Monthly Archives: January 2014

Texas death blamed on Bush’s chicken strips

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Campylobacter bacteria in chicken strips from a Bush’s Chicken outlet in Killeen, Texas killed a man after weeks of pain, his widow claims in court.

Angela Scurry sued 38th Street Chicken LLC dba Bush’s Chicken and the franchisor, Hammock Partners LLC, in Travis County Court.

Scurry and her late husband Morris bought chicken strips at Bush’s driver-through window on Nov. 27, 2012, she says in the lawsuit. Morris ate some immediately and the bush's.chickenrest later that night.

At 3 a.m. on Nov. 28, he awakened her with the sound of his vomiting and diarrhea, which continued for three hours.

Later that day, Morris “collapsed inside the home,” and she found him “on the floor writhing in pain.”

He was hospitalized in intense pain and “diagnosed with an infection caused by the Campylobacter bacteria,” his widow says. “During his hospital stay, decedent suffered a cardiac arrest as a result of the infection and was on the verge of dying, but was resuscitated.”

Angela Scurry claims that Bell County Health District inspection records show the defendant Bush’s outlet has a record of improper cooking temperatures, cross-contamination and other violations that could cause bacteria growth.     

The defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.
Founded in Waco in 1996, the fried chicken chain has, according to Courthouse News Service,  a cult-like following in Texas, particularly among alumni of Baylor University.

UK man fined £4.6k for operating illegal poultry cutting plant

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A Lutton man has been fined £4,650 for operating an illegal poultry cutting plant.

Shahbaz Khan, 36, of 157 Dallow Road, Luton, was prosecuted during a hearing at Luton Magistrates’ Court on Monday (January 6).

chix-caleb1-WEBHe also paid a victim surcharge of £47 and council costs of £866.

In July 2012 Luton council food safety officers were alerted by a member of the public who noticed crates of chicken meat piled up beside a garage behind shops in Riddy Lane in July 2012.

When officers visited, chicken meat was being processed without approval in unhygienic conditions. Food safety officers immediately closed the business.

Chicken was being processed in a garage with no running water and a splintered wooden pallet covered in greasy cardboard was used as a cutting surface for the meat.

The garage wall was covered with a tarpaulin sheet stained with blood and dried-on chicken flesh and the fridge door handle was dirty with dried-on chicken flesh and feathers.

Flies were crawling over a wooden cutting block.

Butchers were wearing dirty aprons stained with grease and blood, and there was a bag of filthy butchers aprons encrusted with scraps of chicken flesh.

Outside the garage, 38 crates of chicken waste including skin, bones and feathers were piled up and covered in blue-bottle flies with blood dripping from the crates and running over the pathway.

When Mr Khan failed to attend court in September 2013, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

He was finally brought before the magistrates this week and pleaded guilty to ten food hygiene offences. 

Maggot infestation at Melbourne’s Sushi Sushi

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Sushi Sushi at Maribyrnong’s Highpoint shopping centre apparently served a Melbourne student a crispy chicken roll infested with maggots, the latest of many food hygiene infringements from the Japanese food franchise.

“I looked and saw two things wiggling around,” recounted Chloe McSaveney. “I spat out what I had in my mouth.”

She claims that when she confronted store workers they simply threw the roll in the bin and SushiSushi_logooffered a refund for her meal.

Highpoint centre management staff retrieved the offending roll and presented it to local health inspectors for testing. Lab results confirmed the presence of fly larvae.

While Maribyrnong Council environmental health officer Jonathan Brett admitted that “the presence of a maggot is unlikely to cause physical harm,” McSaveney is still reeling from the encounter.

“The mental side of things is still affecting me now,” she told The Age. “I’m having trouble eating – I’m only eating about half of what I normally eat, and I’m struggling to be confident my food isn’t ridden with maggots.”

Sushi Sushi’s general manager Paul Grixti originally claimed that “in 15 years of trading … this was the first food safety incident they have ever had.” However, public records tell a different story.

In March of this year, the owner of Sushi Sushi’s Glenferrie store was fined $18,000 for nine food hygiene offences. The charges included a failure to take all practical measures to keep pests from the eatery’s premises.

Last year the Sushi Sushi outlet at Doncaster’s Stockland The Pines Shopping Centre was also charged for “a couple of procedures that weren’t followed,” according to a backtracking Grixti.

The apologetic general manager insisted that he did not mean that Sushi Sushi had never breached food safety rules, just that it was the first case where fly larvae was found in the franchise’s food.

U.S. food-safety audit gives Canada low grade, calls for better meat oversight

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Despite what some Canadian academics, government and industry types say about the safety of Canadian meat, the U.S thinks it sorta sucks.

This is nothing new.

But does matter to cattle ranchers who rely on trade with the U.S.

According to a report in the Globe and Mail, a U.S. audit of Canada’s food-safety system calls on the federal regulator to strengthen oversight of sanitation and the humane handling Chicago_meat_inspection_swift_co_1906of animals at meat-slaughtering plants.

The findings from the tour of seven food-processing facilities, two laboratories and five Canadian Food Inspection Agency offices in the fall of 2012 were kept confidential until recently.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture declined to release the report earlier to The Globe and Mail, which requested it through U.S. access to information law. The findings were published last month on the department’s website.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency received an “adequate” rating, the lowest of three scores that are meted out to countries deemed eligible to export food to the United States. The designation means Canada will be subject to more robust audits and its food exports will undergo more inspections at the U.S. border than those of countries whose food-safety systems were rated “average” or “well-performing.”

Canada’s food-safety system faced heightened scrutiny after 23 people died in an outbreak of listeriosis linked to a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto in 2008, and E. coli contamination in 2012 at the former XL Foods facility near Brooks, Alta., led to the largest meat recall in Canadian history.

The federal government has revamped oversight of the CFIA, transferring responsibility to the Health Minister from the Agriculture Minister in October. The true effect of that change – whether it is substantial or cosmetic – remains unclear.

The U.S. review reveals that auditors found sanitation issues, including flaking paint and rust on pipes and overhead rails, at a pig-slaughter facility in Langley, B.C. Problems were also observed at the former XL cattle-slaughter plant, then temporarily shut down amid the E. coli outbreak in which 18 people fell sick with potentially deadly bacteria.

On their Nov. 2, 2012, visit to XL, auditors noted greasy spots on several conveyor belts in the boning room, which could have led to contamination. Among other issues observed was dust on protective trays under ventilators and blowers, also a contamination concern.

“There are always issues with audits, but overall, the audit findings were very good,” Tom Graham, director of CFIA’s domestic inspection division, said of the 2012 audit.

The CFIA plans to add extra oversight to its inspection program. The agency will establish a permanent inspection verification office in the spring, Mr. Graham said. The new office, which was recommended in an independent review of the XL contamination, will review inspection activities at food plants.

Keith Warriner, a food-science professor at the University of Guelph, thinks additional oversight of inspectors is a good idea. He said the XL recall and the listeriosis outbreak highlighted weaknesses.

“The common feature of those [cases] is that the CFIA weren’t applying the rules. They were turning a blind eye, and that was more so in the case of XL Foods,” Dr. Warriner said. “You need to have this [new] inspection service to make sure the inspectors are applying the regulations.”

2 (and many more) sick; Salmonella scare closes Melbourne Vietnamese eatery

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People like their Vietnamese  food in Australia, and Melbourne has a long history of foodborne illness associated with these eateries.

The Hao Phong restaurant in Footscray was closed by health authorities on Tuesday after two diners were taken to hospital for salmonella poisoning, a Victorian health department spokesman said.

There are a number of other suspected cases involving people who ate at the restaurant, Hao Phong restaurant in Footscrayhe said.

Food cooked at the restaurant has been taken away for testing and the premises has been closed for a thorough clean-up.

Maribyrnong mayor Grant Miles said the council hoped to re-open the restaurant “within a few days”.

“It’s important to say the restaurant is being fully co-operative,” Cr Miles told Justin Smith.

“I believe there are 13 people who are sick from eating in the restaurant, but at this stage it’s still an ongoing investigation.

“I’ve eaten at this restaurant many, many times over the past years. It has an extremely good track record.

Cr Miles said the council had not publicised the closure because there was no proof the restaurant was at fault.

Justin Smith: “So why shut it down?”

Cr Miles: “It’s better to err on the side of caution.”

Justin Smith: “My point exactly.”

It’s believed people who ate at the restaurant between December 27 and 31 have been affected.

This is the state of food safety awareness in Australia.

300 sick from pesticide in frozen food in Japan

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More than 300 people across Japan have fallen ill after eating frozen food products contaminated with pesticide.

Shoppers have reported vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms of food poisoning after eating food produced at a plant in Gunma, north of Tokyo, according to surveys carried Maruha Nichiroout by the Asahi Shimbun and other local media.

The plant, run by a subsidiary of the nation’s largest seafood firm Maruha Nichiro Holdings, is at the centre of the nation’s latest food poisoning scandal.

Japanese police have launched an investigation into the company after it revealed last month that some of its frozen food products were tainted with malathion, an agricultural chemical often used to kill aphid in corn and rice fields.

Shouldn’t unannounced audits have always been the way? SQF brags its third-party assessment program to require unannounced audits

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I can’t speak to the veracity of the claim by the Safe Quality Food Institute (SQFI), a division of the Food Marketing Institute, which today announced the incorporation of an unannounced audit protocol to be included in the next revision of the SQF Code (SQF).

But if audits are going to have any use, they have to be unannounced.

With the support of its Technical Advisory Council, representing SQF stakeholders, SQF will become the first internationally accredited third-party assessment program to require sunnybrook-auditorunannounced audits. Robert Garfield, senior vice president, SQFI, issued the following statement:

“SQFI’s unannounced audit protocol will be introduced in February 2014 and implemented in July 2014, and will require that one out of every three SQF audits will be unannounced. 

“We made the decision to enhance the rigor of the SQFI program after consulting with numerous stakeholders. We understand that the food industry must respond to and meet the nation’s food safety challenges more rapidly and effectively, which requires a more nimble approach to our program.”

What we found when investigating the audit issue was:

• food safety audits and inspections are a key component of the nation’s food safety system and their use will expand in the future, for both domestic and imported foodstuffs., but recent failures can be emotionally, physically and financially devastating to the victims and the businesses involved;

• many outbreaks involve firms that have had their food production systems verified and received acceptable ratings from food safety auditors or government inspectors;

• while inspectors and auditors play an active role in overseeing compliance, the burden for food safety lies primarily with food producers;

• there are lots of limitations with audits and inspections, just like with restaurants inspections, but with an estimated 48 million sick each year in the U.S., the question should be, how best to improve food safety?

• audit reports are only useful if the purchaser or  food producer reviews the results, understands the risks addressed by the standards and makes risk-reduction decisions based on the results;

• there appears to be a disconnect between what auditors provide (a snapshot) and what buyers believe they are doing (a full verification or certification of product and process);

• third-party audits are only one performance indicator and need to be supplemented with microbial testing, second-party audits of suppliers and the in-house capacity to meaningfully assess the results of audits and inspections;

• companies who blame the auditor or inspector for outbreaks of foodborne illness should also blame themselves;

• assessing food-handling practices of staff through internal observations, externally-led evaluations, and audit and inspection results can provide indicators of a food safety culture; and,

• the use of audits to help create, improve, and maintain a genuine food safety culture holds the most promise in preventing foodborne illness and safeguarding public health.

Audits and inspections are never enough: A critique to enhance food safety

30.aug.12

Food Control

D.A. Powell, S. Erdozain, C. Dodd, R. Costa, K. Morley, B.J. Chapman

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713512004409?v=s5

Abstract

Internal and external food safety audits are conducted to assess the safety and quality of food including on-farm production, manufacturing practices, sanitation, and hygiene. Some auditors are direct stakeholders that are employed by food establishments to conduct internal audits, while other auditors may represent the interests of a second-party purchaser or a third-party auditing agency. Some buyers conduct their own audits or additional testing, while some buyers trust the results of third-party audits or inspections. Third-party auditors, however, use various food safety audit standards and most do not have a vested interest in the products being sold. Audits are conducted under a proprietary standard, while food safety inspections are generally conducted within a legal framework. There have been many foodborne illness outbreaks linked to food processors that have passed third-party audits and inspections, raising questions about the utility of both. Supporters argue third-party audits are a way to ensure food safety in an era of dwindling economic resources. Critics contend that while external audits and inspections can be a valuable tool to help ensure safe food, such activities represent only a snapshot in time. This paper identifies limitations of food safety inspections and audits and provides recommendations for strengthening the system, based on developing a strong food safety culture, including risk-based verification steps, throughout the food safety system.

Meat pumped with pond water in south China

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Food processing is all about adding water and salt and charging more. That’s what a food science prof told me a long time ago.

But usually that water is clean or potable.

Reuters reports China has held seven people in southern Guangdong province for injecting dirty pond water into lamb meat to swell its weight and raise its price, state lamb.watertelevision reported in the latest food scandal to hit the world’s second largest economy.

The suspects slaughtered up to 100 sheep per day at an illegal warehouse, pumping bacteria-ridden water into the meat before it was sold at markets, food stalls and restaurants in major cities such as Guangzhou and Foshan, China Central Television (CCTV) said in a three-minute report.

Authorities raided the illegal lamb meat abattoir in Guangdong at the end of December, finding around 30 carcasses injected with water, 335 live sheep, forged inspection stamps, and equipment to inject water into the meat, the report showed.

Each sheep was pumped with up to six kilograms of water just after being slaughtered, to add extra weight.

How do you know that hamburger is done?

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The family along with a friend went to Palm Beach on Friday.

hamburger.done.jan.14Not that Palm Beach, but the one on the Gold Coast (Australia) about an hour away.

After acting like tourists and getting sunburnt, we grabbed some lunch. I usually order what the kid wants, and eat the leftovers, a strategy I learned from having four previous kids.

She wanted a hamburger (right, exactly as shown) so I asked the purveyor at the takeaway, how do you know the hamburger is done?

She said people complain if it’s pink, so they cook it well.

Color is a lousy indicator. Stick it in.

barfblog.Stick It In