Going public fail: E. coli cheese outbreak suspected days before recall issued

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Douglas Powell

My friend and hockey goon Kevin Allen at the University of British Columbia makes some good points about policy after one person died and 16 others were sickened with E. coli O157:H7 via raw milk cheese in Canada.

Dr. Robert Parker, the chief medical officer for the B.C. Interior Health Authority, makes some lousy points about policy and when to go public.

According to CBC, health officials suspected an E. coli outbreak was linked to a B.C. cheese farm as early as last Friday, but waited until Tuesday to warn the public because they had to be certain of the source. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed one person has died and 10 people are ill from consuming raw milk cheese products from B.C. Gort’s Gouda has been linked to an outbreak of E. coli in B.C. and Alberta

Parker says media attention can destroy a business, and authorities wanted to be certain. He says people do not need to stop eating cheese made from raw milk, since there have not been several outbreaks. “I think if we start seeing repeated outbreaks in unpasteurized cheese products, it might be worthwhile to review again,” said Parker.

There have been endless and a disproportionately high number of outbreaks associated with raw milk cheese. Parker should know that.

Publicly available guidelines for when to go public with health information that are consistently followed by health types, would remove many conspiratorial elements.

Edmonton’s Annemarie McCrie ate at Gort’s Farm on Sept. 1 on her way back home from vacation in B.C. with a friend. “We wanted to stop and there’s a little sign that said ‘cheese farm’ – so I thought ‘oh, let’s go to the cheese farm,’ because everybody wants to visit a cheese farm.”

I don’t.

Kevin Allen, a University of British Columbia microbiologist, says this recall highlights the problems associated with consuming raw milk and its products. “Obviously we have a failure here,” says Allen. Allen says currently Canadian law requires raw milk cheese to be aged for 60 days in order to eliminate pathogens and make it safe, but E. coli O157 can survive well past that time and aging is not a guarantee of safety. “The problem is we have a modern-day food chain with modern-day pathogens that seem tolerant to these conditions that we use to render it safe,” says Allen. “I think it’s maybe time to look at our policy and maybe amend it.”

A Calgary cheesemaker whose family has been in the cheese business for roughly 300 years wants to see unpasteurized cheese banned in Canada.

Going public: some public rules about foodborne Illness notification would ease some private angst

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Douglas Powell

The adult porn industry has clear rules about when to stop production: someone tests positive for HIV, the industry shuts down.

Public health officials in Nova Scotia (that’s in Canada) knew they were dealing with an outbreak of E. coli five days before they informed the public about it in early January, documents obtained by The Canadian Press show.

The first indication that staff were aware of the E. coli O157 outbreak appears in two emails sent by the province’s chief medical officer to staff with the Health Department and district health authorities on Dec. 31, 2012.

In one of the emails, Dr. Robert Strang says the Health Department was in the process of gathering more information about the outbreak and officials would meet on Jan. 2 to assess it.

Notes from that day’s meeting, which were released under access-to-information legislation, show that Health Department officials knew there were dealing with seven confirmed cases of E. coli O157 affecting people ranging in age from 18 to 83.

Those notes also show that six of those people reported eating at fast food restaurants and they showed symptoms of the bacterial infection from Dec. 23-26, 2012. Officials were also aware of an E. coli outbreak of the same strain in New Brunswick but decided to delay notifying the public, the notes show.

“There have been no media calls yet. Until we know what the link is, we will provide standardized messaging,” the notes say.

“If NB is sending messaging out, we should be consistent. Delay 24 hours.”

It wasn’t until Jan. 4 that the department issued a news release confirming it was investigating the cases, two of which required hospital admission. No one died.

In an interview, Strang said he doesn’t believe Health Department officials tried to withhold information from the public. Instead, he said they needed to gather more information from the people who contracted the infection.

“The judgment was that we needed to wait at least 24 hours … so we have something concrete that we can say to the public,” Strang said.

