In this very special pre-Thanksgiving episode, Don and Ben start with talking about Ben’s on-set experiences this week, which was like a food safety holiday. The guys then talk about the challenges connecting with entertainment producers and publishers around getting food safety messages into recipes and cooking shows. The conversation goes to pizza and COVID-19 (Australian and Jersey), Thanksgiving plans (or lack thereof) and eating just black licorice as nutrient source. The episode ends with a discussion about number and size of COVID-19 clusters of in various food settings.
The episode can be found on your favorite podcast app or downloaded here.
Although trained in molecular biology, genetics and food science, I always had a desire to additionally express my creativity as a writer. In 1986I put aside my fears and made my way to the second floor of the university centre, home to all things student, including the University of Guelph student newspaper, The Ontarion.
I approached the editor-in-chief, who had issued a call for additional writers, and boldly – it seemed bold at the time – said. I want to write.
But rather than do record reviews or movie reviews, which everyone wanted to write, I said I want to write about science. I was a MSc student at the time.
After a few published pieces, I was awarded a weekly science column. The next year, through a series of weird events, I became editor-in-chief and lost interest in grad school (or was it the other way around?).
For a newbie journo, it was a struggle to come up with a weekly column while running my experiments to understand the basis of disease resistance –Verticillium wilt – in tomatoes.
My cats led the way.
My first warm-blooded pets – whom I named Clark and Kent — had been provided by my veterinary student girlfriend. I became fascinated with cat behavior, and thought the 25,000 potential readers would share my cat voyeurism.
Some did, enough to secure my weekly column and write about other sciencey things.
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, (B. Breedlove) and the British Library, London, UK (J. Igunma) write in the Dec. 2020 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases that Felis catus, the only domesticated species of cat in the family Felidae, flourishes on every continent except Antarctica. Able to thrive in almost any climate and habitat, it is among the world’s most invasive species. Current estimates of the global cat population, including pet, stray, and feral cats, range from 200 million to 600 million. Where there are humans, more than likely there are also cats.
Humans living in agricultural villages in northern Africa and the Near East are believed to have domesticated the African wildcat (Felis lybica) between 8,000 to 12,000 years ago. Archaeologist Magdalena Krajcarz and colleagues noted, “The cat’s way to domestication is a complex and still unresolved topic with many questions concerning the chronology of its dispersal with agricultural societies and the nature of its evolving relationship with humans.” Likely stored grains and trash piles in villages attracted rodent pests, which in turn lured local wildcats and initiated a nascent mutualistic relationship that has since flourished.
From those villages, cats found their way around the world. Authors Lee Harper and Joyce L. White wrote that ancient sailors “were quick to see the advantage of having cats aboard ship during long voyages to protect their food supplies from damage by rodents.” Trade and commerce helped spread cats from the Middle East to various ports of call in Europe, the Far East and Orient, and the Americas. Throughout this common history, cats have been both reviled and revered by humans.
During the Middle Ages in Europe, some religious institutions considered cats evil, leading to thousands being killed. Later, however, the Black Death spread by fleas on rats contributed to cats’ redemption. Harper and White noted, “The cat’s skill as a hunter of vermin was desperately needed. Its reputation was salvaged. Owning a cat was back in style.”
Ancient Egyptians ascribed to cats many characteristics shared with deities they worshipped. Freyja, Norse goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, rode on a cat-drawn chariot. Temples in medieval Japan often kept a pair of cats to protect precious manuscripts from being ruined by mice. In the Kingdom of Siam, which is modern-day Thailand, Buddhist monks welcomed cats into their temples, where they were protected as Maeo Wat (Temple Cats).
This month’s cover art, “two lucky cats to support leadership,” is the second folio from A Thai Treatise on Cats, created in the 19th century in central Thailand and acquired by the British Library in 2011. Such manuscripts about cats were made for breeders in Thailand at least from the 18th century on, although it is believed that cat breeding goes back to the beginnings of the ancient Thai Kingdom of Ayutthaya in the 14th century.
