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

Indonesian earthquake victims suffer food poisoning at shelter

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I have been known to tell my partner, your attempts at help are futile, please stay away.

Ruslan Sangadji of The Jakarta Post reports that dozens of people from Kabonena and Tipo subdistricts in Palu, Central Sulawesi, who were displaced by a recent earthquake, have been hospitalized for reported food poisoning after consuming donated food on Saturday.

Badrun, one of the food poisoning victims, said the food was distributed to the shelter at around 11 a.m. local time. The displaced people did not feel anything strange as they ate the food but an hour later they started to feel dizzy and nauseous, he said.

The victims – mostly children – were rushed to Anutapura Palu Hospital.

Anutapura Palu Hospital deputy director for medical services Herry Mulyadi said his office had recorded that at least 38 people had been admitted to the hospital, while others were taken to other hospitals.

“Every single one of them complained about feeling dizzy and nauseous,” Herry said.

By Sunday, more than half of the food poisoning victims had been discharged.

Central Sulawesi Governor Longki Djanggola, who visited the victims at the hospital on Saturday evening, said that everyone should ensure that the food and drinks they donated were safe for consumption.

“I thank everyone who took part in helping the displaced people through their donations; but people, at the same time, have to remain vigilant before consuming [the food],” he said.

Samples of the food had been taken to Central Palu’s medical laboratory for examination, Longki said.

It remains unclear who sent the food to the shelter.

Thermometers may help: Caterers in China are reportedly using AI to spot unhygienic cooks

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Thepaper.cn (via the South China Morning Post) reports that local authorities in eastern China have tapped artificial intelligence (AI) to clamp down on unsanitary cooks in kitchens — and to reward those who adhere to best practices.

According to the report, a camera-based system currently being piloted in the Zhejiang city of Shaoxing automatically recognizes “poor [sanitation] habits” and alerts managers to offending workers via a mobile app. It’s reportedly the fruit of a six-year project — Sunshine Kitchen — that seeks to bring transparency to food preparation in catering, hotels, school cafeterias, and restaurants.

Zhou Feng, director of the Food Service Supervision Department in Shaoxing, told Thepaper.cn that the system can identify 18 different “risk management” areas, including smoking and using a smartphone. On the flip side, it recognizes four positive habits, like disinfecting surfaces and hand washing, and monitors kitchen conditions that might impact food safety, such as temperature and humidity.

So far, the local Xianheng Hotel and over 87 catering companies are said to have trialed the system, and authorities reportedly plan to expand the number to over 1,000 this year.

It’s not the first time AI has been applied to food safety.

In November 2018, a study led by researchers at Google and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health described a machine learning model — FINDER (Foodborne IllNess DEtector in Real time) — that leveraged search and location data to highlight “potentially unsafe” restaurants. FINDER took in anonymous logs from users who opted to share their location data, and it identified search queries indicative of food poisoning (e.g., “how to relieve stomach pain”) while looking up restaurants visited by the users who performed those searches.

In the end, FINDER not only outperformed complaint-based inspections and routine inspections concerning precision, scale, and latency (the time that passed between people becoming sick and the outbreak being identified), it managed to better attribute the location of foodborne illness to a specific venue than did customers.

San Francisco-based startup ImpactVision, meanwhile, leverages machine learning and hyperspectral imaging — a technique that combines spectroscopy and computer vision — to assess the quality of food in factories and elsewhere automatically. It’s now working with avocado distributors to replace their current systems, and with large berry distributors to potentially automate manual processes, such as counting strawberries.

Computer program aids food safety types with pathogen testing

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Cornell University scientists have developed a computer program, Environmental Monitoring With an Agent-Based Model of Listeria (EnABLe), to simulate the most likely locations in a processing facility where the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes might be found. Food safety managers may then test those areas for the bacteria’s presence, adding an important tool to prevent food contamination and human exposure to the pathogen through tainted food.

The computer model, which is described in the Jan. 24 issue of Scientific Reports, has the potential to be modified for a wide range of microbes and locations.

“The goal is to build a decision-support tool for control of any pathogen in any complex environment,” said Renata Ivanek, associate professor in the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences and senior author of the paper. The study was funded by the Frozen Food Foundation through a grant to Martin Wiedmann, professor of food science, who is also a co-author of the paper.

The researchers, including first author Claire Zoellner, a postdoctoral research associate in Ivanek’s lab, want to eventually apply the framework to identifying contamination from pathogens that cause hospital-acquired infections in veterinary hospitals or E. coli bacteria in fruit and vegetable processing plants.

Food safety professionals at processing facilities keep regular schedules for pathogen testing. They rely on their own expertise and knowledge of the building to determine where to swab for samples.

“Whenever we have an environment that is complex, we always have to rely on expert opinion and general rules for this system, or this company, but what we’re trying to offer is a way to make this more quantitative and systematic by creating this digital reality,” Ivanek said.

For the system to work, Zoellner, Ivanek and colleagues entered all relevant data into the model – including historical perspectives, expert feedback, details of the equipment used and its cleaning schedule, the jobs people do, and materials and people who enter from outside the facility.

“A computer model like EnABLe connects those data to help answer questions related to changes in contamination risks, potential sources of contamination and approaches for risk mitigation and management,” Zoellner said.

“A single person could never keep track of all that information, but if we run this model on a computer, we can have in one iteration a distribution of Listeria across equipment after one week. And every time you run it, it will be different and collectively predict a range of possible outcomes,” Ivanek said.

The paper describes a model system that traces Listeria species on equipment and surfaces in a cold-smoked salmon facility. Simulations revealed contamination dynamics and risks for Listeria contamination on equipment surfaces. Furthermore, the insights gained from seeing patterns in the areas where Listeria is predicted can inform the design of food processing plants and Listeria-monitoring programs. In the future, the model will be applied to frozen food facilities.

90 soldiers contracted Q fever while serving in Afghanistan

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At least 90 British military personnel have been diagnosed with confirmed cases of Q fever after serving in Helmand, Afghanistan, a British court heard this week.

According to a UK military news outlet, Forces Network, a consultant in infectious diseases and tropical medicine told the Central London Country Court on Tuesday that 90 confirmed cases of Q Fever had been recorded among British soldiers who had served in Helmand.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Bailey’s testimony was heard in the case of Wayne Bass, a private with 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment, who said his life has been ruined after he contracted the disease while in Helmand in 2011/2012.

Humans can catch Q fever by breathing in dust from the feces of infected farm animals such as sheep, cattle and goats.

During his tour, his lawyers said Bass was in contact with goats and sheep and “was often required to take cover and jump through ditches and crawl along the ground – coming into contact with animal products and excrement”.

Bass, 34, was medically discharged from the Army in 2014 because of his Q fever and chronic fatigue symptoms.

Bailey, who specializes in infectious diseases and tropical medicine, and a national expert in Q fever, gave evidence during the second day of the trial.

Under questioning from Theo Huckle QC for Bass, Bailey said he has 90 military and 10 civilian cases in his care after they were referred to him.

He confirmed the 90 had served in Helmand and said the number of military cases “built up from 2008”, Forces Network reported.

Bailey told the court: “We have seen no new cases since 2014 from Afghanistan. Occasionally we get other military cases from other locations. Cyprus most recently.”

Bailey said he had seen “one British soldier who very, very nearly died” as a result of Q fever and subsequent complications, but there have been no UK deaths in his group.

In court documents setting out the case, it is argued that the MoD should have considered using Doxycycline, an antibiotic used to treat Q fever, as an anti-malarial drug, Forces Network reported.

The MoD however denies failing in its duty of care – pointing out that a vaccine used by some countries is not licensed in the UK.

Raw is risky: Pet food recalled after Minn. Health finds Salmonella in a human

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State officials are notifying consumers of a recall of raw turkey pet food from Woody’s Pet Food Deli. Salmonella contamination was found after the Minnesota Department of Health identified a human case linked to the pet food

The recalled product was sold in 5-pound plastic containers labeled “Woody’s Pet Food Deli Raw Free Range Turkey” and can be identified by the white date sticker on the cover of the pet food container, the state health and agriculture departments said in a statement Monday.

The product was sold at Woody’s Pet Food Deli locations in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Woodbury. The lots recalled have these use-by dates:

– Jan. 10, 2020

– Jan. 12, 2020

– Jan. 15, 2020

No other lots of Woody’s Pet Food Deli products are affected by the recall, the agencies said.

Consumers with the recalled product at home are being told to throw it out or return it to a Woody’s Pet Food Deli for a full refund and not feed the contaminated product to pets, state officials said.

Consumers with questions can contact the Woody’s Pet Food Deli stores directly or email the company at info@woodyspetdeli.com .

