The Las Cruces Sun-News reports that a rule change will go into effect today that requires those who sell home-based food products to have a permit issued by the New Mexico Environment Department.

That permit will allow the sale of certain foods that can be prepared in home-based food processing operations within state jurisdiction. Those foods include yeast and quick breads, cookies, cakes, tortillas, high-sugar pies and pastries, high-sugar jam and jellies, dry mixes (made from commercial ingredients), candy and fudge. Those foods do not support the rapid and progressive growth of infectious and toxicogenic microorganisms, including Clostridium botulinium, responsible for foodborne disease.

The food permit costs $100 a year. To obtain a permit to operate, a seller can submit an application to a local NMED field office. The application package is available at www.nmenv.state.nm.us/fod/Food_Program or at your local NMED field office.

As Ben and Brae wrote in the Wisconsin State Journal back in March, 2006, leave the umpires in the field -- the health inspectors who make sure everybody plays by the rules. In this game we need to get along so it doesn't leave a nasty and sometimes lethal taste in the mouths of players or spectators.
 

Today’s USA Today asked a bunch of food safety types what the government could do to improve the school lunch program.

My full answer included,

“Does it have to be government? They’re not very good at this stuff.”

 What got published this a.m., along with a photo by Dave Adams of Kansas State, was,

"Government should set minimal standards and demand continuous improvement from all of its suppliers. More importantly, every cafeteria needs to make microbial food safety -- from hand washing to food handling -- part of the daily culture." 

Douglas Powell, professor of food safety at Kansas State University and the publisher of barfblog.com.

The story explains that in 1982, hamburgers from McDonald’s fast-food chain sickened at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan. No one died, but the pathogen that caused the severe cramps, abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea turned out to be a little-known, especially dangerous form of the common stomach bacteria E. coli. The new subtype, E. coli O157:H7, produced a toxin that destroyed red blood cells and, in later cases elsewhere, caused kidney failure or death.

Confounded by the discovery, McDonald's hired one of the nation's best-known food safety scientists, Michael Doyle, and told him, he recalls, "to bulletproof their system so E. coli never happened to them again."

McDonald's reconsidered its old assumptions about food — from how often beef-processing plants should test ground beef to how well a hamburger must be cooked to kill off pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella.

The results helped change the industry. For years, the federal food code said burgers had to be cooked only until their internal temperature reached 140 degrees; McDonald's tests showed the safe standard was 155 degrees and that the meat must register that temperature for at least 15 seconds.

Microbial data also altered the demands McDonald's imposed on its suppliers.

After a couple of years, the company saw that "about 5% of the suppliers could not get down to what we considered a reasonable level for salmonella and E. coli," says Doyle, now director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety. "McDonald's worked hard with them, but they couldn't get there, so McDonald's let them go."

The lesson, many analysts say, is that organizations with great buying power — such as fast-food chains or the school lunch program — can set higher standards, and industry ultimately will meet those standards because that's where the money is. The school lunch program purchases huge volumes of commodities such as beef, poultry and other staples –– $830 million worth in 2008.
 

Chapman asks me the other day, “How do we fight the dogma?”

Is that like fight the power? Fight the man? Fight for your right to party?

What he was talking about was food safety dogma, the kind where seemingly good people give bad food safety advice. Like the Brits and their piping hot turkey.

But this was directed at home. Why do good people reference bad advice, such as the cumbersomely named U.S. Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education, and their Holiday food safety success kit, which says people should always wash their hands for 20 seconds with warm water and never defrost turkey on the counter (with exclamation marks, so readers know they are seriously serious).

When washing hands, water temperature doesn’t matter, 10 seconds is sufficient. Turkey can be thawed on the counter, don’t leave it there forever and don’t let the cat nibble on it.

The dogma part is, where are the references? How do groups like the horribly named Partnership come up with food safety advice? Is it some magical mystery tour or is there some reference to something credible? Who knows. It’s not publicly available.

So why anyone would reference the awkward Partnership as a credible source is bizarrely baffling.

 

The Los Angeles Times reports that one of the latest "Dinner Buzz Specials" at the Ganja Gourmet, was described as,

"Start with our ganjanade [ganja tapenade], bread and a fat dank joint! Then choose from a slice of pizza or LaGanja [lasagna]. Then top it off with a Ganja Gourmet dessert, your choice, $30."

Technically, the Ganja Gourmet is a medical marijuana dispensary, one of many that have sprung up this year throughout Colorado.

Nine years after voters approved a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana, state health officials decided in July to end a five-patient limit for marijuana suppliers. The numbers of both registered patients and dispensaries have exploded.

At least 15,000 people have applied to join the 15,800 already on the state registry of patients. Although no official tally exists of the number of new dispensaries, dozens have opened -- so many that Westword, a Denver newspaper, hired two critics to review them.

Ganja Gourmet owner Steve Horwitz, a 51-year-old Long Island, N.Y., native who said he has used marijuana since his teens to cope with attention-deficit disorder, said,

"I already knew I loved to eat pot."

His chefs "medicate" the dishes by cooking them with butter or olive oil infused with marijuana. The infusion process can take several days of simmering an ounce of marijuana in one pound of butter or one cup of oil.

Horwitz remains convinced of a bright future; his pipe dream is to eventually ship his creations all over the country.

"I'll be the Omaha Steaks of medical marijuana.”