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
Every day I see jobs being advertised for communications and marketing types that I know I am qualified for and it would be nice to have a paycheck, but then I look at what is produced and realize I would have to check my brain at the door.
Not my style.
Someone from the OIE writes, we hear about health challenges at the human-animal-environment interface. Zoonotic diseases such as avian influenza, rabies, Ebola, and Rift Valley fever continue to have major impacts on health, livelihoods, and economies. These health threats cannot be effectively addressed by one sector alone. Multidisciplinary and multisectoral collaboration is needed to tackle them and to reduce their impacts.
As a way to support countries in taking a One Health approach to address zoonotic diseases, the guide: “Taking a Multisectoral, One Health Approach: A Tripartite Guide to Addressing Zoonotic Diseases in Countries” has been jointly developed by the Tripartite organizations (FAO, OIE, and WHO). This Guide, referred to as the Tripartite Zoonotic Guide (TZG) is flexible enough to be used for other health threats at the human-animal-environment interface; for example, food safety and antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
I won’t go into anymore. If you’re interested, click on the url.
WMC 5 reports a Texas man has successfully had a tapeworm removed from his brain in what doctors are calling a miracle.
Doctors think the tapeworm had been growing slowly ever since the man, identified only as Gerardo, contracted it from eating undercooked pork in Mexico more than a decade ago.
Gerardo says he got an MRI after fainting last year while playing soccer. He says he had been having headaches and “feeling off” for months prior to the fall.
“It’s very intense, very strong because it made me sweat too, sweat from the pain, pain in the head, and then, I would vomit from the pain,” said Gerardo in Spanish.
Even so, Gerardo was shocked when the MRI revealed a tapeworm in his brain.
After a complex surgery to remove the tapeworm, Gerardo says he’s back to his normal self. He has even returned to work.
Dr. Jordan Amadio, neurosurgeon at Ascension Seton, says the man’s case was “rare and truly extraordinary.” Interestingly, a tapeworm had also been found in Gerardo’s sister’s brain years earlier.
“In certain regions of the country, like Texas and California, this can be more common. So, there’s definitely something, I think, for every medical professional to be aware of. It is not commonly seen and can actually masquerade as different things,” Amadio said.
Several kinds of tapeworms, which are found worldwide, cause the parasitic infection taeniasis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eating raw or undercooked beef or pork is the primary risk factor for becoming infected.
John Keogh of Big News Network writes that the globalization of the food chain has resulted in increased complexity and diminished transparency and trust into how and where our foods are grown, harvested, processed and by whom.
But this homily – we knew our grower so it must be safer – has no basis in factor data.
It’s like washing produce: It might make you feel better, but microbiologically, it does shit.
While the extent of global food fraud is difficult to quantify, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) suggests food fraud affects 10 per cent of commercially sold food. Various academic and industry sources suggest that globally, food fraud ranges from US$10 billion to $49 billion. This is likely a conservative range considering estimates of fake Australian meats alone and sold worldwide are as high as AUD$4 billion, or more than US$2.5 billion.
If you add the sales of fake wines and alcohol, adulterated honey and spices, mislabelled fish and false claims of organic products, wild-caught fish or grain-fed
As social media amplifies recurring high-profile incidents of food fraud, trust in our global food supply chains remains a concern. For the foreseeable future, much of Canada’s food fraud remains hidden in plain sight, sitting right there on our grocery store shelves.
“Based on the slowed rate of human illness reports, the FDA and CDC are no longer recommending that people avoid purchasing or feeding pig ear pet treats entirely,” FDA officials wrote in a press release.
At the end of July, FDA and CDC recommended no pig ear pet treat sale or use in the United States. With the end of the outbreak, the FDA altered its guidance to pet product retailers and pet owners. The agency now recommends that retailers who wish to re-introduce pig ear pet treats should take appropriate steps to ensure that their suppliers are controlling for pathogens such as Salmonella, and that products are not cross-contaminated after processing. Likewise, the agency advised pet owners to use good hygiene when feeding pig ear pet treats.
Reports of illness from these Salmonella infections started on June 10, 2015 and ran until September 13, 2019. Over the course of the outbreak, official reports tied 154 cases of human infection with exposure to pig ear pet treats in 34 states. Patients ranged in age from less than one year to 90 years. Of 133 cases with info available, 35 people needed hospitalization. Children younger than 5 years were infected in 27 cases.
Public health officials conducted genome sequencing of the Salmonella involved in the outbreak. The researchers revealed that many of the strains were resistant to multiple antibiotics, including ampicillin, streptomycin, tetracycline and ciprofloxacin. Salmonella strains identified were Cerro, Derby, London, Infantis, Newport, Rissen and I 4,[5],12:i:-.
