Campylobacter week: two great papers on the pathogen
A couple of cool papers on Campylobacter were published last week -- one discussing outbreaks of the pathogen in Australia (and the most common sources) and another suggesting that generic E. coli is a lousy indicator of campy in water.
In the first paper, Outbreaks of Campylobacteriosis in Australia, 2001 to 2006, researchers looked at 33 outbreaks of campylobacterosis between 2001 and 2006 resulting in 457 probable and 147 confirmed illnesses. These outbreaks only captured 0.1 per cent of laboratory confirmed outbreaks suggesting that sporadic cases are much more problematic than outbreaks. The group found that commercial settings were implicated in 55 per cent of the outbreaks, and the most common suspected food vehicle was poultry (41 per cent of outbreaks). Salads were also suspected in two of the outbreaks.
In the second paper, Thermotolerant Coliforms Are Not a Good Surrogate for Campylobacter spp. in Environmental Water, researchers in the former home of the Nordiques, Quebec, analyzed over 2400 samples of river water from 25 sites over a two year period. The samples were tested for the presence of indicators (thermotolerant coliforms and generic E. coli) and Campylobacter. The group found that there was a weak association between the distributions of Campylobacter spp. and thermotolerant coliforms and between the quantitative levels of the two classes of organisms. Their results suggest that sampling water for thermotolerant coliform does not provide a good indication whether or not Campylobacter is present.
This is important information for the produce industry which, as the first paper shows, plays a role in Campylobacter infections. By testing water for common indicators, producers and packers may be missing campylobacter risks entirely.
A good way to get campylobacter? Use raw chicken to reduce swelling.
What's the worst thing to say to a farmer? Hi, I'm from the government, I'm here to help
We figured out about 15 years ago that the worst thing to say to a farmer was, Hi, I’m from the government, I’m here to help, cause we hung out with farmers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration apparently hasn’t figured this out, and went all gushy about how the two agencies are sharing people and resources to develop new produce regs.
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Farmers across the nation were cleaning themselves after hearing the news from Washington.
“USDA's fresh produce chief will join FDA to develop new food safety rules, as part of a cooperative initiative between FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Today's announcement comes amid beefed up outreach efforts with key agriculture and safe food stakeholders to better share and exchange produce safety ‘best practices’ and ideas.”
Will this result in fewer sick people? No . Is it complete bureau-speak that no one, especially those that grow fresh produce for a nation, will care about? Yes. Saturday Night Live captured the do-nothingness that has already cloaked the Obama change administration.
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.
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.
Should fruits and vegetables be cleaned with bottled washes? No
I’ve already posted on some of the dubious marketing and safety claims that accompanied the original Fit produce wash before it was abandoned by Procter & Gamble in 2001.
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On Monday, the Los Angeles Times takes a look at produce washes out there – such as Veggie Wash, Fit Fruit and Vegetable Wash, Bi-O-Kleen Produce Wash, Earth Friendly Products Fruit & Vegetable Wash and Eat Cleaner All Natural Food Wash and Wipes -- and concludes water is just fine.
Sandra McCurdy, extension food safety specialist in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho, says that most produce is pathogen-free because it's been washed during processing and because handlers take steps to avoid contaminating the fruits and vegetables they stock in the produce aisle. But if it is not, a thorough rinse under water is usually all that's needed to remove most pathogens.
Michael Doyle (left), professor and director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia in Griffin, Ga. (Doyle developed an antimicrobial technology that was licensed earlier this year by the makers of Fit produce wash.) said,
"If the bacteria get into the tissue during processing, it's too late, it's trapped in the tissue.”
As for pesticides, there's little scientific evidence to support claims that washes do a better job than water when it comes to removing them, says Anne Riederer, a professor of environmental and occupational health at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.
Produce in public: Spinach, safety and public policy
That’s the title of a book chapter that’s just been published and attempts to answer the question: what does it take for farmers, processors and retailers to pay attention to food safety risks – in the absence of an outbreak?
Last week, trade magazine The Packer did a story about Earthbound Farms, the producer of E. coli O157:H7 tainted-spinach in 2006, which quoted president Charles Sweat as saying,
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“Now that we are three years beyond that, it’s almost always hard to go back and put our mind where it was in 2005 and 2006 because we know so much more today than we knew then.”
What Ben Chapman, Casey Jacob and I asked in the book chapter is, why didn’t companies like EarthBound know a lot more about microbial food safety before over 200 became ill and four died in 2006?
In October, 1996, a 16-month-old Denver girl drank Smoothie juice manufactured by Odwalla Inc. of Half Moon Bay, California. She died several weeks later; 64 others became ill in several western U.S. states and British Columbia after drinking the same juices, which contained unpasteurized apple cider -- and E. coli O157:H7. Investigators believed that some of the apples used to make the cider might have been insufficiently washed after falling to the ground and coming into contact with deer feces (Powell and Leiss, 1997).
Almost 10 years later, on Sept. 14, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that an outbreak of E. coli O157: H7 had killed a 77-year-old woman and sickened 49 others (United States Food and Drug Administration, 2006). The FDA learned from the Centers for Disease Control and Wisconsin health officials that the outbreak may have been linked to the consumption of produce and identified bagged fresh spinach as a possible cause (Bridges, 2006a).
In the decade between these two watershed outbreaks, almost 500 outbreaks of foodborne illness involving fresh produce were documented, publicized and led to some changes within the industry, yet what author Malcolm Gladwell would call a tipping point -- "a point at which a slow gradual change becomes irreversible and then proceeds with gathering pace" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_Point) -- in public awareness about produce-associated risks did not happen until the spinach E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in the fall of 2006. At what point did sufficient evidence exist to compel the fresh produce industry to embrace the kind of change the sector has heralded since 2007? And at what point will future evidence be deemed sufficient to initiate change within an industry?
We conclude:
Ultimately, investigators showed that the E. coli O157:H7 was found on a transitional organic spinach field and was the same serotype as that found in a neighboring grass-fed cow-calf operation. These findings, coupled with the public outcry linked to the outbreak and the media coverage, sparked a myriad of changes and initiatives by the industry, government and others. What may never be answered is, why this outbreak at this time? A decade of evidence existed highlighting problems with fresh produce, warning letters were written, yet little was seemingly accomplished. The real challenge for food safety professionals, is to garner support for safe food practices in the absence of an outbreak, to create a culture that values microbiologically safe food, from farm-to-fork, at all times, and not just in the glare of the media spotlight.
Powell, D.A., Jacob, C.J., and Chapman, B. 2009. Produce in public: Spinach, safety and public policy in Microbial Safety of Fresh Produce: Challenges, Perspectives, and Strategies ed. by X. Fan, B.A. Niemira, C.J. Doona, F.E. Feeherry and R.B. Gravani. Blackwell Publishing.
Raw seafood should not be packed and sold with fresh produce
It’s the biggest thing to happen in Manhattan (Kansas) grocery shopping … at least since we went away a few weeks ago.
