Author Archives: Brae Surgeoner

Taste of Chicago illnesses must be real blow to city inspectors

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Reports from the Associated Press today suggest that more than 120 people who ate from the same booth at the Taste of Chicago food festival last week became ill, at least nine of them with salmonella poisoning and 10 who were hospitalized. The number could increase because lab results are pending in some of the cases.
The 126 people are reported to have ate at the Pars Cove Persian Cuisine booth, which served cucumber salad over hummus, grilled lamb and beef, pomegranate barbecued chicken and baklava.
It was the first confirmed outbreak of a food-borne illness associated with the Taste of Chicago in at least 20 years.

A Chicago Department of Health press release yesterday shared some interesting facts about food safety at taste of Chicago, which would make this outbreak a real blow to city inspectors who seem not to make light of food safety. From the press release:

– Taste of Chicago is by far the most intensively regulated food service operation in the city. The event features a 24-hour-a-day food safety presence – teams of CDPH sanitarians inspect and re-inspect the 70-plus food booths from 8:30 a.m. to midnight each day, and staff hired by the Illinois Restaurant Association monitors and logs the temperatures in the refrigerated storage trucks overnight.

– All vendors are required to undergo training to prepare, serve and store food safely under outdoor conditions.

– Scrutiny is intense. A food booth is typically inspected at least four times each day, while a typical city restaurant is inspected twice a year.

– While most vendors do an exceptionally good job of ensuring food safety, the intense scrutiny typically results in CDPH ordering the disposal of food that does not meet its exacting standards. Each year, about 2,000 pounds of food (an average of 200 pounds a day) at the event are disposed of by order of CDPH inspectors.

Mammoth burger – so big it’s scary.

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The Calgary Herald reports today that a pair of Calgary chefs will join forces Friday to create what may be the biggest hamburger the city has ever seen — a 60-kilogram monster that will be sold off, piece by piece, to benefit the Kids Cancer Care Foundation of Alberta.
Owner of the eatery, restaurateur Itzhak Likver was quoted as saying, "It’s going to be so big, I don’t know how to cut it even. I need to find a big, big knife."
Friday’s behemoth burger is estimated to be about 20 centimetres thick and measure roughly one metre in diameter, requiring nearly 45 kilograms of hamburger meat.
The remaining 20 kilograms will come from 40 slices of melted mozzarella cheese, 20 juicy tomatoes, five large onions, three heads of crisp romaine lettuce and four cups of mustard and ketchup, topped off by eight crunchy pickles.

I’d be interested to know how (and if) the chefs plan to measure the internal temperature of this mammoth burger — it’s enough of a challenge to ensure food safety on a regular size patty. No talk of food safety in the original news article, but of course that might kill the feel good vibe surrounding the charity event.

What gets in the way of washing your hands?

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According to a new study appearing in the June issue of the Journal of Environmental Health, important barriers related to hand-washing in the restaurant environment include time pressure, inadequate facilities and supplies, lack of accountability, lack of involvement of managers and coworkers, and organizations that are not supportive of hand-washing – ouch!
The researchers used two focus groups (a total of 18 participants, although recruitment calls were made to 150 establishments) to interview food handlers currently employed in restaurants in two Oregon counties.
The advantage of using focus groups is to derive substantive content of verbally expressed views, opinions, experiences and attitudes that are not as easily accessed using means such as surveys. For instance, a food handler in the current study who expressed a desire for additional education and training about FBI’s that result from not washing hands during food preparation, was quoted as saying: "I am very curious. I know germs exist and they are out there. We hear about Salmonella and all that stuff. But I’m curious as to if we don’t wash our hands, what is the result? I think we should be educated because I don’t really know what happens. I mean yeah, you get sick. But what does Salmonella do to a person?" But, after having worked in the foodservice industry for several years prior to joining iFSN, one of my favorite quotes from the study regarding lack of accountability for hand-washing (because I don’t doubt that it’s a common fear in the industry) has to be: "I don’t think I could tell anyone I work with that they need to wash their hands. I’d get some swear words back in my face."
As a result of the focus group sessions, the researchers recommended that future educational and training programs include: a hands on training program that orients new employees to correct hand-washing practices and more advanced education about FBI’s; involvement of both managers and coworkers in the training; easily accessible hand-washing facilities stocked with necessary supplies; continued hand-washing training and support involving the food service industry, managers, and coworkers; and finally, involvement of health departments and inspectors in providing managers and food workers with advice and consultation on improvement of hand-washing practice.
For more pictures of hand-washing signs and miscellaneous food safety related notices that we’ve captured in our travels, check out our blog, Hygiene Aficionado.

