The Patch writes that a bunch of Salmonella illnesses have been linked to eating food from a Costco deli in Issaquah, Washington.
The Patch reports that King County health officials released a bulletin today stating,
Since August 28, 2017, we have learned of seven King County residents who tested positive for Salmonella I,4,[5], 12:i:- infections. DNA fingerprinting was performed on the Salmonella bacteria from the seven people who got sick and was identical for all cases, suggesting a common source of infection. Illness onsets occurred sporadically during August 28, 2017–July 13, 2018, and a common epidemiological link among all cases was not established until August 2018; no single food item prepared by the service deli has been identified as the source of the illnesses.
Salmonella is crazy hardy. Sticking around in a deli location for a year, is notable though. Niches in equipment, floors, utensils could be good harborage spots. Someone sent me an outbreak report a while ago about a restaurant that had a really long Salmonella outbreak linked to drains and the environment (I think, I can’t find the post though).
A man is accused of rubbing his bare behind on produce at a grocery store in northern Virginia before putting the items back on display.
News outlets report 27-year-old Michael Dwayne Johnson, of Manassas, is charged with indecent exposure and destruction of property. A Manassas police release says an employee on Saturday noticed Johnson grabbing produce, pulling down his pants and rubbing the produce on his behind before putting it back.
It says the store had to destroy several pallets of produce because of Johnson’s actions. A police spokeswoman says the report lists fruit as the ruined produce. Authorities have not released a motive.
Regarding peer-reviewed papers about cooking shows and food safety and something about integrity: There’s a lot of hucksters out there – especially in academia.
I’ve articulated where the idea came from (my father), how we set out to do the research in 2002, how the Canadian Food Network loved us and then threatened to sue us.
I’m, uh, unaffiliated, so sue away.
The rest of youse are posers, but at least the Germans cited us.
Which sorta freaks me out, given that my infant father had his surrounding landscape bombed away in Newport, Wales, in 1940 (some of my relatives may have owned the Red Lion, no one really wants to talk about it).
Since a few years, cooking shows have enjoyed great popularity in Germany. Currently, about 60 different formats are broadcasted on German television. In the field of food preparation and nutrition, they represent a significant passive source of information. This study aims to assess food safety practices in German TV cooking shows and to identify potential differences between professional and amateur chefs.
With the help of an observational sheet, three trained evaluators examined 100 episodes of eight popular TV cooking shows. On average, the evaluators observed 1.2 hygiene mistakes per minute or one hygiene lapse every 50 seconds. The most common mistakes include the use of unwashed cutting boards, adding ingredients with unwashed hands and wiping dirty hands with tea towels.
A lack of handwashing before beginning food preparation and after coughing, sneezing, wiping the nose or sweat or touching their hair, eyes, etc. was also frequently observed. No significant differences between professional and amateur chefs were found for the overall frequency of food safety mistakes, but professional chefs more often complied with specific personal hygiene measures.
Findings suggest that little attention is paid to safe food handling practices in German TV cooking shows. However, they may be particularly suited to convey safe food handling practices to a broad audience, not least because of their popularity.
Food safety behavior observed in German TV cooking shows
The Virginia and Georgia departments of health are investigating a multistate outbreak of psittacosis occurring at two poultry slaughter plants owned by a single corporation. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are assisting with the investigation.
Contact a healthcare professional if you have fever, cough, headache, or muscle aches after working at a poultry slaughter plant involved in the outbreak. Tell your healthcare professional that you may have been exposed to psittacosis. Healthcare professionals can treat psittacosis with antibiotics.
Plant management should implement steps to minimize exposures to bird droppings and respiratory secretions to protect their workers.
During August–September 2018, psittacosis cases were reported among workers at two poultry slaughter plants in Virginia and Georgia. A single corporation owns both plants.
Chlamydia psittaci, the type of bacteria that causes psittacosis, was detected by a laboratory test in 10 people. Additional illnesses in workers at the two plants have been identified, although have not been confirmed by the laboratory.
