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Michele Samarya-Timm, guest barfblogger: Handwashing…it’s in the hole

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Reports of Bill Murray’s recent arrest for erratically driving a golf cart motivated me to dust off a copy of Caddyshack.

It’s a classic film…you know the scene…families leisurely at poolside, going for a swim, enjoying a summer’s day—an errant candy bar splashes in the midst of the bathers and when it is finally observed floating in the water someone screams…

Doodie!  Doodie!! 

The languid setting suddenly switches to one of shock, repulsion and pandemonium as everyone subsequently rushes to distance themselves from the buoyant turd.  Yup, I could see something similar happening in real life.  How easily the public is repelled when a potential threat is so conspicuous.

Aw…don’t touch it!

The raucous distancing the scene portrays is not far from what would happen in reality…if poop was always so visible.  But “poop” and a host of other micro flora undesirables are not always so discernable in the pool or on our hands. The ubiquitous reality of pathogens such as Norovirus, shigella, staph, and a quantity of others hitchhiking on our skin should be cause for a similar reaction – but towards the nearest supply of soap and water.  Convincing others of the importance of clean hands would be easier if potential contaminants were always so clearly visible and distasteful. 

Turds.  Double turds. 

Observational studies continue to show us that when contaminants are out of sight, handwashing is out of mind.  What better time than National Clean Hands Week and National Food Safety Education Month to renew our efforts to motivate others to get rid of doodie and other unwanted flora on their hands?  

It’s no big deal. 

Yes it is. Yeah, maybe Bill Murray could be the poster child for “Don’t Eat Poop.” But so should we.  Keep reminding, keep educating, and keep upholding the practice of using soap and water to distance us from pathogens.

When it comes to handwashing, we all need to “be the ball.”

Related websites: 
Food Safety Education Month:  http://www.foodsafety.gov/~fsg/september.html
National Clean Hands Week:  www.cleanhandscoalition.org

Michéle Samarya-Timm is a Health Educator for the Franklin Township Health Department in New Jersey.

Angela Dodd, guest barfblogger: No pee zone

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I recently witnessed a different kind of food safety hazard that probably occurs more often than is ever mentioned.
I kicked off last weekend with some classmates — drinks were flowing and the food was disappearing as fast as it could be cooked. Since everyone seemed to be hungry, plates were of no need. As I stood there eating my food I couldn’t help but notice what was going on just across my shoulder. One gentleman had found out how quickly selected beverages run through the body. He had made his way to the fence to relieve himself (since using a toilet would be way to civilized) and decided to place his uneaten hot dog in his mouth in order to free up his hands for other uses. After the job was done, he found it perfectly normal to take the hot dog back out of his mouth and continue eating his dinner

Probably not much of a risk for others, but certainly a yuck factor.
“Don’t Eat Poop, Wash Your Hands”.

Angela Dodd is a Senior in Food Science at Kansas State University — and she washes her hands after peeing.

Casey Wilkinson, guest barfblogger: Poop on your shoes…

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The Associated Press posted an article early this morning entitled, “Buffet worker stomps garlic with boots.” Visions of dog poop and day-old mud imbedded in the fine crevices of the soles of these boots flooded my mind and brought terror to my heart. Would someone actually do this? Could a fellow eater like myself be so distracted from the bacterial ramifications of using one’s shoes as a culinary instrument?
I clicked on the headline and waited for the story to appear.  I read in horror as each word confirmed my deepest fears: the entire story was absolutely true.
Apparently the worker at a Great China Buffet restaurant was using a very innovative technique to press garlic cloves: stomping them with his boots in a back alley.  A passerby had noted him there with a horror similar to my own and snapped a photo.
The Rockland County Health Department was notified and quickly came for an inspection. The worker was fired for his act, and the restaurant will be re-inspected soon.
I wish I could rest easy now, but I’m afraid there may be more out there just like him: full of ignorance and disregard for the safety of our food.
Don’t eat poop, people: Wash your hands. And don’t stomp the garlic.

They call me…Tater Salad.

