Author Archives: Ben Chapman

Ben Chapman

About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.

Food Safety Talk 128: It’s the Esters, John

Posted on by
Reply

The show begins with a discussion of Ben’s recent travels. From there the discussion moves on to obligatory talk about beverages, Canadian and Philadelphia accents, Apple, and other podcasts. The food safety talk begins in earnest with the discussion about what is meant by the words ‘risk assessment’. From there the discussion turns to ‘food safety programs’, restaurant inspections and what customers might want to know, the humor of David Lloyd, and then back to meat safety and proper thermometer use. The show ends with The Onions humorous take on handwashing water temperature. The After Dark contains the usual nonsense including talk about music videos.

Episode 128 can be found here and on iTunes.

Show notes so you can follow along at home:

 

The food safety world has lost two champions

Posted on by
Reply

I never met Dave Theno. I saw him speak a few times at IAFP, and other places; he had a fantastic story to tell – he had the experience of cleaning up after a tragic food safety mess. Stories like that are compelling – especially when the storyteller is earnest an candid (and Dave was). There’s a lot to learn from folks like that. Dave was a food safety rock star. Everyone knew him.

Sadly, Dave passed away on Monday.

The food safety world lost another star, albeit quietly.

My introduction to the real food and agriculture world was driving around Ontario (that’s in Canada) with Doug and Amber Bailey.

In the summer of 2001, we went on a trip to Leamington, Ontario to spend some time in vegetable greenhouses where Amber was collecting wash water and tomato samples for analysis and talking to the growers about hazards and risk reduction.

These trips were part of a program that Doug, Amber and Denton Hoffman, then General Manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, had created. On that trip, Denton told me that what kept him up at night was the thought of a customer in Pittsburgh or Cleveland getting sick from one of his industry’s 200+ members products.

That one incident could close the border to the hundreds of thousands of pounds of tomatoes and cucumbers that were being shipped all over the Eastern U.S.

I think the story is that Denton approached Doug sometime after following a Cyclospora outbreak linked to Guatemalan raspberries. Initially California strawberries were fingered for the illnesses. Denton saw how an outbreak, even if the industry wasn’t the source, could cost millions. So he wanted a robust, science-based and defendable food safety program to protect his members.

I took over Amber’s role as food safety coordinator and worked alongside Denton from 2001-2005. After declining health over the past few years and a stroke in 2015, Denton passed away last week.

I can’t find the words to describe how my experience with Denton shaped me. I have to steal Doug’s words, ‘This guy was a champion of on-farm food safety, long before it was fashionable.’ Yep.

Food safety, Idaho style

Posted on by
Reply

The kids in Idaho are alright. Thanks to University of Idaho’s Josh Bevan and the rest of the IFT Intermountain section, I’m in Sun Valley, Idaho taking in the sites after talking some food safety stuff. I gave a talk Friday morning (slides here) on things we’ve seen on barfblog that some might consider emerging issues (kimchi, tempeh, kombucha, sous vide) and a bit on where mere mortals in the kitchen might get food safety information.

One of the things I talked about was illnesses from handling and/or eating raw flour – current with Canadian’s experiencing their second outbreak in a few months.

From CBC news (home of Hockey Night in Canada and topical food safety news):

A new, separate recall involves a batch of Rogers 10-kilogram all-purpose flour possibly contaminated with E.coli and sold at B.C. Costco stores.The recall was triggered by a Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) investigation after five people in B.C. all became infected with the same strain of E.coli.The B.C. Centre for Disease Control tested the Rogers flour purchased by one of the victims who fell ill after eating raw dough. It contained the E.coli strain O121.Rogers Foods says a direct link to its flour product has not yet been proven and that it’s working with the CFIA on investigating the situation.The company stresses that people can protect themselves by not eating raw flour or dough — the cooking process helps kill any lingering pathogens.”We must emphasize that flour is a raw agricultural product and must be thoroughly baked or cooked before eating,” Rogers Foods said in a letter to customers.

Also this week, Schaffner posed a question to a Facebook group of food safety nerds, ‘E. coli in flour: So always there and now we see it, or new problem?’

My guess, instep with lots of the responses, is it has been there in low levels resulting illnesses. But they looked sporadic with the long shelf life of the product and commingling.

Back in Idaho, I shared some of the materials that from a workshop on STEC in flour that Natalie Seymour and I organized. Karen Neil of CDC, Tim Jackson from Nestle and Scott Hood from General Mills spoke about challenges in flour food safety. The workshop focused on stuff like, there’s no kill step in the milling process, there’s literally tons of commingling and although it’s not intended to be eaten raw – sometimes it is (in cookie dough, cake mix).

