Food Safety Talk 77: Sous vide is French for under vacuum

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Ben Chapman

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.

Ben and Don start by catching up about technology. Ben is quite excited about Google fiber coming to Raleigh, NC, Don, already subscribed to Verizon fios says that the fiber is great. Ben then leads a discussion about his new obsession, the Wake Forest Community discussion board on Facebook. The page is a forum for pretty much anything from tooth abscesses, to snakes, to local business ratings. The guys delve into the community forum concept and explore the intersection with food safety (sale of goods, transportation from out of state). Don mentions that he has been volunteering with the innovation committee in Freehold borough who also is looking at a community forum. Ben introduces the concept of lip dubbing and Don provides his favorite, a NFL video about reading of lips incorrectly.

The real food safety portion of the podcast starts by Don talking about Better Process Control School. Don talked about some feedback he was giving to a couple of small companies about aseptic processing, challenge studies and jacketed kettles, and expressed some frustration with FDA because sometimes their interpretation of science isn’t clear.

The discussion goes into regulatory hurdles, retail food safety, variances and HACCP plans. Ben talked about an individual that is interested in food sustainability who is looking to divert food waste from restaurants to pantries, using reduced oxygen packaging for storage and transport. The guys talk about regulating food even that is given away (but not it all states) and the variance process.

NC Senator Thom Tillis garnered headlines for suggesting that restaurants be allowed to opt out of handwashing regulations as long as they post a disclosure or advisory – or replacing one regulation with another. The podcast ends with a discussion of a possible norovirus outbreak at NC State.

Norovirus sucks; The Cowfish reopens after 50 illnesses and a deep clean

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Ben Chapman

Last week I talked to a bunch of retail food safety folks at FMI Foundation’s Retail Food Safety Forum about norovirus (and other stuff). Part of my message was that once the perfect human pathogen is in a restaurant, grocery store, or cruise ship, it’s tough to get it out without some illnesses.

Part of the problem with noro (beyond the low mean infectious dose; environmental stability; and, 10^9 virus particles per gram of vomit/poop) is a vomit event can lead to particles floating through the air. And maybe moving 30 feet from the barf splatter. Check out Grace Thompson’s vomit modeling apparatus (below, exactly as shown) for more.

According to WCNC, The Cowfish, a popular sushi and burger joint in Charlotte, is about to reopen following a noro outbreak affecting over 50 staff and patrons. Mecklenburg County Medical Director Dr. Stephen Keener says the working theory, according to is that a patron or food handler had the virus, brought it into the system, and spread it.

The Cowfish voluntarily closed its doors after norovirus is believed to have made about 50 people sick last week.

They original closed the doors to the restaurant as a precaution. The second time they closed, they brought in professionals to clean. Something they didn’t do the first time.

NBC Charlotte pulled up the most recent health inspection report. The restaurant was cited for hands not being clean and properly washed.

The health department still hasn’t found the cause of the illness and released this statement: ‘Cowfish management has been proactive and in constant contact with the Health Department.”

The owner of the restaurant calls this a regrettable situation and says, ‘We also will continue to work with health officials to be sure we are doing everything possible to protect the health and safety of our guests and employees.’

Bringing in some professionals who have compounds that are effective against noro (CDC advises 1000-5000ppm of chlorine for contaminated surfaces).

Food as snake oil: ‘diet gurus’ hook us with religion veiled in science

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Douglas Powell

With full respect to Kurt Vonnegut, I listen to the ethical pronouncements of the leaders of the church of organic and am able to distill only two firm commandments from them. The first commandment is this: Stop thinking. The second commandment is this: Obey. Only a person who has given up on the power of reason to improve life here on earth, or a soldier in basic training, could accept either commandment gladly.

Food is 21st century snake oil. In an era of unprecedented affluence, consumers now choose among a cacophony of low‑fat, enhanced‑nutrient staples reflecting a range of political statements and perceived lifestyle preferences, far beyond dolphin‑free tuna.

And to go with the Salt Spring Island goat cheese, the all‑organic carrots and the Snapple-laced echinacea is a veritable sideshow of hucksters and buskers, flogging their wares to the highest bidder ‑‑ these things always cost a premium ‑‑ or at least the most fashionable.

In 2001, the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld four complaints against claims in a Soil Association leaflet entitled Five Reasons To Eat Organic. The ASA ruled there was no evidence that, contrary to the assertions of the Soil Association, that consumers could taste the difference, that organic was healthy, that it was better for the environment, and that organic meant healthy, happy animals. On one claim, the Soil Association responded that 53% of people buying organic produce did so because they thought it was healthy. The ASA rightly ruled this did not constitute any sort of clinical or scientific evidence.

