Yearly Archives: 2015

Blue Bell suspending operations at its Broken Arrow facility after Listeria outbreak

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Blue Bell Creameries has voluntarily stopped operations at its manufacturing plant in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, so it can be inspected to determine out how some ice cream products recently were contaminated with listeria.

blue-bell-ice-cream-cups-450px“We are taking this step out of an abundance of caution to ensure that we are doing everything possible to provide our consumers with safe products and to preserve the trust we have built with them and their families for more than a century,” said the company in a release.

The shut-down comes not long after listeria monocytogenes was found on a chocolate ice cream cup that was produced at the Broken Arrow plant on April 15, 2014, and recovered from a hospital in Wichita, Kansas.

Soybean sprouts recalled because of Listeria risk

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Henry’s Farm Inc. of Woodford, VA is recalling all packages of soybean sprouts because they may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections to individuals with weakened immune systems.

list.sproutsThe contamination was discovered after sampling by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Food Safety Program and subsequent analysis by the Virginia Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services revealed the presence of Listeria monocytogenes in the products. No illness has been reported to date.

Reduction of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli attached to stainless steel

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Amy R. Parks and Mindy M. Brashears write in Food Safety Magazine that shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) are pathogens of concern across various products within the food industry, as they have been connected to a wide variety of outbreaks and recalls.

e.coli.vaccine.beefMost of the scientific literature concerning the removal of attached STEC cells focuses on E. coli O157:H7, as it was the first STEC to be considered an adulterant in nonintact beef products in the United States after a large outbreak from undercooked ground beef patties in 1982.

Worldwide, non-O157 STEC strains are estimated to cause 20 to 50 percent of STEC-related infections. A review of outbreaks from 1983 through 2002 found six serogroups (O26, O111, O103, O121, O145 and O45) to be the most common non-O157 STECs causing human illness in the United States.With an estimated 70 percent of non-O157 STEC infections being caused by these serogroups, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service has included these serogroups along with E. coli O157:H7 as adulterants in nonintact beef products.

Biofilms are communities of microorganisms that can form on both living and nonliving surfaces, including those found in food processing plants. Biofilm formation depends on the microorganisms present and can be affected by a variety of environmental conditions, including nutrient availability, temperature, the cleanliness of the surface and the presence of other microorganisms. Previous studies have determined that E. coli O157:H7 can attach and form biofilms on surfaces such as stainless steel and plastic.

A series of studies, including two conducted in our laboratory, have shown STEC attachment is strain dependent. This finding was important because it shows assumptions cannot be made about the entire serogroup in terms of attachment to and biofilm formation on these surfaces.

Stop touching yourself: Corn flakes invented to prevent masturbation

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Trader Joe’s corn flakes contain mixed tocopherols (Vitamin E); Kellogg’s adds the preservative BHT to its packaging. The makers of early Corn Flakes devised a solution that required no additives and shot the product’s popularity up like the puck in a strongman game at a Corn Belt county fair. 

road.to.wellvilleOddly enough, Corn Flakes were apparently invented as an antidote to masturbation, according to several accounts. A medical movement originating in the early 18th century declared that solitary sex led to illness, ranging from spinal tuberculosis and epilepsy to bad posture. A century later, these anxieties still held. John Harvey Kellogg believed that spicy foods and meats could encourage sexual arousal and lead to “self-pollution.” To avoid that horror, he advised a vegetarian diet with lots of cereal grains—which he was perpetually trying to coax into a palatable form. He was an influential figure who preached that cereal would save lives. “I get erections,” one patient confesses to a fictionalized Kellogg in the film adaptation of T.C. Boyle’s novel The Road to Wellville (which I’ve actually read and is far better than the movie). “I warn you sir,” the doctor replies. “An erection is a flagpole on your grave.”

Kellogg’s experiments with grains took place at his own oasis of health, the Medical and Surgical Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. “The vast resort offered the combined features of a medical boardinghouse, hospital, religious retreat, country club, tent Chautauqua, spa,” writes Gerald Carson in his 1957 book Cornflake Crusade, “all carried forward in an atmosphere of moral reform and asceticism.” At “The San,” physical health, spiritual health, and chastity could all be achieved through enemas, sinusoidal baths (a bath with the application of an electrical current), and proper diet. The problem with the Kellogg health diet was that it was tasteless and boring. One San dinner menu offered a choice of three entrées: “Protose Fillets,” “Nutolene,” or rice. Before the cereal boom, breakfast was “porridge or mush, graham gems, parsnips, tomato toast, ‘some kind of sauce,’ and a little milk.”

Canada says Canada is best at food safety, but inspectors don’t have CSI goggles to see bacteria: Leaked documents contradict CFIA claims, as Lilydale recall grows

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Not sure what’s going on in Canada, but consumer confidence in food safety should be questionable.

rick.holleyLeaked documents appear to contradict statements by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s top bureaucratd that oversight at meat processing plants in Alberta has not been reduced as the federal watchdog grapples with staff shortages and tight budgets.

In a tersely worded release issued in the aftermath of this week’s allegations by meat inspectors that the frequency of some checks have been cut in half at facilities in the northern half of the province, CFIA-president-and-former-Guelph-squash-player Bruce Archibald said the union’s claims  were false and unnecessarily undermined Canadian confidence in their food safety system.

But an internal strategy document obtained by the Calgary Herald shows the agency had plans in to reduce the daily presence of inspectors in plants and the frequency of some of their tasks by up to 50 per cent starting in early January of this year.

While inspectors would still visit plants that export to the U.S. every day to ensure compliance with that country’s standards, the strategy shows facilities that produced solely for the Canadian market would now only see an inspector three days a week.

“Processing group will not be able to complete work as per program design,” the document said.

“With reduced inspector presence at establishments, the CVS (compliance verification system) must be reduced.”

Agency officials did not respond to a request to interview Archibald about the apparent contradiction between his comments and the detailed strategy outlined in the December document that inspectors union president Bob Kingston says was implemented on January 5 as planned by CFIA managers.

“We have bent over backwards to be factually correct about what’s happening and our members get pretty upset when the head of the CFIA calls them liars,” Kingston said in an interview.

“This is not about protecting  jobs, but about whether the agency has the resources it needs to ensure the safety of  food on Canadian kitchen tables and store shelves.”

The controversy over the inspection cuts in Alberta – made as CFIA grappled with a $43.3 million reduction in annual budget for food safety and with the prospect of more financial pain next year – comes as the agency deals with a growing recall of products from one of the plants where oversight has been reduced in recent months.

patrick.stewartThe agency’s inspectors were busy Thursday pulling potentially tainted turkey made by Lilydale Inc. from store shelves across the country, a week after warning consumers that chicken from the company’s plant in Edmonton could be contaminated with the same Listeria monocytogenes bacteria.

CFIA said the suspect products were produced on a range of dates, but officials indicated they all appear to have been manufactured on the same line.

The recalls were triggered by positive results from testing of swabs of equipment in the plant and finished product made within a specific time frame, the agency said.

Officials did not directly answer a Herald query as to whether a CFIA inspector was at the plant on all the days when the recalled product was manufactured.

But they did say an inspector was present on March 10, one of the production days in question, when checks were done before the line began operating.

Rick Holley, a food safety expert at the University of Manitoba who advised the government during the deadly Maple Leaf Foods listeria outbreak in 2008, said that recent spikes in listeria outbreaks in processed meats have made him concerned that the meat industry is slacking in its sanitation practices.

“If we let our guard down, I think we’re just asking for trouble,” he said.

Holley said there are five times as many food recalls due to listeria contamination this year than the year before. To come to that conclusion, he analyzed data on food recalls from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and found that in the first three months of 2015, 44 per cent were due to listeria contamination.

Only 9 per cent of recalls during all of 2014 were because of listeria, he said. What concerned him most, he said, was that the listeria outbreak was largely coming from cooked meat and fish products, which means that the bacteria was probably introduced during packaging.

The CFIA boasted in its statement that the Conference Board of Canada has rated Canada’s food safety system number 1 out of 17 OECD countries. This statistic comes from a report co-authored by Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at the University of Guelph. Charlebois said that there is no magic number of food inspectors that will guarantee food safety.

Holly disagreed with his methods, and said it is difficult to compare information across countries.

Rick knows food safety.

Dr. John H. Silliker: Obit

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Dr. John H. Silliker

john.silliker.obitJune 20, 1922 – March 19, 2015

Biography

Dr. John H. Silliker, a renowned food microbiologist and founder of Silliker Laboratories, the largest independent network of food testing and consulting laboratories in the U.S., died after a brief illness on March 19, 2015. Dr. Silliker, 92, had been a resident of Crown Point, IN, and Naples, FL, for over two decades.

Born in Canada on June 20, 1922, Dr. Silliker was raised in Hollywood, CA, where he counted a number of future movie stars among his high school classmates. He enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of South California in 1940. Unsure of his career path, he left the learning institution after three years and enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Assigned to serve in the prestigious Combat Engineers at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, Dr. Silliker was put to work in the medical department at the base. It was there that he befriended a young scientist, Hiroshi Sugiyama, and was mesmerized by a complex microorganism that would one day stand the food industry on its ear: Salmonella.

Dr. Silliker credited Sugiyama, who went on to a distinguished career at the University of Wisconsin’s Food Research Institute, with giving him a crash course on food microbiology. Together, the young soldiers made batches of salmonella antisera in the laboratory. Through a fortuitous stint in army fatigues, Dr. Silliker’s future assumed a decidedly different course.

Following an honorable discharge, Dr. Silliker returned to USC and earned a doctorate in microbiology in 1950. Three years later, he landed his first big career break with Chicago-based Swift and Company. After nine years at Swift, he held the position of chief microbiologist and associate director of research. But he yearned to start his own business.

At this time, St. James Hospital in south suburban Chicago Heights, IL, was seeking someone with his microbiology background to work in its pathology department. On paper, joining a hospital staff didn’t appear to be a logical step for a man with entrepreneurial ambitions. But as part of his employment, St. James agreed he could use its lab to moonlight as a food microbiology consultant. For three years, his consulting business grew steadily. However, a 1965 decree from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which launched warfare on the presence of Salmonella in processed food, placed his days at the hospital on life support.

Due to his extensive Salmonella expertise, Dr. Silliker’s small consulting business was soon overrun with samples and the hospital wanted him gone. He rented a 5,000 square foot, two-floor building down the road from the hospital. Silliker Laboratories was incorporated in Chicago Heights, IL, in 1967. From the brick building, Dr. Silliker took great pride in providing young scientists and local area residents with the opportunity to hone and learn new work skills. 

The focus on food safety took on greater dimensions in the U.S. following the FDA’s declaration of war on Salmonella. Over the next two decades, Silliker Laboratories opened new operations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and Canada. Dr. Silliker hired two young Ph.Ds — Damien A. Gabis and Russell S. Flowers – to help him grow the organization. Both would go on to helm the company with distinction.
Dr. Silliker was committed to making meaningful contributions to food safety outside the confines of his laboratory. He was an early proponent of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system; developed the revolutionary concept of using sponges to collect environmental samples in food plants; and testified at congressional hearings that resulted in the passage of landmark food safety legislation.

“Retiring” in 1987, Dr. Silliker returned home to California, but remained involved as a company consultant. In the mid-1990s, Institut Merieux, a leading international company dedicated to improving public health, acquired a controlling interest in Silliker. Today, the company is known as Merieux NutriSciences and features over 75 locations in 18 countries.

A sports enthusiast, Dr. Silliker revered Joe “the Brown Bomber” Louis, watched the development of a young California golfing phenom, Tiger Woods, and followed his beloved USC Trojans football team. By a twist of faith, he served as an adjunct professor at the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) for a few years and used the income from his alumni’s archrival to pay for his Trojan season tickets, a wicked irony that he enjoyed with immense gusto.

The author of over 80 peer reviewed publications, Dr. Silliker served on numerous scientific committees and groups, including several years on the highly influential International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF). During his exceedingly productive tenure, he served as ICMSF editorial committee chairman for the highly acclaimed two-volume monograph, “Microbial Ecology of Food” (Microorganisms in Foods 3).

For his outstanding contributions, the Institute of Food Technologists, American Academy of Microbiology, NSF International, and International Association for Food Protection and other scientific groups recognized his decades of service.
Upon learning of his death, many of Dr. Silliker’s colleagues praised both the man and the scientist.

Dr. R. Bruce Tompkin, who succeeded Dr. Silliker as Director of Research at Swift and served on the ICMSF board with him, said he was a mentor who gave his time freely even when Silliker Laboratories was in its infancy. “It is not possible to include all of John’s contributions and it isn’t necessary,’ he said. “Each of us has our own recollection of John and how he impacted our professional experience.”

“John was one of the three or four food microbiologists of that period that left an imprint that continues to be important 50+ years later,” said Dr. Robert L. Buchanan, a former FDA official who currently serves on the faculty of the University of Maryland.
“John Silliker was a giant in the food industry,” Russ Flowers said. “The influence he had on my life both professionally and personally is impossible to measure. I will always cherish the many late hours we spent together in the laboratory building Silliker into the most respected brand in food testing.”

Dr. Silliker is survived by his wife, Katherine Lee; his daughters Paula Silliker Goepfert (Pino Tarabelli) and Margaret Elizabeth Silliker (John Ryan); his sister Margaret Silliker Williams; his grandchildren Colin McDonnell Goepfert (Rachel) and Gwendolyn Silliker Goepfert (Nello Patrone); his great grandchildren Connor, Samuel, and William Goepfert; his stepsons James and John Harrell whose mother Marguerite predeceased him; his stepchildren Mary Beth Senne (Scott), Maureen Reid (Dr. J.R.), Margaret Groark (Richard), Michael Lee (Jennifer), Brian Lee (Jennifer); eleven step grandchildren, and two step great grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to the South Suburban Humane Society in Chicago Heights, IL.

 

U.S. database of food safety inspections

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University of Maryland faculty and graduate students in computer science and economics, together with a colleague from UCLA, have created the largest national database of food safety inspection information.

larry.david.rest.inspecIn the U.S., such inspections are done by local public health departments, which can take different approaches to conducting, coding and reporting inspection data. Using this unique new automated database, food service businesses and consumers can monitor and compare food safety practices from outlets across the nation.

The national database was developed by UMD Professor of Computer Science Ben Bederson, UMD Professor of Economics Ginger Jin, UCLA Associate Professor of Business Management Philip Leslie, new Ph.D. graduate Alexander Quinn (computer science) and UMD Ph.D. graduate student Ben Zou (economics).

According to Bederson, who also is UMD’s Associate Provost of Learning Initiatives and Executive Director of its Teaching and Learning Transformation Center, the team’s database uses data robots to automatically collect data from local government websites, and represents a huge leap from local and state databases that are built using manually-collected and sometimes poorly correlated data, and which can easily miss the big picture and have little impact on compliance actions.

“Building our system to reliably collect information from so many different jurisdictions was a formidable engineering challenge,” said Bederson.

Another difficulty was developing normalization algorithms to compare data across jurisdictions where the data is very different. For some web pages, the team had to write custom ‘scrapers’ to get the data, and for others they had to interpret already available databases.

For non-commercial use, the database is publicly available at http://hazelanalytics.com/ at no cost.

Not all meat juice is the same

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I’ve always wanted to use the phrase, meat juice, in a peer-reviewed journal article, but researchers from Sweden beat me to it.

meat.juiceMeat juice samples are used in serological assays to monitor infectious diseases within the food chain. However, evidence of inferior sensitivity, presumably due to low levels of antibodies in the meat juice compared to serum, has been presented, and it has been suggested that adjusting the dilution factor of meat juice in proportion to its blood content could improve sensitivity.

