Yearly Archives: 2015

Reading Terminal Market eateries in Pennsylvania slowly fixing health

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Moses Smucker, who runs a luncheonette at Reading Terminal Market, recalls riding a mule up Aisle Seven more than decade ago during an event honoring Pennsylvania Dutch culture. Behind him, his son paraded on a white quarter horse.

The market has since banished livestock, and in 2008, eateries like Smucker’s came under new food safety rules that focus on preventing illness more scientifically.

reading-terminal-market-philadelphia-food-court-680uwSmucker, a jolly Old Order Amish merchant who runs the Grill@Smuckers, has adapted well to the new order. His eatery had no foodborne illness violations in 2014, the more serious of the Philadelphia health department’s two categories.

Some other merchants have struggled to meet the risk-based standards, inspection reports show. They include some of the terminal’s most-beloved eateries: Beck’s Cajun Café (9), the Dutch Eating Place (9), Olympic Gyro (8), Franks-A-Lot (6), and Hershel’s East Side Deli (5).

The average citywide inspection had 2.3 food-borne illness violations, according to city reports.

The city’s chief food safety officer, Palak Raval-Nelson, said judging an eatery just by its number of serious violations could be misinterpreted, she said. It’s the type of violation and the severity that matters.

How does Moses Smucker keep the inspectors at bay?

Smucker pointed to his wife of 42 years, Suzy.

“She stays on top of things,” Smucker said. “When she cleans, she cleans it right.”

Superbowl guacamole dip food safety tips

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Superbowl pregame coverage started at something like 6:00 am this morning and it’s on in the background at my house. Between helping the kids with Lego building and coloring I’ve seen segments on a former player who is now a high school principal; an NFL player who chose listening to an hour of Nickleback over “swimming everywhere you go”; and, an insightful interview with half-time performer Katy Perry where she reported that Seahawks (and former N.C. State) Quarterback Russell Wilson likes pizza.

And I’ve heard about deflated balls about 900 times.Bill-Belichickx-large

Capitalizing on the Superbowl hysteria, Debbi Snook of cleveland.com has some football party food safety tips and a recipe for turkey chili from LeBron Jame’s former chef (how’s that for a title). The risk reduction tips aren’t bad (and are even in context for a party with guacamole). But the article fails to point to a safe temperature (165F) for ground turkey.

Did you know that fruit and vegetables pose 48 percent of foodborne illnesses? That means those veggie platters, dips and any cream-based foods deserve some extra scrutiny to keep your guests safe.

-Instead of refilling the same bowl of guacamole, divide it among a few smaller bowls to replace the one that becomes empty.

-Wash your hands frequently when cooking, and dry them on a clean towel.

-Ask someone else to cook if you’re under the weather.

– Wash your avocados with cold water and a scrub brush before peeling and slicing (for quality reasons, mainly -ben).

– Avert “double-dipping” violations by placing serving utensils such as spoons and tongs at each serving bowl.

Botulism: Rice snack shuts down New Zealand man’s organs

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A spicy rice snack pack very nearly turned into the last meal Richard Strang ate.

IMG_8529It left him in a four-day induced coma in Wellington Hospital, his stay due to a toxin not seen in New Zealand for more than 30 years.

Strang, who had been living in Japan, was visiting his mother in Wellington last month when he ate a pack of pre-cooked “heat and eat” organic risotto that was probably well past its best-before date.

He was struck down by botulism, a rare and potentially fatal illness caused by a toxin that attacks the nervous system.

His lungs and other organs began shutting down, and “it was all pretty much touch and go”, he said.

The last – and only – suspected case was that of two Rotorua sisters thought to have contracted botulism from watercress and boiled mussels in 1984.

Botulism was also the toxin wrongly thought to have been present in a batch of whey sent to China by Fonterra in 2013.

Strang is still going through rehabilitation, and needs to stay in New Zealand until he regains enough strength to return to Japan.

The Ministry for Primary Industries said the rice snack he ate contained no preservatives, and “incorrect handling” was thought to be the cause of his illness.

The meal had been made following appropriate regulations, but MPI understood it was not refrigerated, as instructed, and was eaten “well after its likely best-before date”.

