Monthly Archives: October 2013

We’ve done it this way for years no one sick: Iowa edition

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Hamburg and Farragut schools are taking precautions against salmonella and waiting for information from state health authorities regarding four students reportedly treated for the bacterial disease.

Hamburg School Superintendent Jay Lutt said it’s unknown whether the cases in his district are linked to the salmonella outbreak in 20 states belushi.cafeteriaconnected to Foster Farms. However, he says an investigation determined the illnesses are not linked to the district’s food provider.

“Even before I knew about that outbreak,” said Lutt, “I called the provider of our foods, which provides to all schools in southwest Iowa. In their 31 years of business, they have not had a case of salmonella. One thing we’re pretty certain is that it didn’t come from any of the food we bring in from their main supplier.”

8 sick; Salmonella strikes UK nursery

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Several children who attend the same Dundee nursery have been hit by salmonella.

The Evening Telegraph reports eight children at Technotots Nursery in Brunel Road, Wester Gourdie Industrial Estate, were struck down with the bacteria last month.

As yet the investigation has not revealed what caused the salmonella dirty.jobs.daycare.e.coliinfections but the owner of Technotots denies it originated in the nursery.

Angela McGoldrick, owner of Technotots Nursery, said: “It was a secondary infection and there was no point or service associated with the nursery, which means the salmonella has not originated from us but has come from elsewhere.

“The first case was on September 13. When it increased to two we took certain precautions and environmental health came into the scene.”

317 sick in Foster Farms Salmonella outbreak; just cook it still doesn’t cut it; skating, hockey, Thanksgiving turkey

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Amy, Sorenne and I began eight weeks of skating lessons at the local arena Satuday (I suck after seven years of no ice, thank you Kansas), started cooking the Canadian Thanksgiving feast at 3 a.m Sunday, and have had hockey on in the background since 4 a.m.

I try to be super-extra careful when cooking a big bird because of the potential for cross-contamination, and the potential of sickening a bunch therm.turkey.oct.13of what-would-become former friends.

But in some cases, extra care is not enough.

As the Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak linked to Foster Farms hits 317 sick, Costco has ordered a recall of nearly 40,000 pounds of rotisserie chickens after one tested positive for Salmonella on Friday.

That’s a cooked chicken. To paraphrase Bill Marler, if Costco can’t cook the poop out of a bird, why are consumers expected to?

Still, company types, many government types and other types, insist all will be well if the chicken is just cooked properly.

This is a terrible message, and not scientifically accurate.

Chapman at least got a few correct points in when he told Live Science cross-contamination can happen at any point in the cooking and handling process, starting at the grocery store, don’t wash the bird, and use a damn thermometer.

(I gave one to an IT friend here for the Thanksgiving food orgy.)

After threatening Monday to close three Foster Farms processing plants, the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed on Thursday to allow the plants to continue operating with advanced, super-secret safety procedures.

Neither the company nor USDA will say what these procedures are. Doesn’t build confidence.

Which would be an additional reason the list of retailers recalling Fosters products is growing.

Lynne Terry of the Oregonian writes that Costco’s El Camino Real store in San Francisco, Calif., is pulling and products over Salmonella contamination. The recall includes nearly 8,800 Kirkland Signature Foster Farms rotisserie chickens and more than 310 units of Kirkland Farm rotisserie chicken soup, rotisserie chicken leg quarters and rotisserie chicken salad.

The products were sold to Costco customers at the El Camino Real store between Sept. 11 and Sept. 23, the notice said. The chickens were processed at three Foster Farms plants in central California.

Fred Meyer and QFC stores have withdrawn chicken from the same plants. They were sold under the brand names of Simple Truth Organic and Kroger Value. The voluntary withdrawal also includes deli chicken and rotisserie chickens.

Melinda Merrill, Fred Meyer spokeswoman, said the stores are still selling the Foster Farms labeled poultry that came from a plant that’s not been implicated in the outbreak.

This outbreak differs in that the variety of salmonella is especially virulent.

There are seven strains of salmonella Heidelberg involved in the outbreak. Several of them are antibiotic-resistant and “one of the strains that we’ve tested is resistant to seven antibiotics,” said Christopher Braden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention division of foodborne diseases.

Of the people infected, 42% have been hospitalized — an unusually high percentage, according to the CDC.

“That’s about twice what we would normally see for a salmonella outbreak,” Braden said. “We think that’s at least in part due to the fact that a number of these strains have resistance to one or more antibiotics.”

