Yearly Archives: 2015

Food truck operators need tools to reduce risks – like a handwashing sink

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I like a good food truck meal. The experience is less about eating food from a small sweaty kitchen and sitting on the ground and more about ordering something from a small menu that the chef specializes in. A couple of weeks ago I had a fantastic sautéed cauliflower and roasted potato pita from a food truck at a community event.foodtruck

Before eating there I checked out whether they had an inspection grade (because there are some trucks that like to operate incognito, outside the law) and asked how they washed their hands. The chef told me that they have a handwashing sink with running water and a collection tank. I still have to trust that he actually uses it but at least he had the tools.

That’s a bit different from a food truck on the Carnegie Mellon campus. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tartan Express was forced to close following an inspection where they were cited lots of risky things including not having a sink.

The Allegheny County Health Department has cleared the Tartan Express food truck on the Carnegie Mellon University campus to reopen after it was closed earlier this week for multiple food safety violations, including lack of running water.

The truck, which serves Asian food, operates at 5000 Forbes Ave. “No one in the vehicle is able to wash hands when beginning new tasks, after handling money or touching the face or hair,” an inspector wrote this week.

Other violations included holding food at unsafe temperatures and inadequate sanitization.

13 sick with E. coli from apple cider in California

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The El Dorado County HealthDepartment says unpasteurized juice from High Hill Ranch has tested positive for E-coli.

high.hill.ciderHealth officials say 13 people got sick after drinking the juice. It’s unclear how the juice became contaminated.

High Hill voluntarily discontinued the production and sale of the juice dated on or after Oct. 6, 2015.

Here are the dates of the investigation:

On October 23, the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services says there were at least seven cases of E. coli illness among residents of Sacramento County who consumed unpasteurized apple juice either sampled at or purchased from High Hill Ranch between October 10 and October 12, 2015.

On October 23, High Hill Ranch voluntarily discontinued the processing, sale and distribution of unpasteurized apple juice currently in stock. Unpasteurized apple juice was replaced with a flash  pasteurized apple juice product produced and bottled by another local vendor.

On October 23, the County of El Dorado issued a press release advising the public of a voluntary recall of unpasteurized apple juice initiated by High Hill Ranch due to suspected contamination with bacteria, likely a strain of E. coli. Consumers were advised not to consume unpasteurized apple juice purchased on or after October 6, 2015, and to dispose of any remaining product.

On October 29, the California Department of Public Health notified the County that there were 13 ill patients associated with the consumption of unpasteurized apple juice from High Hill Ranch. Three of these patients were laboratory confirmed with E. coli. Two additional patients were subsequently confirmed to have E. coli. 
On October 30, High Hill Ranch notified the County that they had submitted samples of unpasteurized apple juice to an independent laboratoryfor testing for E. coli. The juice samples tested were from a separate and subsequent production run after the suspected processing period that may have contained harmful bacteria.

On November 4, the County was notified by the CDPH that a sample of unpasteurized juice obtained from one of the ill Sacramento County patients had tested positive for E. coli.

On November 5, the County was notified by the CDPH that all laboratory samples collected from High Hill Ranch on October 21, by CDPH were negative for the presence of E. coli.

High Hill Ranch has voluntarily discontinued the production and sale of unpasteurized apple juice indefinitely. No other High Hill Ranch products are being investigated. High Hill Ranch continues to fully cooperate with local and state health officials during this ongoing investigation.
A table of juice-related outbreaks is available at: https://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Juice-related-outbreaks-11-5-15.xlsx

‘I dodged a bullet’ E. coli O26 Chipotle victim says he may go vegetarian; that may not help

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As the number of E. coli O26 victims creeped to 40, Chris Collins says he has always been selective about where he goes out for a meal. He said he respected Chipotle for its food integrity and animal-welfare policies.

chipotleBut a week after being treated at a hospital for severe intestinal distress, the Lake Oswego, Ore., resident no longer considers the casual Mexican restaurant a safe choice.

Collins was one of at least 39 (now 40) people in Oregon and Washington state to be sickened with E. coli in an outbreak linked to the popular chain.

“The reality is there was waste in my food. Something I can never be able to tell unless I got sick,” he said. “For me, it doesn’t seem to make sense to take that risk again.”

Collins decided to speak out about his experience after reading comments in the press and social media and concluding that people didn’t understand the severity of E. coli.

He also wanted people to understand how many things could go wrong in a restaurant and result in customers getting sick.

“I feel like I dodged a bullet. I’m lucky that I’m in as good health as I am,” said Collins, who works out five to six times a week and loves to hike.

