‘Multiple illnesses’ Salmonella cases in Iowa linked to Fareway chicken salad

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The Iowa Department of Public Safety (IDPH) and Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals issued a consumer advisory Tuesday for chicken salad sold at Fareway stores.

The chicken salad, which is produced and packaged by a third party for Fareway, is implicated in multiple cases of salmonella illness across Iowa. Preliminary test results from the State Hygienic Laboratory (SHL) at the University of Iowa indicate the presence of salmonella in this product.

Fareway voluntarily stopped the sale of the product and pulled the chicken salad from its shelves after being contacted by DIA. “The company has been very cooperative and is working with IDPH and DIA in the investigation of the reported illnesses,” said DIA Food and Consumer Safety Bureau Chief Steven Mandernach, who noted that no chicken salad has been sold to the consuming public since last Friday evening (2/9/18).

IDPH is investigating multiple cases of possible illness associated with the chicken salad. “The bottom line is that no one should eat this product,” said IDPH Medical Director, Dr. Patricia Quinlisk. “If you have it in your refrigerator, you should throw it away.”

But what does gastro mean? Outbreak hits University of Queensland students

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I don’t know what it is about Australians, whether it’s some pseudo-inherited British culture of hierarchy, or just dumbness, but lately, any outbreak of barfing and pooping is called a gastro outbreak.

As in gastroenteritis.

There are microbiology labs in Australia, so figure it out, and let people know.

Janelle Miles of The Courier Mail reports 20 students at two University of Queensland residential colleges have fallen ill with gastroenteritis in the middle of orientation week.

The students are residents of King’s College and Grace College at UQ’s St Lucia campus in Brisbane’s west.

They have been quarantined separated from other students to avoid the infection spreading.

Was it foodborne? Are there any epidemiologists in Australia? Is anyone investigating?

New food safety tools and messages deserve investigation

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Nine years ago I had my most memorable bout with foodborne illness. I had Campylobacter and it was terrible. It all started with a trip to visit Doug in Kansas.
I gave a somewhat incoherent talk to an undergraduate food microbiology class while sweating; slept most of my visit away; went to a football game; left the football game at halftime; spent two nights rushing to the bathroom every hour to evacuate my intestines.
I wanted to blame Doug.
He brings out the best in people.
After a feverish trip home (diarrhea on a plane sucks) and crashing for the remainder of the weekend I went to my doctor to get things checked out. I described my symptoms, had a rectal exam (fun) and was given the materials needed for a stool sample. 
The idea of stool sample harvesting was way more fun than the actual act.
It’s amazing any foodborne illnesses are confirmed with stool samples because the process is a bit nuts. It took some thinking to figure out how to catch the sample without contaminating it with water or urine. The final decision was to use the bucket from our cleaned and sanitized salad spinner – which has since been retired – and place it in the toilet bowl.
I took the poop harvest and filled three vials to fill (one for C. difficile, one for parasites and another for other pathogens), and a bonus margarine-like tub for “other things.” The vials were easy, they came with their own spoons. After ten swipes across the base of the former salad spinner I was able to messily get the rest of the sample collected in the tub. Then came the clean-up.  This whole episode took me about 45 minutes.
I proudly returned to the doctor’s office with samples in hand. I asked her what percentage of stool sample kits come back filled with poop. She said about 10%.
That’s the problem with clinical confirmation of foodborne illness pathogens.
Patrick Quade and the iwaspoisoned.com group is trying to add to the toolbox of public health foodborne illness investigations, because not a lot of samples make it to public health so cases can be confirmed.
According to the New York Times, this is the era of internet-assisted consumer revenge, and as scorned customers in industries from dentistry to dog-walking have used digital platforms to broadcast their displeasure, the balance of power has tipped considerably in the buyer’s favor. This is especially true of IWasPoisoned, which has collected about 89,000 reports since it opened in 2009. 
Consumers use the site to decide which restaurants to avoid, and public health departments and food industry groups routinely monitor its submissions, hoping to identify outbreaks before they spread. The site has even begun to tilt stocks, as traders on Wall Street see the value of knowing which national restaurant chain might soon have a food-safety crisis on its hands.
Not everyone is happy about the added transparency. Restaurant executives have criticized IWasPoisoned for allowing anonymous and unverified submissions, which they say leads to false reports and irresponsible fear-mongering. Some public health officials have objected on the grounds that food poisoning victims can’t be trusted to correctly identify what made them sick.
“It’s not helping food safety,” said Martin Wiedmann, a professor of food safety at Cornell University. “If you want to trace food-borne illness, it needs to be done by public health departments, and it needs to include food history.”
I dunno. Maybe it will help as a supplemental data set. There are folks in local and state health departments subscribing to alerts that can lead to earlier and more focused investigations.
The end of my story is that I was diagnosed with campylobacteriosis. I became a statistic. I was administered a food history questionnaire. No answers on a source ever came back. New tools to crowdsource public health information can act as a an early warning system for outbreak and illness investigators.

