264 sick with Salmonella: Maybe Brisbane’s standards suck? Convention and Exhibition Centre has passed three Council inspections since outbreak

Was there any raw-egg based dishes such as a mayonnaise or aoili that sickens hundreds of Australians each year?

brisbane.conf.centre.foodA second outbreak of salmonella has been linked to the BCEC in the same week that 254 people have been confirmed ill — with 22 cases of salmonella — fowling a principal’s conference at the venue on February 26-27.

Fundraising Institute of Australia chief executive Rob Edwards said about 10 people are ill, five with confirmed cases of salmonella, across Australia and New Zealand after eating at the venue from February 18 — 20 for the organisation’s conference.

A Brisbane City Council spokeswoman said the BCEC had been inspected three times since March 3 — when the outbreak became public — and they were ‘compliant to a Five Star Safety Standard’ under Council’s EatSafe program.

Maybe Brisbane’s standards suck.

BCEC general manager Bob O’Keeffe said Queensland Health had informed them 56 swab tests from kitchens and food products had tested negative to salmonella.

Hot puddings and custards have been now struck off the menu pending the investigations.

On March 3 whole eggs and poultry were also banned.

So what was on the menu during these events?

Mater foundation executive director of fundraising Lesley Ray, 53, chaired the FIA conference and was first to fall ill and attended an emergency department on February 22.

On February 25 she told the FIA she believed she was sick from conference food and she believes this was passed onto the BCEC.

Two days later a blood test confirmed she had salmonella poisoning.

Canberra charity worker Pearl Lee, 45, was hospitalised after being struck down with salmonella.

She got confirmation of salmonella poisoning on February 24 and has accused the BCEC of ignoring her illness, saying they had 48 hours’ notice their food had poisoned her before the principal’s conference was held.

She says she passed on her diagnosis to the FIA who then contacted the BCEC but Mr Edwards said they didn’t tell BCEC people had fallen ill until February 25 — still a day before the principal’s conference.

“We had a few people calling me saying they were ill and did we know what was going on,” Mr Edwards said.

Mr O’Keeffe has refuted this, saying the BCEC wasn’t aware of Ms Lee’s illness until March 4.

Queensland Health – which is seemingly useless — wouldn’t reveal when they learnt people had fallen ill from the FIA conference, instead a spokeswoman said they would “follow up any reports of illness in attendees at other conferences held at the BCEC in the recent period.”

Make the full menu public.

Australian kangaroo meat fails basic hygiene tests

Can’t blame imports on this one: Kangaroo harvesters in Australia have been discovered not adhering to the most basic of hygiene standards, documents obtained under freedom of information show.

kangerooInvestigations by the New South Wales (NSW)Food Authority have found numerous breaches of hygiene and safety rules that prevent cross-contamination of kangaroo meat, including carcasses hung from rusty hooks, lack of water and cleaning facilities, and live animals being allowed alongside dead ones.

Critics say the huge industry is still a wild west, with vast differences in the practices of different kangaroo harvesters, who hunt animals in the wild without the regulations of commercial farming operations.

But the head of the industry association has strongly rejected this claim, saying the overall rate of breaches is low and kangaroo undergoes more extensive testing for pathogens before it is sold than other meats.

Greens MP John Kaye, who obtained the information under freedom of information laws, said the potential for cross contamination in the meat meant no one could eat it without putting themselves at risk of infection.

“Poor hygiene practices have potentially devastating consequences for any food but game meat is particularly vulnerable,” he said. “No one should eat meat that was hung on rusty carcass hook, processed over a tray with old dried blood or exposed to other live animals with the risk of faecal and other contamination.”

“This so-called healthy alternative to other red meats could be riddled with pathogens.”

Five years ago Fairfax Media revealed independent testing had found dangerously high levels of salmonella and E.coli in kangaroo meat bought from supermarkets.

Daniel Ramp, a senior lecturer and director of the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Technology Sydney, said previously contamination levels had been found that were “way above safety standards”.

Unbaked chicken patty recalled after testing positive for E. coli O157:H7 in Canada

Juici Patties (Canada) is recalling Juici Patties brand Jamaican Style unbaked Chicken Patty from the marketplace due to possible E. coli O157:H7 contamination.

Juici PattiesThis recall was triggered by the company. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is conducting a food safety investigation, which may lead to the recall of other products. If other high-risk products are recalled, the CFIA will notify the public through updated Food Recall Warnings.

The CFIA is verifying that industry is removing recalled product from the marketplace.

There have been no confirmed illnesses associated with the consumption of this product.

It’s not unfortunate, it’s preventable: Second food poisoning outbreak linked to Brisbane Convention Centre

Food safety amateur hour here in Brisbane.

Family guy barfA second outbreak of food poisoning has been linked to Brisbane’s Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCEC), as health authorities continue to investigate an incident in which hundreds of Queensland Education employees fell sick.