“What do you say publicly without doing unnecessary harm or creating unnecessary anxiety? So we’d respond if questions came to us, but we didn’t feel we were ready yet to go proactively because we didn’t have enough of the detail.”

New Brunswick’s Health Department went public with its outbreak of E. coli on Jan. 3, prompting calls to Nova Scotia’s Health Department that day from the news media, the documents show.

Strang said New Brunswick’s chief medical officer was able to tell the public a day earlier because that province’s outbreak occurred a few days before the one in Nova Scotia.

He said he was first alerted by the on-call medical officer of health to reports of a few cases of E. coli over the weekend of Dec. 29 and 30.

“With the information I had, I wasn’t concerned enough to bring people in on New Year’s Day,” he said. “My judgment was that it could certainly wait until the next working day.”

Strang said the E. coli outbreak would have been treated differently if there had been an indication of ongoing sickness due to the bacteria.

“If we had a sense that there was an ongoing risk to the public, we would have been communicating that right away,” said Strang.

The outbreak, which was also detected in Ontario, was later traced to shredded lettuce distributed by FreshPoint Inc. to KFC and Taco Bell restaurants.

Yup, I said that: ‘porn industry more responsible than food industry’ here’s why

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Douglas Powell

Who doesn’t like to wake up to porn.

Food porn.

Someone over at Food Production Daily, a web news service that seems to have an alarmingly more number of readers than I do, decided to watch a video of a talk I posted last week and recorded three weeks ago.

“… I would argue the porn industry is more responsible than the food industry, ‘cos the food industry says, ‘well you have got to cook your pot pies’ or ‘you have to cook your hamburger.’

“The porn industry says ‘just use a condom’ and they shut down if they get a positive [indicator of a fault], just like that.”

Not quite, but transcribing can be challenging.

To the food industry types who e-mailed me with outrage, here’s what I did say, with surrounding context:

“Bacteria don’t care; there are outbreaks at big places, there are outbreaks at small places, there are outbreaks in local food, there’s outbreaks in food from around the globe. People either know about bacteria and take steps to reduce the risk, or they don’t. And what I want to be able to do is buy from the people that take those steps, and let me know about it, because at the supermarket, it’s all faith-based (safety).

“In fact, I would argue the porn industry is more responsible than the food industry. Because the food industry says, you have to cook your pot pies, or you have to cook your hamburger, or you have to cook your eggs. That’d be like the porn industry saying, use a condom, when, they shut down when they get a positive just like that. The whole food safety message is sorta lost in the overwhelming amount of messages involving food porn.

“What do we learn from all these outbreaks? Food safety begins on the farm and goes all the way through the systems; these are biological systems, not conspiracies; any system is only as good as its weakest link; and, stop blaming consumers.”

(I’m much more efficient with words when writing than babbling at a computer in the early morning).

I also compared food safety to coaching girls’ hockey, and wondered why is it I needed 30-something hours of training to coach a travel team of 9-year-old girls, but needed nothing to prepare food in Ontario, Canada?

My food industry critics didn’t mention that comparison.

While still awakening to the love letters about 4 a.m., another arrived, via Gustavo Arellano of OC Weekly, that I had nothing to do with.

“Kansas State professor Doug Powell is a legend in the food safety industry, and not just because his blog is called barfblog. He’s someone who always criticizes anyone in food–whether celebrity chefs, food producers, government inspectors, and others–who dismiss bacteria as harmless microorganisms, who doesn’t have safety on the top of their list.

“And in a video he recorded last week, Powell took it further: he stated that the porn industry is “more responsible” than the food industry. …

“For those of you who don’t know your porn: producers in California always immediately shut down all productions whenever there’s a report of a performer with HIV–no exceptions. Powell’s argument was that the food industry, when confronted with outbreaks, puts the blame on the consumers, not themselves, while porn does the opposite. …

“This isn’t the first time the profe has stated his golden quote. Back in 2010, he said the same on his blog. Powell’s blurb starts at around 21:17, but listen to the whole thing: not only is it informative, it’s HILARIOUS!”

