I’m in Atlanta for the National Environmental Health Association’s Educational Conference.
At 1pm today I’ll be presenting during the Food Safety Training Showcase (Courtland Rm at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta for those of you who are in town).
You can find the materials I’ll be presenting at bites.ksu.edu/NEHA2009.
Doug introduced me to Google Alerts a few weeks ago and my email inbox hasn’t been the same since. I get approximately 50-100 email hits on handwashing everyday. Most of them are relevant to washing hands, but some are about handwashing clothes and dishes.
The reason for sharing my numerous emails: wash your hands.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced raising the alert level to phase 6, the pandemic phase. The severity of the virus, H1N1, is moderate, claims the WHO. Across the world there are newly suspected cases of so-called swine flu. In the US alone, there have been 17,800 confirmed cases, 1600 hospitalized, and 44 deaths; all are attributed to H1N1 flu.
Every reported case in the news or other blogs is typically accompanied with a campaign for their readers to wash their hands. I, of course, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to inform BarfBlog readers to do the same.
Handwashing can reduce sickness by an estimated 25%. Hands should be washed before and after handling food, using the bathroom, coughing, sneezing, and blowing ones nose. Also, people should avoid touching their face (eyes, nose, and mouth) to reduce their risk.
Foodborne illness can be an unpleasant experience or something more serious. The World Health Organization estimates up to 2 billion people get sick from food and water each year – 30 per cent of all citizens in all countries.
Dr. Douglas Powell, associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University, leads a group of individuals passionately committed to reducing the incidence of foodborne illness, through research, teaching and information. The group strives daily to be the international leader in comprehensive and compelling food safety information that impacts individual lives – and reduces the number of sick people.
The electronic publications, barfblog.com and bites.ksu.edu, are comprehensive, current and compelling sources of food safety news and analysis, and help foster a farm-to-fork culture that values microbiologically safe food.
Research
• The effectiveness of food safety messages and media in public discussions of food safety issues, such as the risks of listeria to pregnant women, legislation surrounding raw milk, public availability of restaurant inspection data, and the safety of fresh produce, are evaluated through qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Observational research methodologies are used to quantify individual food safety behaviors from farm-to-fork, to enhance handwashing compliance, thermometer use, food packaging information and interventions that can reduce the number of people that get sick from the food and water they consume.
Teaching
• A graduate program in food safety risk analysis – including food safety, language, culture and policy — is being developed and will include distance-education.
• Courses are currently taught in Food Safety Risk Analysis, and Food Safety Reporting.
Information
• Dr. Powell is the publisher and editor of bites and barfblog, rapid, reliable and relevant sources of food safety information. Dr. Ben Chapman of North Carolina State University is the assistant editor.
• bites and barfblog are produced by a cross-cultural team of secondary, undergraduate and graduate students as well as professionals who create multilingual and multicultural food safety and security information, including weekly food safety information sheets, and multimedia resources.
• Research, educational and journalistic opportunities are available for secondary, undergraduate and graduate students through bites.ksu.edu and barfblog.com.
For further information, please contact:
Dr. Douglas Powell
associate professor, food safety
dept. diagnostic medicine/pathobiology
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS
66506
cell: 785-317-0560
fax: 785-532-4039
dpowell@ksu.edu
bites.ksu.edu
barfblog.com
donteatpoop.com
youtube.com/SafeFoodCafe
or
Dr. Benjamin Chapman
Food Safety Specialist
Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family & Consumer Sciences
NC Cooperative Extension Service
North Carolina State University
Campus Box 7606 (512 Brickhaven Drive)
Raleigh, NC 27695-7606
919.515.8099 (office)
919.809.3205 (cell)
benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu
Irony is pretty ironic sometimes.
On the three-year anniversary of me officially starting at Kansas State University, two-years after the beginning of barfblog.com, and a year after going down the baby road yet again, Chapman finally gets his PhD, and all the staff at the remnants of the Food Safety Network at the University of Guelph are fired.