Thirteen percent of those sickened have salmonella septicemia, a serious, life-threatening, whole-body inflammation, Braden said. Normal for salmonella would be “just a few percent,” he said.

In a statement, Foster Farms CEO Ron Foster said “we have worked relentlessly to address these issues and will continue to do so as we work to regain consumer trust and confidence in the Foster Farms brand.”

Those comments do not bolster consumer confidence.

If you’ve got a good food safety system, brag about it. Because some companies are better.

 

Norovirus on a cruise ship: a first-person story

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Cruise Law News has this first-person account of how nasty norovirus can be – this time on the Celebrity Summit cruise ship.

We too were on the Summit recently. We reported how dirty our Royal Suite was. They said they cleaned it, but the only evidence was that they used epoxy on the dining area parkay floor. The smell was horrendous.

I had allergic reaction tongue swelled, face, nose, eyelids and had hives on face and upper body. The doctor on call would not acknowledge this chicken_4 vomit cruiseand commenced to tell me that I was having an allergic reaction to blood pressure and cholesterol medications I have been on for years. He told me to stop taking these medications and he filled new prescriptions together with benedryl. They put in an IV to rehydrate me two times.

At the end of the cruise I was taken off the ship in a wheelchair. I had been sick the entire second week. Our butler was under orders to charge us for all the bottle water we needed. They clean the suite with a dirty rag and some kind of spray they use in all the rooms and hallways. It’s disgusting! You wouldn’t use someone else’s used tissue. How sanitary is that?

They charged our ship account $600 for the doctor and pills (that I didn’t use except for the benedryl). When we questioned the charge even though we had bought the travel insurance, the Concierge said we “must read the fine print.” Three days after my allergic reaction, my disabled husband got the norovirus. Through all of this the doctor refused to come to our suite. They said we needed to come to the doctor office.

This trip was from hell!

Herbal horses**t; products omit ingredients, contain fillers

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The majority of herbal products on the market contain ingredients not listed on the label, with most companies substituting cheaper alternatives and using fillers, according to new research from the University of Guelph.

The study, published today in the open access journal BMC Medicine, used DNA barcoding technology to test 44 herbal products sold by 12 food.fraud.adulterationcompanies. Only two of the companies provided authentic products without substitutions, contaminants or fillers.

Overall, nearly 60 per cent of the herbal products contained plant species not listed on the label.

Researchers detected product substitution in 32 per cent of the samples.  More than 20 per cent of the products included fillers such as rice, soybeans and wheat not listed on the label.

“Contamination and substitution in herbal products present considerable health risks for consumers,” said lead author Steven Newmaster, an integrative biology professor and botanical director of the Guelph-based Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO), home of the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding.

“We found contamination in several products with plants that have known toxicity, side effects and/or negatively interact with other herbs, supplements and medications.”

One product labelled as St. John’s wort contained Senna alexandrina, a plant with laxative properties. It’s not intended for prolonged use, as it can cause chronic diarrhea and liver damage and negatively interacts with immune cells in the colon.

Several herbal products contained Parthenium hysterophorus (feverfew), which can cause swelling and numbness in the mouth, oral ulcers, and nausea. It also reacts with medications metabolized by the liver.

One ginkgo product was contaminated with Juglans nigra (black walnut), which could endanger people with nut allergies.

Unlabelled fillers such as wheat, soybeans and rice are also a concern for people with allergies or who are seeking gluten-free products, Newmaster said.

7 sick in E. coli outbreak: Public Health Agency of Canada doesn’t cross provincial borders

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Jim Romahn writes in his blog that Belmont Meat Packers burgers have crossed every provincial border across Canada, but the Public Health Agency of Canada isn’t posting any information about how many people have been sickened so far after eating burgers processed at the Toronto plant.

Loblaws is recalling its President’s Choice products from across Canada.
Sobeys is recalling its Compliments products from across Canada, and cold.cut.cannonmaybe we’ll soon learn that it, too, will be recalling them from across Canada.

But as far as the Public Health Agency is concerned, it’s not involved until people are sickened in more than one province or territory.

But the agency did post information from the Ontario Ministry of Health indicating that seven people in Ontario have so far been linked to these burgers.

It makes me wonder how things are going to work out as food safety transitions from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to Health Canada where it will be joined at the hip with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

At least being joined at the hip promises to be better than being under the head of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz of “death by a thousand cold cuts” fame. 

Canadian food inspectors to report through Health, not Agriculture

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, largely created and run for the first five years by my eventual friend, Ron Doering, is now going to report to Parliament via Health Canada.

