Reaching into the annals of foodborne illness history, there’s a quote in a paper by Rob Tauxe on traditional outbreak scenario:

[It] often follows a church supper, family picnic, wedding reception, or other social event. This scenario involves an acute and highly local outbreak, with a high inoculum dose and a high attack rate. The outbreak is typically immediately apparent to those in the local group, who promptly involve medical and public health authorities. The investigation identifies a food-handling error in a small kitchen that occurs shortly before consumption.

Congratulations unnamed Missouri caterer: you’re a traditional throwback.

According to the eMissourian, about 300 people got from Clostridium perfringens poisoning from gravy served at a wedding reception held at the Eagles Hall in Sullivan, Missouri.

C. perfringens spores often survive cooking but are not a problem until the food, like a big vat of gravy, is held at an improper temperature, or cooled improperly. The spores can germinate into cells which then can multiply to food poisoning levels if food is held between 41°F and 135°F for more than four hours.

Tests of food and stool samples came back positive for Clostridium perfringens, said Tony Buel, epidemiology specialist with the Franklin County Health Department.

About 100 people made reports to the county health department concerning the food poisoning. Some said they were aware of others who got sick, and it was estimated that more than 300 were affected.

About 750 people attended the April 5 wedding event at the Sullivan Eagles Hall, Buel said.

Hours after the wedding event people woke up experiencing symptoms of abdominal cramps and diarrhea, Buel said. Symptoms can last 24 hours.

Buel said the problem occurred when it took too long to cool the gravy down. That can cause bacteria growth and put toxins in food, he added.

Health officials inspected the catering facility, which, Buel said, was clean. The caterer handled another event the same day and no food poisoning happened.

The caterer was not penalized but was educated about the proper cooking process (maybe they should focus on cooling/hot holding? -ben), Buel said.

Buel said he did not want to release the name of the caterer because it could harm the business.

I guess the risk of hurting a business that doesn’t know how to handle foods for large crowds outweighs other event planners making an informed choice. If I was organizing a banquet or a wedding I’d want to know whether a caterer made 300 people sick before I hired them.

But I’m a bit of a weirdo.

Folks who want to make food in their home or garage and sell it are part of a growing business segment. By many accounts, the cottage food industry is growing in North America. Twenty U.S. states allow certain foods to be processed in the home and sold for consumption – but it’s a patchwork of regulatory approaches. In some states, the entire process is deregulated for certain exempt products. These products usually are limited to direct-selling (at a farmers’ market or roadside stand) of baked goods, jams and jellies.

The county extension agents I support are fielding an increased number of questions of how to break into the food industry in the past year. The situation in Canada apparently similar. According to CTV, Manitoba (that’s in Canada) is entering the cottage food fray and will explore how to ensure food safety while supporting the niche industry.

I collected baseball cards when I was a kid and once had a Ryne Sandberg rookie card. Growing up in an American League market, the Cubs shortstop was sort of a mythical figure – seen only in cards and on SportsCentre (that’s the Canadian version of SportsCenter).

Currently the Philadelphia Phillies’ manager, Sandberg is saying that he got food poisoning from Citi Field, while on a road trip to play the Mets. According to NJ.com, Sandberg lost six lbs in two days after eating at Shake Shack.

Shake Shack is trying to get a hold of Sandberg to smooth things over or make it right.

Later in the day, Mets first baseman Lucas Duda told ESPN New York that an undercooked burger from the same place left him feeling ill Friday night.

Wonder if Sandberg will go to Mama’s next time.

“A couple of coaches took a bite and didn’t like what they saw and threw the rest away,” Sandberg told reporters before Tuesday’s game. “I was in a rush, so I ended up putting it away. I had one piece of toast in two days, and I’m feeling fine about that. I don’t want anything in my stomach.”

It was only a matter of time until the pot brownie industry parroted the timeless line of “we’ve been doing this for x number of years and have never made anyone sick.” The Denver Post  home of a pot reviewer, reports that Denver health folks have some real concerns about the storage of THC-infused /extracted oil which is used as an ingredient in many edibles.

City officials said that since January 2013, inspectors have made at least 340 visits to edibles manufacturers and the medical dispensaries and recreational pot shops that sell their products.

Scott Henderson, food program supervisor for the Denver Department of Environmental Health, said the city began applying existing food regulations to edibles because of rising safety concerns. Plant-infused oils can support the growth of dangerous bacteria (or spore germination, outgrowth, multiplication and botulinum toxin formation -ben) that can cause illness if eaten, Henderson said.

The city’s food safety regulations classify plant-infused oils as “potentially hazardous foods,” meaning they must be stored refrigerated to prevent bacterial growth unless otherwise approved. The oils are used as the active ingredient in many infused foods.

