Monthly Archives: June 2011

Madeleine Ferrieres on German sprout outbreak: the fear of dying poisoned has been around a long time

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That’s my rough translation.

Madeleine Ferrieres’ 2002 book, Mad Cow Sacred Cow is my favorite food safety book. And she’s French. So that puts me in good with Amy.

As the death toll from E. coli O104 reached 43 in Europe, with 3,688 people sick in Germany, including 823 suffering from hemolytic uremic syndrome and an additional 114 cases in other countries, Madeleine Ferrières, professor of modern history at the University of Avignon told Le Point, “There is a curious game of ping-pong where the consumer discards the health authorities and the authorities send us back to our own behavior.”

That’s fairly astute, even if the translation might be slightly off.

There’s lots of media noise about this new strain of E. coli O104, but no one seems to be asking questions of the farming practices: if this organic sprout farm was the source of the E. coli O104, how did it get there? Was the farm fertilizing with night soil (human crap); was the irrigation water on the farm ever tested; were the seeds contaminated and another outbreak will show up somewhere?

As Ferrieres wrote in her book,

"All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates. … And we are often too blinded by this amnesia to view our present food situation clearly. This amnesia is very convenient. It allows us to reinvent the past and construct a complaisant, retrospective mythology."
 

Canadian E. coli outbreak linked walnuts appears to be over; 1 dead 13 sick

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Canadians rejoice: the E. coli O157 outbreak that sickened 14, apparently linked to walnuts, is over.

The Public Health Agency of Canada says other than walnuts distributed by Montreal-based Amira Enterprises, there’s no indication that raw, shelled walnuts pose a health risk and therefore it is no longer recommending that Canadians roast raw, shelled walnuts before eating them.

One patient in Quebec with an underlying medical condition died during the outbreak, which also affected people in Ontario and New Brunswick.

The agency says that based on the information available, raw, shelled walnuts are still the suspected source of the outbreak, although it was never confirmed by laboratory testing of walnuts.

"Although positive laboratory findings would confirm, negative findings do not disprove walnuts as the suspected source of the outbreak."

I look forward to the scientific report on this outbreak that will be available … probably never.

Gonzalo Erdozain: water and soap are for sanitizing; dog tongues are for licking dogs

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Scott Weese from Worms & Germs Blog said it best, “a dog’s tongue is not a medical device.”

According to an article by All Pet News (referencing a study by University of Florida Gainesville), in which risk for zoonotic transmission was obviously disregarded, treating human wounds with dog saliva leads to wounds healing twice as fast. It’s the perfect example of lab results being extrapolated into real world situations without proper knowledge or testing. Although dog saliva may have antibacterial properties and Nerve Growth Factor, you can’t conclude from lab-controlled experiments, using purified concentrated compounds, that a dog licking a wound is beneficial.

Lefebvre et al. (2006) published a paper titled “Prevalence of zoonotic agents in dogs visiting hospitalized people in Ontario: Implications for infection control,” in which zoonotic agents were isolated from 80 out of 102 (80%) dogs.

Clostridium difficile, was the most prevalent agent, isolated from 58 out of 102 (58%) fecal specimens, 71% of which were toxigenic. Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase Escherichia coli was isolated from one dog, extended-spectrum cephalosporinase E. coli was isolated from three dogs, and organisms of the genus Salmonella were isolated from three dogs.

Common sense would state that if you use your dog’s saliva for wound healing, you probably wouldn’t be washing it after being licked. This would increase the risk for wounds in general to get infected, but if your wound is on your hand, you are also at a higher risk of getting you and others (via cross-contamination) infected with a zoonotic disease. I don’t know about laboratory dogs, but I know my dog spends a lot of time licking herself, including her rear end. So as cute as those images of dogs licking their owner’s face look on TV, I keep my dog’s tongue away from me.
 

Name-and-shame’ difficult to digest for some of Australia

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Canberra’s cute enough; really boring on weekends, even if Elvis Costello is playing in a park. In the late 19th century the Australians decided they needed a federal capital, and eventually picked a sheep farm halfway between Melbourne and Sydney.

Like Washington, D.C., the Australian Capital Territory is a unique government structure all its own. Although located within the Australian state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, ACT and the federal capital of Canberra can apparently make its own rules – at least regarding restaurant inspection disclosure.

