Category Archives: Food Safety Policy

The only thing certain is more uncertainty: Europe tries new uncertainty approach

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The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has developed a harmonised approach to assessing and taking account of uncertainties in food safety, and animal and plant health. This approach will boost the transparency of the resulting scientific advice and make it more robust for decision-making.

Maybe.

The EFSA Scientific Committee guidance on uncertainty in scientific assessments offers a diverse toolbox of scientific methods and technical tools for uncertainty analysis. It is sufficiently flexible to be implemented in such diverse areas as plant pests, microbiological hazards and chemical substances.

Prof Tony Hardy, Chair of the Scientific Committee said: “Since 2016, we have tested, refined and tailored our new approach to uncertainty analysis, benefiting from open consultations with EFSA’s partners and the wider public. Crucially, we learnt a great deal about how to apply the new approach by trialling it across all EFSA’s scientific areas of activity.

The approach is described in two separate documents: a short user-friendly (says who?) guidance with practical instructions and tips, and a supporting scientific opinion with all the detailed scientific reasoning and methods.

The long-term goal is that the new guidance on uncertainty will be an integral step in all EFSA’s scientific assessments.

Prof Hans Verhagen is head of EFSA’s department for risk assessment. He said: “The trial showed that in areas like plant health, an explicit uncertainty analysis is already being used, with positive feedback from risk managers who say this helps them with their decision-making. In other areas, where uncertainty analysis is not yet integrated in the assessment process, the testing phase has helped give a clearer idea how to develop tailored approaches.”

EFSA will implement the approach in two stages. In general scientific areas, the guidance will apply from autumn 2018 after the renewal of the Authority’s scientific panels.

In regulated products areas such as pesticides, food additives or food contact materials it will be phased in later on, in light of the experience gained in the ‘non-regulated’ areas.

In parallel, EFSA is developing practical guidance for communication specialists on how to communicate the results of uncertainty analysis to different target audiences, including the public. A public consultation will be held on a draft of the communication approach in 2018.

Others have been working on this for 40 years. When the goal is public health – so more people don’t barf – we already know it’s better to go public early and oftern.

Going public: Early disclosure of food risks for the benefit of public health

Mar.17

NEHA, Volume 79.7, Pages 8-14

Benjamin Chapman, Maria Sol Erdozaim, Douglas Powell

http://www.neha.org/node/58904

Often during an outbreak of foodborne illness, there are health officials who have data indicating that there is a risk prior to notifying the public. During the lag period between the first public health signal and some release of public information, there are decision makers who are weighing evidence with the impacts of going public. Multiple agencies and analysts have lamented that there is not a common playbook or decision tree for how public health agencies determine what information to release and when. Regularly, health authorities suggest that how and when public information is released is evaluated on a case-by-case basis without sharing the steps and criteria used to make decisions. Information provision on its own is not enough. Risk communication, to be effective and grounded in behavior theory, should provide control measure options for risk management decisions. There is no indication in the literature that consumers benefit from paternalistic protection decisions to guard against information overload. A review of the risk communication literature related to outbreaks, as well as case studies of actual incidents, are explored and a blueprint for health authorities to follow is provided.

Fancy food ain’t safe food: UK-steak-house edition (Jamie Oliver is a food-safety idiot) and quinoa ain’t steak

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Ruki Sayid of the Mirror writes the meat supplier behind Wetherspoon’s sudden move to axe steak for its Steak Club menu is at the centre of a food hygiene investigation.

The Food Standards Agency revealed Russell Hume’s sites have been inspected and products recalled after allegations it was in “serious non-compliance with food hygiene regulations.”

The firm has previously supplied meat for Jamie Oliver’s restaurants, but bosses today confirmed that they switched suppliers as soon as they became aware of problems.

Following a tip, the FSA carried out a spot check on the firm’s Birmingham site and then sent teams to other locations which also failed to meet regulations.

The FSA said: “There is no indication that people have become ill from eating meat supplied by Russell Hume.

“However, we are concerned about the poor practices in place at their premises so that is why we have taken proportionate action to ensure no meat can leave their sites at present.

“We are continuing to assess the situation.”

Customers were up in arms when Wetherspoon scrapped steak from its menu without warning at its 900 pubs.

The decision meant servings of the Aberdeen Angus rump steak, sirloin steak and gammon were unavailable to order as customers were reportedly offered quinoa and halloumi salad alternatives instead.

One furious diner told how he stormed out of a branch in Scarborough when he learned of the Steak Club shortcomings.

James Jarvis, 27, told The Sun : “One of their suggestions was a quinoa salad with grilled halloumi. I came in for a steak — not a poncey salad!”

