In Feb. 2019, people started showing up sick with Salmonella at hospitals in Adelaide, South Australia.
Ultimately 58 people were sickened and health types linked the outbreak to a raw egg butter being served with Vietnamese rolls from three bakeries all owned by Angkor Bakery.
Last week, five people connected with the three Angkor Bakery stores, including two of the owners, faced the Elizabeth Magistrates Court in South Australia. They were charged with failing to comply with food standards and providing unsafe food products.
As my colleague Andrew Thomson of Think ST Solutions writes, outbreaks occur due to a systems breakdown: it’s a financial burden on everyone, including the broader food industry; it causes much pain and suffering for those involved and in legal terms a food business at the centre of an outbreak can be liable for injuries caused and prosecuted by health authorities for failing to provide safe food.
One of the bakery owners told awaiting media outside Court last week of the true cost of this incident to the business: lost public confidence and business sales and now the entire business concern is for sale; owners are unable to engage legal representation due to the financial cost; it has fractured the family.
Steve White from global insurance brokerage and risk management firm, Arthur J Gallagher (Australia), says the best way to protect your customers – and to avoid costly lawsuits, penalties and damage to reputation and business interruption – is to know your obligations, maintain food safety standards and have the right insurance.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) an outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) — E. coli O103 and E. coli O121 — linked to ground bison appears to be over.
CDC, several states, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency investigated a multistate outbreak of infections.
On July 16, 2019, Northfork Bison Distributions, Inc., in Saint-Leonard, Quebec, Canada, recalled external icon ground bison produced between February 22, 2019, and April 30, 2019. Recalled ground bison was sold to distributors as ground bison and bison patties, referred to as Bison Burgers and/or Buffalo Burgers. Recalled ground bison was also sold to retailers in 4-ounce burger patties.
Do not eat, sell, or serve recalled Northfork Bison products.
As of September 13, 2019, this outbreak appears to be over.
A total of 33 people infected with the outbreak strain of STEC O103 and STEC O121 were reported from eight states.
Eighteen people were hospitalized. No cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure, were reported. No deaths were reported.
When ordering at a restaurant, ask that ground bison burgers be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 160°F.
Jess Davis of ABC News reports a frozen meringue was key to identifying and outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis (SE), a bacteria that until last year was not found in Australia, that sickened almost 200 people.
People first started getting sick in May 2018 and by July a cluster of cases had appeared in New South Wales. That was when health authorities started investigating.
“Health, through their investigations, were able to look at a number of isolates of Salmonella enteritidis that came from humans, who unfortunately had been ill, and use a technology called whole genome sequencing,” said NSW Food Authority CEO Lisa Szabo.
“So it’s a genetic-based technology that helps us join the dots, shall I say. And this was the first time they could see a group of people with the same whole genome sequence.”
Anyone with a confirmed case of SE was interviewed by investigators and asked for a detailed account of what they’d eaten — to try to find what the different cases had in common.
A few weeks after being interviewed, one of those people remembered they had a frozen meringue cake in their freezer, leftover from a birthday party, around the time they got sick.
Officers went to that person’s home, collected the cake and had it tested.
“We were able to isolate the Salmonella enteritidis and it had that same whole genome sequence. At the same time we could see who manufactured that cake,” Ms Szabo said.
“We could go back to the manufacturer, have a look at their environment, look at how they handle food and where they get their ingredients from, and that’s where we saw the connection to the egg farm.”
It wasn’t until September that the frozen meringue led investigators to a farm on the outskirts of Sydney, but by then the bacteria had slowly started spreading across the industry.
“Once we detected salmonella enteritidis on this particular farm, we then commenced another round of investigations … more from the biosecurity and then the farm side of trying to understand … [whether the] farm had other connections to other properties around the state” Ms Szabo said.
But how the bacteria made its way into Australian eggs in the first place is likely to remain a mystery.
One property in Victoria and 13 in NSW have been affected so far and more than half-a-million birds have been culled at a cost of $10 million.
The spread of SE has been blamed largely on the interconnected nature of the egg industry, with all the infected farms connected in some way.
Egg farmers often trade produce with each other, and equipment and workers also regularly move from farm to farm.
Veterinarian Rod Jenner said SE was difficult to contain because it could survive and multiply without a host and could live in the environment for up to two years.
“It can survive in dust and dirt, in vehicles, and can travel in the wind. Rodents, wild birds, that sort of thing, can carry it on their skin or in their bodies as well,” he said.
“So it has actually been demonstrated to travel vast distances and be contaminated, be deposited on other farms that have previously been free.”
A farmer’s worst nightmareBede Burke’s egg farm at Tamworth in NSW was the 11th property to be infected, with a notification it had tested positive to SE during a routine check just over three months ago.
“Your whole world crashes down around you, you know,” Mr Burke said.
“We just didn’t sleep for a week and that first seven or eight days was really traumatic. We had to learn how to both decontaminate and disinfect the premises.”
When the notification came through on the eve of the federal election, Mr Burke had to withhold his eggs from sale and was faced with the prospect of culling entire flocks.
“But then you’ve got heap of eggs on your premises, you can’t not stop packing eggs, we were still going to pack 90,000 eggs a day,” he said.
“It’s just stress beyond all belief and then start planning for the worst.”
But he was lucky the contamination was picked up early and while a swab of dirt and dust had tested positive, it hadn’t yet spread to his egg or birds.
There have been no confirmed cases of SE since June and the industry hopes that will be the end of it.
But the outbreak has raised serious questions about how biosecurity is managed. Despite the disease becoming a national problem, its enforcement and regulation is state-based.
Philip Szepe, who runs an egg farm at Kinglake in Victoria, tests for all strains of salmonella every three months.
But he’s concerned that not all farmers are as diligent and said biosecurity was too reliant on self-regulation.
“Government’s really good at responding to crisis. It’d be great if the Government had a bit more engagement with the industry around monitoring, surveillance and compliance,” he said.
On Tuesday, Auckland City district commander Superintendent Karyn Malthus said officers were called to an incident where an unknown man was sleeping in a person’s vehicle.
He was taken back to the Avondale Police Station but fled while being taken from the police car into the station.
“Police gave chase however were unable to catch him and he was last seen running down a driveway on Great North Rd,” Malthus said.
On Thursday, police said a man was arrested about midday in connection to the incident.
Salted clams from China and Korea appear to be the common factor in a spate of hepatitis A cases in various countries.
According to the Korea Biomedical Review, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said that it has confirmed that contaminated fermented shellfish was the main culprit behind the hepatitis A outbreak this summer.
The KCDC came to the conclusions after conducting an in-depth epidemiological investigation.
The agency randomly sampled 270 of the 2,178 hepatitis A patients, diagnosed between July 28 and August 24, and surveyed whether they consumed fermented shellfish this summer. It found that 42 percent of the patients had eaten fermented shellfish during the incubation period.
KCDC also found that 80.7 percent of the 26 patients diagnosed with hepatitis A in August also ate fermented shellfish, while discovering Hepatitis A virus genes in 11 batches out of the 18 batches collected after the outbreak.
Notably, five of these genes found in the research showed close relations with the virus detected in hepatitis A patients.
As of now, the disease control agency has confirmed 10 products that have tested positive to the hepatitis A virus. Nine of them were imported from China, and one was made in Korea.
“Out of the total 10 products, weighing 37,094kg, 31,764kg has already been sold to the markets, while the remaining 5,330 kg were recovered and disposed of,” the agency said.
Yesterday, the Australian NSW Food Authority advised that Byul Mi Kim Chi is conducting a recall of Salted clams, due to a possible microbial (Hepatitis A virus) contamination. Further, Koryo Food Co. is conducting a recall of Pickled clams, due to a possible microbial (Hepatitis A virus) contamination.
NSW Food Authority CEO, Lisa Szabo said testing was underway on a number of products but full results may take a number of weeks.
“Although a contamination has not yet been confirmed, we have advised the companies of a potential link to 8 cases of hepatitis A in NSW, and they have both undertaken a recall of the product,” Dr Szabo said.
I used to be a lick-the-batter-off-the-spoon kind of guy. I stopped doing that a few years ago. I don’t eat raw cookie dough, or let my kids eat it. I’m probably not the most fun dad, but outbreaksrecalls like what is going on right now is why.
General Mills announced today a voluntary national recall of five-pound bags of its Gold Medal Unbleached All Purpose Flour with a better if used by date of September 6, 2020. The recall is being issued for the potential presence of E. coli O26 which was discovered during sampling of the five-pound bag product. This recall is being issued out of an abundance of care as General Mills has not received any direct consumer reports of confirmed illnesses related to this product.
This recall only affects this one date code of Gold Medal Unbleached All Purpose Flour five-pound bags. All other types of Gold Medal Flour are not affected by this recall.
Guidance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) continues to warn that consumers should refrain from consuming any raw products made with flour. E. coli O26 is killed by heat through baking, frying, sautéing or boiling products made with flour. All surfaces, hands and utensils should be properly cleaned after contact with flour or dough.
I think they mean cleaned and sanitized.
There’s something about O26 and O121 and flour that we’re all gonna have to figure out.
Here’s the outbreak from May 2019. Here’s a Canadian outbreak from 2017. Oh, here’s another outbreak from 2016.
Nolan Moittie was 23-months-old when he became one of 15 children in the Hauts-de-France region to fall ill having eaten beef contaminated with E. coli.
The boy was left paralysed for life, unable to walk, talk or eat.
Yesterday he was rushed to intensive care when his heart stopped beating.
He died shortly afterwards, despite medics’ efforts to revive him, Le Parisien reported.
The other children suffer from conditions that will affect their kidneys for the rest of their lives.
The lawyer of Nolan’s family, Florence Rault, said the boy had suffered a ‘real ordeal since the accident’.
Bosses at Seb-Cerf, who marketed frozen steaks under the Steak Country brand, were tried at Douai Criminal Court in northern France in 2017.
Former boss Guy Lamorlette, 78, was sentenced to three years in prison for failing to carry out checks on the meat.
He was also banned from any industrial or commercial activity and ordered to pay damages to the victims.
At a February hearing Lamorlette tried to blame Laurent Appere, the company’s former quality manager who died just before the trial began.
Lamorlette is said to be considering an appeal.
Nolan’s family lawyer, Florence Rault, told Le Parisien: “I hope that the person responsible for this tragedy will have the decency to withdraw his appeal on points of law.
“At the first trial, he did not even want to watch Nolan, now he must serve his sentence and Nolan’s parents must be able to be compensated and mourn.”
While most of the time the symptoms are identified and the illness diagnosed, I still think that botulism would be a terrible way to go. Paralysis, ventilator, life long impacts.
Florian Garcia of Le Parisien reports (and this has been translated, poorly) that outdated soup was to blame for a French woman’s botulism. I’m guessing there was some temperature control issues (like it came in a tetra pack and wasn’t refrigerated – or there was a processing failure) at the root of this, not the date thing.
soup, via wikipedia
“She is almost totally paralyzed, blows a friend of the family. And with very little hope of recovery. “A week and a half after a first malaise occurred late August, the health of this resident of Essonne has deteriorated significantly. After several days of hospitalization, the doctors of Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris diagnosed her case of botulism . A very rare disease, which she contracted by ingesting an outdated vegetable soup.
For the family, who does not want to express themselves, a vegetable soup is at the origin of the disease. In the fridge of the victim, several products call the investigators of the repression of frauds. Among them, a soup with a deadline of consumption (DLC) August 4 … outdated for three weeks.
“We took this information very seriously and immediately put ourselves at the disposal of the authorities, details the brand of soup incriminated. No problem was reported on the 630 bottles of the lot that have been sold and consumed since. “
According to her, the negligence was therefore committed by the consumer. “Given the incubation period, three days according to the National Health Security Agency (ANSES), the date of hospitalization of the patient, end of August, and the deadline for consumption of the product, August 4 , it turned out that the sick person has consumed an expired product, “says the company.
Given the severity of the disease, the company’s production method was scrutinized. “We were able to demonstrate that all the manufacturing operations were done in the state of the art,” added the spokesperson. It is a pasteurized soup and like all products of this type, it is heated above 80 ° C. This guarantees pasteurization but not sterilization. It must therefore be kept cool and consumed within a maximum of 30 days. Beyond this DLC, the freshness of a product of this type can not be guaranteed. “
The UK Food Standards Agency reports the top nine retailers across the UK have published their latest testing results on campylobacter contamination in UK-produced fresh whole chickens (covering samples tested from April to June 2019).
The latest figures show that on average, across the major retailers, 3.6% of chickens tested positive for the highest level of contamination. These are the chickens carrying more than 1,000 colony forming units per gram (cfu/g) of campylobacter.
Results
The sampling and analyses are carried out in accordance with protocols laid down by the FSA and agreed by Industry.
We have been testing chickens for campylobacter since February 2014 and publishing the results as part of a campaign to bring together the whole food chain to tackle the problem. Campylobacter is the most common cause of food poisoning in the UK.
In September 2017 we announced changes to the survey, with major retailers carrying out their own sampling and publishing their results under robust protocols laid down by the FSA. We are continuing to sample fresh whole chickens sold at retail, however, the focus is now on the smaller retailers and the independent market.
Chicken is safe if consumers follow good kitchen practice:
Cover and chill raw chicken – cover raw chicken and store at the bottom of the fridge so juices cannot drip onto other foods and contaminate them with food poisoning bacteria such as campylobacter
Don’t wash raw chicken – thorough cooking will kill any bacteria present, including campylobacter, while washing chicken can spread germs by splashing
Wash used utensils – thoroughly wash and clean all utensils, chopping boards and surfaces used to prepare raw chicken
Wash hands thoroughly with soap and warm water, after handling raw chicken – this helps stop the spread of campylobacter by avoiding cross-contamination
Cook chicken thoroughly – make sure chicken is steaming hot all the way through before serving. Cut into the thickest part of the meat and check that it is steaming hot with no pink meat and that the juices run clear.
One morning when today’s school lunch was to be cooked at the Torskolan in Torsås, the staff discovered that the falu sausage that would have been cooked was covered with musbajs.
The school called me and told me that something similar to rodent spilling was found on the fallow basket. We then contacted the company from which we buy the sausage, which immediately withdrew it, says Gustaf Nilsson, environmental inspector at Torsås Municipality.
The planned sausage lunch was quickly replaced with soup and a detective work has been underway to find out where the mice have come in.
“I don’t know where they managed to get in, but before it came to school, the sausage was both at a factory and at a transhipment center. However, it is unlikely that it happened at school. The staff has detailed their routines there.
Gustaf Nilsson says he has not been to anything like it before.
“After all, the routines have failed and it is very unfortunate that this has happened. However, the staff at Torskolan did everything right to discover the pellet before starting to cook.”
Samples taken on the sausage show high levels of E. coli, ie some form of stool. The suspicion is that it comes from forest mice.
Ultimately 58 people were sickened and health types linked the outbreak to a raw egg butter being served with Vietnamese rolls from three bakeries all owned by Angkor Bakery.
