The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports on November 15, 2019, Central Valley Meat Co. in Hanford, Calif. Recalled 34,222 pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with Salmonella Dublin.
Recalled beef was produced on July 23, 2019, and shipped to retail locations in California.
Products are labelled as Stater Bros Ground Beef brand with the establishment number “EST. 6063A.”
Do not eat recalled ground beef. Check your home for it, including your freezer. Return it to the store or throw it away.
If you don’t know if the ground beef you have at home was recalled, contact the store where it was purchased to find out if it was recalled.
Restaurants and retailers should not serve or sell recalled beef and should check food storage and freezers for it.
If possible, retailers who received recalled beef should contact their customers to alert them of the recall.
Never try to cook recalled meat to make it safe.
At this time, a single supplier, distributor, or brand of ground beef has not been identified that can account for all the illnesses in this outbreak.
Foodborne illnesses in this province already account for 41,000 visits to hospital emergency rooms and 137,000 more to physicians’ offices each year. Contaminated food kills about 70 people in Ontario annually and sends another 6,600 to hospital.
Symptoms of foodborne illnesses range from mild nausea and stomach pains to, in rare cases, long-term health problems, and even death. Most people have had a mild case of food poisoning at one time or another without being aware of it— according to 2014 Public Health Ontario statistics, an estimated 96% of cases go unreported. Contamination of food can happen at any point in the food-supply chain, from the farm to transport to preparation and packaging. Meat, for example, can be rendered unfit by unclean conditions at slaughterhouses, or by contamination at meat-processing plants. Water runoff and sprays containing bacteria, pesticides, and other chemicals can affect the purity of farm produce. In addition, food at “food premises,” which Ontario law defines as any “premises where food or milk is manufactured, processed, prepared, stored, handled, displayed, distributed, transported, sold or offered for sale,” can be contaminated with bacteria from the use of unsanitary utensils and improper cooking methods. In Ontario, prevention of foodborne illness is the responsibility of all three levels of government, which license and inspect food producers and food premises as follows:
• Meat, produce, fish and dairy produced, processed and consumed only in Ontario are generally the responsibility of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (Ministry of Agriculture).
• Food premises are inspected by 35 Public Health Units in municipalities across Ontario that are funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and by the municipalities in which they are based.
• Food imported into Ontario from other provinces or countries, or produced in Ontario for export outside the province, is inspected by the federal Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). Forty-five percent of agriculture food products sold in Ontario are produced or processed within the province; the remaining half is imported from other provinces and countries, which means it is licensed and inspected by the federal CFIA. It is important that the Ministry of Agriculture do an effective job of licensing and inspecting producers to ensure that food produced in this province for sale to Ontarians is free of any contamination that might affect their health. Similarly, the Public Health Units have an important responsibility to make sure that 338 Chapter 3
• VFM Section 3.06 food is handled hygienically and prepared correctly to protect consumers. The Ministry of Agriculture spent about $39.5 million in the 2018/19 fiscal year on foodsafety licensing, inspections and other related services, while the Ministry of Health and municipalities spent about $63.1 million the same year to fund the Public Health Units. Total average annual spending by the two ministries and municipalities over the last five years on food safety was about $105.7 million. While the risk of a mass foodborne-illness outbreak in Ontario is likely low, small-scale food incidents could have the potential to occur because it would take only one diseased animal or one unclean restaurant. Our audit identified several areas where improvements could further minimize food-safety risks to Ontarians. We noted, for example, the following issues with respect to Ministry of Agriculture licensing and inspection of Ontario producers:
• Ninety-eight percent of meat tested negative for harmful drug residue, but in the 2% of cases of positive drug-residue test results, there was no follow-up with the farmers who raised the animals to prevent repeat occurrences. Since April 2015, about 300 meat samples (representing about 2% of the meat tested) taken from provincially inspected slaughterhouses were found to contain drug residues above prescribed standards. The lack of an appropriate process to follow up and educate farmers whose animals have tested positive increases the risk of such meat entering the food chain.