Wyoming Food Freedom Act threatens public safety

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The Wyoming Tribune Eagle writes in an editorial that House Bill 56, the Food Freedom Act, is a bad move for public health.

food-freedom-statute-of-libertyThe bill would let Wyomingites make direct purchases of foodstuffs from farmers and ranchers but there are more than a few examples – and plenty of data – that show allowing the unregulated sale of food items from one buyer to another (which HB 56 would do) has the potential to sicken Wyoming residents. Consider:
– The chances of an outbreak from raw milk (one of the items that the bill’s supporters want) are at least 150 times greater than those of pasteurized milk, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
– Non-outbreak (more sporadic) cases of foodborne illness in raw milk are estimated to be 25 times larger than the number of documented cases.
– There have been 41 documented cases of illness from raw milk in Wyoming in five years.
– Some 180 people became ill with salmonella in North Dakota in 2006 when they were served unlicensed food by a caterer. One victim’s family spent $4,000 just traveling back and forth to the hospital. That did not include their medical expenses.

But, supporters of HB 56 say, informed Wyoming residents should have the right to buy these food items if they so choose (meat would be limited to poultry only). Problem is, not all buyers of these products are informed. They see them for sale, they consume them and they get sick.

raw.milk.food.freedomAnd then there is the fact that children could be fed tainted food products. How can they be “informed”? And it is important to note that even if the elderly and pregnant women know what they are consuming, they are at much greater risk for serious illness if the food is contaminated.

This is a bad bill. That it flew through the House without real consideration of its potential impacts shows it simply has become a political statement about individual liberty. HB 56 should be killed before it takes the life of even one Wyomingite.

Top Melbourne Chinese restaurant fined 15K over cockroach infestation

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The operators of a top Chinese restaurant in Melbourne have been fined $15,000 after pleading guilty to multiple breaches of food hygiene laws.

aw-Red-20Emperor-20Chinese-20restaurant-20in-20Southbank_20120723114752691792-620x349City food inspectors found the Red Emperor in Southbank infested with cockroaches, mouse droppings and fruit flies when they searched the fine-dining venue on May 19 and 20 last year, Fairfax Media reports.

Uncovered cooked chickens and other food items exposed to pests, evidence of mice chewing through food bags and accumulated food waste or grease in fridge seals were among other examples of food safety breaches.

Owner Lihua Gao voluntarily shut the restaurant’s doors the day before inspectors ordered it closed because it posed an immediate risk to the public.

Melbourne Magistrates Court heard yesterday the inspection followed a complaint by a customer “about an adverse reaction” to food bought at the restaurant.

Gao, 37, the sole director of City Wall Garden Pty Ltd, the business’s registered proprietor, and Raymond Cheung, 60, the business’s food safety manager, each pleaded guilty to 10 charges.

How sequencing foods’ DNA could help us prevent diseases

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Davey Alba asks in Wired, what’s almost as important to life as food? Food safety.

Last year, in the US, according to the CDC, one in six people were affected by food-borne diseases, resulting in 128,000 hospitalizations, 3,000 deaths, and an economic burden totaling $80 billion.

Scientist from IBM Research and Mars Incorporated have announced the Sequencing the Food Supply Chain Consortium, a collaborative food safety organization that aims to leverage advances in genomics and analytics to further our understanding of what makes food safe.

The researchers will conduct the largest-ever metagenomics study of our foods, sequencing the DNA and RNA of popular foods in an effort to identify what traits keep food safe and these can be effected by outside microorganisms and other factors. Eventually, the researchers will extend the project “from farm to fork,” examining materials across the length and breadth of the supply chain.

In this way, IBM Research and Mars are joining many others, including the San Francisco-based startup Hampton Creek, who hope to supercharge food R&D using data analysis. After reinventing Google and Facebook and so many other online operations, the big data movement is now moving into other industries, ranging from medicine and healthcare to the development of new industrial materials.

“We want to get a baseline for safe food ingredients, all the way up and down the food supply chain, including what makes healthy biochemistry,” says James Kaufman, public health manager for IBM Research. “If you can understand what a normal, healthy microbiome looks like, you can figure some things out about how that microbiome will respond to the unknown.”

