Author Archives: Douglas Powell

About Douglas Powell

A former professor of food safety and the publisher of barfblog.com, Powell is passionate about food, has five daughters, and is an OK goaltender in pickup hockey. Download Doug’s CV here. Dr. Douglas Powell editor, barfblog.com retired professor, food safety 3/289 Annerley Rd Annerley, Queensland 4103 dpowell29@gmail.com 61478222221 I am based in Brisbane, Australia, 15 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time

Toxo goes about its biz the mean way

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Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular parasite that reconfigures its host cell to promote pathogenesis. One consequence of Toxoplasma parasitism is increased migratory activity of host cells, which facilitates dissemination.

Here, we show that Toxoplasma triggers the unfolded protein response (UPR) in host cells through calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). We further identify a novel role for the host ER stress sensor protein IRE1 in Toxoplasma pathogenesis. Upon infection, Toxoplasma activates IRE1, engaging its noncanonical role in actin remodeling through the binding of filamin A. By inducing cytoskeletal remodeling via IRE1 oligomerization in host cells, Toxoplasma enhances host cell migration in vitro and dissemination of the parasite to host organs in vivo.

Our study has identified novel mechanisms used by Toxoplasma to induce dissemination of infected cells, providing new insights into strategies for treatment of toxoplasmosis.

Toxoplasma gondii co-opts the unfolded protein response to enhance migration and dissemination of infected host cells, 7 July 2020

American Society for Microbiology

Leonardo Augusto, Jennifer Martynowicz, Parth H. Amin, Nada S. Alakhras, Mark H. Kaplan, Ronald C. Wek, William J. Sullivan Jr.

DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00915-20

https://mbio.asm.org/content/11/4/e00915-20

The guitar solo in this still gives me chills

E. coli in tea

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In this study, the persistence of toxigenic Escherichia coli (E. coli ) on dried chamomile, peppermint, ginger, cinnamon, black and green teas stored under 4, 10, and 25°C was determined.

 The E. coli survival rate in ginger and cinnamon teas decreased below 0 on Day 5. In the other tested teas, E. coli survivability showed a downward trend over time, but never dropped to 0. Chamomile tea retained the greatest population of viable E. coli . Meanwhile, die‐off of E. coli was higher at 25°C compared to lower temperatures. Additionally, fate of E. coli during brewing at 60, 70 and 80°C was evaluated.

The E. coli population was reduced to below 2 Log colony forming units (CFU)/g after 1 min at 80°C, At the same time, the E. coli survival at 60°C was higher than that at 70°C in all tested teas. The data indicated that if E. coli survives after storage of prepared teas, it may also survive and grow after the brewing process, especially if performed using temperatures <80°C. Finally, we analyzed the correlations between temperature, time, tea varieties and E. coli survival, and successfully constructed a random forest regression model. The results of this study can be used to predict changes in E. coli during storage and fate during the brewing process. Results will form the basis of undertaking a risk assessment.

Survival of toxigenic Escherichia coli on chamomile, peppermint, green, black, ginger, and cinnamon teas during storage and brewing, 23 June 2020

Journal of Food Safety

Yanan Liu, Fan Wu, Yan Zhu, Yirui Chen, Kayla Murray, Zhaoxin Lu, Keith Warriner

https://doi.org/10.1111/jfs.12831

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jfs.12831

And the tea lady is featured here.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance (Monty Python’s) from EpicFilmsGlobal on Vimeo.

Salmonella-carrying cockroaches in Cardiff City Road restaurant

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A popular City Road café in the Welsh capital was closed down after around 100 cockroaches were discovered in the kitchen and dining area.

The insects were found at Mr Tikka on City Road in Roath, Cardiff, when council officers carried out an unannounced routine inspection on May 7 of last year.

When officers arrived, the owner, Rubi Begum, was seen sweeping two live insects off the counter and white powder – believed to be an insecticide – was on the kitchen floor.

More insects, including German cockroaches, which pose a significant health risk, were later discovered in the kitchen and dining area where customers were eating.

Ms Begum and her husband Munim Khan appeared at Cardiff Magistrates’ Court on July 9 for sentencing after admitting four food hygiene offences.

Mr Tikka, which serves baguettes, baked potatoes and curry dishes, has since been awarded a four-star food hygiene rating.

Raw is risky: Why salads are the biggest source of food poisoning and what to do to avoid it

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Brian Adam of Intallght writes just over a year ago, the United States saw the largest outbreak of E. coli since 2006; affecting at least 98 people in more than 20 states. The origin wa bagged romaine lettuce. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. Vegetables and fresh fruit have become a real headache for food safety experts.

 Today in the United States, fresh vegetables are the largest source of food poisoning. In Europe, the figures are not so pristine, but the bacteria and viruses associated with this type of food also are to blame for the vast majority of poisonings. We are facing a real danger for food safety: salads.

