For the past 25 years, all I’ve heard is we can’t adopt new technology because consumers don’t want it.
Bullshit.
Consumers don’t know what they want until they are offered it.
We sorta proved that in 2000 when we offered genetically engineered and conventional sweet corn and potatoes for sale at a farmer’s market.
The big stores wouldn’t let us in, because they were terrified to let moms and dads know that sweet corn and potatoes was grown with pesticides.
Corporate assholes.
Which allowed the anti-GE crowd to come up with some conspiracy shit that resulted in a death-to-science banner on my lab door.
Move out of your parent’s basement, get a life.
Bruce Cran of the Consumers Association of Canada told CTV News the federal government has done “an incompetent job” informing Canadians that irradiation is safe and he worries that a lack of action could lead to a deadly outbreak.
“They need to promote an understanding so Canadians can make an informed choice, and they’re not doing that for whatever reason,” Cran said. “This is not only a safe practice, it’s one that many of us would like to be able to use.”
“Our members would absolutely support it,” said Robin Horel, president of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council.
“But we haven’t pushed hard because … the companies that produce chicken and turkey are concerned about what the consumer response would be.”
It’s called leadership.
Yes, leaders get some arrows in the back, but it’s been decades, either get behind science or suffer down the road.
My cousin the asparagus farmer bills his crop as genetically-engineered free. But anyone in the know knows that asparagus has been bred using multiple techniques over the years so it is absolutely genetically modified.
I asked him once if a fungal resistant GE asparagus came along, would he plant it.
He shrugged.
I have full respect for any farmer that can make a living doing whatever, getting gullible consumers to buy whatever.
There is a long history of food fairy tales, most famously linked to Dr. Kellogg in Michigan.
Anna Madison, a spokeswoman for Health Canada, said in an email the federal government would not promote irradiation since it does not engage in promotional activities.
Bullshit.
Health Canada promotes all kinds of bad food safety advice, from handwashing to thermometer use.
Rick Holley, professor emeritus of food microbiology and food safety at University of Manitoba, says irradiation is safe and is even more important for chicken than for ground beef. Chicken causes more illness in Canada, he said.
Holley said salmonella is naturally present on a lot of chicken and the gastro-intestinal bacteria campylobactor is present on all of it, regardless of whether a bird is free-range or factory.
“Both of these organisms occasionally kill, but because they make more people ill who recover, then the emphasis is not placed on them to the same extent as E. coli O157 in hamburger,” said Holley, who suggested that irradiating chicken could cut food-related illness in Canada by 25 per cent.
Food trucks are not some glamorized version of nirvana that Jon Favreau can make into a movie.
There are food safety risks, and they are magnified by the small space and hipster environment of a food truck.
Megan Woolhouse of the Boston Globe called me a couple of weeks ago (megan.woolhouse@globe.com) and I told her what I thought.
(It’s amazing that reporters can track me down in Australia, but Kansas State University decided I was not on campus so couldn’t do my job, as they moved toward distance education; my guess is the cattle farmers that fund Kansas didn’t like the things I was saying publicly. Whatever. So far over it.)
Megan writes: They’re restaurants on wheels, churning out everything from pan-seared dumplings to juicy porchetta sandwiches for the city’s hungry lunchtime crowds.
But food trucks, which are proliferating at a rapid pace around Boston, are more likely to be temporarily shut down for serious health violations than their brick-and-mortar counterparts, most commonly for violating a basic requirement for proper sanitation: running water.
A Boston Globe review of 2016 city health records found that while food trucks were less likely overall than restaurants to have violations, they were more likely to be suspended for serious issues that pose an “imminent public health threat.’’ Nine of the city’s 96 licensed food trucks last year were closed on the spot until the violations were corrected, usually within a week or two. By comparison, two of every 100 restaurants were suspended.
A recent E. coli outbreak that shuttered several food trucks operated by the Chicken & Rice Guys has raised questions about whether these movable feasts are as safe as traditional restaurants.
Food trucks in Boston were cited for violations 200 times in 2016, and of that total, about half were serious infractions, and the other half minor. A majority of the most serious violations that led to temporary suspensions were related to water, or the lack of it.
On board some trucks, the water tank was empty or a sink or pipe leaked, so employees were not able to rinse vegetables and surfaces or wash their hands, as required by health regulations.
