Joseph Whitworth of Food Navigator writes that two Staphylococcal food poisoning cases have been linked to raw sheep’s milk cheese in Spain.
La Agencia Española de Consumo, Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (AECOSAN) said the cheese was made by Buruaga Arditegia.
Today’s show opens with some quick beverage talk and then moves to a discussion of podcasting (and teleconferencing) gear. A brief segue into pop-culture is followed by a deep dive into how to develop science-based advise to consumers. The safety of bed-side water, the ongoing romaine outbreak, and Listeria in mashed potatoes round out the food safety news. Listener feedback and a promo for the upcoming live podcast at MSU end the show.
Episode 154 is available on iTunes and here.
Show notes so you can follow along at home:
Matt Shipman, Research Communications Lead at NC State News Services (and all-around great guy) writes,
When folks get sick after a picnic, people often blame the potato salad. Or the chicken salad. Or whatever other side dish was made with mayonnaise. But that’s usually not the culprit.
“It’s not always the potato salad…except when it’s the potato salad,” says Ben Chapman, a food safety researcher at NC State University. “There are lots of other foods at a cookout that can also lead to illnesses.”
Potato Salad
When it is the potato salad, the culprits are usually Staphylococcus aureus or Clostridium perfringens. And a combination of factors can lead to problems. In most “salads” of this type, low-acid potatoes, chicken, pasta or hard-boiled eggs are added to the mayonnaise. The mayonnaise is acidified to make it safe, but the low acidity of the potatoes (or foods) offsets the acidity of the mayonnaise, creating an environment where bacteria can thrive.
That sets the stage. Then poor hygiene comes into play. S. aureus, for example, can often be found on our faces, particularly around the eyes or nose. So, S. aureus can be introduced to salads when people touch their face and then – without washing their hands – touch the food.
However, in order for bacteria to become a problem, there also has to be “temperature abuse,” meaning that the potato salad isn’t kept below 41°F.
“For example, above 90°F, foodborne pathogens in potato salad increase tenfold in as quickly as an hour,” Chapman says. “In ideal temperatures for bacteria, such as body temperature, bacterial populations can double in less than 20 minutes.”
So, it’s rarely the mayonnaise. Instead, it’s the combination of mayonnaise and other salad ingredients, plus poor hygiene and poor temperature control.
But, in rare cases, it can be the potatoes. An outbreak of botulism poisoning in 2015 stemmed from potato salad made using potatoes that had been canned improperly by a home cook.
“Potatoes need to be ‘pressure canned,’ using a boiling water bath,” Chapman says. “These potatoes weren’t, which led to 29 illnesses and two deaths – the largest botulism poisoning in 40 years.”
Why It’s Not the Mayonnaise (And When It Could Be)
A big reason that mayonnaise rarely causes foodborne illness these days is that most people buy their mayonnaise, rather than making it from scratch.
“Commercially produced mayonnaise is acidified to reduce spoilage and kill off human pathogens,” Chapman says. “It’s really low risk on its own.”
However, many mayo recipes for the home cook don’t include acid, which makes it possible for pathogens – like S. aureus, C. perfringens and Salmonella – to grow and become a health risk.
“So, if you’re making mayonnaise at home, pick a recipe that uses pasteurized egg products and incorporates acid – such as vinegar or lemon juice – to reduce risk” Chapman says. “And refrigeration is still incredibly important, as recipes may not incorporate enough acid to address risks.”
More Likely Culprits
If it’s probably not the mayonnaise salad, what are the more likely culprits behind foodborne illness? The answer may surprise you.
“Fresh fruits and vegetables are responsible for more outbreaks of foodborne illness than any other type of food; they’ve been linked to 46 percent of foodborne illnesses between 1998 and 2008,” Chapman says.
That does not mean that you shouldn’t eat your fruits and veggies. Just beware of risks.
Unfortunately, in most cases, contaminated produce was contaminated before the consumer bought it – at any point between the field where it was grown and the shelf where the consumer picked it up.
That said, you can still take steps to reduce risk
First, you really want to avoid cross contamination, which is when pathogens from uncooked food (like raw meat) are transferred to food that’s ready to eat. That can happen if you don’t wash your hands, for instance, or if you use the same cutting board for cutting chicken and preparing salad.
You can also reduce risk by washing your produce – though that won’t eliminate risk altogether.
And, if you are growing your own fruits and vegetables, make sure you’re that you are following some fundamental food safety guidelines for gardeners: using a clean water source (not your rain barrel); keeping wildlife from contaminating your garden; keeping your hands and gardening gear clean; and not using uncomposted manure.
As for grilling, check out our “5 Things You Should Know About Grilling Burgers (To Avoid Getting Sick).” There are good tips in there!
Bon appétit!
The unofficial start of the summer is this weekend in the U.S. – Memorial day. Folks will be bbqing, cooking out, grilling out, whatever.
There’s a recommendation from USDA that on a hot day, above 90F/32C that food shouldn’t sit out for more than an hour. I couldn’t find a good reference for this. So I started texting Don.
He wasn’t answering. (I found out later it was because he was doing an interview with CBC, that’s a radio/TV network in Canada).
I started looking at a Conference for Food Protection document on how to handle food decisions at retail when the power goes out. Not exactly what I was looking for – all the modeling starts at 41F and doesn’t get as hot as I was looking for.
Then Don finally answered and suggested this paper on Salmonella in cut tomatoes.
Getting warmer.
I finally got into Combase and generated a couple of no-lag growth models for staph (in something like potato salad) and Salmonella. 
