I have no idea what a Lamington is, but I do know about Staphylococcus aureus.
Metcash Food & Grocery Ltd has recalled Baker’s Oven Choc Lamingtons 4 Pack from IGA and Independent stores in QLD, Northern NSW and WA due to Staphylococcus aureus contamination.
As usual, no information on how this contamination was detected, and no information if anyone is sick. Way to go, Australian public health beurotypes.
Escherichia coli O157:H7 can spread, likely airborne, more than one tenth mile downwind from a cattle feedlot onto nearby produce, according to a paper published ahead of print in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
The high percentages of leafy greens contaminated with E. coli suggest great risk for planting fresh produce 180 m [590 feet] or less from a feedlot,” the investigators write. That suggests that current buffer zone guidelines of 120 meters [400 feet] from a feedlot may be inadequate. This is the first comprehensive and long-term study of its kind, says first author Elaine D. Berry, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, in Clay Center, Nebraska.
In the study, the investigators sampled leafy greens growing in nine plots; three each at 60, 120, and 180 meters downwind from the cattle feedlot at the research center, over a two year period. The rate of contamination with the pathogenic E. coli O157:H7 declined with distance from an average of 3.5 percent of samples per plot at 60 meters to 1.8 percent at 180 meters.
The researchers sampled the produce six times between June and September of each year. They also sampled the feedlot surface manure in 10 feedlot pens for E. coli O157:H7, finding it in an average of 71.7 to 73.3 percent of samples in 2012 and 2011, respectively. Moreover, the study’s long-term nature enabled sampling under a greater diversity of weather conditions.
A variety of conditions can affect the level of contamination, says Berry. For example, following a period of high cattle management activity when the feedlot was dry and dusty, including removal of around 300 head of cattle for shipping, the rate of total non-pathogenic E. coli-contaminated samples per plot at 180 meters shot up to 92.2 percent.
Conversely, total E. coli-positive leafy green samples were notably lower on one August sample date than on any other date, a finding the investigators attribute to cleaning and removal of feedlot surface manure from the nearby pens a few weeks earlier.
The investigators also found E. coli in air samples at 180 meters from the feedlot, though the instruments were not sensitive enough to pick up E. coli O157:H7. However, the presence of E. coli in the air samples serves as a surrogate for E. coli O157:H7, demonstrating that the pathogen may also be transmitted in this manner, says Berry. The highest levels of contamination found on leafy greens, in August and September of 2012, followed several weeks of very little rainfall and several days of high temperatures, conditions that appear to abet airborne transport of bacteria from the feedlot, she says.
Limitations of the research include that it was conducted only in one state—Nebraska, which is not a produce growing state. Nonetheless, Berry says that the location was a reasonable model for some of the U.S.’s major produce growing regions, such as California’s Central Coast, as winds there can blow almost as hard as in Nebraska, and both places can have dry summers, which are conducive to airborne transport of bacteria.
The impetus for conducting the research was the rising incidence of foodborne disease outbreaks caused by contamination of fresh produce, says Berry.
BMG Trading, Inc. an Oakville, Ontario establishment, is recalling approximately 26,108 pounds of pork products that were produced without the benefit of federal inspection, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.
The Pork Leg Flank products were produced on December 16, 2014. The following product is subject to recall: [View Label]
1800 lb. (approximate) combo bins containing 65 – 75 legs of “PORK LEG FLANK ON COMBO.”
The products subject to recall bear the establishment number “394” inside the Canadian mark of inspection as well as a health certificate number listed as “CERT. No. CERT. 097400.” These products were shipped to retail locations for further processing in Arizona.
The problem was discovered using the Public Health Information System (PHIS) during a weekly review of import shipment data. It was found that the product failed to present at the Canadian border for FSIS reinspection and was distributed into U.S. commerce.
FSIS and the company have received no reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products. Anyone concerned about a reaction should contact a healthcare provider.
FSIS routinely conducts recall effectiveness checks to verify recalling firms notify their customers of the recall and that steps are taken to make certain that the product is no longer available to consumers. When available, the retail distribution lists will be posted on the FSIS website at www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls.
Tim Worstall, whose latest book is “23 Things We Are Telling You About Capitalism” writes in Forbes in yet another way of the power of marketing food safety – at retail — that Don Boudreaux outlines the value of brands in maintaining or increasing the quality of foodstuffs subject to branding. He then goes on to ask whether there have been any empirical studies of which method actually improves quality the most. I’m afraid that all I can offer is anecdote here from the UK’s history: but branding most definitely came first in the clean up of mid-19th century food supplies.
Here’s Boudreaux:
Because Smith will in fact supply milk of consistently good quality (with “good quality” here determined by consumers rather than by bureaucrats, dietary “experts,” or other officious intermeddlers), other milk suppliers will have incentives not only to devise and use ways to signal to consumers that their milk will be of consistently good quality, but, as a result of this signaling, actually to supply milk of consistently good quality.
These ways can vary, depending upon costs, benefits, and existing government regulations. The ways of assuring consistently good quality milk might be branding of the sort used by farmer Smith. But perhaps they will involve the use of grocery chains that take responsibility for testing and assuring the quality of the milk sold in their stores. (With this latter method, the relevant brand becomes that of the supermarket rather than of the individual dairy farm.) But the particular ways used to assure consistently good quality milk are less important than the fact that there are private market incentives to supply quality assurance and maintenance – as Tom Sowell’s description of McDonald’s efforts makes plain.