City inspectors closed The Savory Truck outside Brigham and Women’s Hospital in April 2016 after inspectors found condensation dripping into food and no water for employees to wash their hands, according to city inspection reports.
The next day, officials temporarily shuttered Saigon Alley, a food truck specializing in Vietnamese fare in the Financial District. Health inspectors said there was “no evidence of handwashing due to broken pipes at handsink.”
The Clover food truck parked at Dewey Square was ordered to close immediately last October. Once again, the issue was water.
In 2013, Clover voluntarily pulled its trucks off the road after a salmonella outbreak affected 12 people, at least half of whom ate at one of its restaurants or food trucks. Salmonella bacteria can cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps, and in severe cases, hospitalization.
On the Rose Kennedy Greenway, customers lined up for lunch at a food truck.
Water and hand-washing are fundamental to keeping harmful bacteria at bay in any food establishment, but even more critical on a food truck, said Doug Powell a former professor of food safety at Kansas State University and an author of barfblog.com, which chronicles foodborne illness outbreaks.
In a small space, washing takes on more importance because bad bacteria can spread more quickly. Cutting surfaces on the trucks are used for a variety of tasks, he said, and workers who serve food might also collect payments.
The rolling restaurants are also not connected directly to a city’s water supply and rely instead on a water tank connected to a sink, much like on a boat or airplane. Water can simply run out, and finding places to refill poses another dilemma, so workers might cut corners to conserve it.
“All of those health problems get magnified in a smaller space on a food truck,” Powell said. “So you really have to be good at what you’re doing.”
The problems have come to light as food trucks soar in popularity. The number of trucks in Boston grew from 14 in 2010 to 96 in 2016.
Trucks generally operate without significant problems, and the industry has long argued that they are as safe as — if not safer than — restaurants.
Matt Geller, president of the National Food Truck Association, said, “We see E. coli outbreaks in restaurants, so it’s not about the vehicle or the food. It’s about the particular operation.”
That’s idocracy.
E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria are almost always about the ingredients that restaurants source.
I didn’t know Don Schaffner, food safety guru and pop sensation at Rutgers University, was a Brittney Spears fan.
But he writes, whoops, I did it again, putting publication of peer-reviewed research ahead of press release.
We had an article published in the Journal Food of Protection earlier this week. While this current research is no five second rule, I thought it might garner some press interest, so I worked with colleagues at my university to put together a press release. I do enjoy talking to the media as part of my job, and it’s especially fun when it’s my own research.
(That’s why I became a professor, because I was bored talking about other people’s research and wanted to talk about my own — dp)
I thought I would take a little bit of time and share with barfblog.com readers about the process, because you folks are into this too.
An early draft of the press release had the title “Cool Water as Effective as Hot for Killing Germs”. This led to a conversation with my colleague in media relations who explained that using the word “killing” in the headline would lead to many more hits on Google (the modern-day equivalent of “if it bleeds, it leads”). I had to explain, that while I know all about search engine optimization (SEO), I could not in good conscience tell a scientific fib. Handwashing, for the most part does not kill germs, it simply removes them from your hands, and allows them to be washed down the drain.
Which brings me to antibacterial soaps – which seem to kill germs. This particular research article did look at the question of antibacterial soaps, and basically led to the same conclusion as our other on the issue: antibacterial soaps do work better than plain soaps when it comes to reducing bacterial counts on the hands, probably because there is some actual bacterial killing going on. For a variety of reasons, antibacterial soaps tend to work people up into a lather (pun intended… who says scientists have to be serious?). I had one journalist tell me [no link for you, sleazy British Tabloid] that they had already come to the conclusion that antibacterial soaps don’t work, and could I just say that. No, I explained I could not just say that, because that’s not what our research found. Instead, we found a highly significant difference (p= 0.0003) between hand washes with an antibacterial soap, and with a similarly formulated plain soap. In this particular study the difference was small, about 0.3 log. I know many readers of this blog are comfortable and thinking on the log scale, but for you non-microbiologists, 0.3 log corresponds to about a 50% greater reduction. Now 50% sounds like a lot to a non-microbiologist, but when you’re doing food microbiology, sometimes the data themselves can vary by 0.5 logs, or almost 70%. So what we ended up saying in the manuscript was, while highly significant, the difference was “within the range of error for microbiological data (i.e., a clinically insignificant difference).” I wish I’d said that a bit more forcefully in the manuscript, but sometimes we have to make compromises in peer review. The bottom line? I believe that antibacterial soap works better than plain soap in reducing bacteria on your hands. We reach this conclusion in our meta-analysis on the subject, and even this relatively small difference can have a profound effect on public health, at least if you believe our risk assessment manuscript on the subject.
