Yearly Archives: 2015

Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network—2 decades of achievements, 1996–2015

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The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) provides a foundation for food safety policy and illness prevention in the United States.

FoodNet.pyramid.fbi.OverviewFoodNet conducts active, population-based surveillance at 10 US sites for laboratory-confirmed infections of 9 bacterial and parasitic pathogens transmitted commonly through food and for hemolytic uremic syndrome.

Through FoodNet, state and federal scientists collaborate to monitor trends in enteric illnesses, identify their sources, and implement special studies. FoodNet’s major contributions include establishment of reliable, active population-based surveillance of enteric diseases; development and implementation of epidemiologic studies to determine risk and protective factors for sporadic enteric infections; population and laboratory surveys that describe the features of gastrointestinal illnesses, medical care–seeking behavior, frequency of eating various foods, and laboratory practices; and development of a surveillance and research platform that can be adapted to address emerging issues.

The importance of FoodNet’s ongoing contributions probably will grow as clinical, laboratory, and informatics technologies continue changing rapidly.

Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network—2 decades of achievements, 1996–2015

Emerging Infectious Diseases, Volume 21, Number 9,  September 2015

Olga L. Henao Comments to Author , Timothy F. Jones, Duc J. Vugia, Patricia M. Griffin, and for the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) Workgroup

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/9/15-0581_article

Irrigation water, produce and pathogens

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The microbiological sanitary quality and safety of leafy greens and strawberries were assessed in the primary production in Belgium, Brazil, Egypt, Norway and Spain by enumeration of Escherichia coli and detection of Salmonella, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and Campylobacter.

strawberryWater samples were more prone to containing pathogens (54 positives out of 950 analyses) than soil (16/1186) and produce on the field (18/977 for leafy greens and 5/402 for strawberries). The prevalence of pathogens also varied markedly according to the sampling region. Flooding of fields increased the risk considerably, with odds ratio (OR) 10.9 for Salmonella and 7.0 for STEC.

A significant association between elevated numbers of generic E. coli and detection of pathogens (OR of 2.3 for STEC and 2.7 for Salmonella) was established. Generic E. coli was found to be a suitable index organism for Salmonella and STEC, but to a lesser extent for Campylobacter. Guidelines on frequency of sampling and threshold values for E. coli in irrigation water may differ from region to region. 

Risk Factors for Salmonella, shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli and Campylobacter occurrence in primary production of leafy greens and strawberries

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Siele Ceuppens, Gro S. Johannessen, Ana Allende, Eduardo César Tondo,  Fouad El-Tahan, Imca Sampers, Liesbeth Jacxsens, and  Mieke Uyttendaele

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/8/9809

Biosensor platform for rapid detection of E. coli in drinking water

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The need for rapid, specific and sensitive assays that provide a detection of bacterial indicators are important for monitoring water quality. Rapid detection using biosensor is a novel approach for microbiological testing applications. Besides, validation of rapid methods is an obstacle in adoption of such new bio-sensing technologies.

drinking.water.e.coliIn this study, the strategy developed is based on using the compound 4-methylumbelliferyl glucuronide (MUG), which is hydrolyzed rapidly by the action of E. coli β-D-glucuronidase (GUD) enzyme to yield a fluorogenic product that can be quantified and directly related to the number of E. coli cells present in water samples. The detection time required for the biosensor response ranged from 30 to 120 minutes, depending on the number of bacteria. The specificity of the MUG based biosensor platform assay for the detection of E. coli was examined by pure cultures of non-target bacterial genera and also non-target substrates. GUD activity was found to be specific for E. coli and no such enzymatic activity was detected in other species. Moreover, the sensitivity of rapid enzymatic assays was investigated and repeatedly determined to be less than 10 E. coli cells per reaction vial concentrated from 100 mL of water samples.

The applicability of the method was tested by performing fluorescence assays under pure and mixed bacterial flora in environmental samples. In addition, the procedural QA/QC for routine monitoring of drinking water samples have been validated by comparing the performance of the biosensor platform for the detection of E. coli and culture-based standard techniques such as Membrane Filtration (MF). The results of this study indicated that the fluorescence signals generated in samples using specific substrate molecules can be utilized to develop a bio-sensing platform for the detection of E. coli in drinking water. The procedural QA/QC of the biosensor will provide both industry and regulatory authorities a useful tool for near real-time monitoring of E. coli in drinking water samples. Furthermore, this system can be applied independently or in conjunction with other methods as a part of an array of biochemical assays in order to reliably detect E. coli in water.