A senior health official told the Canberra Times that Canberrans must not be told which of the city’s restaurants were deemed too unhygienic to serve food, because naming them would undermine the rule of law.

Earlier this year, ACT Health suppressed the identities of up to 10 eateries it shut down in 2010, saying naming the businesses could cause them ”unreasonable” harm.

The Canberra Times, which had sought access to the list under freedom of information law, appealed against the initial decision, citing interstate and overseas governments that used ”name-and-shame” policies to encourage food safety.

Health Minister Katy Gallagher agreed in February to consider introducing laws similar to those in NSW, where food businesses that fail hygiene inspections are named on a government website.

However, the deputy head of the ACT Government’s health directorate, Ian Thompson, has now ruled out revealing last year’s worst offenders, saying to do so might unfairly influence a trial.

In reviewing the earlier decision to censor the businesses’ names, he dropped the argument that disclosing their identities would unreasonably affect them.

But he invoked his power under the FoI Act to suppress documents ”affecting enforcement of the law and protection of public safety.”

The censored reports show officials issued 63 warnings in 2009 and 2010 to businesses that failed hygiene checks. Inspectors also banned up to 10 eateries last year from serving food, because they had either ignored warnings or posed ”a serious danger to public health”.

Mr Thompson allowed only one of them Dickson’s Domino’s Pizza store to be named, because it had already faced charges in court. That franchise now has new managers.

The reports’ most common criticism was that kitchens lacked a sink and soap for washing hands.

However, several of the documents described filthy and vermin-infested workplaces, where rotting scraps were piled behind fryers and meat was stored in dangerously warm fridges.

Meanwhile, Restaurant and Catering Australia has panned the effectiveness of name-and-shame registers such as NSW’s, saying it sometimes punishes innocent businesspeople. Chief executive John Hart said yesterday the NSW laws were flawed because they ”have no gradation.”

However, Mr Hart said a so-called ”scores-on-doors” or hygiene ratings scheme would help the public.

2 unusual traits blended in Germany’s E. coli strain

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Gina Kolata of The New York Times writes in tomorrow’s paper that the E. coli O104 that killed 40 people in Germany over the past month have a highly unusual combination of two traits and that may be what made the outbreak among the deadliest in recent history.

One trait was a toxin, called Shiga, that causes severe illness, including bloody diarrhea and, in some patients, kidney failure. The other is the ability of this strain to gather on the surface of an intestinal wall in a dense pattern that looks like a stack of bricks, possibly enhancing the bacteria’s ability to pump the toxin into the body.

With the two traits combined in one strain of E. coli bacteria, “now they are highly virulent,” said Dr. Matthew K. Waldor, an infectious-disease expert at Harvard Medical School who was not connected with the new research.

The new findings, by a team led by Helge Karch of the University of Münster, are being published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. They result from two days of fevered work to characterize the bacteria causing the illness that raced through Germany in May.

Experts in the United States praised the German scientists’ work. The work and the entire outbreak are “a real game-changer,” said Dr. Philip I. Tarr, a professor of pediatrics and expert in gut infections at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. John Mekalanos of Harvard called the paper “extremely important.”

Dr. Karch, a well-known expert in E. coli, infections, got the first stool samples on May 25. Over the next few days, more and more samples flooded his lab, 50 to 100 a day. “You can’t imagine,” he said.

He isolated the strain that was causing the illness and analyzed it to determine that it was strain O104:H4. Then he began investigating the bacteria’s DNA. First he determined what kind of Shiga toxin it made. Then he did adherence tests and found that the bacteria stuck to surfaces in the bricklike pattern. It is an unmistakable phenomenon: “Once you see it you will never forget it,” Dr. Karch said.
He posted the results and provided detailed information so most labs that had a suspicious stool sample could analyze it immediately and see if the stool contained O104:H4 bacteria. Until he posted that information, most labs would be at a loss. The strain is so rare that there are no standard tests to find it.

Dr. Karch also realized that the O104:H4 strain had been seen before in bloody diarrhea and kidney failure, but only on rare occasions — first in Germany in 2001, then sporadically in a few other countries. And in each outbreak, at most a few people were ill.