I wanted to stress in the press release, and what I’ve been leading with during my media interviews, is that wash water temperature makes no difference, at least in the range that we studied (~ 60°F to 100°F). Our data show that there was no significant difference, no matter what temperature was used in the hand wash. Water temperature has along an interesting history in the FDA model food code. It used to be that the code specified a specific water temperature for washing the hands. It turns out that that temperature was based on the temperature at which bacon grease liquefies. The current code says that hands must be washed in warm water. Elsewhere in the current code it specifies that a hand wash sink must be capable of dispensing water at 100°F, hence our reason for doing the research. One point that I’ve been stressing in the media interviews is that it’s all about comfort. We want people to be comfortable when their washing their hands, and so my advice is use whatever water is most comfortable for you. It remains to be seen whether we will be able to change what’s in the code. Check back in 2018 after the next Conference for Food Protection
We looked at several other factors in this research as well. We investigated the volume of soap used: 0.5 mL, one mL and two mL, and we found no difference between these volumes of soap. Of course this doesn’t mean you can use as little soap as you want, my recommendation is to use at least 0.5 mL. Using more than this doesn’t seem to make a difference. This is also consistent with what we found in our [meta-analysis](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22054188).
In a recent paper published in Food Protection Trends, my PhD student Dane Jensen (who was also the lead author on this handwashing study), and I published an analysis of recommendations on handwashing signs. Dane had a hand (pun intended, see above) in several of the handwashing research manuscripts coming out of my lab in recent years. What we found in the FPT handwashing signage research was that handwashing recommendations were all over the place. So we decided to study lather time in this current manuscript. For purposes of our research we defined lather time as the time from when the soap is applied, until the water rinse begins. We studied five, 10, 20, and 40 second lather times. We only saw a statistically significant difference between lather times of five and 20 seconds. The recommendation I would draw from this finding, is to lather for at least 10 seconds. Lathering for more than 10 seconds does not appear to offer any additional benefit.
One of the questions that seems to come up again and again in media interviews on this topic is “who funded the research”. While I understand the motivation for the question, it’s starting to get under my skin (okay okay, I’ll stop with the puns). The question seems to imply that somehow if I take money from the industry, my results are not to be trusted. I strongly resent the implication. It’s damn difficult to get grants these days, and I don’t think it’s going to get any easier until something changes in Washington. We funded this research using discretionary money, but I’m proud that we did it in collaboration with our co-authors from GOJO. They were instrumental in helping us think about our experimental design, plus they gave us free soap. They are also really smart and hard-working scientists, who really sweat the details.
Is this the last word on handwashing? I doubt it. We’ve got at least one more paper from Dane’s dissertation in the pipeline, and I’ve still got more ideas. If anyone reading this believes that industry funded research is somehow tainted, and you’ve got $250,000, please get in touch.
That’s the background and shows just how much good scientists sweat the details, whereas any hack can make a claim, spread it on the Internet, supported by no data, just interpretation.
I’ve got a modest 70 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and a book, but when I had a big lab with the money flowing, I got bored. That’s just me.
Surprisingly I still get cited in peer-reviewed journals a few times a week, so I know I’ve got a body of work that people go to.
Thee scandals of pay-for-publication journals are a smear on the scientific community, but until someone comes up with a better system, peer-review largely works.
I’ve kept my mouth shut for years while papers got written, reviewed and published.
No PR before publication.
Those who do are attention-seeking assholes and another smear on the profession.
Washing our hands can keep us from spreading germs and getting sick. But a new Rutgers-New Brunswick study found that cool water removes the same amount of harmful bacteria as hot.
“People need to feel comfortable when they are washing their hands but as far as effectiveness, this study shows us that the temperature of the water used didn’t matter,” said Donald Schaffner, distinguished professor and extension specialist in food science.