Essentially, the scientists are hoping to uncover what combination of microbes that makes food ingredients safe, and what factors affect the structure of these microbial communities, including exposure to new pathogenic organisms and other impurities that may not have ever come up yet. It is these unknowns, Kaufman explains, that can eventually make food unsafe—whether that’s the evolution of new organisms, a misguided attempt at innovating food, or even because of an intentional act of terrorism.

And for no particular reason, here are the Beatles, who today in 1969, made their last public performance on the roof of Apple Records in London.

U2 sucks.

 

Popular Canberra bakery fined 10K for food safety breaches

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The clean up took only hours, but the risk to public health through potentially contaminated food has seen one of Canberra’s largest private bakeries fined $10,000.

bread.nerdsThat Bagel Place, also known as Bread Nerds, pleaded guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court to seven charges of not complying with food standards and was convicted and sentenced on Friday, almost two-and-a-half years after the breaches.

The charges stem from an inspection in August 2012, but the case has been delayed while the ACT Supreme Court ruled on the legality of charging offenders with multiple counts for breaches of the Food Act.

Court documents said health authorities went to the Hume premises on August 29 after receiving a complaint from the public.

Inspectors issued the business with a prohibition notice the next day, forcing it to shut, as it was deemed to be selling food that was a risk to public health.

The owners had the bakery clean within hours and were able to reopen that afternoon.

Inspectors took a number of photographs during the initial inspection, which showed unclean surfaces that risked contamination and issues that made cleaning difficult.

Breaches included general uncleanliness and a buildup of residue on the dough mixer, bagel roller, bagel conveyor, oven, floors, benches and surfaces.

Food was also stored incorrectly, with food products on the floor, bags left open, uncovered dry ingredients, and unclean food storage containers and tubs.

In one example, hydraulic fluid was found above open bags of flour and seeds.

Owner Shane Peart, in an interview with the authorities, admitted that the bakery had been “unclean” and “that the bakery was not in a satisfactory condition”.

Defence lawyer Adrian McKenna told the court on Friday that the offences should be seen as low-to-mid range.

Mr McKenna said his client had accepted responsibility and, although there had been reasons for the breaches, he made no excuses.

12 cases of salmonella confirmed in Texas

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The mystery remains on what exactly is causing Dalhart residents to catch salmonella. Coon Memorial Hospital says that the first case was reported several weeks ago, and since then, it’s increased at a steady rate.

Dalhart1950s3Improper handling of food is often a cause of salmonella. However, the investigation is still ongoing in order to find the culprit in Dalhart. The Texas Department of Health isn’t calling this a public health hazard just yet.

Blame the consumer, Texas style.

Are Australian raw milk pushers the same as U.S. anti-vaxxers?

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Adults can choose to do many things, like drink unpasteurized milk or not get vaccinated, but those choices should not be inflicted on children.

milk.dirty.toronto.1913A growing number of parents in recent years, especially in the U.S., have skipped their children’s vaccines because of a discredited belief that vaccines are linked to autism.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 84 people in 14 states were diagnosed with measles from Jan. 1 through Jan. 28. Most were infected either at Disneyland or by someone who went there.

Controlling a measles outbreak is expensive and time-consuming. Each case in a 2008 measles outbreak cost taxpayers more than $10,000 as public health staff traced each patient’s contacts, quarantined patients and administered vaccines.

Now apply the same language to those in Victoria who plan to fight for their right to drink unpasteurized milk today (it’s Saturday in Australia) despite one death and four serious illnesses in children under five-years-old, announced in Dec. and linked to consumption of raw milk.

Three of the four children – all under five — developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, usually associated with shiga-toxin producing E. coli, such as E. coli O157, and the other developed cryptosporidiosis.

The death was attributed to HUS. How many others developed milder forms of illness is unknown.

Rebecca Freer, who is planning the drink-in outside a state Minister’s office in Melbourne, said exactly what anti-vaxxers would say: “I think they’re in denial that there’s a large subculture of raw milk drinkers, who are well-informed, educated people.”