• Some pesticides banned for use in groundskeeping for health and safety reasons are found in Ontario-grown produce in levels exceeding Health Canada’s allowable limits. The Cosmetic Pesticides Ban Act lists 131 pesticides that cannot be used for cosmetic groundskeeping, in parks and yards, for example, because of potential health and environmental concerns. However, their use is allowed in agriculture for operational and economic reasons. Between 2014 and 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture tested about 1,200 Ontario-grown produce samples and found residues of 14 banned pesticides that exceeded Health Canada limits a total of 76 times.
• Current legislation provides limited enforcement tools to compel fish processors to address food-safety infractions, resulting in repeat offences. Fish processors who sell only in Ontario do not require a licence to operate. The Ministry of Agriculture, therefore, may not be able to close them because there is no licence to revoke if inspectors identify serious food-safety deficiencies. The Ministry also has no legal power to issue fines or compliance orders. Our sample review of 182 inspection reports on fish-processing plants found that two-thirds of the infractions noted in 2018/19 were repeat offences that had also been observed in each of the two previous years.
• The Ministry of Agriculture did not receive sufficient information to provide sufficient oversight of the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO). The Ministry delegated inspection of cow-milk producers to the DFO in 1998. However, the Ministry did not consistently receive sufficient information from DFO to provide adequate oversight of the organization. We found that DFO’s reports to the Ministry were high-level summaries that did not specifically identify non-compliant producers whose test samples repeatedly exceeded regulatory bacteria limits. In addition, the reports did not say what actions DFO took to address the issue of repeat offenders.
• The Ministry of Agriculture did not have complete details about the activities of produce farmers in Ontario to select appropriate producers for sample-testing. The Ministry’s inventory of farmers did not contain complete information on production volumes, type of crops grown, and where the produce Food Safety Inspection Programs 339 Chapter 3
• VFM Section 3.06 was sold. Such data would be useful to determine a risk-based food-sample-testing plan. We noted the following issues with Public Health Units, which are responsible to inspect food premises:
• Public Health Units did not investigate complaints of foodborne illnesses on a timely basis. Based on our review of inspection reports from 2016 to 2018 at five Public Health Units, we found that for those foodborne-illness complaints that required food premises inspections, the Public Health Units consistently did not inspect 20% of food premises within two days of receiving the complaint. The Public Health Units we visited informed us that a two-day timeline is considered a best practice.
• Different inspection-grading systems for food premises among Public Health Units provided inconsistent information to the public across Ontario. The degree of public disclosure of inspection results for food premises, along with the inspection-grading systems used by the 35 Health Units, varied across the province. The variations can be confusing to the public.
• While not all special events require inspections, only about 12% of them within the jurisdictions of the five Public Health Units we visited were inspected in 2018, and only about 15% in 2017. Public Health Units are required to assess food safety risks at temporary food premises, which include special events such as summer fairs and festivals, to determine if these premises require an inspection. However, we found that there are currently no minimum provincial requirements for the frequency of inspections of special events as there are for fixed food premises, such as restaurants. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, special events can be high risk because the usual safety features of a kitchen, such as the ability to monitor food temperatures and washing facilities, may not be available at outdoor events.