Collins went to urgent care first. They took one look at him and sent him to an emergency room. That’s when it started to get really scary. He didn’t connect his illness to Chipotle until the emergency-room doctor called him the next day.

Now, he’s not willing to eat out at all and he and his wife are seriously considering becoming vegetarians.

Except E. coli, especially the Shiga-toxin producing kind, are everywhere. And investigators are focusing on produce.

“It’s not just a meat issue. I’ve seen E. coli infections in very strict vegetarians,” says Niket Sonpal, M.D., assistant clinical professor of gastroenterology at Touro College of Medicine.

Since E. coli is an intestinal bacteria found in humans and animals, it gets spread by poop. If contaminated waste gets into manure or the irrigation water used for crops, the bacteria spreads to the produce. Infected animals can even contaminate a crop by leaving droppings in a field of normally healthy tomatoes and lettuce leaves.

San Jose restaurant no longer gettin’ shiggy wit it

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Marisco’s San Juan #3 restaurant linked to 200 cases of shigellosis is due to be open for business tomorrow according to KCRA. Although a source of the outbreak wasn’t confirmed, the working theory is that an infected food handler was to blame.

The Department of Environmental Health reinspected Marisco’s San Juan #3, which has been closed since Oct. 18, and approved it for reopening after finding it no longer poses a risk to public health from shigella bacteria, officials said.

County officials said the restaurant’s owners voluntarily discarded all food products on site, cleaned and sanitized the facility and retrained all employees in proper food handling methods. Employees who tested negative for shigella are being allowed to return to work.

Health officials determined that an outbreak of illness connected with the restaurant at 205 N. Fourth St. that caused 190 people to become sick was caused by shigella, a contagious diarrhoeal illness.

The source was most likely from an infected food handler at the restaurant who contaminated the entrees with their hands, officials said. But the exact source of the outbreak has not been determined, and officials have said it might never be identified.

Tracing produce helps answer outbreak questions – Chipotle edition

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When I was a graduate student investigating food safety in the produce industry, I saw a lot of transactions and product movement while I was in packing sheds. Repacking, trading pallets (“I’m short on product but I need to fill an order”) and cash sales. These transactions are messy, documentation and separation-wise, and provide a challenge to traceability within the supply chain.

Traceability and being able to follow the route that a a supply is part of a good food safety culture. When it works, it allows investigators to find the source of a problem leading to lessons learned.Chipotle

According to WRAL, some folks I know in the North Carolina food safety world are helping out trace produce ingredients identified as the source of 40 cases of E. coli O26 linked to Chipotle restaurants.

When the E. coli outbreak occurred at Chipotle restaurants in the Northwest, tracing the source of the problem started at Food Logiq, a software food safety company in Durham. Food Logiq contracts with companies like restaurants and grocery stores to track fresh fruits, vegetables and other products from the source to where they end up. If there’s a problem—as in the case of Chipolte—Food Logiq’s software can trace it.

“The big thing that we do is proactive data collection,” said Andrew Kennedy, co-founder of Food Logiq. 

“This case label, not only does it have the product, but it has the log code which then points to packaging dates,” Kennedy said. “We know exactly what dates it was packed. We can trace that back to the farm of origin, and that is the key piece of information.”

Ben Chapman, a food safety expert and associate professor at North Carolina State, blogs about food safety issues. He says companies like Food Logiq track vital information about the food supply chain. “The more we can trace these things, and pull that information together, that means we can all build—in our community and food safety community—better tools to help reduce the chances of people getting sick,” Chapman said.

Market microbial food safety instead of fear: Hot dogs do not contain human meat

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The eye-catching headlines on the new findings started coming in waves. “Report: Human DNA Found in Hot Dogs” said USA Today, in a typical example.

da.bears.hot.dogThis bizarre information came from a single document released on Oct. 17 by the consumer marketing arm of a company called Clear Labs, which had found traces of human DNA in 2 percent of the products sampled.

But don’t worry: There’s no evidence that hot-dog lovers are unwitting cannibals. It’s more a matter of hygiene in food production. The tiniest particles of hair, nails and skin could show up in these tests.

Even so, an executive at the company interviewed last week was unapologetic about the attention-grabbing finding.

“Its pretty unlikely that the human DNA piece is actually harmful to consumer health,” said Mahni Ghorashi, a Clear Labs founder. “We consider it more of a hygienic issue that degrades the quality of the food.”

Snopes, the rumor-debunking site, was rather more harsh, labeling the information “unproven.”

