Yearly Archives: 2015

Parents in Tennessee want to know how six-year-old meat could be served at school

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Dozens of parents and students packed into the Hawkins County Board of Education, expecting answers about how their children could be served six-year-old meat in the cafeteria.

They were stunned to learn the school’s current system doesn’t keep track of dates such as when food shipments arrived or when it was time to throw unused food away.

School board members came to realize there’s been almost no such plan up to this point.

“People got it, it was normal and it was a just no. it was not normal once you tasted it obviously,” said Olivia Ewing, Cherokee High School senior.

On Thursday, 10News reported that some schools in the system had served six-year-old pork last week. The meat had been frozen up until preparation.

Board of Education Chairman Chris Christian is working to find out when the meat arrived at the schools.

No public warning, epi pushed aside: 26 sick from Salmonella linked to NZ bakery

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A major outbreak of food poisoning affecting 26 people throughout the North Island has been traced back to a Northland bakery.

barf.o.meterMinistry for Primary Industries manager of compliance operations Gary Orr said the outbreak started on January 1 and went through to February 10. Of the 26 people who had food poisoning, 16 had eaten at the bakery.

While investigators visited the bakery the day after notification to carry out a review of food handling practices, they were unable to identify the source of the outbreak, he said. As a result MPI declined to name the bakery involved.

“The investigation did not find the definitive source of the Salmonella, so there was no proof that the bakery had done anything wrong,” he said.

Because the investigation did not find the source of the outbreak there was no public warning as there was no way to tell people how to prevent themselves from becoming ill, Mr Orr said. “A number of areas for improvement were identified and follow-up visits by MPI to the bakery confirmed that these improvements had been implemented.”

Once again, epidemiology gets put aside for definitive proof.

Double secret probation: ‘Special team’ to check work of CFIA inspectors

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Health Minister Rona Ambrose is sending a special team to check the work of nearly 40 Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors at a meat processing plant in Alberta.

“I’m going to send them in to make sure everything is okay,” Ambrose said during question period Thursday, after NDP MP Laurin Liu said Canadians are at risk because of inadequate E. coli testing.

CTV News first reported Wednesday on government documents that show meat tainted with E. coli bacteria from the plant in Brooks, Alta., was detected by U.S. food inspectors in 2014.

That was two years after the government shut down the plant – formerly operated by XL Foods – after at least 18 people were sickened by meat containing the bacteria.

The documents also noted hygiene concerns, including employees standing in “two to three inches of pooling blood and contaminated water,” lack of running water in the bathroom sinks, and unflushed toilets with fecal matter.

JBS Foods, the Brazil-based company that now owns the plant, said any problems indicated in the inspections have been resolved.

Ambrose said that a 2014 Conference Board of Canada report that ranked Canada’s food inspection system first among 17 industrialized countries is proof the CFIA is “doing an excellent job.”

It’s proof politicians will cite bogus studies and believe their own press releases.

Keeping food safe at school and community gardens

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My grandparents introduced me to vegetable gardening when I was a kid. I used to leave the city for a couple of weeks each summer and visit them in Campbellford, Ontario (that’s in Canada) and they’d put me to work in their garden. I’d pull weeds, pick up fallen tomatoes (for the compost) and help pick green beans. It’s all a bit hazy, but looking back they didn’t let me handle anything that was ready to eat. Probably because I was dirty.Screen Shot 2014-03-17 at 11.41.11 AM

A few years ago my group was asked by the great folks at the NC Department of Public Instruction about the safety of produce in school gardens. As concerns over healthy food choices grew, more schools were asking about growing their own produce and using gardens as a teaching tool as well as a source of food. The food safety team correctly worried about risks.

I couldn’t find much in the literature on the about pathogens or even production practices at gardens so I figured a good place to start was to get into the field and figure out what was going on. Ashley Chaifetz, barfblog contributor and PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill worked for a summer to figure out the situation and came up with a short document to get garden organizers started (see growingsafergardens.com for all the materials). And then she evaluated it, the results of the project were published yesterday in Food Protection Trends.

Here’s a press release from NC State News Services’ and my main man, Matt Shipman.

School and community gardens have become increasingly popular in recent years, but the people managing and working in these gardens are often unfamiliar with food safety practices that reduce the risk of foodborne illness. Now researchers have developed guidelines that address how to limit risk in these gardens – and a pilot study shows that the guidelines make a difference.

“People involved with these gardens are passionate about healthy eating, food security and helping people connect to where their food comes from,” says Ashley Chaifetz, lead author of a paper describing the work and its effect on school and community gardening practices. “But they often don’t have formal training in how to limit exposure to foodborne pathogens. We developed tools to help educate these gardeners, and our research shows that the tools are effective.” Chaifetz is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but worked in the lab of NC State associate professor and food safety specialist Ben Chapman at the time of the study.