Dumpster diving: Praised by the lads, loathed by the parents

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The Hamilton Spectator today reports that an alert principal intercepted 1,500 Hershey Peanut Butter Cups potentially contaminated by salmonella which flooded a Hamilton high school Tuesday.
The story says that the bars — identified as Hershey products recalled in November and believed stolen from a recycler — were brought to Mountain Secondary School by students who found them in a dumpster behind a closed variety store nearby.
Principal Virginia McCulloch said she and vice-principal Patrick Elliott noticed the bars appearing in the halls 20 minutes before classes ended on the last day before exams.
Eric Matthews, manager of Hamilton’s health protection branch, praised McCulloch’s quick thinking and the students’ willingness to turn in the candy.
There is no evidence anyone was selling the bars at the school, he said.

Note: Back in November fears of salmonella contamination drove chocolate-maker Hershey to recall a wide variety of its chocolate bars and candies made at its Smiths Falls, Ont. plant. The company identified soy lecithin as the contaminant, though both it and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency received heat from the media for refusing to reveal the suppliers identity. For more, read: How the chocolate got spilled will not be told,  The sweet taste of truth archived at iFSN. More of the recalled chocolate bars were discovered last week in a Lindsay, Ont. convenience store. For the complete story, see: Potentially dangerous  chocolate found in  Lindsay  corner store.

Are Manhattan’s (KS) Houlihan’s staff still acclimatizing?

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Across North America where restaurant inspection results are made available to members of the public, they are done so using a patchwork of food safety disclosure systems. In Los Angeles County, a restaurant must post a letter grade in its front window (A, B or C). Whereas in Toronto, a restaurant must post a color placard in its front window (green, yellow or red). In addition to onsite notification, both cities provide a searchable online database for a hungry public to look up inspection results by restaurant name, address or borough. A "carrot and stick" approach to improving food safety standards, public disclosure of restaurant inspection results are intended to reward operators who make food safety a pillar of success, and punish those who scramble when the inspector arrives on the premise.

Last night as I was flipping through the local newspaper for Manhattan, Kansas (population ca. 50, 000) I stopped when I came across its ‘foodSAFETY’ column for area food inspections which (evidently) is published weekly in Tuesday’s Food & Drink section. Very cool. Even cooler was that the paper published the inspection findings for one of the town’s newest restaurants — Houlihan’s — which is but a 5 minute walk from where I’m living. Ouch… the findings are not good. See for yourself. When the restaurant opened on February 2nd, the Kansas State Collegian, reported that managers chose not to advertise the opening of the restaurant to allow employees to acclimate to the full 170-person capacity. Based on this report, I would say that almost three months later employees are still acclimatizing. It will be interesting to see (and hear about) the impact that this report has on the restaurant’s business, and of course on the staff’s attention to food safety.

Raw deal from raw, unpasteurized milk

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Every week in the U.S. there is a report of unpasteurized milk testing positive for listeria or salmonella or E. coli or campylobacter (see Contamination shows up in dairy, Capital Press, May 18/07); every month there is a report of people, largely children, sickened after consuming unpasteurized milk in the misguided belief that all things natural are good.
For example, in September, two children who drank raw milk from a Whatcom County dairy in Washington State became ill with E. coli O157:H7. At the same time, four children, including two 8-year-olds in San Diego County, Calif., were hospitalized with E. coli infection after consuming raw milk products.
In December 2005, 18 people in Washington and Oregon, including six children, were infected with E. coli O157:H7 after drinking unlicensed raw milk. Two of the kids almost died.
In April 2005, four cases of E. coli linked to unpasteurized milk were reported to Ontario, Canada health officials — in this case, from an individual who routinely sold raw milk from the back of a vehicle parked in a city north of Toronto (see raw milk outbreak listings).
Unpasteurized milk is legal to sell in 28 U.S. states, in part due to the lobbying efforts of Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation (see Advocate of fatty foods puts dietitians in a stew, Sydney Morning Herald, May. 20/07).
Fallon and her supporters claim that it is foods other than raw milk which are responsible for the hundreds of illnesses linked to raw milk.
Such claims are nonsensical and endanger public health.
Fallon and her disciples also claim that consumers should be free to choose.
Choice is good. But as the 19th-century English utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, noted, 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.
Science can be used to enhance what nature provided. Further, 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.
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.