My guess is that everyone got tired of the misguided rants about CFIA reporting through Agriculture, and that Agriculture was there to promote doug.ron.jan.13food, not protect public health, and it was an obvious conflict of interest.

Obvious only to conspiracy seekers.

Doering always had a straight answer – food safety has to come first, otherwise there is no market.

To me, the change is cosmetic, like promoters massaging language, so that genetic engineering becomes natural enhancement, or whatever the marketers are pushing these days.

I don’t care who does the regulating and inspection, as long as the results are available for public scrutiny.

Health Canada brags “this reorganization will strengthen Canada’s food safety system by bringing all three authorities responsible for food safety under one Minister. This will ensure clear focus, easy collaboration, and timely communication with Canadians when it comes to food safety. This change also further underscores the CFIA’s commitment to food safety as a top priority.”

According to Canadian Press, food safety in Canada is a three-way:

• Health Canada develops food safety standards and policies and participates in public awareness campaigns about safe food practices;

• CFIA checks that industry meets federal food safety and regulatory requirements; and,

• the public health agency steps in when outbreaks occur, gauging the scope of the problem, providing epidemiology services and advising people how to protect themselves.

Sounds great. Why has the Public Health Agency of Canada been silent for a week about the latest E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in hamburger?

Sunland shuttered: NM peanut butter plant involved in a nationwide salmonella outbreak last year closes its doors

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In fall, 2012, 41 people in 20 states contracted Salmonella from natural and organic peanut butter, produced by Sunland Inc. of Portales, New Mexico, and primarily through purchases at Trader Joe’s.

By Nov. 2012, Sunland was eager to reopen, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had other ideas, and filed a permanent injunction against Sunland.

In May, 2013, Sunland announced it was back in production and company officials said their barf-inducing coveted natural and organic sunland_20120925084929_320_240-300x225butters could be back on store shelves within a month.

But now they’re bankrupt.

Food safety can do that to an operation.

Officials with Sunland Inc., the nation’s largest organic peanut butter processor, said “ongoing financial and liquidity challenges made it necessary for the company to file for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 of the bankruptcy code.”

Chapter 7 means the company shuts down and liquidates its assets. According to the bankruptcy filing, Sunland has an estimated $10 million to $50 million in assets, $50 million to $100 million in liabilities and 1,000 to 5,000 creditors.

Sunland reopened last May, but reportedly took a big financial hit from the eight-month closure and lawsuits that followed the salmonella outbreak.

The company had about 100 employees, who were notified Wednesday that the plant was shut down.

Portales Mayor Sharon King lamented the closure, calling it a “very sad day for our community” and noting that Sunland had been in business for decades.

7 sick from E. coli burgers in Ontario; federal public health MIA, no government shutdown

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There’s no federal government shutdown in Canada, which is a different country than the U.S., but bureaucratic sleepiness continues.

A week after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced a recall of hamburgers made by Toronto-based Belmont Meats Ltd., the feds in meatwad.raw.hamburgerthe form of Health Canada and/or Public Health Agency of Canada, have provided no information on how many people are sick.

Maybe they’re still at the cottage.

Ontario’s top doctor, Dr. Arlene King, has filled the void, and has stated that seven Ontario residents are sick with an additional suspected case.

The recall has been expanded from Compliments brand Super 8 Beef Burgers sold in packages of six in Sobeys, Sobeys Urban, Foodland, Freshco and Price Chopper stores in Ontario and Atlantic Canada to ow include President’s Choice Beef Burgers in 4.54 kilogram packages sold nationally in Loblaws banner stores and Webers Bucket of Burgers sold in 1.02 kilogram packages, which may have been distributed across Canada.

Those aren’t grape nuts

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As a teenager I worked in a bulk food store. The job was great. I hung out with a close friend who worked there too and my responsibilities consisted of taking large bags or boxes of food, opening them up, and putting them into bins.grape+nuts3

I also got to eat a lot of wine gums and M&M’s.

Customers would come in, grab an empty bag and scoop out what they needed. Cost was based on weight. One of the popular bins (sort of surprisingly), which required at least a weekly refill, was Grape Nuts, the Post-made cereal. The flaw of the system where I worked was that the bins had tiny labels and a few times a week someone looking for Grape Nuts would fill a bag up with textured vegetable protein.

Dried cat vomit also apparently looks like Grape Nuts to Hartford CBS affiliate reporter Scot Haney. During newscast banter Haney, (below, exactly as shown) picks up what he believed was a Grape Nut from the floor and reveals later that he accidentally had eaten dried cat vomit that he had brought in on his shoe.

Yum.