Alan Levinovitz writes for NPR that from Paleo to vegan to raw, nutrition gurus package their advice as sound, settled science. It doesn’t matter whether meat is blamed for colon cancer or grains are called out as fattening poison — there’s no shortage of citations and technical terms (tertiary amines, gliadin, ketogenesis) to back up the claims.

But as a scholar of religion, it’s become increasingly clear to me that when it comes to fad diets, science is often just a veneer. Peel it away and you find timeless myths and superstitions, used to reinforce narratives of good and evil that give meaning to people’s lives and the illusion of control over their well-being.

Take the grain-free monks of ancient China. (My specialty is classical Chinese thought.) Like all diet gurus, these monks used a time-tested formula. They mocked the culinary culture around them, which depended on the so-called wugu, or “five grains.”

According to the monks’ radical teachings, conventional grain-laden Chinese diets “rotted and befouled” your organs, leading to early disease and death. By avoiding the five grains, you could achieve perfect health, immortality, clear skin, the ability to fly and teleport. Well, not quite. To fully realize the benefits of the monks’ diet, you also had to take proprietary supplements, highly technical alchemical preparations that only a select few knew how to make. All of this may sound eerily familiar: Look no further than modern anti-grain polemics like Dr. David Perlmutter’s Grain Brain — complete with its own recommended supplement regimen.

Despite basic logic and evidence to the contrary, the philosophy of the grain-free monks gained popularity. That’s because then, as now, the appeal of dietary fads had much to do with myths, not facts. Chief among these is the myth of “paradise past,” an appealing fiction about a time when everyone was happy and healthy, until they ate the wrong food and fell from grace.

The mythic narrative of “unnatural” modernity and a “natural” paradise past is persuasive as ever. Religious figures like Adam and Eve have been replaced by Paleolithic man and our grandparents: “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” is journalist Michael Pollan’s oft-quoted line.

The story also has a powerful moral dimension. It’s the Prince of Evil, after all, who tempted Eve. Once secularized, Satan reappears as corporations and scientists who feed us chemical additives, modern grains and GMOs, the “toxic” fruits of sin. (No matter if science doesn’t agree that any of these things are very toxic.)

Paradise past. Good and evil. Benevolent Nature with a capital N. The promise of nutritional salvation. After you’ve constructed a compellingly simple narrative foundation, all you have to do is wrap your chosen diet in scientific rhetoric.

For Chinese monks, that rhetoric involved “five phases theory.” For ancient Greeks and Romans it was “humors” — four fluids thought to be the basis of human health. Now it is peer-reviewed studies. Thankfully for diet gurus, the literature of nutrition science is vague, vast and highly contested — just like religious texts — making it easy to cherry-pick whatever data confirm your biases.

Food pantry policy and food safety

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Ben Chapman

Dr. Ashley Chaifetz. a research assistant at N.C. State University writes via UVM’s Food Feed,

Every year, an estimated 48 million Americans contract a foodborne illness. Those illnesses have come from pretty much every place where there’s food: grocery stores, hospitals, church dinners, county fairs, schools, restaurants, prisons, private homes, and even emergency food providers. I wish I could say that foodborne illness prevention was simple, that everyone knew how to reduce risk, that access to institution-specific food safety materials is readily-available, or that our food is always safe and we didn’t need to worry. Unfortunately, that’s not the case; although some food distributors are more closely regulated than others, it’s incredibly difficult to trace an illness to its source.

Foods distributed through shelters, food banks, food pantries, soup kitchens, backpack programs, and other institution-specific programs are referred to as emergency food. In North Carolina, there are seven food banks and at least 2,500 emergency food providers associated with Feeding America (the country’s largest hunger-relief charity), plus hundreds more independent organizations.

To examine and analyze the standard operating procedures and supply chain of the food pantry system, I conducted interviews at 105 food pantries in 12 counties across North Carolina. While committed to social welfare, the food pantries are self-governed, and the issues of hunger and nutrition can supersede other concerns for the vulnerable populations served. Increasingly, food pantries create rules and regulations in the absence of those created by any level of government. Each food pantry operates with its own set of rules, some of which are formalized and some that are informal.

