The Bradenton Herald in Florida, just 30 minutes from beautiful Anna Maria Island in the Gulf of Mexico where the family and friends have vacationed for years, reported for the second time in three months, there’s a multistate, multi-brand organic basil recall prompted by the possibility of cyclospora after testing done in Florida.
The recall announced by Shenandoah Growers’ last week involves a couple of brands also in November’s massive recall, which was ignited by Florida Department of Agriculture testing. This product pull, according to the company-written, FDA-posted recall notice, followedFDA testing in Miami of basil grown at Puerto Vallarta Herbs SAS farms in Colombia.
Produce-associated foodborne disease outbreaks have increased worldwide highlighting the importance of proper implementation of risk management practices (RMP). We determined the relationship between environmental characteristics (i.e., physical resources) of produce farms and implementation of RMP.
Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses principles, we identified 36 studies to include in our analysis. Most study data were collected through surveys administered to growers in developed countries. Quality assessment results showed that studies on this topic should be more rigorously conducted (e.g., powering sample sizes and training data collectors) to yield better quality evidence. Agricultural waters were the most common environmental characteristic assessed, with many farms using unsafe water sources. Hygiene aids (e.g., accessible handwashing facilities), were lacking across many farms. Animal intrusion RMP were the least commonly assessed environmental characteristic. Only one study tested the relationship between on-farm environmental characteristics and RMP implementation reporting a positive relationship between accessible handwashing and worker hygiene practices.
Grower knowledge and perception of RMP combined with cost and ease in carrying out RMP might influence the availability of physical resources for proper RMP implementation. These results can inform practical interventions aimed to increase adoption of RMP on produce farms.
The relationship between environmental characteristics and risk management practices on produce farms: A systematic literature review
Agriculture
Dilhani Nisansala Jayawardhana 1 , Loan Thi Thanh Cao 2 , Thomas A. Yeargin 3 , Kristen E. Gibson 3 and Angela M. Fraser 1,*
The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR) of factors influencing crisis management (CM). The study attempts to assess the main areas that have been linked to and studied CM, and the research outlets that have been provided these research.
The study adopts a qualitative approach and uses SLR method to collect relevant data. The study surveyed 223 studies from different research outlets, including the most reputed publishers; Emerald, Wiley, Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, SAGE, and Inderscience. The extracted articles are categorized into 8 areas based on their effect on CM. The most important factors are communication and social media, which have 66 studies with 4039 citations, leadership which have 40 studies with 2315 citations, followed by knowledge, governance, information technology, strategic planning, and professional entities, which have 38, 24, 23, 16, and 16 manuscripts with 2109, 1738, 301, 548, and 160 citations, respectively.
The current study provides an open insight for academicians and researchers on the main areas of CM investigated by prior studies. It provides a novel contribution and comprehensive understating through highlighting what has been done and what is left to be done in respect to crisis management.
Factors influencing crisis management: A systematic review and synthesis for future research, 2021
Cogent Business and Management
Yahya Maresh H. Hazaa , Faozi A. Almaqtari & Abdullah Al-Swidi
Following an initial reduction in human campylobacteriosis in New Zealand after the implementation of poultry food chain-focused interventions during 2006–2008, further decline has been relatively small.
We report a year-long study of notified campylobacteriosis cases, incorporating a case control study combined with a source attribution study. The purpose was to generate up-to-date evidence on the relative contributions of different sources of campylobacteriosis in New Zealand.
Methods
The study approach included:
A case-control study of notified cases (aged six months or more) sampled in a major urban centre (Auckland, every second case) and a mixed urban/rural area (Manawatū/Whanganui, every case), between 12 March 2018 and 11 March 2019.
Source attribution of human campylobacteriosis cases sampled from these two regions over the study period by modelling of multilocus sequence typing data of Campylobacter jejuni and C. coli isolates from faecal samples of notified human cases and relevant sources (poultry, cattle, sheep).
Results
Most cases (84%) were infected with strains attributed to a poultry source, while 14% were attributed to a cattle source. Approximately 90% of urban campylobacteriosis cases were attributed to poultry sources, compared to almost 75% of rural cases.
Poultry consumption per se was not identified as a significant risk factor. However specific risk factors related to poultry meat preparation and consumption did result in statistically significantly elevated odds ratios.
Conclusions
The overall findings combining source attribution and analysis of specific risk factors indicate that poultry meat remains a dominant pathway for exposure and infection.
Source attributed case-control study of campylobacteriosis in New Zealand, 01 February 2021
International Journal of Infectious Diseases vol. 103
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), public health and regulatory officials in several states, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are collecting different types of data to investigate a multistate outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes infections.
Epidemiologic data show that Hispanic-style fresh and soft cheeses may be contaminated with Listeria and may be making people sick. A specific type or brand of Hispanic-style fresh and soft cheese has not yet been identified.
As of February 11, 2021, seven people infected with the outbreak strain of Listeria monocytogenes have been reported from four states (see map). Illnesses started on dates ranging from October 20, 2020, to January 22, 2021, with six recent illnesses in 2021 (see timeline).
The true number of sick people in an outbreak is likely higher than the number reported, and the outbreak may not be limited to the states with known illnesses. This is because some people recover without medical care and are not tested for Listeria. In addition, recent illnesses may not yet be reported as it usually takes 2 to 4 weeks to determine if a sick person is part of an outbreak.
Sick people range in age from 45 to 75 years, with a median age of 61. Six people are Hispanic, and 43% are female. All seven people have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.
State and local public health officials are interviewing people about the foods they ate in the month before they got sick. Of the four people interviewed, three reported eating at least one type of Hispanic-style fresh and soft cheeses and all three reported eating queso fresco. Public health officials are continuing to interview sick people to try to identify a specific type or brand of cheese.
Public health investigators are using the PulseNet system to identify illnesses that may be part of this outbreak. CDC PulseNet manages a national database of DNA fingerprints of bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses. DNA fingerprinting is performed on bacteria using a method called whole genome sequencing (WGS).
WGS showed that bacteria from sick people’s samples are closely related genetically. This means that people in this outbreak likely got sick from the same food.
State officials are testing samples of Hispanic-style fresh and soft cheeses that they collected from stores where sick people report purchasing cheeses from.
CDC is advising people at higher risk for severe Listeria illness to not eat Hispanic-style fresh and soft cheeses (like queso fresco) until we learn more and to contact their healthcare provider right away if they have any symptoms of severe Listeria illness after eating Hispanic-style fresh and soft .
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in Dec.2020 that each year in the U.S.an estimated 9 million people get sick, 56,000 are hospitalized, and 1,300 die of foodborne disease caused by known pathogens. These estimates help us understand the scope of this public health problem. However, to develop effective prevention measures, we need to understand the types of foods contributing to the problem.
The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) is a tri-agency group created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS). IFSAC developed a method to estimate the percentages of foodborne illness attributed to certain sources using outbreak data from 1998 through the most recent year for four priority pathogens: Salmonella, Escherichia coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes, and Campylobacter. IFSAC described this method and the estimates for 2012 in a report, peer-reviewed journal article, and at a public meeting. IFSAC derived the estimates for 2018 using the same method used for the 2012 estimates, with some modifications. The data came from 1,459 foodborne disease outbreaks that occurred from 1998 through 2018 and for which each confirmed or suspected implicated food was assigned to a single food category. The method relies most heavily on the most recent five years of outbreak data (2014 – 2018). Foods are categorized using a scheme IFSAC created that classifies foods into 17 categories that closely align with the U.S. food regulatory agencies’ classification needs. Salmonella illnesses came from a wide variety of foods.
More than 75% of Salmonella illnesses were attributed to seven food categories: Chicken, Seeded Vegetables (such as tomatoes), Pork, Fruits, Other Produce (such as nuts), Eggs and Turkey. E. coli O157 illnesses were most often linked to Vegetable Row Crops (such as leafy greens) and Beef. Over 75% of illnesses were linked to these two categories. Listeria monocytogenes illnesses were most often linked to Dairy products and Fruits. More than 75% of illnesses were attributed to these two categories, but the rarity of Listeria monocytogenes outbreaks makes these estimates less reliable than those for other pathogens. Non-Dairy Campylobacter illnesses were most often linked to Chicken. Over 75% of non-Dairy foodborne illnesses were attributed to Chicken, Other Seafood (such as shellfish), and Turkey, with Campylobacter illnesses most often linked to Chicken. An attribution percentage for Dairy is not included because, among other reasons, most foodborne Campylobacter outbreaks were associated with unpasteurized milk, which is not widely consumed, and we think these over-represent Dairy as a source of illness caused by Campylobacter. Removing Dairy illnesses from the calculations highlights important sources of illness from widely consumed foods, such as Chicken.
This collaborative effort to provide annual attribution estimates continues IFSAC’s work to improve foodborne illness source attribution, which can help inform efforts to prioritize food safety initiatives, interventions, and policies for reducing foodborne illnesses. These consensus estimates allow all three agencies to take a consistent approach to identifying food safety priorities to protect public health. For more information on IFSAC projects visit https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/ifsac/projects/index.html.
Technology Networks reports that E. coli food poisoning is one of the worst food poisonings, causing bloody diarrhea and kidney damage. But all the carnage might be just an unintended side effect, researchers from UConn Health report in the 27 November issue of Science Immunology. Their findings might lead to more effective treatments for this potentially deadly disease.
Escherichia coli are a diverse group of bacteria that often live in animal guts. Many types of E. coli never make us sick; other varieties can cause traveler’s diarrhea. But swallowing even a few cells of the type of E. coli that makes Shiga toxin can make us very, very ill. Shiga toxin damages blood vessels in the intestines, causing bloody diarrhea. If Shiga toxin gets into the bloodstream it can cause kidney failure.
“This is especially common in children; about 15% of kids with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli infections get kidney disease, and some can suffer long term kidney damage,” says UConn Health immunologist Sivapriya Vanaja.
A group of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli called enterohemorrhagic E. coli, or EHEC, are especially common in the United States. When you hear that a batch of romaine lettuce is being recalled because of a dangerous outbreak of food poisoning, it’s almost certainly due to EHEC.
EHEC normally live in cattle without making them sick. It used to be relatively common to have EHEC outbreaks coming from unhygienically prepared ground meat, but stringent regulations on slaughterhouses have made this less common. Now it’s more likely for EHEC to appear on vegetables grown in fields adjacent to cattle or manure runoff.
But no matter where it comes from, once EHEC bacteria get inside a human, the infection is hard to treat. Antibiotics tend to make it worse—when the bacteria feel themselves dying, they make more Shiga toxin. And EHEC are very good at inhibiting the part of the immune system that normally responds early to this kind of infection, allowing them to grow unchecked in the human gut.
In a study led by Morena Havira, a postdoctoral fellow in Vanaja’s lab, the team wanted to know how EHEC suppresses the immune system. The body normally responds to early stages of E. coli infections by activating an enzyme that kicks off an alarm inside cells. The cell bursts open to release a cloud of warning molecules that call other parts of the immune system to come and fight the bacteria.
But EHEC squashes that early response. To figure out how it does that, Vanaja and her colleagues decided to see which individual gene in EHEC was responsible. They took many different varieties of EHEC from a bacterial mutant library, and infected immune cells with them.
The team found that cells infected with EHEC that was missing the gene for Shiga toxin mustered a higher immune response compared to normal EHEC.
It was surprising. Shiga toxin is very well-studied for its toxic activity; it wasn’t known that it had another function,” Dr. Vanaja says. So Shiga toxin’s stealthy suppression of the immune system may have a link to all the bloody drama that ensues. Spurred on by this exciting observation, they conducted a series of detailed molecular studies, which revealed that Shiga toxin blocks a protein from bursting open the infected cell and alerting the body of infection.
Now that Vanaja and her colleagues know the specific molecular step Shiga toxin interferes with inside the immune cells, they are trying to figure out how, exactly, it blocks it. Once they know that, they may be able to find medicines that prevent toxin from interfering with immune responses.
x
I live in Brisbane, so when I eat fish it’s golden snapper, scallops or big fat prawns. All from our local shores.
It ain’t cheap, but damn it’s good.
In China, they have something called fish balls which sounds as gross as I imagine they are. Penang Health Department inspectors ordered the closure of a 50-year-old fish ball factory after vermin were found contaminating products at its premises.
Food Safety and Quality Division (BKMM) environmental health officer, Mohd Wazir Khalid, said the factory has 14 days to improve cleanliness after flies, cockroaches and centipedes were discovered on the food and in storage containers; while rat droppings were found in the storeroom.
“Although it is not a halal product, we still have a responsibility to protect the non-Muslim community,” he said of the Ops Tegar that was conducted yesterday.
He told reporters that the product was found on the floor, covered in flies and cockroaches, which could cause food poisoning.
He said they also found a fish ball product mixed with a pork-based product that was not labelled in Malay, violating Regulation 10 of the Food Act 1983, which could cause consumer confusion because it is sold at wet markets around Penang.
Mohd Wazir said the factory was raided twice last year and given a verbal warning for the same violations.
He said BKMM also issued three compound notices under Regulation 32 of the Food Act 1983 because employees were not wearing aprons or shoes, and many had not been immunised against typhoid.
Barefoot in fish balls is food I don’t want to think about. I had the privilege of seeing Dutch live in small Canadian clubs several times over the years. Great entertainer.
Cross-contamination of raw food to other surfaces, hands, and foods is a serious issue in foodservice. With individuals eating more meals away from home, contracting a foodborne illness from a food service establishment is an increasing concern. However, most studies have concentrated on hands or food contact surfaces and neglected atypical and unusual surfaces (surfaces that are not typically identified as a source of cross-contamination) and venues. This review seeks to identify atypically cross-contaminated surfaces and atypical venues where cross-contamination could occur that have not been examined thoroughly in the literature.
Most surfaces that could be at risk for cross-contamination are frequently touched, rarely cleaned and sanitized, and can support the persistence and/or growth of foodborne pathogens. These surfaces include, menus, spice and condiment containers, aprons and coveralls, mobile devices and tablets, and currency, among others. Venues that are explored, temporary events, mobile vendors, and markets, are usually limited in space or infrastructure, have low compliance to proper handwashing, and provide the opportunity for raw and RTE foods to come into contact with one another. These factors all create an environment where cross-contamination can occur and potentially impact food safety. A more comprehensive cleaning sanitizing regime encompassing these surfaces and venues could potentially help mitigate the cross-contamination described here.
This review highlights key surfaces and venues that have the potential to be cross-contaminated that have been underestimated in the past or are not fully explored in the literature. These knowledge gaps demonstrate where further work is need to fully understand the role of these surfaces and venues in cross-contamination and how it can be prevented in the future.
Cross-contamination on atypical surfaces and venues in food service environments, 05 February 2021
International Association for Food Protection
Rebecca Goulter; Margaret Kirchner; Benjamin Chapman; James S. Clayton; Lee-Ann Jaykus
Lisa Fickenscher of the New York Post writes that an apparent salmonella outbreak at a resort in Jamaica in Dec. has ruined vacations for potentially dozens of holiday travelers — and now some sickened guests are considering legal action, The Post has learned.
“It was a nightmare,” Chantel Ele of Lincoln, Nebraska, told The Post of her experience at the Grand Palladium Resort and Spa, which was echoed by other people online. “I don’t know how many people go on an all-inclusive vacation and lose weight.”
Ele and her husband, Justin, secured their room at the 537-room beachside resort, which boasts 11 restaurants, 17 bars and “one of the largest swimming pools in the Caribbean,” in February before the pandemic hit.
But the island getaway dissolved into severe stomach and body cramps and diarrhea within two days of their arrival on Dec. 13 — tethering them to a bathroom at all times, Justin told The Post.
Aaron Sutton and his fiancé Cheyenne also had trouble in paradise. The couple, who live in Pittsburgh, squeezed in about 48 hours of fun before they were both felled by unrelenting diarrhea and vomiting on Dec. 14, they said. They booked their $4,000 honeymoon trip to the Palladium resort last year after getting engaged in Jamaica, and held on to the reservation despite being forced to postpone their wedding.
“My fiancé was so weak and feverish, she could barely stand up,” Sutton told The Post.
Iwaspoisoned.com, a platform that tracks food-borne illnesses, has tallied the number of guests who have allegedly become ill at the resort in December at close to 100, said the site’s founder Patrick Quade, who based the tally on reports to websites like TripAdvisor, Orbitz, Booking.com and the resort’s Facebook page.
The recall announced by Shenandoah Growers’ last week involves a couple of brands also in November’s massive recall, which was ignited by Florida Department of Agriculture testing. This product pull, according to the company-written, FDA-posted recall notice, followed FDA testing in Miami of basil grown at Puerto Vallarta Herbs SAS farms in Colombia.
