Immunization through vaccination has been a commercially available pre-harvest intervention to reduce E. coli shedding in cattle for about five years.
Despite demonstrated substantial improvement in human health that vaccine adoption offers, it has not been widely adopted. This highlights the need for understanding the economic situation underlying limited adoption.
Using an equilibrium displacement model, this study identifies the economic impact to U.S. feedlots implementing this vaccination across a series of alternative scenarios.
Producers face $1 billion to $1.8 billion in welfare losses over 10 years if they adopt this technology without any associated increases in demand for fed cattle. Retail beef demand increases of 1.7% to 3.0% or export demand increases of 18.1% to 32.6% would each individually make producers economically neutral to adoption. Retail or packer cost decreases of 1.2% to 3.9% would likewise be sufficient to make producers neutral to adoption.
Last July, 57 people were sickened and nine were hospitalized in Minnesota with E. coli O157:H7. All of the victims ate celery or potato salad made with celery at events catered by the same company. Government investigators traced the celery to Martignoni Ranch just north of Gonzales, grown by Costa Farms of Soledad. The celery was cooled and packed by Mann Packing in Salinas.
An attorney representing the victims believes the E. coli contamination started with the caterer, not the growers or packers.
“This report will help get the case resolved,” said William Marler, managing partner of the Marler Clark law firm in Seattle. “We believe the caterer is likely to settle,” he said, since the company won’t be able to point the finger at anyone else.
In late January, the California Department of Public Health completed its initial inquiry into the incident, which state officials conducted in cooperation with the federal Food and Drug Administration. Investigators found no E. coli in seven soil and water samples taken from the ranch. During their inspection, they didn’t see any problems that might have contributed to cross-contamination. And the investigators could not find signs of contamination from a defunct dairy operation next door.
Over 300 visitors to Hoya Resort Hotel Wuling are still coming for the long holiday weekend.
The outbreak over the Lunar New Year holiday of the norovirus, which causes the rapid onset of vomiting and diarrhea, has affected the health of over 200 visitors and employees at the resort. The virus is transmitted through the fecal-oral route, primarily through contaminated food or water.
After the outbreak began, Hoya Resort Hotel Wuling closed for two days. Visitors wishing to continue their stay were given the option of signing the affidavit absolving the hotel from all responsibility should they contract the virus. In addition, the resort will not provide them with food.
The resort is reportedly fully booked for the coming Feb. 28 weekend. The cherry blossoms in the area which bloom briefly as spring nears are a major visitor attraction.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has today published the latest set of results from its year-long survey of campylobacter on fresh chickens. Campylobacter is a food bug mainly found on raw poultry and is the biggest cause of food poisoning in the UK.
The results are published for the first time as Official Statistics and the full report can be found via the link on this page. Cumulative results for samples taken between February and November 2014 have now been published, including results presented by major retailer.
The results to date show:
19% of chickens tested positive for campylobacter within the highest band of contamination.*
73% of chickens tested positive for the presence of campylobacter.
7% of packaging tested positive for the presence of campylobacter. Only three out of more than 3,000 samples of packaging tested positive at the highest band of contamination.
*More than 1,000 colony forming units per gram (>1,000 cfu/g). These units indicate the degree of contamination on each sample.
More than 3,000 samples of fresh whole chilled chickens and packaging have now been tested. Data continue to show variations between the retailers but none is meeting the target for reducing campylobacter (see table below).
The FSA’s 12-month survey, running from February 2014 to February 2015, will test around 4,000 samples of whole chickens bought from UK retail outlets and smaller independent stores and butchers. The full set of results is expected to be published in May.
The FSA has welcomed the publication by M&S of a case-study showing the results from the retailer’s recently implemented five-point intervention plan to reduce campylobacter on its chickens. The preliminary results published by M&S indicate a significant reduction in the number of the most highly contaminated birds.
Steve Wearne, FSA Director of Policy, said: ‘We now know it is possible to make positive inroads in the reduction of campylobacter. Figures released today by M&S show that their intervention plan has resulted in fewer contaminated chickens on sale in their stores. If one retailer can achieve this campylobacter reduction through systematic interventions then others can, and should.
‘Our survey is putting pressure on retailers to work with poultry processors to do more to tackle campylobacter. We want the industry to reduce the number of the most highly contaminated chickens as we know this will have the greatest impact on public health.
‘Campylobacter is killed by thorough cooking, but it should not be left to consumers to manage the risk.’
Is M&S Marks and Spencer or something else?
Retailer
Number of
samples
% skin samples positive for campylobacter (95% confidence interval)
[1] The ‘Others’ category includes supermarkets where the market share was deemed small using the 2010 Kantar data: eg Lidl, Aldi, Iceland, plus convenience stores, independents, butchers etc.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released FDA-iRISK 2.0, an enhanced version of the free web-based tool that helps users conduct their own quantitative risk assessments in support of food safety. The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, (JIFSAN) will also host a webinar to highlight key features of FDA-iRISK 2.0.
FDA-iRISK 2.0 allows users to rank and compare risks and predict the effectiveness of prevention and control measures. Enhanced features include:
advanced modeling methods, such as rare events and new dose-response modeling options;
faster development of alternative scenarios;
innovative reporting of results;
graphical representations of dose-response and variability in contamination and consumption to better understand and verify data; and
easier data-sharing with other users.
The JIFSAN webinar is scheduled for March 11, 2015 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm EDT. The webinar is free, but registration is required. To register, please visit JIFSAN Event Registration.
I was called Boog in high school — after baseball great, Miller Lite pitchman and mesquite BBQ connoisseur, Boog Powell — but never Booger.
Sometimes it’s best to let things ruminate, ferment, instead of simply repeating public relations drivel.
Guess that’s one reason people write books. Or journal articles.
Various U.S. government agencies patted themselves on the back for their “improved method for analyzing outbreak data to determine which foods are responsible for illness” while underselling the actual report.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) co-authored a report (and threesomes never work out well), Foodborne Illness Source Attribution Estimates for Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157 (E. coli O157), Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), and Campylobacter using Outbreak Surveillance Data by the Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC). A partnership of the three agencies, IFSAC focuses on foodborne illness source attribution, which is the process of estimating the most common food sources responsible for specific foodborne illnesses.
The report briefly summarizes IFSAC’s methods and results, including estimated attribution percentages for the four pathogens named in its title. CDC estimates that, together, these four pathogens cause 1.9 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year.
The agencies anticipate that IFSAC’s work will enhance their efforts to prevent foodborne illness.
Who doesn’t anticipate what threesomes will bring.
The new estimates, combined with other data, may shape agency priorities and support the development of regulations and performance standards and measures, among other activities. The recently developed method employs new food categories that align with those used to regulate food products and emphasizes more recent outbreak data.
As outlined in the report, IFSAC analyzed data from nearly 1,000 outbreaks that occurred from 1998 to 2012 to assess which categories of foods were most responsible for making people sick with Salmonella, E. coli O157, Listeria, and Campylobacter. IFSAC experts divided food into 17 categories for the analysis. The pathogens were chosen because of the frequency or severity of the illnesses they cause, and because targeted interventions can have a significant impact in reducing them.
The report presents the methods behind the results and provides the amount of uncertainty around the estimates.
Some of the findings include:
More than 80 percent of E. coli O157 illnesses were attributed to beef and vegetable row crops, such as leafy vegetables.
Salmonella illnesses were broadly attributed across food commodities, with 77 percent of illnesses related to seeded vegetables (such as tomatoes), eggs, fruits, chicken, beef, sprouts and pork.
Nearly 75 percent of Campylobacter illnesses were attributed to dairy (66 percent) and chicken (8 percent). Most of the dairy outbreaks used in the analysis were related to raw milk or cheese produced from raw milk, such as unpasteurized queso fresco.
More than 80 percent of Listeria illnesses were attributed to fruit (50 percent) and dairy (31 percent). Data were sparse for Listeria, and the estimate for fruit reflects the impact of a single large outbreak linked to cantaloupes in 2011.
The figure on the right (the one other than Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice) is what they sent out to PR types. The figure on the left is what they actually wrote.
From Australia to Wisconsin to cucumbers, epidemiology is getting hammered with a bunch of people defending their turf by saying, there’s no definitive proof.
Information collected from 65 students, coaches and parents indicated that consumption of milk was the only exposure statistically associated with the illness, DHS spokeswoman Jennifer Miller said.
For instance, the report said that some of the 38 people sickened at the dinner did not eat chicken, that 32 drank unpasteurized milk, and that six others drank milk consumed from a store-bought jug that could have contained pasteurized or unpasteurized milk.
Also, DATCP staff collected cow manure specimens from the Reeds’ cows and genetic fingerprinting proved that the bacteria that caused the illness at the dinner was the same bacteria strain found on the Reeds’ farm, Miller said.
But it’s the Salmonella-in-cucumbers outbreak – publicly unknown until a week ago — that reveals how deep interests influence.
An 18-week Salmonella outbreak linked to fresh cucumbers in 2014 sickened at least 275 people across 29 U.S. states, and killed one man.
Several of us in the food safety world – and probably the cucumber-consuming world – were left wondering, why didn’t we know about this?
Here’s the explanation from Dr. Bob (Bob Whitaker, chief science officer at the U.S. Produce Marketing Association; if anyone calls me Dr. Doug, I glare, and say, that’s Dr. Evil to you; I didn’t spent seven years in Evil University to be Mr. Evil):
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) today. Anything with “morbidity” and “mortality” in the title is probably not going to rank highly on your general reading list and this weekly report was fairly typical of the reports published by CDC; highly technical and detailed, very informative, but probably targeted to a fairly specific audience.
So mere mortals are too dumb to understand?
Unfortunately, the process of identifying the cause of an illness outbreak and then further identifying how the people became ill and where that product originated from involves, as a first step, time consuming reporting of patient sample microbiology from local communities to states and perhaps up to the federal level. Often the process of just collecting this type of information and recognizing that there may be an illness outbreak exceeds the shelf life of our perishable products. Once an outbreak has been recognized, the epidemiological traceback or the process of determining what people might have come in contact with to make them ill can begin.
Epidemiology involves patient surveys, case control studies and correlation coefficients and can be time consuming and may yield multiple potential contamination vehicles. Finally, once potential food vehicles are identified, a traceback can be conducted to learn where patients might have obtained or consumed a specific food and investigators can work back to where the food was ultimately grown, harvested, packed or processed. Once production locations are identified, investigators can take microbial samples in an attempt to match any strains from the production environment to those isolated clinically from patients or in some limited cases from the food itself. Often by the time all of these vitally necessary steps have been completed, the crop is long gone and direct proof for how the contamination occurred or the source of the contamination is impossible to ascertain. Such was the case described by this Salmonella outbreak related to cucumbers.
CDC also disclosed that they employed consultations with industry experts early on in their investigation to gather information about industry practices, crop production cycles in the suspected region and product distribution. This is a positive step and is the result of a great deal of effort by the industry and CDC to determine how to engage industry to better inform investigations.
More accurate and rapid epidemiological investigations will ultimately help our industry determine what went wrong when these unfortunate illness outbreaks occur and are assigned to a produce item. This will help us direct research efforts aimed at identifying mitigation steps that can reduce the risk of further occurrences and assist operators in building improved risk and science-based food safety programs.
So why wasn’t the public informed there were a bunch of sick people?
Kirk Smith, epidemiology supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Health, told the Washington Post four years ago it’s rare for scientists investigating foodborne illness outbreaks to test the exact food suspected of carrying pathogens. By the time symptoms occur and a foodborne illness is reported and confirmed, the product in question has likely been consumed or has exceeded its shelf-life and been thrown away.
Instead, scientists, like detectives, interview victims, collect data, analyze patterns and match food “fingerprints” to determine the likely source of an outbreak.
“Epidemiology is actually a much faster and more powerful tool than is laboratory confirmation.”
As we have written, often during an outbreak of foodborne illness there are health officials who have data indicating that there is a risk, prior to the public. During the lag period between the first public health signal and some release of public information there are decision makers who are weighing evidence with the impacts of going public.
There is no indication in the literature that consumers benefit from paternalistic protection decisions to guard against information overload.
On August 27, 2014, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Division of Public Health (DPH) was notified of two cases of cryptosporidiosis in siblings aged <3 years. Idaho’s Southwest District Health (SWDH) investigated and found that both children had consumed raw (unpasteurized) goat milk produced at a dairy licensed by the Idaho State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) and purchased at a retail store. Milk produced before August 18, the date of illness onset, was unavailable for testing from retail stores, the household, or the dairy.
All seven of Idaho’s Public Health Districts and DPH continued to monitor cryptosporidiosis reports submitted from Idaho health care providers and laboratories statewide as required by Idaho law. Public Health Districts investigated reports by interviewing ill persons or their parents using a standardized questionnaire. After the hold order, SWDH and the Central District Health Department identified nine ill persons in four households. Four persons who had regularly consumed raw goat milk produced before August 18 experienced symptoms of gastroenteritis, and five household members who had not consumed the milk experienced onsets of symptoms of gastroenteritis 3–8 days after the first household member became ill. No other common exposures were identified. CDC case definitions for cryptosporidiosis were used (1). In total, the 11 ill persons were aged 2 months–76 years (median = 11 years); six were female. One patient was hospitalized. Stool specimens were obtained in three primary cases (i.e., illnesses in those who drank the raw goat milk) and three secondary cases (i.e., illness in contacts of those who drank the raw goat milk); CDC isolated Cryptosporidium parvum subtype IIaA16G3R1 from all six. The last reported outbreak-associated illness was a secondary case with an onset date of September 3.
In addition to the four tested milk samples from containers, five of five milk samples collected along the production line on September 2 tested positive for Cryptosporidium by PCR at the commercial laboratory. Testing of all nine milk samples (four from containers and five from the production line) at CDC for Cryptosporidium by PCR and direct fluorescent antibody test was negative. CDC and the commercial laboratory collaborated to validate the negative result by using sequencing to determine that false-positive results at the commercial laboratory were likely caused by goat DNA amplification during PCR. An inspection of the dairy did not reveal any obvious contamination sources. Water from the producer’s well tested negative at Idaho Bureau of Laboratories for Cryptosporidium by direct fluorescent antibody test after ultrafiltration. Goat stool was unavailable for testing. Negative results led ISDA to release the hold order on September 18.
Epidemiologic evidence implicated contaminated raw goat milk as the outbreak source. It was not possible to obtain confirmatory laboratory evidence of milk contamination. Milk consumed before illness onset was unavailable for testing and could have been subjected to a single, undetected contamination event. No other common source was identified, and isolation of the identical Cryptosporidium genotype from ill persons did not disprove a common source. This outbreak highlights an infrequently reported cryptosporidiosis risk from unpasteurized milk (2,3), the value of sequencing to validate PCR protocols, the utility of genotyping Cryptosporidium isolates for strengthening epidemiologic evidence, and the risk for secondary transmission of Cryptosporidium. An increasing number of enteric outbreaks are associated with raw milk consumption (4,5). Resources for consumers, health care providers, and public health officials regarding risks from raw milk consumption are available at http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-index.html.
Cryptosporidiosis associated with consumption of unpasteurized goat milk — Idaho, 2014
CDC MMWR 64(07);194-195
Mariana Rosenthal, Randi Pedersen, Scott Leibsle, Vincent Hill, Kris Carter, Dawn M. Roellig
The suitability for consumers of a variety of raw milk cheeses purchased over the Internet was investigated in terms of packaging, labelling, physicochemical parameters and microbiological safety. 108 purchases from seven European countries were examined.
The prevalences of Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli and coagulase positive staphylococci (SA) were determined. All 108 samples were described on websites as raw milk cheeses and thereby qualified for this study. However, after delivery it was noted that 4.6% (5/108) of cheeses were labelled to be manufactured from heat-treated or pasteurized milk. Delivery duration ranged from 24 h to six days. Immediately upon receipt cheese temperatures were observed to range between 5 and 23 °C, whereas in 61.5% of all cases the temperature was higher than 15 °C. Cheese labelling was examined in respect of EC Guideline 2000/13 and Regulation No. 853/2004. Only 17.6% (19/108) of cheeses were properly labelled and fulfilled all European guideline requirements.
In 50.9%, 38.8%, 46.3% and 39.8% of all cases (i) specific storage requirements, (ii) name and address of the manufacturer/packer or seller, (iii) net weight and (iv) shelf life (use by date), were missing. Even the labelling information “made from raw milk” was not apparent on 36% of all cheese items delivered. The major foodborne pathogen L. monocytogenes was detected in 1.9% of all samples, one of which had counts of 9.5 × 103 CFU/g. None of the 108 investigated cheeses showed a pH ≤ 5.0 and aw value ≤0.94 which are the limiting values for growth of L. monocytogenes. For two samples (0.9%) and 11 samples (10.2%) the pH and the aw value was ≤4.4 or ≤0.92, respectively at least at one of three stipulated time points (receipt, mid-shelf-life and at expiry). Salmonella spp. could not be detected in any of the samples. E. coli and SA could be detected in a total of 29.6% (≥10 CFU/g; 32/108) and 8.3% (≥100 CFU/g; 9/108) of samples, respectively, indicating poor conditions of hygiene.
Results reveal that labelling and hygiene concerns about the safety of Internet purchased cheeses in Europe are justified.
How safe is European Internet cheese? A purchase and microbiological investigation
Food Control, Volume 54, August 2015, Pages 225–230
Dagmar Schoder , Anja Strauß, Kati Szakmary-Brändle, Martin Wagner