No deaths have been reported.
Virginia and Georgia departments of health are conducting an investigation, and the number of cases is likely to change.
Current evidence indicates that all of the people who have psittacosis work at poultry slaughter plants in two states: Virginia and Georgia. Investigators are still working to understand why the outbreak occurred.
The affected plants in Virginia and Georgia voluntarily suspended operations for cleaning.
On September 8, 2018, the affected plant in Virginia suspended operations. The plant reopened on September 18, 2018.
On September 15, 2018, the affected plant in Georgia suspended operations. The plant reopened on September 19, 2018.
Plant management held town hall meetings in both plants to inform their workers about the outbreak.
CDC will provide updates when more information is available.
The most common way someone gets infected with the bacteria that cause psittacosis (Chlamydia psittaci) is by breathing in dust containing dried secretions (e.g., droppings, respiratory) from infected birds. There is no evidence that these bacteria can spread by preparing or eating chicken meat.
It is rare for psittacosis to spread from person to person. In this outbreak, infection among family members who are not workers at the affected plants has not been reported.
Sequim-State Department of Agriculture laboratory tests found no traces of E. coli in products from Dungeness Valley Creamery, a raw milk dairy farm north of Sequim, after Department of Health officials linked two cases of E. coli with consumption of the dairy’s products.
Last Friday, the state’s Department of Health issued a press release that said: “Lab results recently confirmed a child under 5-years-old from Island County and (a) resident in their 70s of Clallam County became ill with an E. coli infection after drinking Dungeness Valley Creamery raw milk.”
However, representatives of the state’s Department of Agriculture said that results the following day showed E. coli was not found in random product samples from the farm. Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria normally live in the intestines of healthy people and animals.
Chris McGann, spokesman for the state’s Department of Agriculture who regulates raw milk producers, said the agency tested 21 samples of raw milk, with 15 randomly selected from retail locations and six directly from the dairy, and all were deemed “not found” to have E. coli.
Liz Coleman, communication lead for environmental public health, said investigators found unique strands of E. coli in the consumers and the common link was they both drank raw milk roughly around the same time from the creamery.
State health officials said the milk batch that allegedly held E. coli and infected the two patients was unavailable for testing.
Ryan McCarthey, Dungeness Valley Creamery co-owner, said, “They haven’t found any contamination, so I don’t have any reasons to believe our product is contaminated. I guess it’s going to be one of those unsolved mysteries.”
McCarthey said he disagrees with the Department of Health’s wording that the infection came from the creamery.
“We want to know if there was a pathogen,” he said. “We definitely want to do our best to control and mitigate any problem with product.”
Ben Hamilton of CPH Post reports there were twice as many salmonella outbreaks in Denmark in 2017 than in the previous year.
In total, there were 25 outbreaks, and 1,067 people became ill as a result.
The increase is partly blamed on improved ways of detecting outbreaks. ‘Whole genome sequencing’, for example, makes it easier to detect the same source of infection.
“We hope it can lead to a decline in salmonella cases in the long term,” noted Luise Müller, an epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut.
“It should enable us to become better at deducing why some foods are more likely to make people sicker than others.”
Danish-produced pork was the biggest culprit, while there were no cases sourced to chicken.
Foodborne outbreaks in general are increasing. In 2017, there were 63, up from 49 in the previous year.
The biggest culprit is campylobacter, a bacterium that made 4,257 people ill in 2017.
An Uber driver from Augusta, Georgia has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault after allegedly stabbing two passengers, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office tells People.
On Sunday, 29-year-old Shaunisha Danielle Brown was arrested after she allegedly stabbed two of her passengers after someone threw up in her car, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
Passenger Daniel Millard, who was using the rideshare with two other female passengers, told WRDW-TV it was just your average ride until Brown allegedly got offended by something one of the riders said, rather than one of them getting sick.
“The Uber driver showed up we all get in. Everything is fine and dandy. We are like we’re going home. Great,” Miller told the television station.
