More corporate douchebags who talk a good food safety game but could care less have been caught endangering people and losing huge piles of money for their owners.

The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are reporting this morning that Basic Food Flavors Inc., the Las Vegas company at the center of a recall of more than 100 food products containing hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP, continued to make and distribute food ingredients for about a month after it learned salmonella was present at its processing facility, according to a Food and Drug Administration report.

Managers at Basic Food Flavors of Las Vegas learned on Jan. 21 that samples taken a week earlier from their Nevada facility tested positive for salmonella, but they kept shipping their product to foodmakers, according to FDA inspection records.

The FDA last week recommended companies recall products, from chips to soups, that contain a commonly used additive made by Basic Food Flavors that tested positive for salmonella. The additive is mixed into foods to give them a meaty flavor.

FDA officials inspected Basic Food's plant for about two weeks starting in mid-February and found the company didn't adequately clean equipment and store foods to protect against the growth of contaminants such as salmonella, according to the inspection report.

The inspectors noted that "light-brown residue" and "dark-brown liquid" was observed on or around where Basic Food makes flavor-enhancing ingredients used in foods. The inspectors said brown residue was also found in a plastic pipe used in making food ingredients.

Basic Food makes a flavor enhancer called hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP. The FDA report said the company first learned salmonella was present at its processing facility for HVP on Jan. 21. The company continued to distribute the ingredients until Feb. 15. A representative for the company wasn't immediately available to comment. The company hasn't responded to earlier requests for comment.

No illnesses have been reported related to the recall, said FDA spokeswoman Rita Chappelle.

But those who shipped out Salmonella-positive ingredients are still douchebags.

A list of affected products can be found at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/HVPCP/.

I’ve already given Kevin Allen enough attention – the dude who really enjoyed himself too much while bouncing hockey pucks off my head – but he’s polite enough to give credit and he took my risk analysis course back in 1998 when he was a fledgling graduate student.

The course devotes a lot of time to food safety risk communication and Kevin, being a bright guy, thought, CBC is about to call and ask me about Salmonella in hydrolyzed vegetable protein, I’ll check in with Doug for some tips.

Kevin called, I told him to figure out what his couple of key messages were and hammer them home, cause TV and radio are relentless in their quest for simplicity, and the result is in the first couple of minutes in the video available at

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Local_News/BC/ID=1435456122

Not bad, although his second soundbite may have had more Canadian credibility if he said, “as a father of two children and a hockey player (goon)” but who am I to quibble.

Canada, meet your newest food safety spokesthingy, from Belleville, Ontario, now plying at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Kevin Allen (above, right, exactly as shown).
 

Some federal food safety thingy decided he just had to tell me how disappointed he was because I ran the don’t-kiss-frogs-and-salmonella story and the U.K. version that linked it to a Disney movie, The Frog and the Prince.

“Your non-apology for your role is (sic) amplifying the ‘far-fetched, but sorta fun’ story makes me wonder how serious you are about your posts and your role in our public health community.”

Who is ‘our?’ Writing 101 mistake.

And dude, join the end of the line. Lots of people are disappointed with me.

The headline of the blog post was, Don't kiss frogs or turtles, whether it’s in a Disney film or not. And with a new report from CDC, let me reiterate, don’t kiss turtles.

On September 4, 2008, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) and the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PADOH) notified CDC of an outbreak of possible turtle-associated human Salmonella Typhimurium infections detected by identifying strains with similar pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns in PulseNet. Turtles and other reptiles have long been recognized as sources of human Salmonella infections (1), and the sale or distribution of small turtles (those with carapace lengths <4 inches) has been prohibited in the United States since 1975 (2,3). CDC and state and local health departments conducted a multistate investigation during September--November 2008. This report summarizes the results of that investigation, which identified 135 cases in 25 states and the District of Columbia; 45% were in children aged ≤5 years. Among 70 patients with primary infection, 37% reported turtle exposure, of which 81% was to small turtles most commonly purchased from street vendors. A matched case-control study showed a significant association between illness and exposure to turtles (matched odds ratio [mOR] = 16.5). Increasing enforcement of existing local, state, and federal regulations against the sale of small turtles, increasing penalties for illegal sales, and enacting more state and local laws regulating the sale of small turtles (e.g., requiring Salmonella awareness education at the point-of-sale), could augment federal prevention efforts. …

This S. Typhimurium outbreak is the third multistate, turtle-associated Salmonella outbreak in the United States since 2006. Before 2006, no large multistate turtle-associated Salmonella outbreaks were identified. One reason for this apparent increase might be PulseNet, which has improved the ability to detect multistate outbreaks. Increased pet turtle ownership in the United States also might contribute to the recurrent outbreaks: the proportion of households in the United States owning pet turtles doubled during 1996--2006, from 0.5% to 1.0% (4). Together, the three recent Salmonella outbreaks account for 258 laboratory-confirmed cases of salmonellosis (5--7) and many more unreported illnesses likely occurred. As with past outbreaks, most ill persons reporting turtle exposure were exposed to turtles with shell lengths <4 inches; these turtles were mainly acquired from flea markets, street vendors, and souvenir shops. The case-control study found a significant association of Salmonella infection with turtle exposure; however, 63% of primary cases in the outbreak had no knownturtle exposure, and 60% had no reptile exposure. This might have resulted, in part, from failure to recall a turtle exposure. Parents or guardians were interviewed as proxies for young children and they might have been unaware of their child's turtle exposure outside of the home. In addition, certain patients might have had unknown indirect turtle exposure through environmental cross-contamination or unrecognized person-to-person transmission or have been sporadic or background cases.

CNBC ran a feature about raw eggs in recipes today that contained some food safety nose-stretchers.

On the plus side, the story acknowledged that raw eggs can carry salmonella, and when Catherine Donnelly, a professor of food safety at the University of Vermont, said that adults may get sick from salmonella, but are unlikely to die, the story said,

“not dying is a pretty low bar to set for dinner.”

Charles Reeves, chef and owner of Penny Cluse Cafe, a restaurant in Burlington, Vt., known for its from-scratch breakfasts and lunches, said,

"You can't own a restaurant and call yourself a chef if you're using mayonnaise out of a bottle. It's just too easy to make it better yourself."

Though his customers' safety is a primary concern, Reeves doesn't think twice about using raw eggs, including serving them over easy and sunny side up.

"You just always have to use absolutely fresh eggs that come from a reputable source," he says.

A reputable source with those superhero Salmonella goggles?

Todd Pritchard, a food scientist at the University of Vermont, said farm fresh doesn't necessarily mean bacteria free, adding,

"Bacteria are blind. They don't see whether the eggs come from a local farmer or are free-range or organic."

That’s of no concern to Nancy Oakes, a James Beard award-winning chef and owner of San Francisco's Boulevard Restaurant who calls the raw egg a "simply magical food."

At Boulevard, Oakes creates aiolis with raw egg yolk, and accompanies her Caesar salad with a soft-cooked egg on the side. She says safety efforts focus too much on the kitchen, and not enough on the farms where the eggs are produced.

The story concludes that for adult home cooks in good health, the minute risk of being sickened may be worth the joy of soft boiled eggs or homemade mayo. Ditto when dining out.

That’s not true.

The American Egg Board estimates the risk of an egg being contaminated with salmonella at about 1 in 20,000. So at home, if I make mayo, or dip into the pancake batter, I’ve upped the risk to 5-6 out of 20,000. If a restaurant is making mayo or aioli, dozens if not hundreds of eggs could be used, cross-contaminating the kitchen area and potentially sickening thousands of people daily.

That’s how 111 people got sick with Salmonella from The Burger Bar in Albury, Australia in Jan. 2010. It was the raw egg in the aioli.

Risk gets amplified real easily.

Pritchard also points out that while it's true that the likelihood of being sickened by an egg is low, it doesn't matter, if you're the one who gets sick.

Especially if it is preventable.