While Michael Rousell, 62, who visited a Wetherspoon in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, told the newspaper: “I can’t believe a multi- million pound organisation like Wetherspoon can’t sort this out ­— it beggars belief.”

A notice apparently pictured at one pub read: “Due to a supplier failure, the following meals are unavailable: 8oz and 14oz Aberdeen Angus rump steak, 8oz sirloin steak, 5oz and 10z gammon.”

In memorandum: Wisconsin epidemiologist Jeffrey Davis identified Milwaukee’s Cryptosporidium outbreak

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I was a new doctoral student when cryptosporidiosis sickened over 400,000 people and killed 69 in Wisconsin in the spring of 1993.

I had recently started the Food Safety Network, which was bringing daily updates to scientists and public health folks who usually had to wait 6 months for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly to arrive.

It may seem trivial now, but it was a big deal in its day.

Lotsa posers and copycats over the years, so we went to barfblog.com.

Later that year, cryptosporidiosis would sicken hundreds in Kitchener-Waterloo, where I was living with my young family.

Somehow, I was speaking about this to our home-renovator-contractor-and-therapist yesterday while he unplugged our kitchen faucet.

And then I got this.

Meg Jones of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes that as doctors’ offices filled with Milwaukeeans suffering from a mysterious illness in 1993, Mayor John Norquist called a meeting with state and local officials.

Norquist asked state epidemiologist Jeffrey Davis whether he would drink a glass of Milwaukee’s water and when Davis said he would not, Norquist issued a massive boil water advisory that affected more than 1 million residents.

With decades of work in public health, Davis was the perfect person to figure out a little-known parasite cryptosporidiosis could be the culprit that sickened more than 400,000 people.

As state epidemiologist for the past four decades, Davis was Wisconsin’s doctor.

He was a medical sleuth who figured out the connection between toxic shock syndrome and tampons and helped determine the infectious agent transmitted by ticks that causes Lyme disease. 

Davis, 72, died of pneumonia in Madison Jan. 16.

“Jeff’s knowledge of the literature helped identify the (Cryptosporidium) outbreak earlier. Cryptosporidiosis at that point was a pretty rare pathogen,” said State Public Health Veterinarian James Kazmierczak.

Knowing about a similar waterborne outbreak elsewhere in the U.S., Davis asked to see data on water quality in Milwaukee and noticed a spike in turbidity at the same time that people began to get sick. At the time, city water supplies were not tested for Cryptosporidium.

“Because of Jeff’s knowledge of what happened earlier with cryptosporidiosis, that became the leading suspect,” said Kazmierczak.

Davis grew up in Whitefish Bay and earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry in 1967 at University of Wisconsin-Madison and his medical degree in 1971 at the University of Chicago. He did his internship and residency in pediatrics in Florida and from 1973 to 1975 worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the South Carolina Department of Health.

After a stint at Duke University Medical Center, he returned to Wisconsin in 1978 as state epidemiologist and chief of the division of acute and communicable diseases. In 1991, his job title changed to chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for communicable diseases.

“He loved being a sleuth and medical detective, leading investigations of all sorts, from toxic shock syndrome to Legionnaires’ outbreaks, to the Cryptosporidium water supply outbreak, which was huge,” said his wife Roseanne Clark.

“He really was passionate about trying to figure out the source to reduce the impact on as many people as possible. He cared about the health of the people of Wisconsin.”

Science, or poetry in motion: Modern pig inspection

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) today announced its continued effort to modernize inspection systems through science-based approaches to food safety. USDA is proposing to amend the federal meat inspection regulations to establish a new voluntary inspection system for market hog slaughter establishments called the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System (NSIS), while also requiring additional pathogen sampling for all swine slaughter establishments.

The proposed rule also allows innovation and flexibility to establishments that are slaughtering market hogs. Market hogs are uniform, healthy, young animals that can be slaughtered and processed in this modernized system more efficiently and effectively with enhanced process control.

For market hog establishments that opt into NSIS, the proposed rule would increase the number of offline USDA inspection tasks, while continuing 100% FSIS carcass-by-carcass inspection. These offline inspection tasks place inspectors in areas of the production process where they can perform critical tasks that have direct impact on food safety.

There will be a 60-day period for comment once the rule is published in the Federal Register.

To view the proposed rule and information on how to comment on the rule, visit the FSIS website at fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/regulations/federal-register/proposed-rules.

 

‘Something will always be somebody’s last meal’ Does it have to be today?

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My favorite food safety fairytale is along the lines of, we’ve always produced food this way and no one has ever gotten sick.

Because bugs don’t change, food don’t change, people don’t change.

Raw oysters, the renowned aphrodhsiac, is especially prone to fairytale hyperbole.

Delayna Earley of the Island Packet in South Carolina, writes, who doesn’t love a good oyster roast?

