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
Chris Koger of The Packer writes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be collecting romaine samples in California and Arizona for a year to test for salmonella and E. coli following several foodborne outbreaks linked to the lettuce.
The new program begins this month, according to the FDA, citing two E. coli outbreaks in 2018 linked to romaine, and another one in October that was suspected to be from the leafy green. In its notice on the surveillance program, the FDA also cited a 2012 Salmonella Newport outbreak from romaine.
“Consistent with the FDA’s mission to protect consumers, if one of the target pathogens is detected as a result of this assignment, the agency will perform whole genome sequencing of the microorganism’s DNA to determine its virulence and whether it is genetically related to isolates causing human illness,” according to the notice.
All samples will be tested before processing to allow the FDA to quickly find the point of origin, which has been problematic in recent outbreaks as public and federal health agencies traced lettuce through the supply chain. In part, traceability hurdles have led to the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety program, which tasks the industry with enhancing traceability methods and technology.
Trimmed and washed lettuce will be tested, but not fresh-cut lettuce, and no lettuce at the farm-level will be involved in the surveillance program.
Samples will be targeted at facilities and farms identified in the outbreaks starting in 2017, including wholesalers, foodservice distribution centers, and commercial cooling and cold storage facilities, according to the FDA notice.
Chinese officials believe the unidentified male became infected after handling and eating a wild hare on Nov. 5 in the Inner Mongolia, according to state news site XinhuaNet.
As a precaution, officials quarantined the people who had since come in contact with the man. None of them have exhibited fever or other symptoms of the plague, infamous for the Black Death pandemic during the Middle Ages.
Two cases of pneumonic plague, a highly contagious form of the disease, were confirmed in China by local health officials last week. The two patients, who also were from Inner Mongolia, were diagnosed in Beijing and are currently being treated for the condition in the Chaoyang District.
No epidemiological association has been found between the two cases, according to officials.
The plague is caused by Yersinia pestis — a common bacteria carried by rats, rabbits and squirrels, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Humans can contract the bubonic plague when bitten by infected fleas. Handling infected animals directly also can cause infection.
According to the department of health, the infections were identified in people who’d eaten Ready Pac Bistro Bowl Chicken Caesar Salad purchased at Sam’s Club stores in Maryland.
One person was hospitalized as a result of the E. coli O157 infection.
No deaths have been linked to it.
And there aren’t enough bagpipes and mandolins in rock.
I love Mondays in Australia because it’s Sunday in the U.S., football and hockey are on TV for background, the kid is at school when not in France, and I write (Sorenne painting in France).
Fourteen years ago, me and Chapman went on a road trip to Prince George (where Ben thought he would be eaten by bears) to Seattle, then to Manhattan, Kansas, where in the first week I met a girl, got a job, and then spinach happened.
Leafy greens are still covered in shit.
I am drowning in nostalgia, but things haven’t changed, and, as John Prine wrote, all the news just repeats itself.
Same with relationships.
Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration food safety chief, David Acheson, writes that on October 31, 2019, FDA announced a romaine lettuce E. coli O157:H7 outbreak for which the active investigation had ended and the outbreak appeared to be over. As such FDA stated there was no “current or ongoing risk to the public” and no avoidance of the produce was recommended.
Since that announcement, however, I have seen a number of articles condemning FDA and CDC. Why? Because the traceback investigation of the outbreak began in mid-September when CDC notified FDA of an illness cluster that had sickened 23 people across 12 states. So why the delay in announcing it to the public?
Despite the critical (and rather self-serving; always self-serving) stance on the “inexcusable” delay taken by a prominent foodborne illness attorney and his Food Safety “News” publication – which blasted a headline FDA “hid” the outbreak – my stance, having been an FDA official myself involved in outbreak investigations, is that the delay was practical and sensible.
Why? As FDA states right in its announcement:
When romaine lettuce was identified as the likely source, the available data indicated that the outbreak was not ongoing and romaine lettuce eaten by sick people was past its shelf life and no longer available for sale.
Even once romaine was identified as the likely cause, no common source or point of contamination was identified that could be used to further protect the public.
During the traceback investigation, the outbreak strain was not detected in any of the samples collected from farms, and there were no new cases.
Thus, neither FDA nor CDC identified any actionable information for consumers.
So, if it is not in consumers’ best interest to publicize an issue that no longer exists, why should they be driven away from a healthy food alternative? Why should unfounded unease be generated that will damage the industry, providing no benefit for consumers but ultimately impacting their pockets? There is just no upside to making an allegation without information. We’ve seen the impact on consumers and the industry when an announcement of a suspected food turns out to be incorrect; specifically “don’t eat the tomatoes” when it turned out to be jalapeno and serrano peppers. Having learned from such incidents, FDA’s approach is: If we don’t have a message that will help protect the public, then there is no message to be imparted.
So, rather than condemn FDA and CDC, I would commend them for getting the balance correct. And, perhaps, instead of any condemning, we should be working together to get the answers faster, to get outbreak data through better, faster, more efficient and coordinated traceability. Our entire system is too slow – a topic we have discussed many times in these newsletters.
I disagree.
The public and the scientific community need to be informed to prevent additional people from barfing.
I also rarely eat lettuce of any sort because it is overrated and the hygiene controls are not adequate.
Greek salad without lettuce is my fave.
Going public: Early disclosure of food risks for the benefit of public health
Mar.17
NEHA, Volume 79.7, Pages 8-14
Benjamin Chapman, Maria Sol Erdozaim, Douglas Powell
Often during an outbreak of foodborne illness, there are health officials who have data indicating that there is a risk prior to notifying the public. During the lag period between the first public health signal and some release of public information, there are decision makers who are weighing evidence with the impacts of going public. Multiple agencies and analysts have lamented that there is not a common playbook or decision tree for how public health agencies determine what information to release and when. Regularly, health authorities suggest that how and when public information is released is evaluated on a case-by-case basis without sharing the steps and criteria used to make decisions. Information provision on its own is not enough. Risk communication, to be effective and grounded in behavior theory, should provide control measure options for risk management decisions. There is no indication in the literature that consumers benefit from paternalistic protection decisions to guard against information overload. A review of the risk communication literature related to outbreaks, as well as case studies of actual incidents, are explored and a blueprint for health authorities to follow is provided.
A complaint was filed at U.S. 30 Diner on West Market Street in York and the inspector found 24 violations. The inspector found a sewage back-up in the basement piping system. One of the pipes was leaking and the facility was using duct tape as a repair. The inspector also says food employees were wearing soiled garments, and personal medication was found on a shelf with food. They say the entire food facility was extremely dirty with old food, trash, and dirt. The inspector also found a dog leash. The person in charge acknowledged that he brings his dog into the rear of the food facility, according to the report.
People always thought I was a bit affected when I would do the cooking for an Australian sausage sizzle and whip out my tip=sensitive digital thermometer and test every sausage.
I would say, no kid is getting sick on my watch.
Canadian health types say an outbreak of Salmonella that sickened a dozen people in Ontario and Quebec has been linked to a brand of sausage.
The Public Health Agency of Canada says the outbreak appears to be ongoing, in spite of a recall of the affected sausages.
The agency says the source of the outbreak is Filicetti brand Italian Style mild, dry, cured sausage (which is supposed to be cooked, but apparently not so much)
Ten people in Ontario and two in Quebec have become sick.
I had a nice chat with my Australian friend, Deon, of over 20 years.
He may even come and stay at the Brisbane house for a few days.
He did tell me, keep writing as long as you can, because I don’t suffer fools gladly, but the psche is coming back at 7:30 a.m. so I can get another brain scan and Amy can go do her work.
Food safety remains faith-based. So does my brain. Too many pucks to the head, starting in 1967.
A Waikato dairy processing company has been handed down the largest fine in the region for its recidivist dirty dairying behaviour.
Rural Life, one of my favorite bathtub magazines.
The offending by Open Country Dairy Ltd, based in Waharoa near Matamata, was so bad residents suffered dehabilitating effects – from closing the doors and windows to headaches and vomiting.
The company was convicted and fined $221,250 for discharging objectionable odour that caused significant impacts on the local community, and also unlawfully discharging wastewater, impacting on a local river.
Waikato Regional Council’s investigations and incident response manager, Patrick Lynch, said it was the largest fine imposed for any prosecution taken under the Resource Management Act in the Waikato region.
The prosecution followed “numerous complaints” from local businesses and residents of Waharoa through two periods in 2018.
Residents reported that there had been ongoing, persistent and objectionable odour.
In March 2018 the council discovered the odour issues were connected to the failure of the company’s wastewater pond liner. As a result, the Waitoa River was also contaminated.
“This is the fifth prosecution of this company, or its predecessor, relating to unlawful discharges into the environment,” Lynch said.
The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) conducts routine food inspections of over 15,000 food establishments to ensure the health and safety of their patrons.
In 2015, CDPH deployed a machine learning model to schedule inspections of establishments based on their likelihood to commit critical food code violations.
The City of Chicago released the training data and source code for the model, allowing anyone to examine the model. We provide the first independent analysis of the model, the data, the predictor variables, the performance metrics, and the underlying assumptions. We present a summary of our findings, share lessons learned, and make recommendations to address some of the issues our analysis unearthed.
Hindsight analysis of the Chicago food inspection forecasting model, 2019
Illinois Institute of Technology
Vinesh Kannan, Matthew Shapiro, and Mustafa Bilgic
Some of its most popular cheeses, including its 200g camembert and brie are being recalled. Dixie Sulda and Jessica Galletly of Adelaide Now report the SA company said there was no evidence the form of E.coli found was dangerous but it was recalling them as a precaution.
The cheeses are available from Coles and independent retailers in SA, Queensland, Victoria and WA. In NSW they also sell at Woolies and in Tasmania they are sold at independent retailers.
Udder Delights chef executive Sheree Sullivan said the team was “devastated” after small levels of the bacteria were found in some of the company’s white mould 200g cheeses.
“It is with a very heavy heart that Udder Delights is doing its first voluntary recall since we began 20 years ago,” Ms Sullivan said.
“The whole team is devastated, because we all just work so hard to create a really high quality product.
“You always learn some of your best lessons through disasters, and I never really understood what a voluntary recall was. It means you have a choice – do you want to recall or not? We decided as a business we wanted to be 100 per cent sure it was safe.
“It was great SA Health and Dairysafe confirmed it wasn’t a dangerous bacteria, which can sometimes be a little bit of sunshine in a dark cloud.”
Ms Sullivan would not speculate on what caused the contamination, but said they were working with SA Health and their quality assurance team to quickly resolve the issue.
The new program begins this month, according to the FDA, citing two E. coli outbreaks in 2018 linked to romaine, and another one in October that was suspected to be from the leafy green. In its notice on the surveillance program, the FDA also cited a 2012 Salmonella Newport outbreak from romaine.
