Category Archives: E. coli

Facebook don’t know food safety: Zuckerberg once served Dorsey cold, hand-killed goat

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recalls as his “most memorable encounter” with Facebook boss Zuckerberg, in a new interview with Rolling Stone.

“He made goat for me for dinner. He killed the goat,” Dorsey says, before clarifying that he didn’t actually witness the slaughter. “He killed it before. I guess he kills it. He kills it with a laser gun and then the knife.”

When the interviewer rightly questions Dorsey’s use of the term “laser gun”, Dorsey says: “I don’t know. A stun gun. They stun it, and then he knifed it. Then they send it to a butcher.”

Though it was undoubtedly a smart move for Zuckerberg to send the animal to be prepared by a professional after he killed it, he might have also considered hiring a chef, with Dorsey indicating the meat wasn’t exactly cooked when it was served.

“I go, ‘We’re eating the goat you killed?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Have you eaten goat before?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I love it.’ I’m like, ‘What else are we having?’ ‘Salad.’ I said, ‘Where is the goat?’ ‘It’s in the oven.’

“Then we waited for about 30 minutes. He’s like, ‘I think it’s done now.’ We go in the dining room. He puts the goat down. It was cold. That was memorable. I don’t know if it went back in the oven. I just ate my salad.”

Being ruminants, goats are a significant source of Shiga-toxin producing E. Coli (STEC) with estimates of 10 per cent contaminated.

A pledge to only eat animals he personally killed was part of Zuckerberg’s yearly self-imposed challenge in 2011. Laser guns weren’t specifically mentioned in the challenge, but at this point nobody would be surprised if he used one. Apparently the goat was one of six he kept at his Palo Alto property.

Les Nessman explains how to talk about continuing leafy green outbreaks

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A romaine lettuce task force was organized by the industry in December to help prevent future outbreaks, said Jennifer McEntire, vice president of food safety and technology for the United Fresh Produce Association.

The task force has representation from all types of growing operations from different growing regions, she said.

One primary focus of the task force is preventing outbreaks by looking at root cause analysis, she said.

A table of leafy green-related outbreaks – at least 80 since 1995 – is available here.

But Les Nessman gets to the heart of this political process — in 1978:

UK family still waiting for answers one year after E. coli poisoning

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The Yorkshire Post reports parents of two boys who be­came se­ri­ously ill af­ter con­tract­ing E.coli 0157 sus­pected to be from beef burg­ers are still wait­ing for an­swers from su­per­mar­ket gi­ant Sains­bury’s more than a year later.

Al­fie and Oliver Maude, then seven and three, from Rich­mond, North York­shire, came down with up­set stom­achs two days af­ter eat­ing the Taste the Dif­fer­ence Aberdeen An­gus burg­ers in Oc­to­ber 2017. Al­fie was ad­mit­ted to Dar­ling­ton hos­pi­tal two days later with ex­cru­ci­at­ing stom­ach pain and se­vere de­hy­dra­tion.

He was then rushed to New­cas­tle hos­pi­tal for dial­y­sis be­cause his kid­neys were fail­ing. Both boys had de­vel­oped a se­ri­ous con­di­tion, hae­molytic uremic syn­drome, al­though Oliver did not re­quire dial­y­sis.

Both will have to un­dergo reg­u­lar check-ups well into adult­hood to keep an eye on their kid­neys.

Mother Vicci Maude said she and hus­band Steve were be­sides them­selves with worry as their boys “puffed up and turned yel­low”. She said: “When the con­sul­tant came in she said some chil­dren don’t sur­vive this – ob­vi­ously it was the hard­est thing I’ve ever had to hear. They still find it very stress­ful hav­ing to go back to hos­pi­tal and hav­ing blood tests. I just feel they (Sains­bury’s) need to take some re­spon­sibiity.”

Heterosexual man: Development of a phage cocktail to control the top 7 shiga -toxin E. coli serogroups on fresh produce

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Sorenne is afraid of bugs.

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.

Why so many outbreaks in 2018? I’m not sure there were, but math is hard

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Don and I recorded a podcast today and one of the potential show titles was math is hard.