“I’ve been doing this all my life and we’ve never had a case of anyone dying from eating an oyster,” Larry Toomer, owner of the Bluffton Oyster Co., said. “We know where our oysters came from because we harvest them, refrigerate them ourselves and then cook them shortly after.”

Toomer says that there is always a risk when consuming any raw food, but the oysters that are harvested off the coast of the Low country typically don’t have bacteria due cleansing nature of the tidal waters they grow in.

“Something will always be somebody’s last meal,” Toomer says. “If you’re immune system is not up to snuff you shouldn’t eat anything raw, whether that is an oyster, or burger or any other type of meat, but something is going to set you off if you’re already sick. But other than that, we shouldn’t worry too much.”

Seek and ye shall find: Citrobacter in pre-cut veggies in a German hospital sickened 76

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A foodborne outbreak of VIM carbapenemase-expressing Citrobacter freundii (CPC) occurred between February and June 2016 at a major university hospital in Germany.

An explosive increase of CPC isolated from rectal swabs of patients during weekly routine screening led to the declaration of an outbreak. A hospital-wide prevalence screening was initiated as well as screening of all patients on admission and before transfer to another ward, and canteen staff, patient rooms, medical and kitchen inventory and food. Swabs were streaked out on selective plates. All CPC isolates were analysed by mass spectrometry and selected isolates by whole-genome sequencing.

In total, 76 mostly unrelated cases in different wards were identified. The CPC was isolated from retained samples of prepared vegetable salads and puddings and from a mixing machine used to prepare them only after an overnight culture. The immediate ban on serving potential source food resulted in a sharp decline and finally disappearance of novel cases. Repeated testing of pre-sliced vegetables showed a high degree of contamination with C. freundii without a carbapenemase, indicating a possible source.

This report demonstrates that an explosive increase in carbapenemase-expressing Enterobacteriaceae contamination may be caused by a foodborne source, and suggests that pre-sliced vegetables have to be taken into account as a putative pathogen repository. It also underlines the importance of appropriate cooling, transport, re-heating and distribution of meals and indicates that probing of non-organic surfaces is limited by low sensitivity, which may be increased by additional overnight cultivation in appropriate media.

A nosocomial foodborne outbreak of a VIM carbapenemase-expressing Citrobacter freundii

15 January 2018

Clinical Infectious Diseases, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciy034

Mathias Pletz, Antje Wollny, Ute-Heike Dobermann, Jurgen Rodel, Svetlana Neubauer, Claudia Stein, Christian Brandt, Anita Hartung, Alexander Mellmann, Sabine Edel, Vladimir Patchev, Oliwia Makarewicz, Jens Maschmann

https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/cid/ciy034/4809943?redirectedFrom=PDF

Cilantro has a history of shits: Produce risk modelling in India

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This study estimates illness (diarrhea) risks from fecal pathogens that can be transmitted via fecal-contaminated fresh produce. To do this, a quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) framework was developed in National Capital Region, India based on bacterial indicator and pathogen data from fresh produce wash samples collected at local markets.

Produce wash samples were analyzed for fecal indicator bacteria (Escherichia coli, total Bacteroidales) and pathogens (Salmonella, Shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC), enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC)). Based on the E. coli data and on literature values for Cryptosporidium and norovirus, the annual mean diarrhea risk posed by ingestion of fresh produce ranged from 18% in cucumbers to 59% in cilantro for E. coli O157:H7, and was <0.0001% for Cryptosporidium; for norovirus the risk was 11% for cucumbers and up to 46% for cilantro. The risks were drastically reduced, from 59% to 4% for E. coli O157:H7, and from 46% to 2% for norovirus for cilantro in post-harvest washing and disinfection scenario.

The present QMRA study revealed the potential hazards of eating raw produce and how post-harvest practices can reduce the risk of illness. The results may lead to better food safety surveillance systems and use of hygienic practices pre- and post-harvest.

Quantitative microbial risk assessment to estimate the risk of diarrheal diseases from fresh produce consumption in India

Food Microbiology, January 2018

Arti Kundu, Stefan Wuertz, Woutrina Smith

DOI: 10.1016/j.fm.2018.01.017 

http://www.x-mol.com/paper/530702

Foodborne disease outbreaks in the United States: A historical overview

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Understanding the epidemiology of foodborne disease outbreaks (FBDOs) is important for informing investigation, control, and prevention methods.

We examined annual summary FBDO data in the United States from 1938 to 2015, to help understand the epidemiology of outbreaks over time. Due to changes in reporting procedures, before 1998, the mean number of annual outbreaks was 378, and after that, it was 1062.