Three firms recalled product associated with the outbreak: Pet Supplies Plus, Lennox, and Dog Goods USA. A fourth firm, Hollywood Pet, also recalled Salmonella positive pet ear treats that it had sourced from Dog Goods USA, but testing was not sufficient to determine if these treats were connected to illnesses. All of these recalled products originated from suppliers in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia. The importers were placed on Import Alert 72-03 (“Detention Without Physical Examination and Intensified Coverage of Pig Ears And Other Pet Treats Due To The Presence of Salmonella”). These importers were Suarko, SRL (Argentina) and Anabe Industria e Comercio de Proteinas (Brazil), and Custom Pet S.A.S. (Colombia).
The European Centers for Disease Control reports patients had onset of illness between 2017 and August 2019. Three patients have died and one suffered a miscarriage due to the infection. The close genetic relatedness of the strains (≤3 allelic differences), and the temporal distribution of the cases suggest a prolonged, intermittent, common source foodborne outbreak which occurred in at least two EU Member States.
Nine isolates from six sliced ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products, produced between 2017 and 2019 by the Dutch Manufacturing Company A, were found to be contaminated with L. monocytogenes strains matching the outbreak strain (≤3 allelic differences). Although the exact points of contamination have not been identified yet, the results of the investigation suggest that the contamination may have happened at the Dutch Manufacturing Company A, which represents the only common manufacturing point of the contaminated products. The Dutch Manufacturing Company A distributed products to several EU countries as well as to countries outside the EU.
Following the detection in food of L. monocytogenes isolates matching the outbreak strain, and the discovery of the environmental contamination with other L. monocytogenes strains, the Dutch Manufacturing Company A stopped the production in October 2019, and finalised the withdrawals and recalls of all RTE meat products. This measure decreases the risk of new cases occurring possibly associated with products from this company.
Pregnant women, the elderly and immunocompromised people are at higher risk of invasive listeriosis, which is associated with severe clinical course and potential death. Therefore, specific attention should be paid to the administration of RTE meat products to people in hospitals, nursing homes and those belonging to vulnerable population groups.
We talk a lot about Norovirus because there are a lot of outbreaks and a lot of sick people.
Dogs too.
In July 2018, recombinant norovirus GII.Pe-GII.4 Sydney was detected in dogs who had diarrhea in a kennel and in children living on the same premises in Thailand. Whole-genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of 4 noroviruses from Thailand showed that the canine norovirus was closely related to human norovirus GII.Pe-GII.4 Sydney, suggesting human-to-canine transmission.
Listeria monocytogenes may persist in food production environments and cause listeriosis. In Norway, a product of concern is the traditional and popular fermented fish product “rakfisk”, which is made from freshwater salmonid fish by mild-salting and brine maturation at low temperatures for several months. It is eaten without any heat treatment, and L. monocytogenes, therefore, poses a potential hazard.
We investigated the effect of salt and temperature on the growth of L. monocytogenes in rakfisk during the 91 days of maturation. The amounts of organic acids produced during fermentation were too low to inhibit growth of L. monocytogenes.
Temperature was clearly the most important parameter for controlling L. monocytogenes. At 7 °C, approximately 2 log growth was observed during the first 14 days of fermentation, and the level of L. monocytogenes thereafter remained constant. At 4 °C, only a little growth potential of the pathogen was recorded. We also investigated the effect of the anti-Listeria bacteriophage P100 on rakfisk with added L. monocytogenes. The phage was introduced to the L. monocytogenes-inoculated fish before fermentation, and an average of 0.9 log reduction was observed throughout the fermentation period.
This is the first study of L. monocytogenes behavior in rakfisk and points to possible measures for increasing the product safety.
Growth behavior of listeria monocytogenes in a traditional Norwegian fermented fish product (rakfisk), and its inhibition through bacteriophage addition
Foods
Lars Axelsson, Guro Alette Bjerke, Anette McLeod, Ingunn Berget and Askild L. Holck
The Hindustan Times reports at least 50 people from Odisha’s coastal Kendrapara district, most of them women and children, were taken ill after they consumed food from a container that had a dead snake in it, said an official on Thursday.
The incident happened during a community feast at Maa Shankatatarini temple in Chandan Nagar Deuli village under Pattamundai block of Kendrapara district where 30 families were having their meal. Many of the people were hospitalised after they started to vomit, said the official.