Biosensor platform for rapid detection of E. coli in drinking water

Arizona State University Digital Repository

Hesari, Nikou / Abbaszadegan, Morteza / Alum, Absar / Fox, Peter  / Stout, Valerie

http://repository.asu.edu/items/34809

476 sick with cyclosporiasis in US, 87 in Canada

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As of August 17, 2015 (3pm EDT), a total of 476 ill persons with confirmed Cyclospora infection were reported to CDC in 2015. Most of these persons—282 (59%) of 476—experienced onset of illness on or after May 1, 2015, and did not have a history of international travel within 2 weeks before illness onset.

 cilantro.slugs.powell.10These 282 persons were from the following 22 states: Arkansas (2), California (2), Connecticut (3), Florida (10), Georgia (23), Illinois (7), Iowa (1), Kansas (2), Maryland (1), Massachusetts (9), Michigan (2), Missouri (1), Montana (3), Nebraska (1), New Jersey (6), New Mexico (2), New York (excluding NYC) (8), New York City (21), Texas (162), Utah (1), Virginia (3), Washington (2), and Wisconsin (10).

Clusters of illness linked to restaurants or events have been identified in Texas, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Cluster investigations are ongoing in Texas and Georgia. Cluster investigations in Wisconsin and Texas have preliminarily identified cilantro as a suspect vehicle. Investigations are ongoing to identify specific food item(s) linked to the cases that are not part of the identified clusters.

87 cases have been reported in Canada.

Half of 3,700 issues in Michigan prison kitchens went unresolved by Aramark

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Aramark and the Michigan Department of Corrections failed to address almost half of the approximately 3,700 issues with food safety, prisoner safety and prison security reported between March 2014 and October 2014.

aramark.mi.prisonThose findings were released in a report by Progress Michigan, a liberal group based out of Lansing, following their review of about 25,000 pages of emails between the MDOC and Aramark officials.

Lonnie Scott, director of Progress Michigan, said 3,707 issues with Aramark’s performance were reported during the eight-month period they reviewed. Of those 3,707 issues, 1,791 — 48.3 percent of those reported — were unresolved as of October 2014.

The controversial three-year, $145 million contract with Aramark was ended by mutual agreement last month. MDOC officials said the contract was terminated due to unresolvable contract issues, and not the onslaught of negative headlines about the contractor’s performance in Michigan prisons.

Trinity Services Group is currently in the process of taking over Aramark’s duties and will take full control of food service in prisons by September. The contract is set to run for three years and will cost taxpayers $158 million.

Hugh Madden, communications director at Progress Michigan, said the report shows unacceptable failures from both Aramark and the state’s contract monitors.

“I don’t know of any private restaurant that would want to put that on the door, that, hey, we solved 48 percent of the violations that were reported in our kitchens,” he said.

 

Too cool for toilets: Jimmy Buffett fans leave buckets of poop at concert

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Jimmy, ya gotta say something to your fans.

Last Saturday’s Jimmy Buffett concert in Mansfield, MA left a foul taste in everyone’s mouth. That’s because the legions of drunken retirees who make up Buffett’s fan base apparently like to make their own homemade toilets for these events, which they then leave, brimming with excrement, for some poor bastard to clean up.

jimmy.buffett.toiletAccording to police lieutenant Sam Thompson, the Parrotheads are just too rock n’ roll to use the designated bathrooms.

Local police chief Ronald Sellon called the leavings “unsanitary and just disrespectful. [T]he most common model is a 5-gallon bucket with its rim lined with a foam pool noodle for a seat, stashed inside a tent.”

Is there an increase in multistate foodborne disease outbreaks—United States, 1973–2010?

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Food Safety Talk podcast nerds Chapman and Schaffner are forever going on about Betteridge’s Law.

For the uninitiated, Betteridge’s Law states that “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

interstate-mdBetteridge himself stated, “The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.”

I use question marks in headlines to avoid lawsuits.

A new paper posits that changes in food production and distribution have increased opportunities for foods contaminated early in the supply chain to be distributed widely, increasing the possibility of multistate outbreaks.

In recent decades, surveillance systems for foodborne disease have been improved, allowing officials to more effectively identify related cases and to trace and identify an outbreak’s source.

Materials and Methods: We reviewed multistate foodborne disease outbreaks reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System during 1973–2010. We calculated the percentage of multistate foodborne disease outbreaks relative to all foodborne disease outbreaks and described characteristics of multistate outbreaks, including the etiologic agents and implicated foods.

Results: Multistate outbreaks accounted for 234 (0.8%) of 27,755 foodborne disease outbreaks, 24,003 (3%) of 700,600 outbreak-associated illnesses, 2839 (10%) of 29,756 outbreak-associated hospitalizations, and 99 (16%) of 628 outbreak-associated deaths. The median annual number of multistate outbreaks increased from 2.5 during 1973–1980 to 13.5 during 2001–2010; the number of multistate outbreak-associated illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths also increased. Most multistate outbreaks were caused by Salmonella (47%) and Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (26%). Foods most commonly implicated were beef (22%), fruits (13%), and leafy vegetables (13%).