The project, led by Chapman, was borne out of discussions with public school and park officials who asked for food safety guidelines for school and community gardens. The research team then developed a document that lists food safety risks, gives specific instructions on how to limit those risks, and explains how the risk mitigation efforts work.

For example, gardening involves working with your hands, creating the possibility of transferring pathogens to fresh produce. To limit that risk, people should wash their hands before working in the garden – not just after digging in the dirt. So, gardeners should have access to handwashing facilities (and should use them), in order to wash off any pathogens.

The guidelines also offer garden managers advice on how to share the recommendations with volunteers who work in the garden.

Once the guidelines were complete, the researchers wanted to know how and whether the guidance would influence behavior. To find out, they launched a project with 10 community gardens and 10 school gardens.

The researchers conducted on-site, observation-based assessments of food safety practices at all 20 gardens. They then gave the guidelines and related supplies – such as hand soap – to the garden managers.

Two months later, the researchers went back to the gardens to conduct a follow-up assessment.

Sixteen of the 20 gardens improved their overall scores in terms of their use of best practices.

In particular, the researchers found significant improvement in three areas: handwashing; addressing the safety of the site’s water supply; and assessing pre-existing hazards at the site, such as potential soil contamination.

“There’s still room for additional improvement in their food safety practices, but it’s important to note that we saw real advances in risk reduction simply by providing the guidelines,” Chapman says. “We’re exploring additional, follow-up measures, such as webinars and YouTube videos, to see if they lead to additional improvements.”

The guidance, “A Handbook for Beginning and Veteran Garden Organizers: How to Reduce Food Safety Risks,” is freely available online.

The paper, “Implementation of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) in School and Community Gardens,” was published online April 30 in the journal Food Protection Trends. Lead author of the paper is Ashley Chaifetz, currently a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but who worked in Chapman’s lab at the time of the study. Co-authors include Elizabeth Driscoll and Chris Gunter of NC State, and Kristina Alnajjar and Alice Ammerman of UNC-Chapel Hill. The work was supported by the North Carolina Department of Instruction, North Carolina Recreation and Parks Association, and the Carolina Center for Public Service at the University of North Carolina.

Here’s the abstract

Implementation of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) in School and Community Gardens

Authors: Ashley Chaifetz, Kristina Alnajjar, and Alice Ammerman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Elizabeth Driscoll, Christopher C. Gunter, and Benjamin Chapman, North Carolina State University

Published: online April 30, Food Protection Trends

Interest in school and community gardens has increased over the past decade as a method to connect students and communities with food production. Although data on gardens as a source for foodborne illness is scarce, growing practices and settings are similar to those in small-scale commercial production. The objectives of this study were to (1) create a set of evidence-based best practices for gardens based on established food safety guidance for fresh produce, (2) create an intervention for delivery, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of the practices. The guidelines were designed to impact garden organizer and volunteer behavior as well as organizational infrastructure regarding site selection, soil testing, handwashing, water, composting, garden design and fencing, sanitation, and volunteer management. School and community gardens (n = 20, 10 of each) were visited twice, using a pre-post design, and a risk-based observation instrument was administered. Sixteen gardens (80%) improved their overall scores. While the findings demonstrated that handwashing behavior could be altered significantly (P < 0.01) through the provision of the designed intervention, they also suggest a suitable means to take steps toward a safer garden.

Handwashing is never enough: 32 suspected sick from WA animal contact area

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The Whatcom County Health Department is continuing to look for the cause of an E. coli outbreak among schoolchildren who went to the Milk Makers Fest last week in Lynden.

MILK_MAKERS_FEST_020.aurora_standalone.prod_affiliate.39Um, cows? Sheep? Goats?

Six children have been sickened so far with shiga toxin-producing E. coli and up to 32 are reported with symptoms.

The Milk Makers Fest introduces young students to farming. It also gave them a chance to pet farm animals.

Meanwhile, health officials are reminding people that they should wash their hands well, especially after using the bathroom and before preparing food for eating.

“Everybody has to be careful with their hand washing,” said Greg Stern, Whatcom County Health officer.

Uh-huh.

A table of petting zoo outbreaks is available at https://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Petting-Zoo-Outbreaks-Table-4-8-14.xlsx.

Best practices for planning events encouraging human-animal interactions

Zoonoses and Public Health

G. Erdozain , K. KuKanich , B. Chapman  and D. Powell

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/zph.12117/abstract?deniedAccess

Educational events encouraging human–animal interaction include the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. It is estimated that 14% of all disease in the US caused by Campylobacter spp., Cryptosporidium spp., Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157, non-O157 STECs, Listeria monocytogenes, nontyphoidal Salmonella enterica and Yersinia enterocolitica were attributable to animal contact. This article reviews best practices for organizing events where human–animal interactions are encouraged, with the objective of lowering the risk of zoonotic disease transmission.