• Some food premises were never inspected until Public Health Units received complaints from the public. The lists of food premises kept by the five Health Units were not up to date. At the five Health Units we visited, we found 253 complaints received between 2016 and 2018 relating to food premises whose existence the Health Units were unaware of until they received the complaints. There were also several areas where current regulations and standards may be insufficient. For example:
• Businesses operating solely within Ontario can market their products as “organic” even if they are not certified to the Canadian Organic Standards. The CFIA requires certification for products labelled as organic when they are sold across provincial or international borders—but Ontario allows the sale of non-certified products labelled as organic within the province. In comparison, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia all have laws requiring that organic food be certified to the Canadian Organic Standards even when it is sold only within their borders. Based on our research, there are at least 34 organic producers in Ontario that are not certified to the Canadian Organic Standards but are advertising their products as “organic.” The majority of these organic growers sell their products through farmers’ markets. We also noted that routine sample testing of produce for pesticides residue is not required for the CFIA organic certification process. • Sheep milk and non-chicken eggs are not subject to mandatory regulation or inspection for quality assurance. Milk from cows and goats, along with eggs from chickens, is regulated and inspected by the federal or Ontario governments, or both. However, 340 Chapter 3
•VFM Section 3.06 there is no mandatory regulation or inspection of milk from sheep and water-buffalo, or of eggs from other fowl. In comparison, Manitoba and Alberta regulate all animals kept for the purpose of producing milk. Finally, we noted gaps in the inspections carried out by the different government entities responsible for food safety. We found, for example, that although the Ministry of Agriculture and the CFIA check for federal food-labelling requirements regarding allergens in provincial food-processing plants, they do not verify other labelling requirements, such as place of origin and nutritional value.
Liz Braun of the Toronto Sun writes the aptly named Poop Café has received a yellow rating from the Toronto Public Health food safety program
In other gross out news, a recent edition of barfblog recaps a CBSLA report about how the delivery guy from Ubereats might be munching on your fries or sipping your drink before those items are delivered to you. Think about that the next time you call DoorDash or Foodora.
If that’s not disgusting enough, barfblog will also let you read all about how many sushi joints in Ireland fail to meet food safety standards, or even about mice in an Amsterdam crepe restaurant. Ewwww!
I love the sourness of blackberries. As a child I used to pick baskets full to be made into pies by my aunt. As a grown up in Guelph (that’s in Canada) there was a huge blackberry tree next door and I would pick baskets full and make pies.
Hepatitis A cases in three states that are “potentially linked” to fresh blackberries bought at Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets stores in September.
Six of the 11 people who’ve been diagnosed have been hospitalized, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which is investigating the outbreak with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A Nov. 20 notice from the FDA said hepatitis A illnesses in Indiana, Nebraska and Wisconsin are potentially linked to fresh conventionally-grown blackberries. Patients told FDA investigators they bought and consumed the berries from Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets in those three states.
The blackberries came from a distribution center that served 11 states, and the FDA is working with “federal and state partners to obtain additional information during the traceback investigation,” according to the notice.
Fresh Thyme released a statement that there is no indication the berries were contaminated by in-store handling and only conventional blackberries sold from Sept. 9-30 are involved.
The girls are off in the French territory of New Caledonia doing Amy-directed French biz and yesterday they went to Lifou, Island, part of the Loyalty Islands which the French decided would be useful way back when.
I look forward to their tales.
I spoke at an Australian food safety conference in 2004 on the Gold Coast and mentioned something about grocery trolleys in an interview and that segment made it to the national news.
Not my intent.
I was trying to point out possible short cummings of food safety for shoppers, and subsequently spent four hours going through my local Coles – biggest supermarket in Australia – with the vp of food safety, pointing out their vulnerabilities, like:
if you’re going to cut a melon in half, please ensure it is kept at 4C (better not to cut it in half)
label frozen meat products properly i.e. is it needle tenderized, are those frozen dished raw frozen or cooked frozen
what criteria do you have for produce on shelves.