The Hy-Vee opened.
And the Kroger-owned Dillon’s where we usually shopped is making some changes.
The first time we visited our usually bustling Dillon’s after the Hy-Vee opened, the place was a ghost town. Row after row of marked down products and a sense of malaise. We asked an employee why it was so quiet and he said, “It’s quiet?”
By yesterday, however, the pace at Dillon’s had picked up, and some new products had been added as well as a small demonstration kitchen near the meat aisle.
One of the new products was this (above right). Raw (previously frozen) scallops, packed with cherry tomatoes and lettuce. This seems like an exceedingly bad idea – microbiologically.
Obama moves on food safety: will it mean fewer sick people?
Reuters is reporting this morning ahead of a press conference later today by recently formed supergroup, the Food Safety Working Group (right, not exactly as shown), that the Obama administration is ordering tougher steps to curb salmonella and E.coli contamination in U.S. food processing plants and created a new deputy food commissioner post to coordinate safety.
In response to the working group recommendations, the administration created a new position -- deputy commissioner for foods -- at the Food and Drug Administration to increase coordination of food safety activities in different parts of the federal government.
Other highlights include:
• the FDA has issued a rule aimed at reducing salmonella contamination of eggs during production;
• the administration directed the Food Safety and Inspection Service to develop standards by the end of the year to reduce salmonella in turkey and poultry;
• to reduce E.coli contamination of beef, the FSIS was directed to improve surveillance and testing for the bacteria in plants that handle beef, especially ground beef; and,
• the administration said the FDA would issue new guidance to the industry by the end of the month in an effort to reduce E.coli contamination in tomatoes, melons and green leafy vegetables.
Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturers Association said the absence of a federal standard for commodities like leafy greens, tomatoes and melons was the "biggest hole in the current food safety net" and the proposal to issue guidance "is the single most important step that we can take to reduce the risk of foodborne contamination."
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Yes, fresh produce is the biggest hole – although all the processing-related outbreaks of late suggest a fairly big hole – but FDA has been issuing guidance for growing safe, fresh produce for 10 years. Does anyone follow it? Will more guidance mean fewer sick people? Doubtful.
As I wrote when the supergroup, Food Safety Working Group, announced its inaugural tour back in March,
U.S. President Obama is excellent at setting tone, and maybe that’s the best that can be expected. At least food safety is on the White House agenda. Maybe it will send a message that everyone, from farm-to-fork, needs to get super-serious about providing microbiologically safe food. Maybe that will increase the safety of the food supply and result in fewer sick people. Maybe there will be a hit single to be found in the Working Group’s first release.
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."
Microbiologically safe produce - local or otherwise
The Obama’s – meaning Michelle – have started a gardening craze. Robert Kenner, the director of Food Inc., told Vanity Fair the solution to so-called industrial food issues was “to go to a farmers’ market whenever possible … it kind of feels like a religious experience.” And on rolls the bandwagon.
Massive rainfalls and 100F days has lead to some ideal growing conditions here in Manhattan (Kansas) but also presents some challenges in the form of floodwater (I’m convinced there’s just no drainage around here).
The microbiological safety of water sources is critical when growing fresh produce that is not going to be cooked. Did that floodwater come downstream from any sort of livestock operation (or human outhouse)? Did the water provide a vehicle for bird or rodent or lizard poop and pathogens to contaminate produce, inside and out? Will those pathogens now flourish in heat?
Those issues and more are discussed in the latest video from the SafeFoodCafe, the bites.ksu.edu digital video subsidiary. The new video guy, Evan, did his best to make me look cool with what he had. He needs better source material.
Chipotle buys local - but is it safe?
At what point did the language of sustainability get co-opted by organo-local business types?
I ride my bike around town (which is a health hazard in Manhattan), we had a fabulous salad of greens grown in our own garden last night for dinner along with the tuna steak (which wasn’t grown in Kansas), yet when I speak at a local panel or read something, it’s all these folks falling over themselves to be declared green.
Chipotle Mexican Grill will expand its local produce program this summer, purchasing at least 35 percent of at least one bulk produce item in all of its restaurants from local farmers when it is seasonally available. This represents a 10 percent increase over last year's program, the first of its kind for any national restaurant chain.
"Our commitment to cooking and preparing food with more sustainable ingredients has always been about doing the right thing; the right thing for better tasting food, the right thing for the environment, and the right thing for farmers," says Steve Ells, founder, chairman, and co-CEO of Chipotle.
As a lowly consumer, I can only hope that Chipotle holds its local suppliers to some sort of microbiological standards for food safety – maybe they cook the poop out of everything.
I don’t want to hear about how sustainable it is – unless Chipotle or anyone else is going to provide data on water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and microbiological loads on local produce versus the produce provided by the big ‘ole big guys. Do farmers get pissed that anyone thinks they can grow food to feed a bunch of people? Or do they just smirk, bemused?
Once again, Chipotle is the douchebag of fast food.
Mobile food-safety labs get FDA up to speed
Elizabeth Weise of USA Today once again goes to the food safety frontlines to report about the mobile testing laboratory being used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this time at the border crossing between Mexico and Nogales, Arizona.
Seventy percent of the fruits and vegetables Americans consume in winter are imported from Mexico, a total of 7 billion pounds, says Allison Moore, communications director for the Nogales-based Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. About half comes through Nogales.
The road that leads to the border begins to fill with trucks carrying fruits, vegetables and manufactured goods at 6:30 a.m. By noon there can be a line of trucks up to 7 miles long snaking through the low desert hills waiting to make the crossing (right ,photo from USA Today).
The lab represents a new era for the agency in keeping the food supply safe, says Michael Chappell, FDA acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. It is a tool that can be suited up and rolled out to anyplace in the country facing the danger of contaminated food, whether at the hand of terrorists or Mother Nature.
In the three weeks the trailers were based in Nogales before heading to their next assignment, the FDA estimates that direct contact with the truckers shaved tens of thousands of dollars in testing costs and spoiled produce. The mobile unit also may help repair the agency's reputation, which has been battered by public frustration with the contamination of such popular foods as peanuts and spinach.
Cross-contamination at checkout
Katie and I were craving hamburgers this weekend and Doug decided to indulge us. At the supermarket on Saturday he picked up some ground beef along with our normal cart full of produce and other proteins. As usual, I tried to separate the items in the cart so that the fresh produce was not touching the beef, pork, or salmon filets, even though all the meat was wrapped.
Checkout on Saturdays is always busy, and with a baby, a shopper’s plus card, a payment method, eco-friendly shopping bags, and chatter with the cashiers and baggers, there are plenty of distractions. On this particular day, the new store manager was bagging our items and complementing Doug on his culinary ability: “I can see you must be a good cook because those items require skill.” I chimed in with full-hearted agreement. Doug’s an awesome cook.