In the Rutgers study, published in the June issue of the Journal of Food Protection, high levels of a harmless bacteria were put on the hands of 21 participants multiple times over a six-month period before they were asked to wash their hands in 60-degree, 79-degree or 100-degree water temperatures using 0.5 ml, 1 ml or 2 ml volumes of soap.
“This study may have significant implications towards water energy, since using cold water saves more energy than warm or hot water,” said Schaffner. “Also we learned even washing for 10 seconds significantly removed bacteria from the hands.”
While the study indicates that there is no difference between the amount of soap used, more work needs to be done to understand exactly how much and what type of soap is needed to remove harmful microbes from hands, said co-author Jim Arbogast, vice president of Hygiene Sciences and Public Health Advancements for GOJO. “This is important because the biggest public health need is to increase handwashing or hand sanitizing by foodservice workers and the public before eating, preparing food and after using the restroom,” Arbogast said.
These findings are significant, particularly to the restaurant and food industry, because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issues guidelines, every four years, to states. Those guidelines currently recommend that plumbing systems at food establishments and restaurants deliver water at 100 degrees Fahrenheit for handwashing.
Schaffner said the issue of water temperature has been debated for a number of years without enough science to back-up any recommendation to change the policy guidelines or provide proof that water temperature makes a difference in hand hygiene. Many states, in fact, interpret the FDA guidelines as a requirement that water temperature for handwashing must be 100 degrees, he said.
The FDA is scheduled to hold a conference in 2018 to discuss the existing code and any modifications that should be made and Schaffner would like to see the water temperature policy revised at that time.
“I think this study indicates that there should be a policy change,” said Schaffner. “Instead of having a temperature requirement, the policy should only say that comfortable or warm water needs to be delivered. We are wasting energy to heat water to a level that is not necessary.”
FIU says that if you have ever suffered from food poisoning, you will appreciate why it is so important to inspect food before it reaches the consumer. Food producers have to check for bacteria and signs of contamination before they are able to ship out any perishable food. Some common bacteria that can lead to foodborne illnesses include E.coli, salmonella and listeria. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control, each year, one in six Americans gets sick by consuming contaminated foods or beverages, that is forty-eight million people, out of whom 128,000 are hospitalized.
Typically, the inspection process, which involves putting samples in a solution and placing it in an incubator to see if bacteria grows, takes anywhere from 18 hours to several days. The reason is that it takes time for bacteria to grow at detectable levels. Current detection techniques are limited – you may need about 1,000 to a million bacteria present, depending on the technique, in a small volume before bacteria can be successfully detected. To reach that level, it takes time.
With this new device, food producers are able to run the whole solution through a smaller container inside the incubator oven. Antibodies in the device capture the target bacteria. This procedure allows bacteria to be concentrated in a smaller volume enabling same day detection.
“We are focused on helping food producers reduce storage cost and get fresher food to consumers,” Gaitas says. “We are addressing a major and well documented need in a very large market. There are about 1.2 billion food tests conducted worldwide and about 220 million tests in the United States.”
By shortening the detection time by one day, the team believes that the device can save the food industry billions. For example, meat producers, as a collective industry, could save up to $3 billion in storage costs by shortening the detection to one day. This device can also be used to expedite the detection of bloodborne illnesses such as sepsis and viral infections; however, currently the commercial focus is on food due to the lower barriers to entry.
Gaitas formed a company, Kytaro Inc – an FIU startup – which spent the last few years creating and testing the device and publishing the results in scientific journals. Besides Gaitas and Kim, the company has been employing FIU undergraduates.
FIU notes that this April, with the support of Henry Artigues of the Office of Research and Economic Development and Shekhar Bhansali, chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Kytaro was recognized as one of “40 Best University Startups 2017” at the University Startups Conference and Demo Day in Washington, D.C. About 200 startups applied to the national competition.
And I get frustrated making lunch for the kid and the wife.
Not so much the wife, but the 8-year-old drives me crazy when she com home after school, has hardly eaten anything that we packed together, and says she’s hungry.
I tell her to make what she wants.
Tough house.
Jennifer McClellan of USA Today writes that Americans don’t set out to waste food (just like they don’t set out to shoot people).