Me, I just keep on truckin’ on. We’re working out the kinks with bites.ksu.edu, and barfblog.com had yet another record number of visitors today. So for the best food safety news and analysis, visit often.
At barfblog we’re all about community-generated content. It’s fun when someone emails with a food safety-related story or a picture for us to share. Today’s content comes from a colleague and avid barfblog groupie who was driving through southern Georgia this morning and snapped the picture at right.
The pictured sign is posted at the entrance of a pecan and peanut company’s roadside market/shop. All I know about this unidentified business is that it distributes stuff like raw, roasted and nut products all over the U.S.
Sure, it’s a good idea to keep dogs out of the food area of a store, but suggesting to take a walk in the orchard, an equally important food area, is kind of weird.
To me, it seems like the producer should be thinking their orchard is a food area as well. Sure, it’s really tough to control birds, deer and feral pigs, but inviting dogs to take a dump in the orchard (something that is controllable) probably isn’t a good idea. In the climate of uncertainty around the effectiveness of pathogen reduction strategies in the nut industry, it’s an especially bad idea.
Keep the dog poop out of the orchard.
In a nice intersection of music and food safety, Gasoline Magazine reports that Jack White (one of my very favorite thrashers) brought some poorly-handled Detroit pierogies to Jesse Hughes of the Eagles of Death Metal resulting in some celebrity barf. Hughes says that the pierogies arrived before a show in Toronto last fall and gave him the squirts and a queasy stomach for most of the performance:
"Dude, I had botulism… Jack White bought pierogies in Detroit and brought them up to the gig, and I ended up eating one far too long after it had expired. I ended up contracting mild botulism and sweating out of every hole, so to speak, for about 12 hours. I was the worst f’n experience I’ve ever had. But you can’t call in sick to rock & roll"
Amen, brother; that’s why I love rock & roll.
Working in a restaurant, that’s different. Call in sick.
It probably wasn’t actual botulism (would have been difficult to pound the guitar with a body full of neurotoxin) but sounds like a nasty foodborne illness experience.
Actual botulism did appear this week in WA, where a woman in her 30s and two children under 10 fell ill from eating improperly-canned green beans from a home garden. The woman is reportedly recovering slowly and remains on a ventilator.
Here’s some Sunday rock & roll, Jack White and the Rolling Stones, Loving Cup:
And a bonus video, The Dirty Mac’s Yer Blues from the Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus:
Karla Cook writes in tomorrow’s New York Times that the Peanut Corp of America-linked Salmonella outbreak’s reach has not been limited to multi-national companies:
Small businesses in all corners of the United States bought potentially tainted peanut products from the Peanut Corporation of America and are now part of one of the largest food recalls ever in this country. There is the chef in Las Vegas, for instance, who used them in protein bars, the packager of nuts and dried fruits in Connecticut, the cannery in Montana that sold chocolate-covered nuts and the ice cream manufacturer in New York State.
While big companies like Kellogg, Kraft and General Mills have the experience and staff to handle recalls, many small businesses have never had to deal with anything like this.
Some have had to keep employees on overtime or hire additional help to handle the recall-related work — records have to be searched to identify and track products, and replacement products manufactured. And company officials say they are spending a lot of time reassuring their customers.
“It’s not our fault this recall went through,” said Tom Lundeen, who co-owns Aspen Hills Inc., in Garner, Iowa, which makes frozen cookie dough for fund-raisers. “We do everything correct and we have an incredibly high level of quality control, and we still have to pay for the mistakes of P.C.A.”
Yep, exactly – this outbreak has demonstrated the complexity and interconnectedness of the food system — which has largely been built on trust in suppliers or the results of their third-party audits.
Jenny Scott, a microbiologist and vice president of science policy and food protection for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group in Washington, said small businesses need to know their suppliers’ food safety culture and practices, and whether the suppliers are capable of doing the right thing. Last week, she helped teach a Web seminar for 60 participants, “The Ingredient Supply Chain: Do You Know Who You’re in Bed With?”
Like it was straight out of the pages of barfblog — although trying to assess the food safety culture and supplier practices is difficult, it’s not impossible. Creating and fostering the openess and transparency of food production through marketing food safety, with companies opening their doors can help buyers make decisions.
