Dubai addressing shawarma risks

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Ben Chapman

I’m on my way back to the US after a few days in Dubai teaching hotel, restaurant and other food business folks about stuff like sous vide food safety and measuring production parameters to reduce risk.

Bobby Krishna (below, left, exactly as shown), always the gracious host, showed me some cool stuff that Dubai is planning on launching as they prepare to host Expo 2020. One of the challenges the Dubai Municipality has tackled over the past decade as they modernize and add resources to their food safety system is balancing the traditional food stall/small business with addressing risks.

According to Gulf News, after a phase-in period, Dubai officials are enforcing new rules to make shawarmas safe again including proper facilities, temperature control and equipment sanitation.

Almost 45 per cent of shawarma stands in Dubai will be closed, with Dubai Municipality enforcing its new rules for the sale of the popular Arabic delicacy in the emirate from November 1.

The six-month deadline given to 572 small and medium food outlets selling shawarma across Dubai to implement the new rules related to space, equipment and storage requirements aimed at enhancing hygiene and safety of the product ended on October 31.

Of these, only 318 have either made or are in the process of making the changes to their existing conditions as per the new guidelines to ensure the health and safety of consumers, the civic body said on Monday.

Sultan Ali Al Taher, head of Food Inspection Section at the Food Safety Department, said 146 establishments (25.5 per cent) among the 572 have completed the implementation of the new requirements before the deadline, 172 establishments (30.07 per cent) have begun the amendments and are still in the process of completing these.

The primary change that consumers can see will be the end of shawarma stands operating in an open area of an outlet. It is mandatory to move the shawarma stands indoors and ensure that they are not exposed to dust, dirt or any other external sources of pollution.

The regulations also make it mandatory to ensure proper refrigeration of raw materials, enough space for the storage of shawarma-making tools, separate facilities for defrosting frozen meat, thorough cleansing of vegetables and proper ways of waste disposal.

About a decade ago shawarma-style foods were linked to three outbreaks of E.coli O157 in Alberta, and I stopped eating them. Outbreak investigators found that traditional cooking practices including a rotating a cone of meat next to a heat source, were problematic, especially when the meat was cooked from frozen. A national committee was created to look at donair risks associated and the group recommended grilling post cone cut-off to ensure pathogen-killing temps.

But is it (microbiologically) safe?

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Douglas Powell

Mangoes are coming into season.

Australian egg producers are flogging studies saying that eggs are OK to eat every day.

But are they safe?

And the pork producers have a national 6-2-2 campaign:

Discover the secret to the perfect pork steak with our new 6-2-2 campaign.

Take a 2cm pork steak (sirloin, leg, scotch fillet or medallion).
Pre-heat a pan, griddle pan or BBQ plate just like you would for any other steak.
Cook the pork steak on one side, without turning, for 6 minutes.
Turn it over once and allow it to cook for 2 more minutes. This method will cook the steak to just white but if you prefer it cooked pink, just reduce the cooking time.
Remove the steak from the pan and rest for 2 minutes. Resting allows the juices to settle and produces a more tender and juicy result.
Remember the simple rule for next time: 6 minutes on one side, 2 minutes on the other and 2 minutes to rest = the 10 minute pork steak.

(No accounting for variations in cooking devices, just use a damn thermometer and take out the guesswork.)

All at the same time as Australia’s annual food safety week began with this year’s theme , raw and risky (sounds familiar).

The NSW Food Authority is throwing its support behind the Food Safety Information Council’s Food Safety Week 2016 that commences today Sunday 6 November, urging NSW consumers not to become one of the estimated 4.1 million people affected by food poisoning each year in Australia.

Dr Lisa Szabo, NSW Food Authority CEO, said the theme of this year’s Australian Food Safety Week “Raw and risky” is a timely and apt reminder that some foods carry more risk than others.

“Recent years have seen major food poisoning outbreaks linked to risky raw foods such as unpasteurised cow’s milk, raw egg dishes, bean/seed sprouts, frozen berries and lettuce,” Dr Szabo said.

Herbal tea in Canada recalled; may pose serious health risks

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Douglas Powell

“Phytovie Acore Vrai Calamus” herbal tea, an unauthorized natural health product, is being recalled after Health Canada testing found it to contain excessive levels of beta-asarone. Beta-asarone can be toxic if consumed in high amounts. The product was sold by Gourmet Nutrition F.B. Inc. over the Internet and may also be available at retail stores

Read product labels to verify that health products have been authorized for sale by Health Canada. Authorized health products have an eight-digit DIN, a DIN-HM or an NPN. You can also check if products have been authorized for sale by searching Health Canada’s Drug Product Database and Licensed Natural Health Product Database.

Report adverse events to health products to Health Canada by calling toll-free at 1-866-234-2345, or by reporting online, by mail or by fax.

Report complaints about health products to Health Canada by calling toll-free at 1-800-267-9675, or complete an online complaint form.

Phytovie Acore Vrai Calamus herbal tea was found to contain beta-asarone (a chemical found in certain plants) exceeding the maximum level permitted in a natural health product. Ingesting high amounts of beta-asarone can be toxic, and can lead to nausea, prolonged vomiting (for several hours), and a faster-than-normal heart rate, which can be life threatening.

the company’s recall and will inform Canadians if new safety information arises.

Vietnamese factory workers go home early after refusing worms for lunch

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Douglas Powell

Thousands of workers at a Chinese garment firm in Ho Chi Minh City went without lunch, on Saturday, after some reportedly found worms in their soup.

According to a story that appeared in Thanh Nien newspaper, on Sunday, a number of workers at the Worldon Company in Cu Chi District vomited at the sight of the worms.

The company sent everyone home early that afternoon after a number of workers fainted and others complained of exhaustion.

This wasn’t the first sign of trouble at Worldon’s canteen.

On October 29, a lunch of ground fish, shrimp, stir-fried vegetables and cabbage soup sent 109 employees to the hospital.

Doctors held seven of the workers overnight to treat them for severe food poisoning.

In May, dozens of workers became ill after another bad lunch.

Worldon Vietnam is owned by Shenzhou International, a Chinese clothing manufacturer based in Zhejiang Province in eastern China. The company employs more than 6,000 workers.

Barf’s up: South Bank Surf Club faces 32 charges after 28 sickened with raw egg aioli

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Douglas Powell

On Sept. 23, 2015, Brisbane’s South Bank Surf Club allegedly made up a large batch of raw-egg-based aioli sauce and served it for seven days.

At least 28 diners were sickened.

At the time, the manager of the club said the cause was “a bad batch of eggs’’ provided by a supplier. They said the eggs had been used in sauces served with seafood platters.

“We’ve been caught out, unfortunately. Our customers’ wellbeing is our priority and anyone with concerns can get in touch with us,” they said. “To rectify the problem, we are not making sauces in-house.’’

This is a common refrain in Australia.

We, the chefs, would never put the health of our customers in harm’s way, yet they continue to do so with the line, we got a bad batch of eggs.

Now, Brisbane City Council health inspectors have filed a complaint in Brisbane Magistrates Court accusing the club, owned by Brisbane hospitality king Bevan Bickle, of letting the aioli and other sauces sit kitchen benches for up to three hours without refrigeration on the day they were used in meals including fish and chips, burgers and pulled pork sandwiches between September 23 and October 1 last year.

Court documents state aioli is a “potentially hazardous food” because “pathogenic microorganisms” can grow due to the raw egg and it needs to be refrigerated.

The club faces 32 charges of breaching food safety laws.

When inspector Heath Vogler visited the restaurant on October 16 he alleges the aioli was kept at 11C.

The council summons filed in court states aioli must be stored below 5C to minimise the growth of poisonous bacteria.

The case returns to court on December 23. The restaurant has not entered a plea.

A table of Australian egg outbreaks is available at https://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/raw-egg-related-outbreaks-australia-10-9-15.xlsx

Chipotle top cheeses make a lot of dough

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Ben Chapman

According to Motley Fool, top execs at Chipotle made more money than lots of other food CEOs.

Even after their compensations were cut in half last year, its co-CEOs Steve Ells and Monty Moran earned nearly $14 million each.

Ells’ and Moran’s compensation packages are particularly egregious in the wake of its food safety crisis, which began last year with an E. coli outbreak at a number of its restaurants in the Pacific Northwest.

To a certain extent, it’s to be expected that a company like Chipotle would have something like this happen at some point in its corporate existence. After all, it’s happened at virtually every other major food company in the United States, be it fast food chains such as McDonalds, Taco Bell, or Jack in the Box or grocery stores such as Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, or Costco.

But what’s important to appreciate is that Chipotle left itself especially vulnerable to food borne illness outbreaks. As Austin Carr points out in an incredibly detailed review of Chiptole’s crisis for Fast Company magazine, while the chain served the equivalent of the population of Philadelphia on a daily basis prior to outbreaks, it had only four people assigned to its quality assurance team, tasked with tracking the quality of ingredients sourced from suppliers.

Over 100 ill with noro at USC

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Ben Chapman

Norovirus kind of sucks, unless you are a virologist. The perfect human pathogen (a term coined by my NoroCORE colleague and all-around good guy, Aron Hall) is shed at a crazy high rate of virus particles per gram of vomit or feces and sticks around in the environment for a long time. So outbreaks tend to persist and hit college campuses where lots of people live and eat together.

Like USC, where, according to LAist, a lot of students are sick.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has confirmed that they are currently investigating a norovirus outbreak at the University of Southern California. A representative from the Department of Public Health told LAist that 103 cases have been reported since October 26, which is when the university reached out to the department about the situation.

The university has asked students to remain home from classes or social events until they’ve been symptom free for at least 24 hours, according to a post on the USC Engemann Student Health Center website. This isn’t the first time the student body has been struck down by the virus—in 2008 hundreds of cases were reported in 2008, and there were a number of outbreaks around the L.A. area last year, as well.

Brae Surgeoner, Doug and I had a paper published in the Journal of Environmental Health about some research we conducted in the Winter of 2006. The study came about because a whole bunch of kids in the University of Guelph’s residence system started puking from an apparent norovirus outbreak. There were lots of handwashing signs up and we wanted to know whether they changed hygiene behavior (especially if kids were using the tools available when entering the cafeteria). Turns out that students weren’t doing as good of a job at hand hygiene as they reported to us.

Words matter and universities can suck: Benedict Cumberbatch reads a letter from Kurt Vonnegut

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Douglas Powell

My children speak harshly.

Because I did not want my daughters disadvantaged in any way in response to crude language.

They’re also good hockey players (where crude language rules).

At the 2014 ‘Letters Live’ event at the Hay Festival, Benedict Cumberbatch reads a letter by Kurt Vonnegut to a headmaster who had just burned all the copies of a particular book by Kurt in the school’s furnace.

Online food delivery app to stop selling dog, cat and other meat because food safety

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Ben Chapman

I’m a fan of apps and the Internet disrupting business models – like Uber and airbnb have – but when it comes to food I like to have folks playing by the same rules. Online food sales can be a bit dicey.

This article from gbtimes has it all: meat of unknown origin. Questionable slaughter practices. Online food sales. Dog meat, cat meat, shark fins and bear pile (something may be lost in translation or is it pie? I can’t find anything on what this is).

Chinese food delivery app Ele.me has decided to remove foods containing dog meat and shark fins from its menu options, saying that the move was based on food safety and animal protection considerations.

The Alibaba-backed startup announced on Wednesday that it has removed 294 merchants selling dog meat products and deleted 7,733 meals containing dog meat from its mobile app platform during the last three days.

Ele.me said in a statement published on its Weibo account that it was not taking sides in the debate over whether dog meat was morally acceptable but was concerned about the food safety issues it poses to consumers.

“There are currently no regulations concerning dog meat slaughter and quarantine system in China, so most of the dog meat in the market comes from unknown origins,” the Shanghai-based company said.

“In the absence of quarantine, dog meat can carry parasites, rabies, viruses and other deadly pests, so there is a large food safety risk. This prompted us to make the final decision.”

Ele.me added that following the same logic, the company plans to remove foods containing shark fins, bear paws, bear pile, cat meat, snake meat and other potentially unsafe foods from its platform too.

The public health cost of a hepatitis A outbreak: scallops edition

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Ben Chapman

A recent twitter exchange about corporate food safety folks really becoming compliance teams highlights that all this food safety stuff is nestled somewhere in a web of risk, cost and benefit. Risk and benefit come down to public health and business risk metrics – which can be fraught with limitations and assumptions.

Risk-based decision making is the mantra in food safety. Picking out an intervention is a starts with a numbers game: calculating the likelihood of an action (like handwashing) and matching that with the prevalence of a pathogen in the system. This is the stuff that gets the math nerds like Schaffner excited (me too). Businesses are faced with risk, cost and benefit decisions daily.

Food safety teams that focus just on compliance are trusting that the compliance folks got the science and risk correct. Sometimes they do. But lawmaking is slow.

The cost part of the equation somewhat straight forward.

One cost that’s been debated in food service for over twenty years is whether or not employers or public health folks should require food handlers to be vaccinated for hepatitis A. Jacobs and colleagues arrived at the conclusion that the public health benefit of vaccinating for hep A doesn’t equal the costs – but doesn’t factor in all the bad publicity, hassle and incident management costs.

Or costs to the public health system. According to KHON2 300+ cases of hepatitis A is costing hundreds of thousands of public health dollars.

The Hawaii Department of Health says it’s spent approximately $336,100 to investigate and respond to the hepatitis A outbreak.

Here’s how it breaks down: $304,600 were spent on normal staff work hours, and an estimated $19,750 went to pay for 300 hours of overtime work.

The rest went to pay for vaccines and lab specimen shipments to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the health department tells us that was covered by federal grant funds.

It took a lot of work for health officials just to pinpoint the source of the outbreak, including an online survey, numerous interviews with people, and visits to businesses.

Although officials identified the source — imported frozen scallops — they’re still not done with this outbreak. They’re now looking into a hepatitis-A-related death.

“The woman was in and out of the hospital really since she became ill in July, and so there were times where she needed a liver transplant,” said foodborne illness attorney Bill Marler. “She sort of seemed to rally. She got to go home for a little while, and then she was back in the hospital with complications.”