Dr. Karch thinks it smoldered in human populations, causing mild illnesses in most and occasionally causing severe disease. Then, somehow, it was passed to the bean sprouts by someone who harbored the bacteria. And since sprouts are eaten raw, they were highly infectious.

He himself does not like sprouts, he says, though his wife does. Aware that sprouts have always been “a high-risk food” for bacterial illnesses, he will not touch them unless they have been cooked.

Commercially grown sprouts risky: UBC study

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Full-time hockey goon Kevin Allen (right, exactly as shown), who unfortunately lives in Vancouver and had to tolerate the indignity of the Boston Bruins stealing the Stanley Cup (that’s hockey) has decided to drown his misery by focusing on his real job and talking about the risks of raw sprouts.

He was even nice enough to mention me, although he had no trouble shooting pucks off my head, skating by, and going, uh, sorry.

Didn’t care, the equipment was better and you don’t score goals shooting off the goalie’s head.

Although it can be unnerving.

Sorta like the faith-based food safety system that has evolved around fresh produce, especially sprouts.

Randy Shore of the Vancouver Sun reports that a University of British Columbia.-led study of microorganisms on domestic produce found detectable levels of bacteria on 93 per cent of samples of sprouts taken from grocery stores across Canada.

Sprouts are grown in a warm, moist environment for three to five days, a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, said lead researcher Kevin Allen, a UBC food microbiologist, who likens the risk associated with eating commercially grown sprouts to consuming uncooked seafood.

Although the enterococcus bacteria detected on the sprouts poses no direct threat to health, the growing conditions that allow it to thrive can also encourage the growth of more harmful bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella.

Nearly 80 per cent of sprout samples — including bean, alfalfa, broccoli, garlic and onion — showed microbial loads too numerous to count. Herbs, salad greens and spinach showed far fewer positive results and generally lower microbial loads.

Allen’s produce testing revealed that seven per cent of fresh herb samples and two per cent of sprout samples contained a generic non-deadly form of E. coli, while about half of all samples of herbs, spinach, sprouts and leafy greens contained detectable levels of coliform, which may indicate fecal contamination of soil or water.

The distribution and concentration of enterococcus in the sprouts was much higher than expected, Allen said. Samples of produce were collected from grocery stores in five Canadian cities, including Vancouver, in March.

Kansas State University food safety professor Doug Powell, a collaborator with Allen, has recorded 38 outbreaks of illness associated with the consumption of raw sprouts over the past 20 years.

“From a consumer’s perspective, if produce is contaminated when it comes into the household, there is almost nothing they can do short of cooking it that will reduce or eliminate that risk,” said Allen.

But a note from the old prof to the former student: publish before press release.
 

Father-of-two, 46, left paralysed after eating undercooked pork chop

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The Daily Mail reports a father-of-two today told how he almost died after eating an under-cooked pork chop.

Darren Ashall, a plant operator from Chorley, Lancashire, developed a potentially lethal brain bug that has left him in hospital for nearly five months.

The 46-year-old cannot walk and still struggles to communicate. However, doctors told him he is lucky to be alive after listeria meningitis attacked his immune system and left an abscess on his brain.

He first fell ill after cooking two pork chops on a caravan stove while working away from home in Birmingham.

“I thought one of the chops wasn’t cooked properly. I regretted eating it straight away. I knew it was a mistake. A month later I went to hospital thinking I was having a heart attack. After three days, my face started drooping on one side and people thought I was having a stroke.”

Darren had picked up the listeria bug, which can lay dormant for up to 70 days.
 

Utah man accused of eating live baby rat, posting video online charged with animal cruelty

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From the deeply weird files, Associated Press reports a Utah man faces an animal cruelty charge after a Facebook video surfaced showing him eating what appeared to be a live baby rat.

Thirty-one-year-old Andy Ray Harris of Tooele was charged with the misdemeanor in April after authorities viewed the video.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals reported it to police.

The video shows a man putting what appears to be a tiny, hairless rat in his mouth, chewing it up and swallowing it.

Harris has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
 

Sprouts sicken many, even if it’s ‘impossible to happen’

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This is the only advice I’ve given my daughters: keep your stick on the ice, don’t take wooden nickels, and when someone says, “trust me,” immediately distrust that person.