Benjamin Chapman, food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, went further. “If you’re in the peanut butter industry, you need to be thinking about salmonella,” he said. Learning about suppliers is challenging when the supplier is not local, and the layers of the national food system are difficult to pierce.
SunHerald.com is reporting an outbreak of Salmonella at a maximum security prison in Jackson County, Mississippi:
The state Health Department is currently trying to determine what food could’ve caused a salmonella outbreak at the maximum-security jail this week.
The outbreak sent five inmates to the hospital, though only one remains hospitalized, officials said.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd said the inmates started getting sick, suffering mostly from diarrhea and abdominal cramps, on Monday, with two the inmates experiencing a low-grade fever. The sheriff said the jail gets its food from an international food services company.
He said the ingestion of peanuts or peanut butter has been ruled out as the possible cause of the illness. He said, so far, officials believe the potentially life-threatening bacterial infection could’ve been caused by some lettuce that the food services company provided and the inmates ingested.
The Sun Herald updates this story in Thursday’s edition.
Lettuce and leafy greens have most often been associated with pathogenic E. coli in outbreaks, but food handlers have been known to shed Salmonella without showing symptoms.
Multiple outlets are reporting tonight that every peanut, every ounce of peanut oil and all peanut butter and paste products produced by Peanut Corporation of America in its Blakely, Georgia plant since January 2007 has been recalled.
From the FDA website:
PCA sells its products to institutional and industrial users for service in large institutions or for sale and further processing by other companies. PCA does not sell peanuts or peanut products directly to consumers in stores.
The expanded recall includes all peanuts (dry and oil roasted), granulated peanuts, peanut meal, peanut butter and peanut paste. All of the recalled peanuts and peanut products were made only at the company’s Blakely, Georgia facility; the lot numbers and a description of the products being recalled are listed at the end of this release. The Blakely, Georgia facility has stopped producing all peanut products.
Peanut Corporation of American released a statement tonight that includes the following:
“The goal of Peanut Corporation of America over the past 33 years has always been to
follow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s good manufacturing practices in order to provide a safe product for consumers. It is because of our commitment to our customers and consumers that PCA has taken extraordinary measures to identify and recall all products that have been identified as presenting a potential risk."
"PCA uses only two highly reputable labs for product testing and they are widely used by the industry and employ good laboratory practices. PCA categorically denies any allegations that the Company sought favorable results from any lab in order to ship its products."
"We want our customers and consumers to know that we are continuing to work day and night with the FDA and other officials to determine the source of the problem and ensure that it never happens again.”
Being proactive and keeping food that has tested positive for a pathogen off of the plates of consumers is good for public health. Waiting until illnesses are reported is irresponsible and demonstrates a lack of concern for customers. PCA’s words say that they place the utmost importance in food safety, but their reported actions suggest that investigating and fixing a pathogen problem is only important when there are illnesses, not before they occur.
As for PCA’s customers, knowing the food safety practices of a supplier, no matter whether it’s at a farmers market or a multi-national is really important. If they’re in China or around the corner, they need to follow the rules and know how to reduce risks. This goes beyond relying on third-party audit results. Tracking where product goes and knowing what inputs went into it is the cornerstone of a good culture of food safety.
As a follow-up to last week’s kebab/street meat post, today, the FSA published results of a survey of the content of 494 kebabs across the UK.
The study’s authors report that without salad and sauces, the average kebab contains:
* 98% of daily salt
* nearly 1000 calories
* 148% of daily saturated fat
The authors also report the mislabelling of kebab meat, with meat species not declared or declared wrongly. In some instances, pork was present in samples labelled as Halal.
The Food Standards Agency’s Chief Scientist Andrew Wadge said:
‘We welcome this new study. It is important that people are properly informed about the food they eat. However, our advice is that people don’t need to avoid doner kebabs altogether because of these findings. Like all types of food that is high in fat and salt they do not need to be cut out of your diet altogether."
Wonder if they sampled for pathogens, and if they found any.