The numbers speak for themselves

In 1990, more than 400 epidemic outbreaks associated with fresh fruits and salads were detected. Between 2001 and 2013 we are not even able to know in its entirety, some experts explain, how many related outbreaks appeared, but they are many, increasing since 2008. Arrived in 2013, in Europe these epidemics seem to reduce their growth, stagnating in number per year, as explained in this article by EFSA, the European authority on food safety.

Despite the fact that Europe the number of appearances seems to have stabilized, in the United States they have continued to increase. The danger is still lurking, hidden between “romaine lettuce and Brussels sprouts.” The reason is in “cool” words.

According to some independent experts, this increase could be related to the increased consumption of vegetables and fresh fruit in the diet. This is a consequence of the search for a better, healthier diet. But, not being processed, these foods can also bring unexpected and unpleasant surprises.

But what is the problem? What’s wrong with fresh vegetables? It is not that strict food safety controls do not pass, as it happens with everything that arrives at our supermarkets but fresh food, especially if we put it in a plastic bag, is cannon fodder for microorganisms.

Smarter than your average bear: Trichinosis sends 10 people to the hospital after eating undercooked bear in Russia

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Outbreak News Today reports that Russian officials report last week that 10 people from Altai Republic, near the Mongolian border, were hospitalized with trichinosis after consuming undercooked bear cub.

The regional office of Rospotrebnadzor said, “Not all bears, of course, are infected wi. But this sometimes happens, there were simply no such massive cases. We are in control of the situation.”

Earlier, Russians were advised to avoid contact with raw meat and animal blood in Altai, so as not to get infected with bubonic plague. As the infectious disease doctor Ivan Konovalov stated , outbreaks of the plague periodically occur in Russia, where the traditions of local peoples include eating raw animal meat. He emphasized that there is a vaccine against the plague pathogen.

Trichinosis is a parasitic disease caused most commonly by the roundworm Trichinella spiralis. If someone ingests undercooked or raw meat with the encysted larvae, the stomach acid releases the larvae which mature to adults in the intestine.

After about a week the female starts releasing larvae which enter the bloodstream and find their way to skeletal muscle where they encapsulate.

There can be gastrointestinal symptoms mimicking acute food poisoning when there is activity of the adults in the intestine.

US to miss foodborne disease reduction goals

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I’ve said this for years.

Need new messages, new strategy.

The American Veterinary Medical Association newsletter reports numbers of confirmed illnesses in humans resulting from common foodborne pathogens have risen or remained level for several years, putting the U.S. on track to miss 2020 reduction targets.

Better tests and more testing may help explain why the numbers have not fallen, but to reach its goals, the U.S. needs more work to reduce food contamination, according to authors of an article published this spring in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Among the findings, the authors wrote that preliminary 2019 data show confirmed illness counts for Listeria, Salmonella, and Shigella have remained unchanged over several years, and confirmed illness counts for the other five pathogens tracked by the CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network increased.
“FoodNet surveillance data indicate that progress in controlling major foodborne pathogens in the United States has stalled,” the article states. “To better protect the public and achieve forthcoming Healthy People 2030 foodborne disease reduction goals, more widespread implementation of known prevention measures and new strategies that target particular pathogens and serotypes are needed.”

I saw the Hip at a bar in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on this tour with my 6-month pregnant ex-wife.

Great show.

Food safety management: the UK version

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My 28-year-old music therapist came over for her one hour session this morning which is the highlight of my week. I sing and play guitar like no one is watching. And I introduce her to 50-year-old songs, like those on Workingman’s Dead, which we played this morning in its entirety (Oh, and Chapman, she likes Jimmy Buffett, so suck it).

This paper forms part of an ongoing project studying various approaches to the management of hazards and risk in the food industry with implications for other areas of risk management where cooperation and collaboration between organisations are of a potential benefit. In this paper we give particular focus to the Food Standard Agency’s proposed Regulating Our Future that requires closer cooperation and collaboration between the public enforcement authorities and the industry organisations that police food hygiene and food safety management. The forming of a Primary Authority between Cornwall Council and Safe and Local Supplier Approval (SALSA) emerged as a potential means of contributing to this by improving trust between all parties involved, sharing of information, assessing risk, reducing inspection times and frequency of inspections from Primary Authority. Attention is given to the current relationship between the various organisations involved from the perspectives and viewpoints of Local Authority Enforcement Officers from Preston City Council, Cornwall Council and SALSA and other experienced food safety professionals. The research is qualitative and grounded, including a review of the extant literature and interviews with food safety and food standards professionals from the private and public enforcement sectors.

Approaches to the management and policing of food safety: The food standard agency’s regulating our future, 2019

International Journal of Management and Applied Research vol. 7 no. 2

Richard Bradford-Knox, Kevin Kane, Simon Neighbour

http://ijmar.org/v7n2/20-012.pdf

When ya gotta go: Woman goes to toilet on California beach during CNN reporter’s live broadcastd

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A woman was filmed using a beach for a bathroom in broad daylight while a CNN reporter broadcast just feet away from her. The unidentified woman relieved herself on Santa Monica beach in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon as journalist Sarah Seigner discussed the ongoing coronavirus crisis with her colleagues in New York City.