A mean of 42% had a known etiology during 1961–1998; since then the etiology has been identified in ∼65%, with a marked increase in the number of norovirus outbreaks. From 1967 to 1997, a mean of 41% of FBDOs occurred in restaurant settings, increasing to 60% in 1998–2015. Concurrently, the proportion of outbreaks occurring at a home decreased from 25% to 8%.

The mean size of outbreaks has decreased over time, and the number of multistate outbreaks has increased. Many social, economic, environmental, technological, and regulatory changes have dramatically affected the epidemiology of foodborne disease over time.

Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, Vol. 15 Issue 1

January 2018

Timothy Jones and Jane Yackley

https://doi.org/10.1089/fpd.2017.2388

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2017.2388

‘Disease from outer space’ States confront the spread of CWD in deer

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In March, 1996, the UK government confirmed what had been known for years: bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or mad cow disease) was killing humans in the UK.

The various forms of transmissible encephalopathies have different names according to the species – scrapie in sheep, feline spongiform encephalopathy in cats, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in humans, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk.

But they’re all the same affliction, caused by infectious proteins, or prions.

I haven’t been following the CWD outbreak in deer, but it seems to be where BSE was about 1993: There’s this mysterious new disease no one ever thoughts would cross over to humans, but now, maybe?

Jim Robbins of the New York Times writes that, as darkness closed in, one hunter after another stopped at this newly opened game check station, deer carcasses loaded in the beds of their pickups.

They had been given licenses for a special hunt, and others would follow. Jessica Goosmann, a wildlife technician with Montana’s Fish, Wildlife & Parks Department, stepped outside to greet them, reaching for the neck of each freshly killed deer to cut an incision and remove a lymph node for testing.

On the edge of this south-central Montana village, where deer hunting is a way of life, the game check station has become the front line of the state’s efforts to stop the spread of a deadly infection known as chronic wasting disease.

It has ravaged deer herds throughout the United States and Canada and forced the killing of thousands of infected animals in 24 states and three Canadian provinces. It has also been found in Norway and South Korea. With the disease widespread in Wyoming, the Dakotas and the province of Alberta, Montana officials had been bracing for its emergence.

So in November, when biologists discovered it in six deer in this part of Montana and in another near the Canadian border, officials began setting up special hunts and stations for testing.

“It wasn’t a surprise that we found it,” said John Vore, game management bureau chief for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks. “It was a disappointment, but not a surprise.”

On Friday, the department announced that two more deer from this region, taken early in the special hunt, tested positive for the disease. Other test results are pending.

Chronic wasting disease is a contagious neurological disease that infects elk, deer, moose and caribou, and reduces their brains to a spongy consistency. Animals become emaciated, behave strangely and eventually die. It’s not known to be transferred to humans. Neither is it known to be spread from wild to domestic animals. There is no treatment, although a vaccine has been successful in tests in wild deer.

It is among a class of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, or TSE. Most experts believe the infectious agent is something called a prion, a misfolded cellular protein found in the nervous system and lymph tissue. The disease was first noted in captive deer in Colorado in the 1960s. The most closely related animal disease is scrapie in sheep.

“It’s a very unusual disease,” said Matthew Dunfee, an expert at the Wildlife Management Institute in Fort Collins, Co. and project director for the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance. “Some experts say it’s a disease from outer space.”

 

Modeling foodborne illness effects in France, 2008-2013

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Many thanks to our French correspondent who forwarded this abstract on the latest foodborne illness data from France.

To assess the impact of foodborne infections on human health and to set priorities for surveillance, prevention and control strategies, estimates of food-related morbidity and mortality are necessary. The objective of the present study was to produce the annual number of symptomatic cases, hospitalized cases and deceased cases for 21 foodborne pathogen agents (10 bacteria, 3 viruses, 8 parasites) in metropolitan France for the 2008-2013 period.

Our findings reveal that morbidity and mortality attributed to infectious foodborne diseases remain high in France, representing 1.28-2.23 million illnesses, 15,800-21,200 hospitalizations, and 232-358 deaths. Campylobacter spp., non-typhoidal Salmonella spp. and norovirus infections accounted for the majority of all food-related illnesses and hospitalizations in France. Non-typhoidal Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes accounted for half of the burden of food-related deaths.

The knowledge of the absolute and relative burden of food-borne infections is useful for all stakeholders (public authorities and operators) involved in the field of food safety.

Estimates of food-related morbidity and mortality in metropolitan France, 2008-2013

Bulletin epidemiologique hebdomadaire

Dieter Van Cauteren, Yann Le Strat, Cecile Sommen, Mathias Bruyand, Mathieu Tourdjman, Nathalie Jourdan-Da Silva, Elisaveth Couturier, Nelly Fournet, Henriette De Valk, Jean-Claude Desenclos

http://invs.santepubliquefrance.fr/beh/2018/1/2018_1_1.html