Writing in all caps and with exclamation marks scares me. But as an obituary, Gustavo’s got it pretty much right, although Amy pointed out I’m not just that way with food safety types, it’s with everyone, and the real reason we don’t get invited to dinner (Journey sucks).

I tried to be reflective and said, “the problem with legends is they usually die young.”

Amy said,”You’re not young.”

8 now sickened from E. coli burgers in Canada

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Douglas Powell

A person in Saskatchewan has been confirmed with E. coli O157:H7 linked to a nation-wide outbreak, bringing the total to eight.

People began getting sick in Nov. 2012 and investigators honed in on burgers made by Cardinal Meats.

Matt McClure of the Calgary Herald reported yesterday that the outbreak raises questions about when to go public with health information.

“If we were in a situation where tons and tons of people were getting sick, we’d probably act faster,” Dr. Gregory Taylor, the health agency’s deputy chief, said.

“You don’t want to initiate a food recall unless you have good solid evidence that’s the offending product because there’s big implications … for the producer and marketer it’s a big loss and cost to them.”

The information from the three ill patients last fall did prompt the CFIA staff to quietly begin testing packages of the suspect Butcher’s Choice brand inspectors collected from store shelves.

But because none were initially able to provide a product box or a store receipt that would allow investigators to pinpoint a lot number or production day at the facility, the government didn’t sound the alarm.

Unable to find an unopened package in the market that was tainted, officials at the two federal agencies waited until the additional cases popped up on their computer screens in early December before convening an emergency meeting with their provincial counterparts.

Even then, federal employees believed there was inadequate proof to order a recall by a plant that churns out over $100 million in product each year.

The decision was made that another round of testing of product from store shelves was necessary. When CFIA found a contaminated package on Dec. 12, federal officials finally felt they had the scientific basis to issue a public health alert.

Some consumer advocates and food safety experts say the federal government’s handling of the Cardinal investigation and its delays during the XL Foods outbreak that left 18 people ill earlier last fall show it has conflicting priorities.

Rick Holley, a meat microbiologist at the University of Manitoba, thinks CFIA and PHAC could have acted sooner.

“They don’t have an excuse to wait for an analytical result from a food product,” Holley said. “Epidemiological evidence from patients is enough in Canada, just like it is in the United States.”

In the wake of the 2008 listeria outbreak at Maple Leaf Foods that killed 23 people and left dozens more ill, an independent investigator told CFIA and PHAC they should look more at the food histories of patients and depend less on finding tainted product on store shelves when deciding whether a health alert is warranted.

A new policy issued two years ago by Health Canada was supposed to ensure that the total weight of evidence would determine the course of action during future outbreaks.

“But because O157 still isn’t considered an adulterant under Canadian legislation,” said Holley, “I expect there’s still some reluctance to follow those rules.”

Beef trim from Canada, New Zealand and Australia had been used to make the tainted burgers, but investigators were never able to pinpoint a specific source of the contamination.

By Christmas Eve, though, CFIA officials thought they had all the tainted product off the shelves and issued a release to say their investigation was concluded.

Within weeks, they would be forced to resume their probe.

Two more patients — one in Manitoba and another in Ontario — fell ill last month from what PHAC now says is a strain of bacteria nearly identical to one found earlier.

Taylor said consumers shouldn’t depend on CFIA and PHAC staff to ensure their beef isn’t tainted.

“The consistent message we have to Canadians is to fully cook your hamburger,” he said. “We’ve got a good food safety system in this country, but nothing’s perfect.”

12 sick; Canada E. coli O157 outbreak raises questions about going public

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Douglas Powell

Twelve people are now believed to be sick in an E. coli O157 outbreak in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (in Canada).

But as reported by the Chronicle Herald, Liberal health critic Leo Glavine says the Nova Scotia health system needs to report E. coli cases more quickly.

He said he is also concerned that district health authorities do not have to inform the chief medical officer of health when people get sick from the bacteria.

Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer Robert Strang told the public about the cases in a news release Thursday, but only after the CBC reported the outbreak.

Early reporting of the illness should be mandated, Glavine said Saturday.

“I think what we need is to have E. coli as one of those reportable quick response (conditions) that then allows the chief medical officer to let the residents of Nova Scotia know.”

Such a system exists in New Brunswick, Glavine said. In that province a verbal report must be made to health officials in that province within an hour of anyone being diagnosed with a suspected food or water-borne condition, and a written report must be made within 24 hours.

Having a system in place in Nova Scotia that allows for an early warning of an outbreak would help reduce its spread because it would put “us all on greater alert to do the best pratices and be that more diligent,” he said.

Health Minister Dave Wilson defended the timing of his department’s release.

“When illnesses like this occur, there are many processes that take place behind the scenes that must be followed,” he said. “In the early stages of an investigation we want to learn as much as possible, to avoid alarming the public.

“Once we had enough of the necessary information, we issued our news release and we will be providing updates to keep everyone up to date. Our first update is planned for Monday, whether we have new information or not.”

If leafy greens audit citations are a good thing, why not go full Monty?

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Douglas Powell

The California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement decided to heap praise upon itself by stating it is unique amongst other auditing firms in that it has access to audit information for an entire industry. Approximately 75% of U.S. leafy greens produced come from California and LGMA members contribute 99% of California’s production. That provides a lot of valuable farming food safety information.

Industry has lots of data, but is loathe to get into specifics.

Market that data at retail and let consumers decide. Variations already exist in forms of restaurant inspection disclosure, so why can’t farms do the same?

And those pesky recalls and outbreaks keep happening.

27 sick; almonds linked to Australian salmonella outbreak

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Douglas Powell

It’s mildly entertaining to go to the shops in Brisbane and guess what 1980s song will be playing as background, while Amy dresses like Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan and inflicts the same on Sorenne.

But it’s annoying to think Australians are stuck in the mid-1980s when it comes to communicating about food safety.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) today urged consumers to check their pantries for raw almonds that might be contaminated with Salmonella, while revealing that at least 27 people were sick.

When Woolworths announced a recall of the almonds earlier this month several people from southeast Queensland e-mailed me and said, oh yeah, we got sick.

A couple of weeks later and there’s now 27 sick.

So, health types, when did you know people were sick, when did you make the association with almonds, who grew and processed the almonds, what preventative measures were taken by growers and the industry, given the history of Salmonella-related almond outbreaks in California, and what is your policy on informing the public about potential health risks?

Or should we all just go back to sleep?

Deputy FSANZ chief executive Melanie Fisher said, “The food recalls were notified earlier this month but we want to ensure consumers are carefully checking their pantries as packaged raw almonds are often bought to use later.”

I don’t know who talks like that, but I’m still learning Australian.

Food safety officials waited weeks to issue tainted beef alert

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Douglas Powell

Canadian food safety bureaucrats waited nearly two weeks to issue a public health alert after learning that beef from an Alberta plant was contaminated with a potentially deadly bacteria.

Post Media is reporting this morning that officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency revealed Monday they only launched an in-depth review of the sanitation and controls at the XL Foods facility in Brooks after their counterparts south of the border found two more contaminated samples of animal trimmings destined for ground beef, infected with E. coli 0157.

A senior executive with the Public Service Alliance of Canada and veteran meat inspector said the affected product should have been recalled within days of the initial positive tests.

“We’ve allowed potentially contaminated product to get to the tables and into stomachs of people across this country,” said Bob Jackson, the PSAC’s executive vicepresident in B.C.

“They should have taken action immediately when they had that positive result. Under the CFIA’s new regulations and procedures, those decisions are left to the company, but there was a time when a federally-appointed, independent inspector would have tagged that product and insisted it wasn’t going anywhere.”

“XL Foods executives did not agree to be interviewed for this story, but an executive with a large American food distributor confirmed on condition of anonymity that the company had told him the contaminated product did not test positive at the plant’s in-house laboratory after it was slaughtered and processed Aug. 27.

“But a shipment that later crossed the border was sampled by inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service on Sept. 3 and was found to be contaminated with the bacteria.

“The test results were passed on to CFIA the next day, the same day the Canadian agency said its own routine sampling found a positive result in product from the XL plant. While agency officials said they immediately began an investigation, no recall was issued based on Health Canada’s assessment that normal cooking would eliminate any risk to consumers.

“On Sept. 12, the Food Safety Inspection Service notified Canadian officials of two more contaminated samples in product that had been intercepted at the border and tested.

“This is not the first time that American authorities have singled out the Brooks facility or wrapped the CFIA on the knuckles for its oversight of meat slaughter and processing facilities that export product to the United States.

“A 2008 audit of what was then Lakeside Packers found knives used to check carcasses had blood and residue from use the previous day, and scrap metal near the building was a potential harbour for pests.

“The 2010 audit noted there had been two instances when contaminated ground beef from unidentified plants in Canada had ended up being caught during FSIS’s border inspections.

“The agency concluded it has systemic concerns with the Canadian inspection system, including the fact CFIA was not consistently assigning federal inspectors to each shift at plants where product was produced. A re-view of Canadian inspector logs found a low number of documented non-compliance instances, which didn’t reflect what their counterparts found when American officials visited the plants.

“In the week since the first health warning was announced on Sept. 16, CFIA has had to reissue alerts and expand the voluntary recall six more times to include 250 different products. It has been trying to track down and isolate potentially contaminated product that has moved along the supply chain toward restaurant kitchens and consumer barbecues throughout Canada and parts of the United States.

U.S. agency alerted Canada to E. coli danger

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Douglas Powell

As the Canadian Food Inspection Agency expands the XL Foods E. coli O157:H7 recall for the sixth time tonight, it was revealed CFIA first became aware of problems with the beef when tests conducted in the U.S. came back positive.

According to the Canadian Press, agency spokesman Garfield Balsom confirmed that word of the positive findings came from the Food Safety Inspection Service of the U.S. on Sept. 3, nearly two weeks before CFIA began issuing advisories about ground beef products produced at Edmonton-based XL Foods.

(For sticklers, the story identified FSIS as an agency of the U.S. Drug Authority; it’s part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.)

Balsom said XL initiated the recall on its own, insisting it was not ordered as a result of the U.S. test results.

“There were some positives identified by the FSIS, but the positives were not the trigger for the recall,” Balsom said in a telephone interview. “The recall was a voluntary recall by the company.”

So, what does trigger public notification in Canada?

If the product is imported, Canada goes public quickly; if it’s homegrown, they take their time.

Going public: Mexican mangoes, first fingered in Canada, now linked to at least 79 illness in US

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Douglas Powell

How do health agencies decide when to go public with information about an outbreak of foodborne illness that makes a lot of people barf?

There’s at least 73 people in California who would probably like to know after being sickened with Salmonella Braenderup, the same strain that Canadian health types revealed had sickened 22 people on Saturday.

California, you got beat by Canada in going public? This isn’t hockey, it’s public health, but adds to the embarrassing and accumulating record of silence on produce–related outbreaks.

And it doesn’t help when the story is broken by the USA Today; were you really just waiting around for someone to ask?

Daniella-brand mangoes imported from Mexico are being withdrawn from sale in the United States because of a possible link to salmonella. Splendid Products of Burlingame, Calif, which distributes the fruit, issued the voluntary recall Monday "out of an abundance of caution," says general manager Larry Nienkerk.

Or an abundance of people barfing.

Washington state has had six cases of salmonella that match the genetic fingerprint of the Canadian cases but has not yet linked them directly to the Mexican mangoes, says Donn Moyer of the Washington State Department of Health in Olympia. "We’re still looking into it."

Yes, there are always uncertainties involved; which would be much more understandable if every agency would make clear the criteria they use for when or when not to inform the public about a lot of barf.

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