Conclusions: The number of identified and reported multistate foodborne disease outbreaks has increased. Improvements in detection, investigation, and reporting of foodborne disease outbreaks help explain the increasing number of reported multistate outbreaks and the increasing percentage of outbreaks that were multistate. Knowing the etiologic agents and foods responsible for multistate outbreaks can help to identify sources of food contamination so that the safety of the food supply can be improved.

 Increase in multistate foodborne disease outbreaks—United States, 1973–2010

Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, August 18, 2015, doi:10.1089/fpd.2014.1908

Nguyen Von D., Bennett Sarah D., Mungai Elisabeth, Gieraltowski Laura, Hise Kelley, and Gould L. Hannah

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.201

The trouble with meanings of risk, safety and security

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The concepts of risk, safety, and security have received substantial academic interest. Several assumptions exist about their nature and relation.

riskBesides academic use, the words risk, safety, and security are frequent in ordinary language, for example, in media reporting. In this article, we analyze the concepts of risk, safety, and security, and their relation, based on empirical observation of their actual everyday use.

The “behavioral profiles” of the nouns risk, safety, and security and the adjectives risky, safe, and secure are coded and compared regarding lexical and grammatical contexts.

The main findings are: (1) the three nouns risk, safety, and security, and the two adjectives safe and secure, have widespread use in different senses, which will make any attempt to define them in a single unified manner extremely difficult; (2) the relationship between the central risk terms is complex and only partially confirms the distinctions commonly made between the terms in specialized terminology; (3) whereas most attempts to define risk in specialized terminology have taken the term to have a quantitative meaning, nonquantitative meanings dominate in everyday language, and numerical meanings are rare; and (4) the three adjectives safe, secure, and risky are frequently used in comparative form. This speaks against interpretations that would take them as absolute, all-or-nothing concepts.

The Concepts of Risk, Safety, and Security: Applications in Everyday Language

Wiley Online Library, Risk Analysis, 18 AUG 2015

Max Boholm, Niklas Möller and Sven Ove Hansson

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/risa.12464/abstract;jsessionid=9D9F719E466B8B041E72C7163C374D8D.f04t01

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/risa.12464/abstract;jsessionid=9D9F719E466B8B041E72C7163C374D8D.f04t01

UV equipment brought in to kill off crypto

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Water bosses are bringing in ultra violet ray equipment to help kill off cryptosporidium in the water supply which has affected over 300,000 Lancashire residents.


Lancashire.water_United Utilities is to use the portable UV rigs at three sites on the Fylde which it says should make a difference and help kill off cryptosporidium. The equipment, which consists of powerful fluorescent UV lights shining in a tank through which water passes, will be used on water leaving the Warbreck, Weeton and Westby service reservoir outlets.

The UV C rays attack the DNA of the parasite killing it rapidly. It also works on other potentially harmful microbes such as e-coli. John Butcher, UU’s regional supplies manager, said: “Cryoptosporidium is very vulnerable to this UV C light. The normal treatment process at Franklaw deals with it and the water coming out of there is clear, but we have brought this in to deal with the water now going through the system.”

Gary Dixon UU’s customer services director said they had identified a possible source for the contamination but had to wait for the Drinking Water Inspectorate’s official report.

Calling all norovirus: passenger forced to sit beside vomit on plane

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I’ve encountered vomit in public a few times.

A few weeks ago a fellow food safety nerd and I sat on a Seattle train and watched a woman 20 ft away yack on the floor while her partner consoled her. My friend and I figured that we’d get noro just by being there (we didn’t).CMhGalfWUAAnNds

A few years ago my son threw up on a flight which led to a fascinating approach by Delta Airlines involving plastic bags to contain the risk and coffee pods to manage the smell.

According to BBC, a Rynair passenger was forced to sit next to a vomit pile on a flight from Gatwick to London this week.

A 24-year-old was forced to sit in the same aisle as vomit left by a previous passenger on a Ryanair flight from Gatwick to Dublin on Sunday.

Noel O’Hare noticed the smell and mess as soon as he sat down with his friends on the hour and a half flight.220px-Neilyounglandingonwatercover

He told Newsbeat the “unsightly mess” was on the ground mixed in with a bag and tissues.

Ryanair cabin staff told him that because Gatwick isn’t their base and their cleaners are in Dublin, it couldn’t be cleaned up until they arrived back in Ireland.

Spray and aerosolization of vomit particles makes being in that adjacent seat particularly fun.