Monthly Archives: October 2013

Another petting zoo outbreak? Maybe

Posted on by
2

Families, according to WDRB, are claiming their children got sick after going to the Huber’s Petting Zoo in Indiana.

The Clark County Health Department confirms one E. coli case, but says at this point, Huber’s Orchard, Winery and Vineyards and its petting zoo courtlynn.petting.zooare not connected.

A mother tells WDRB that her 2-year-old daughter is at Kosair Children’s Hospital after her kidneys failed after contracting E.coli.

She says she believes she got it from going to Huber’s petting zoo and claims there are two other sick children at the hospital dealing with the same thing who also pet the animals there.

Huber’s says it has received numerous calls and has issued its own statement on Facebook.

Dana Huber with Huber’s Marketing and Public Relations says, “To be completely honest the Facebook posts, what was being posted as of yesterday was very concerning to us. Our family didn’t want to release information until it was the most accurate information. Again, we handled it the best that we could.”

Huber says the family wanted to set the record straight and let people know there is no link between E. coli and their facility. Huber’s says their thoughts are with the family who has been affected.

A table of petting zoo related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks.

Needle tenderized? No problemo; AMI asks for withdrawal of beef rule

Posted on by
2

The American Meat Institute has submitted comments recommending that USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) withdraw its proposed rule requiring labeling on needle- or blade-tenderized beef products.

“The existing labeling scheme for products that have been needle injected or blade tenderized, with appropriate qualifying statements or tenderizingPageother label information, provides open and transparent information based on recognizable common and usual product names and should be kept,” the comments say.

The comments highlight, among other things, the safety record of mechanically tenderized (MT) products, as well the proposed rule’s potential to confuse consumers by changing the product name to include the mechanically tenderized distinction. 

AMI’s full comments are available at http://www.meatami.com/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/94617

. 

280 sick; Just cook it doesn’t cut it, difference between prevention and monitoring

Posted on by
Reply

Industry is responsible for producing safe food.

Farmers, processors, distributors, retailers, restaurants and consumers, these individuals are responsible for doing what they can to produce FunkyChickenHimicrobiologically safe food.

It’s not the job of government, and they don’t really care.

Does any business owner really want to hold their brand hostage with government inspection, or should they go above and beyond to protect that brand they’ve worked hard to establish.

The hysterical level of stories about how furloughed U.S. government types have been brought back to work to monitor the outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg that has sickened at least 280 linked to Foster Farms poultry, highlights the difference between prevention and monitoring: government is there to monitor to establish a minimal standard, like the Pinto, and it’s usually after the outbreak.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has now threatened Foster Farms with shutting down the three plants involved in the outbreak by withholding inspection.

Foster Farms has announced no plans to recall any of its chicken products, nor did it recall any chickens in the previous outbreak, which sickened more than 100 people between January and July of this year.

There is no legal requirement for companies to issue recalls in cases involving whole – rather than ground – meat, but they could do it voluntarily.

“From a business standpoint, it sends a tremendously bad message to your customers,” Craig Hedberg, a food safety expert and professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, told NBC. “They obviously have this strain present in their chickens and they’re not adequately controlling it in their plants and it’s getting out to customers.”

Instead, Foster Farms, and a lot of government and industry apologists have repeated advice that consumers should clean thoroughly, avoid cross-contamination and cook the chicken beyond 165 degrees – a temperature that will kill any salmonella bacteria.

We’ve done studies where we observed these consumers preparing a chicken dinner. Cross-contamination is almost impossible to avoid.

But why not blame the consumer. It’s easier and more efficient.

Dr. Katrina Hedberg, Oregon’s state epidemiologist, is the lone public chicken.thermhealth exception, and is correct when she says, consumers are not to blame.

“We’re not seeing an outbreak because people suddenly decided they like to eat their chicken rare,” Hedberg said. “If you’re suddenly seeing an uptick in cases, it’s probably because there’s more bacteria.”

A spokesman for Foster Farms declined to give food safety specifics when asked by Lynne Terry of The Oregonian, saying food safety practices are “proprietary.” When asked why the company did not act sooner, a spokesman said Foster Farms wanted to be sure the added safety practices were effective.

The USDA has known about this problem for a decade. Oregon scientists have been tracking a Salmonella Heidelberg strain first associated with Foster Farms in 2004. State authorities notified both the USDA and Foster Farms.