The woman, who appeared to be homeless, wandered into the camera shot as Seigner told her colleagues how the area had broken a one-day Covid-19 diagnosis record on Friday, with more than 3,000 cases confirmed. The video-bomber could be seen dumping a black trash bag on the sand, before pulling down her pants as she prepared to go to the bathroom. Seigner appeared to have been warned over her ear-piece about what was going on behind her, and shuffled slightly to the right to block the woman from view and spare viewers’ blushes. Her colleague in New York managed to keep a straight face throughout. Seigner spoke as California saw a surge in coronavirus cases in recent weeks, with the Golden State experiencing a 41% rise in Covid-19 hospitals since mid-June.

California broke its single-day coronavirus diagnosis on July 5, with 11,529 new cases confirmed. Daily death figures have been hovering around 100, and have yet to beat the all-time high of 115 Covid-19 deaths recorded towards the start of the outbreak on April 22. The worrying numbers have prompted multiple California counties to pass or begin reversing reopening measures.

Fancy food ain ‘t safe food: UK restaurant fined £10,000

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An award-winning Fishguard restaurant and its two directors have been ordered to pay more than £15,200 for food safety offences, with one of them prohibited from operating a food business.

Both directors of JT3 Restaurant in Fishguard, Daniel Wynne Jones and Lois Thomas, along with their company Me‘n’u1 Ltd, pleaded guilty to all offences at Haverfordwest Magistrates Court on Friday, 3 July.

They were fined a total of £10,700 with more than £4,500 costs, and Daniel Wynne Jones was also banned from operating a food business.

In a prosecution brought by Pembrokeshire County Council, the court heard that the premises was issued a Food Hygiene Rating of 0 following an inspection in March 2019 by an officer from the authority’s Public Protection Division.

During the inspection the officer found the basement kitchen to be in a poor state of cleanliness and repair, with no disinfecting cleaning products or soap available, an inadequate water supply and flies present. There was no evidence of any food safety management system in use and the business scored a 0 food hygiene rating.

Two revisits were made to check for improvements, which were made, but the business failed to display their food hygiene rating sticker and had to be supplied with a new one, along with a warning.

Subsequent visits saw the sticker being hidden behind doors and then behind an umbrella hanging from a hook above it. A fixed penalty fine for the offence of failing to display the sticker went unpaid.

On 13 December 2019 another inspection was carried out at the restaurant. On arrival officers were told that the business was closed, but once in the kitchen, they found that a substantial amount of food preparation was going on and were dismayed to find that conditions had deteriorated again, including the ongoing poor structural condition and complete lack of any implemented food safety controls in relation to the safe production of food. Again, the business scored a 0 Food Hygiene rating.

By 19 December the situation had worsened to the point that two visits had to be made that day and a Remedial Action Notice served to prevent the manufacture of chicken liver parfait and duck. Improvement notices were also served to try to address the level of training and ensure that food safety procedures were introduced and sustained.

Unfortunately these improvement notices were not complied with and the food hygiene rating sticker remained deliberately hidden.

As well as the fine, costs of £4571.11 were awarded to the county council, with victim surcharges of £240.

And, on the 50th anniversary of Workingman’s Dead, one of my favorite albums, enjoy.

 

Brits like their tea – it’s not local

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In this study, the persistence of toxigenic Escherichia coli (E. coli ) on dried chamomile, peppermint, ginger, cinnamon, black and green teas stored under 4, 10, and 25°C was determined.

The E. coli survival rate in ginger and cinnamon teas decreased below 0 on Day 5. In the other tested teas, E. coli survivability showed a downward trend over time, but never dropped to 0. Chamomile tea retained the greatest population of viable E. coli . Meanwhile, die‐off of E. coli was higher at 25°C compared to lower temperatures. Additionally, fate of E. coli during brewing at 60, 70 and 80°C was evaluated.

The E. coli population was reduced to below 2 Log colony forming units (CFU)/g after 1 min at 80°C, At the same time, the E. coli survival at 60°C was higher than that at 70°C in all tested teas. The data indicated that if E. coli survives after storage of prepared teas, it may also survive and grow after the brewing process, especially if performed using temperatures <80°C. Finally, we analyzed the correlations between temperature, time, tea varieties and E. coli survival, and successfully constructed a random forest regression model. The results of this study can be used to predict changes in E. coli during storage and fate during the brewing process. Results will form the basis of undertaking a risk assessment.

Survival of toxigenic Escherichia coli on chamomile, peppermint, green, black, ginger, and cinnamon teas during storage and brewing, 23 June 2020

Journal of Food Safety

Yanan Liu, Fan Wu, Yan Zhu, Yirui Chen, Kayla Murray, Zhaoxin Lu, Keith Warriner

https://doi.org/10.1111/jfs.12831

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jfs.12831