Colts win in stunner; stadium food service company denies media access to witness food safety improvements
Maybe it was the stadium food that somehow lifted the Indianapolis Colts to a stunning come-from-behind 35-34 victory over the New England Patriots in another chapter of the U.S. football rivalry of 
the decade, Peyton Manning (right) versus Tom Brady (below, left).
After being hammered by local health types, the folks who run the food concessions at Lucas Oil Stadium swooped into town and promised to set things straight. WISH went out to ask some tailgaters to see how confident were about buying food inside the stadium.
Tailgater Glen Vigar reacted to the news,"(It's) a little scary. I mean it's a brand new building. I wouldn't expect it."
Vigar said that he wouldn't eat the food there anymore.
Centerplate said it planned to have 15 of its own food safety inspectors inside the stadium Sunday to make sure conditions are clean.
24-Hour News 8 had asked to be inside the stadium to see how that was going, but a Centerplate spokesperson denied that request.
Supermarket Guru says stickers on clamshells a good food safety idea to go
Supermarket Guru picked up on our food safety stickers for takeout food and suggested it was one way retailers could turn food safety into a competitive advantage, and wrest takeout business from nearby restaurants.
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Which was exactly one of our thoughts when we began experimenting with food safety stickers about five years ago.
While SupermarketGuru.com doesn’t know the full details of their proposed label, we suggest that besides basic date and serving information, it also clearly states whether a food might contain allergens like peanuts or gluten. In our opinion, supermarkets have failed so far to truly differentiate themselves in prepared foods and easy takeout. This is one value-added step that could help food stores retain the takeout volume that fell in their laps when the economy cratered, and people curbed their restaurant visits. They didn’t really earn the windfall, but they got it, and now they have to address consumer concerns about food safety in order to burnish their image as takeout sources.
Perhaps a special opportunity for this approach is in the small-format stores modeled after Tesco’s Fresh & Easy, which emphasize takeout offerings, and are already battling convenience stores, which are stepping up their meal programs. Safe food-handling stickers could add professionalism to the displays and confidence in consumers, and make the prepared foods section a more frequent destination.
We'll work with anyone who is interested in developing the sticker concept for their own food business -- large or small. Any new sticker would have a different phone number and website than those depicted (below) and would be based on research tailored to a specific operation.
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Customer can't get south of the border, shoots Taco Bell staff
It must suck to work in food service. Minimum wage, nerds like me telling staff to pay attention to food safety, and occasionally getting shot at by customers.
A man who was refused service around three in the morning by staff at Taco Bell on the outskirts of Miami waited outside in his white sports utility vehicle and when staff exited, he shot and wounded one female employee in the leg.
The victim was treated at a local hospital. Police are asking for help with their inquiry.
The Zoonoses Diaries: Caught at Cat town
Vet school doesn’t leave much time for extracurricular activities (especially during second year classes), but I try my best to stay relatively well rounded throughout these four years of academic boot camp. One of my favorite weekend activities is Cat town, a tailgating area near the football stadium here at K-State. (Doug talked about it yesterday) Each home football game has a different Vet med-associated club volunteer to help serve food at Cat town, and yesterday’s game against Tennessee Tech was CVMF’s day (Christian Veterinary Medical Fellowship). As a CVMF member, I helped to set up and serve lunch to the tailgaters. In typical vet student fashion, some brought their pets to the event. One of my classmates has two beautiful black-capped caiques that are always a big hit at Vet med events, and we had them strategically placed at the t-shirt selling booth to attract people to support the second year class.
Now to defend myself, when serving I wore my food-serving plastic gloves in aseptic fashion. I didn’t touch my face with my fingers or sneeze into my hands. I wish there would’ve been hand sanitizer available before I put my gloves on, because serving food hygienically involves a combination of good hand washing and regular glove changes. We only had one server touching food directly
(handing out burger buns) and everyone else used a utensil such as a spoon, knife or tongs to serve food along with gloves. During the slower parts of the afternoon, I would take breaks to chat with people and often drift over to see the birds, Monty and Apple (right). They are very charming little creatures, so I took full advantage of holding them and kissing them (glove-free).
Lo and behold, who shows up to Cat town but my food-safety boss Doug Powell. He eyes my classmate and I suspiciously as we hold the birds on our fingers and give them kisses on the beak, all while enjoying burgers and cake (pretty much doing everything the CDC recommends avoiding). Amy and Sorenne got an especially close look at the birds. In the background Doug said, “Keep that Salmonella factory away from my baby.” There’s the Doug I know, always thinking about the potential pathogens.
Later in the afternoon I chatted with my classmate about her food safety practices with the birds. She goes on to tell me that she frequently consumes food around her birds, and has never had any sickness in the past that could be related to the birds. While feeding the birds potatoes salad from her own fork, she tells me that she may have gotten Salmonella from them in the past, but she’s been around them so much that her body may have developed a tolerance to the bacterium. She has never has them tested to see if they carry Salmonella in their feces, though most birds do.