And a risk factor in the 2016 Gold Medal-linked outbreak was kids handling raw tortilla and pizza dough in restaurants. There’s some other stuff known about flour – generic E. coli species have been found in flour in NZ. A survey conducted on wheat and flour milling in Australia showed no detectable Salmonella, 3.0 MPN/g of generic E. coli and 0.3 MPN/g of B. cereus recovered on average from 650 samples (from two mills).

And a 2007 US study found generic E. coli in 12.8% of commercial wheat flour samples examined.

We need better messages, better delivery and not just the same old stuff to get folks the risk information they need to make decisions.

 

Food Safety Talk 127: A five-second lather

Posted on by
Reply

Don and Ben get down and dirty with shower habits, trips to Idaho and calendar best practices. They go in-depth on the science of handwashing, including temperatures and lathering styles including a creepy mechanical pigskin hand simulator. The show ends with a response to Roderick on the Line’s question on keeping bacon fat on the stove and listener followup on home pasteurized eggs.

Episode 127 can be found here and on iTunes.

Show notes so you can follow at home:

Nacho cheese-linked botulism cases; how?

Posted on by
Reply
A father of two small kids, Martin Galindo-Larios Jr. has tragically died.
A 33 year old mother of three, Lavinia Kelly, is paralyzed, unable to speak or breathe on her own.
The New York Daily news cites, Theresa Kelly recalling her sister calling, unable to express what was wrong with her. “My phone rings and I pick up the phone it’s her and she can’t articulate a word,” she told the news station. “I’ve never seen my sister not have function of her body or not be able to communicate.”
There are at least eight others ill. From one of the scariest foodborne pathogens, C. botulinum. This is a terrible outbreak with a lot of unknowns.
All because of gas station nacho cheese.
The type of cheese comes in a bag, usually inserted into a dispenser that heats it up and holds it until someone pours it on their Doritos. The cheese linked to these illnesses, from Gehl Foods, is produced aseptically to be stored at room temperature. Unrelated, Gehl Foods had a recall on their dispensers a few years ago due to fire risks.
And much of the information that’s out there points to the cheese being the vehicle, but since all the illnesses are linked to one gas station, Valley Oak Food and Fuel gas station in Walnut Grove, California, it’s likely that storage, handling or both led to the illnesses.
Nozzles on food and beverage dispensers are notorious for soil and have been linked to listeria issues in the past. Its possible that buildup or contamination from hands or food placed a spore in the nozzle area – and it got sucked up into the anaerobic cheese bag. This only becomes an issue if the temperature of the cheese in the dispenser drops lower than 120F or so.
Maybe a food employee took a half empty bag out of the dispenser, and put an old cap back on the bag, and left it out at room temperature for a while (like hours or days) by accident. And then reinstalled it.
Or possibly there was a puncture of the bag in transport or storage that shoved a spore deep inside the cheese – and the product coagulated and hardened, resealing the package.
I’m done speculating now.
I told Laura Geggei at Live Science about botulism, and why it scares me.
The toxin blocks nerve messages, which, in turn, causes people to lose control of their muscles, Chapman told Live Science. For instance, people who have consumed the toxin may have trouble swallowing, droopy eyelids and difficulty breathing, he said.
“They are essentially paralyzed, as the toxin surrounds those nerves and blocks those messages,” Chapman told Live Science.
“People can recover only as the toxin gets scrubbed from their body, which is a long, horrible process,” Chapman said. “Some people never recover from it. I’ve seen cases of people, years later, still walking with a cane [and] having problems with speech.”

The intersection of marijuana and food safety

Posted on by
Reply

I hate missing hockey. Skipping my Monday night game was worth it though; I spent some time with some old friends at the Rocky Mountain Food Safety Conference in Denver. I’d been with the good folks of Colorado before, speaking at the conference in 2006 (and again virtually with Doug a couple of years ago).

Sometimes food safety meetings have similar slots: updates on recent outbreaks, a company’s new training strategy or someone talking about environmental sampling. The Rocky Mountain Food Safety Conference was different. I spent an afternoon learning about keeping marijuana and food products safe.

I found it fascinating.

Doug often cites a Neil Young quote that guides a lot of stuff that I do ‘Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.’ Farmers’ markets, food pantries, roadkill. These are all in the food safety ditch. So is pot.

I learned that marijuana (and the active compounds of THC and CBD) can be consumed in lots of different ways – smoking is the somewhat traditional way, but there’s vaping, edibles (cookies, candies, chocolates, etc) and even suppositories, tampons and personal lubricants. Who knew.

What was really compelling is the intricacies of the regulations and enforcement. The state health folks are in a tough spot because they receive federal funds – and the product is still seen as illegal by the feds. This has led to some local health departments have stepped in to regulating not only just the retail stores on how they handle the food and other products – but also the marijuana infused product processing. I’ve said that environmental health specialists are the salt of the earth; passionate protectors of public health and have some of the very best stories. It’s heartening to see folks who know food safety stuff putting together a framework of science-based guidelines for pathogen control, pesticides and other risky compounds. They’re trailblazers since there’s not a whole lot to go on. They look to LACF thermal death curves for C. bot spore inactivation in oils and tinctures (these aren’t highly refined oils) and requiring folks to manage cleaning and sanitation using GMP and the Food Code as a guide. There are risks, marijuana smoking was linked to a 1981 outbreak of salmonellosis (an oldie but a goodie) and some of the edibles out there have the correct pH and water activity to support the growth of pathogens.