About 250 people reported gastro-intestinal symptoms following a school principals’ conference which was attended by about 1,200 delegates from around the state on February 26 and 27, according to Queensland Health.

Now it has emerged there was an outbreak of food poisoning among people who attended a conference at the site a week earlier.

It is understood at least 10 people became sick during a Fundraising Institute of Australia conference, with five of them diagnosed with salmonella, including the conference chairwoman.

Among those diagnosed with salmonella was charity worker Pearl Lee, who told ABC News she notified the BCEC and health authorities that she had been hospitalized with the illness.

“They should have really stepped on it quicker, because that was at least 48 hours before the teachers’ conference and they could have actually prevented the mass outbreak,” she said.

Fundraising Institute of Australia chief executive Rob Edwards said the organisation had been contacted by conference attendees hospitalised with salmonella poisoning.

“It’s just an unfortunate circumstance to happen. People go to a conference, have an enjoyable time, and then to go away with food poisoning is not a great outcome I would have thought,” he said.

“They [BCEC] have now asked us to put these folk into contact with Queensland Health, who are actually tracking the problem down as I understand.”

It’s not a totality, man? Sphere me. Food safety behavior

In order to minimise the occurrence of foodborne illness, it is recommended that individuals perform safe food-handling behaviours, such as cooking food properly, cleaning hands and surfaces before preparing food, keeping food at the correct temperature, and avoiding unsafe foods.

DudePrevious research examining the determinants of safe food-handling behaviour has producing mixed results; however, this may be due to the fact that this research examined these behaviours as a totality, rather than considering the determinants of each behaviour separately. As such, the objective for the present study was to examine the predictors of the four aforementioned safe food-handling behaviours by applying an extended theory of planned behaviour to the prediction of each distinct behaviour.

Method: Participants were 170 students who completed theory of planned behaviour measures, with the addition of moral norm and habit strength at time 1, and behaviour measures one week later.

Results: While the influence of injunctive and descriptive norm and perceived behavioural control differed between behaviours, it appeared that moral norm was an important predictor of intention to engage in each of the four behaviours. Similarly, habit strength was an important predictor of each of the behaviours and moderated the relationship between intention and behaviour for the behaviour of avoiding unsafe food.

Conclusion: The implication of these findings is that examining safe food-handling behaviours separately, rather than as a totality, may result in meaningful distinctions between the predictors of these behaviours.

 Examining the predictive utility of an extended theory of planned behavior model in the context of specific individual safe food-handling.

Appetite
Barbara Mullan, Vanessa Allom, Kirby Sainsbury, and Lauren A. Monds

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019566631500080X

Food safety cleanup: and don’t celebrate International Women’s Day at an all-male club in Australia

Three new cases of hepatitis A linked to recalled frozen berries imported from China have been reported in Australia, bringing the total to 26. Sucks. Cook frozen berries for one minute, see our infosheet at https://barfblog.com/2015/02/new-food-safety-infosheet-hepatitis-a-illnesses-linked-to-frozen-berries-in-australia/

john.oliverWe don’t need no inspection: The farmer who runs an organic dairy farm in Minnesota will appear in court Monday, defending his refusal to allow a state inspection he doesn’t want and contends his farm doesn’t need. Raw milk, live free or die.

Royal China Restaurant in Chamblee, Atlanta, serves some of the city’s best dim sum. Just don’t order the lobster. An employee was observed hitting lobster against the inside of a trash can while prepping the crustacean during a recent routine health inspection. There were also four dead lobsters inside a holding tank at the restaurant at 3295 Chamblee Dunwoody Road.

Fund us: Local health departments that spent more money on food safety and sanitation experienced significantly lower incidences of salmonella and cryptosporidium, according to a University of Washington study published today in the American Journal of Public Health.

From the duh files, and why I ignore Washington: The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report last week stating that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “is not planning to meet” mandates required within the Food Safety Modernization Act and the agency is raising doubts that the high number of required inspections is actually beneficial in any way.

McDonald’s capitulates, saying it plans to start using chicken raised without antibiotics commonly used in humans, and milk from cows that are not treated with rBST. That’s normal. McDonald’s killed off the genetically engineered Bt potato about 2000 because of its purchasing decisions, ensuring increased pesticide use around the fragile waterways of PEI and New Brunswick (in Canada).

There are literally tons of human poop on Mount Everest and it’s now estimated that they leave behind up to 26,500 pounds of excrement annually — and it’s getting to the point where the pits of poop and urine surrounding these camps are becoming a serious environmental and health problem.

How does one eliminate a norovirus outbreak? The Village Manor in Michigan claims to have done that. Probably with laser cats.

And Australia continues to embarrass itself, with the governing party celebrating International Women’s Day at an all-male club. Fortunately, John Oliver is a better comedian than I am (and I may be a better food safety type than John Oliver).

Campylobacter sucks: Irish woman’s terrifying ordeal, paralyzed and couldn’t move a muscle

An Irish woman was left paralysed from her neck to her toes after eating a chicken which was contaminated with a common bacteria.

campy.chickenSandra Loftus, from Kinsealy, Co Dublin, contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome – a severely debilitating condition of the nervous system – after she ate chicken infected with campylobacter.

The bacteria commonly causes food poisoning and shockingly 98.3% of chickens bought by the public here in Ireland are infected with it.

And like Sandra, one in 100 of us who contract food poisoning from campylobacter will get Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

She explained: “I was cooking dinner for the family and I was doing a chicken stir fry.

“The next day I was very sick I had terrible cramps in my stomach, nausea, diarrhea – it was really bad. The Saturday then when I got up the legs just went from under me.

“After a full day in hospital they said to me, ‘Look, just go home, it could be a virus, come back to us if it gets worse.’

“When Monday came I couldn’t even lift my hands – there was no power or anything.

“So I was straight back over to A&E and spent three months in high dependency there and then nearly a year in rehab in Dun Laoghaire.”

Sandra told RTE’s Consumer Show that she thought she was going to die.

She said: “I was paralysed from my neck to my toes, I couldn’t move a muscle.

barfblog.Stick It In“And I thought I was going to die because when we looked into it one in four people can die from this.”

Sandra spent three months in intensive care unit battling for her life and then spent a further nine months at the National Rehabilitation Centre in Dun Laoghaire.

Thankfully she has now fully recovered from her ordeal.

However, in the food safety advice bit at the end, sorta like Dear Abbey, the story says, “Make sure chicken is steaming hot all the way through before serving. Cut in to the thickest part of the meat and check that it is steaming hot with no pink meat and that the juices run clear.”

Fail.

Use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

2 dead, 31 sick: Same Salmonella strain found in Australian bakery that supplies nursing homes

The strain of Salmonella thought to have killed two nursing home residents and caused dozens of others to fall ill has been found in a Wollongong bakery, tests have confirmed.

BettamaidTo date, 31 cases of confirmed salmonella have been reported from 10 aged care facilities in the Illawarra, south eastern Sydney and ACT.

Two patients have died as a result of the outbreak.

The nursing homes involved are either run by Illawarra Retirement Trust or supplied catering by IRT.

Last month testing conducted by the New South Wales Food Authority at Bettamaid wholesale bakery in Unanderra came back positive for Salmonella.

The Food Authority then carried out further testing on environmental swabs and food samples taken from the bakery.

A test on an environmental swab has returned positive to the strain of Salmonella detected in sick residents, Salmonella bovismorbificans.

A spokeswoman said food samples supplied by the bakery to affected facilities also tested positive for Salmonella, but the strain was still being typed.

There were no reports of illness in the broader community related to consumption of food from the bakery, which supplies a number of shops and school canteens.

But don’t panic: 6 students sick with E. coli from same school in California

An E. coli outbreak in Lodi, California has sickened six elementary school children, requiring one to be hospitalized. The children all attend the same elementary school, but the school has been ruled out as a source of the outbreak.

remaincalm.kevin.baconTwo students in Lodi’s Reese Elementary School’s combined second and third-grade class were confirmed on Monday to have become infected with the E. coli bacteria last week. The students were taken to the hospital when they first showed signs of becoming ill.

School principal Gary Odell realized something was going on last Tuesday. Feb. 24. “It came up a week ago. The secretary noticed that four students were out sick and one had gone to the hospital over the weekend. When the three others began showing symptoms, the nurse contacted (the San Joaquin County Department of Public Health),” Odell said.

Odell said the health department investigated the food services department, and the school cafeteria was given a clean bill of health. The bacteria was not coming from the school’s kitchen or the cafeteria. It is really not known where the first child got the infection because there are so many sources of a potential infection. It is just unusual for this many children from the same school to become infected in such a short time.

Parents weren’t notified of the outbreak until Monday evening after letters were sent home with their children. The principal explained the reason for the lateness of the notification, saying that once the health department took over, they had to follow their guidelines. This meant there had to be two confirmed cases before the public was notified to avoid a panic.

Why does Australia have these huge outbreaks? And an egg problem? 250 now sick from principals’ conference

The number of people who have been struck down by food poisoning since eating at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre last week as part of a principals conference has jumped to 250.

salmonella.eggsThe cases are spread across Queensland with the highest numbers in Cairns and the Sunshine Coast with 34 cases reported in each of those regions.

About 1400 people descended on the venue for the conference on Thursday and Friday last week.

The outbreak is the second worst case of salmonella poisoning in the state’s history.

The worst was in November 2013 from a Melbourne Cup function with 350 reported cases and 12 hospitalizations.

A 77-year-old women’s death was linked to that outbreak which was suspected to have been caused by bad eggs.

An outbreak of Salmonella in January this year from deep fried ice cream at Chin Chin restaurant (it was the eggs) led to 141 cases with at least eight people hospitalized.

A table of Australian egg outbreaks is available at https://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/raw-egg-related-outbreaks-australia-3-2-15.xlsx\