Things lawyers say ‘My owner insulted the inspector’s heritage but at the lower end of the scale’ Brisbane restaurant fined $20K

Posted on by
Reply

Health inspectors are poorly paid and take a lot of shit.

Can’t report reality, gotta keep tourism and biz happy regardless of how little they know about food safety.

A Brisbane restaurateur has been fined more than $20,000 after pleading guilty to racially abusing a health inspector who found a “cockroach infestation” in his business.

Ravendra Prasad (right, exactly as shown) said the public should be comfortable eating at his takeaway restaurant, which has remained open since he was charged, as he left the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

Toby Crockford of the Brisbane Times reports the 11 charges against the 64-year-old, who either owns or is involved in three restaurants, stemmed from two inspections in 2017 at his Indian Feast restaurant in St Lucia.

The health inspector found at least six breaches of the food standards code on July 5, 2017, which included a “large number” of live and dead cockroaches and cockroach faeces in the Indian Feast kitchen.

The restaurant’s licence was immediately suspended, resulting in the five-day shutdown, after separate infestations were found behind a dishwasher and freezer.

Brisbane City Council lawyer Roman Micairan said the kitchen was in “a state of uncleanliness” and, in addition to the cockroaches, “food waste and other debris [was] strewn around”.

Mr Micairan said the discovery of the cockroaches led to Mr Prasad becoming upset and insulting the health inspector, which included comments regarding the inspector’s eastern European heritage, telling her to go back  where she came from and questioning whether she could do her job.

During a follow-up inspection on August 18, 2017, the cockroach issue had been rectified, but the inspector found food-processing breaches, including pre-cooked food not be cooled at the correct temperature, increasing the risk of bacterial growth.

Defence lawyer Peter Trout argued Mr Prasad’s insult was “on the lower end of the scale” and his client had been “adamantly remorseful” after lashing out.

Raw and local risky: Milk & Honey sued over salmonella outbreak caused from raw egg use

Posted on by
Reply

Guess lots of areas got raw-egg-based problems.

Jason Steen of Scoop Nashville reports that newly filed court documents reveal Milk & Honey served salmonella-tainted ‘short rib gnocchi’ to patrons during August of 2018, causing over 20 patrons to fall ill with salmonella poisoning, and the Metro Health Department to deem it an outbreak.

Between August 3rd and August 15th of 2018, more than 20 patrons of Milk & Honey, a restaurant on 11th Ave S in the Gulch, were diagnosed with salmonella poisoning, according to the Metro Health Department, who formally deemed the incident an ‘outbreak’. Environmental, epidemiological, and lab testing linked the outbreak to the raw egg product furnished to Milk & Honey by a vendor, Gravel Ridge Farms. Specifically, they found the gnocchi was were only being cooked to 130 degrees, well below the required 145 degree required cook-kill temperature.

Documents from the lawsuit and Metro Health reveal:

Milk & Honey purchased unpasteurized raw eggs and/or raw egg product from Gravel Ridge Farms to be used in food prep, as part of their desire to source “local foods”

Milk & Honey used the unpasteurized eggs in a featured menu item: ‘Short Rib Gnocchi’. The gnocchi portion of this dish involves fashioning flour and raw egg yolk into dough, cutting it into pieces, and placed on a pan for freezing.

A plaintiff in the lawsuit dined at Milk & Honey in August of 2018, after which he fell sick with symptoms that found him hospitalized at Centennial Medial Center, which was diagnosed as salmonella poisoning.

At least 20 additional patrons were diagnosed with salmonella poisoning after eating the same dish.

An investigation by the Metro Health Department found a ‘lack of management oversight’ into the preparation of the short rib gnocchi. During their initial interview with the restaurant management, boiling of the raw gnocchi was indicated, however, in a reconstruction of events, it was learned that boiling did not take place in the actual kitchen production of the dish. It was being pan-seared upon each order, instead of boiled.

The Metro Health Department also found a lack of training to be a factor. The employee responsible for the final cooking and preparation of the dish was not unfamiliar with Gnocchi and was not trained on measuring or verifying final cooking temperatures of the raw gnocchi.

Taylor Monen, who is the owner of Milk & Honey, wrote a follow-up letter to Metro Health, which reads, in part:

After your visit on Friday, we felt that our past cook that evening probably did not cook the gnocchi long enough to reach a temperature that would have completely killed this bacteria present in the gnocchi…

I am not certain that I will be keeping it on the menu unless I am able to acquire pasteurized egg product that we can use to make these gnocchi noodles.

During the same email, Monen acknowledges the dangers of using small farms for egg sourcing, and acknowledged safer alternatives were readily available from food suppliers.

The newly filed lawsuit claims seeks claims of negligence in the amount of $575,000.00 &  punitive damages  up to $1,000,000.00.

Les Nessman explains how to talk about continuing leafy green outbreaks

Posted on by
Reply

A romaine lettuce task force was organized by the industry in December to help prevent future outbreaks, said Jennifer McEntire, vice president of food safety and technology for the United Fresh Produce Association.

The task force has representation from all types of growing operations from different growing regions, she said.

One primary focus of the task force is preventing outbreaks by looking at root cause analysis, she said.

A table of leafy green-related outbreaks – at least 80 since 1995 – is available here.

But Les Nessman gets to the heart of this political process — in 1978:

500 now sick from Royal Caribbean Norovirus cruise sickness

Posted on by
Reply

Hi, my name is Doug.

I’m married and not looking for anything like that.

I like smart women, long walks on the beach (with Ted the Wonder Dog — that’s him about 5:30 a.m. on Yaroomba Beach with me — and Amy and Sorenne, which I’ve been doing the last four days), and have never been on a cruise.

That Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas cruise has now sickened about 500 with Norovirus, up from 277 last week.

All the passengers will be offered a refund as a result of the outbreak, Royal Caribbean has said.

This is an unusual move on the part of Royal Caribbean. Costs for the seven-night Western Caribbean voyage on the Oasis of the Seas start at $626 (£487) per person before taxes and fees for an interior stateroom.

Cruise companies are not under obligation to provide a refund in such situations as this.

“Cruise lines look at this sort of thing on a case by case basis and how disruptive this was to passengers,” Colleen McDaniel, executive editor at Cruise Critic, told Market Watch.

277 sick from Noro: Carribean cruise from hell

Posted on by
Reply

CBS News reports one of the world’s biggest cruise ships, Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, is returning to a Florida port a day early and giving passengers full refunds of their fare after 277 guests and crew members were hit with an outbreak of norovirus as it sailed to Jamaica.

Cruise line spokesman Owen Torres told The Associated Press, “We think the right thing to do is get everyone home early rather than have guests worry about their health.”

He says the ship will return to Port Canaveral on Saturday. It sailed from there Sunday on a seven-day Caribbean cruise.

Passengers took to social media on Wednesday, tweeting they were forced to stay onboard after docking in Falmouth, Jamaica, for what was supposed to be a day of excursions.

Torres said returning a day early gives the cruise line “more time to completely clean and sanitize the ship” before it sails again.

Scientists in India figure out how Salmonella infect plants

Posted on by
Reply

Sunderarajan Padmanabhan of Biotech Times writes that E. coli and Salmonella bacteria are the most common causes of food poisoning. Although most Salmonella outbreaks are linked to contamination during handling and transportation of the vegetables, there are also cases where the infectious bacterium had entered the plant when it was still in the farmland.

A new study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Bengaluru, has solved the mystery.

They have found that unlike other disease-causing bacteria that enter the root, fruit or leaf by producing enzymes to break down the plant’s cell wall, Salmonella sneaks in through a tiny gap created when a lateral root branches out from the plant’s primary root.

The researchers were studying how different types of bacteria colonize the roots of tomato plants. While other bacteria were spread across the root, Salmonella clustered almost exclusively around areas where lateral roots emerge. When a lateral root pierces open the wall of the primary root to spread across the soil, it leaves behind a tiny opening. They figured out that it was entering through the gap with the help of fluorescent tagging and imaging.

They also noticed that under same conditions a plant with a greater number of lateral roots harbored a greater concentration of Salmonella than one with fewer lateral roots. Similarly, when plants were artificially induced to produce more lateral roots, Salmonella concentration increased.

Tomatoes plucked from these plants also tested positive for Salmonella infection, revealing its ability to travel all the way up to the fruit. “It is just like a systemic infection in humans,” said senior author Dipshikha Chakravortty, Professor, Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, IISc. The researchers have published a paper on their work in the journal, BMC Plant Biology.

Kapudeep Karmakar, Ph.D. student in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, IISc, and first author of the paper, noted that there are several possible sources from where Salmonella can reach the soil, such as manure containing animal faeces or contaminated irrigation water.

“Various studies show that irrigation water gets contaminated by sewage water. When that irrigation water is applied in the field, the soil becomes the portal for Salmonella to enter,” he said.

13 sick: Some had eaten rakfish: — more affected by mysterious listeria outbreaks in eastern Norway

Posted on by
Reply

News Beezer reports that shortly before Christmas, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health announced that there had been six reports of a new outbreak of Listeriosis. Today it was known that this number has increased significantly and that the affected area is also larger than previously known

Typically, 1-2 patients with listeriosis are reported monthly. Four of the six patients reported in December come from Hedmark and Oppland. Now the infection has spread further and is increasing more and more.

A total of thirteen people have been reported with listeriosis. Most are located in the above circles, and Buskerud is now included in the list. It is common that they are older than 70 years and affect their general condition. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority works with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, the Municipal Health Service and the Norwegian Veterinary Institute to determine if patients can share a common source of infection. So far, five patients have detected bacteria with a similar DNA profile.

Stick it in: Thermometer use

Posted on by
Reply

Temperature control prevents the rapid growth of foodborne pathogens during food storage and assures adequate heating to destroy pathogens prior to consumption. The use of thermometers is a recognized best practice among consumer and food worker guidelines; however, compliance with this recommendation is quite low.

Eighty-five studies from the past 21 years were reviewed and an analyzed for the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors associated with thermometer use and the motivators and barriers to cooking and refrigerator thermometer use among consumers and food workers. Barriers to thermometer were categorized into two major groups: ‘‘the belief that a thermometer is not necessary’’ and ‘‘the difficulty of selecting and using a thermometer.’’ Each group has its unique aspects. Four barriers were recognized in the ‘‘not necessary’’ group: (i) preference for alternative techniques, (ii) mainstream media and food professionals seldom serve as role models and often negate the need for food thermometers, (iii) limited awareness of potential health issues associated with current practices, and (iv) limited knowledge and awareness related to thermometer usage for specific food groups.

Six barriers were recognized in the ‘‘difficult to select and use’’ group: (i) difficulties in selecting the type of food thermometers, (ii) availability of food thermometers, (iii) lack of skills related to the usage of food thermometers, (iv) limited knowledge related to endpoint temperatures, (v) inability to calibrate food thermometers, and (vi) lack of knowledge about food thermometer cleaning and sanitation. These findings will facilitate the development and adoption of effective strategies to increase thermometer use and increase food safety education efficacy with a positive impact on public health.

Motivators and barriers to cooking and refrigerator thermometer use among consumers and food workers: A review.

Journal of Food Protection vol. 82 noi. 1 pg. 128-150

Yaohua Feng and Christine Bruhn

doi:10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-18-245

http://www.jfoodprotection.org/doi/pdf/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-18-245