In-N-Out Burger is one of those trendy joints lauded by celebrities that happens to print bible citations in small print on areas of packaging.
Cool.
But food safety isn’t cool, just boring, so when the Livermore, Los Angeles location shut down after nine members of a college softball team complained of flu-like symptoms after eating at the restaurant last Saturday, customers were shocked.
The county web site shows they were cited for a high risk violation in December of last year.
That involved surfaces, utensils, and equipment that was not cleaned or sanitized.
They had minor citations for the same problem just last month.
Bruce said, “It’s very concerning considering the amount of foot traffic and patronage that this place gets, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened sooner if that is the case.”
Employees with In-N-Out Burger say they don’t have any indications that there were any issues at this restaurant but they did clean and disinfect it along with screening their associates.
When people die from stupid food safety mistakes, are the rest of restaurant goers supposed to just pass it off, like industry, government and academic associations, or should the families be pissed?
Katie Cox of The Indy Channel writes that Indiana State Department of Health says it is “highly likely” that food from a West Lafayette restaurant was the cause of a man’s death last October.
The health department began their investigation into the Agave Azul on Sagamore Parkway after four people reported becoming sick shortly after eating at the restaurant on October 22, 2016. The four had eaten dishes containing beef, pork or chicken.
One of those four, Alexander Zdravich, 66, was hospitalized because of the severity of his illness. Despite aggressive medical treatment, the health department said Zdravich died on October 26.
How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Emily Weinstein, The Times’s deputy food editor, discussed the tech she’s using.
“Generally speaking, anything that helps you be more accurate as you work through a recipe — like an instant-read digital thermometer — is worth having.”
On Sunday, May 21, 2000, at 1:30 p.m., the Bruce Grey Owen Sound Health Unit in Ontario (that’s in Canada) posted a notice to hospitals and physicians on their web site to make them aware of a boil water advisory for Walkerton, and that a suspected agent in the increase of diarrheal cases was E. coli O157:H7.
Walkerton Water Tower
Not a lot of people were using RSS feeds, and I don’t know if the health unit web site had must-visit status in 2000. But Walkerton, a town of 5,000, was already rife with rumors that something was making residents sick, and many suspected
the water supply. The first public announcement was also the Sunday of the Victoria Day or May 24 long weekend and received scant media coverage.
It wasn’t until Monday evening that local television and radio began reporting illnesses, stating that at least 300 people in Walkerton were ill.
At 11:00 a.m., on Tuesday May 23, the Walkerton hospital jointly held a media conference with the health unit to inform the public of outbreak, make the public aware of the potential complications of the E. coli O157:H7 infection, and to tell the public to take necessary precautions. This generated a print report in the local paper the next day, which was picked up by the national wire service Tuesday evening, and subsequently appeared in papers across Canada on May 24.
The E. coli was thought to originate on a farm owned by a veterinarian and his family at the edge of town, a cow-calf operation that was the poster farm for Environmental Farm Plans. Heavy rains washed cattle manure into a long discarded well-head which was apparently still connected to the municipal system. The brothers in charge of the municipal water system for Walkerton were found to add chlorine based on smell rather than something like test strips, and were criminally convicted.
It identified several failings by the Hastings District Council, Hawke’s Bay Regional Council and drinking water assessors.
The outbreak in August last year made some 5500 of the town’s 14,000 residents ill with campylobacteriosis. It put 45 in hospital and was linked to three deaths.
The contamination was later found to have entered the town’s drinking water bores. Panel chair Lyn Stevens QC said the outbreak “shook public confidence” in this fundamental service of providing safe drinking water and it raised “serious questions” about the safety and security of New Zealand’s drinking water.
Knowledge and awareness of aquifer and contamination risks near Brookvale Rd fell below “required standards” and it failed to take effective steps to assess the risk, including the management of the many uncapped or disused bores in the vicinity, and the monitoring of the district council’s resource consent to take the water.
Walkerton redux.
The district council “failed to embrace or implement the high standard of care required of a public drinking-water supplier,” particularly in light of a similar outbreak in the district in 1998, from which it appeared to have learned nothing.
The council’s mid-level managers especially failed, Stevens said. They delegated tasks but did not adequately supervise or ensure implementation of requirements. This led to unacceptable delays in developing the council’s water safety plan which would have been “fundamental in addressing the risks of the outbreak.”
That’s a polite way of saying, people care more about their retirement than others, and often fuck up.
Drinking Water Assessors were also at fault, with Stevens finding they were “too hands off” in applying the drinking water standards.
Sounds like food safety auditors.
They should have been stricter in requiring the district council to comply with responsibilities with its water safety plan, he said.
“They failed to address the [council] sufficiently about the lack of risk assessment and the link between the bores and the nearby pond.”
Nicki Harper of Hawkes Bay Today wrote a high number of positive E. coli readings in the Havelock North and Hastings water supplies over the years, dating back to a 1998 water contamination event similar to last year’s Havelock North campylobacter outbreak, caused bureau-types to do, nothing.
It was confirmed yesterday that the most likely source of the contamination was sheep feces that ran off a paddock following heavy rain on August 5 and 6 into the Mangateretere pond near Brookvale Bore 1.
Water from the pond then entered into the aquifer and flowed across to Bore 1 where it was pumped into the reticulation, Mr Stevens said.
The son of an elderly woman who died shortly after contracting Campylobacter during the Havelock North gastro crisis says she had “good innings” despite her death.
Jean Sparksman, 89, was one of three elderly people whose deaths were linked to the outbreak and had been living in the Mary Doyle retirement village at the time of the crisis.
Speaking from the Whangaparaoa Peninsula in Auckland yesterday, Mrs Sparksman’s son, Keith, said her death shouldn’t have happened the way it did.
“She contracted this bug but there were no steps taken to help. That’s probably why she died in the first place.”
The failures are all too familiar: space shuttle Challenger, Bhopal, BP in the Gulf, Listeria in Maple Leaf cold cuts, Walkerton: the tests said things were not good. But a human condition kicked in: Nothing bad happened yesterday so there is a greater chance of nothing bad happening today.
All these people fucked up, and others got sick.
Yet government, industry and academia will trod along, piling up retirement savings, until the next shitfest comes along.
So just watch this stupid Stones video with Keith out of his mind.
I was sitting with my friend Dave, as you do waiting for kids to be released from school yesterday, and I was telling him I’m going to back off the hockey head coaching thing, I’ve been doing it for four years, and Sorenne and I need a coaching break from each other.
Dave’s kid is taking to the ice for the first time in full hockey gear on Sunday, so I said I’d be there to help him.
Dave asked me why I was backing off, and I said, I had a lot of death about 35 years ago, it’s all on the Intertubes, but now I’m revisiting it, because I don’t have endless amounts of kids, I don’t have a job, and it’s making me evaluate what went on and who I am.
And I’m not the best person to be lead for the kids.
Dave: You can’t leave me hanging, what happened?
Doug (the 90 second version): In March 1981 I was in a car crash. I was driving and went through a house. My best friend was in the front seat with me and he died. There was one other person in the other car and he died.
I was in the hospital for two weeks and still have long-term pain related to the left side of my body, which was basically collapsed.
Then I went to jail for criminal negligence causing death, then my cousin, the only one of six children who survived a car crash before I knew him, died over a waterfall in B.C.
Then I got out of jail, went to visit my grandmother in Barrie, Ontario (in Canada) where she was caring for her husband who was dying of Alzheimer’s, and she took her own life.
I took her to the hospital with my uncle and she pretty much died in my arms.
And then death pretty much went away and I’ve been completely fortunate.
I have a fantastic support group I meet with most Fridays, lots of military, post-traumatic stress disorder types, oh, and the concussions I received playing goalie with a shitty piece of plastic for a mask have now become legendary.
Why do I share this?
Because it’s hard fucking work to get inside your soul.
It makes me a better writer.
It may even make me a better person, jury’s out on that one.
Don’t like it? Start your own blog, that is why I started the other University of Guelph newspaper, back when newspapers existed in 1986, because I got tired of listening to myself complain.
Before I moved to the south I hadn’t thought about a gas station as a place for a meal. Growing up in Ontario (that’s in Canada) I was familiar with a Tim Hortons/gas station combos, but there weren’t a lot of independent stations selling foods like here in North Carolina. Most gas stations are stocked at least with crockpots full of boiled peanuts or metal rollers frying hot dogs. Sometimes there are tacos, tamales, or bbq sandwiches.
Oh and nachos with a faucet that squirts cheese.
That kind of cheese has, according to the Sacramento Bee, been linked to a cluster of five cases of botulism at a California gas station.
On Wednesday, Sacramento County Public Health officials pinpointed the source of the botulism outbreak as “prepared food, particularly nacho cheese sauce” from Valley Oak Food and Fuel gas station in the Delta. Five people are hospitalized in serious condition with botulism, a rare but serious paralytic illness caused by a nerve toxin, and an additional patient is suspected of having the illness.
The gas station, which sits on a busy stretch of River Road across from the Walnut Grove Bridge, stopped selling food and drink products on May 5 after the county Department of Environmental Management temporarily revoked its permit. Employees of the gas station refused to comment this week on the suspected outbreak.
Some of the gas station nacho cheeses come in an aseptically sealed bag (right, exactly as shown) that can be stored at room temperature because of how they are processed, despite the high pH and high water activity. Kathy Glass and Ellin Doyle wrote a fantastic summary of the safety of processed cheeses and they highlight three bot outbreaks of cheese sauces in the past.
A single case of fatal botulism in California was associated with the consumption of a Liederkranz Brand canned cheese spread in 1951. Few details are available about the formulation and conditions under which this product was produced and stored. The product label indicated that it was a pasteurized process soft ripened cheese spread with citric acid and vegetable gum added. Moisture and salt levels were not reported, but pH of the product was 5.9.
Two decades later in 1974, a cheese spread with onions was implicated in an outbreak in Argentina that resulted in six cases of botulism and three deaths.. As with the Liederkranz product, this spread was not thermally processed to be commercially sterile nor was it formulated specifically for safety. Laboratory experiments revealed that botulinal toxin was produced in cheese spread samples with a similar formulation (pH 5.7, aw 0.97) after 30 to 70 days’ storage at 30oC.
A third outbreak involving process cheese resulted in eight cases of botulism and one death in Georgia in 1993. The implicated cheese sauce was aseptically canned to eliminate C. botulinum spores; therefore, it was not formulated to prevent botulinal growth. The epidemiological investigation suggested that the product was likely recontaminated in the restaurant with C. botulinum spores and stored at room tempera- ture for several days before use. Inoculation studies of the implicated cheese sauce (pH 5.8, aw 0.96) revealed that botulinal toxin was produced after 8 days’ storage at 22oC.
I’ve done it, I’ve applied for jobs, but it makes me feel nauseous.
In a Cormey-Team America way.
My grandfather – the original Homer — was the asparagus baron of Canada.
100 acres that he sold at the door in Alliston, Ontario (that’s in Canada) in the 1960s and 70s, and my cousin is making a living with 40 acres outside Cambridge, Ontario (also in Canada – Barrie’s Asparagus).
There’s this guy at the University of Guelph who has been doing the PR thing for decades. I once asked his boss, a good scientist, do you know how much bullshit this guy is spinning?
And he said yeah, but that was what the system required.
Swallow whole.
(Oh, and to my Ontario farmer friends, I understand it’s been a bit wet. Adapt).
But this isn’t about asparagus.
It’s about the weird perversion that a bunch of groups have to educate consumers.
The U.S. just went through the dumbest electoral cycle in its history, and people want to be educated?
No it’s the rise of idiocracy.
In the past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration got $3 million to educate consumers about genetically engineered foods, Cargill unveiled its Non-GMO Project partnership, which is stupid beyond belief (and knowing that Cargill’s Mike Robach, vice-president, corporate food safety, quality & regulatory is chair of the Global Food Safety Initiative’s board of directors makes me question the value of any food safety audit ever sanctioned by GFSI), and the National cattlemen’s Beef Association has produced “two fact sheets on beef production and processing, available to consumers seeking more information about their steaks and other cuts, and how they got to the plate,” to educate consumers makes me want to scream.
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
Whenever a group says the public needs to be educated about food safety, biotechnology, trans fats, organics or anything else, that group has utterly failed to present a compelling case for their cause. Individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. And it’s sorta arrogant to state that others need to be educated; to imply that if only you understood the world as I understand the world, we would agree and dissent would be minimized.
There’s a shitload of academic literature about the value of story-telling, about providing information rather than educating, withholding judgement, but these assholes can’t help themselves.
They know better.
Waste money.
My farmer relatives who interact with people daily know a whole lot more than you.
Audits and inspections are never enough: A critique to enhance food safety
30.aug.12
Food Control
D.A. Powell, S. Erdozain, C. Dodd, R. Costa, K. Morley, B.J. Chapman
Internal and external food safety audits are conducted to assess the safety and quality of food including on-farm production, manufacturing practices, sanitation, and hygiene. Some auditors are direct stakeholders that are employed by food establishments to conduct internal audits, while other auditors may represent the interests of a second-party purchaser or a third-party auditing agency. Some buyers conduct their own audits or additional testing, while some buyers trust the results of third-party audits or inspections. Third-party auditors, however, use various food safety audit standards and most do not have a vested interest in the products being sold. Audits are conducted under a proprietary standard, while food safety inspections are generally conducted within a legal framework. There have been many foodborne illness outbreaks linked to food processors that have passed third-party audits and inspections, raising questions about the utility of both. Supporters argue third-party audits are a way to ensure food safety in an era of dwindling economic resources. Critics contend that while external audits and inspections can be a valuable tool to help ensure safe food, such activities represent only a snapshot in time. This paper identifies limitations of food safety inspections and audits and provides recommendations for strengthening the system, based on developing a strong food safety culture, including risk-based verification steps, throughout the food safety system.
In Dec. 2014, an outbreak of E. coli 055 was identified in Dorset, U.K. with at least 31 sickened. Public Health England (PHE) and local environmental health officials investigated and found nothing, other than cats were also being affected.
Tara Russell of the Bournemouth Echo reports a nurse who fears her family’s lives will never be the same again after contracting the deadly E. coli bug has accused health officials of a ‘cover up.’
Three years on, Isaac suffers with severe seizures, must be peg fed for 10 hours each night and will need a kidney transplant and Jessica endures crippling head pains, fatigue and depression as a result of the bug.
But though the families’ lives have changed irreversibly, they feel let down by the Public Health England (PHE) investigation.
Jessica, who completed the London Marathon to raise awareness of her family’s plight, said: “This illness has robbed us. We are no longer the same people. It’s very frightening how life can suddenly change in an instant and I’m sure if all the other families were sat around the table they would say exactly the same.
“If someone attempts to murder someone, that is taken very seriously. We have been close to death through whatever reason that may be, yet we feel it was not taken at all seriously and more and more and more people suffered.
“It feels like a cover up and we just believe there are too many questions that have been left unanswered.”
Isaac and Jessica became ill after the family had eaten together at a restaurant. Medics originally put symptoms down to gastroenteritis but they were later diagnosed with a severe life-threatening complication which attacked their kidneys, liver and brain and fought for life. Today Jessica said they face a daily battle for recovery.
“We were discharged within a day of each other and we were so naïve. We thought we’d get our lives back together. How wrong were we.
“I used to be fit and active, now there’s not a day I can say ‘I feel well today.’”
Isaac today suffers severe health and behavioural problems.
The investigation closed in March 2016 without the affected families being made aware and failed to find the source. The outbreak was only confirmed by PHE in response to enquiries made by the Bournemouth Echo in November 2014 after it struck a children’s nursery in Blandford – months after the initial outbreak.
Jessica said: “We’ve been in the dark throughout with absolutely no communication about the outbreak, investigation or what has happened since. If they’d have thought we were important enough to find the cause, little babies and children may not have been put through the same hell.
“All we can hope for is that lessons have been learned so no other family ever has to go through the same horrendous ordeal we are living. For us, every morning is a constant reminder that life for us will never be the same.”
This is normal in the U.K. where science-based agencies recommend cooking food to the standard of piping hot, and where 252 people were sickened with E. coli O157 in 2010 – 80 hospitalized, one death, possibly linked to potatoes and leeks – and the Food Standards Agency reminded people to wash their produce.
This is some fucked up shit.
Maybe that’s why I like John Oliver so much.
He says he’s British and has no human emotion.
It’s buried way, way down.
Russell of the Bournemouth Echo writes public health officials carried out a review of the E. coli outbreak in Dorset to ‘identify lessons learnt.’
Public Health England said it is a ‘learning organisation’ and ‘reflects on outbreaks’ however refused to reveal what these lessons were.
Dr Sarah Harrison, consultant in health protection at Public Health England South West said: “Our colleagues in Public Health England worked closely with partners to try and identify a possible common source of infection, but the investigations did not identify a single common source. It is very good news that there have been no further cases of infection with this strain in Dorset since the end of the outbreak in 2015, however we remain vigilant.
“PHE is a learning organisation and reflects on outbreaks to identify lessons learnt and to continually improve our response. A review of this outbreak was conducted at the time by staff involved in line with standard procedures.
“E coli VTEC can be a very serious infection and can be passed easily from person to person and young children are particularly easily affected. We know that the bacteria causing the infection can survive in the environment, so good hand hygiene is important to prevent the spread. Wash hands thoroughly using soap and water after using the toilet, before and after handling food and after contact with animals including farm animals. Small children should be supervised in washing their hands. Remove any loose soil before storing vegetables and thoroughly wash all vegetables and fruit that will be eaten raw.”
PHE said the investigation at the time was extensive with involvement from many organisations.
A statement read: “Control measures included extended screening and exclusion of cases and high risk contacts. Public Health England and the Animal and Plant Health Agency put in place enhanced surveillance of faecal samples in Dorset laboratories and environmental sampling to help determine the extent of this organism in the community. The only link common to all the cases was that they either lived in or had close links to the county. The outbreak investigation closed in March 2016.”
As John Oliver would say, cool.
As Jessica Archer would say, fuck off you bureaucratic assholes who spend work time watching goats singing Taylor Swift songs on the the Intertubes.
‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’ is Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970s rendering of the ever-famous Louisville event, the annual Kentucky Derby. Alongside his companion and cartoonist Ralph Steadman, he paints a picture of an event that is just that: utterly decadent and wholly depraved.
Check out our top five quotes and you’ll see what we mean…
#1 Hunter S. Thompson and Steadman arrive at the racetrack bar and anyone who’s anyone is there: the politicians, the beautiful women and the rich locals, all there to see and be seen.
The only thing more important than the horse race itself is the sport of people-watching.
How different is that to the streams of spectators dressed in their best finery on Millionaire’s Row, desperate to impress the watchful eyes of the fashion police at the track nowadays?
#2 Looking out over the stands, Hunter S. Thompson imagines them packed with spectators, crying, fighting and falling over each other when the Kentucky Derby begins. The screaming, the vomiting, the public urination, the desperate grappling for money.
Ever sat in the cheap seats at a race track? If you’re in the infield, say goodbye to your hearing, you might as well throw away your shoes, and forget about personal space.
#3 Hunter S. Thompson studies the faces of the horse breeders, looking for the one face that perfectly represents the character of the typical Kentucky Derby race-goer. The privileged sort, drunk on whiskey and the belief in their own pure-bred Southern superiority.
They might be less conspicuously drunk nowadays but the only people who claim to be more pure-bred than the horses at a derby are the people who breed them.
#4 That night after the first race, drinking ensues in the unfortunate absence of drugs. Stealing passes to the race clubhouse, Hunter S. Thompson and Steadman spend an incoherent Kentucky Derby Day lost in a sea of whiskey-soaked people.
We’ve all seen the pictures of the rowdy drunken crowds falling over each other and pouring out of a race track. Hardly a stretch for the imagination.
#5 Hunter S. Thompson awakes from his drunken, sleep-like stupor, he sees an ill, red, haggered-looking face in the mirror. The exact face of the loathsome type of person he was looking for at the Derby.
The morning after the night before. We’ve all been there. This one doesn’t necessarily apply exclusively to horse races…just, mornings.
Hunter S. Thompson got one thing right in ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’: the racetrack is capable of bringing out the worst in human nature. But there’s really no denying it, it’s still a great day out.
Katie Forster of The Independent reports a dodgy batch of smelly French cheese has been blamed for a mass food poisoning outbreak at schools in Normandy.
All French cheese smalls bad.
Dodgy is not a microbiologically–specific term.
An investigation launched after 300 children fell ill in the town of Rouen named the culprit as gone-off cheese served up by school canteens.
One parent said her child would be avoiding school meals after the scandal, telling local media: “I’d prefer to take them to a fast food place”.
Local authorities inspected the producers of the cheese – a soft, mould-ripened local variety called neufchâtel – but were unable to identify the origin of the contamination.
The children began to suffer headaches, vomiting and stomach aches after eating the cheese at 54 different primary schools and nurseries on 27 April.
A survey of 1,000 parents of children in the region, both those affected and not affected by the outbreak, found a “strong association between the consumption of the cheese and the appearance of digestive symptoms,” according to the local health board.
Cool.
Bruce said, “It’s very concerning considering the amount of foot traffic and patronage that this place gets, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened sooner if that is the case.”
