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
Schaffner has also agreed, I didn’t ask Margaret, but had a good chat with her today, so now i’m formally asking.
The book will be peer reviewed, so everyone will get credit. It is made to be sold at airports. I was gonna write it myself, but figured out I needed a little help from my friends, and that it’s OK to ask for help.
That’s Katija and Ben, back in the day, when we would go golfing at 6:30 a.m.
Dec. 29 is always a bustling day, with my birthday, my 12-year-wedding-at-city hall in Manhattan, Kansas, but most importantly, my mother’s birthday.
I was born on her 21st birthday
How lucky were you (that’s sarcasm)
But my 77-year-old mother, sitting a few days ago with my four Canadian daughters (3 grandsons missing) wouldn’t be there if her father, Homer, hadn’t got rid of the cows.
Mom lived.
It was about 1943, and my mother developed undulate fever from drinking unpasteurized raw milk.
Homer turned the farm into potatoes (as you do in Alliston, Ontario, that’s in Canada), and then became the asparagus baron of Canada.
A New York resident recently contracted the RB51 strain of the Brucella abortus bacteria after consuming raw milk.
Reshma Ravishanker and Bellie Thomas of the Deccan Herald report a calm Sunday night turned into a nightmare for the children at a remand home in Siddapura as several of them fell ill after consuming food in which they had spotted a lizard. As many as 103 children of Siddapura Balamandira were rushed to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health (IGICH) in the early hours of Monday. While some had started gagging and had diarrhoea, the others were nauseated after consuming rice and sambar for dinner.
Fourteen-year-old Mayank (name changed) picked up a spoon of rice and sambar which was served for dinner on Sunday night. Just when he thought he was chewing on a piece of onion, an unpleasant taste made him spit it out. He had bitten into a dead lizard. At the same time, another 10-year-old found a lizard’s leg in his plate. Chaos set in soon. About six fell seriously ill, but the staffers brought the others also to the hospital as a measure of precaution at 2 am.
Kevin Zimmerman of West Fair Online reports that Barbarie’s Black Angus Grill in Danbury has voluntarily closed while the city’s health department investigates a possible outbreak of a food-borne illness.
The investigation came in the wake of several diners’ complaints of food poisoning after dining at the 5 Eagle Road eatery, which were first reported on Dec. 26. The Health Department emphasized that no evidence of food poisoning has been found yet.
Barbarie’s was last inspected by the Danbury Health Department on Aug. 15 and passed with a score of a 91, according to city health department records.
“The Barbarie name has been a part of Danbury for over 60 years,” the restaurant, which could reopen as soon as today, said in a statement. “Our main priority is the safety and health of our patrons. We are currently working alongside the health department to get to the bottom of this. At this time, we do not have any further information.”
I told her the other day how Surgeoner made his students (and kids) stick their arms into boxes filled with mosquitoes – mossies as they’re called here – to see what dose of DEET worked, while the kids got bitten.
She became more terrified.
That’s OK, I have lots of parenting failures.
As the consumption of fresh produce increases worldwide, Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) outbreaks linked to contaminated produce are becoming more frequent. Biocontrol of STEC using phages can be a safe and effective way to reduce STEC on fruits and vegetables.