“They showed signs of food poisoning. However, many of them were discharged after administration of intravenous fluid,” said the medical officer of Pattamundai Sub Divisional Hospital, Chandra Sekhar Das. The community feast was organised by a women self help group of the area.
The presence of the dead snake was detected during the washing of the utensils.
And this is the only U2 song I can tolerate, largely because it’s rooted in a Tom Robbins novel. Otherwise, U2 is bloated and overrated.
The popular review site Yelp started warning Southern Californians about restaurants that get low health inspection grades Wednesday, and some of those places are famous, fancy eateries.
Joel Grover and Amy Corral of NBC Los Angeles report that starting Wednesday, if you try to read Yelp reviews of any LA County restaurant that has a C rating or worse, you’ll first see a big, bold warning that says “Consumer Alert: Low Food Safety Score.”
”The goal of the ‘health score alerts’ that we’re placing today is to both warn consumers, but also provide further incentive for businesses to improve their cleanliness and their hygiene at their establishment,” said Yelp senior VP Vince Sollitto.
Here’s what the new alert will look like on Yelp.
Among the dozens of restaurants that now have Consumer Alerts on Yelp is the upscale Rosaline in West Hollywood. Rosaline was honored as a “favourite for good value” by the prestigious Michelin Guide last year, but also received C grades on its last two inspections.
On Nov. 5, the health inspector cited Rosaline for 13 violations, three of them major, including vermin. In his report, the inspector observed “at least a dozen live adult and nymph cockroaches” and “at least a dozen soft, fresh rat droppings.”
…at least a dozen live adult and nymph cockroaches” and “…at least a dozen soft, fresh rat droppings.
But customers might not know Rosaline got a “C” –70 out of 100 — because the letter grade is not prominently placed at eye level at the entrance.
Rosaline told the I-Team it has fixed the vermin problem and is waiting for a re-inspection.
“After the Health Department found vermin in a wall cavity, Rosaliné closed for 10 days to repair damage found in two of our walls we believe was caused by neighboring construction. The health department thoroughly inspected and approved our reopening on November 15th. Over the past two and a half months, we have made multiple requests to the Health Department provide a current grade,” the Rosaliné team said in a follow-up email.
The LA County Health Department began giving restaurants letter grades in 1998, after the I-Team’s Joel Grover went undercover and exposed LA restaurants with filthy conditions and practices, like workers picking their noses while preparing food, and sneezing right into food that was about to be served to customers.
Before 1998, the health department kept restaurant inspection scores secret. Until then, if a restaurant failed an inspection, consumers remained unaware.
For the last 21 years, restaurant inspection information and scores have been made available on the LA County Public Health Department’s website, but finding information about specific restaurants requires several steps of digging.
The county’s online information is also sometimes inaccurate or incomplete; the I-Team noticed that one prominent Beverly Hills restaurant got a C rating last October, but then paid a fee for a reinspection and got an A. The C no longer appears on the county’s site. A restaurant inspection history is supposed to be publicly posted.
Yelp says its new Consumer Alerts will make information about low scoring restaurants easily accessible to consumers.
“The goal of the Yelp program is to make health hygiene scores for restaurants both more accessible to consumers and more easily understandable for them,” Yelp’s Vince Sollitto said.
But the I-Team found errors in Yelp’s Consumer Alert program too. As of this morning, more than 70 LA county businesses had Health Score Alerts –meaning their grades were C or below. But the I-Team found at least five of those businesses actually had As or Bs, on their most recent inspections listed on the county’s website.
When the I-Team asked Yelp about the discrepancies, a spokesperson said they “get an updated data feed from the Los Angeles County Health department on approximately a weekly basis,” and were factoring the most recent information into their consumer alerts.
Food contamination during air travel presents unique risks to those affected. Foodborne pathogens can cause serious illness among all on board, and potentially jeopardize flight safety. These risks are likely to increase with current trends of “densification” and a predicted massive expansion of air travel. While aircraft are being equipped with ever newer designs with a focus on efficiency and comfort, regulations remained largely unmodified in terms of basic hygiene requirements.
Strict guidelines for food hygiene exist for on-ground food settings and catering kitchens. There is uncertainty about hygiene standards on board commercial aircraft, and little regulatory oversight of what happens to food in-flight. In two hypothetical scenarios we indicate the potential risks associated with poor food handling practice onboard aircraft, with the ultimate aim of bringing aviation food safety in line with on-ground regulations. Changes in cabin design alongside adequate training in safe food handling have the potential to increase public health protection. We urge a review of existing in-flight hygiene protocols to better direct the development of regulation, prevention, and intervention measures for aviation food safety.
In-flight transmission of foodborne disease: How can airlines improve?