When a sprout grower involved in an outbreak that sickened 140 people says, “it’s next to impossible for anything to happen," giggle knowingly and walk away.

Tiny Greens’ Organic Farm in Urbana, Illinois, the source of a Jimmy John’s related sprout outbreak that sickened at least 140, talks a lot on its web page about being sustainable, natural, organic and using a crap-load of crap in their sprout production.

“The farm is certified by the Global Organic Alliance, which helps with finding a supply of organic seeds, which can be surprisingly hard to acquire. We grow the seeds in compost that we create ourselves, made of a mixture of year old woodchips and leftover sprouts. We have never had to find an outside source for compost. As long as you keep the sprouts healthy, there is no need for using chemicals. Healthy growing materials also mean an end product that is higher in vitamins, minerals and enzymes.”

Why a national sandwich chain like Jimmy John’s would buy an identified high-risk product – raw sprouts – from such an outfit is beyond me; it’s their business to lose.

Yesterday, the owner of Tiny Greens’ went on the PR offensive, telling The News-Gazatte he has taken several corrective actions to address food safety concerns raised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Why didn’t he do that previously, what with all the raw sprout outbreaks over the past two decades?

"After the changes we made, it’s next to impossible for anything to happen," said Bill Bagby Jr., owner of Tiny Greens in Urbana.

According to the FDA, a sample of compost runoff from outside the Urbana farm turned up a salmonella strain "indistinguishable" from the one responsible for the outbreak.

After agency inspectors noted that Tiny Greens employees, who were wearing boots, pushed carts through compost water runoff outside the facility and did not sanitize boots or carts before returning through a greenhouse door to the production area, Bagby said now the outside carts and boots never come inside the production facility, and inside boots and carts never go outside the facility. The greenhouse door also is now for exiting the building only.

Bagby consulted with an epidemiologist to help him throughout the process, and a new food safety manager is now on staff.

RocknRolla: Don’t play in animal poop – at music festivals or elsewhere

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In June 1997, at least seven people who attended the Glastonbury Music Festival in the U.K. were infected with Escherichia coli O157. A cow belonging to a herd that had previously grazed the site tested positive for the same strain, leading researchers to conclude the most likely vehicle of infection was mud contaminated with Escherichia coli O157 from infected cattle.

??In June 2007, hundreds were stricken and 18 tested positive for campylobacter during the annual Test of Metal mountain bike race in Squamish, B.C.?? Dr. Paul Martiquet, the chief medical officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said, "This was an outbreak with a high attack rate. Our future advice to the race organizers is to inspect the route prior to the race to ensure it is not littered with animal feces, and not end the race at the horse ring. If there is any horse poop, they have to remove it."

Up to 160 people who attended the Merida Bikes mountain bike Marathon July 5-6, 2008, based on Builth Wells, in Wales, fell ill, and 10 of the riders tested positive for campylobacter. The report described the course as,??“very muddy and contaminated with sheep slurry in certain areas, leading to significant amounts of mud splashing over participants and their equipment. … The most statistically significant risk was the inadvertent ingestion of mud.

So yesterday, the U.K. Health Protection Agency decided to remind Glastonbury goers not to play in animal poop.

Dr Mark Salter, a consultant in communicable disease control from the HPA’s Health Protection Unit in the South West has been attending festivals, including Glastonbury, for 20 years to offer health protection advice and has devised the following rock and roll tips to help people to stay safe.

If you become unwell, particularly with diarrhoea and sickness, before the festival don’t go as you could spread your illness to other people.

Make sure you use condoms with any new partners to protect yourself against any sexually transmitted infections. In 2010 there were over 200,000 cases of chlamydia, genital warts, syphilis, gonorrhoea and herpes in the 15-24 year old age group in England.

If you have to take medication for an existing condition make sure you take it with you as well as enough to last the duration of the festival.

Avoid using streams and rivers for bathing or cooling off as the water quality may not be suitable.

Don’t forget to wash your hands thoroughly after using the toilet, before eating and prior to preparing food. It is preferable to use soap and water but if that is not available then sanitising hand gel is a good substitute – bring your own and carry it around with you.

"My experience of providing health advice and assistance at festivals for over 20 years tells me that people generally end up being unwell due to the combination of too much alcohol, drugs, sex and less than ideal hygiene.”