Food Safety Talk 75: 76 Trombones

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Food Safety Talk, a bi-weekly podcast for food safety nerds, by food safety nerds. The podcast is hosted by Ben Chapman and barfblog contributor Don Schaffner, Extension Specialist in Food Science and Professor at Rutgers University. Every two weeks or so, Ben and Don get together virtually and talk for about an hour.  They talk about what’s on their minds or in the news regarding food safety, and popular culture. They strive to be relevant, funny and informative — sometimes they succeed. You can download the audio recordings right from the website, or subscribe using iTunes.1430350256159

The episode starts with Don very annoyed because he bought a microphone stand, carried it to various continents without using it, and now he cannot find it. In its absence he has resorted to using a hat.

 The podcast opens with discussion about making podcasts.  A listener asked how episode titles are selected in response to the title of Food Safety Talk episode 68: We found it in Wild Pig Feces. The process for podcast title selection is to look for random, out of context phrases from the show, text about them 30-40 times to select one, and lastly make sure it isn’t too long. One of Renee Boyer’s students, Lily Yang, also expressed interest in podcasting and Ben suggested she start with listening to lots of other podcasts. Recommended podcasts include Merlin and Dan’s Back to Work on 5by5 and the WTF podcast especially the episode with RuPaul.  Another resource is The Podcast Method website.

The focus of this episode was professionals making poor risk management decisions. A health inspector from the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture tried to stop a mother from breastfeeding in her farmer’s market booth despite the fact that she had proper hand washing facilities. Officials later apologized.  Ben and Don applaud the well-reasoned response the mother, Tanessa Holt gave.

Additional excitement brought to you by the ‘Theater of Public Health’ includes a middle school in New Jersey was closed because a staff member had C. difficile . Ben provides an historic example of risk management vs. communication virucidal footbaths were installed at airports in response to foot and mouth disease outbreak with the understanding that they were not effective.

The guys talk about how there is often a lack of data to inform risk, for example with the proposed use of hand sanitizer between handling money and then food. Or maybe the data does exist, but isn’t at the forefront of public health recommendations (the removal of tomato stem scar).  Ben and Don talk about gaps existing between regulations and practical ideas for implementation. Don found Rutgers dining hall did not have a vomit clean up plan and the Food Code is lacking specific best practices. One good resource for vomit clean up is here.

The conversation turned to public perceptions of food risks.  Food safety professionals are perhaps not proactive about correcting public misperceptions.  A counter example is South Dakota soybean producers who aim to correct misperceptions people have about GMOs and pesticides through a new advertising campaign.  Don talks about an interview question related to safest cuts of meat.  Regarding food safety ranking Mike Batz has created a top ten list of food-pathogen combinations. For better or worse, the Mother Jones article is here.

In recall news, Chipotle took a pork carnitas off of their menu because they suspend a pork supplier due to animal welfare concerns.

Lastly, Don received an urgent voicemail from the department administrator to sign a very important document and stated that ‘lack of planning on other peoples part does not does not constitute an emergency on my part.’

How to win friends and influence people? NZ burger chef loses it after foodborne illness accusation

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The social media storm began when a woman sent a private Facebook message to Ekim Burgers, saying that she loved the cafe’s food but her son had spent the night vomiting after eating there.

how.to.win.friends.influence.people“Firstly, this is not a complaint,” the woman began. “[The burger] is the only thing he ate differently from us that day so we assume it was the burger. Just wanted you to be aware. We thought the burgers were fantastic and know it was probably a one-off.”

And it probably wasn’t the burger (that would take 2-4 days, unless it was norovirus).

But the response from the chef is an instructive lesson in what not to do when chatting with customers.

On Wednesday, owner Mike Duffy posted a screengrab of the private message from the Wellington woman, saying “he wanted to get in first.”

When people complained he was breaching her privacy, he posted on Thursday the rant against his customers.

“Almost 20 years in this f—ing industry and never had a person who ate what I cook get sick from it,” he wrote on Ekim Burger’s Facebook page.

No evidence to prove that.

“Plenty of pissed up office jocks pulling the ‘i got food poisoning’ call after going home way to [sic] drunk from a staff Christmas party with someone who they shouldn’t have.

“Loads of middle class no idea house wives completely out of their league complaining that their wine glass should have more in it.

“Dozens of to [sic] drunk to drive but gonna anyway cos they can lawyer’s with no regard for the position they put you in as the license holder by driving home.