In the present study, the agreement between Toxoplasma gondii–specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels in meat juice and serum was evaluated, and whether the level of immunoglobulins in meat juice was dependent on its blood content.

Serum and meat juice from diaphragm, heart, tongue, Musculus triceps brachii and M. semitendinosus were collected from 20 pigs experimentally infected with T. gondii. Analysis of total IgG, heme-containing proteins (hematin), and hemoglobin (Hb) revealed significant differences between samples from different muscles, with the highest levels in samples from heart and tongue, and the lowest in samples from leg muscles. Comparison of T. gondii–specific antibody titers in meat juice and serum revealed a strong positive correlation for meat juice from heart (rs=0.87; p<0.001), while it was lower for M. semitendinosus (rs=0.71; p<0.001) and diaphragm (rs=0.54; p=0.02). Meanwhile, the correlation between total IgG and T. gondii titer ratio (meat juice/serum) was highest in diaphragm (rs=0.77; p<0.001) followed by M. semitendinosus (rs=0.64; p=0.005) and heart (rs=0.50; p=0.051). The correlation between Hb and T. gondii titer ratio was only significant for diaphragm (rs=0.65; p=0.008), and for hematin no significant correlation was recorded. In conclusion, the specific IgG titers in meat juice appeared to depend on the total IgG level, but the correlation to blood (Hb or hematin) was poor.

Importantly, large significant differences in total IgG levels as well as in specific antibody titers were recorded, depending on the muscle the meat juice had been extracted from.

 “Meat juice” is not a homogeneous serological matrix

Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. April 2015, 12(4): 280-288

Wallander Camilla, Frössling Jenny, Vågsholm Ivar, Burrells Alison, and Lundén Anna

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2014.1863#utm_source=ETOC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fpd

 

Fancy food ain’t safe food: Pakistan polo edition

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 Expired food, chocked sinks and unhygienic conditions in the kitchen and food storage area have exposed high quality standards claimed by the management of a top restaurant located inside the Polo Ground, Race Course Park.

 polo.pakistanThe shocking truth was unveiled after a team of the Punjab Food Authority led by Food Safety Officer Nadeem Haleem visited the restaurant on Thursday evening. The team faced resistance from the management but it managed to enter the kitchen for inspection. In the meantime, the legal adviser of the restaurant came and asked the PFA team not to ask much questions from the kitchen staff.

 PFA officials said the kitchen the eatery, which was considered one of top restaurants, was similar to that an ordinary road-side eatery, dispelling general perception that restaurants serving the elite follow high standards of hygiene and food safety.

Take charge, inspect yourself: Health violations at Philly airport have dropped

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More than a decade ago, city health inspectors would see occasional mouse droppings at Philadelphia International Airport, black residue and slime inside ice machines, and eggs and other cold foods kept at temperatures too warm.

philly.airport.foodIn 2011, the airport approved the hiring of two former city health inspectors, and the results have been dramatic.

Violations for risk factors known to cause food-borne illness have significantly declined. Today, the airport’s 27 eat-in restaurants have a better average than the citywide numbers for 5,000 non-airport eat-in restaurants.

The airport numbers improved after MarketPlace Philadelphia, the company that manages the airport shops and restaurants, hired Ken Gruen, a retired health department district supervisor in West Philadelphia, and Jerry Zager, another health inspector, who worked with Gruen.

The two have a business, Environmental Health Consultants L.L.C. In addition to making sure 70 food establishments between Terminals A and F are up to snuff, their other major client is the Philadelphia Four Seasons Hotel. “We inspect the kitchen, their entire food preparation and storage facility,” Gruen said.

At the airport, Gruen and Zager make the rounds of every terminal once a month, checking food-storage temperatures, cleanliness of floors and countertops, whether there are paper towels, hot water, and soap, and whether the establishment has a current city food license. They also make sure there is a certified food-safety handler on duty, as required by the Philadelphia Health Code.