Yearly Archives: 2015

Use a thermometer? 5 sick in Vermont E. coli outbreak

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A South Royalton restaurant voluntarily closed for several days recently and switched food vendors after being contacted by state officials who are investigating an E. coli “cluster” that has sickened at least five people.

worthy.burgerMeanwhile, state officials have released few details about their investigation, including the potential source of the contamination or how widespread the risk may be.

Jason Merrill, executive chef at Worthy Burger, said the Vermont Department of Health approached the restaurant’s leadership team last week and asked them to consider changing some of their food vendors out of precaution.

“They haven’t told me which ones they wanted me to change, so I changed pretty much all of my vendors,” Merrill said, noting he uses six or seven area farms to supply ingredients for the menu at Worthy Burger, which specializes in locally sourced food.

At least five people have contracted E. coli in what state officials have referred to as a “cluster,” according to the Vermont Department of Health. The locations of the five laboratory-confirmed cases, as well as a sixth case listed as “probable,” haven’t been divulged by health officials nor is it clear how the six cases are connected.

The health department is working on identifying the source of the contamination, spokesman Ben Truman said on Thursday.

Life of Poo handwashing: 30-second food safety stories

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Everyone says they wash their hands.

life-of-pi_0But when researchers look, most don’t

(especially men).

A UK professor wrote a book, The Life of Poo,

Sorta like the Life of Pi (and the last book I read).

He says toothbrushes should be 2m from the loo.

And he says, no one washes their hands in a way that will work.

“Whether you are brushing your teeth, having sex, cleaning your bathroom, following the 2-second rule, debating the 5-second rule, guzzling probiotics or just sitting on the toilet, this book is likely to be of interest to you.”

 

30-second food safety stories.

I wash my hands.

The quasi-daily probe E1: The okra of the sea

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My friend Mike Batz of University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogen Institute and I were chatting a while back and thought it would be cool to connect for short podcasts when there was something fun going on. Here’s the first episode (and maybe the last) in it’s raw, unedited, short format.Daily-probe

Today we talked about oysters, raw and steamed, Vibrio, norovirus, burden and risk-based messaging.

The article that prompted the probe was from Lifezette where oysters are referred to as those scary shellfish.

Heads up, raw oyster lovers. New research from China shows the bivalves not only transmit human norovirus, they also serve as a reservoir for the harmful and highly contagious virus.

In an expansive study published recently in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology, scientists discovered that more than 80 percent of the known noroviruses matched those found in oysters.

Even common recommendations for reducing the risks of illness, such as avoiding them from warm-water sources, aren’t a guarantee you won’t get sick, food safety expert Ben Chapman told LifeZette.

“Considering where they’re from, and not eating them at a certain time of year, may reduce the risk, though risk is always there,” said Chapman, a researcher at North Carolina State University. Chapman also notes that cooking oysters may lower risk, but that steaming — a popular way to prepare them — isn’t likely to get them above 140 degrees.

Listen to the episode here.

I’m no Yogi Berra, but this Taco Bell worker caught with hands down his pants

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There’s an old food safety saying: gloves give a false sense of security, and it doesn’t matter whether wearing gloves or not, you scratch your ass, bacteria are going to move.

taco.bell.2OK, it’s my saying.

Been making people cringe for 20 years.

But now, because everyone has a camera, there’s photographic proof.

A customer at an Ohio Taco Bell noticed one of the employees behind the counter had his skillful taco-making hands inside his pants, brushing up against his backside.

The customer posted the picture to Taco Bell through Facebook, and according to Fox 8, the employee was identified, then fired.

Taco Bell said:

“This is completely unacceptable and has no place in our restaurants. Our franchisee took immediate action, and has terminated the employee and retraining the entire staff. We want customers to know that the person in the photo was never in contact with the food, and that the Health Department inspected the restaurant and approved its operations.”

They couldn’t fire the guy fast enough, though, as the memes quickly started pouring into Taco Bell’s site.

If someone tried ordering a Choco Taco, this guy was definitely delivering.

But instead of the corporate apologetics, Taco Bell could have found a more fitting use for its PR thingies.

RIP Yogi. King of the soundbite

yogi.bera.sep.115Before athletes were required to have a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in addition to their busy schedule of pre-, post- and mid-game interviews, Berra’s prowess with a funny quip and quick soundbite rivaled his skill on the field.

Lines like “It’s déjà all over again” have bcome so ubiquitous that they simply seem to have sprung, fully formed, from the American vernacular.

1, When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

  1. Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
  2. You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.
  3. Make a game plan and stick to it. Unless it’s not working.
  4. We made too many wrong mistakes.
  5. Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel.
  6. All pitchers are liars or crybabies.
  7. Even Napoleon had his Watergate.
  8. If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.
  9. Take it with a grin of salt.

Entire publications have said less with many more words.

.

 

Food safety silliness: 30-second food safety stories

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There once was a dentist name Price.

He thought raw milk was all very nice.

miley.cyrus.tongueHe helped invent the Paleo diet.

And even, I’m told, Miley Cyrus likes it.

So it must be true.

Celebrity.

But I want my food, like my medicine, to be based in 2015.

Not 1939.

30-second food safety stories.

Don’t get me started on microorganisms.

Vaccines work: More than 3700 people vaccinated after possible Hardee’s Hepatitis A exposure in SC

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The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) says it has provided 3,706 vaccinations through its hepatitis A vaccine clinics in Spartanburg and Greenville.

hardee'sThey say vaccinations are being offered to individuals who might have been exposed to hepatitis A at two Hardee’s restaurants located in Spartanburg County.

The restaurants are located at:

12209 Greenville Highway in Lyman

1397 E. Main St. in Duncan.

DHEC’s Spartanburg and Greenville county health departments will continue to provide post-exposure treatments Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., through September 29, 2015.

Just cook it doesn’t cut it: Egg factory owner in Germany arrested over man’s death from Salmonella

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A poultry farmer whose contaminated eggs caused a Salmonella outbreak at a Birmingham, UK hospital has been arrested over the death of a man in Austria.

salm.eanygg.germFive patients died at Heartlands Hospital in Bordesley Green and the bacteria was traced back to eggs from factory Bayern Ei in Bavaria, Germany.

The same source of Salmonella is blamed for the death of a 75-year-old man.

Factory owner Stefan Pohlman is in custody accused of grievous bodily harm causing death, said a German lawyer.

The salmonella outbreak at Heartlands Hospital between 25 May and 18 June 2014, saw 32 staff and patients infected.

A report found it directly caused the death of one patient.

It played a part in other deaths because inadequately equipped wards, unmonitored food preparation and poor cleaning helped it spread, the report stated.

The evolution of dangerous E. coli

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Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) is the causative agent of bloody diarrhea and extraintestinal sequelae in humans, most importantly hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP).

dangerBesides the bacteriophage-encoded Shiga toxin gene (stx), EHEC harbors the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE), which confers the ability to cause attaching and effacing lesions. Currently, the vast majority of EHEC infections are caused by strains belonging to five O serogroups (the “big five”), which, in addition to O157, the most important, comprise O26, O103, O111, and O145.

We hypothesize that these four non-O157 EHEC serotypes differ in their phylogenies. To test this hypothesis, we used multilocus sequence typing (MLST) to analyze a large collection of 250 isolates of these four O serogroups, which were isolated from diseased as well as healthy humans and cattle between 1952 and 2009. The majority of the EHEC isolates of O serogroups O26 and O111 clustered into one sequence type complex, STC29. Isolates of O103 clustered mainly in STC20, and most isolates of O145 were found within STC32. In addition to these EHEC strains, STC29 also included stx-negative E. coli strains, termed atypical enteropathogenic E. coli (aEPEC), yet another intestinal pathogenic E. coli group. The finding that aEPEC and EHEC isolates of non-O157 O serogroups share the same phylogeny suggests an ongoing microevolutionary scenario in which the phage-encoded Shiga toxin gene stx is transferred between aEPEC and EHEC.

As a consequence, aEPEC strains of STC29 can be regarded as post- or pre-EHEC isolates. Therefore, STC29 incorporates phylogenetic information useful for unraveling the evolution of EHEC.

Highly virulent non-O157 enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (ehec) serotypes reflect similar phylogenetic lineages, providing new insights into the evolution of EHEC

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, October 2015, Volume 81, Number 20

Inga Eichhorn, Katrin Heidemanns, Torsten Semmler, Bianca Kinnemann, Alexander Mellmann, Dag Harmsen, Muna F. Anjum, Herbert Schmidtf Angelika Fruth, Peter Valentin-Weigand, Jürgen Heesemann, Sebastian Suerbaum, Helge Karchc, and Lothar H. Wieler

http://aem.asm.org/content/81/20/7041.abstract?etoc

142 sickened with E. coli from UK takeaway because staff fail to wash hands

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More than 100 takeaway customers were sick for up to two months with a rare strain of E. coli – after staff did not wash their hands after using the toilet, a court heard.

handwashing.sep.12Nottingham Crown Court heard that 142 customers of the Khyber Pass in Hyson Green, Nottingham, suffered with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea after the outbreak last June.

In one case, a 13-year-old girl spent four nights in hospital with a consultant saying the infection could have been fatal if it was not treated.

Amjad Bhatti and Mohammed Basit, owners of the Khyber Pass, in Gregory Boulevard, pleaded guilty to seven food hygiene offences and were sentenced on Wednesday.

Prosecuting, Bernard Thorogood said that nine of the 12 members of staff who handle food at the takeaway were found to have traces of the bacteria, and one of the defendant’s daughters fell ill.

Mitigating, Robert Egbuna said lessons had been learnt and improvements made at the takeaway.

He said: “It is not just a case of adding hand basins. There have been significant changes that have come about from the real shock of what has happened.”

Bhatti and Basit were both given four months prison suspended for a year, as well as being ordered to do 250 hours of unpaid work each.

His Honour Judge Jeremy Lea also said each of the victims should be paid £200 compensation by the defendants as well as paying costs of £25,752.36.

94 sickened at staff retreat; further test results sought

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Health types in Brantford, Ontario, Canada have revealed that 94 people at a staff retreat could have sickened by Plesiomonas shigelloides.

WanyeGretzkyParkway“We’ve had just one positive result,” warned infectious diseases manager Ruth Gratton of the Brant County Health Unit.

“That is not enough evidence to confirm this organism

About half of those who ate at a Brant Family and Children’s Services staff event on Sept. 10 at the South Dumfries Community Centre in St. George became sick after a catered lunch that included egg salad wraps, chicken wraps and potato salad.

Dozens of workers began calling in sick the next day with severe abdominal cramping and diarrhea. Many had to consult a doctor and several went to the emergency department with intensive symptoms.

The caterer involved in the luncheon has been ordered, until further notice, to stop providing food service in the Brantford or Brant County. If the caterer is found to be at fault, it can be charged under the Health Protection Act.

At Brant Family and Children’s Services, things are returning to normal. “My sense is that a handful of staff are still off (but) I don’t have exact numbers,” Patrick Banning, director of administration at the BFCS, said Tuesday.

Gratton said area health-care providers were asked to notify the unit if any complications arose from the 94 cases but no one has been in touch.