The staph model doesn’t go as high as 90F/32C so it’s a bit conservative different. But the Salmonella model shows a 1 log increase in just over an hour.
So yeah, hot days matter.
The situation that Life Hacker’s Nick Douglas presented to me was (I’m paraphrasing here slightly): hey, I’m gonna leave a glass of water out over night and I know it’s not going to be a problem after a couple of hours, but I can’t leave that water there for a few weeks can I, because it will go bad, right?
My answer (paraphrased as well) I guess it depends what you mean by bad. The water will probably taste different the longer it sits there. Yeast, mold and algae might float into it, but as far as pathogens go, my take is that it’s really low risk.
I told him that the water wasn’t the issue, it’s what gets introduced to the water like food debris or some other nutrient source. And then a pathogen. Or poop. Poop has both.
My quote was, ‘What would matter is if, like, someone had poop on their finger and stuck it in there.’
It’s not like I thought water rots, OK? I just thought that there’s enough bacteria floating around a home, or in tap water, or on your lips when you take a sip, that given a month alone in a glass, it might grow and then make you sick. But, as food safety specialist Dr. Benjamin Chapman tells me in a mildly embarrassing phone call, it won’t.
But there must be some way it could, right? Yes, Dr. Chapman says, if you didn’t wash the glass properly, and left a nutrient like juice or other sugary remnants.
Mary Kekatos of the Daily Mail reports that Carson Meyer had been feeling perpetually tired for almost a year.
The 20-year-old, who had recently been drafted by the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team, had been experiencing relentless lethargy along with pale skin and a loss of appetite.
Doctors, psychiatrists and trainers thought the Powell, Ohio, native might have depression, mononucleosis, and even cancer.
It wasn’t until a trip to the bathroom that Meyer figured out why he was sick – a 25-inch tapeworm had been living in his small intestine. ‘’
Any hockey player knows the stench of equipment: Many of us carry around that stench with pride (although I’m not sure of the microbiological safety).
And when our partners or lab mates complain, we whip out the Febreze.
Magnify that problem.
How do you rid an entire town of the stench left by 200 poop-filled shipping containers? Apparently the answer is simple: you spray it with Febreze.
Carloads of the odor-eliminating products, produced by Procter & Gamble, were recently delivered to residents in Parrish, Alabama after a New York City “poop train” was hauled away on April 17. The disgusting cargo had been sitting in rail cars near Parrish for over two months while it waited to be transferred to a landfill 20 miles from the small town.
“At Febreze, we believe that no one should be immersed in stink and are confident that our lineup of odor-eliminating products could finally bring a breath of fresh air to the good people of Parrish,” Procter & Gamble’s Mandy Ciccarella said, via AL.com.
Many residents compared the overwhelming stink to trainloads of dead bodies. Some added that the smell was making them sick on a regular basis.
“The running joke was when the poop train came that we just needed to drop Febreze on top of the train,” a Parrish resident said in a video shared on social media by Febreze.
New York has been pushing its poop on other states after the federal government made it illegal for the city to dump waste in the ocean in 1988. The foul-smelling trains have been heading south after two landfills in Pennsylvania stopped accepting the sewage, according to CBS Sacramento.
Parrish officials have fought back against future “poop trains” entering their town by denying a business licence to the operator of Big Sky landfill. “The poop train brought the funk and Febreze came by to freshen us up,” one of the small town’s 960 residents added.
I get it that most people think microbial food safety is some bizarre niche about bugs and barfing.
But I’ve had enough people tell me their worst barf story that maybe there’s some storytelling interest.
According to Kurt Andersen of The New York Times, Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities who died at age 87, made everyone talk about him.
Tom Wolfe made every reader like a friend.
Who hasn’t gone to university with the pretty partner who was too good for you (I Am Charlotte Simmons), who hasn’t tripped out on acid (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) and who hasn’t thought themselves a master of Wall Street (or acamedia or anywhere else; The Bonfire of the Vanities).
I had this job in 1989, smashing rock.
I sat in this tiny, elevated cubicle in the middle of a sparse gravel pit, and any stones that became lodged in the metal sifters, I had to go out with a sledgehammer and dislodge.
I spent my spare time reading Bonfire of the Vanities, great book, terrible movie.
It was at a cottage rental about 1991 that I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and my best friend decided he didn’t want to hang out with me anymore: Don’t invite close friends to cottages, it doesn’t end well.
I don’t like counting outbreak tolls or square mileage affected – in the absence of meaningful information – because it seems like accounting, and I have an accountant to do that.
Numbers numb and go past the story: Stalin said, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”
None of us wants to be a statistic.
Whether it’s E. coli in Romaine lettuce in the U.S. or Listeria in rockmelon in Australia, producer groups have failed the farmers they are supposed to represent.
Step up. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.
Mark Donaldson of the Wanneroo Times writes, a Currambine food outlet, which has now shut down, has been fined for a food safety breach after a customer bit into a piece of metal while eating a meal last year.
DS Business Venture, which ran Pastacup at Currambine Central, was due to stand trial in Joondalup Magistrates Court today but changed its plea to guilty.
No one from the business appeared in court to face the charge of “a person must not sell food that is unsuitable”.
The City of Joondalup prosecutor said a customer bought a three cheese ravioli from the store in May, 2017.
The complainant was eating a meal and bit into something hard, damaging a tooth.
Investigators found it was a rivet that had fallen off a cheese grater.
Magistrate Edward de Vries considered it a minor food safety case but said the customer “would have been in some pain biting into a metal rivet”.
He fined the business $3000 plus costs of another $3000.
The prosecutor conceded there was little chance of recovering the fine now the business had shut down.