The objective of this study was to identify food safety risk factors associated with supermarket trolleys (grills and handles) and handheld baskets. Indicator microorganisms evaluated were those detected by aerobic plate count (APC), yeast and molds (YM), Enterobacteriaceae (EB). Environmental listeria (EL), coliforms (CF), and E. coli (EC). In addition, listeria monocytogenes, staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli O157 and salmonella sp. Were tested for. Trolley grills (n=36) had 2.7 x 102 CFU/cm2. Trolley handles (n=36) had 2.7 x 106 of CF and 5.2 CFU/cm2 of YM. The bottom of handheld baskets (n=25) had 3.5 x 105 CFU/cm2 of CF and 5.07 CFU/cm2 of EC. S. aureus was found on 96% of the baskets, 50% of the trolley handles (18 out of 36 samples), and 42% of the trolleys’ grills. E. coli O157 was identified on 17% of baskets, 3% on trolley grills, and 3% on handles. Salmonella sp. was detected on 16% of baskets and 8% of trolley grills. L. monocytogenes was detected on 17% of the bottoms of handheld baskets but on none of the other samples. These results suggest the need for implementation of sanitation programs to regularly clean trolleys and baskets, as well as for consumer education.
Microbial contamination of grocery shopping trolleys and baskets in west Texas, 2020
Food Protection Trends vol. 40 no. 1
Alexandra Calle, Breyan Montoya, Andrea English, and Mindy Brashears
The bacterial pathogen Shigella, often spread through contaminated food or water, is a leading cause of mortality in both children and older adults in the developing world. Although scientists have been studying Shigella for decades, no effective vaccine has been developed, and the pathogen has acquired resistance to many antibiotics. The recent discovery of an early adherence step in the infection cycle by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) could provide a new therapeutic target or even a new method for vaccine development.
As it moves through the digestive system, Shigella traverses the small intestine and subsequently infects the large intestine, causing cramping, diarrhea and dehydration in the disease called shigellosis.
“We wanted to determine how Shigella makes its first contact with epithelial cells in the early stages of disease development,” says Dr. Christina Faherty, senior author on the study published in mSphere. “Because of certain gene sequence annotations, and the way that Shigella appeared following growth in standard laboratory media, it was believed that Shigella strains do not produce fimbriae or other adherence factors.” Fimbriae are short hair-like fibers that bacterial cells use to adhere to individual epithelial cells to instigate infection.
The work of Faherty and the research team has uncovered evidence of fimbriae that aid adherence to epithelial cells, an important step in the start of a shigellosis infection. “We mimicked the conditions that Shigella would face in its journey through the small intestine by adding bile salts and glucose to laboratory media,” says Faherty. “With this method, we discovered what had been hidden in plain sight before–the gene expression profiles that enabled Shigella to initiate this early step in infection by attaching to the epithelial tissue of the host.”
Chapman and I have know for decades that when someone says they’re going to educate someone else about food safety stuff, it is doomed to failure.
The key to learning is, and always has been, storytelling.
Embed your data or facts within the story.
The Science of Storytelling (2019) shows you how to craft a compelling story using lessons from psychology and neuroscience. These blinks walk you through the steps of creating a narrative that grips your audience by subtly manipulating their brains. From demonstrating how to create a perfectly flawed character to explaining the power of stimulating details, Will Storr reveals the crucial elements that go into building a great story.
Diets rich in minimally processed foods are associated with numerous health benefits, in part, due to their diverse, natural microbiota. However, antimicrobials, such as chlorine and peracetic acid (PAA), that are used to address food safety concerns may damage the natural microflora of fresh produce.
One promising approach for targeting pathogenic bacteria in foods without impacting the normal food microbiota are bacteriophages. In this study, we observed that combinational treatment of conventional antimicrobials (PAA and chlorine) and bacteriophages, specifically the Salmonella‐targeted preparation SalmoFresh, retained the bactericidal effectiveness of individual interventions, and in some cases, achieved substantially increased efficacy. Additionally, the bacterial microbiomes of farm fresh and organic produce were less affected after phage treatment compared to PAA and chlorine.
Finally, our study revealed that resistance rates against SalmoFresh were relatively minor and unaffected by the stresses introduced after chemical washes and/or bacteriophage treatment.
Treatment of fresh produce with a salmonella-targeted bacteriophage cocktail is compatible with chlorine or peracetic acid and more consistently preserves the microbial community on produce, 10 January 2020
Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EcO157) infections have been recurrently associated with produce. The physiological state of EcO157 cells surviving the many stresses encountered on plants is poorly understood. EcO157 populations on plants in the field generally follow a biphasic decay in which small subpopulations survive over longer periods of time. We hypothesized that these subpopulations include persister cells, known as cells in a transient dormant state that arise through phenotypic variation in a clonal population.
Using three experimental regimes (with growing, stationary at carrying capacity, and decaying populations), we measured the persister cell fractions in culturable EcO157 populations after inoculation onto lettuce plants in the laboratory. The greatest average persister cell fractions on the leaves within each regime were 0.015, 0.095, and 0.221%, respectively. The declining EcO157 populations on plants incubated under dry conditions showed the largest increase in the persister fraction (46.9-fold). Differential equation models were built to describe the average temporal dynamics of EcO157 normal and persister cell populations after inoculation onto plants maintained under low relative humidity, resulting in switch rates from a normal cell to a persister cell of 7.7 × 10−6 to 2.8 × 10−5 h−1. Applying our model equations from the decay regime, we estimated model parameters for four published field trials of EcO157 survival on lettuce and obtained switch rates similar to those obtained in our study. Hence, our model has relevance to the survival of this human pathogen on lettuce plants in the field. Given the low metabolic state of persister cells, which may protect them from sanitization treatments, these cells are important to consider in the microbial decontamination of produce.
IMPORTANCE Despite causing outbreaks of foodborne illness linked to lettuce consumption, E. coli O157:H7 (EcO157) declines rapidly when applied onto plants in the field, and few cells survive over prolonged periods of time. We hypothesized that these cells are persisters, which are in a dormant state and which arise naturally in bacterial populations. When lettuce plants were inoculated with EcO157 in the laboratory, the greatest persister fraction in the population was observed during population decline on dry leaf surfaces. Using mathematical modeling, we calculated the switch rate from an EcO157 normal to persister cell on dry lettuce plants based on our laboratory data. The model was applied to published studies in which lettuce was inoculated with EcO157 in the field, and switch rates similar to those obtained in our study were obtained. Our results contribute important new knowledge about the physiology of this virulent pathogen on plants to be considered to enhance produce safety.
Formation of Escherichia coli O157:H7 persister cells in the lettuce phyllosphere and application of differential equation models to predict their prevalence on lettuce plants in the field
08 November 2019
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Daniel S. Munther, Michelle Q. Carter, Claude V. Aldric, Renata Ivanek, Maria T. Brandl
The objective of this study was to identify food safety risk factors associated with supermarket trolleys (grills and handles) and handheld baskets.
Indicator microorganisms evaluated were those detected by aerobic plate count (APC), yeast and molds (YM), Enterobacteriaceae (EB). Environmental listeria (EL), coliforms (CF), and E. coli (EC). In addition, listeria monocytogenes, staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli O157 and salmonella sp. Were tested for. Trolley grills (n=36) had 2.7 x 102 CFU/cm2. Trolley handles (n=36) had 2.7 x 106 of CF and 5.2 CFU/cm2 of YM. The bottom of handheld baskets (n=25) had 3.5 x 105 CFU/cm2 of CF and 5.07 CFU/cm2 of EC. S. aureus was found on 96% of the baskets, 50% of the trolley handles (18 out of 36 samples), and 42% of the trolleys’ grills. E. coli O157 was identified on 17% of baskets, 3% on trolley grills, and 3% on handles. Salmonella sp. was detected on 16% of baskets and 8% of trolley grills. L. monocytogenes was detected on 17% of the bottoms of handheld baskets but on none of the other samples.
These results suggest the need for implementation of sanitation programs to regularly clean trolleys and baskets, as well as for consumer education.
Microbial contamination of grocery shopping trolleys and baskets in west Texas, 2020
Food Protection Trends vol. 40 no. 1
Alexandra Calle, Breyan Montoya, Andrea English, and Mindy Brashears
States: 7