“100000s of eggs on Sunday mornings when no one, least of all the other staff wants to hear some little shit kid banging his or her fork on the wooden table only to be released from its chair to f— up the morning of other diners. So it’s dimwitted parents can talk about what shit the service is even though they’d never tip no matter how good it was.”

Unapologetic, Duffy said the rant was inspired by what he calls a creeping culture of rudeness and entitlement among hospitality patrons, who he said have a responsibility to behave well in restaurants, cafes and bars.

“It’s common courtesy and it’s not common anymore,” he explained.

This is happening: Baby formula made of raw milk in US

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The Washington Post reports that three years ago, after giving birth to her daughter, Nancy Noe had to accept the disappointing fact that she wasn’t producing enough breast milk to feed her baby.

colbert.raw.milkAfter trying everything—like frequent pumping and help from a lactation consultant—she did what she considered the next best thing: she went in search of the most organic baby formula she could find. “Reading the ingredients on the commercial formulas hardly made me feel any better,” Noe said recently. “I had no idea what any of this stuff was. I wanted another option.”

Then that she came across a recipe for a make-at-home formula created by the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF), whose stated mission is to restore nutrient-dense foods to the American diet. The formula is made using raw, or unpasteurized, cow’s milk and 13 additional ingredients—like homemade whey, lactose, gelatin, and healthy oils—designed to mimic the fat and nutrients in human breast milk.

Nancy was nervous to feed raw milk to her 7-week-old baby, and it initially didn’t go well. Her daughter experienced cheese-like vomiting, strange colored stool, and a lot of upset. “At first I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ ” Noe said. “But after two weeks, she began to thrive. She grew well, slept well, and loved her bottle. She’s now a very healthy 3-year-old.”

But the idea of a do-it-yourself formula—especially one made with raw milk— unsurprisingly has very vocal opponents.

“The idea that you would feed raw milk to an infant is completely insane,” says Katherine Lilleskov, a Brooklyn-based lactation consultant and RN. “With their weakened immune systems, infants are particularly vulnerable to harmful bacteria. It’s our job to keep our babies away from that stuff, not willingly feed it to them.

The WAPF formula was first developed nearly 20 years ago by Sally Fallon Morell, the foundation’s founding president, and nutritionist Mary Enig, early advocates for whole foods. Since then, Fallon estimates, nearly 20,000 families have used her recipe to feed their babies, and the number of parents experimenting with the formula doesn’t seem to show signs of abating. Fallon argues that the formula provides immune-stimulating, health-promoting, and antimicrobial components very similar to human breast milk, and hears often from parents happy to have found an alternative to commercial formula.

Nuts.

Portugal only made listeriosis a notifiable disease in 2014?

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In Portugal, listeriosis has been notifiable since April 2014, but there is no active surveillance programme for the disease.

listeria4A retrospective study involving 25 national hospitals led to the detection of an outbreak that occurred between March 2009 and February 2012. The amount of time between the start of the outbreak and its detection was 16 months. 

Of the 30 cases of listeriosis reported, 27 were in the Lisbon and Vale do Tejo region. Two cases were maternal/neonatal infections and one resulted in fetal loss. The mean age of the non-maternal/neonatal cases was 59 years (standard deviation: 17); 13 cases were more than 65 years-old. The case fatality rate was 36.7%. All cases were caused by molecular serogroup IVb isolates indistinguishable by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and ribotype profiles. Collaborative investigations with the national health and food safety authorities identified cheese as the probable source of infection, traced to a processing plant. The magnitude of this outbreak, the first reported food-borne listeriosis outbreak in Portugal, highlights the importance of having an effective listeriosis surveillance system in place for early detection and resolution of outbreaks, as well as the need for a process for the prompt submission of Listeria monocytogenes isolates for routine laboratory typing.

 Cheese-related listeriosis outbreak, Portugal, March 2009 to February 2012

Euro Surveill. 2015;20(17):pii=21104

Magalhães R, Almeida G, Ferreira V, Santos I, Silva J, Mendes MM, Pita J, Mariano G, Mâncio I, Sousa MM, Farber J, Pagotto F, Teixeira P.

http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=21104

Toxic mothballs mixed in with candy in 1,100 food bank hampers handed out in Canada

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Health officials are urging B.C. food bank users to throw away a candy mix distributed in hampers after mothballs were accidentally mixed into it.

11015297Camphor mothballs were mistakenly put into a candy mix in more than 1,100 hampers at the Share Family and Community Services Food Bank in Port Moody, Fraser Health said in a release.

Those hampers were then distributed to residents in the Tri-Cities, Anmore and Belcarra over the last two weeks.

Families that received the hampers are warned to immediately discard the candy containers by placing them in a bag and then putting them in the garbage.

Health officials also urge those families to keep the candy mix away from children and pets, and to not consume it.