At Home Baked, operating under a license held by Advanced Medical Alternatives, was instructed to stop selling and destroy its marijuana-infused baking mixes and oil pouches. The company used a cold-water hash extraction in oil stored in reduced oxygen packaging at room temperature, which is conducive to spore germination and toxin formation, a report says.

Co-owner James Ashkar said he understands the city’s concerns. But he said the botulism threat is virtually nonexistent, no one has ever gotten sick from his products and the city is overstepping its bounds in a “witch hunt on edibles.”

Marisa Bunning, associate professor and extension specialist in food science and human nutrition at Colorado State University, said time and temperature abuses have long been shown to make food unsafe.

“The system we have in place — with health departments maintaining the standards that have been set and citing establishments that don’t follow those — that is a very good system that prevents illness,” Bunning said. “This is a new industry, so it’s probably going to take some time to learn the safe handling practices that are necessary.”

Holding an herbs in oil mixture at room temperature allows for cell formation and growth. Garlic-in-oil mixtures, have been the source of multiple illnesses. U.S. Food and Drug Administration-mandated microbial inhibitors or acidifying agents for commercially available (and non-pot-containing) infused oils.

Pot brownies might be a nice treat for Denverites, botulism is not.

A lot of fresh produce safety verification was established in the absence of regulations. After dealing with fallout following outbreaks, food service and retail buyers started setting and enforcing standards for their suppliers. Between self-audits or declarations, regulatory inspections, buyer visits and third-party audits there’s a lot of data gathered on many factors – some risky, some not so much. 

Putting it all together is an exercise in exploring jurisdiction, laws, industry standards and vendor requirements. It’s a confusing patchwork, even for those in the supply chain. One of the standards, increasingly pointed to as a cost-effective option for small and medium-sized farmers, is found in the USDA GAPs audit.

In an attempt to pull back the curtain on the auditing process, Lancaster Online details a mock USDA GAPs audit at a Pennsylvania farm.

Most people, farmers included, do not like being held up to scrutiny. But the Woerner family in Adams County offered their operation up to just that last week. They allowed Brenda Sheaffer, a state Department of Agriculture inspector, to conduct a public mock audit at their packing house. The walk-through, organized by Penn State Extension, was designed to help growers see an operation through an inspector’s eyes.

No birds were nesting in the rafters, and the roof did not have any glass skylights that could break and fall into the food when packing time comes around. So far, so good.

“Wood cannot be sanitized,” she said. “You can clean it, but you can’t sanitize it.” Instead, the surfaces should be metal or plastic, or they could be coated with food-grade paint, she said. Wood is a touchy subject because many farmers transport their fruit in wooden crates. Even though it is a common practice, those wooden crates can lead to a deduction on the audit, though the crates by themselves will not cause the farm to fail the inspection, Sheaffer said.

My keychain is loaded with shopper loyalty cards, something that I was introduced to when I moved to North Carolina. Every few days when I take Sam grocery shopping (one of his favorite pastimes) I swipe the Food Lion, Harris Teeter or Lowe’s Foods barcode to get our deals. 

We also get email alerts if something we purchased has a safety issue – a nice secondary benefit – but like Bill Hallman says, awareness is only the first step in recalls.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been touting the use of shopper loyalty cards as epidemiological tools for years. Lots of data is collected by retailers with every swipe: date, product, lot, location. CDC reported that the cards aided in an investigation into a 2009 outbreak of Salmonella montevideo linked to pepper (which was used as an ingredient in multiple foods).

The late Bill Keene told NBC News in 2013 “We rely on people’s memories, which are quite fallible, and on our interviews, which are quite fallible. Shopper club cards are a good source of finding out what people ate.”

The good folks at the other CDC, the British Columbia Centers for Disease Control (that’s in Canada) published a report in Eurosurvellance this week about a hepatitis A outbreak investigation  that was solved using loyalty cards.

In 2012, an investigation was launched following the identification of three non-travel-related hepatitis A cases within one week in one of BC’s five geographically based health authorities, compared with 10 hepatitis A cases in the affected HA in the previous year, six of which were related to travel to endemic countries

 Authorisation was obtained from cases who shopped at major supermarket chains for those chains to release detailed shopping histories via the cases’ store loyalty cards. Shopping histories going back three months were analysed to include products with an extended refrigerated or frozen storage life.

I’m currently at the Conference for Food Protection biannual meeting in Orlando viewing and slightly participating in the world of changing retail food safety rules. It’s fascinating to see the sausage making up close. While representatives from industry, regulators, consumer advocacy groups and academia discuss stuff like handwashing, drying and water temperatures, the Public Health Agency of Canada released it’s 2012 FoodNet Data.