Les Bubbles kitchen in Brisbane ça craint

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A customer dobbed (that’s Australian for, to inform against someone) a popular Brisbane restaurant Les Bubbles to food safety authorities after a rat scurried past her during the dinner rush, a court has been told.

Melanie Petrinec of the Courier Mail reports embattled restaurateur Damian Griffiths was today fined $3000 and company Limes Properties Pty Ltd was fined $30,000 after pleading guilty to breaches of food standards.

Griffiths was overseas when the case was mentioned in the Brisbane Magistrates Court last week, and did not appear in person.

Instead, his lawyer made submissions in writing to the court to say Griffiths was “simply unaware of what was going on” at his former restaurant when the rat was discovered in October, 2016.

Les Bubbles is now under new management and a spokesperson says all checks and pest inspections were now up to date.

Brisbane City Council prosecutor Andrea Lopez said it was irrelevant if he was aware or not, and revealed it was a customer who raised the alarm with authorities.

“A live rodent during a busy dinner rush has actually run across the room in the restaurant,” she said.

“The rodent has been quite comfortable in the food business.”

Subsequently, food safety inspectors claimed to find dirty equipment and rodent droppings in multiple areas including under the kitchen bench, under a downstairs bar and near the dishwashing area.

Ms Lopez said the rat droppings indicated “quite a large presence of rodent activity”.

Improving food safety, one thermometer at a time

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Sorenne and I were walking home from school yesterday, sweating in the heat and humidity, and were waiting at a light with a young woman who had just got off work at an early childcare place that Sorenne used to attend.

I started up a conversation — it’s a long light – and she told me she had finished university and was taking a gap year, so had to pay the bills and was working.

I asked her what she was planning to do and she matter-of-factly said, “A PhD in clinical psychology.”

“That’s cool, I’ve got a PhD.”

“Oh, what in?”

“Food science, or food safety.”

“I remember you now. You were the parent who was always temping things with a thermometer when we had sausage sizzles.”

“Yup.”

“That was cool.”

Thanks to the barfblog.com community who has wrote back after my personal post about depression and the like.

The little things make a big difference.

Chapman, I need more thermometers.

 

17 new cases of Norovirus at the Winter Olympics

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There’s a reason why people panic when they hear norovirus. It is extremely contagious and difficult to control. I’ve had it and the plethora of pain that accompanies it is not pleasant.

IOL reports:

Norovirus cases at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics have risen to nearly 200, organisers said on Monday, despite an intense battle to contain the outbreak.
Seventeen new cases have taken the total to 194, although 147 of those affected have already been released from quarantine, they said.
About 1,200 security guards were quarantined and replaced by hundreds of soldiers when the highly contagious bug first came to light last week.
Officials say they are doing everything they can to stop more people getting the virus, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting and can be spread by contaminated food and water.
Any illness spreading to the competitors would be a major embarrassment to hosts South Korea.

It’s a thing (in theatres Friday): Poop Talk

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We were ahead of the curve on mass blogging about barf, we had Don’t Eat Poop T-shirts in four languages (Bill Murray got the Chinese one), but never had the resources to pull off a movie.

Carly Mallenbaum of USA Today asks, should humans be uncomfortable talking about something that everyone does, regardless of age, race, religion, income or gender?.

At least that’s what director Aaron Feldman hopes you do while watching his documentary, Poop Talk (in select theaters Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and other cities, and on demand), which opens a dialogue about doo-doo with the help of dozens of scientists and comedians.

Guests include Dr. Drew Pinsky (who explains that being grossed out by feces has evolutionary purposes), a skittish Eric Stonestreet (the Modern Family actor says he can’t poop in a public restroom), a candid Nicole Byer (she talks about using a plane toilet while eating a burger), a wise Rob Corddry (he owns a tricked-out bidet) and the affable Kumail Nanjiani.

Yes, that’s the same Nanjiani who recently earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay for his personal love story, The Big Sick.

The critically acclaimed comedy contains it’s own poop scene, as Kumail tries to figure out why his girlfriend, Emily (played by Zoe Kazan), wants to go to a diner at 3 a.m. for, she says, “a cup of coffee.”

