nightmare.