A quick look through the data makes me think that something is going on in Canada when it comes to Campylobacter. Earlier this year CDC released their 2012 food safety progress report and a 14 per cent increase in reported Campylobacter illnesses (to a rate of 14 cases/100,000) garnered a frowny face.

The FoodNet Canada data released today shows that Canada’s 2011 national estimate of campylobacteriosis was about double the rate of the U.S. at 27 cases/100,000.

Wow.

The new FoodNet Canada data shows a campylobacteriosis rate at a British Columbia sentinel site as 39/100,000. Triple the rate in the U.S.

Double wow.

Something must be up – whether it’s a much higher rate of contamination on food (which is primarily poultry) or the practices throughout the farm-to-fork chain.

FoodNet Canada’s primary objectives are to: detect changes in trends in human enteric disease and levels of pathogen exposure from food, animal and water sources in a defined population, strengthen source attribution efforts in Canada by determining significant exposure factors for enteric illness, and assess the effectiveness of food safety programs and targeted interventions.

FoodNet Canada currently has two sentinel sites in operation: the Region of Waterloo Public Health in Ontario since 2005, and the Fraser Health Authority of lower mainland British Columbia since 2010. In each sentinel site, enhanced human disease surveillance is performed in parallel with active surveillance of enteric pathogens in various exposure sources.

Retail level surveillance results from FoodNet Canada indicate that Salmonella, Campylobacter and Listeria monocytogenes are frequently found on retail chicken breasts and in some cases more frequently on processed poultry products. These could be potential areas of focus for food safety interventions.

In 2012, campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis and giardiasis were the most commonly reported enteric diseases in FoodNet Canada’s sentinel sites. Overall, the total number of endemic enteric cases reported in the ON and BC sites in 2012 was lower than that reported in 2011. The incidence rate of sporadic, endemic cryptosporidiosis decreased in the ON site from 2011 to 2012. The incidence rate of total salmonellosis cases decreased in the BC site from 2011 to 2012, due to fewer reported outbreak and endemic cases (travel cases did not have an impact).

Travel continues to be an important factor in the burden of enteric disease. In 2012, over 30% of all cases of enteric disease were associated with travel outside of Canada, in both the ON and BC sites.

Food Safety Talk, a bi-weekly podcast for food safety nerds, by food safety nerds. The podcast is hosted by Ben Chapman and barfblog contributor Don Schaffner, Extension Specialist in Food Science and Professor at Rutgers University. Every two weeks or so, Ben and Don get together virtually and talk for about an hour.  They talk about what’s on their minds or in the news regarding food safety, and popular culture. They strive to be relevant, funny and informative — sometimes they succeed. You can download the audio recordings right from the website, or subscribe using iTunes.

In Episode 59 Don and Ben start the show talking about producing stuff, productivity, procrastinating and the excitement of being the bottleneck. Don then spoke about his love of treadmill writing using Dragon Dictate software. David Allen’s two-minute rule and Omnifocus (not to be confused with the five-second rule) also made another appearance. Don also hinted that a certain productivity expert may make an appearance at IAFP 2014. This information made Ben get excited and talk really fast.

Ben talked about watching a documentary about The Improv and took away that food safety communicators and some comedians both benefit from studying storytelling. The guys talked about blocking off specific times in the day to practice your craft (whatever it is).

Don and Ben announced that the infamous Andreas would be leaving the show as master show note person. Don and Ben wished Andreas the best, made him a lifetime member of the Food Safety Talk family and expressed their gratitude to him as helping grow the show. He will be missed. Don also talked about Scott Hurd and Wilber Feagan, who both passed away within 24hrs.

In the new segment, Outbreak Flashback, the guys discussed the 2007 Castleberry’s botulism outbreak and it’s impacts. Don stepped through an FDA investigation report that Bill Marler had on his blog and highlighted some of the lessons that can be taken away for microbiologists as well as industry members.

The guys happened to be in Orlando at the same time and didn’t connect with each other in person. Don was speaking at the Florida Association for Food Protection and Ben was visiting with the National Registry of Food Safety Professionals folks about non-traditional food manager training.

Don and Ben then discussed a question about a New Jersey entrepreneur making and selling granola at a Pennsylvania farmers’ market.

At the end of the show Don gave Ben a statistics test on confidence intervals from Andrew Gelmen’s blog. Andrew is also the source of this excellent paper on storytelling.

In after dark the guys talked about green jellybeans, acne and setting up projects with a statistics person in advance.