He then goes on to ask whether there are any empirical studies: to which I have to say that I don’t know of any rigorous ones. However, a tale from history. In my native UK the first investigations into who was adulterating what came around 1820. The German chemist who published them soon found himself the object of trumped up charges and left the country. So, no, no one is saying that unalloyed corporate or producer power is the answer here. …
Another way of describing this is the possibly apocryphal story of Heinz tomato soup. Back in the early days canning, at least at industrial scale, was a fairly hit and miss operation. There’s another story of an Arctic expedition all dying from botulism as a result of their canned food not being properly heated and sealed before departure. When Heinz came out they were just another in a long list of people trying it all. But their soup had the startling feature of killing people less often than their rivals. And thus the brand became valuable as a signifier of someone who knew what they were doing with their canning. But that is an apocryphal story.
Philip Derfler, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service writes in this letter to The New York Times that in “Making a Pig’s Ear of Food Safety” (Op-Ed, Dec. 13), Ted Genoways unfairly portrays a pilot food safety inspection program that is being run by the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, or F.S.I.S. In the pilot, federal inspectors are actually able to perform more food safety checks per shift than in more traditional inspection programs.
Further, although Mr. Genoways cites problems that occurred during implementation of a new agency data collection system, no meat entered the market uninspected because of these problems. While the new system helps the agency analyze data, daily inspection does not rely on the system’s operation.
Mr. Genoways’s dire predictions about F.S.I.S.’s direction are without basis. The Government Accountability Office found in a recent report that F.S.I.S. is a “science-based, data-driven” organization.
Consumers can be assured that any changes to F.S.I.S.’s food safety system will be based on the best approaches to ensure food safety, as determined by relevant data and applicable science.
TMZ reports that the Lead singer of Say Anything hurled on stage Monday night … soaking a security guard in vomit.
Lead singer Max Bemis was towards the end of the set at the House of Blues in West Hollywood when he projectile vomited without warning. It’s unclear why … but there was alcohol on stage so it ain’t that hard to read between the lines.
Bemis didn’t miss a beat, and continued singing “I Want to Know Your Plans.” As for the security guard … well it definitely ruined his night.
Sometimes being close to the stage is overrated (There was this one time at a Who concert in Toronto in 1979, when me and my friend Dave decided we were too close to the stage by all the idiots around us, and the only way to get out was for me to roll my eyes into the back of my head, and Dave dragged me out, yelling, OD, OD. It worked.)
Retail grocery folks often share that customers sometimes leave physical food safety hazards behind while they shop. A decade ago, a retailer told us that the physical hazards they dealt with the most was finding false fingernails in the bulk bread bins.
I wonder how often rings are left in the Walmart lettuce bins.
The below is a classified ad (they still exist?) from today’s Raleigh News and Observer.
Sorenne and I will go shopping this morning because when I do, it’s last minute.
The annual 36-hour orgy has begun at the Sydney Fish Market and we’ll be getting our own seafood first thing in Brisbane.
“I think it’s the vibe during Christmas, the busyness, the rush, the excitement of it all. Everyone is in a good mood, it’s a good time of the year,” says seafood buyer Paul Papacosta, from Penrith Seafoods at Wetherill Park, and Sydney Fresh Seafoods at Manly and Potts Point.
“But quality becomes a bigger issue because there is so much volume going through, you have to keep your eyes on everything, you can’t let anything slip through.”
Dimitri Hari has been running around the Sydney Fish Market since he was two.
“My old man works in the industry, mum was in it, my aunties. I was thrown in and they couldn’t get me out. God knows they tried but I wouldn’t get out of the place,” says Hari who works for de Costi, one of the biggest players in the market.
“Seafood has definitely become a (Christmas) tradition. As each year goes by, Christmas tends to get bigger — a lot more prawns, a lot more oysters.
“People like to indulge with lobsters, there is that. Even though people might be doing their traditional roast, there is definitely a big seafood influence there.
Not so much in the UK, where the Food Standards Agency cracked down on Ades Limited in London for handling and packaging dried fish products and whole frozen African land snails in an unapproved establishment (this establishment is different to the one mentioned on product labels), under unsatisfactory hygiene conditions with a lack of traceability. Its existing approval has been revoked because of these issues.
Despite investigations by the enforcement authorities, it has not been possible to obtain the full distribution details or product traceability records for these products.
The Public Health Agency of Canada today announced the appointment of Dr. Matthew Gilmour as the new Scientific Director General National Public Health Laboratories, responsible for the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg and the Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses (LFZ) in Guelph, Ontario. Dr. Gilmour will begin his position in February 2015.
Dr. Gilmour is currently a clinical microbiologist with Diagnostic Services of Manitoba and an assistant professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Manitoba. He is also a past employee of the Agency where he held the positions of Director of Bacteriology and Enteric Diseases and the Chief of Enteric Diseases at the NML.
The Scientific Director General is responsible for managing the delivery of laboratory public health and emergency preparedness programs, providing strategic scientific advice to senior officials and representing Canada’s top human health laboratories nationally and internationally.
The position is being filled following the retirement of Dr. Frank Plummer. To staff the position, the Agency ran a national competition to find the most qualified and best-suited candidate. Dr. Gilmour was selected following a rigorous process and he will bring his experience and scientific leadership to this important role.