“She went down another wrong road and Amber just said, ‘Just get us where we are going please,’ and the driver got offended by that I’ll take it,” Millard explained.
Millard then said Brown allegedly made an abrupt stop and yelled, “What did you say to me?”
“Then, Amber said ‘just get us home please,’” Millard told WRDW-TV. “Then Amber said ‘we paid 100% for the ride so we want 100% of the ride.’ [Brown] slammed on her breaks again, and she said she doesn’t need this, ‘get out of my vehicle.’ Amber is still demanding ‘please take us to our house, please take us to our house,’” Millard continued.
Authorities claim “the women were intoxicated, and one began to vomit in the car,” and that’s what allegedly prompted Brown to get physical.
According to the Augusta Chronicle, Brown attempted to kick the riders out, but when they didn’t oblige she allegedly pulled out an X-Acto knife and stabbed the women multiple times. Millard was not harmed.
We have escaped to Coff’s Harbour, about five hours south of Brisbane, for our annual hockey tournament at the Big Banana, which has a small ice rink so we play 3-on-3, and where Russell Crowe apparently learned to skate for his role in the 1999 movie, Mystery, Alaska (a great hockey movie).
Amy is involved in all kinds of things, I coached for a few years and am now a happy spectator.
JFK of NSA Hockey, who played junior in Michigan, runs a day-long hockey camp for kids who are interested, so it’s a couple of days of writing and chilling for me and the Hubbell.
I’m going to catch up on some blog posts, fit each with one of my favorite songs, and then get on with that book.
I laid in bed and figured out the first half the other night.
We have Ted, the Wonder Dog, with us (he’s a wonder because how can such a little thing shit so much).
According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control, dogs, especially puppies, are a known source of sporadic Campylobacter infections in humans, but are uncommonly reported to cause outbreaks.
Investigation of a multistate, multidrug-resistant outbreak of Campylobacter jejuni infections implicated puppies from breeders and distributors sold through pet stores as the outbreak source. Outbreak strains were resistant to all antibiotics commonly used to treat Campylobacter infections.
Campylobacter causes an estimated 1.3 million diarrheal illnesses in the United States annually (1). In August 2017, the Florida Department of Health notified CDC of six Campylobacter jejuni infections linked to company A, a national pet store chain based in Ohio. CDC examined whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data and identified six isolates from company A puppies in Florida that were highly related to an isolate from a company A customer in Ohio. This information prompted a multistate investigation by local and state health and agriculture departments and CDC to identify the outbreak source and prevent additional illness. Health officials from six states visited pet stores to collect puppy fecal samples, antibiotic records, and traceback information.
Nationally, 118 persons, including 29 pet store employees, in 18 states were identified with illness onset during January 5, 2016–February 4, 2018. In total, six pet store companies were linked to the outbreak. Outbreak isolates were resistant by antibiotic susceptibility testing to all antibiotics commonly used to treat Campylobacter infections, including macrolides and quinolones. Store record reviews revealed that among 149 investigated puppies, 142 (95%) received one or more courses of antibiotics, raising concern that antibiotic use might have led to development of resistance. Public health authorities issued infection prevention recommendations to affected pet stores and recommendations for testing puppies to veterinarians. This outbreak demonstrates that puppies can be a source of multidrug-resistant Campylobacter infections in humans, warranting a closer look at antimicrobial use in the commercial dog industry.
If you’re a stray cat, Ted the Wonder Dog will make friends.
Multidrug-resistant campylobacter jejuni outbreak linked to puppy exposure- United States, 2016-2018
Last Sunday, Sept. 16, 2018, I had a requested op-ed published in the Sydney Morning Herald. I was a little rusty, so Amy did more than just clean it up, and I haven’t gotten around to posting it until now because there was some medical stuff last week, but all is well and here it is:
My 9-year-old daughter and I were watching the news on Saturday morning and she asked, why would someone put a needle in strawberries?