And labeling, serving/dose size matters.

My guess is that there are a few processors who are really good at the THC part of things – and not so good at the food safety. It’s cool that the local regulators are working with them to keep the stoners safe.

I got back in time for my hockey game tonight.

Not everything is food safety

Posted on by
1

Travel woes en route to an FAO meeting (oh, that is a food safety hook)  in Russia resulted in me having 12 hours to kill in Paris. Instead of staying in the city, I did something today that I’ve thought about for a while but had not had the chance- rented the world’s smallest stick shift car and traveled to Normandy. I drove through the French countryside and walked along Juno Beach where many Canadians landed on D-Day.

Most emotional for me was seeing an area of the world that had an impact on my life – the small villages of Le Mesnil-Patry and Norrey-en-Bessin. My grandfather, who Sam is named for, was part of a small group of seven that survived a battle where their company lost 98 soldiers. My grandfather was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal. Although we were very close he never spoke about it.

 

Nacho cheese linked to gas station botulism outbreak

Posted on by
1

Before I moved to the south I hadn’t thought about a gas station as a place for a meal. Growing up in Ontario (that’s in Canada) I was familiar with a Tim Hortons/gas station combos, but there weren’t a lot of independent stations selling foods like here in North Carolina. Most gas stations are stocked at least with crockpots full of boiled peanuts or metal rollers frying hot dogs. Sometimes there are tacos, tamales, or bbq sandwiches.

Oh and nachos with a faucet that squirts cheese.

That kind of cheese has, according to the Sacramento Bee, been linked to a cluster of five cases of botulism at a California gas station.

On Wednesday, Sacramento County Public Health officials pinpointed the source of the botulism outbreak as “prepared food, particularly nacho cheese sauce” from Valley Oak Food and Fuel gas station in the Delta. Five people are hospitalized in serious condition with botulism, a rare but serious paralytic illness caused by a nerve toxin, and an additional patient is suspected of having the illness.

The gas station, which sits on a busy stretch of River Road across from the Walnut Grove Bridge, stopped selling food and drink products on May 5 after the county Department of Environmental Management temporarily revoked its permit. Employees of the gas station refused to comment this week on the suspected outbreak.

Some of the gas station nacho cheeses come in an aseptically sealed bag (right, exactly as shown) that can be stored at room temperature because of how they are processed, despite the high pH and high water activity. Kathy Glass and Ellin Doyle wrote a fantastic summary of the safety of processed cheeses and they highlight three bot outbreaks of cheese sauces in the past.

A single case of fatal botulism in California was associated with the consumption of a Liederkranz Brand canned cheese spread in 1951. Few details are available about the formulation and conditions under which this product was produced and stored. The product label indicated that it was a pasteurized process soft ripened cheese spread with citric acid and vegetable gum added. Moisture and salt levels were not reported, but pH of the product was 5.9.

Two decades later in 1974, a cheese spread with onions was implicated in an outbreak in Argentina that resulted in six cases of botulism and three deaths.. As with the Liederkranz product, this spread was not thermally processed to be commercially sterile nor was it formulated specifically for safety. Laboratory experiments revealed that botulinal toxin was produced in cheese spread samples with a similar formulation (pH 5.7, aw 0.97) after 30 to 70 days’ storage at 30oC.

A third outbreak involving process cheese resulted in eight cases of botulism and one death in Georgia in 1993. The implicated cheese sauce was aseptically canned to eliminate C. botulinum spores; therefore, it was not formulated to prevent botulinal growth. The epidemiological investigation suggested that the product was likely recontaminated in the restaurant with C. botulinum spores and stored at room tempera- ture for several days before use. Inoculation studies of the implicated cheese sauce (pH 5.8, aw 0.96) revealed that botulinal toxin was produced after 8 days’ storage at 22oC.

 

 

Food Safety Talk 125: Slapping it on a bun

Posted on by
Reply

Don and Ben talked big concerts, Flaming Lips (the band, not the anatomy) obscure Canadian bands covering Neil Young and then got into some food safety stuff like the particulars of deer antler tea, with some deer penis sprinkled in. The discussion went to the rules around home-based food businesses and how risk-based decisions are made in regulatory choices. The episode finished with some listener feedback on washing produce and mold and whether food employees at Blue Apron (and like mail-order businesses) should have local health department food handler training.

Episode 125 can be found here and on iTunes.

Show notes so you can follow along at home: