You’re such a cute bunny; yes you are; and you can carry dangerous bacteria

Posted on September 20, 2017 by Douglas Powell

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in zoonotic (e.g. Salmonella spp.), pathogenic, and opportunistic (e.g. E. coli) bacteria in animals represents a potential reservoir of antimicrobial resistant bacteria and resistance genes to bacteria infecting humans and other animals. This study evaluated the prevalence of E. coli and Salmonella enterica, and the presence of associated AMR in commercial meat, companion, research, and shelter rabbits in Canada. Associations between antimicrobial usage and prevalence of AMR in bacterial isolates were also examined in commercial meat rabbits.

Culture and susceptibility testing was conducted on pooled fecal samples from weanling and adult commercial meat rabbits taken during both summer and winter months (n = 100, 27 farms), and from pooled laboratory (n = 14, 8 laboratory facilities), companion (n = 53), and shelter (n = 15, 4 shelters) rabbit fecal samples.

At the facility level, E. coli was identified in samples from each commercial rabbit farm, laboratory facility, and 3 of 4 shelters, and in 6 of 53 companion rabbit fecal samples. Seventy-nine of 314 (25.2%; CI: 20.7-30.2%) E. coli isolates demonstrated resistance to >1 antimicrobial agent. At least one E. coli isolate resistant to at least one antimicrobial agent was present in samples from 55.6% of commercial farms, and from 25% of each laboratory and shelter facilities, with resistance to tetracycline being most common; no resistance was identified in companion animal samples. Salmonella enterica subsp. was identified exclusively in pooled fecal samples from commercial rabbit farms; Salmonella enterica serovar London from one farm and Salmonella enterica serovar Kentucky from another. The S. Kentucky isolate was resistant to amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, ampicillin, cefoxitin, ceftiofur, ceftriaxone, streptomycin, and tetracycline, whereas the S. London isolate was pansusceptible. Routine use of antimicrobials on commercial meat rabbit farms was not significantly associated with the presence of antimicrobial resistant E. coli or S. enterica on farms; trends towards resistance were present when resistance to specific antimicrobial classes was examined. E. coli was widely prevalent in many Canadian domestic rabbit populations, while S. enterica was rare. The prevalence of AMR in isolated bacteria was variable and most common in isolates from commercial meat rabbits (96% of the AMR isolates were from commercial meat rabbit fecal samples).

Our results highlight that domestic rabbits, and particularly meat rabbits, may be carriers of phenotypically antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and AMR genes, possibly contributing to transmission of these bacteria and their genes to bacteria in humans through food or direct contact, as well as to other co-housed animal species.

Prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in fecal Escherchia coli and Salmonella Enterica in Canadian commercial meat, companion, laboratory, and shelter rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) ad its association with routine antimicrobial use in commercial meat rabbits

Preventative Veterinary Medicine, vol 147, 1 November 2017, Pages 53-57, Jennifer Kylie, Scott A. McEwen, Patrick Boerlin, Richard J. Reid-Smith, J. Scott Weese, Patricia V. Turner, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2017.09.004

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167587716305062

24 sick with campy from pig roast in Guelph

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Douglas Powell

Canada’s self-proclaimed capital of food safety has reported at least 24 people became ill after attending a pig roast in Guelph earlier this year.

A report by Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health says that the people became ill with a gastrointestinal disorder after attending a catered pig roast event at an unspecified location in Guelph in May/June.

That’s some good reporting time. Guess everyone was off for summer holidays.

“Pig roasts area a popular and high-risk method of cooking for large gatherings. It is important that WDGPH staff are prepared to respond to community outbreaks and remain diligent in their knowledge of food safety,” reads a staff report.

“Pig roasts are a common catering method for preparing and cooking large volumes of meat. This cooking style is associated with a number of food safety challenges that food operators must be aware of in order to prevent any potential food borne illness from occurring in those consuming the meat.”

Leftover food from the pig roast was delivered the following morning to a drop-in centre in Guelph, but no illnesses from those consuming the meat there were reported.

A total of 82 individuals attended the event and Public Health interviewed 74 of them. Thirty-three per cent of those people reported getting sick, the report says.

“The inspection and epidemiological investigation indicate pork as the source of illness,” says the report.

An inspection of the unnamed Guelph caterer for the pig roast found “a number of items” not in compliance with regulations, including hazardous food not being maintained at 4 C or lower during transportation, poor sanitary maintenance and lack of supplies in the staff washroom.

Name and shame the caterer.

What to do with the sponge

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Robert Mancini

The kitchen sponge has been gaining a lot of traction lately in food safety media that stemmed from the recent German study that analyzed 14 sponges. Don Schaffner provided his expertise regarding the validity of the study on Barfblog earlier.

It is no surprise that sponges harbor bacteria, what is surprising is all of the conflicting messaging on what to do with them. Food safety messaging needs to be rapid, reliable, relevant and repeated. Unfortunately it is not just food safety messaging on social media, inconsistency exists within food safety Regulations in Canada compounding the problem further. But that’s a whole other blog.

A study conducted in 2007 evaluated different disinfection methods to reduce bacteria, yeasts and molds on kitchen sponges (1). Sponges were soaked in 10% bleach solution for 3 min, lemon juice (pH 2.9) for 1 min, or deionized water for 1 min, placed in a microwave oven for 1 min at full power, or placed in a dishwasher for full wash and drying cycles, or left untreated (control). The study showed that microwaving or placing the sponge in a dishwasher significantly lowered aerobic bacterial counts on sponges more than chemicals and control.

Doug Williams of the The San Diego Union Tribune writes:

As a longtime food safety consultant, teacher and inspector, Robert Romaine has seen plenty of disastrous and dirty commercial kitchens.
He knows the menacing microbes that make us sick and has seen the evils lurking in kitchen corners.
So, he has a couple of rules. One, avoid potlucks. Who knows how that chicken salad was prepared. And two, when invited to a friend’s house for dinner, put the blinders on.
“When I’m visiting someone, I try not to hang around the kitchen,” says Romaine, who owns Food Safety Consulting in San Diego. “Sometimes I know too much, and I just don’t want to know what’s going on in there.”
The dangers are many, from improper refrigeration to cross contamination. But recently, there’s been an added focus on kitchen sinks and counters and the way people keep them clean — or don’t.
Yet as Romaine notes, precautions can easily be taken in our home kitchens to lessen the dangers of contamination.
Take that disgusting sponge, for instance.
“If a person is careful and actually knows they got the sponge up to 180 degrees (when cleaning it), nothing’s going to live,” he says. The key is being certain the temperature is high enough, not just warm but lethally hot. Federal government guidelines suggest 165 degrees as the minimum temperature for killing bacteria. A food thermometer can be used to test that sponge after microwaving. Adds Joyce Wilkins, who taught food safety for years in San Diego through her business, Safe at the Plate: “Yes, the sponge is fairly disgusting. All bacteria, all organisms die at 165 degrees, so if you heat it up hot enough to burn you in the microwave, you will kill it.”

Wilkins, in fact, discourages the use of a sponge and suggests buying a pack of 10 dishcloths instead and using a fresh one every 24 hours. “The big issue is dampness,” she says. “Bacteria need water to survive, and if the cloth is dried out each time,” it helps prevent bacteria growth.

Romaine suggests using paper towels instead of cloths or a sponge for cleanup, especially after preparing meat or chicken. Paper towels can be thrown away so bacteria can’t be transferred. “Obviously, if you just cut up raw chicken, you don’t want to use a household sponge for that,” he says. “But if you’re just wiping up debris from cutting up bread or vegetables, that’s not very harmful.”

Wilkins also will use isopropyl alcohol to clean surfaces, along with a stiff-bristled brush instead of a sponge. A cutting board used to prepare chicken, for instance, will be scrubbed with a brush and hot, soapy water, then treated with some of the alcohol to kill remaining germs, rinsed and allowed to air dry. The same system can be used for countertops, where a brush can dislodge the bio film that can build up over time (and not be rubbed away with a sponge or cloth).
Instead of using a dishtowel to dry just-washed plates and utensils — a towel that may have been used to dry hands or wipe a countertop — allow those plates and utensils to air dry.

Do not use isopropyl alcohol to clean surfaces, washing with soap and water applying friction is good enough.

1. Manan Sharma , Janet Eastridge, Cheryl Mudd. 2007. Effective household disinfection methods of kitchen sponges. Food Control 20 (2009) 310–313

Restaurant employee positive for Hepatitis A

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Robert Mancini

A worker at Cliffside Bistro tested positive for Hepatitis A in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada.

City News reports
Toronto Public Health said Monday that anyone who recently ate at a Scarborough restaurant may have been exposed to hepatitis A.
Health officials said an employee at Cliffside Bistro at 22-77 Kingston Rd. near Midland Avenue has tested positive for the illness.
Anyone who ate at the restaurant on July 21, between July 25-29 and between Aug. 2-4 may have been exposed.

The problem with Hep A is the long incubation period and symptoms may not appear until 14-28 days after exposure.

While the risk of infections is low, Toronto Public Health says they will be holding several free hepatitis A vaccination clinics at the Scarborough Civic Centre.
The clinics are open on Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Hepatitis A can be spread by improper hand washing after using the washroom and the coming into contact with food. Common symptoms include fever, tiredness, loss of appetite, nausea/vomiting, stomach pains and jaundice (yellowing of the skin).

Raspberry mousse cakes recalled due to norovirus; are those berries frozen?

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Ben Chapman

Doug and I share recipes sometimes; we’ve talked about roasting chicken, turkey stock and earlier this summer we shared ideas on good veggies to grill. Today we chatted about something neither of us have made: raspberry mousse. We weren’t sure if the raspberries were heated at all – all of this to reason out how norovirus got into raspberry mousse cakes and other baked goods that are making people sick in Canada. Not sure how many, or where. Because, you know, going public is tough.

From CFIA,

Industry is recalling various raspberry mousse cakes from the marketplace due to norovirus. Consumers should not consume and retailers, hotels, restaurants and institutions should not sell, or serve the recalled products described below.

Retailers, hotels, restaurants and institutions are advised to check the labels of raspberry mousse cakes or check with their supplier to determine if they have the affected product.

These products may also have been sold frozen or refrigerated, or clerk-served from bakery-pastry counters with or without a label or coding. Consumers who are unsure if they have purchased the affected product are advised to contact their retailer.

This recall was triggered by findings by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) during its investigation into a foodborne illness outbreak.

I figured the raspberry mousse out, most recipes are some variation of blend up a bunch of raspberries (fresh or frozen), strain them, set some gelatin, add the raspberry juice and whip. Not a whole lot of noro control.

Oh, and frozen raspberries have been linked to (as the title of this article suggests) multiple norovirus outbreaks. Including these, that were recalled in June in Quebec.

BBQ food safety

Posted on August 8, 2017 by Robert Mancini

BBQ food safety tips….in August…a little late in the game for us in Canada, then I realized this story stems from Australia.

Food safety tips for parties and BBQs
Storage:
Ensure you have enough fridge and freezer space
Keep cold foods in the fridge until they are ready to serve e.g. salads
Temperature controls:
The bacteria that cause food poisoning grow rapidly between 5°C and 60°C (also known as the temperature danger zone)
Hot food should be served steaming hot – at least 60°C
Food should be thoroughly cooked before consuming. It is recommended that poultry, minced meats and sausages be cooked until well done right through to the centre. No pink should be visible and the juices should run clear. Alternately, you can use a meat thermometer to check if the meat is properly cooked.

Nope. Always use a thermometer to ensure safety of foods, never rely on color alone. This will also prevent over-cooking meats/fish that would otherwise lend to formation of heterocyclic amines (HCA’s), potent mutagens formed when meats/fish are cooked using high temperature methods. One way to reduce the formation of HCA’s is to marinate your meat/fish before grilling. Studies have shown that marinated meats and fish contained lower levels HCA’s than non-marinated samples with the exception of pan-fried salmon(1).

Preventing cross-contamination:
Wash and dry hands thoroughly before preparing food (and in between handling raw and cooked foods)
Keep raw and cooked food separate – don’t let raw meat juices drip onto other foods
Use different knives and cutting boards for raw and cooked foods
Ensure that benches, kitchen equipment and tableware are clean and dry
Avoid making food for others if you are sick
Leftovers:
Refrigerate any leftovers straight away
Leftovers should be consumed within 3 days
Reheat leftover food to at least 75°C or until it is steaming hot

1. Heterocyclic amines content of meat and fish cooked by Brazilian methods. 2010. J Food Compost Anal. Feb 1; 23(1): 61–69.

Food fraud in Canada

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Robert Mancini

I love Canada except for the ridiculous sub-zero temperatures we get here in the winter-Powell and Chapman can attest to this having lived in Ontario.
Canada is not immune to food fraud and with increase testing of food products, we’ll see just how bad it is. A study conducted by Sylvain Charlebois, the dean of the Faculty of Management and professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University indicates that more than 40 per cent of Canadians believe to have been victims of food fraud already.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed. – Mahatma Gandhi

Liam Casey of the Globe and Mail writes

A federally funded study has found that 20 per cent of sausages sampled from grocery stores across Canada contained meats that weren’t on the label.
The study, published this week in the journal Food Control, was conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph and commissioned by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
It examined 100 sausages that were labelled as containing just one ingredient – beef, pork, chicken or turkey.
“About one in five of the sausages we tested had some off-label ingredients in them, which is alarming,” said Robert Hanner, lead author of the study and an associate professor with the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at the University of Guelph.
The CFIA reached out to Prof. Hanner for the study after the European horse meat scandal in 2013, where food labelled as beef was found to have horse meat – in some cases beef was completely substituted by horse meat.
The goal of the study, the federal food regulator said, was to examine scientific methods used by Prof. Hanner to see if the CFIA could use them in its regulatory practices. The scientific tools showed promising results, the CFIA said.
Seven of 27 beef sausages examined in the study contained pork. One of 38 supposedly pure pork sausages contained horse meat. Of 20 chicken sausages, four also contained turkey and one also had beef. Five of the 15 turkey sausages studied contained no turkey at all – they were entirely chicken.
None of the sausages examined contained more than one other type of meat in addition to the meat the sausage was meant to contain, Prof. Hanner said, noting, however that researchers were only testing for turkey, chicken, pork, beef and horse.
“The good news is that typically beef sausages predominantly contain beef, but some of them also contain pork, so for our kosher and halal consumers, that is a bit disconcerting,” Prof. Hanner said.

The undeclared meats found weren’t trace levels, Prof. Hanner noted.
“The levels we’re seeing aren’t because the blades on a grinder aren’t perfectly clean,” he said, adding that many of the undeclared ingredients found in the sausages were recorded in the range of 1 per cent to 5 per cent.
More than one per cent of undeclared ingredients indicates a breakdown in food processing or intentional food fraud, Prof. Hanner explained.

Costco recalls cut broccoli because of E. coli O26

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Ben Chapman

Non O157 STECs aren’t new but it’s still kinda notable when they pop up in recalls. The more folks look, whether buyers or suppliers are testing for them, the more folks find.

In 2015 E. coli O26 caused 60 illnesses (including 22 hospitalizations) associated with Chipotle. No source was identified, but the pathogen has been seen in both meats and produce. Today’s winner is cut broccoli.

According to a CFIA post, Costco is recalling Gold Coast brand broccoli florettes after someone found the pathogen. Or as CFIA so helpfully says, ‘This recall was triggered by the company.’

Gold Coast has a food safety page on their website. They say stuff like, ‘Microbiological Testing Program – Our new, fully equipped, in-house Microbiological Laboratory performs raw product, in process, finished product, and environmental testing.’

and

‘All raw and finished products are “lot coded” and can be traced back to specific suppliers, growers, ranches, fields, and plots.’

I look forward to hearing more.

Cyclosporiasis – France ex Mexico

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Douglas Powell

This case of cyclospora may have no relation to the Canadian outbreak; or may.

A 64-year-old French [female] with type 2 diabetes mellitus was referred to our department on [Mon 3 Jul 2017] because she was suffering from protracted diarrhea.

Symptoms began on [Sat 10 Jun 2017] as she was just returning from a touristic trip in Cancun (Quintana Roo State, Mexico) where she stayed from [Mon 29 May to Fri 9 Jun 2017] with her husband.

She acknowledged having moderate watery diarrhea with abdominal discomfort, bloating, transient vomiting, 5 kg weight [approx. 11.02 pounds] loss and fatigue. Empiric therapy with oral Metronidazole 500 mg 3 times a day for 7 days she received previously failed to improve her symptoms. Of note, a 1st microscopic stool examination failed to identify parasites and no enteropathogenic bacteria was found by culture on selective media.

Up to 3 extra stool specimens where sent to the laboratory of clinical parasitology in our hospital.

Oocysts of Cyclospora cayetanensis where evidenced by autofluorescence after Bailenger concentration technique.

Low levels of Salmonella may be associated with foodborne outbreaks

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Douglas Powell

A significant data gap exists with respect to the levels of pathogens in foods implicated in foodborne outbreaks. These data are essential for the quantification of pathogen exposure via the ingestion of contaminated food.

Here we report the levels of the foodborne pathogen Salmonella in comminuted raw chicken products that had been breaded and then frozen. The products investigated were collected during four food safety investigations of foodborne outbreaks that occurred in Canada from 2014 to 2016. Most-probable-number (MPN) distribution analysis of the food samples revealed Salmonella levels of 0.0018 to 3 MPN/g, which is equivalent to 1 MPN per 0.33 to 556 g of product. These data suggest low levels of Salmonella may be associated with foodborne outbreaks.

Enumerative analysis of Salmonella in outbreak-associated breaded and frozen comminuted raw chicken products

Journal of Food Protection – May 2017

Angela Catford, Kyle Ganz, and Sandeep Tamber

http://www.jfoodprotection.org/doi/abs/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-16-496?code=fopr-site

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