Ben Tinker of CNN reports a 31-year-old Texas man went to get a tattoo on his right leg. Beneath an illustration of a cross and hands in prayer, the words “Jesus is my life” were written in cursive.
As tattoo artists will tell you, there are some critically important rules to follow in the hours and days after getting inked. Most important: keeping your new body art clean and covered while the skin has a heightened susceptibility to bacterial infection.
Every time a tattoo gun pierces your skin, the needle is opening a wound — and another pathway by which germs can enter your body. The larger the tattoo, the more you increase your risk of possible infection.
A report published last week in BMJ Case Reports, a prominent peer-reviewed medical journal, reveals only that the subject was a Latino man living in Texas.
Five days after getting his tattoo, the man decided to go for a swim in the Gulf of Mexico. Just three days after that, he was admitted to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas with severe pain in both of his legs and feet. His symptoms included a fever, chills and redness around his tattoo and elsewhere on his legs.
“A lot of our patients, when they come to our institution, come in sick — and he was certainly among the sicker of the patients that we’ve had come in,” said Dr. Nicholas Hendren, an internal medicine resident at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and lead author of the report. “He said he had a lot of pain in [his right leg]. That, of course, drew our attention right away.
“Within a few hours, things had progressed pretty quickly,” he said. “There’s darkening skin changes, more bruising, more discoloration, what we call bullae — or mounds of fluid that were starting to collect in his legs — which, of course, is very alarming to anyone, as it was to us.
“He was already in the early stages of septic shock, and his kidneys had already had some injury,” Hendren said. “Very quickly, his septic shock progressed from … early stages to severe stages very rapidly, within 12 hours or so, which is typical for this type of infection.”
To make matters worse, the man had chronic liver disease from drinking six 12-ounce beers a day. He was immediately placed on a ventilator to help him breathe and given potent antibiotics.
The man tested positive for Vibrio vulnificus, a bacterium commonly found in coastal ocean water. The CDC estimates that this infection, called vibriosis, causes 80,000 illnesses and 100 deaths every year in the United States. The strongest risk factors are liver disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV and thalassemia, a rare blood disorder.
“In the USA, most serious infections appear to occur with the ingestion of raw oysters along the Gulf Coast, as nearly all oysters are reported to harbor V. vulnificus during the summer months and 95% of cases were related to raw
Most of the time, the only symptoms someone will experience are vomiting and diarrhea, according to Hendren. Most healthy people don’t end up in the hospital, he said, because their immune system is strong enough to fight the infection.
But “Infections can also occur with exposure of open wounds to contaminated salt or brackish water; however, this represents an uncommon mechanism of infection,” according to the report.
Hendren never got the opportunity to ask the patient directly whether he was aware of the advice against swimming soon after getting a tattoo but said the man and his family were unaware of how a serious infection can progress so quickly.
For the next few weeks, the man was kept largely sedated. After initial pessimism about the man’s prognosis, Hendren and his colleagues became cautiously optimistic. The patient was removed from the breathing machine 18 days after being admitted to the hospital and began “aggressive rehabilitation.”
Over the next month, however, the man’s condition slowly began to worsen. About two months after he was first admitted to the hospital, he died of septic shock.
“For patients who are healthy, this organism very rarely infects people,” Hendren said. “If they are infected, most people do fine and essentially never present to the hospital. But in patients who do have liver disease, they’re susceptible to much more infection.”
Since most infections are the result of eating raw oysters, Hendren stressed the only way to kill the bacteria is by cooking them. People with liver disease or iron disorders should never eat raw oysters because they’re at such high risk for these infections, he said.
Hendren said the message isn’t that people shouldn’t get tattoos.
“It’s if you choose to get a tattoo, do it safely, do it through a licensed place, and make sure you take care of the wound and treat it like any other wound,” he said. “That’s important.”
Restaurants that run a clean business and take pride in food safety should brag about it.
But food safety extends to suppliers.
(And I love the Chipotle ref in the clip: “Sure it happens, but I’ll go back.”)
Michael Rosenfield of NBC Boston reports that testing is taking place on all employees at two Boston restaurants as health officials try to figure out if one of the workers may be the cause of the salmonella outbreak that has sickened eight people.
Health officials say the common link in each of the eight cases is two restaurants that are both in the same office building in the Back Bay, Café Med and Back Bay Sandwich.
Four people got sick after eating at Café Med, two after eating at Back Bay Sandwich, and two other customers ate at both, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
Inspectors found numerous code violations at both eateries, prompting the city to shut down the businesses temporarily.
“We have always addressed primary inspection violations, and always passed the follow-up inspection,” the owner of Back Bay Sandwich said in a statement. “We have always prided ourselves on the cleanliness of the business, and I look forward to working with the city to improve on all aspects.”
Despite being in the same building, both restaurants have separate staffs and kitchens.
Do the two restaurants have common suppliers? And what are those ingredients that may harbor Salmonella?
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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.”
In December 2016, 14 cases of Amanita phalloides poisoning were identified by the California Poison Control System (CPCS) among persons who had consumed foraged wild mushrooms. In the past few years before this outbreak, CPCS only received reports of a few mushroom poisoning cases per year. All patients in this outbreak had gastrointestinal manifestations of intoxication leading to dehydration and hepatotoxicity. Three patients received liver transplants; all patients recovered, although one (a child) had permanent neurologic impairment.
Wild-picked mushrooms should be evaluated by a trained mycologist before ingestion. Inexperienced foragers should be strongly discouraged from eating any wild mushrooms. Health care providers should be aware of the potential for toxicity after wild mushroom ingestion, that gastrointestinal symptoms mimicking viral gastroenteritis can occur after ingestion and slowly progress to potentially fatal hepatotoxicity, and should contact the local poison center for reporting and assistance with management of these patients.
Amanita phalloides Mushroom Poisonings- Northern California, December 2016
MMWR, Weekly, June 2, 2017, 66(21); 549-553, Kathy T. Vo, MD; Martha E. Montgomery, MD; S. Todd Mitchell, MD; Pieter H. Scheerlinck, MD; Daniel K. Colby, MD; Kathryn H. Meier, PharmD; Susan Kim-Katz, PharmD; Ilene B. Anderson, PharmD; Steven R. Offerman, MD; Kent R. Olson, MD; Craig G. Smollin, MD
Initial microbiological testing (for Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella, Yersinia, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Entamoeba histolytica, adeno-, astro-, noro-, rota- and sapovirus) of stool samples from 15 symptomatic cases was negative, despite a clinical presentation suggestive of calicivirus.
Analyses of the findings from both the Sollentuna municipality environmental team and a web-based questionnaire suggested that the source of the outbreak was the salad buffet served on 20 April, although no specific food item could be identified.
Subsequent electron microscopic examination of stool samples followed by whole genome sequencing revealed a variant of sapovirus genogroup V. The virus was not detected using standard PCR screening. This paper describes the epidemiological outbreak investigation and findings leading to the discovery.
Investigation of a foodborne outbreak of gastroenteritis in a school canteen revealed a variant of sapovirus genogroup V not detected by standard PCR, sollentuna, Sweden, 2016
Eurosurveillance, vol 22, issue 22, 01 June 2017, M Hergens, J Nederby Öhd, E Alm , HH Askling, S Helgesson, M Insulander, N Lagerqvist, B Svenungsson, M Tihane, T Tolfvenstam, P Follin,
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.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, many state departments of health and agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service are investigating eight multistate outbreaks of human Salmonella infections linked to contact with live poultry in backyard flocks.
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These outbreaks are caused by several kinds of Salmonella bacteria: Salmonella Braenderup, Salmonella Enteritidis, Salmonella Hadar, Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i-, Salmonella Indiana, Salmonella Infantis, Salmonella Mbandaka, and Salmonella Typhimurium.
As of May 25, 2017, 372 people infected with the outbreak strains of Salmonella have been reported from 47 states.
Illnesses started on dates ranging from January 4, 2017 to May 13, 2017.
71 ill people have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.
36% of ill people are children younger than 5 years.
Epidemiologic, traceback, and laboratory findings link the eight outbreaks to contact with live poultry, such as chicks and ducklings, which come from several hatcheries.
In interviews, 190 (83%) of 228 ill people reported contact with live poultry in the week before illness started.
People reported purchasing live baby poultry from several sources, including feed supply stores, websites, hatcheries, and from relatives.
Contact with live poultry and the areas where they live and roam can make people sick with Salmonella infections. Chicks, ducklings, and other live poultry that look healthy and clean can still carry Salmonella bacteria.
Outbreaks linked to contact with live poultry have increased in recent years as more people keep backyard flocks. In 2016, a record number of illnesses were linked to contact with backyard poultry.
She helped me prepare dinner tonight, in a sous chef role.
My eldest daughter turned 30-years-old today.
She’s got a 4-year-old and is doing great.
This pic of Sorenne, the bald baby, was taken when she was about 5-months-old in Kansas, when Katie the grad student was about to go do her MS research in New Zealand, lived with us.
I still miss her.
Sorenne read me four different stories tonight that she is working on in her notebook.
Earlier today I was talking to someone about the value of throwing stuff out for public consumption, no matter how terrifying.
So maybe I’m slowly learning.
However Katie and Amy have both perfected the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you-Doug look.
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.
As tattoo artists will tell you, there are some critically important rules to follow in the hours and days after getting inked. Most important: keeping your new body art clean and covered while the skin has a heightened susceptibility to bacterial infection.