I’m writing from experience, I had to take calculus in high school twice to get it. Explaining probability and risk is even tougher.

Some of the math of food safety illness burden comes down to this for me: There are billions of meals every year in the U.S. that don’t lead to foodborne illness.

That’s good.

There are millions of meals every year in the U.S. that do lead to foodborne illness.

That’s bad.

There was some buzz in the food and health media after a CNN article stated that CDC had investigated more multistate outbreaks in 2018, 21 in total, than any previous year.

That’s sorta true, but sorta not, depends on how it’s counted.

Rachel Rettner of Live Science talked to me about this last week and I shared the National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS) dashboard with her. This is a super cool tool that CDC has where they track all the reported outbreaks in the U.S. and the number isn’t 21. It’s probably closer to 4000. At least that’s around what has been reported into NORS annually since 2009 when reporting got better.

I’m throwing out the multistate part in my calculations, because the microbes don’t care about state lines or borders.

From the Live Science article:

Experts say that, although we heard a lot about foodborne disease in 2018, it doesn’t mean that we had any more outbreaks than usual. Indeed, it’s likely that the U.S. always has about the same number of outbreaks every year, said Benjamin Chapman, an associate professor and food safety specialist at North Carolina State University. But critically, health officials are getting better at detecting these outbreaks, Chapman said, leading to an increase in reported outbreaks in recent years.
“The science is getting better, and the public health resources are getting better, and we’re just getting better at finding things,” Chapman told Live Science

And although these outbreaks made headlines, there are hundreds more outbreaks that we don’t necessarily hear about that get investigated and reported every year. (An outbreak refers to an instance when two or more people get the same illness from the same contaminated food or ingredient, according to the CDC.)
Indeed, according to the CDC’s National Outbreak Reporting System, which summarizes data on U.S. reports of foodborne illness, there were about 4,000 foodborne illness outbreaks each year from 2012 to 2016, (the most recent years for which data is available). That’s up from only about 1,000 reported outbreaks in 2008.
That “looks like this big jump” in outbreaks, Chapman said. But the increase is really due to health officials getting better at “connecting the dots” to find more foodborne illness outbreaks, he said. In other words, the outbreaks were happening, but health officials just weren’t as good as detecting them.

Unfortunately, better detection of outbreaks means that the total number of reported outbreaks likely won’t be going down anytime soon.
“As we get better at reducing risk [of foodborne illness], we also get better at finding things we didn’t know were there,” Chapman said. “I don’t expect that we would have any less or any more outbreaks in 2019.”

Rewashing those pre-washed greens isn’t doing anything

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If I’m eating pre-washed lettuce I just open the bag and throw it on the plate. Because there’s not much I can do, safety-wise, to it once it’s in my home. If there’s pathogenic E. coli, Listeria or Salmonella there (or others) I’m stuck with it.

Cindy Tran of the Daily Mail writes that Sydney, Australia nutritionist Susie Burrell recently talked about food safety risks on a local morning show including a recommendation to rewash prewashed leafy greens. 

She said people should always wash their store-bought salads, even if the packaging says ‘pre-washed’.

‘You must wash those ones out of the bags. It does say pre-washed but I would always wash it again because it has sat there for a long period, you don’t know what the turnover time is.’

I’m following recommendations from a bunch of my food safety friends who reviewed the literature on cut, bagged, washed, ready-to-eat leafy greens from a few years ago. In the abstract, they write:

The panel concluded that leafy green salad in sealed bags labeled “washed” or “ready-to-eat” that are produced in a facility inspected by a regulatory authority and operated under cGMPs, does not need additional washing at the time of use unless specifically directed on the label.

Leafy green food safety risks need to be addressed before they get to me, all I can do by washing it again is increase the chance I cross-contaminate the salad precursor in my home. My purchasing choice is based in trust that growers, packers and processors know what they are doing, and do it. But at best, they can only remove 90-99% of what is there with a wash.

And I can’t do any better.

365 burgers in a year, how many were cooked to 160F?

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I like hamburgers, not enough to eat an average of one a day though. According to the Los Angeles Times, that’s what restaurant investor Lawrence Longo did in 2018. Added difficulty, he did it at 365 different restaurants.

When asked to describe the perfect burger Longo responded:

Not too much going on. Bun-cheese-meat-bun. If you have the right meat, the right bun, the right ratio, you don’t need any ingredients on that burger. The juices on that burger are all you really need.

I’d add that it was cooked to 160F and verified with a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

 

Food safety and marketing folks should get together and improve messaging

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One of the common discussions I have with industry folks is around the disconnect between marketing and food safety. The good food safety people will remain nameless, but a few times a year I hear at a meeting or via email/text/DM that someone in their organization doesn’t get food safety and puts stuff out without thinking of consequences.

John Bassett, friend of the blog (and pod) you can find him at @foodriskguy on Twitter, a great food safety risk assessment dude called out some folks at My Food Bag NZ (a Blue Apron-type meal service) for missing the mark on their messaging.

 

The good folks at My Food Bag responded with a canned response. I’d rather hear from their food safety folks.

 

 

Food Safety Talk 171: 350 Million Caesars

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It’s a Christmas miracle as Don and Ben finally align schedules after snow kept Ben from his microphone and Don’s travel. After a little bit of banter on construction noises, and Canadian cocktails, the guys talk about egg nog and the effects of alcohol on Salmonella. The conversation goes to eating human flesh and brains (the guys are not fans) and mycotoxins in a fermented Chinese tea, puerh. Don and Ben chat about cleaning retail stores after recalled produce has been on display and whether Romaine lettuce is now worry-free.

Food Safety Talk episode 171 is now available here and at iTunes.

Show notes so you can follow along at home:

It’s explained by shit in irrigation water: Santa Barbara farm first fingered with outbreak strain of E coli O157 in Romaine lettuce that sickened 59 in US, 28 in Canada: Tumble those dice

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Welcome to Washington, D.C., Frank, and government PR.

On Nov. 20, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned the American public of a multi-state outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 linked to romaine lettuce and advised against eating any romaine lettuce on the market at that time.

According to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. and FDA Deputy Commissioner Frank Yiannas, we  have new results to report from this investigation tracing the source of the contamination to at least one specific farm. Based on these and other new findings, we’re updating our recommendations for the romaine lettuce industry and consumers.
Today, we’re announcing that we’ve identified a positive sample result for the outbreak strain in the sediment of a local irrigation reservoir used by a single farm owned and operated by Adam Bros. Farms in Santa Barbara County.

The FDA will be sending investigators back to this farm for further sampling. It’s important to note that although this is an important piece of information, the finding on this farm doesn’t explain all illnesses and our traceback investigation will continue as we narrow down what commonalities this farm may have with other farms that are part of our investigation. While the analysis of the strain found in the people who got ill and the sediment in one of this farm’s water sources is a genetic match, our traceback work suggests that additional romaine lettuce shipped from other farms could also likely be implicated in the outbreak. Therefore, the water from the reservoir on this single farm doesn’t fully explain what the common source of the contamination. We are continuing to investigate what commonalities there could be from multiple farms in the region that could explain this finding in the water, and potentially the ultimate source of the outbreak.

As of Dec. 13, our investigation yielded records from five restaurants in four different states that have identified 11 different distributors, nine different growers, and eight different farms as potential sources of contaminated romaine lettuce. Currently, no single establishment is in common across the investigated supply chains. This indicates that although we have identified a positive sample from one farm to date, the outbreak may not be explained by a single farm, grower, harvester, or distributor.

At the same time, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control updated its warning to advise U.S. consumers to not eat and retailers and restaurants not serve or sell any romaine lettuce harvested from certain counties in the Central Coastal growing regions of northern and central California. If you do not know where the romaine is from, do not eat it.

  • Some romaine lettuce products are now labeled with a harvest location by region. Consumers, restaurants, and retailers should check bags or boxes of romaine lettuce for a label indicating where the lettuce was harvested.
      • Do not buy, serve, sell, or eat romaine lettuce from the following California counties: Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Barbara.
      • If the romaine lettuce is not labeled with a harvest growing region and county, do not buy, serve, sell, or eat it.
      • The Public Health Agency of Canada has identified ill people infected with the same DNA fingerprint of E. coliO157:H7 bacteria in Canada.