The positive side of cat ownership, as celebrated in those cat treatises, is acknowledged on the CDC website, “Research has shown that cats can provide emotional support, improve moods, and contribute to the overall morale of their owners. Cats are also credited with promoting socialization among older individuals and physically or mentally disabled people.” Cats, as noted earlier, have also historically helped control the spread of rodent-borne diseases among humans.
Nonetheless, living in close quarters with cats carries some health risks. Cats can transfer various zoonotic diseases, including Campylobacter infection, cat–scratch disease, cryptosporidiosis, hookworm infection, plague, rabies, and salmonellosis. Cats are the only animal in which the Toxoplasma gondii parasite completes its life cycle, and humans in close contact with cat litter, for example, are at risk of developing toxoplasmosis, which pregnant women can potentially transmit to a fetus. Much less common is transfer of disease from humans to animals, such as the suspected case of human-to-cat transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 reported in this issue. (Both owner and cat recovered.)
Detecting, responding to, and preparing for emerging zoonotic infections―which, like cats, have made their way around the world with our help―are major challenges for public health leaders. Even if cats are not actual talismans or have the power to improve leadership, spending a few minutes considering these lucky cats may provide public health officials a brief respite or serendipitous insight.
In consideration of our mutual relationship with cats
Eoghan Moloney of the Independent writes three unregistered online sushi restaurants were ordered to close by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) after it was found they were being run from a bedroom of a house in Dublin.
Koi Sushi, Nagoya Sushi and Kyoto Sushi takeaway restaurants were all registered to the same address of a house in the Santry area of Dublin and were ordered to close after the FSAI found them in breach of numerous laws around food and food safety.
Dr Pamela Byrne, Chief Executive, FSAI expressed particular concern at the conditions in which the high-risk sushi products were being stored in.
Dr Byrne said the conditions in which the Sushi restaurants were operating in “posed a grave and immediate danger” to consumer health.
“Running a food business that has not been registered and is therefore, not supervised is totally unacceptable and poses a very serious risk to consumers’ health.
“In these instances, the unregistered businesses were producing sushi without any hygiene or temperature controls. Sushi is a very high-risk product because it contains raw fish which must be kept chilled to reduce the growth of dangerous bacteria. It can also contain cooked rice, which is a ready-to-eat product that must be kept chilled.
“In these instances, the absence of a food safety management system, no monitoring of the cold chain and no evidence of traceability of raw ingredients posed a grave and immediate danger to consumer health,” Dr Byrne said.
The FSAI closure orders on the premises detail how food was being produced, processed and distributed in an unsatisfactory and unclean environment.
There was an absence of safe practice when handling raw fish and cooked rice, it says, with the enforcement order noting a lack of access to hand washing facilities in the ‘food prep’ area. There was also no access to hot water, which posed “a serious risk to public health.”
This paper came out in Feb. but was lost in the Covid haze.
Observation is always better than self-reported survey BS (I cooked the turkey below, in Brisbane, and it went back in the oven)
Chapman learned well. Abstract below.
The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of an intervention for consumer thermometer use by using a randomized experimental design and direct observation of meal preparation.
The study was conducted in test kitchen facilities in two locations in North Carolina (one urban and one rural). Cameras recorded participants’ actions at various locations throughout the kitchen and recorded the meal preparation from beginning to end. Before preparing the meal, a randomized treatment group watched a 3-min U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) food safety video “The Importance of Cooking to a Safe Internal Temperature and How to Use a Food Thermometer.”
Participants in the control and treatment groups were observed while cooking turkey burgers and preparing a salad to determine whether a thermometer was used to check the doneness of the turkey patties. Following meal preparation, all participants responded to a post-observation interview about food handling behaviors. Treatment group participants were also asked about the intervention.
A total of 383 people participated in the study (201 in the control group and 182 in the treatment group). Participants who viewed the video were twice as likely to use a thermometer to check the doneness of the turkey patties compared with the participants who were not exposed to the video (75 versus 34%) and twice as likely to place the thermometer in the correct location (52 versus 23%). Sixty-seven percent of participants who watched the video reported that it influenced their behavior in the kitchen.
This study demonstrates the importance of timing and framing of a behavioral intervention for thermometer use and highlights considerations for the development of additional messages (e.g., proper insertion).
An observational study of thermometer use by consumers when preparing ground turkey patties
Minh Duong; Ellen Thomas Shumaker; Sheryl C Cates; Lisa Shelley; Lydia Goodson; Christopher Bernstein; Aaron Lavallee; Margaret Kirchner; Rebecca Goulter; Lee-Ann Jaykus; Benjamin Chapman
I’m sorry I missed this story in Wales Online from Sept. 13, 2020, as I was doing my own recovering.
Cathy Owen writes that Sharon Jeffreys dreads this time of year.
As children return for the start of the school year, she relives what happened to her family 15 years ago over and over, and over again.
It was only two weeks into the start of the school year at Deri Primary in 2005 when her eldest son Chandler came home with stomach pains and the beginning of a nightmare for the young family.
Chandler had contracted E. coli O157 after eating contaminated food that had been supplied to the school by a local butcher.
But worse was to come after his younger brother Mason also became ill with the food poisoning.
The five-year-old had only just switched from taking packed lunches to having school dinners because he was so fond of chips and sausages.
“It was the worse decision I ever made,” says Sharon. “Mason loved his food. He was taking sausages and chips off the plates of children, so we decided to switch him to school dinners and he was really happy.”
Mason and eight-year-old Chandler were one of more than 150 schoolchildren and adults struck down in the south Wales outbreak. Thirty-one people were admitted to hospital, but Mason was the only one to die.
He had suffered high temperatures, stomach pains and had hallucinations and was admitted to Bristol children’s hospital, but died of kidney failure.
Today, his mum Sharon remembers every moment of those terrifying days.
“It will be 15 years on September 13 when Chandler first became ill,” she remembers. “When Mason started to be sick I tried to do everything I possibly could. Mason’s condition deteriorated considerably and he started to hallucinate saying he could see slugs and frogs.
“He went a yellow colour and started sweating like he’d just come out of a shower. Mason died two weeks later in unbearable pain.”
Reflecting on the amount of time that has passed, Sharon says: “I just can’t believe how long it has been, it feels like such a long time since I last saw him.
“It is still very difficult to think about, but at this time of year I always relive that awful time. I always dread September coming along because it takes me back there.
“I will never get over it, but I have had to learn how to live with it, but little things can take me back there. Like I see a blade of grass, or hear something and it takes me back with a jolt.
“After Mason died it was really busy, there was the inquest and then the legal proceedings, so I didn’t actually face what had happened for a long time, and then it went quiet and it was like trying to scramble out of a big black hole.
“Mason would have been 21 in December. He should have been looking forward to celebrating that milestone in his life.
“Chandler is 23 now, but he is not the same person. He and Mason were so close, it has left a big hole in his life.
“My younger son is 16 and it has affected his life too. He can’t remember Mason because he wasn’t even one at the time, and that upsets him.”
Fifteen years on and Sharon and her family still feel that they have been denied justice.
Bridgend butcher William Tudor, 56, was jailed for breaching hygiene laws by allowing raw meat to come into contact with cooked ham and turkey.
It was claimed he bought cheap frozen New Zealand mutton and passed it off as prime Welsh lamb and staff who brought him rotten meat unfit for consumption were told to “mince it up” and use it in faggots.
Sharon went on to immerse herself in other food safety issues, including a push to make restaurant inspection disclosure – scores on doors – mandatory in Wales. Voluntary disclosure misses the point and if large cities like Toronto, New York and Los Angeles can figure out how to make it mandatory so can Wales.
Disclosure became mandatory in Wales and Northern Ireland in Nov. 2013, thanks in part – or largely — to Sharon’s efforts.
The rest of the UK, and Australia, wallows in a voluntary system: lousy score, don’t post it.
“The food hygiene rating scheme is very important and it is good that more people are more aware after what happened,” says Sharon.
“It is a bit concerning to hear that Covid might have an impact on some council environmental services, but we need to make sure there are more officers carrying out inspections and making sure that best practice is being followed.
“I have heard back from people that they have used our story as part of their training for cooks and kitchen staff.
“Before Mason’s death I had never really heard of E. coli. I had heard the name, but didn’t know much about it.
“Now, I think people are definitely more aware. That is good to know, good to know that people haven’t forgotten, even after all these years.”
In Aug. 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control warned consumers not to eat, serve, or sell loose or bagged peaches packed or supplied by Prima Wawona or Wawona Packing Company LLC.
Peaches were sold in bags and individually (bulk/loose peaches).
If you can’t tell where the peaches are from, don’t eat them. Throw them out.
Don’t eat food made with these peaches.
Check your kitchen and refrigerator for recalled peaches. If you freeze fresh peaches to use later, check your freezer, too.
Retailers that sold these peaches include Aldi, Food Lion, Hannaford, Kroger, Target, Walmartand Wegmans.
The recalled bulk/loose peaches were sold in grocery stores through August 3, 2020 in various ways, typically loose in bins for shoppers to select.
The peaches may have the following stickers with Price Look Up (PLU) numbers on them: 4037, 4038, 4044, 4401, 94037, 94038, 94044, 94401. However, not all peaches with these PLU codes are supplied by Prima Wawona. If you are unsure of the brand or variety of your loose peaches, you can contact your retailer or supplier, or throw them out.
Brands and product codes for recalled peaches sold in bags include:
Wawona Peaches – 033383322001
Wawona Organic Peaches – 849315000400
Prima® Peaches – 766342325903
Organic Marketside Peaches – 849315000400
Kroger Peaches – 011110181749
Wegmans Peaches – 077890490488
Wash and sanitize places where peaches were stored, including countertops and refrigerator drawers or shelves.
Restaurants and retailers, as well as suppliers, distributors, and others in the supply chain, should clean and sanitize any surfaces that may have come in contact with recalled peaches, including cutting boards, countertops, refrigerators, and storage bins. If peaches from other sources were mixed with recalled peaches, all peaches should be discarded.Prior to the CDC announcement, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) warned warned the public not to consume and retailers, distributors, manufacturers, and food service establishments such as hotels, restaurants, cafeterias, hospitals, and nursing homes not to serve, use, or sell the products described below.
Prima Wawona, located in Fresno, California, has recalled fresh peaches with various brand names due to possible Salmonella contamination. Various importers in Canada are conducting a recall of the affected products.
Martin Wiedmann, a professor of food safety at Cornell University, told the New York Times, “The challenge with salmonella is salmonella can really enter or contaminate food almost anywhere in the whole chain. It could start from a field or an orchard, where salmonella could be introduced. It could be in a facility where the product is packaged. It could be from a human who carries salmonella.”
Customers who have the peaches at home, even if they are frozen, should not eat them and should toss them out immediately, the F.D.A. said. They should also throw away any items that were made with the peaches. Health officials also recommend cleaning and sanitizing the area where the fruit was kept, because it may have come into contact with and contaminated surfaces or containers.
This is important because, according to Dr. Wiedmann, salmonella is incredibly resilient.
“Salmonella is very good at surviving in the environment,” he said, “so there are examples where salmonella lived in an environment, a built environment — a processing plant or a building — for years.”
Food and Drug Administration official Mark Moorman told The Packer the “smarter” era of food safety has not yet arrived.
Moorman, director of FDA’s Office of Food Safety, spoke about the agency’s food safety goals on Aug. 20 at the U.S. Apple Association’s online 125th Annual Crop and Outlook Marketing Conference.
Recall of onions from Thomson International Inc., Bakersfield, Calif., were still occurring as of Aug. 20, Moorman said.
Smarter tools and approaches for prevention and outbreak rsponse;
New business models and retail modernization; and
Food safety culture.
He said the vision for the future is for a much more responsive food safety system, with end-to-end traceability.
“I want to be very clear with this group looking very hard and in our own culture and we are asking ourselves how do we influence consumer behavior,” he said.
Asked whether apples are low risk because they don’t come in contact with the ground, Moorman noted the current recall of peaches, which are linked to an outbreak of salmonella.
“I would agree in general that apples are a lower-risk (food), but all of us should remain humble, and recognize that the world of
Cucumbers found in retail markets are often waxed to improve visual appeal and retard moisture loss. This waxing may affect bacterial survival and the waxing process may facilitate cross-contamination between cucumbers. This study assessed survival of Salmonella on waxed and un-waxed cucumbers and the potential for Salmonella cross-contamination during the waxing process.
Fresh waxed or un-waxed cucumbers were spot-inoculated with a Salmonella enterica cocktail. Three different wax coatings (mineral oil, vegetable oil, or petroleum wax) were manually applied to un-waxed cucumbers using polyethylene brushes. Salmonella transfer from inoculated cucumbers to brush or to un-inoculated cucumbers was quantified.
Higher Salmonella concentrations were observed on waxed cucumbers during the first 3 days of storage but the final concentration on un-waxed cucumbers was higher than on waxed cucumbers at the end of storage, regardless of storage temperature. Wax formulation did affect survival of Salmonella inoculated directly into waxes, with the significant decline in Salmonella populations observed in vegetable-based wax coating, but with populations unchanged over 7 days at 7 or 21 °C in mineral oil-based and petroleum-based waxes. Salmonella cells could transfer from inoculated un-waxed cucumbers to brushes used for waxing and then to un-inoculated cucumbers during waxing. Significantly higher log percent transfer to brushes was observed when cucumbers were waxed with vegetable oil (0.71 log percent, P = 0.00441) vs. mineral oil (0.06 log percent) or petroleum (0.05 log percent).
Transfer to un-inoculated cucumbers via brushes was also quantified (0.18 to 0.35 log percent transfer). Salmonella remaining on contaminated cucumbers after waxing could be detected for up to 7 days, and Salmonella survived better on cucumbers treated with a petroleum-based wax. These findings should be useful in managing risk of Salmonella contamination in cucumbers during post-harvest handling.
Quantification of survival and transfer of salmonella on fresh cucumbers during waxingJournal of Food Protection
Jimmy McCloskey of Metro UK reported in July a shoplifter was caught thanks to a distinctive t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase ‘I pooped today’ he wore on his stealing expeditions.
We had fun with our Don’t Eat Poop T-shirts after the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach and sales, which went to support our food safety news gathering and distribution activities, went on for years. Extremely popular with public health inspectors.
John Hunt admitted shoplifting from a Walmart in Wichita Falls, Texas, after police posted surveillance grabs of him stealing, with the vulgar t-shirt prompting one cop to recognize Hunt.
Hunt wore the memorable shirt and chatted to store workers while his alleged accomplice Kevin LaPointe began to steal. Afterwards, staff flagged up the distinctive item of clothing to police, with one cop immediately recognizing it on seeing images from another shop that Hunt had targeted.
Hunt was jailed for nine months Friday for stealing twice from a Walmart store – with his booty including two home security systems worth $600 – as well as theft of electricity from a meter. His guilty plea saw two further shoplifting charges against him dismissed. He has a lengthy list of previous arrests spanning back to 2014 for charges including assault, theft and driving without a seat belt.
Given that phages are able to destroy bacteria, they are of particular interest to science. Basic researchers from the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) in Berlin are especially interested in the tube used by phages to implant their DNA (or RNA – dp) into bacteria. In collaboration with colleagues from Forschungszentrum Jülich and Jena University Hospital, they have now revealed the 3D structure of this crucial phage component in atomic resolution. The key to success was combining two methods – solid-state NMR and cryo-electron microscopy. The study has just been published in the journal Nature Communications.
With growing antibiotic resistance, phages have increasingly become the focus of research. Phages are naturally occurring viruses with a very useful property: they implant their DNA into bacteria and proliferate there until the bacterial cell is ultimately destroyed. This is why they are also referred to as bacteriophages (bacteria eaters). This approach has already been shown to fight multidrug-resistant bacteria. Last year, the case of a girl from England hit the headlines, when she was cured from a serious antibiotic-resistant infection using engineered phages.
However, the widespread use of phage therapy is still a long way off. Many of the underlying principles that are key to advancing this therapy are not yet understood. For example, little was previously known about the appearance of the exact architecture of the tube used by phages to implant their DNA into bacteria. Now scientists from the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) in Berlin, together with colleagues from Forschungszentrum Jülich and Jena University Hospital, have managed to reveal the 3D structure of this crucial phage component in atomic resolution.
“The structure and flexibility of the DNA tube attached to the icosahedron-shaped capsid is somewhat reminiscent of a spinal column,” stated FMP’s Professor Adam Lange, describing one of the new findings. “It seems to be perfectly designed for transporting DNA.”
The researchers were able to gain insights into the structure and function of this sophisticated DNA transport pathway – in this case, from a variant of phage SPP1 – by combining solid-state NMR with cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). Lange’s research group further developed nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) especially for this task under an ERC Grant; cryo-EM expert Professor Gunnar Schröder from Forschungszentrum Jülich performed the electron-microscopic investigations. In addition, new modeling algorithms were required for the computer-based combination of the two data sets for structure determination. These algorithms were developed by Professor Michael Habeck from Jena University Hospital. “The key to success was combining the two methods, representing a methodological milestone,” commented Professor Lange.
While solid-state NMR is ideal for visualizing flexible structures and tiny details, cryo-EM provides insight into the overall architecture. The resulting image shows that six gp17.1 proteins organize into stacked rings, forming a hollow tube. The rings are connected by flexible linkers, making the tube very bendable. “We are now able to understand how negatively charged DNA is repelled from the likewise negatively charged interior wall of the flexible tube, passing through it smoothly,” explained FMP’s Maximilian Zinke, lead author of the study now published in Nature Communications. “The bacteria are ultimately destroyed via this pathway.”
The European Union summary report on surveillance for the presence of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) in 2019, 17 November 2020, EFSA:
This report presents the results of surveillance on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) in cattle, sheep, goats, cervids and other species, and genotyping in sheep, carried out in 2019 by 28 Member States (MS), and by Iceland, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland (non‐MS).
In total, 1,150,388 cattle were tested by MS, a 2.7% decrease from 2018 and 44,557 by the six non‐MS. Six cases of H‐BSE were reported by France (4) and Spain (2), and 1 L‐BSE by Poland. The number of H‐ BSE cases was the largest reported per year including the youngest ever case (5.5 years of age).
In total, 338,098 sheep and 143,529 goats were tested in the EU, an increase of 3.9% in both species compared with 2018. In sheep, 17 inconclusive cases by two MS and 997 cases of scrapie were reported: 911 classical (97 index cases (IC), one of ARR/ARR genotype and 98.7% with genotypes of susceptible groups) by seven MS, 86 atypical (AS) (80 IC) by 11 MS. Thirty‐one ovine scrapie cases were reported by Iceland and Norway. Random genotyping was only reported by eight MS: Cyprus excluded, 15.7% of genotyped sheep carried genotypes of susceptible groups. In goats, three inconclusive cases by two MS and 390 cases of scrapie were reported: 379 classical (24 IC) by six MS, 11 atypical (10 IC) by six MS.
The heterogeneous enforcement of a 3‐year surveillance programme for chronic wasting disease (CWD) in six MS (Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden) resulted in the testing of 7,980 cervids and confirmation of three CWD cases in wild moose in Sweden. Other seven MS tested 2,732 cervids with no positive results. Norway tested 30,147 cervids in 2019, with two new moose cases. In total, 122 animals from four other species reported by three MS TSE tested negative.
The conversation goes to pizza and COVID-19 (Australian and Jersey), Thanksgiving plans (or lack thereof) and eating just black licorice as nutrient source. The episode ends with a discussion about number and size of COVID-19 clusters of in various food settings.
