Aunt Jemima mix recall due to Salmonella
Quaker Oats announced yesterday that it is recalling a limited amount of pancake and waffle mixes due to potential Salmonella contamination. I wrote a couple of weeks back about sesame seeds and Salmonella, and how dried goods (like seeds, nuts and flour) seem to be prone to Salmonella contamination.
Quick hits on this recall:
1. Interesting to me that the FDA's press release and Quaker Oats press release includes this line (and it is in italics on the FDA site, as to highlight it):
There is very low risk of illness when preparation directions on box are followed and product is not consumed raw or undercooked. Salmonella bacteria is killed at a temperature of 160° F.
After Conagra's meat pie communication I didn't think we'd see consumer control messages like this. I wonder how hot pancakes get? Or waffles, it's kind of hard to use a thermometer on them. I like my waffles kind of light, just cooked enough to not fall apart. Not sure what the literature says on this one.
2. Quaker Oats has great information on their website already (here, at top, and here), with a nice graphic on how to handle the recall. The consumer information on Aunt Jemima's graphic doesn't include the undercooked message that the press releases do. Especially love that people can sign-up for ongoing info -- good preparation on Quaker Oats' part.
Quick hits on this recall:
1. Interesting to me that the FDA's press release and Quaker Oats press release includes this line (and it is in italics on the FDA site, as to highlight it):
There is very low risk of illness when preparation directions on box are followed and product is not consumed raw or undercooked. Salmonella bacteria is killed at a temperature of 160° F.
After Conagra's meat pie communication I didn't think we'd see consumer control messages like this. I wonder how hot pancakes get? Or waffles, it's kind of hard to use a thermometer on them. I like my waffles kind of light, just cooked enough to not fall apart. Not sure what the literature says on this one.
2. Quaker Oats has great information on their website already (here, at top, and here), with a nice graphic on how to handle the recall. The consumer information on Aunt Jemima's graphic doesn't include the undercooked message that the press releases do. Especially love that people can sign-up for ongoing info -- good preparation on Quaker Oats' part.
Today's ifsn infosheet: ground beef products linked to outbreak
Today's infosheet focuses on an outbreak of E. coli O157 linked to ground beef and ground beef products served at restaurants in the US. We use the outbreak and recall to highlight the importance of handling ground beef and patties properly in kitchens, including proper cooking,
keeping foods separate, using clean equipment and handwashing. You can download the infosheet here.
keeping foods separate, using clean equipment and handwashing. You can download the infosheet here.
Food Safety on film
The International Food Safety Network can now be found on YouTube! We’ve posted our first video, which covers the recent E. coli O157:H7 outbreak associated with pepperoni on frozen pizzas. More videos should show up soon, so make sure to subscribe to us on the right side of the video.
Video Link
iFSN's YouTube profile
Video Link
iFSN's YouTube profile
OMG! Christmas could be ruined
Reuters is reporting that Godiva Chocolatier is recalling Christmas chocolates in Asia and Europe after two pieces of metal fragments were discovered last month in two boxes of the chocolate made in France and sold in Japan Godiva Chocolatier is a unit of Campbell Soup Co.
Non-O157 STEC meeting
US Food Safety and Inspection Service is co-hosting a public meeting on non-O157 E. coli tomorrow.
FSIS's press release from October states: "Currently only one strain, E. coli O157:H7 is considered an adulterant in meat. The CDC has reported an increase in the number of non-O157:H7 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infections from 2000 to 2005. Outbreaks from these organisms have been reported in the U.S. since 1990, and foodborne exposures have been suspected in many of these outbreaks.
The purpose of the meeting is to solicit input from academia, consumers, other public health and regulatory agencies and industry on the issue of whether non-O157:H7 STECs should be considered to be adulterants as E. coli O157:H7."
This meeting strikes me as a cool thing -- publicly discussing whether to increase the adulterant list in an open and transparent way. This meeting has led to us to pull together a selection of non-O157 outbreaks (not just the STEC ones), which can be found below, and the USDA has posted a table of 13 non-O157 STEC outbreaks (page 40), which we have reproduced below.
Wonder how the conagra pot-pie outbreak recall/non-recall would have played out had strains of Salmonella been declared adulterants, or if the Topps outbreak driven recall would have changed if E. coli O157:H7 wasn't an adulterant.
For barfblog readers in the D.C. area the public meeting will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the George Mason University Arlington campus, 3401 N. Fairfax Drive, Room 244, Arlington, Va., 22201.
FSIS's press release from October states: "Currently only one strain, E. coli O157:H7 is considered an adulterant in meat. The CDC has reported an increase in the number of non-O157:H7 Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) infections from 2000 to 2005. Outbreaks from these organisms have been reported in the U.S. since 1990, and foodborne exposures have been suspected in many of these outbreaks.
The purpose of the meeting is to solicit input from academia, consumers, other public health and regulatory agencies and industry on the issue of whether non-O157:H7 STECs should be considered to be adulterants as E. coli O157:H7."
This meeting strikes me as a cool thing -- publicly discussing whether to increase the adulterant list in an open and transparent way. This meeting has led to us to pull together a selection of non-O157 outbreaks (not just the STEC ones), which can be found below, and the USDA has posted a table of 13 non-O157 STEC outbreaks (page 40), which we have reproduced below.
Wonder how the conagra pot-pie outbreak recall/non-recall would have played out had strains of Salmonella been declared adulterants, or if the Topps outbreak driven recall would have changed if E. coli O157:H7 wasn't an adulterant.
For barfblog readers in the D.C. area the public meeting will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., at the George Mason University Arlington campus, 3401 N. Fairfax Drive, Room 244, Arlington, Va., 22201.
They call me...Tater Salad.
Mmm…nothing starts off the semester like a well-charred burger and a heaping pile of tater salad. But like Ron White, this tater salad should not be out in pub-lic.
I was recently a guest at a “welcome back” picnic along with about fifty other students. A few of the dozen or so faculty in attendance grilled up a box full of beef patties and tossed them in a pile for us all to assemble and consume in traditional picnic fashion. I looked them over, picked a luke warm specimen out of the bunch and threw it on a bun with ketchup. But was it done? It certainly looked done, but charred as it may appear, color is no indicator of doneness.
The star of the show, however, was really the five tubs of Kroger brand Mustard Potato Salad lying open on the adjacent table. “Poop Salad" as it was recently dubbed by a ColumbusING blogger from Columbus, Ohio, where E. coli O157:H7 was found in the salads during a routine safety check. This was after the product was distributed and sold, of course. (That’s just the way these things work.) So Kroger did the socially responsible thing and issued a recall in attempt to remove the possibly tainted salad out of the refrigerators of innocent people and dispose of it properly.
So how does a recall happen? The information goes out: newspapers are picking up the story, TV news crews are spreading the word, satellites in outer space are linking up… but people are sitting around eating recalled potato salad like there’s just a little guy in a booth tapping Morse code and sad little beepings just can’t keep up.
It’s sad that it seems so true. Somebody out there is not keeping up. But who? During the recent Castleberry chili recall people were still eating the stuff, not knowing there could be a botulism toxin inside, weeks after the recall was announced.
How do we get people to care about the safety of the food they eat? “I was tainted on a production line (possibly),” the tater salad cries. “You threw me…in-to pub-lic.” But the public isn’t paying any attention.
Casey Wilkinson is an undergrad research student at iFSN, and she loves her mom's tater salad.
I was recently a guest at a “welcome back” picnic along with about fifty other students. A few of the dozen or so faculty in attendance grilled up a box full of beef patties and tossed them in a pile for us all to assemble and consume in traditional picnic fashion. I looked them over, picked a luke warm specimen out of the bunch and threw it on a bun with ketchup. But was it done? It certainly looked done, but charred as it may appear, color is no indicator of doneness.
The star of the show, however, was really the five tubs of Kroger brand Mustard Potato Salad lying open on the adjacent table. “Poop Salad" as it was recently dubbed by a ColumbusING blogger from Columbus, Ohio, where E. coli O157:H7 was found in the salads during a routine safety check. This was after the product was distributed and sold, of course. (That’s just the way these things work.) So Kroger did the socially responsible thing and issued a recall in attempt to remove the possibly tainted salad out of the refrigerators of innocent people and dispose of it properly.
So how does a recall happen? The information goes out: newspapers are picking up the story, TV news crews are spreading the word, satellites in outer space are linking up… but people are sitting around eating recalled potato salad like there’s just a little guy in a booth tapping Morse code and sad little beepings just can’t keep up.
It’s sad that it seems so true. Somebody out there is not keeping up. But who? During the recent Castleberry chili recall people were still eating the stuff, not knowing there could be a botulism toxin inside, weeks after the recall was announced.
How do we get people to care about the safety of the food they eat? “I was tainted on a production line (possibly),” the tater salad cries. “You threw me…in-to pub-lic.” But the public isn’t paying any attention.
Casey Wilkinson is an undergrad research student at iFSN, and she loves her mom's tater salad.
