Bacteria has been detected in crayfish served by a restaurant which had been ordered to suspend operation after an outbreak of food poisoning earlier this month.
Inspection reports showed that Vibrio parahemolyticus had been detected in food samples provided both by Zheng Wen Qi Crayfish Donburi restaurant and its customers, Yangpu District government said on Friday.
“Considering the restaurant staff’s nonstandard practices in dealing with the excessive quantity of food, the incident is deemed as a food poisoning case caused by food affected by Vibrio Parahemolyticus,” a district government notice said.
A number of diners suffered from diarrhea, stomach aches and vomiting after eating crayfish donburi — a dish of crayfish meat on a bed of rice — at the outlet. The restaurant was so popular before the accident that it was said to have served 1,300 portions of donburi on its second day of opening.
“At this time, we have three confirmed cases and are tracking a few more possible cases in the community,” said Lougene Marsh, JCDHE director, in the news release. “We encourage everyone to wash their hands frequently and ensure their children take frequent breaks from the pool to prevent accidents.”
JCDHE is working closely with pool operators in Overland Park and Shawnee for cautionary measures to close and/or treat swimming pools with which infected individuals had contact.
Tom Karst of The Packer writes that in a presentation to the U.S. Apple Association’s Outlook and Marketing Conference Aug. 20, the Food and Drug Administration’s Roberta Wagner took questions from the audience about pending food safety rules and the fallout from the foodborne illness outbreak in late 2014 linked to Listeria monocytogenes in caramel apples.
One audience member asked Wagner, associate director for Food Safety Modernization Act Operations at FDA, about the agency’s unclear messages about whether whole apples were involved. He asked her if whole fresh apples were implicated in the outbreak.
“I can tell you the statistic we are showing are only for caramel apples,” she said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35 people were sickened, 34 hospitalized and three died as a result of the outbreak linked to caramel apples.
“One of the research areas we need to (address) is why caramel apples and not apples?” she said.
Another conference attendee noted that foreign governments blocked imports of whole fresh apples.
“What is the FDA going to do so we hopefully curb that in the future?” he said.
Wagner said the FDA can’t control actions by other governments, but that the FDA will work with agriculture officials in other countries to defuse any concerns.
A new restaurant in Tokyo named Curry Shop Shimizu is unlike any other curry shop. They offer their signature dish in a toilet-shaped plate, and for good reason – the restaurant offers poo-flavored curry.
Apparently, Curry Shop Shimizu’s main reason for opening a shop which specializes in poo curry is originality. The restaurant reportedly wanted to be “the world’s first” something, and following some brainstorming, the creators came up with the idea thinking nobody else in the world would offer such a curry.
According to Kotaku, even Japanese site NariNari has called the poo-flavored curry “shocking” with the eatery being certainly a “first for mankind.”
The restaurant calls their poop curry “unko curry.” The name might sound disgusting, but the contents of the unko curry isn’t really inedible. The poop curry is reportedly made from “exceedingly healthy ingredients,” including green tea, cocoa powder and goya, to name a few.
The owners of the former Copa Brazilian restaurant had been scheduled to go before the ACT Magistrates Court on Thursday over the incident that left about 160 people with food poisoning in May 2013.
Under ACT food safety law, those who either knowingly or negligently sell unsafe food can face criminal prosecution.
The criminal case follows civil lawsuits against the restaurant, with an estimated $1 million, including costs, paid out to those struck down by salmonella.
An ACT Health investigation found a supplier in Victoria to be responsible for the bad eggs that had been used by the Dickson restaurant to make raw egg mayonnaise.
The mayonnaise was then served to diners in a potato salad.
Many patrons of the then newly-opened all-you-can-eat Brazilian barbecue were struck down with salmonella poisoning, and the Canberra Hospital’s emergency department reportedly had one of its busiest days on record.
In the aftermath, the restaurant issued an apology to those affected and removed all products containing raw egg from its menu to ensure the poisoning was not repeated.
It closed voluntarily, before reopening under the close watch of ACT Health authorities.
But the restaurant eventually closed its doors and left Dickson in June last year.
New data collected by Stericycle, a company that handles recalls for businesses, shows a sharp jump in the number of recalls of organic food products, according to a story in the N.Y. Times.
Organic food products accounted for 7 percent of all food units recalled so far this year, compared with 2 percent of those recalled last year, according to data from the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture that Stericycle uses to compile its quarterly report on recalls.
In 2012 and 2013, only 1 percent of total units of food recalled were organic.
Kevin Pollack, a vice president at Stericycle, said the growing consumer and corporate demand for organic ingredients was at least partly responsible for the increase.
“What’s striking is that since 2012, all organic recalls have been driven by bacterial contamination, like salmonella, listeria and hepatitis A, rather than a problem with a label,” Mr. Pollack said. “This is a fairly serious and really important issue because a lot of consumers just aren’t aware of it.”
For that matter, the overall amount of food recalled because of suspected bacterial contamination has increased this year, adding to what has been an upward trend in food recalls since 2012, according to Stericycle, which predicts a 24 percent increase in the number of food units that will be recalled by the F.D.A. this year.
The Organic Trade Association, however, took issue with Stericycle’s accounting of recalls, saying its own quick analysis of recall data from the F.D.A. and the Agriculture Department show the problem is less severe, with organic products accounting for 4.9 percent of recalls, in line with the percentage of organic food sold out of total retail sales of food.
“A key point to keep in mind is that an overall increase in organic recalls between 2012 and 2015 would not be surprising — not because organic food is less safe, but because of the dramatic increase in organic food sales and purchases that we’ve been seeing in this country,” said Gwendolyn Wyard, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs at the trade group.
“Sales of organic food in the U.S. have risen by almost 25 percent just since 2012, and the number of organic products on the market is increasing steadily as demand for organic increases,” she said.
Ms. Wyard also noted that food safety mechanisms had increased since 2012, with a corresponding increase in food recalls.
According to a press release on NASA’s website, eight faculty-led teams received about $200,000 per year for up to three years of research dealing with high priority needs for the future of space exploration. Among the proposed projects is Clemson University’s “Synthetic Biology for Recycling Human Waste into Food, Nutraceuticals, and Materials: Closing the Loop for Long-Term Space Travel.”
NASA currently pays commercial space travel firms like SpaceX to bring supplies to astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS). But for trips farther into the solar system, astronauts will need huge amounts of food to sustain themselves for months or even years.
Astronauts will, therefore, have to produce their own food, and it appears human waste might be the key to eliminating shortages and possibly making a home out of Mars.
ISS astronauts made a major leap toward self-sustainability last May by successfully growing lettuce in space. If human waste can be made to taste nearly as good as that red romaine lettuce, Mars could merely be the starting point for a series of journeys into the deepest depths of space.
Methods: In April–October 2012, we conducted a case–control study in two hospitals in Shenzhen, China. Laboratory-confirmed VP cases (N = 83) were matched on age, sex, and other social factors to healthy controls (N = 249). Subjects were interviewed using a questionnaire on medical history; contact with seawater; clinical symptoms and outcome; travel history over the past week; and dietary history 3 days prior to onset. Laboratory tests were used to culture, serotype, and genotype VP strains. We used logistic regression to calculate the odds ratios for the association of VP infection with potential risk factors.
Results: In multivariate analysis, VP infection was associated with having pre-existing chronic disease (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 6.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.5–23.7), eating undercooked seafood (aOR, 8.0; 95% CI, 1.3–50.4), eating undercooked meat (aOR, 29.1; 95% CI, 3.0–278.2), eating food from a street food vendor (aOR, 7.6; 95% CI, 3.3–17.6), and eating vegetable salad (aOR, 12.1; 95% CI, 5.2–28.2).
Conclusions: Eating raw (undercooked) seafood and meat is an important source of VP infection among the study population. Cross-contamination of VP in other food (e.g., vegetables and undercooked meat) likely plays a more important role. Intervention should be taken to lower the risks of cross-contamination with undercooked seafood/meat, especially targeted at people with low income, transient workers, and people with medical risk factors.
Risk factors for Vibrio parahaemolyticus Infection in a southern coastal region of China
Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. Ahead of print. doi:10.1089/fpd.2015.1988.
Liao Yuxue, Li Yinghui, Wu Shuyu, Mou Jin, Xu Zengkang, Cui Rilin, Klena John D., Shi Xiaolu, Lu Yan, Qiu Yaqun, Lin Yiman, Xie Xu, Ma Hanwu, Li Zhongjie, Yu Hongjie, Varma Jay K., Ran Lu, Hu Qinghua, and Cheng Jinquan
In the course of the ensuing 9 months, 18 isolates originating from 13 patients and from one food sample were collected. Of the 13 human cases, 10 (77%) were female. The patients’ ages ranged from 27 to 83 years (median age 49 years). Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) performed with XbaI, and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) were used to type the strains. PFGE as well as MLST showed the strains as indistinguishable. The PFGE pattern and MLST sequence type (ST427) were identical to those of Salmonella enterica serovar Szentes isolated in previous years (2002–2013) from sporadic cases in Switzerland and Germany.
The increased isolation frequency continued for 6 months after the detection of Salmonella Szentes in sprouts. No common food exposure could be established. Due to lack of information on the potential food source, further investigations were not possible. The outbreak of this unusual serotype was detected because of its temporal clustering.
Salmonella enterica serovar Szentes, a rare serotype causing a 9-month outbreak in 2013 and 2014 in Switzerland
Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. Ahead of print. doi:10.1089/fpd.2015.1996.
Nüesch-Inderbinen Magdalena, Cernela Nicole, Althaus Denise, Hächler Herbert, and Stephan Roger
I’ve been lucky to be close to some excellent projects, some of the stuff and knowledge created through these projects ends up mattering to food safety nerds – especially those who are making risk management decisions. NC State student Grace Tung-Thompson’s PhD project on vomit spray and norovirus is one of the most impactful. The work was carried out as part of the USDA NIFA-funded NoroCORE project led by my friend Lee-Ann Jaykus.
I’ve talked to lots of Environmental Health Specialists, retailers and food service food safety folks about what Grace and fellow graduate student Dominic Libera put together and many respond with a weird level of enthusiasm for the barf project.
Mainly because a real question they struggle with is how far will virus particles travel from an up-chuck event – knowing this, and then cleaning and sanitizing helps limit the scope of a potential outbreak. Today Grace’s work was published in PLOS ONE.
Matt Shipman, Research Communications Lead for University Communications and all around great guy writes about the project for The Abstract:
Tucked away in a quiet lab on NC State’s Raleigh campus is something that looks like a glorified air compressor with a grotesque clay face. It’s called “the vomiting machine” and it does exactly what you think it does. Researchers are using it to study one of the most widespread pathogens in the United States: norovirus.
Norovirus is a group of more than 30 related viruses that can cause vomiting and diarrhea. Norovirus affects about 20 million people each year in the U.S., with infections that can lead to hospitalization and occasionally to death, particularly in the elderly. About a quarter of the time, “noro” infection is obtained by consuming contaminated foods or water. However, it is most often spread between people in close contact with each other. The epidemic GII.4 strain predominates, but there are others.
But how, exactly, is noro transmitted from person to person?
“Epidemiological studies have suggested that norovirus can be ‘aerosolized’ through vomiting, meaning that small particles containing norovirus can become airborne when someone throws up,” says Grace Thompson, a recent Ph.D. graduate whose work at NC State focused on how norovirus spreads through vomiting and how long it is detectable in vomit. (Fun fact: noro can still be detected in dried vomit after six weeks.)
“According to outbreak reports, it appears that people can become infected with noro if they are directly or indirectly exposed to vomiting events,” Thompson explains. “If aerosolized particles land on a countertop, you could also touch the counter with your hand, then touch your hand to your mouth, leading to infection.”
But while norovirus aerosolization by vomiting has long been suspected, no one knew if it was actually occurring. This is the sort of question that Lee-Ann Jaykus’s lab lives for.
Jaykus is a professor of food science at NC State and scientific director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture Food Virology Collaborative, also known as NoroCORE (short for Norovirus Collaborative for Outreach, Research, and Education). They are, quite simply, norovirus experts.
To see if vomiting could really aerosolize norovirus, researchers in Jaykus’s lab (including Grace Thompson) needed a controlled way to observe and study vomiting over and over again. They needed a vomiting machine.
As you may imagine, there is a limited demand for vomiting machines, so the researchers had to design and build their own. They found a partner in Dominic Libera, a graduate student in NC State’s civil, construction and environmental engineering department in Francis de los Reyes’s lab. They also needed data upon which to build their model. Dr. Kenneth Koch, a gastroenterologist with Wake Forest University, provided that expertise.
Working together, the researchers created a machine that is essentially a scaled-down version of the mouth, esophagus, and stomach – made of tubes and a pressure chamber that passes through a clay face to give it the correct vomiting angle. The machine is designed (using engineering similitude principles) to let researchers control the pressure and volume of the vomit, in order to mimic a range of natural vomiting behaviors. The whole thing is enclosed in a sealed plexiglas box and placed under a biosafety hood. (A short video of the machine can be seen here.)
Instead of vomit, the researchers use liquid solutions of different viscosities or thicknesses as “artificial vomitus” to reflect different stages of digestion. And, since they cannot use real norovirus, they used a bacteriophage called MS2, which is a virus that infects E. coli but is harmless to humans. MS2 is easy to culture and is a common stand-in for noro.
Putting The Machine To Work
In 2012 and 2013, the team did extensive testing of the machine, to make sure that it was scaled appropriately and worked the way they wanted it to. And in 2014, Thompson began using the machine for formal experiments.
And what did they find? Well, virus was indeed aerosolized. Although the amount of MS2 aerosolized as a percent of total virus “vomited” was relatively low (less than 0.3 percent), vomit from infected people contains millions of particles. When the math is done, this means that the actual amount of virus particles aerosolized during a single vomiting event ranges from only a few into the thousands, perhaps more. (This work was recently published in PLOS ONE. More information on the findings is available here.)
“And that is enough to be problematic because it only takes a few, perhaps less than 20, to make a susceptible person ill” Jaykus says. “This machine may seem odd, but it’s helping us understand a disease that affects millions of people. This is work that can help us prevent or contain the spread of norovirus – and there’s nothing odd about that.”
Inspection reports showed that Vibrio parahemolyticus had been detected in food samples provided both by Zheng Wen Qi Crayfish Donburi restaurant and its customers, Yangpu District government said on Friday.