In the meantime, as the hamburger was being passed over the scale and scanner, juice poured out all over the place. I watched the cashier and was about to say something, but she pulled out a sanitary wipe and cleaned her hands. She then proceeded to pass every one of our produce items over the scale and through the hamburger juice. I felt like I should say something but wanted Doug to be the bad ass. And as I stood there stunned, not wanting the store manager to fire the woman, she completed our transaction and was on to the next person.
As soon as we exited the store, I declared we would have to wash every piece of produce in the bags. It didn’t even occur to me until later that the following person’s items were also going to pass over that potentially E.coli-laden scale. And maybe the same thing had already happened five times before we arrived. Maybe we were already at risk before our hamburger leaked all over.
It’s important to wash fresh fruits and vegetables to remove external contamination, because you never know where it’s been. Once your produce is exposed, it can contaminate other items in your bag or at home. Even if you are a careful consumer, it’s difficult to know just where that tomato has been.
(P.S. Doug cooked the burgers to a perfect 160F and they were delicious.)
Escaped bull shops for produce
No one was hurt when a bull escaped the clutches of its owner and ran into Cummins' Super-Valu in Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, Ireland.
Independent.ie reports the bull had been at the local mart a few hundred yards away when it made its great escape.
Was it shopping for steaks?
By the time the bull was eventually recaptured by its owner, a local farmer, the only damage done was to fruit and vegetable stands.
"People were joking afterwards that our beef was fresh and fully traceable," said Mr Cummins. "He passed out Tesco to get to us. That tells its own story."
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.
Albertsons customers face hepatitis threat
The Denver Post reports that people who have eaten store-prepared produce from an Albertsons in Littleton, Colorado, recently could face shots because a store employee has tested positive for hepatitis A.
The Tri-County Health Department said the warning applies specifically to those who have bought green onions, celery that has had the leaves trimmed, any lettuce that was not pre-bagged, any pre-cut watermelon, cantaloupe or honeydew melon.
"The employee followed good hand hygiene practices and wore gloves," said Dr. Richard L. Vogt, executive Director of Tri-County Health Department.
For more information call the health department at 303-846-2006 or Albertsons at 1-877-932-7948. Information also is available on the health department website, www.tchd.org.
Traceability: I can't draw but I can trace
Traceability is one of those food safety buzzwords that’s been around for awhile but doesn’t seem to mean much. Last year during the Salmonella in tomatoes/jalapenos outbreak, health types expressed severe frustration that many food vendors had little idea where their tomatoes were coming from. Same with the current peanut mess – why are companies still figuring out, two months after the initial recalls, that they have the PCA crap in their products.
A report expected to be made public today by Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, found that most food manufacturers and distributors cannot identify the suppliers or recipients of their products despite federal rules that require them to do so.
The investigators contacted 220 food facilities to ask about their supplier records. But only 118 of these businesses were included in the study because the rest were not required under rules adopted by the F.D.A. in 2005 to maintain supplier and recipient records. Of those 118 firms, 70 failed to provide investigators with required information about suppliers or customers, with 6 of the companies failing to provide any information at all.
United Fresh Produce Association President and CEO Tom Stenzel was scheduled to tell the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Agriculture today that,
“… we have a very good story to tell in produce traceability.”
However, one vendor told investigators that it kept no records of tomato purchases.
Tomatoes have repeatedly been implicated in nationwide food contamination scares, including one last year. Fifteen facilities told investigators they mixed raw products from more than 10 farms.
Spider found at Tulsa Whole Foods
An employee at Whole Foods Market in Tulsa, OK, recently caught a spider (below) roaming in the produce section.
The director of animal facilities at the University of Tulsa, Terry Childs, thought it to be a Brazilian wandering spider, or banana spider, which is considered to be the most deadly spider in the world. Childs said the spider likely came to the store in a bunch of bananas from Honduras.
A manager at the store said employees check the produce for spiders and insects, and believes that’s why the spider was discovered before it left the store.
Whole Foods said in a later statement,
"We take every precaution to inspect all of our produce as it arrives in the store and prior to it being merchandised on the sales floor. This incident is an extremely unusual circumstance, and one that we've never encountered before. We are confident that this will remain an isolated incident as we are very cautious when unpacking produce for our sales floor."
I can’t find this statement, so I’m not sure if the entire thing is so defensive and impersonal. I wonder whether the store or chain ever said sorry for the scare, or that they were glad no one got hurt.
Granted, the situation may not have been as dire as was first believed. The curator of aquariums and herpetology at the Tulsa Zoo, Barry Downer, saw video and photos of the spider (who has now been destroyed) and thinks it may have been a Huntsman spider—an arachnid that is harmless to humans.
Regardless of its true identity, the spider was perceived as a threat to shoppers and Whole Foods would do well to recognize that.
If anybody finds their statement, I’d love to check it out: casey.jo.jacob@gmail.com, or comment here for all to enjoy.
Does organic produce need to be washed?
Organic produce is so virtuous that UK writer Lucy Siegle had to ask, Does organic produce need to be washed?
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“Health professionals are adamant that all fresh produce should be cleaned to remove potential pathogens. … Even produce sold as ‘pre-washed’ needs to be washed. … As organic produce has been annexed by big commercial enterprises, it is increasingly scrubbed up in huge pack houses that bring together produce from large numbers of farms for a good dousing.”
Siegle needs to research beyond the big ag conspiracy. A panel of scientists with expertise in microbial safety of fresh produce concluded in 2007 prewashed bagged salads should not be washed again at foodservice or at home.
"Leafy green salad in sealed bags labeled “washed” or “ready-to-eat” that are produced in a facility inspected by a regulatory authority and operated under cGMPs, does not need additional washing at the time of use unless specifically directed on the label. The panel also advised that additional washing of ready-to-eat green salads is not likely to enhance safety. The risk of cross contamination from food handlers and food contact surfaces used during washing may outweigh any safety benefit that further washing may confer."
Jon Stewart did a nice job trashing stereotypes of big ag, stem cells and that scientific discovery is planned – all at once. See about 1:48 minutes into the video below.
Michelle Obama promotes fresh produce; how about microbiologically safe produce?
The New York Times continues the fascination with all things Obama this morning as it reports on First Lady Michelle’s focus on fresh produce.
“You know, we want to make sure our guests here and across the nation are eating nutritious items. Collect some fruits and vegetables; bring by some good healthy food. We can provide this kind of healthy food for communities across the country, and we can do it by each of us lending a hand.”
In a speech at the Department of Agriculture last month, Mrs. Obama described herself as “a big believer” in community gardens that provide “fresh fruits and vegetables for so many communities across this nation and world.”
I am too. Brought the seedlings in yesterday as a temporary cold snap hit Kansas, but the greens and asparagus will soon be sprouting from the family garden. I also know fresh produce is also the biggest source of foodborne illness today in the U.S. That’s because it’s fresh, and anything that comes into contact has the potential to contaminate.
So, yeah Michelle, promote the produce, but organic and local do not mean safe. Play up those producers who responsibly manage microbial risks. And if you’re going to put your kids dining habits front and center, you really don’t want them barfing.
Kristen Schaal, otherwise known as Mel from Flight of the Conchords, offered her take on First Lady Michelle last night on the Daily Show.
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.
2 in coma, 6 sick after eating slugs, snails in home-grown produce
Whenever there is an outbreak of Salmonella or E. coli in fresh produce like tomatoes or lettuce, I’m quick to stress that washing does little to remove dangerous microorganisms and that prevention on the farm is the first line of defense.
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But I still wash produce. Like the tomato that some little kid may have emptied his nose on in the grocery aisle – a colleague talking about her sleepless nights notes how she’s drowning in a “sea of snot” from her kid – or been violated by norovirus-laden fingers from a promiscuous shopper, that’s why I wash tomatoes.
Yesterday the Hawaiian state Health Department urged Hawai'i residents to thoroughly wash home-grown vegetables and avoid eating uncooked slugs or snails after several Big Island residents contracted a rare form of meningitis, leaving two of the patients in comas, from accidentally eating tiny slugs on home-grown vegetables.
All contracted a rare form of meningitis — or infection of the spinal fluid — called eosinophilic meningitis or angiostrongyliasis. It is caused by the rat lung-worm parasite, or Angiostrongylus cantonensis, and is spread when snails and slugs eat parasite-infested rat dung and move onto vegetables, where they are eaten by humans.
Yesterday's advisory by the state Department of Health comes in the wake of six probable cases of rat lung-worm in Hawai'i in 2008. All those who got sick were residents of the Big Island and regularly ate fresh raw vegetables from backyard gardens.
State epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park said,
"We are in no way saying that vegetables are unsafe. I would advocate locally grown vegetables — just wash them."
Third-party audits sorta suck
I’ve never been a fan of third-party audits.
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As Ben and I wrote a few years ago,
“On-farm food safety cannot be just a set of formulaic guidelines; rather, it must be specific to an agricultural site to make it work, as suggested by Rangarajan et al (2002). A one-size-fits-all approach will not work, as the individual producer has many different priorities at any given time during the growing season. Participation of stakeholders has been identified as a missing component in all reviewed programmes. Further, third-party audits are an incomplete form of verification that provide a limited view of a producer’s facilities and documentation but do not effectively reduce risk. Audits are analagous to restaurant inspections, a snapshot of a business’s operating procedures and a visual inspection of facilities. It has been suggested that inspection scores for restaurants are subject to inspector inconsistencies and are not predictive of the likelihood of an outbreak (Cruz et al, 2001; Jones et al 2004). This is likely to be true for producer third-party audits as well.”
At some point, folks will figure out that all these outbreaks of foodborne illness – like Salmonella in peanut butter – happened at places that passed so-called independent audits.
As Abraham Mahshie of The Packer wrote last week,
Increasingly, industry officials are calling for a regulatory benchmark that would create science-based food safety standards for third-party auditors. The result, they say, will be a sharp reduction in the cost of third-party audits that are at times repetitive and arbitrary measures of food safety.
“To me, the real issue in the certification, validation, etc. is there is no real scientific basis,” said Robert Buchanan, director of the Center for Food Systems Safety & Security, College Park, Md. “It hasn’t really been worked out to say, ‘these are the key steps that need to be controlled, or need to be achieved.’” …
He said that global GAP certifications, for example, in his opinion do not certify products for safety. … Buchanan said, in many cases, the third-party auditors are not transparent enough for the scientific community to survey and critically analyze what they are actually measuring.
I said that 10 years ago.
Paul Medeiros, food safety consulting manager for Guelph Food Technology Centre, Guelph, Ontario, said in Canada, many growers and government officials are debating how the standards for food safety should be set and who should provide the oversight once standards are in place.
That may keep a bunch of government and grower-types employed – does nothing for food safety.
Focus on what is going to result in fewer sick people.
Powell DA and Chapman BJ: Fresh Threat: What's lurking in your salad bowl? J Sci Food Agric 87:1799 – 1801 (2007)
FDA lax in produce oversight
The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported today that the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to combat foodborne illness are hampered by infrequent inspections, not enough staff and the failure to implement a program devoted to the safety of fresh produce.
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The report said that inspections at produce-processing facilities are rare and that when problems are discovered, the FDA relies on the industry to correct them without oversight or follow-up. …
The report also cited previously unpublished FDA data showing that 14 people died and 10,253 were sickened in 96 outbreaks associated with fresh produce from 1996 through 2006. This summer, salmonella sickened at least 1,440 people in 43 states and Washington, D.C.
But the report found that only 3% of the FDA's food safety budget goes toward efforts to protect fresh produce.
Buying fresh produce is an act of faith: Here's why
Buying any sort of fresh produce is an act of faith. The Associated Press explains why in a story today.
At the end of a dirt road in northern Mexico, the conveyer belts processing hundreds of tons of vegetables a year for U.S. and Mexican markets are open to the elements, protected only by a corrugated metal roof.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspects this packing plant, its warehouse in McAllen, Texas, and a farm in Mexico are among the sources of the United States' largest outbreak of food-borne illness in a decade, which infected at least 1,440 people with a rare form of salmonella.
A plant manager confirmed to The Associated Press that workers handling chili peppers aren't required to separate them according to the sanitary conditions in which they were grown, offering a possible explanation for how such a rare strain of salmonella could have caused such a large outbreak.
The AP has found that while some Mexican producers grow fruits and vegetables under strict sanitary conditions for export to the U.S., many don't — and they can still send their produce across the border easily.
Neither the U.S. nor the Mexican governments impose any safety requirements on farms and processing plants. That includes those using unsanitary conditions — like those at Agricola Zaragoza — and brokers or packing plants that mix export-grade fruits and vegetables with lower-quality produce. …
(There) is no public list of the chains that require sanitary practices, meaning there's no way to know whether the fruit and vegetables in any particular store is certified or not. …
Agricola Zaragoza is one of the uncertified plants, manager Emilio Garcia told the AP. He said the packing plant washes produce from both certified and uncertified producers, opening up the possibility for contamination. He refused to give details about his suppliers. …
Kathy Means, a vice president for the U.S. Produce Marketing Associations, said food safety is in the hands of the food industry, with most major produce buyers requiring both U.S. and foreign food producers to have third-party audit programs. However, Means said, not all buyers follow the same rules.
"It's not government-regulated, so it's up to the company to require it.”
I say, cut the BS and start deliberately marketing food safety. That way, someone has to back it up; not some dance with an auditor or certifier, or some other third party that has nothing to do with credibility and everything to do with providing distance when the shit hits the fan – or the produce.
Salmonella use tails to attach produce; is that how the mouse got in the salad?
A press release from the Food Micro 2008 conference in Aberdeen says that research being presented tomorrow will describe how Salmonella use flagella to attach themselves to produce.
"The new research, led by Professor Gadi Frankel from Imperial College London and carried out with Dr Rob Shaw and colleagues at the University of Birmingham, has uncovered the mechanism used by one particular form of Salmonella called Salmonella enterica serovar Senftenberg, to infect salad leaves, causing a health risk to people who eat them. …
"Professor Frankel and his colleagues at the University of Birmingham found that Salmonella enterica serovar Senftenberg bacteria have a secondary use for their flagella - the long stringy 'propellers' they use to move around. The flagella flatten out beneath the bacteria and cling onto salad leaves and vegetables like long thin fingers. To test this observation the scientists genetically engineered salmonella without flagella in the lab and found that they could not attach themselves to the leaves, and the salad remained uncontaminated."
Professor Frankel was further quoted as saying, "In their efforts to eat healthily, people are eating more salad products, choosing to buy organic brands, and preferring the ease of 'pre-washed' bagged salads from supermarkets, then ever before. All of these factors, together with the globalisation of the food market, mean that cases of Salmonella and E. coli poisoning caused by salads are likely to rise in the future. This is why it's important to get a head start with understanding how contamination occurs now.”
Maybe a mouse used its tail to allow its head to get into a bag of greens served in Malta, packed in the Netherlands and imported from Belgium. The supplier was fired.
No worries for Shawn Dell Joyce, a sustainable artist and activist living in a green home in New York's Mid-Hudson region, who writes that, "when you start asking questions, you begin to see the beauty of eating locally."
Joyce says that local produce is usually grown and harvested within 24 hours of being sold and that local producers tend to be more careful because it is often their own families, friends and neighbors who will eat the produce.
Maybe the Salmonella in that area don’t have flagella.
Let consumers decide about food irradiation
A friend sent me this mock-up of what the organic types may do in response to the approval of irradiation for spinach and lettuce.
Maybe, and the InterWebs are already soaked with screeds about the dangers of the man, and irradiation, but maybe consumers are a little beyond that. So I put out this:
Food irradiation of fresh produce is an additional tool that can help reduce the threat of foodborne illness — but it is not a magic bullet, according to Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has published a final rule allowing the irradiation of fresh iceberg lettuce and fresh spinach, available at: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cfsup185.html
Farmers still need to practice good agricultural practices, and the possibility of post-processing contamination still exists, Powell said, but added that irradiation is safe and should be made available at the retail level.
"There's a lot of people already speaking on behalf of consumers and what they may or may not do," Powell said. "When it comes to food, consumers vote with their wallets at checkout, not on public opinion surveys. I'd really like to see someone step up and offer consumers the choice. There have been enough serious outbreaks of foodborne illness in fresh produce that the interest in irradiated spinach and lettuce should be strong."
Powell can be reached at 785-317-0560 or dpowell@k-state.edu
There's a lot of poop in produce
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Last night, NewStar Fresh Foods of Salinas, Calif., issued a voluntary recall for fresh cilantro because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.Back on July 18, Salmonella Oranienburg was found in both North Carolina and Texas on jalapenos and avacados.
And on July 9, 2008, Lucky Green Trading, Inc. of Garden Grove, CA, recalled its Thai Basil , because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella. Not the Saintpaul, but still Salmonella.
While the suits are playing armchair quarterback and asking for money, they seem to be completely ignoring the microbiological positives that keep showing up in their product.
At what point will the politicians, crusading under the rubric of food safety, begin to ask, what’s with this don’t test, don’t tell policy?
Cause now that FDA and others are looking, there sure seems to be a lot of poop on produce.
Various suits: Clean up your own backyard before shitting in someone else’s.
And as I’ve written before, when it comes to the safety of the food supply, I generally ignore the chatter from Washington, and I’m increasingly ignoring the chatter from the various usual suspects and hangers on, like academics and others looking to promote their own agenda (many in the food safety world are heading to Columbus, Ohio, for the IAFP meeting and I just really don’t want to be there – and won’t). Will any of this grandstanding actually make food safer? Will fewer people get sick?
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Chipotle misses the microbiological mark - again
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Under the plan, 25 percent of at least one of its produce items, including romaine lettuce, green bell and jalapeño peppers and red onions, for each of its 730-plus restaurants, will be sourced from small and mid-sized local farms. I’m all for local food, as long as someone is checking to ensure the microbiological safety of fresh produce. Local does not automatically mean safe.
Tips for buying fresh produce: Ask, hope, pray
The restaurant was voluntarily closed Thursday, cleaned Saturday under the supervision of health department specialists, and plans to reopen Monday.
Marion restaurant owner Bob Gaddy said he had not heard about the salmonella problems. He and his brother, Mack, have run Harvest Drive-In for 35 years. Like O'Dear, Gaddy makes a point of buying tomatoes and produce from somewhere he thinks is safe, but said it's tough to know.
"You ask. But you also hope and pray.”
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Salmonella in tomato toll rises to 138; E. coli in lettuce outbreak appears over
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that tomatoes grown in Texas, California, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina appear to be blameless. Those imported from Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Israel, the Netherlands and Puerto Rico also did not appear to be the source.
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The FDA said preliminary investigations suggest that raw red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes are the source of the problem.Meanwhile, the Washington Health Department said an E. coli outbreak that sickened at least nine people in Pierce and Thurston counties is apparently over and that there have been no new cases since May 29.
A spokesman, Donn Moyer, said the infection apparently came from romaine lettuce that was served at schools or restaurants. Moyer says health officials haven't been able to identify the source for sure, although the Food and Drug Administration is still investigating.
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?
Pathogens in produce: a brief review
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Irrigation water containing raw sewage or improperly treated effluents from sewage treatment plants may contain hepatitis A, Norwalk viruses, or enteroviruses in addition to bacterial pathogens such as E.coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp. and Shigella spp. (Beuchat, 1998). Produce can also be contaminated with pathogens due to internalization of pathogens both through the root system and flesh or stem scars. Evidence of infiltration of bacteria into vegetables is reported in several articles (Bartz 1982; Bartz and Showalter 1981; Burnett et al., 2000; Seo and Frank 1999; Zhuang et al., 1995). Clear evidence exists to conclude that pathogens can be incorporated into fresh produce. So far, this evidence is based on laboratory experiments, not actual real world situations. Past research suggests that pathogens can enter lettuce plants through its roots and end up in the edible leaves. Small gaps in growing roots through which plant pathogens infect tissue may also allow E. coli entry (Solomon et al, 2002b; Warriner et al., 2003a, Warriner et al., 2003b).
The uptake of Salmonella spp. by roots of hydroponically grown tomato plants has been shown. Within one day of exposure to a high concentration mixture of Salmonella spp. pathogen cells were found in the hypocotyls, cotyledons, stems and leaves of young plants; though whether fruit is affected is not known at this time (Guo et al., 2002).