While their mission is similar, food pantries are diverse. More than 80% of the pantries distribute fruits and vegetables, as well as frozen meat (pork, beef, and chicken), in addition to canned and packaged items. On average, the managers get food from 3.73 sources, including food banks, grocery stores, food distributors, school gardens, farms, hunting trips, federal commodity programs (TEFAP and SNAP), restaurants, individuals, and food drives. Some pantries distribute the same amount of food to each person, while other managers base the number of bags individuals receive on family size. Many food pantries now use a client-choice model, which means the food pantry is set up like a grocery store, allowing the clients to “shop.” Some pantries are open six days per week, while others are open only once per month. Their capacity and ability to store items varies, and few pantry managers receive food safety training of any kind.

As a result of this data analysis, I identified the gaps in their food safety prevention measures and, with Dr. Ben Chapman at NC State University and North Carolina Cooperative Extension, put together a series of online videos to better inform pantry mangers and volunteers of the best food handling and storage practices at food pantries. At that time, best practices for food pantries were nowhere to be found; these are publicly available to all, without a password or special program.

Given the importance of the topic, the first video is centered on general food safety information, details on foodborne illnesses, riskier foods, wild game, and past-date foods (which also encompass the entire fourth video).
Risk prevention is key, and there are low-cost ways to prevent contamination when storing and handling food. Based on the 2009 Food Code (as used in North Carolina), the second video concentrates on three focus areas: time-temperature abuse, cross-contamination, and hand-washing.
So that new and veteran volunteers have the same information on how the pantry is designed to operate (and be kept safe), the third video provides detail on writing standard operating procedures and how to get information on recalled foods (including links from the FDA). Though less related to food safety, there’s a fourth video on how long items can be consumed past the date on the package.
Six additional documents have been provided to assist in implementing new protocols, from checklists and templates for writing the standard operating procedures, to signage, including a flowchart on how to tell if canned foods are ok to eat.

Food pantry managers and volunteers might be confused about food handling—and what we do at home is not always the best practice. Regardless of income level, consumers should have access to food that is safe, requiring all supply chain actors to do their respective parts. Unlike other food systems institutions, food pantries are private (predominately faith-based) organizations that provide a public good; that designation does not mean they should be treated as outliers in terms of food safety and handling information.

Ashley Chaifetz will be a speaker at the UVM Food Systems Summit on June 16-17 at the UVM Davis Center. For more information or to register, visit uvm.edu/foodsystemssummit.

Food safety training can suck

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Rob Mancini writes:

Food safety training is seen as an integral component in the public health system designed to reduce the likelihood of a foodborne illness.

Traditional food safety training courses are administered via classroom-based programs or on-line with little to no hands-on component. If our intention as food safety professionals is to change ones’ food safety behaviors, then it is time to resort to educational psychology- what works and what doesn’t work.

Different people learn in different ways and we must address this issue. A hands-on component is necessary to instill positive correct food safety practices and to aid in memory retention. More often than none, feedback that I receive is that there is no time to do any hands-on work, the class is too long. Not true. Reduce the amount of PowerPoint slides by eliminating the “fluff” and do some hands-on work. Students will not retain 8-hours of information in the long-term.

Paul Forsyth writes in Niagara This Week:

Many Niagara residents are likely being spared the miserable physical symptoms of food poisoning thanks to mandatory food safety training for staff at places such as restaurants, banquet halls and nursing homes, regional politicians were set to hear on June 2.

The Region, which oversees public health in Niagara, pushed for years to have the province bring in mandatory food safety training in Ontario. Faced with inaction on that front, and on the heels of some high-profile outbreaks of food poisoning, the Region brought in its own mandatory training bylaw several years ago.

A new report to regional politicians suggests a whole lot less people are enduring the wretched vomiting and diarrhea that are hallmarks of food poisoning because of safer food handling.

Environmental health manager Chris Gaspar, who wrote the report in consultation with environmental health director Bjorn Christensen, said 459 cases of food poisoning were investigated by public health last year.

But he said it’s estimated that only about 4.4 per cent of actual food poisoning cases are reported, meaning it’s likely the number of cases in Niagara was probably closer to 10,500 last year based on that ratio.

The cost of those outbreaks is astounding. In a report last year, public health staff looked at the number of food poisoning cases of campylobacter, salmonella, E. coli 0157 and shigella — just four of about 30 commonly acquired pathogens. That report noted each case can cost about $1,068 due to medical costs and lost productivity due to people being too sick to go to work, meaning the estimated 3,273 annual poisoning cases involving those four pathogens comes with a pricetag of more than $3 million in Niagara.