I’m thankful that my classmate has never had any sickness related to her birds, but that may not be the case for the rest of the nation. The young, elderly and other immunocompromised individuals are most likely to contract a zoonotic disease when handling pets. Practicing good food safety habits such as washing your hands thoroughly and cooking your meat to the proper temperature can help reduce the risk of food borne disease. Also, don’t kiss animals to allow them to lick your face, especially not in front of your boss.
No baby shoes, no service at Burger King
Sorenne turns 8-months-old tomorrow. Being in Florida, Amy bought her some flip-flops. But that’s about it for shoes.
However, a Burger King manager took the no shirt, no shoes, no service policy to some extremes and threatened to call police on a mom because her 6-month-old baby wasn’t wearing shoes in the restaurant.
Seriously, who would want to put a six month old on the floor of a Burger King?
The video below explains:
Food handlers don't have time
Researchers at Kansas State published the results of a study of the barriers to food safety practices of food handlers. Conducting focus groups with 159 food handlers, split into 2 groups, the researchers report that food handlers not only have a lack of food safety knowledge but also often a lack of understanding why employees should comply with food safety guidelines.
Yep. Totally. So what do we do about it?
The recommendations the researchers provide are:
-Provide regular food safety training to their foodservice employees;
(sure, except training for knowledge change on it’s own doesn’t do much, as they state in their press release)
-Educate employees about the consequences of improper food handling to improve attitudes toward food safety; (we prefer to use “compel” instead of educate, education is too limiting).
-Place signs about consequences of improper food handling in food production areas; (kind of like our food safety infosheets?)
And three food safety culture ideas -- (at barfblog we’ve been talking about food safety culture for a while, as have Frank Yiannas and Chris Griffith):
-Encourage food safety compliance with verbal reminders and praise;
-Be good role models;
-Incorporate food safety practices into employees' daily routines to eliminate the perceptions that they do not have time to perform them.
Hey this is great -- but what’s missing is the how. Just telling managers to make more time for food handlers isn’t very realistic. Food safety communications types, us included, need to get out and start testing food safety culture and measure behavior. And share the results so everyone can build on it.
I presented some similar findings of food handler barriers at IAFP 2007 and some qualitative data on food safety practices at food service (highlighting time pressures especially) at IAFP 2008. I don’t think the solution to time pressures is telling the industry to slow down, or more "education". I think we need to engineer processes and equipment (like self sanitizing knives), look to new tools (like using sanitizer during busy times, instead of handwashing) -- and test them. If they work, and they don’t slow the kitchen down, it’s an easy sell.
Our research in food safety culture needs to move to show me, don't tell me.
If you're sick, stay at home
"In this outbreak, vomiting by a line cook at the work station might have contributed to transmission … Because of the open physical layout of the restaurant, no barrier impeded airborne spread of the virus from the kitchen to the main dining area."Or so concludes the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in its write-up of a Jan. 2006 norovirus outbreak in Michigan (it was a Carrabba's Italian Grill in Lansing, Mich.) in which "at least 364 restaurant patrons became ill with gastroenteritis after dining at a restaurant where employees had reported to work while ill."
At the time of the outbreak, a food service employee in Lansing wrote that, "What happened at Carrabba's could occur at any of our local eateries. Not because their kitchens are not clean, not because they don't follow all of the safety standards, but because sick employees report to work. There is an internal peer pressure to report to work even when you are ill, not to mention that a day without pay can be crucial for some families."
As I wrote in Feb. 2006,
The industry spokesthingies may say that sick employees should not work, but the reality is, no work, no pay. So, for the food industry, tell your sick employees to stay at home, and perhaps even provide incentives, like allowing for a couple of sick days. The cost of a few workers abusing the system pales in comparison to the lawsuits and lost business.
Following the outbreak, the Barry-Eaton District Health Department (where Lansing, MI, is located) issued four recommendations (based on previously published guidelines) for infection control and environmental decontamination after any vomiting incident in a food-service establishment (what to do after someone barfs):
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• Any exposed food or single-service articles (e.g., drinking straws, takeout containers, and paper napkins) should be discarded, and all surface areas within at least a 25-foot radius of the vomiting site should be disinfected with a bleach solution;• ill employees should be excluded from work for at least 72 hours after symptoms subside, and employees returning after a gastrointestinal illness should be restricted from handling kitchenware or ready-to-eat food for an additional 72 hours;
• because thorough disinfection might be necessary, partial or complete closure of the food establishment should be considered after a vomiting incident
• restrooms used during or after a vomiting incident should be closed immediately until they are disinfected properly with bleach solution.