In May 1943, Edsel Bryant Ford, the son of auto magnate Henry Ford, died at the age of 49 in Detroit, of what some claimed was a broken heart.

1418367700411Biology, however, decreed that Ford died of undulant fever, apparently brought on by drinking unpasteurized milk from the Ford dairy herd, at the behest of his father’s mistaken belief that all things natural must be good.

Shortly thereafter, my mother – then a child — developed undulate fever, which my grandfather, with no knowledge of microbiology, attributed to the dairy cows on his farm in Ontario, Canada.

He got rid of the cows and went into potatoes, and then asparagus.

In addition to the personal tragedies, every outbreak raises questions about risk and personal choice.

It’s true that choice is a good thing. People make risk-benefit decisions daily by smoking, drinking, driving, and especially in Brisbane, cycling.

But the 19th-century English utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, noted that absolute choice has limits, stating, “if it (in this case the consumption of raw unpasteurized milk) only directly affects the person undertaking the action, then society has no right to intervene, even if it feels the actor is harming himself.”

Excused from Mill’s libertarian principle are those people who are incapable of self-government — children.

Society generally regulates what is allowed for children – most parents aren’t having a scotch and a smoke with their 3-year-olds.

Celebrity chefs, would-be farmers and the wannabe fashionable can devoutly selectively spin scientific data. Does the Internet inform or merely solidify pre-existing beliefs?

Ten years ago, Ontario’s former chief medical health officer (that’s in Canada), said, “Some people feel that unpasteurized milk is either not bad for their health (they don’t believe the health risks) or they actually believe that it has healing properties because it’s all natural and untainted by government interference.”

Except poop happens, especially in a barn, and when it does people, usually kids, will get sick. That’s why drinking water is chlorinated and milk is pasteurized — one more example of how science can be used to enhance what nature provided.

Yes, lots of other foods make people sick, but in the case of milk, there is a solution to limit harm – pasteurization.

Society has a responsibility to the many — philosopher Mill also articulated how the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one — to use knowledge to minimize harm.

The only thing lacking in pasteurized milk is the bacteria that make people, especially kids, seriously ill.

Adults, do whatever you think works to ensure a natural and healthy lifestyle, but please don’t impose your dietary regimes on those incapable of protecting themselves: your kids.

Litchi fruit connection? Outbreaks of unexplained neurologic illness in India

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that outbreaks of an unexplained acute neurologic illness affecting young children and associated with high case-fatality rates have been reported in the Muzaffarpur district of Bihar state in India since 1995.

he_outbreaks_of_unexplained_neurologic_illnessThe outbreaks generally peak in June and decline weeks later with the onset of monsoon rains. There have been multiple epidemiologic and laboratory investigations of this syndrome, leading to a wide spectrum of proposed causes for the illness, including infectious encephalitis and exposure to pesticides. An association between illness and litchi fruit has been postulated because Muzaffarpur is a litchi fruit–producing region (Figure 1).

To better characterize clinical and epidemiologic features of the illness that might suggest its cause and how it can be prevented, the Indian National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and CDC investigated outbreaks in 2013 and 2014. Clinical and laboratory findings in 2013 suggested a noninflammatory encephalopathy, possibly caused by a toxin. A common laboratory finding was low blood glucose (<70 mg/dL) on admission, a finding associated with a poorer outcome; 44% of all cases were fatal. An ongoing 2014 investigation has found no evidence of any infectious etiology and supports the possibility that exposure to a toxin might be the cause. The outbreak period coincides with the month-long litchi harvesting season in Muzaffarpur. Although a specific etiology has not yet been determined, the 2014 investigation has identified the illness as a hypoglycemic encephalopathy and confirmed the importance of ongoing laboratory evaluation of environmental toxins to identify a potential causative agent, including markers for methylenecyclopropylglycine (MCPG), a compound found in litchi seeds known to cause hypoglycemia in animal studies (1–3). Current public health recommendations are focused on reducing mortality by urging affected families to seek prompt medical care, and ensuring rapid assessment and correction of hypoglycemia in ill children.