But Gaspar said in his new report that the number of cases of E. coli food poisoning in Niagara have plummeted since the introduction of mandatory food safety training, dropping from two cases per 100,000 people in 2012 to just 0.2 cases per 100,000 people in 2014 — a drop of about 90 per cent.

‘Only way to confirm that ground beef is cooked to a temperature high enough to kill harmful bacteria is to use a food thermometer’ Tyson recalls beef

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Guess the Brits didn’t get that line about using a thermometer.

And the freshness is guaranteed, but not the safety.

Tyson Fresh Meats, a Dakota City, Neb., establishment, is recalling approximately 16,000 pounds of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.

The ground beef items were produced on May 16, 2015. The following products are subject to recall:

5 lb. chubs of “80% Lean Ground Beef.”

The products subject to recall bear the establishment number “EST. 245C” inside the USDA mark of inspection and a “best before or freeze by” date of June 5, 2015. These products were shipped to one distribution location in New York.

FSIS discovered the problem during a routine sampling program. Neither FSIS nor the company received any reports of illnesses associated with consumption of this product. FSIS and the company are concerned that some product may have been sold and stored in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers.

E. coli O157:H7 is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause dehydration, bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps 2–8 days (3–4 days, on average) after exposure the organism. While most people recover within a week, some develop a type of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). This condition can occur among persons of any age but is most common in children under 5-years old and older adults. It is marked by easy bruising, pallor, and decreased urine output. Persons who experience these symptoms should seek emergency medical care immediately.

FSIS routinely conducts recall effectiveness checks to verify recalling firms notify their customers of the recall and that steps are taken to make certain that the product is no longer available to consumers. When available, the retail distribution list(s) will be posted on the FSIS website at www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls.

FSIS advises all consumers to safely prepare their raw meat products, including fresh and frozen, and only consume product that has been cooked to a temperature of 160° F. The only way to confirm that ground beef is cooked to a temperature high enough to kill harmful bacteria is to use a food thermometer that measures internal temperature, http://1.usa.gov/1cDxcDQ.

Media with questions regarding the recall can contact Worth Sparkman, at (479) 290-6358 or worth.sparkman@tyson.com. Consumers with questions regarding the recall can contact the consumer hotline, at (866) 328-3156.

Why I don’t get invited to dinner and Australia still has an egg problem

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Douglas Powell

Amy went out for dinner last night with some uni colleagues.

She checked out the menu beforehand – as you do when living with a food safety type for 10 years – and I was encouraged by the 50C salmon and 65C eggs.

Unfortunately, this was the summer menu and it’s winter here.

And I noticed the aioli on the menu, and asked Amy, ask the server if it’s made with raw eggs.

Of course it was.

When those questions are asked in a restaurant, servers think you want to hear whatever is fashionable.

Ten years ago I was sitting in a B.C. restaurant with Chapman and a provincial health inspector, and ordered fish, and asked, is it farmed or wild?

He assured me it was wild.

I said I wanted farmed because that left a smaller ecological footprint.

He said, no one had ever asked for farmed, and eventually admitted that yeah, some of it was farmed.

So how are consumers supposed to know?

They don’t. It’s all faith-based.

I made dinner for Amy before she went out.

She didn’t eat the aioli.

While it’s nice that Dr Paul Armstrong, chairman of the Communicable Diseases Network Australia, acknowledged the other day that, “We have an ongoing problem with salmonella infections linked with chickens, particularly eggs,” it doesn’t help diners who are served raw-egg aioli.

Australia has an egg problem.

Spot the Mistake and Food Network threats

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Douglas Powell

A public health type asked me yesterday, what ever happened to those videos you made in 2002 that Food Network Canada made you take down, after showing them at a talk in Prince Edward Island, perhaps prompted by a Charlottetown Chinese food restaurant that was warned for unsanitary conditions in its washrooms and food premises.

Since Amy hadn’t heard the story, here it is.

In 2004, my laboratory reported that, based on 60 hours of detailed viewing of television cooking shows, an unsafe food handling practice occurred about every four minutes, and that for every safe food handling practice observed, we observed 13 unsafe practices. The most common errors were inadequate hand washing and cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat foods.

The abstract is below.

After completing the initial research in 2002, I began writing about the topic, with snappy headlines like, Can TV cooks become food safety celebrities? One of my students at the time, Christian Battista, put together four, 3-minute greatest hits videos, depicting various practices we observed like cross-contamination and lack of handwashing. The videos were a hit.

Once the paper was published, it made headlines around the globe. Some folks at the Food Network in Canada gave me a call, and said they wanted to work with me and my lab, to enhance food safety on their shows.

I said sure.

I also kept showing the videos at my various public appearances.

And then the Food Network called again.

This time the folks at the other end were on a speakerphone — and there was a lot of them. Lawyers, I suspect.

The Food Network people said if I ever showed the videos again they would sue my ass.

But YouTube didn’t exist back then. And I’m in Australia now. Hmmm ….

Mathiasen, L.A., Chapman, B.J., Lacroix, B.J. and Powell, D.A. 2004. Spot the mistake: Television cooking shows as a source of food safety information, Food Protection Trends 24(5): 328-334.

Consumers receive information on food preparation from a variety of sources. Numerous studies conducted over the past six years demonstrate that television is one of the primary sources for North Americans. This research reports on an examination and categorization of messages that television food and cooking programs provide to viewers about preparing food safely. During June 2002 and 2003, television food and cooking programs were recorded and reviewed, using a defined list of food safety practices based on criteria established by Food Safety Network researchers. Most surveyed programs were shown on Food Network Canada, a specialty cable channel. On average, 30 percent of the programs viewed were produced in Canada, with the remainder produced in the United States or United Kingdom. Sixty hours of content analysis revealed that the programs contained a total of 916 poor food-handling incidents. When negative food handling behaviors were compared to positive food handling behaviors, it was found that for each positive food handling behavior observed, 13 negative behaviors were observed. Common food safety errors included a lack of hand washing, cross-contamination and time-temperature violations. While television food and cooking programs are an entertainment source, there is an opportunity to improve their content so as to promote safe food handling.

spotthemistake

Grandson #2

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Douglas Powell

I’ve written about the imminent birth of grandson #2 and food safety discussions with my daughter.

It happened. Emerson was born at home near Toronto today. All’s well, and as my daughter said, 8.5 pounds of perfection.

Roy writes Michael: something about food safety

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Douglas Powell

On May 20, 2015, Michael Taylor (right, exactly as shown) of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration posted in a FDA blog that, “we’ve got to build prevention into the food safety system globally.”

Taylor, FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, also wrote the Food Safety Modernization Act is about providing assurances that the food system is doing everything it can to prevent problems and to provide food in grocery stores and restaurants that is as safe as it possibly can be.

Friend of the barfblog.com, Roy Costa responded by writing:

I appreciate Michael Taylor’s comments and also believe that FSMA is a step in the right direction. The fact, however, is that companies around the globe have already adopted food safety systems. This article makes it sound like preventative controls are something new and that such programs will be brought about by new federal law. The fact is in most major operations the preventative controls are in place right now. There are firms that have not adopted such in their operations, and FSMA may help to address this, but by and large, the large foodborne illness outbreaks we have seen are not the result not having a prevention program, but the failure of the program to prevent the hazard from occurring.

Breaking a law, however, comes with a high cost for non-compliance, and that hammer is needed for some. But for most operators, this is not the answer to the microbial contamination control problem in their facilities. Our overarching goal in industry should be to be in compliance with FDA’s new laws, however, we need effective food safety management systems and we do not always have them. This is illustrated by the findings of serious sanitation issues, after the fact, in the investigation of the Blue Bell ice cream plant outbreak and many others.

As a regulator, consultant, auditor and investigator for almost 40 years, I am painfully aware of the difficulties in the implementation of complicated quality assurance and safety programs. In light of this, I feel simply more or different “preventative controls” are not likely to improve the situation much, by themselves.

Still, we look to FDA to help us, and I am still wondering if we will get what we need from the agency. We need consistent application and enforcement of the rules, and FDA has to get agents into the field, but most importantly, firms must organize their companies around food safety. This means establishing active and effective committees, appointing dedicated food safety staff, and a planned approach to assuring the safety of products. Companies must also effectively train and educate everyone in the organization, and maybe most importantly, apply the available science and technology to the food safety problem.

A lack of commitment within companies is a root cause of much of the failures of the existing programs, along with a lack of resources. We waste tons of money on audits, manuals, record keeping etc, etc, when we should be investing in educating our employees, improving our infrastructures and applying technology. These applications should include onsite laboratory capability, remote monitoring of critical processes, and sophisticated traceability and recall programs.

I totally support what FDA is doing with FSMA, but we should recognize that a new system of preventative controls is only a solution if our food safety management systems are working effectively.

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