Solomon and colleagues (2002a) discovered that the transmission of E.coli O157:H7 to lettuce was possible through both spray and drip irrigation. They also found that the pathogen persisted on the plants for 20 days following application and submerging the lettuce in a solution of 200ppm chlorine did not eliminate all viable E.coli O157:H7 cells. This suggests that irrigation water of unknown microbial quality should be avoided in lettuce production (Solomon et al., 2002a). In a follow-up experiment, Solomon and colleagues (2002b) explored the transmission of E. coli O157:H7 from manure-contaminated soil and irrigation water to lettuce plants. The researchers recovered viable cells from the inner tissues of the lettuce plants and found that the cells migrated to internal locations in plant tissue and were thus protected from the action of sanitizing agents These experiments demonstrated that E. coli O157:H7 can enter the lettuce plant through the root system and migrate throughout the edible portion of the plant (Solomon et al., 2002b).
The risk of contamination of produce due to Salmonella spp. was found to be increased when soil and water were present, and that soil and water actually act as reservoirs of the pathogen. Xuan and colleagues (2002) found that soil and water were factors in the infiltration of salmonella into the tissues of tomato. This supports the theory that preharvest contact with contaminated soil or water increased the contamination potential by certain pathogens and can lead to problems in pathogen removal and the efficacy of sanitizers.
Flesh scarring can provide a suitable environment for pathogen growth, and decreases the value of employing sanitizers, either in the packing shed or by consumers (Xuan et al., 2002).
The uptake of Salmonella spp. by roots of hydroponically grown tomato plants has also been shown. Within one day of exposure to a high concentration mixture of Salmonella spp. pathogen cells were found in the hypocotyls, cotyledons, stems and leaves of young plants; though whether fruit is affected is not known at this time (Guo et al., 2002).
In a 2006 review, Vectors and conditions for preharvest contamination of fruits and vegetables with pathogens capable of causing enteric diseases, Larry Beuchat of the Center for Food Safety and Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Georgia, concluded:
"Manure, manure compost, sewage, sludge, irrigation water, and runoff water represent
avenues for introduction of pathogenic bacteria, parasites, and viruses to soil in which
fruits and vegetables intended to be eaten raw are grown. Pathogens vary in their
ability to survive in soil amendments and in soil. Inactivation rates and persistence in
soil are also influenced by soil type, rainfall, temperature, and agronomic practices.
Some pathogens can survive in soil for periods of time exceeding those needed to grow
plants from seeds or seedlings to the point of harvest. Pathogens originating from
preharvest environments may contaminate the surface of produce and evidence is
mounting that contamination of internal tissues can also occur. Prevention of
preharvest contamination of fruits and vegetables is an essential part of a systems
approach focused on applying interventions designed to achieve delivery of
microbiologically safe produce to the consumer."
References
Bartz, J.A. 1982. Infiltration of tomatoes immersed at different temperatures to different depths in suspensions of Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora. Plant Disease. 66:302-305.
Bartz, J.A., and R.K. Showalter. 1981. Infiltration of tomatoes by aqueous bacterial suspensions. Phytopathology. 71: 515-518.
Beuchat, 2006. Vectors and conditions for preharvest contamination of fruits and vegetables with pathogens capable of causing enteric diseases. British Food Journal 108 (1): 38-53.
Beuchat, L.R. 1998. Surface decontamination of fruits and vegetables eaten raw: a review. WHO/FSF/FOS/Publication 98.2. World Health Organization. Geneva. 49pp.
Burnett, S.L., Chen. J. and Beuchat, L.R. 2000. Attachment of Escherichia coli O157:H7 to the surfaces and internal structures of apples as detected by confocal scanning laser microscopy. Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 66: 4679-4687.
Guo, X., van Iersel, M. W., Chen, J., Brackett, R. E. and Beuchat, L. R. 2002. Evidence of association of salmonellae with tomato plants grown hydroponically in inoculated nutrient solution. Applied Environmental Microbiology. 68: 3639-3643.
Hedberg, C.W., Angulo, F.J., White, K.E., Langkop, C.W., Schell, W.L., Stobierski M.G., Schuchat, A., Besser, J.M., Dietrich, S., Helsel, L., Griffin, P.M., McFarland J.W. and Osterholm M.T. 1999. Outbreaks of salmonellosis associated with eating uncooked tomatoes: implications for public health. Epidemiology and Infection 122: 385-93.
Seo, K. H., and J. F. Frank. 1999. Attachment of Escherichia coli O157:H7 to lettuce leaf surface and bacterial viability in response to chlorine treatment as demonstrated by using confocal scanning laser microscopy. Journal of Food Protection. 62: 3-9.
Solomon, E. B., Yaron, S., and Matthews, K.R. 2002b. Transmission of Escherichia coli O157:H7 from contaminated manure and irrigation water to lettuce plant tissue and its subsequent internalization. Applied Environmental Microbiology. 68: 397-400.
Solomon, E.B., ,Potenski, C.J. and Matthews, K.R. 2002a. Effect of irrigation method on transmission to and persistence of Escherichia coli O157:H7 on lettuce. Journal of Food Protection. 65: 673–676.
Warriner K., Ibrahim F., Dickinson M,. Wright C. and Waites W.M. 2003a. Internalization of human pathogens within growing salad vegetables. Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering Reviews. 20: 117-134.
Warriner K., Ibrahim F., Dickinson M,. Wright C. and Waites W.M. 2003b. Interaction of Escherichia coli with growing salad spinach plants. Journal of Food Protection. 66: 1790-1797.
Xuan, G., Jinru, C., Brackett, R.E., Beuchat, L.R. 2002. Survival of salmonella on tomatoes stored at high relative humidity, in soil, and on tomatoes in contact with soil. Journal of Food Protection. 65: 274-279.
Zhuang, R.-Y., Beuchat, L.R. and Angulo. F.J. 1995. Fate of Salmonella montevideo on and in raw tomatoes as affected by temperature and treatment with chlorine. Applied Environmental Microbiolology. 61: 2127-2131.
Bugs can enter and grow in fresh veggies: washing is not enough
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Work carried out by a team led by geneticist Prof. Heribert Hirt, and published today in PloS ONE, shows that the strain of bacteria known as Salmonella typhimurium can also invade, and multiply inside, plant cells. It is already known that Salmonella can survive for up to 900 days in contaminated soils, which creates a rich source of infection for plant material. However, Prof. Hirt's team can now show that bacteria from such a source can actively achieve the infection of plant cells, thereby disproving the previous assumption that infection was coincidental and - as regards the bacteria - passive."We marked individual bacteria with a fluorescent protein, which enabled us to observe them as they quite clearly penetrated root cells and multiplied. Just three hours after the bacteria came into contact with the roots, they had penetrated inside the cells of the finest root hairs. 17 hours later, the cells inside of the roots had also become infected. …
"The defence mechanisms fail completely. Although regulating proteins such as the two mitogen-activated protein kinases 3 and 6 are activated just 15 minutes after Salmonella has infected the plant, they cannot prevent the bacteria from multiplying. Another defence mechanism, which is activated by the plant messengers salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and ethylene, proves similarly ineffective. Although these messengers are important to coregraph the plant defense responses, they too are unable to halt the infection."
Previous work has shown that pathogens can enter the inside of tomatoes, leafy greens and cantaloupe. The current work once again demonstrates that food safety begins on the farm, and that food safety messages to cook, clean, chill and separate are seriously deficient. To quote again from the press release,
"If, as has now been discovered, Salmonella survives and multiplies in plant cells, then washing raw fruit and vegetables does nothing to prevent food poisoning."
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Salmonella outbreak plagues Princeton
Princeton Regional Health Department officer David Henry said Salmonella can be carried in uncooked food, including produce. In a fine example of finding a factoid on the Interwebs and using it in a meaningless manner, the story says,
Salmonella bacteria have in recent years grown resistant to certain antibiotics that have been used to promote growth in livestock, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If they've pulled items, it's probably the produce.
Home gardeners 'disconnected' from sources of foodborne illness
With spring just around the corner, I've started some seeds (right, interspersed amongst the French literature books that Amy is fond of) and started working the soil.It's also time for a new crop of stories about how local food is safer, better and just all around morally superior. Like the Arizona Republic last week, which stated,
"An increasing number of consumers hit hard by escalating food costs are, planting backyard gardens to save grocery dollars while protecting the environment against pollutants and themselves against tainted food."
Architects Miro Chun and Bryan White of Phoenix were cited as saying the garden provides a plentiful supply of organic produce, fits in well with their commitment to eat as locally as possible and gives them peace of mind when food-safety scares erupt, with Chun quoted as saying, "We were glad we could pick spinach out of our garden when spinach was making people ill."
Maybe. Depends on what was in the soil. From the backyard to a farmer's field, the basics are the same, especially with fresh produce that is not going to be cooked: know the source of water, know what is being added to the soil, and wash your damn hands.
Researchers from the northeast U.S. reported in the Feb. 2008 Food Protection Trends that based on interviews with 94 home gardeners of fruits and vegetables that,
"Home gardeners, although they acknowledged that they could get sick from consuming produce, did not seem to be aware that contamination could come from a variety of sources such as soil, compost, fresh manure and/or the water supply. Results indicated that there was a 'disconnect,' or lack of understanding, of the sources and mechanisms of pathogenic bacterial contamination as related to its homegrown produce."
This is common. Think like a microorganism and most problems can be predicted and prevented. Be the bug.
Hepatitis A scare at New York Wegmans store
Anyone who handled or ate raw produce purchased from the Wegmans on Sheridan Drive since January 7th is asked to contact their doctor or get treated at free clinics this weekend.Produce shelves at the Wegmans store on Sheridan Drive were empty last night after the store pulled all potentially contaminated products.
The Erie County Health Department is hosting clinics at the Erie Community College north campus from 4 p.m. to midnight Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday. For more information call 1-800-808-1987.
Wegmans spokesperson Ann McCarthy said,
"We will be doing, as we've done in the past, making automated phone calls to customers who would have purchased potentially affected products from our Sheridan Drive store."
Additional information about hepatitis A can be found at
www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hepatitis/a/
Dude, wash your hands. And don't eat poop.
Safe Food Cafe - Handwashing in the produce industry
Are bathrooms a good indicator for food safety practices?
The next time you go into a restaurant, I highly recommend that you visit the restroom first to check out the sanitation conditions of the establishment before ordering and eating your meal. Give it the old once-, twice- and three-times-over inspection. If it passes your examination, the restaurant must have high cleanliness standards.
Really? Pelger sounds pretty trusting. There is some great literature that suggests that inspection scores are not a good indicator of whether a restaurant is going to make someone ill. Should consumers also ask to see the conditions of the bathrooms and port-a-potties on farms and make decisions based on that? I don't think so. I think we should be basing our decisions on what a produce distributor (grower/packer/shipper) can prove about the food safety practices on the farm, not what is possible to clean-up in preparation for a planned audit.
Pelger also writes:
There are many scenarios in the produce industry that can lead to product contamination. Through a sophisticated trace-back process, product can be traced to its original source. In the recent past, foodborne illness outbreaks were linked to spinach, lettuce and tomatoes. These cases have been traced back to their sources and the problems corrected. But what about areas other than farms? Could contamination be happening in other links of the food chain as well?
Pelger is right that food safety is a farm-to-fork, food system issue -- but he unfortunately comes across as whining about how it's not always farms (true) without suggesting how the entire supply chain should get together and address it. If an industry truly believes in the everyone-has-a-role-to-play mantra, they should help their partners (upstream and downstream) in producing safe food. And tell everyone about it.
Food safety begins on the farm ...
… and the kitchen is the last line of defense. Yet groups like FightBac in the U.S. and something called the Food Safety Information Society in Alberta continue to focus exclusively on the kitchen. The Alberta group today issued a press release today to tell consumers that "what you don't know about produce can harm you," provided a bunch of tips about washing and handling, and concluded by saying, "if bacteria have been absorbed by the vegetables, washing will not eliminate them."
These groups need to go beyond the consumer-only focus to a true farm-to-fork food safety system, or at least follow the advice of the World Heath Organization which also recommends using safe water and raw materials -- in other words, source food from safe sources.
Should bagged salads be washed at home?
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Yes, says one of Britain's leading microbiologists, Professor John Threlfall, of the government's Health Protection Agency (HPA). The Scotsman reports today that Threlfall said prepared salads and other "ready-to-eat" foods pose a salmonella threat and he urged consumers to disregard assurances on packaging and wash the contents again before eating.
The U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA) also agreed that extra precautions may be necessary with pre-washed products, with a spokesman quoted as saying,
"Our advice is to wash all lettuce, including bagged lettuce, when you get it home. We will review this advice if we receive extra evidence and reassurances from the industry about their cleaning processes."
No, says the industry, some government agencies and some academics. The products are sufficiently washed at the processing facility, are ready-to-eat, and there is a potential for cross-contamination.
David Barney of the Fresh Prepared Salads Producer Group, which represents UK salad companies, was quoted as saying,
"I am very puzzled by this advice. I don't understand why he is saying this and we would strongly argue against it. Our cleaning processes are robust and well-managed. The wash the salad gets is as good as any wash you would give in the home, and washing it again at home is not going to make a substantive difference to the safety of the product. … There is almost no food-borne illness directly associated with retail prepared salads, because the washing systems have been particularly good. ... It's widely known that kitchens - and particularly kitchen sinks - are the source of much cross-contamination."
What's missing in all of this is data to support either recommendation. And the question is the wrong one, focusing on what consumers can do. Washing of fresh produce, particularly leafy greens like spinach and lettuce, is of limited use in removing dangerous microorganisms. The contamination, especially with E. coli O157 and Salmonella, must be prevented on the farm. A 2005 article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution discussing some aspects of the issue is available here.