 “Why are you being so weird?” Kumail asks a shifty Emily, who finally reveals her hidden motive: “I have to take a huge (freaking) dookie!”

In Poop Talk, Nanjiani says there are plenty more scatological stories where that one came from.

There’s the joke his dad used to tell about how swallowing gum would make your poop become “a yo-yo.” Nanjiani hated that line, especially because as a child he avoided pooping at all costs.

“I figured (that poop is) all the stuff your body doesn’t need. So if I could figure out the formula and just eat what my body needs, it would all get absorbed into me and then I would never have to poop, right?” he says.

The comedian also recalls a time when he was eight years old. He was talking to another kid at a party, “and I noticed he had (pooped) himself,” Nanjiani says. “He looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘That’s not poo; it’s party cream.’ “

Hosts on a viral planet: Ancient virus could be the reason humans can think

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An ancient virus could be responsible for human consciousness, giving you the ability to think for yourself.

Researchers in the Dept. of Neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have linked a human gene responsible for conscious thought to a virus that was spread in the early days of humanity.

Two papers published in the journal Cell discuss the origins of the Arc gene, which packages up genetic information and sends it around nerve cells in little virus-style capsules.

Sean Keach of the New York Post writes these packages of information are believed to be critical to how our nerves communicate and could be responsible for our thoughts.

Elissa D. Pastuzyn, who authored one of the studies, said: “Evolutionary analysis indicates that Arc is derived from a vertebrate lineage of Ty3/gypsy retrotransposons, which are also ancestors to retroviruses.”

It’s believed that between 40 percent and 80 percent of the human genome was developed thanks to ancient viruses.

Viruses make active changes to your cells, injecting their own genetic code.

This can often be entirely useless — and sometimes causes harm, including the reproduction of more viruses — but occasionally we end up with useful modifications.

And it seems an ancient virus may have given rise to all human thought — thanks to the Arc gene.

Pastuzyn said that the virus was “repurposed during evolution, to mediate intercellular communication in the nervous system.”

James Ashley, who authored one of the studies, said: “The neuronal gene Arc is essential for long-lasting information storage in the mammalian brain, mediates various forms of synaptic plasticity and has been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders.”

He added that mutations in the gene have been “linked to autism and schizophrenia,” which suggests that Arc has a pivotal role to play in how we perceive and react to the world around us.

Retrovirus-like Gag Protein Arc1 Binds RNA and Traffics across Synaptic Boutons

 Cell Volume 172, Issues 1-2, p262–274.e11

Arc/Arg3.1 is required for synaptic plasticity and cognition, and mutations in this gene are linked to autism and schizophrenia. Arc bears a domain resembling retroviral/retrotransposon Gag-like proteins, which multimerize into a capsid that packages viral RNA. The significance of such a domain in a plasticity molecule is uncertain. Here, we report that the Drosophila Arc1 protein forms capsid-like structures that bind darc1 mRNA in neurons and is loaded into extracellular vesicles that are transferred from motorneurons to muscles. This loading and transfer depends on the darc1-mRNA 3′ untranslated region, which contains retrotransposon-like sequences. Disrupting transfer blocks synaptic plasticity, suggesting that transfer of dArc1 complexed with its mRNA is required for this function. Notably, cultured cells also release extracellular vesicles containing the Gag region of the Copia retrotransposon complexed with its own mRNA. Taken together, our results point to a trans-synaptic mRNA transport mechanism involving retrovirus-like capsids and extracellular vesicles.

Raw pet food contaminated with Salmonella sickens 2 Minnesota children

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Minnesota health officials say two children in the Twin Cities area got sick from salmonella poisoning after coming in contact with tainted pet food.

The Minnesota Department of Health said Friday that testing found the same salmonella DNA patterns in the siblings. One of the children was hospitalized last month with a painful bone condition.

An investigation found the children’s home contained Raws for Paws Ground Turkey Food, and that the pet food was contaminated.

The contaminated raw turkey pet food was produced on Oct. 12 and sold online on the Raws for Paws website. The product was recalled Feb. 8, 2018, by the manufacturer.

Food Safety Talk 145: Cold Pizza for Breakfast

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Don and Ben start this episode chatting about MacBook Pros (the computers, not the users) and closed Facebook groups with canning advice. Discussion went to a LifeHacker question of the day related to eating leftover pizza that wasn’t refrigerated. The guys talk about insights in academia, government and the food industry and how just degrees and training don’t make food good food safety; that experience and critical thinking matter. The show ends with a chat on leftover rice, overnight oatmeal and making podcasts.

Episode 145 is available on iTunes and here.

Show notes so you can follow along at home: