From the we’ve never had a problem file: Salmonella in lasagna edition

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NBC 29 reports that a group of central Virginia guests have Salmonellosis that appears to be linked to frozen lasagna from a popular pasta shop. In a classic blame game maneuver and "wha happened?" defense, the owner of Mona Lisa (the pasta shop) says that if his food is the source of the outbreak, it was likely customer error.

The owner of Mona Lisa pasta says his kitchen is not to blame for six central Virginia dinner guests coming down with salmonella. While he says he sold the frozen lasagna, it was not his kitchen that was responsible for cooking it to code.

Chef Jim Winecoff has been creating Italian dishes at his Mona Lisa Pasta Shop on Preston Avenue in Charlottesville for years. Winecoff said, “We’ve been here for eight years now providing lasagna, fresh pastas, sausage, ravioli, through the company.”

Winecoff is confident his kitchen is not to blame. Winecoff stated, “We’ve had no trouble whatsoever with our food in the past and I hope this is not a problem with our food. The customer has written instructions as to how to prepare the food, to bake at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time, and that’s a food-safe temperature.”

It’s early on in the investigation and not much information is available but the "we’ve been doing things this way for a while and never had a problem" optimistic attitude doesn’t do much to build trust.

Especially in an outbreak situation.

An operator with a good food safety culture knows about the microbial risks associated with their products and who might screw up, whether it is suppliers, staff or customers. Blaming the customers is never a good thing, especially if you happened to sell them something with a pathogen in it. Ask the ConAgra pot pie folks. Or the Nebraska Beef ground beef folks.

Telling a customer the time of baking and at what temperature misses the measurable risk reduction step — endpoint temperature. Food businesses selling this-needs-to-be-cooked items should be stating what temperature the dish needs to be cooked to and how the temperature needs to be measured.

This entry was posted in Food Safety Culture, Salmonella, Thermometers and tagged , , , by Ben Chapman. Bookmark the permalink.

About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.