People don’t buy an apple because they plan to throw it away. Instagram isn’t filled
A handful of scholars wanted to find the answer. They conducted studies and found, in essence, that Americans waste food because we don’t know another way, and because we can.
The first study to look at U.S. consumers’ attitudes about food waste came out of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in June 2015. One revelation was that having a leaky faucet or leaving lights on bothered people more than throwing away food did. But the gas created by food decay in landfills is a major environmental threat.
The second study, out of Ohio State University in 2016, found that a majority of Americans think food waste is a problem, but find it difficult to reduce their own waste. Indeed, a quarter of respondents said they’re too busy to change.
It’s not all bad, though. There’s hope for us yet.
Americans are “concerned about wasted food, and are interested in taking further action,” the Johns Hopkins study said.
Americans are conditioned to seek out the freshest, most nutritious food.
Grocery stores stock only the most beautiful fruits and vegetables on displays that give the feeling of abundance. And why not? The produce department has some of the biggest profit margins in a grocery store (tell that to the farmers).
Americans think they waste less than their neighbors.
More than 70 percent of people in the Johns Hopkins study and more than 85 percent in the Ohio State study said they toss fewer foods than others do.
Americans would rather be safe than sorry.
Sixty-five percent of people in the Ohio State study said they discarded food because they worry about food poisoning. Of those respondents, 91 percent said they pay attention to date labels on food.
People think older food and food that’s past its date will make them sick.
But more often than not those dates refer to quality, not safety. And most food-borne illness is caused by contamination along the supply line or improper food handling, not from expired food.
Food-date labeling is confusing at best. What do “use by,” “sell by” and “best before” mean anyway? Probably not “poisonous after.”
Infant formula is the only food product with federal regulation for label dates. Everything else is left up to a patchwork of state and local laws.
In most states, the date printed on milk cartons is 21 to 28 days after pasteurization. In Montana, that date is 12 days after pasteurization. When that date passes, retailers are not allowed to sell or donate the milk. Opponents of that law say it has led to an untold amount of milk poured down the drain and has caused milk prices to increase.
The Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic examined Montana’s law in a documentary called “Expired? Food Waste in America.” They pointed out that since milk is pasteurized, which removes potential contaminants, it’s unlikely to make you sick if it’s spoiled.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) introduced the Food Date Labeling Act of 2016, which called for federal standardization of date labeling. It died in committee.
Late last year, the USDA released guidance for the food industry to adopt the phrase “Best If Used By” on date labels.
This year, two of the biggest trade groups in the grocery industry encouraged manufacturers to voluntarily adopt two standard phrases. The Food Marketing Institute and Grocery Manufacturers Association urge producers to label food with “Use By” if it’s a highly perishable item for which there is a food-safety concern. Otherwise, food should be marked with a “Best If Used By” date to describe product quality, not safety.
Essentially, the complications around date labeling come back to affordability. Most Americans can afford the “extra layer of safety” of basing their actions on a date label while those with tighter budgets “look at a label twice, sniff three times and then make a decision,” said Roe, co-author of the Ohio State University study.
In 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture very publicly began to urge consumers to use an accurate food thermometer when cooking ground beef patties because research demonstrated that the color of meat is not a reliable indicator of safety.
USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety at the time, Catherine Woteki, said, “Consumers need to know that the only way to be sure a ground beef patty is cooked to a high enough temperature to destroy any harmful bacteria that may be present is to use a thermometer.”
Shortly thereafter, I started doing it and discovered, not only was using a meat thermometer fairly easy, it made me a better cook. No more extra well-done burgers to ensure the bugs that would make me sick were gone. They tasted better.
By May 2000, USDA launched a national consumer campaign to promote the use of food thermometers in the home. The campaign featured an infantile mascot called Thermy that proclaimed, “It’s Safe to Bite When the Temperature is Right.”
Seventeen years later, the converts are minimal. Canada came to the thermometer table a few years ago, Australia is doing a slow policy creep, but the UK is still firmly committed to piping hot.
The UK Food Standards Agency recently published the sixth, chief scientific adviser’s Science Report, entitled Data Science. No mention of thermometers except to determine refrigerator temperatures or included as packing on food.
Science-based policy depends on whose science is being quoted to what ends. The fancy folks call it value judgments in risk assessments; Kevin Spacey in the TV series House of Cards would call it personal advancement.
So last week, when UK media reports dubbed Hepatitis E the Brexit virus, with the potential for 60,000 Brits to fall sick annually from EU pork, the UK Food Standards Agency once again reiterated how fucking unscientific they are.
“Following media reports this morning we wanted to remind consumers of our advice about cooking pork thoroughly. We always advise that whole cuts of pork, pork products and offal should be thoroughly cooked until steaming hot throughout, the meat is no longer pink and juices run clear.”
The U.S. pork board for years promoted pork be cooked with a “hint of pink.”
This has more to do with breeding efforts to produce leaner pork.
But HEV is a different beast.
Public Health England reported the number of severe cases has almost trebled since 2010, with 1,244 reported in 2016, compared with 368 six years earlier.
The virus causes a flu-like illness and in severe circumstances, could cause death.
This strain has been linked to pig farms in France, Holland, Germany and Denmark and is only killed in meat if people cook it for longer than usual.
Dr Harry Dalton, a gastroenterologist at Exeter University, told a conference on neurological infectious diseases HEV had become a major threat and that no one should eat pink pork and that pregnant women and transplant patients should not eat pork at all.
He also said the virus is heat resistant and survives being cooked until the meat is heated to above 71C (160F) for two minutes.
Looks like some research is required, not that the Brits would change their no pink policy. Maybe they’re homophoblic.
With Memorial Day on Monday in the U.S. and a bank holiday Monday in the U.K., whatever that is, USDA yesterday once again stated, “The best and only way to make sure bacteria have been killed and food is safe to eat is by cooking it to the correct internal temperature as measured by a food thermometer.”
Recent research by USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that only 34 percent of the public use a food thermometer when cooking hamburgers – and that’s self-reported, people lie on surveys.
Use a fucking thermometer and stick it in.
(If you don’t like profanity, don’t read, but if you want to read, your IT censors may figure you can’t handle such dreadful language, and messages are getting blocked. You may want to have a word with your IT folks.)
I hate missing hockey. Skipping my Monday night game was worth it though; I spent some time with some old friends at the Rocky Mountain Food Safety Conference in Denver. I’d been with the good folks of Colorado before, speaking at the conference in 2006 (and again virtually with Doug a couple of years ago).
Sometimes food safety meetings have similar slots: updates on recent outbreaks, a company’s new training strategy or someone talking about environmental sampling. The Rocky Mountain Food Safety Conference was different. I spent an afternoon learning about keeping marijuana and food products safe.
I found it fascinating.
Doug often cites a Neil Young quote that guides a lot of stuff that I do ‘Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.’ Farmers’ markets, food pantries, roadkill. These are all in the food safety ditch. So is pot.
I learned that marijuana (and the active compounds of THC and CBD) can be consumed in lots of different ways – smoking is the somewhat traditional way, but there’s vaping, edibles (cookies, candies, chocolates, etc) and even suppositories, tampons and personal lubricants. Who knew.
What was really compelling is the intricacies of the regulations and enforcement. The state health folks are in a tough spot because they receive federal funds – and the product is still seen as illegal by the feds. This has led to some local health departments have stepped in to regulating not only just the retail stores on how they handle the food and other products – but also the marijuana infused product processing. I’ve said that environmental health specialists are the salt of the earth; passionate protectors of public health and have some of the very best stories. It’s heartening to see folks who know food safety stuff putting together a framework of science-based guidelines for pathogen control, pesticides and other risky compounds. They’re trailblazers since there’s not a whole lot to go on. They look to LACF thermal death curves for C. bot spore inactivation in oils and tinctures (these aren’t highly refined oils) and requiring folks to manage cleaning and sanitation using GMP and the Food Code as a guide. There are risks, marijuana smoking was linked to a 1981 outbreak of salmonellosis (an oldie but a goodie) and some of the edibles out there have the correct pH and water activity to support the growth of pathogens.
My guess is that there are a few processors who are really good at the THC part of things – and not so good at the food safety. It’s cool that the local regulators are working with them to keep the stoners safe.
Although aquaponics is still in its infancy, Fort Langley–based West Creek Aquaculture and others see potential for this alternative to conventional agriculture
Felicity Stone of BC Business reports the fish from B.C.’s handful of land-based aquaculture farms are considered sustainable, with Ocean Wise certification from the Vancouver Aquarium. The farms use no antibiotics, hormones or chemicals, and they compost the fish waste.
Instead of composting the waste, West Creek has experimented with aquaponics, growing vegetables in the same water as the fish so the effluent nourishes the plants, which in turn clean the water. Although plant yield increased, Read found that he couldn’t compete with traditional vegetable growers. He’s still looking for a way to monetize fish effluent as plant fertilizer, but he thinks aquaponics is best suited for farmers in the business of plant, not fish, production.
Crops raised using aquaponics actually tend to be more profitable than the fish, according to U.S. studies. The key is marketing them to compete with other local and organic greens. Andrew Riseman, an associate professor of applied biology and plant breeding at UBC, believes aquaponic produce is superior to both conventionally grown and organic. “But until there’s product differentiation in the marketplace where they can get a premium for that specific product, they’re just lumped in with organics or chemical-free or pesticide-free or whatever other generic grouping they fit into,” he says. “Much like the land-based fish production—they’re grouped in with farmed salmon.”
The key is proving the produce is microbiologically safer?
Doubtful.
Guess the aquaponics folks wouldn’t want to market that.
Long before Instagram and YouTube, the barfblog crew — I can’t believe I just wrote that, I never called my lab members the crew but I did call them the kids, even if I was the immature one — we were making food safety videos and taking pictures.
Just didn’t know what to do with them.
We had an entire website devoted to handwashing signs in bathrooms — as you do.
And then when I moved to Kansas in early 2006, it sorta got lost.
Someone in the lab was taking care of it and I was posting pictures of bathrooms from our trip to France, as we sat on the coast of Marseilles, but then the University of Guelph decided the sandbox wasn’t big enough for both of us so kicked me out.
Now there’s thing called Instagram, which may not be as cool as Snapchat, but whatever, I like pictures.
So Chapman created a barfblogben Instagram account, and I created a barfblogdoug account, because someone already has barfblog and it’s probably me (but linked to a previous e-mail).
I did one post — Amy did it and I immediately forgot how to do it — so I’ll put this picture in here, and maybe some time she’ll show me how to do it again.
This is from the University of Queensland bathroom in the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation building/centre/whatever it’s called.
(All those people who used to work with me, if you know where that website it, send me a note).
Catherine Woteki, served as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s undersecretary for research, education and economics in the Obama administration.
She recently told Pro Publica “This position is the chief scientist of the Department of Agriculture. It should be a person who evaluates the scientific body of evidence and moves appropriately from there.”
Trump expects to appoint Sam Clovis — who, according to sources with knowledge of the appointment and members of the agriculture trade press, is President Trump’s pick to oversee the section — appears to have no such credentials.
Clovis has never taken a graduate course in science and is openly skeptical of climate change. While he has a doctorate in public administration and was a tenured professor of business and public policy at Morningside College for 10 years, he has published almost no academic work.
Morningside College sounds like painting with Dali (below) on SCTV’s Sunrise Semester.
Clovis advised Trump on agricultural issues during his presidential campaign and is currently the senior White House advisor within the USDA, a position described by The Washington Post as “Trump’s eyes and ears” at the agency.
Clovis was also responsible for recruiting Carter Page, whose ties to Russia have become the subject of intense speculation and scrutiny, as a Trump foreign policy advisor.
Neither Clovis, nor the USDA, nor the White House responded to questions about Clovis’ nomination to be the USDA’s undersecretary for research, education and economics.
Clovis has a B.S. in political science from the U.S. Air Force Academy, an MBA from Golden State University and a doctorate in public administration from the University of Alabama. The University of Alabama canceled the program the year after Clovis graduated, but an old course catalogue provided by the university does not indicate the program required any science courses.
Clovis’ published works do not appear to include any scientific papers. His 2006 dissertation concerned federalism and homeland security preparation, and a search for academic research published by Clovis turned up a handful of journal articles, all related to national security and terrorism.
I said get the fuck over it, nothing else seems to work, so try something different when it comes to food safety behavior.
I have full respect for any farmer that can make a living doing whatever, getting gullible consumers to buy whatever.