Consumers should brace themselves for more buzzworthy headlines as genome sequencing gets cheaper and Silicon Valley companies like Clear Labs, Beyond Meat and Soylent try to disrupt eating itself.

The Clear Labs story was an effort to bring marketing attention to the company’s use of gene-sequencing technology, first pioneered by the Human Genome Project. Looking at regions of the genome called bar code regions, the company identifies traces of animal species in food samples, including those that are not supposed to be there. The Hot Dog Report did contain significant findings, notably that pork had been substituted for chicken and turkey in 3 percent of samples, and that 10 percent of vegetarian products contained real meat.

But it was the human DNA detail that took off on social media.

The focus on marketing by food start-ups should not be surprising. While the technology is getting faster and cheaper, start-ups still have to attract investors.

Give the gift of poop

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Shitexpress will deliver a steamy pile of horse crap with a personalized message to your enemies — or twisted friends.

organic-manure1The Hong Kong-based service launched in November 2014 as a marketing experiment and has stuck around like dog doo on a sneaker tread.

“Yes, it’s legit,” CEO Peter (no last name) told The Huffington Post. 

Peter says his firm earned $10,000 in its first month and has made more than 2,500 shipments. Take note, scatological Santas: Orders cost $16.95 for shipping to many places around the world, and can be done anonymously.

Jail’s no fun, especially with Salmonella

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We describe multidrug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella Heidelberg infections associated with mechanically separated chicken (MSC) served at a county correctional facility.

chicken-prisonTwenty-three inmates met the case definition. All reported diarrhea, 19 (83%) reported fever, 16 (70%) reported vomiting, 4 (17%) had fever ≥103°F, and 3 (13%) were hospitalized. A case–control study found no single food item significantly associated with illness. Salmonella Heidelberg with an indistinguishable pulsed-field gel electrophoresis pattern was isolated from nine stool specimens; two isolates displayed resistance to a total of five drug classes, including the third-generation cephalosporin, ceftriaxone.

Salmonella Heidelberg might have contributed to the severity of illness. Salmonella Heidelberg indistinguishable from the outbreak subtype was isolated from unopened MSC. The environmental health assessment identified cross-contamination through poor food-handling practices as a possible contributing factor. Proper hand-washing techniques and safe food-handling practices were reviewed with the kitchen supervisor.

Multidrug-resistant Salmonella Heidelberg associated with mechanically separated chicken at a correctional facility

Foodborne Pathogens and Disease

Taylor Amanda L., Murphree Rendi, Ingram L. Amanda, Garman Katie, Solomon Deborah, Coffey Eric, Walker Deborah, Rogers Marsha, Marder Ellyn, Bottomley Marie, Woron Amy, Thomas Linda, Roberts Sheri, Hardin Henrietta, Arjmandi Parvin, Green Alice, Simmons Latoya, Cornell Allyson, and Dunn John

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2015.2008

Cringing at Chipotle’s communication

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Friend of the barfblog, Michéle Samarya-Timm, with the Somerset County Department of Health (Jersey, represent), writes:

chipotleWith 39 confirmed E. coli O26 illnesses linked to Chipotle, the restaurant has information on its homepage (paradoxically under a banner of “See how we’ve responsibly raised the bar”).  However, Chipotle is verbally minimizing this outbreak, as they choose to call it a “restaurant closure update.”

The words “outbreak,” “illness” and similar are not used. Chipotle prefers to call it a “situation” and an “issue” (I sense attorneys).

The best folks in risk communication have regularly counseled that corporations experiencing a crisis should communicate regularly with their customers, and not minimize an issue.  Considering their previous experiences with Salmonella and Norovirus, Chipotle is still fairly inadequate in this area.

With this in mind, the signs on the doors of their closed stores:  “FYI”, “Outage”, “Don’t Panic” and “Experience Closure” sound more like an admonishment to their corporate administration, then they do words of acknowledgement and updates to loyal fans.

At least they have an empathy statement, “We offer our deepest sympathies to those who have been affected by this situation,” but I’m not feeling it.

CHipolteThe most glaring aspect of failing to reach out to those who are loyal to their burritos: Chipotle’s Twitter & Facebook feeds are silent on the issue. For a company with 715,000 followers, and 407,000 marketing tweets, that’s a huge omission.

In the absence of corporate messaging, people will make it up. Too bad Chipotle isn’t spending as much effort talking to their customers during this outbreak, as they do reaching out with their slick marketing campaigns.

When the company finally decides to jump back on the social media platform, they may have a hard time overcoming the current circulating meme:  You can’t spell Chipotle without E. coli.