Those comments do not bolster consumer confidence.

If you’ve got a good food safety system, brag about it.

Because some companies are better.

Turkey on the table; praise be to Canadian Thanksgiving

Posted on by
1

I paid $9.50/kg for the Canadian Thanksgiving turkey we’ll be carving this Sunday afternoon (after reaching a thermometer-verified 165F or higher; I’m not one of those you-can’t-over-cook-a-turkey-that’s-what-the-gravy-is-for folks).

That’s about $4.50 a pound.

I told the butcher, one of the few to stock turkey (he also has crocodile and kangaroo) that in North America it would be aust.turkey.label_.12-225x300$0.99/pound. Market demand, I guess.

Turkey’s just not that big in Australia, even though we have dozens wandering the streets in our near-to-downtown Brisbane suburb.

The cooking instructions on the label are the same as last year – scientifically incorrect and suck. No safe cooking temperature, no thermometer advice, and says to wash the bird.

No one will be washing the bird in this house.

Last year we had about 30 people show up, and the locals were amazed by such a thing – a turkey.

Dr. Temple Grandin is featured in a video about the turkey industry designed to give the public a look at how the birds are raised, slaughtered and readied for Thanksgiving dinner.

The National Turkey Federation and the American Meat Institute paid for the video which features Grandin with a flock of 1,500 birds and takes the viewer all the way through the stunning and slaughter process.

I like the transparency. It undercuts any attempts at conspiracy theories.

But a 13-minute video? Edit it to two minutes.

My friend Jim Romahn asks, why hasn’t the Canadian turkey industry, which is far more organized than in the United States, done something like this long ago?

“I’m really pleased that the industry wanted the public to see this process because I think we need to show people how it’s just done right in a typical plant,” Grandin said in a news release.

“There’s a lot of good work going on in animal agriculture and I’m glad we’re telling our story openly and honestly.”  

Brunch will be served Oct. 13 at 2 p.m. Show up if you’re around.

Sharing food safety porn is about increasing discussion

Posted on by
Reply

“Hopefully no one ends up in jail.”

That’s what I told Susan Berfield of Bloomberg Business week when she asked me about #citizenfoodsafety, the project created to encourage regular folks to take and share pics of thermometer use, handwashing, restaurant scores and the likes.
Dani has been all about Instagram for the past couple of months and got me hooked on the voyeuristic excitement of following people through the photos they take. So much of what I see is food (I guess because I follow self-described foodies) – why not do the same thing with food safety.xl_2874_food-photography-tp

Susan writes,

You could imagine all sorts of activity emerging from this, but for now, Chapman says he wants only to encourage foodies to ask questions about the safety of what they eat. It’s citizen science, not vigilantism. In this noble version of life on the Internet, the photos will be conversation starters. “There’s just too many illnesses from foodborne pathogens, about 48 million a year,” he says. “There’s a lot of interventions out there, and we haven’t seen the payoff in reduction of illnesses.” The latest salmonella outbreak has already sickened 278 people.

There’s also the possibility that someone will send him a photo of a Taco Bell employee licking a stack of taco shells. Whether it’s rats, a fast-food employee sneezing into your drink, or a dude eating Ramen noodles out of a bowl he made with his beard, Chapman wants to see it—in the name of education. “We’ve seen lipstick on a drinking glass, I’m sure we’ll see hair on pizza, cockroaches in restaurants,” he says. “There’s a yuck factor in those, but they’re not as risky as someone handling raw meat and then not washing their hands before making a salad.”

“This isn’t meant to out restaurants,” he says. Nor is he encouraging people to sneak onto corporate farms or into fast-food kitchens. But “if it does get crazy, that means people are interested,” he says.

Lydia Zuraw of the Food Safety News also wrote about the project:

Food and public-health voyeurism has been around for a while, Chapman says, adding, “The project became reality with the advent and improvement of smart phones and the rise of the interest in citizen science.”

In his post, Chapman references a 2005 program in South Korea that encouraged diners to take pictures of food-safety infractions in restaurants and submit them to health inspectors who could follow up and potentially fine the establishment. The United Kingdom since launched a similar program, and there have been multiple examples of pests in New York and Toronto shared online.

“Better dialogue around food safety isn’t just about awareness. It’s about increasing the value society puts on working towards producing foods in the safest way,” Chapman says. “More dialogue and more informed shoppers and eaters keeps pressure on everyone to do better.”

On how I became a food safety nerd

Posted on by
Reply

This post was originally published at the official blog of the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association (IFSTA) blog – Science Meets Food.

I’m a total food safety nerd (at right, exactly as pictured). Had I not emailed my graduate school mentor, colleague and friend Doug Powell in the winter of 2000 looking for an on-campus summer job (while I was an undergraduate student at the University of Guelph) I’d be some other kind of nerd. I’d probably be a fantasy football blogger or Starbucks barista.chapman-peanuts-1

The story would be a lot cooler if I had sought out Powell as a potential employer because I was interested in the stuff he did, but I didn’t. I had no idea what he did — and being a bit of an idiot, I didn’t bother to look it up. I emailed Doug on the advice of a friend who knew I was desperately looking for a job, and didn’t tell me much else about the dude or what he filled his days with. My friend just said “I think you two will get along”. I didn’t really know what that meant, but really had no other prospects. So I emailed him. And he hired me to pull news.

Pulling news meant that I surfed through the tubes of the interweb for anything food risk-y (microbial food safety, GMO foods, animal disease, etc) and the stories I found (along with the other news pullers) become the content for FSnet, the precursor to barfblog, and the other listserv postings Doug put together every day.

About three weeks in, I found my passion for food safety. That’s when an E.coli O157 outbreak linked to Walkerton Ontario’s town water system became big news ) . This was real life, seven people died and over 2,300 were ill. I was already interested in disease (probably because of Outbreak or the Hot Zone), but the coverage and discussion within the Powell lab around Walkerton (how the outbreak was handled and communicated to the folks drinking the water) drew me in. I was introduced to the field of risk communication where the technical info and real people intersect.

And I made my move from molecular biology and genetics to food safety. That’s where it all started.

That news-pulling gig turned into an MS working with farmers to shape and evaluate an on-farm food safety program. The MS degree turned into a PhD where I looked at handwashing and cross-contamination in kitchen settings. Both degree projects were about evaluating what works to change behaviors – and exploring different messages/delivery methods based on the best available food safety and communication evidence.

Since then I’ve spent time conducting applied and action research leading to extension outputs. But that’s just a fancy way of saying I’ve become a food safety voyeur and storyteller. What really matters, and is central to any food safety intervention that targets behavior, is not what people say, but what they actually do. To get at the real practices food safety folks have to gain access to real life situations, observe and understand systems. And then design something to address risk.  The literature says that for something to connect to someone it has to be specific, timely, compelling, and provide a control method. This can be done through constructing a narrative around a situation.  Once some intervention is made, evaluating the effectiveness is often forgotten. Lots of effort goes into designing things, not as much effort goes into figuring out whether the creation worked.

As an undergraduate I didn’t really know what I was interested in and by chance I found a problem that connected with me personally: there are too many sick people. By exploring different venues within the food system, and having super mentors that supported my interests and ideas, I found a passion for exploring solutions.

—

Lots of barfblog friends including Lily Yang, Ben Raymond, Jon Baugher and Thomas Siebertz contribute to – Science Meets Food. Check it out.

Real-life Airplane as passenger lands plane after pilot ill

Posted on by
Reply

I first saw the 1980 movie Airplane at the drive-in. I thought it was dumb, because I was more interested in the girl I was with. I’ve since re-watched about 30 times, and it’s in my top-5 movies of all time (World According to Garp, Wonderboys, American Beauty, O Brother Where Art Though round out the current list).

Whatever plot there was in Airplane revolved around passengers stricken with food poisoning.

That plot seems to have been borne out in real life after the pilot of a small plane fell ill at the controls and two flight instructors were called in to the airport to give his only passenger a crash course in not crashing.

The man—who had no flying experience—managed to bring the plane in for a safe, though somewhat bumpy, landing at England’s Humberside Airport. “He made quite a good landing actually,” one of the flight instructors tells the BBC.

81 sick with Salmonella; illegal guinea pig slaughter at Minn. fair

Posted on by
2

Leading up to any food festival or state fair, there are lots of allegedly comforting messages about how things are thoroughly inspected and food safety is a top priority.

Doesn’t always work out that way.

In Minneapolis, at least 81 people were sickened with Salmonella after eating food at an Ecuadorian festival on Aug. 11, 2013.

Now, the Star Tribune reports the owner of New York Plaza Produce, which was linked to the outbreak, obtained guinea pigs cuy.guinea.pigfrom an unlicensed supplier and “slaughtered live guinea pigs in the back warewashing area of the meat market,” according to a Minneapolis inspection report.

Nieves Riera was issued a $1,000 citation on Oct. 1 for five violations, discovered in an inspection of the market four days after the festival. There were three “critical” violations, one pertaining to cooking food at an unlicensed facility and two others related to the handling and purchasing of the guinea pigs. 

“Nieves Riera obtained guinea pigs from an unlicensed supplier. The guinea pigs were sold at the Ecuadorian Festival,” the compliance officer noted in the inspection report. “Cooked pork was purchased from a Minneapolis Meat Market. The pork was resold at the Ecuadorian festival. The source of the pork is not an approved wholesaler.”

According to the report, Riera stated that she slaughtered the live guinea pigs in the back area of the meat market. “This is not a slaughterhouse and live animals are not allowed on the premises,” the report says.

Calgary Wendy’s shut down over health violations

Posted on by
Reply

Brisbane is like Calgary, 20 years ago – a cow-town flush with resource money and trying to act sophisticated but still overrun with bogans (fubar).

The Wendy’s on Macleod Trail and 70 Ave. in Calgary was visited by inspectors last Wednesday, who uncovered16 safety violations.

The issues included an employee who didn’t wash their hands while handling raw meat, raw hamburger in a cooler that was too fubarfeat__spanwarm, black mold and water damage in the staff room and grease and oil on the floor.

“The reason that the restaurant has been closed is not because someone has been made ill, it is because we have an older building that requires repairs,” says Lisa Deletroz, spokesperson for Wendy’s Canada. “Part of those repairs involves making it a safer working environment.”

Employees at the affected location have been reassigned and will undergo additional training, and the restaurant will have to be visited by health inspectors again before it can reopen.

Entire food system should be accountable for outbreaks

Posted on by
1

Arresting the Jensen brothers without indicting anyone else in the food system is like arresting Richard Eggers to curb the excesses of the global financial crisis.

Eggers, a 68-year-old Des Moines resident, who gained national attention after being fired by Wells Fargo & Co. in July 2012, was featured on the Colbert Report (video below for North Americans) in a segment satirizing the federal government’s failure to jail a cantaloupesingle high-level banker who helped precipitate the global financial crisis.

Eggers was fired after the nation’s largest bank by market value learned that he had been arrested 49 years ago for putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a Carlisle laundry machine. He is one of an estimated 3,000 low-level bank employees who were fired last year under employment regulations meant to deter the kind of high-level excesses that helped precipitate the global financial crisis.

The Jensen’s case is far more serious, involving the death of 33 people and sickening 143 from Listeria in cantaloupe in 2011, but focusing on the farmers who received stellar audit reports lets the system off the hook.

And the system is at fault.

The nation’s food safety system, especially for produce, is a patchwork of third-party audits, personal assurances, and profit before protection.

The government – the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – says it’s sending a message, but it’s sending the wrong one.

Eric Jensen, 37, and Ryan Jensen, 33, were accused of six counts of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce and aiding and abetting.

The Jensens should be held accountable, as should everyone else in the food system, including the auditors that gave the Jensens a big thumbs up and the retailers who rely on paperwork in the absence of evidence. Going after the weakest link only displays a decrepit and ineffectual system.

Some companies – to their credit – are going beyond the paper trail and using their own staff along with outside expertise to build a credible food safety system; some companies really are better.

And they should brag about it.

Because as a consumer, I have no way of knowing whether one cantaloupe was raised, harvested, packed and shipped more hygienically than another. Retailers insist all food is safe, but weekly outbreaks, especially with repeat offenders, shows the system is broken.

(Meeting government standards implies no sort of microbial food safety; that is a tactic to deflect responsibility, what some call the Pinto effect.)

The FDA may be flexing its tiny muscles against the weak kids, but is doing nothing visible about that troubled third-party system in food, where the company selling the food is paying the auditor to approve the safety of the food.

The best producers won’t rely on government and will get ahead of the food safety curve.