Bye bye, listservs
This is what I sent out to all the previous subscribers of my various listservs over the years. I'm grateful for all the support I received and still pissed that the University of Guelph just scooped up the leftover money for their paper clip fund. Seriously, I left $140,000 that all you great supporters provided for news, and Guelph just sucked it up. Why anyone would ever give them another dime is beyond me. But I'm just a widget; I get that.
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The listserv you have been subscribed to no longer exists. All of the activities of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University have been consolidated under bites.ksu.edu.
The 9,000 or so direct subscribers to fsnet-l have been transferred to bites-l. We’re still working on a daily digest version, so will keep the istserv going for now.
It’s a listserv, and you can subscribe with instructions below.
The fastest way to get breaking food safety news is to subscribe to barfblog.com. We’re also working on moving all the barfblog history to bites.ksu.edu.
The University of Guelph copyrighted the name, Food Safety Network in Canada, without telling anybody. And then they shut it down (no one ever talked with me, they just wanted the cash; what total assholes). I decided the name was old. A Network was cool before Al Gore invented the Internet in 1995, but now?
So everything is at bites.ksu.edu.
And everything is archived at http://archives.foodsafety.ksu.edu/fsnet-archives.htm and bites.ksu.edu
You can subscribe to bites-l
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Dr. Douglas Powell
associate professor, food safety
dept. diagnostic medicine/pathobiology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS
66506
cell: 785-317-0560
fax: 785-532-4039
dpowell@ksu.edu
bites.ksu.edu
barfblog.com
Farmers -- organic, conventional and otherwise - need to focus on microbial food safety
Organic is an industry, just like any other industry. While the organic folks may have cornered the language involving sustainable, natural and healthy, they use the same promotional BS that any big food company would use.
That’s why they use pictures like the one, right, to portray the organic industry. I look at the picture and wonder where those hands have been and what kind of poop is being spread on that fresh produce.
The same organic folks who criticize industry for putting out promotional brochures and information are guilty of … putting out promotional brochures and information.
Taste the Change: How to Go Organic on Campus, is described as “the nation’s first guide for students who want to bring organic dining to campus is now available for download. This ground-breaking student guide is dedicated to feeding the organic revolution on campus.”
I have no idea why a guide that includes “Media Outreach” and “Free Food Never Fails” is considered ground-breaking, but the new brochure does follow the equally abysmal, Organic: It’s Worth It. And once again, the organic folks explicitly state that organic is a production standard, not a food safety standard.
“Organic production is based on a system of farming that maintains and replenishes soil fertility without the use of toxic and persistent pesticides and fertilizers.”
The N.Y. Times pointed out the same thing a few days ago: organic does not mean safer; it’s a lifestyle choice. But the organics industry keeps hinting at health benefits.
“Organic agriculture minimizes children’s exposure to toxic and persistent pesticides in the soil in which they play, the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the foods they eat.”
As Katija and I pointed out in our 2004 paper, Microbial Food Safety Considerations for Organic Produce Production: An Analysis of Canadian Organic Production Standards Compared with US FDA Guidelines for Microbial Food Safety,
“The production of safe food is the responsibility of everyone in the farm-to-fork chain. With established relationships between growers and regulatory infrastructure, the CGSB organic standard would be an ideal vehicle for providing organic growers with information and guidelines on identifying and controlling microbial hazards on their produce.”
Would be. All growers – organic, conventional and otherwise – need to focus on microbial food safety. There’s just too many people getting sick from the food they eat..
Plate-for-one? It's called an electric frying pan
In 1981 I moved into residence as a freshman at the University of Guelph. Back then the meal plan consisted of paper cards that were worth $20 each. There was a German-themed dining hall/bar in the basement of Johnson Hall, called Der Keller, or what we called it, Derks.
Those were the waning days of higher education. The student newspaper had just completed its annual homegrown judging contest, and students could purchase beer with their meal cards. There was also a thriving entrepreneurial culture of meal card scalping. Because new cards were issued at the beginning of each semester, the value would decline as the semester wore on. In the last few weeks, $20 meal cards could be had for $12, which could then be transformed into several pitchers of beer.
And what did those students who traded in meal cards for cash or beer eat? Cereal. Sandwiches. Whatever. For me, the electric frying pan was caloric salvation. I lived on grilled cheese, fried hot dogs, and scrambled eggs. Straight out of the frying pan.
Today, some hustler has reinvented my memories into the plate-for-one. Geeky Gadgets says,
Just cook your food directly on the plate and then once it’s done, you can eat it directly on the plate itself. … It’s perfect for those that are single (and like to keep your meals simple), as well as college students. It’d also make it so you could cook directly from your desk, if you so chose.
A better marketing slogan may be: Plate-for-one, beer for many.
Norovirus season appears to be here
I've always loved the UK term for norovirus: winter vomiting virus. It's so perfect and descriptive. Norovirus is great, but it doesn't have the same ring to it. Seeing that it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere, parts of Canada and the US are burried under snow and ice, it's about time for the increase of norovirus stories we seem to have every year.
This week we've seen stories on the classic norovirus scenarios: cruise ships and university settings.
It was reported that Norwegian Cruise Line's Pride of America ship was the site of an outbreak with 67 passengers and 14 crew members becoming ill. In some fantastic writing on santacruz.com, staff writer Curtis Cartier reported on an outbreak of noro amongst 58 staff at students at UC Santa Cruz. Carteir writes:
Some students, like Zack Mikalonis, initially suspected nasty meatball subs as the culprit. 
On the afternoon of Jan. 15, Mikalonis ate at UCSC’s Porter Dining Hall. Though he says he’s learned to steer clear of burritos, sub sandwiches are fair game. But less than 24 hours after chowing down on the hero, he found himself face down in a toilet bowl.
“I woke up around 4:30am throwing up and having horrible diarrhea,” he says. “A bunch of other kids on my floor got sick too. I had a big quiz the next day that I had to miss.”
This week's food safety infosheet is all about noro.
A couple of months ago Mayra and I came up with our take on cleaning up potentially noro-laced vomit if it hits your locale.