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Mmm…nothing starts off the semester like a well-charred burger and a heaping pile of tater salad. But like Ron White, this tater salad should not be out in pub-lic.
I was recently a guest at a “welcome back” picnic along with about fifty other students. A few of the dozen or so faculty in attendance grilled up a box full of beef patties and tossed them in a pile for us all to assemble and consume in traditional picnic fashion. I looked them over, picked a luke warm specimen out of the bunch and threw it on a bun with ketchup. But was it done? It certainly looked done, but charred as it may appear, color is no indicator of doneness.
The star of the show, however, was really the five tubs of Kroger brand Mustard Potato Salad lying open on the adjacent table. “Poop Salad" as it was recently dubbed by a ColumbusING blogger from Columbus, Ohio, where E. coli O157:H7 was found in the salads during a routine safety check.  This was after the product was distributed and sold, of course. (That’s just the way these things work.) So Kroger did the socially responsible thing and issued a recall in attempt to remove the possibly tainted salad out of the refrigerators of innocent people and dispose of it properly.
So how does a recall happen? The information goes out: newspapers are picking up the story, TV news crews are spreading the word, satellites in outer space are linking up… but people are sitting around eating recalled potato salad like there’s just a little guy in a booth tapping Morse code and sad little beepings just can’t keep up.
It’s sad that it seems so true. Somebody out there is not keeping up. But who? During the recent  Castleberry chili recall people were still eating the stuff, not knowing there could be a botulism toxin inside, weeks after the recall was announced.
How do we get people to care about the safety of the food they eat? “I was tainted on a production line (possibly),” the tater salad cries. “You threw me…in-to pub-lic.” But the public isn’t paying any attention.

Casey Wilkinson is an undergrad research student at iFSN, and she loves her mom’s tater salad.

Don Schaffner, guest barfblogger: Troubled times had come to my hometown…

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Bruce Springsteen wrote those words about his hometown, Freehold, NJ in 1984 for the song "My Hometown" on his Born in the U.S.A. album.

I’m not a huge "Bruce" fan, but for the past 20 years, Bruce’s hometown has also been my hometown so I’ve developed more than a passing interest in the song. (N.B. Bruce doesn’t live here anymore, he lives in a mansion in Rumson, NJ).

Bruce writes about racial strife in Freehold in 1965 "between the black and white".  There is a different sort of racial strife in Freehold now, between Latino’s and whites, and that strife regularly plays out in the editorial pages of our local weekly newspaper, the News Transcript. Like many cities in the United States we have a burgeoning Latino population, and this sometimes creates tension.

But I’m here to write about food safety.  And that’s what you are here to read about.  So what does any of this have to do with food safety?

Well, the story I want to relate starts back in September 2006.  A police officer from a neighboring town, who owns several rental properties in Freehold Borough was cited for having an illegal restaurant operating at one of those properties. The restaurant was being operated by one of his
tenants.  (For more on the story, look here).

While my sympathies tend to run toward leniency when it comes to illegal immigrants (who will cook and wash dishes in our restaurants, cut our grass, and do all the other hot, boring jobs that Americans won’t), and laissez faire when it comes to innovative business practices, given the trouble that legit restaurants have keeping food safe, I’m not sure illegal restaurants are a good idea.

You’ve got to give this illegal restaurant credit for persistence… Flash forward to earlier this summer.  The illegal restaurant had apparently begun operating again. This time the fines involved were almost $11,000.  Maybe everyone involved has learned their lesson.

I doubt I fit the demographic to get served in the illegal "Casa de Mechanic Street", so I’ll have to settle for having my meals prepared by potentially illegal immigrants in definitely legal restaurants elsewhere in my hometown. Maybe at the new Olive Garden?

Don Schaffner is an Extension Specialist in Food Science at Rutgers
University.

Heat em up, eat em up… KSU!

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My favorite time of year is here, college football season. My team, the Kansas State University Wildcats kicks off their season Saturday night on the road against Auburn. Even though I won’t be traveling to the game I’ll still be doing the one thing I love to do before a home game, grilling out. To me, nothing is better than getting in some brats and burgers before walking up to the stadium to cheer on my cats. However, the tailgating scene can get pretty crazy sometimes and food safety may slip some people’s minds. Here are some good tips for the tailgating season.

  • Keep cold food in a cooler at less than 40°F (and keep there beers this cold too!)
  • Make sure the different meats are kept wrapped to prevent cross contamination. Making a burger topped with chicken is delicious, but stacking these meats is only acceptable after cooking
  • Cook food to the right temperature
    • Steaks (beef, pork, fish, lamb) – 145°F
    • Ground (beef, pork, lamb) – 160°F
    • Chicken (whole, ground) – 165°F
  • Probably the smartest thing you can have is a meat thermometer. It’s the only true and tested way to tell if the food is done, and many are small enough to fit in your pocket. These should be a tailgater’s best friend.
  • Hot foods should not be left out for more than 2 hours. As much as you might want to have some food after the game, it is not acceptable to leave the burgers out for all 4 quarters. Put it away and reheat if needed.

              (source: FDA)

The post title is a play on a popular chant at K-state games, thus I find it easy to remember to heat my foods to the proper temperatures. Starting next week you can find me at the Bill Snyder Family Stadium cooking, and losing my voice inside the stadium (from about where the picture above was taken).

    Prediction: KSU 21 – Auburn 20

Brewing coffee from cat poop

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I noticed an interesting article today about how some people in Indonesia are using seeds picked from cat droppings to brew their morning cup of Joe.
According to ITN and Yahoo! News:
"Makers claim they gather undigested seeds from ripe coffee cherries, that have passed through the stomachs of civet cats and use them to make the drink.
It has been suggested enzymes in the animal’s stomach break down the proteins in the seeds and give them a bitter taste that enhances the flavour."
They may be right about the poop seeds affecting the flavor, but the safety risk of this practice is high. The filth that these seeds come from could contain E. coli or other fecal coliforms that can lead to health issues. We’ll keep an eye on this practice, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear about a few people getting sick off of this practice. Read the full article here.

“Stinky Hands” is the quote of the week

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Rebecca J. Gray Causey, a regional food safety and defense coordinator for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, as mentioned in one of Doug’s previous posts , labeled a food handler with a reportedly itchy ass, "Stinky Hands".

The name provided the inspiration for this week’s infosheet. We’ve got to figure out how to incorporate it in the next iFSN T-shirt printing.

Don Schaffner, guest barfblogger: You remember Leonard Skinner. He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner

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Bill Marler’s most recent post got me thinking about summer camp food safety again. 

Marler’s post mentions that kids and parents at a church camp in North
Carolina ate Castleberry’s chili that had been recalled nearly one month
earlier.  While Marler appears to lay the blame on Castleberry’s, I think
camp officials are at least partly responsible.  In my experience summer
camp officials don’t always make good food safety decisions.

I still remember the summer my oldest son worked at a nearby camp.  He
explained all his important duties, one of which was making sure that the
refrigerator temperature logs were filled in with the "correct" temperatures
when the health inspector was due for a visit.

Another example of camp making bad decisions happened earlier this summer
when a norovirus outbreak hit a scout camp in Pensylvannia.  As the
link explains, the first week the camp had "several" norovirus cases in
camp.  They cleaned up and brought in the next weeks campers, and were hit
even harder, with at least 55 ill… so they decided to send all 500 campers
home! 

What the story doesn’t explain (as I learned from a colleague whose son was
one of the 500 sent home the second week) is that parents were not told of
the first outbreak when they dropped their kids off for the second week.
Certainly a bit of honest communication with parents about the outbreak the
first week might have made for fewer irate parents the second week.

Don Schaffner is an Extension Specialist in Food Science at Rutgers
University.  In is spare time he likes to go camping and backpacking with
the Boy Scouts.

Concerts cancelled due to food poisoning

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***New Food Safety Network Infosheet — Concerts cancelled due to food poisoning***
03.may.07
Food Safety Network
foodsafetyinfosheets.ksu.edu
www.foodsafety.ksu.edu
The newest food safety infosheet, a graphical one-page food safety-related story directed at food handlers, is now available at foodsafetyinfosheets.ksu.edu.
Infosheet highlights:
The nationwide Muse and My Chemical Romance tour was brought to a halt this past weekend after band members were struck with food poisoning.
The bands were in Williamsburg, Virginia last Sunday for a concert at William and Mary college, when 16 members from both bands and crews became severely ill.
Other risk factors affecting the safety of food include: proper cooking procedures, temperature control during storage, cross contamination, poor hygiene, and purchasing food from unsafe sources.
Infosheets are created weekly by iFSN and are posted in restaurants, retail stores, on farms and used in training throughout the world. If you have any infosheet topic requests, or photos, please contact Ben Chapman at bchapman@uoguelph.ca