Sampling began after the state health department identified a human case of salmonella linked to the pet food as part of the agency’s ongoing, multistate investigation of salmonella infections coordinated by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Norway finds Salmonella outbreaks linked to countries visited

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During summer 2016, Norway observed an increase in Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Chester cases among travellers to Greece.

Our aim was to investigate genetic relatedness of S. Chester for surveillance and outbreak detection by core genome multilocus sequence typing (cgMLST) and compare the results to genome mapping.

We included S. Chester isolates from 51 cases of salmonellosis between 2000 and 2016. Paired-end sequencing (2 × 250 bp) was performed on Illumina MiSeq. Genetic relatedness by cgMLST for Salmonellaenterica subsp. enterica, including 3,002 genes and seven housekeeping genes, was compared by reference genome mapping with CSI Phylogeny version 1.4 and conventional MLST.

Confirmed travel history was available for 80% of included cases, to Europe (n = 13), Asia (n = 12) and Africa (n = 16). Isolates were distributed into four phylogenetic clusters corresponding to geographical regions. Sequence type (ST) ST411 and a single-locus variant ST5260 (n = 17) were primarily acquired in southern Europe, ST1954 (n = 15) in Africa, ST343 (n = 11) and ST2063 (n = 8) primarily in Asia. Part of the European cluster was further divided into a Greek (n = 10) and a Cypriot (n = 4) cluster. All isolates in the African cluster displayed resistance to ≥ 1 class of antimicrobials, while resistance was rare in the other clusters.

Whole genome sequencing of S. Chester in Norway showed four geographically distinct clusters, with a possible outbreak occurring during summer 2016 related to Greece. We recommend public health institutes to implement cgMLST-based real-time Salmonella enterica surveillance for early and accurate detection of future outbreaks and further development of cluster cut-offs.

Whole genome sequencing of Salmonella Chester reveals geographically distinct clusters, Norway, 2000 to 2016

Siira Lotta, Naseer Umaer, Alfsnes Kristian, Hermansen Nils Olav, Lange Heidi, Brandal Lin T. Whole genome sequencing of Salmonella Chester reveals geographically distinct clusters, Norway, 2000 to 2016. Euro Surveill. 2019;24(4):pii=1800186. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2019.24.4.1800186

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2019.24.4.1800186#abstract_content

Stop kissing chicks, stop stroking that hedgehog and stop touching yourself: 11 sick with Salmonella linked to hedgehogs

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Every time someone introduces a new pet at the kid’s school, I see a Salmonella factory (summer holidays are over, grade 5 started today for Sorenne).

This isn’t the first time the prickly pest or pet, depending on perspective, like possums, has been linked to Salmonella Typhimurium: From December 2011 to April 2013, 26 people were infected with Salmonella typhimurium. One person died and eight people were hospitalized in that outbreak, the C.D.C. reported.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, 11 people infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium have been reported from eight states.

One person has been hospitalized and no deaths have been reported.

Epidemiologic and laboratory evidence indicate that contact with pet hedgehogs is the likely source of this outbreak.

In interviews, 10 (91%) of 11 ill people reported contact with a hedgehog.

Illnesses started on dates from October 22, 2018 to December 25, 2018. Ill people range in age from 2 to 28 years, with a median age of 12. Forty-five percent are female.

The outbreak strain making people sick was identified in samples collected from three hedgehogs in two ill patients’ homes in Minnesota.

Hedgehogs can carry Salmonella germs in their droppings while appearing healthy and clean.

These germs can easily spread to their bodies, habitats, toys, bedding, and anything in the area where they live. People become sick after they touch hedgehogs or anything in their habitats.

Wash your hands

Always wash hands thoroughly with soap and water right after touching, feeding, or caring for a hedgehog or cleaning its habitat. Adults should supervise handwashing for young children.

Play safely

Don’t kiss or snuggle hedgehogs, because this can spread Salmonella germs to your face and mouth and make you sick.

Don’t let hedgehogs roam freely in areas where food is prepared or stored, such as kitchens.

Clean habitats, toys, and supplies outside the house when possible. Avoid cleaning these items in the kitchen or any other location where food is prepared, served, or stored.

Fresh peaches, nectarines and plums recalled in US because of Listeria

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It’s not often that stone fruit – peaches, nectarines and plums are recalled for Listeria.

Jac. Vandenberg, Inc. of Yonkers, New York is doing just that.

The Fresh Peaches, Fresh Nectarines and Fresh Plums were distributed in Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia through small retail establishments and the following select retail stores:

Retail Stores States Product
ALDI Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia Nectarines, Peaches, Plums
Costco California Nectarines
Fairway Market New York Nectarines, Peaches
Hannaford Maine Peaches
Market Basket Massachusetts Nectarines, Peaches
Walmart Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia Nectarines (MD, NJ, NY, PA, VA, WV), Peaches (KY, NJ, NY, OH, PA, WV)

The peaches and nectarines are sold as a bulk retail produce item with PLU sticker (PLU# 4044, 3035, 4378) showing the country of origin of Chile. The peaches, nectarines and plums sold at ALDI are packaged in a 2-pound bag with the brand Rio Duero, EAN# 7804650090281, 7804650090298, 7804650090304. The nectarines sold at Costco are packaged in a 4-pound plastic clamshell with the brand Rio Duero, EAN# 7804650090212.

No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with this problem to date.

The recall was the result of a routine sampling program by the packing house which revealed that the finished products contained the bacteria. The company has ceased the distribution of the product as FDA and the company continue their investigation as to what caused the problem.

Student dies after eating five-day old pasta that had been left out

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(Correction: This actually happened in 2008 and the paper was published in 2011. Still a good reminder of the importance of temperature control.)

Who doesn’t experiment in college?

But meddling with microbiology can be particularly risky.

A student died after eating leftover pasta that had been left on his kitchen benchtop for five days.

The 20-year-old from the Brussels in Belgium became sick after eating leftover spaghetti with tomato sauce which had been prepared five days earlier and stored at room temperature.

After becoming violently ill, he went to bed to try and sleep the sickness off, only to be found dead in bed the next morning by his devastated parents.

An autopsy later revealed he died from Bacillus cereus.

The story has been featured by Dr Bernard, a licenced practitioner who studies and shares bizarre medical cases from around the world on his YouTube channel.

Dr Bernard analysed the case, which originally featured in the US Journal of Clinical Microbiology, along with several others in a dramatised re-enactment, explaining the harmful bacteria caused AJ’s liver to shut down.

Samples of spoiled pasta and tomato sauce samples were also analysed, with the National Reference Laboratory for Food-borne Outbreak confirming the spaghetti was contaminated with “significant amounts” of the B. cereus — while it was absent in the sauce.

Time waits for no one: Dr. Clorox — Ralph Richardson — to retire

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I can’t make this stuff up.

In 2005, I had a stalker girlfriend between wives, so me and Chapman went on a road trip starting in BC, where Chapman was convinced he would be eaten by bears at some jello-fest.

We went to Seattle and looked at Marler’s fancy offices, and then to Manhattan, Kansas, home of Kansas State University, where one of my recent PhD graduates had settled.

I’m proud that the few PhD students I’ve gotten through, and the dozens of MSc students, are innovators and create great work.

But back to the tale.

The day after we arrived, Chapman and I get invited to go speak with a Canadian studies group (paid for by Canadians that fund Americans to study Canadians) and Hubbell is there because she got some money to study Quebec.

I was tired, despondent, but Ben and another grad student were saying, look at her butt.

I was more interested in her brain.

I was an independent, she was (somewhat) married, but we worked through that.

In one week, I met a girl who I’ve been with for 13 years and moved to Kansas because the president offered me a job after having lunch.

The guy left with the mess of details was Dean of the Veterinary College at Kansas State, Ralph Richardson (the details of the job, not the new girl).

The other day, Dr. Ralph C. Richardson announced his plans to retire as Dean and CEO of Kansas State University’s Olathe campus before July 1. He has served there since August 2015.

“I certainly have mixed emotions about retiring, as I’ve never enjoyed my work more and am proud of what has been achieved at the Olathe campus in the last several years,” Dr. Richardson said.

 

“President Myers and Provost Taber are leading K-State forward in unprecedented ways. I love being part of their team and working with faculty and staff, my fellow deans and other university administrators. However, it is imperative to focus on succession planning, especially with the new budget model and strategic enrollment management initiatives coming on board. I want the new leader of the Olathe campus to be well prepared to embrace the opportunities that are coming to K-State through engagement with Greater Kansas City.”

Under Dr. Richardson’s leadership, K-State used the Olathe campus to expand its outreach and services to Greater Kansas City to elevate the university’s profile in academics, research and service in the region and generate new opportunities for students and faculty.

Dr. Richardson helped establish and oversee numerous partnerships that are being used to develop a recruitment and support infrastructure for Kansas City-based undergraduate students to attend K-State and working professionals to enroll at the university’s Olathe campus.

Before his appointment overseeing the Olathe campus, Dr. Richardson served as dean of the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine for 17 years. Under his guidance, the college experienced increased student enrollment; raised more than $72 million in private support for scholarships and seven permanently endowed professorships; introduced the Veterinary Training Program for Rural Kansas, which offers a debt repayment incentive for graduates to work in rural practices in Kansas; increased faculty and staff numbers, with many receiving national and international attention for their teaching, research and service efforts; aligned research and educational programs to meet the needs of the federal government’s National Bio and Agro-defense Facility, or NBAF, which is being built just north of the college; and much more.

Dr. Richardson joined Kansas State University in 1998, coming from Purdue University where he was a professor and head of the veterinary clinical sciences department and a 22-year faculty member of the university. At Purdue, he helped establish an ongoing comparative oncology program, utilizing naturally occurring cancer in pet animals as models for people. Before starting his academic career, Richardson served in the Army Veterinary Corps and worked as a private practice veterinarian in Miami.

Back to the story.

Ralph knew me because when he was at Purdue, he signed up to AnimalNet, one of those listserves that is now obsolete but was radical at the time.

When I met him in person, he was like an old friend, because if you get an e-mail from someone every day, they are like old friends.

After another week I went back to Canada, spoke with my four daughters, and decided, I should be in Kansas. Curt Kastner (the only uninvited dude who showed up at our city hall wedding, because we didn’t invite anyone except the witnesses, much thanks Pete and Angelique) called and said, can I arrange a conference call with Ralph?

I said, why don’t I show up in person?

Next day I was on a flight. I did a TV interview at the Toronto airport as I was departing, about a raw sprouts outbreak that had sickened at least 400 in Ontario (that’s a province in Canada), and within 24 hours, I was in Ralph’s living room, because he had broken his ankle or something while hunting, and was propped up on the couch.

I told him my vision of food safety risk analysis and research and outreach, and he told me he’d see what he could do.

I went and hung out with the girl.

In December, I decided to take the girl to Canada to see if my friends approved, because my solo judgement in such areas had proven awful.

They approved.

On my birthday, Dec. 29, 2005, me and the girl were in a grocery store in Guelph, and Ralph called. He said, we’d like to make you a job offer, how’s $100,000 U.S., plus lab start-up fees?

I was ecstatic.

Within months, me and the girl had bought our own house in Manhattan, Kansas, I was brimming with ideas, the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach started in Sept. 2006 and I was splashed all over American media as someone who may know something about this stuff. Kansas State benefited, and the president would call me weekly and say, great job.

However, back in the veterinary college, the other faculty didn’t really know what to make of me: except Dean Ralph.

I got made a full professor in 2010, but the increasing bureaucracy was not to my liking.

I loved the other aspects of my job, and I loved my wife and family.

So when Dr. Amy Hubbell, formerly of Kansas State University, was offered a faculty appointment at the University of Queensland, I wasn’t gonna be the guy who said no.

It would have been real easy to stay in Kansas, but that wasn’t our style.

So Amy and Sorenne went off to Australia, and I eventually caught up.

I worked by distance at Kansas State.

But other profs started nitpicking.

Our first guest on the first day we moved into the first place we owned rather than rented in 2012 was Dr. Clorox (that’s what they called him in Korea).

Kansas State knew we were in Brisbane, I was still an employee of K-State, but no one bothered to reach out as K-State tried to set up a partnership with the University of Queensland.

I told Ralph that evening, no hard feelings if you have to get rid of me, universities can be small sandboxes with too many and too big egos.

I had presented options for on-line course in food safety policy, a massive open on-line course (MOOC) in food safety, take a 20 per cent pay cut and was repeatedly told my performance as a faculty member was above average – but I got fired for not being there to hold my colleagues hand during tea.

The bosses at Kansas State University determined I had to be on campus, I said no, so I was dumped.

Full professors can get dumped for bad attendance.

I love my wife and family. And that’s where my allegiance lies.

It’s been harder than I thought it would be, I’ve unfortunately expressed my rage to my wife at silly times in silly ways, my brain is degenerating for a variety of reasons, but I’m optimistic, and in addition to the Kastners, Dr. Clorox has been a big fan and a good friend.

Ralph, thanks for all you’ve done for Amy and I, enjoy that retirement, and try not to drive Bev crazy hanging around the house.