Purpose: 1) Evaluate the effectiveness of 7 bacteriophages to reduce viability of E. coli serogroups O26, O45, O103, O111, O121, O145, and O157 on lettuce and sprouts at 4, 10 or 25 °C and storage for 1, 24, 48, and 72 h; 2) to assess STEC phage effectiveness to reduce STEC compared to a conventional chlorinated water wash (150ppm for fresh produce, 1000 ppm for seeds); and 3) to determine if phage-insensitive mutants arise after phage treatments. Methods: 1) Phages either individually or as a cocktail (~108 log PFU/ml) were sprayed to control 105 log CFU/ml STEC spot-inoculated onto fresh lettuce and sprouts that were stored for 1, 24, 48, and 72 h at 2, 10, and 25°C. Samples were collected and bacteria enumerated on McConkey (STEC total numbers) and Rainbow agar (STEC individual serogroup numbers) after each storage period. STEC isolates were confirmed using latex agglutination tests specific for STEC, PCR, and Immunomagnetic Separation (IMS) to recover any surviving STEC serogroups. 2) A scale-up experiment with STEC phage cocktail and chlorinated water applied to lettuce, sprouts, and mung bean seeds (MB) was undertaken to further assess the effectiveness of STEC phage cocktail to reduce STEC on larger quantities of produce and to compare its effectiveness to chemical disinfection. Lettuce, sprouts, and MB were treated with: i) chlorinated water wash (150 ppm for lettuce/sprouts, 1000 ppm for MB); ii) STEC phage cocktail; and iii) a combination of chlorinated water and STEC phage cocktail. Phage cocktails were delivered by immersion. After treatment, lettuce and sprouts were stored for 1, 24, 48, and 72 h at 2, 10, and 25 °C. MB were stored in the dark for 24 h at 25 °C. Seeds were germinated in sterilized water and the survival of STEC isolates was assessed by plating on Rainbow agar. 3) To determine if phage resistant mutants developed during STEC phage treatment, isolated colonies surviving after exposure to phage were randomly picked and tested for phage sensitivity using a microplate virulence assay. OD was measured after microplate incubation for 5 h at 37 °C. Results: 1) In spot-inoculation experiments, the highest STEC reduction (3.7 log10 CFU/g) caused by the phage cocktail was observed at 2 °C after 72 h of storage on lettuce; whereas on sprouts the highest reduction (2.45 log10 CFU/g) occurred at 25 °C after samples were stored for 1 h. All STEC O157, O26, and O103 were killed by spraying phages on both lettuce and sprouts. Overall STEC phages reduced STEC by > 2 log10 CFU/g on fresh produce. 2) During scale-up experiments, the combination of STEC phage cocktail and chlorinated water achieved the highest STEC reductions on produce. On MB, the highest reduction in STEC (1.69 log10 CFU/g) was observed after treatment with the STEC phage cocktail alone. On MB germinated sprouts, the reduction in total STEC was < 1 log10 CFU/g in all treatments. However, none of the treatments eliminated all 7 STEC serogroups. 3) Regarding phage resistance experiments, no STEC mutants were recovered. Conclusion: Results showed that the phage cocktail was able to reduce STEC O26, O45, O103, O111, O121, O145, and O157 serogroups alone, or in combination with chlorinated water on lettuce, sprouts, and MB seeds without the development of phage resistant mutants. However, for MB, the STEC phage cocktail was not effective at controlling STEC populations during germination.
People in Brisbane, they think Canada ends at Banff and Vancouver is some idyllic Canadiana, but to me it’s junkie haven.
Never liked it.
And what kind of popular eatery would serve a rat in a customer’s soup?
Or have some bullshit where a customer would fake a ploy?
That’s the Vancouver I’m familiar with.
The customer posted a video of the rodent in their soup on Instagram.
The Vancouver Sun reports the customer posted the video on Instagram Thursday after they discovered the rodent in their soup at Crab Park Chowdery. The restaurant is well known for serving soups and clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowls. Its owner, Ashton Phillips, says he does not understand how the rodent got into the soup and that the restaurant follows strict health code regulations. He added that a female customer was the one who found the rat in her soup.
A series of high profile food incidents, which have been ineffectively managed by both the regulators and the industry, and where there has been a failure to be open and transparent, have sensitised a proportion of consumers to scary stories about the food supply. There has been concomitant damage to consumer confidence in (i) the safety of food, (ii) the food industry’s commitment to producing safe food and (iii) the authorities’ ability to oversee the food chain.
Threats to consumers’ health and their genuine concerns have to be addressed with effective risk management and the protection of public health has to be paramount.
Dealing with incorrect fears and misperceptions of risk has also to be addressed but achieving this is very difficult. The competencies of social scientists are needed to assist in gaining insights into consumer perceptions of risk, consumer behaviour and the determinants of trust.
Conventional risk communication will not succeed on its own and more innovative and creative communication strategies are needed to engage with consumers using all available media channels in an open and transparent way. The digital media affords the opportunity to revolutionise engagement with consumers on food safety and nutrition-related issues.
Moving from risk communication to food information communication and consumer engagement
Wall, P. G., & Chen, J. (2018). Moving from risk communication to food information communication and consumer engagement. Npj Science of Food, 2(1). doi:10.1038/s41538-018-0031-7
The avocado-based dip was the cause of an aggressive barfing incident that I’ve never been able to push aside, in the same way I wasn’t able to eat muffins for years after a barfing incident when I was a child.
I’m still amazed at the effects sight, sound and smell can have on food preferences.
It was about 33 years ago, and my ex-wife decided to make a batch of her self-proclaimed world-class guac.
We were driving to my relatives in Barrie, Ontario (that’s in Canada) and somewhere on highway 400, we pulled over and too much booze or guac or just being with me caused one of the most violent vomiting incidents I’ve witnessed.
The smell of the guacamole is forged in my memory.
For the whole fresh avocado sampling assignment, the FDA collected, tested and analyzed 1,615 domestic and imported avocado samples for Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes. Of the 1,615 samples, 12 (0.74%) tested positive for Salmonella. As to the Listeria monocytogenes testing, the agency primarily tested the pulp of the avocado samples (as the pulp is the part of the fruit people eat), and some samples of the fruit’s skin. Of the 1,254 avocado pulp samples, 3 (far less than one percent) were positive for Listeria monocytogenes. Of the 361 avocado skin samples, 64 (17.73%) were positive for Listeria monocytogenes. FoodSafety.gov advises consumers to wash all produce before cutting into it or eating.
Washing doesn’t do much, but with avocadoes it seems the exterior skins are loaded with Listeria, so the opportunities for cross-contamination are huge (think of how you prepare avocado).
CBS News concludes that one-in-five avocados tested positive for Listeria on the outside, so better wash those skins.
Washing won’t do much, but clean the damn cutting board and be the bug, think about where it would go.
Outbreak News Today reports that officials with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health report seeing an increase in listeriosis cases in December, prompting a warning for high-risk groups.
Four of the six patients reported in December are from Hedmark and Oppland.
Health officials are working to identify if their is a common food source linked to the increase in cases.
Listeria is usually transmitted through food, especially long-life foods that are refrigerated and eaten without further heat treatment. Many of these food products are popular as Christmas foods and can be found on many Christmas parties.
Ryan J. Foley of The Washington Postwrites a Missouri farmer and businessman ripped off consumers nationwide by falsely marketing more than $140 million worth of corn, soybeans and wheat as certified organic grains, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
The long-running fraud scheme outlined in court documents by prosecutors in Iowa is one of the largest uncovered in the fast-growing organic farming industry. The victims included food companies and their customers who paid higher prices because they thought they were buying grains that had been grown using environmentally sustainable practices.
The alleged leader of the scheme was identified as Randy Constant of Chillicothe, Missouri, who was charged with one count of wire fraud. He is expected to plead guilty during a hearing that is scheduled at the federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Thursday.
The charging document calls on Constant to forfeit $128 million to the government along with his interest in 70 pieces of farm machinery and equipment. His attorney, Mark Weinhardt, didn’t immediately return a phone message seeking comment.
Three Nebraska farmers who sold their crops to Constant pleaded guilty in October to their roles in the scheme and are awaiting sentencing. One of their attorneys has said that Constant recruited them and that they turned a blind eye to his false marketing practices because they reaped higher profits by passing their grains off as organic.
Schaffner has also agreed, I didn’t ask Margaret, but had a good chat with her today, so now i’m formally asking.