Depp daughter’s E. coli scare

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According to FemaleFirst.co.uk, actor Johnny Depp has spoken out about his family’s scare following his seven-year-old daughter, Lily-Rose’s bout with E. coli two months ago.

The story notes that Lily-Rose was rushed to a London hospital after contracting the E.coli bacteria, which caused her kidneys to shut down. Filming on Depp’s latest movie Sweeney Todd was halted so he could keep a vigil at the youngster’s bedside with partner Vanessa Paradis (who, according to other media sources, he may finally marry this summer) .

Although Lily appears to be back to her normal self already, Depp was quoted as saying, "It gave us a great scare. What got us through this wasn’t the strength of Vanessa or me but our daughter and her incredible ability to make us feel OK even though she was very unwell. She was super-strong."

The actor further added, "It was a very bumpy patch but she has come through it beautifully and unscathed and she is now as healthy as she always was. She is wonderful."

The pure, natural, fresh bandwagon rolls on…

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Yesterday Doug posted a letter published in the Kansas State Collegian about Chipotle’s decision to offer naturally raised meats (all beef and chicken eat a vegetarian diet with no animal byproducts, do not receive growth hormones or antibiotics, roam in open pasture and a clean, indoor facility and are verified as humane by independent, third-party animal welfare agenciesin its range of food products) and then today on the way back from Social Secuirty Administation in Manhattan I stop in Ray’s Apple Market (grocery store in Manhattan, Kansas) for some fruit and the advertisement below is hanging from the teller’s checkout computer.

Disconnect between warnings & consumption – Raw milk

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Despite numerous warnings from public health officials during the month of April about raw milk from various farms across the U.S. testing positive for the likes of Campylobacter (New York ), Listeria (Vermont), and Salmonella (Pennsylvania), people continue to believe that raw, unpasteurized milk does a body good.

***Warning on raw milk from Genoa farm***
28.apr.07
The Post Standard (New York) http://blog.syracuse.com/news/2007/04/warning_on_raw_milk_from_genoa.html
The New York state Department of Agriculture and Markets.was cited as saying Saturday that residents of Cayuga County and surrounding counties are being warned not to drink or use unpasteurized raw milk sold from a Genoa farm because of possible bacteria contamination.
Raw milk sold by the Phil Stauderman Farm, 3128 Blakely Road, Genoa, may be contaminated with Campylobacter, a bacteria that can cause diarrhea, fever, abdominal pain, nausea, headache and muscle pain in children and young adults.
 The story says that the Stauderman farm has a department permit to legally sell raw milk at the farm, according to the news release.
A routine sample taken April 16 was found to be contaminated with Campylobacter and the farm was notified of the test on April 19, the department said. The farm voluntarily suspended sales of raw milk on that date, the department said. The tests were confirmed on Friday, the department said.

Are You Being Served?

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The British TV comedy ‘Are You Being Served?’ was, according to a story in the Australian (14 April 07), always compulsory viewing in the Stuttaford household, and the recently deceased John Inman was the obvious star of the series.

Stuttaford says that some of his homosexual patients were initially rather cross because he exaggerated the stereotype of the camp gay, with languid hand movements and his obvious pleasure when taking inside-leg measurements. His catchphrase "I’m free", with its obvious innuendo, became famous.

Later, even most gay campaigners joined the other 22 million avid viewers as Inman’s humour, so obviously in the pantomime tradition like that of his friend Danny La Rue, mitigated any charge that he was setting back the drive to banish discrimination.

The story says that John Inman, 71, contracted hepatitis more than two years ago, after eating food contaminated with the virus. The story goes on to say that a great advance in medicine over the past 25 years has been that both hepatitis A and B can be prevented by vaccination.

In the case of hepatitis A, the initial dose is repeated six to 12 months later with a booster. A form of the vaccination is available for children over the age of 12 months and it should become a routine injection for all those who spend their holidays abroad.