A table of known outbreaks of verotoxigenic E. coli -- including but not limited to E. coli O157:H7 -- associated with fresh spinach and lettuce is available at http://foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=903.
Not sure how this will increase produce food safety
The story says that officials believe that produced tainted with bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella, will have a harder time ending up in the hands of consumers because the dept of ag can conduct more inspections (and cut their per-inspection time down to an hour)
"The introduction of the Fresh Electronic Inspection Reporting/Resource System allows inspectors to input inspection data, such as sugar content and produce quality, into special software developed specifically for that purpose."
It's believed that by cutting down inspection time, there will be more time for more government random checks.
Maybe it will increase the visibility of inspectors on the farm, but I'm not convinced that more generic inspection is the way to go -- having people on farms help farmers reduce risk (either through extension or industry consulting -- people who know the risks, and how to manage them) seems a lot more productive to me. There is research to suggest that more restaurant inspections do not lead to a reduction of the likelihood of illnesses. Farms may be different, but I'm not sure.
I'm not versed in the Arizona Department of Ag's inspection regime, but I did a quick search of the site and didn't find any reference to inspecting for good agricultureal practices (searched "inspection" and all I got was the press release saying that they are using the new technology).
Don't eat poop ... and if you're going to, cook it
Steve Gustafson, program manager for a California county’s Division of Environmental Health, shared some frank words wth the Eureka Reporter about poop:"Most people like their beef and steaks undercooked. It’s a delicacy. For a whole cut, that may be OK. But, ground meat — beef or poultry — is suspect because it’s been handled. It could have bacteria and must be cooked to safe temperatures to kill the bugs and waste produce. … Eating cooked feces can’t hurt you. That’s our joke and it’s true."
Don't eat poop. Either keep it out or cook it.
Acknowledge risks, and stop spinning
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The Perishable Pundit recounts how some Canadian newspapers wrote puff pieces on produce food safety and how a lot of it was import related. The Pundit then uncritically says, "Thanks to Danny Dempster and the Canadian Produce Marketing Association for manning the barricade" and apparently responding with PR palp.
Here's our note in response on produce food safety. And we are all behind and work with farmers who want to do the right microbiological thing.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) estimates that 11-13 million Canadians -- about 30 per cent of the population -- get sick from the food and water they consume each and every year.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control place their estimate at 76 million-- about 25 per cent -- of Americans who also get sick from food and water. The Australians put the figure closer to 30 per cent, as does the World Health Organization. The Australian and American estimates are based on active surveillance – which means that health officials go out and test collections of stool samples for the various bugs that make people poop and puke.
Estimates such as these suggest that food safety is a pretty big deal for everyone, including farmers, processors, grocers, restaurateurs and consumers.
Dr. Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety recently told a scientific meeting that in the 25 years preceding 1997, there were 190 outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with fresh produce in the U.S. and that in the five years that followed, that number jumped to 249. Doyle predicted that produce and other foods from plants will be the dominant vehicles for foodborne illnesses, accounting for more than 50 per cent of all illnesses.
A group at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affair (OMAFRA) estimates that 41 per cent of foodborne illness in Ontario can be attributed to produce. This exceeds every other food group including meat, fish, dairy and eggs.
Dan Dempster, president of the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, says they are all wrong (Fruits, veggies don't deserve a bad rap, Calgary Herald, August 21).
Dempster, as the head of a food industry lobby group, apparently got a peak at a PHAC study that no one else has seen -- at least not publicly -- and claimed that fewer than 3 per cent of the 1,127 outbreaks of foodborne illness reported in Canada over the past eight years were definitively linked to fresh fruits and vegetables, and that produce "is actually the safest fresh food group."
Not having special access to the study, we can only speculate as to the source of Dempster's claims, but, having worked with farmers who grow fresh produce in Canada for the past decade, as well as the international scientific and regulatory community, Dempster's argument seems to hinge on the use of the word “definitively.”
So very little is definitive in outbreaks of foodborne illness (although the outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 200 and killed four last fall was definitively linked to fresh produce -- spinach). Fresh produce is the single biggest source of foodborne illness in North America today, precisely because it is fresh. There is no kill step. The challenge is to maximize a healthy diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables while actively minimizing the very real risks.
It's easy to write off Dempster's article as a marketing puff piece -- which it is --especially since he had a real opportunity to acknowledge the risks associated with fresh fruits and vegetables and focus on the proactive efforts of the produce industry is taking to actively reduce them.
Dr. Douglas Powell is scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University and Ben Chapman is a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph.
My money's on Doyle
Who would you believe?Dr. Michael Doyle (pictured), director of the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety told the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting and Food Expo that in the 25 years preceding 1997, there were 190 outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with fresh produce. In the five years that followed, that number jumped to 249. The list of offenders varied from lettuce, melons and seed sprouts to apple juice, orange juice and tomatoes.
Doyle predicts that produce and other foods from plants will be the dominant vehicles for foodborne illnesses, accounting for more than 50 percent of all illnesses currently estimated at more than 70 million cases a year.
Dan Dempster, president, Canadian Produce Marketing Association, told several Canadian papers that fewer than 3 per cent of the 1,127 outbreaks of foodborne illness reported in Canada were definitively linked to fresh fruits and vegetables, and that produce "is actually the safest fresh food group," based on an unpublished study that apparently the industry has been privy too.
I'll stick with Dr. Doyle.
Bill Marler on line 1
Fall fair season is fast approaching, and more than ever, promoters are proactively and publicly saying, this is what we do to reduce the risk of food safety problems, this is what we do to reduce the risk of problems with petting zoos.Pennsylvania's Centre County Grange Encampment and Fair published an extensive list of risks and steps to reduce risks yesterday.
Today it was Kentucky, promoting the safety steps undertaken by state and local health-types to reduce food safety risks.
It's a refreshing change from the defensive-it's-not-me stance adopted by many other groups specializing in Paleolithic-era communications, such as the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, whose president today published an op-ed in a small Canadian paper (so small it doesn't have a web presence, but it was in FSnet and is on our web site) claiming that fresh produce is the "the safest fresh food group" based on a Public Health Agency of Canada study that apparently the industry, but no one else, has already seen.
More about this later.
Dr. Doyle speaks
Michael Doyle (pictured), director of the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety told Georgia's Lakefront Hartwell that the food safety problem isn't where the food comes from, but how it's grown or processed before it reaches American soil."The centuries-old tradition of using human excreta on farmland is widespread in East Asia, especially in China and Vietnam. And unsanitary polluted water is used in production and processing. The result of these practices is contamination by harmful microbes such as Salmonella."
"The food industry, whether it be growers, manufacturers or distributors, is responsible for providing safe foods. And regulatory agencies need more rapid and robust sampling and detection methods to verify that foods, especially those that are imported, are safe from harmful microbes and chemicals."
Love the gloves.