Some people are not nice.
A couple of years ago a food safety type asked me, what’s the biggest risk to the food supply.
I didn’t hesitate.
Deliberate tampering and food fraud.
Food safety has traditionally been faith-based – especially when it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables. Consumers cannot control how food is handled before it gets to them. This is why consumers need to know their suppliers and know what they are doing to keep people safe.
This latest food tampering scare – 11 cases of contaminanted strawberries reported nationally so far, the first in Sydney on Saturday – makes that clear.
Faith-based food safety sucks. It always has. Risks have always been present. As Madeleine Ferrieres, the author of Mad Cow, Sacred Cow: A History of Food Fears, wrote, “All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates.”
But contemporary consumers forget that contamination risk has always been with us: “We are often too blinded by this amnesia to view our present food situation clearly. This amnesia is very convenient. It allows us to reinvent the past and construct a complaisant, retrospective mythology.”
“We still live with the illusion of modernity, with the false idea that what happens to us is new and unbearable,” she has said in an interview.
What’s new is that we have better tools to detect problems. This also presents an opportunity: those who use the best tools should be able to prove their food is safe through testing and brag about it. They can market food safety measures at retail.
The days of faith-based food safety are coming to a protracted close.
There is a lack – a disturbing lack – of on-farm food safety inspection; farmers need to be more aware of the potential for contamination from microbes (from listeria in rockmelon, for example) as well as sabotage.
There is an equally large lack of information to consumers where they buy their produce. What do Australian grocery shoppers know of the food safety regulations applied to the produce sold in their most popular stores? Who can they ask to find the answers?
The best solution is for farmers and retailers to market food safety. If they have a great food safety program they should be promoting it. Consumers can handle more information rather than less.
Douglas Powell is a (sorta?) retired professor of food safety in Canada and the US who now lives in Brisbane. He blogs at barfblog.com.
And in memorandum, Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, the Blues Brothers’ guitarist and longtime blues sideman who died Friday at 88.
Police say the 34-year-old last week reported that his daughter bit into a strawberry purchased at a local supermarket and that it was contaminated with a needle.
The arrest comes as the hunt for those responsible for sticking needles in strawberries continues, and the federal government ramps up penalties for so- called “food terrorists.”
Food tamperers could spent 10 to 15 years behind bars under draft laws passed by the government on Thursday.
One young boy in NSW has already been arrested over behaviour that “could be called a prank”, police said, and he will be dealt with under the youth cautioning system.
Culprits could face up to 15 years jail under tough updates to food contamination laws the PM will urgently push through parliament this week.
And “idiots” who post Facebook hoaxes about fake contamination cases could face up to 10 years in jail under new measures to deal with “reckless” behaviour.
‘Sabotage’ laws will also be updated to include the sabotage of “goods for human consumption” where it impacts national security.
“Any idiot who thinks they can go out into a shopping centre and start sticking pins in fruit and thinks this is some sort of lark or put something on Facebook which is a hoax, that sort of behaviour is reckless and under the provision we will be seeking to introduce swiftly, that type of behaviour would carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison,” Prime Minister Morrison said today.
“It’s not a joke. It’s not funny. You are putting the livelihoods of hard-working Australians at risk and you are scaring children,” he said.
“You are a coward and a grub. And if you do that sort of thing in this country we will come after you and we will throw the book at you.”
Meanwhile, the strawberry scandal’s costing the industry millions of dollars, but it’s created a booming trade for one food safety company.
A&D Australasia provides metal detectors to food production companies, and their sales in the last week – including in New Zealand – have skyrocketed.
Spokesperson for the company Julian Horsley says he’s sold a year’s worth of products in just four days.
“There’s an element of panic obviously because customers are saying we can’t buy your product until this and this are in line – so that’s obviously a commercial panic to them” he said.
Each detector costs around $22,000, but Horsley says growers are viewing them as an investment.
“For these guys it’s either put my produce in the rubbish bin, or supply it to the customers.”
