Tag Archives: home

Nosestretcher alert: foodborne illness happens in lots of places besides home

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It’s one of those throwaway catch phrases that people promoting some food safety information campaign just can’t help themselves from using: most foodborne illness is from improper handling and cooking of food at home.

In one of those throwaway blurbs in the Vancouver Sun this morning (that’s in Canada), Mia Stainsby reports:

“A doctor (Dr. John Carsely, Vancouver Coastal Health medical health officer) and a chef (David Robertson, of Dirty Apron Cooking School) will be giving a talk on how to prevent food-borne illnesses at home. Some 700,000 cases of food-borne illnesses are reported in B.C. each year and most are from improper handling and cooking of food at home.”

Show me the data. We’ve reviewed most of the data and seen estimates of the home as the source of foodborne illness vary from 11-84 per cent. And most of the data sucks. If a person eats peanut butter or spinach at home, they might get sick at home, but the contamination was beyond the control of the consumer.

As we’ve written before, while some occurrences of foodborne illness result from unsafe practices during final preparation or serving at the site where food was consumed, others are consequences of receiving contaminated food from a supplier, or both. Data gathered on instances of contamination that lead to illness make greater contributions to the development of programs that reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses, than data or assumptions that describe locations where contaminated food is consumed.

The talk will apparently share the importance of using cooking and fridge thermometers to help prevent food poisoning. Great. Foodservice needs that message as well, so why throw in a throwaway comment about the home?

And how ironically ironic that the talk takes place at 11 a.m. at Dirty Apron Cooking School. Take some swabs of those dirty aprons at the cooking school; it’s not a home.

Jacob, C.J. and Powell, D.A. 2009. Where does foodborne illness happen—in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere—and does it matter? Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, 6(9): 1121-1123.
?http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2008.0256

Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.
 

Roy Costa does Tampa home kitchen inspections – and here’ s the video

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The suave and sassy Roy Costa showed up on Tampa television last night, walking viewers through a couple of home kitchen food safety inspections, including the kitchen of ABC Action News Dirty Dining reporter, Wendy Ryan.

(I can’t actually confirm the broadcast date, but the clip showed up on the web last night.)

The story says that Gretchen Barnes is a busy new mom with twin 7-month-old boys, Beckett and Eli, and has much less time to do things like clean the kitchen.

Gretchen was a trooper to allow former health inspector Roy Costa to come to her house and do a mock inspection on her kitchen.

Right away, Roy found a critical violation: Eggs over five months old in her refrigerator. The package had a printed expiration date of September 17, 2010.

Roy said one of the most contaminated areas of the kitchen is the sink drain, because of the disposal and waste spewing up from the bottom.

Roy says it’s a good idea to disinfect the sink drain once a week. So how do you do that?

"Make about a 200-part-per-million dilution of this bleach. Because we know if you have the proper water to bleach, the activity of the chlorine that’s in there is going to be a lot more effective," Roy explained.

So in a bucket of room temperature water, less than a capful of clorox would be enough to create the right level of disinfectant.

And Roy says sanitizing the baby’s toys with that same diluted solution is a good idea.

Sophie the giraffe, a previous favorite of our 2-year-old Sorenne, was somewhat dirty in the twins’ house, so Roy recommended a soap and water wash before sterilizing the twins’ Sophie in the solution for at least 5 minutes. 

Is your in-laws’ cooking a food safety failure

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The occasional relative will welcome my help in the kitchen. That’s Amy’s aunt Jean (right) as we prepped dinner in Minnesota a couple of weeks ago. We talked food safety and I complimented her on stringent thermometer use.

But many dinners with family or friends can be food safety nightmares. Cross-contamination is rampant, temperature control inadequate, and the source of ingredients suspect.

Someone called Grossed Out wrote the Toronto Sun to say her mother-in-law does not wash her hands.

“During our Christmas visit, she and I went grocery shopping. We returned and prepared the leftovers. She "re-mashed" the potatoes with her bare hands — without ever washing her hands. … Is there any way to bring this to her attention without hurting her feelings?”

Columnist Amy Dickinson responds,

“This is extremely unappetizing, not to mention unhealthy. If your mother-in-law handled uncooked chicken or shellfish and then plunged her unwashed hands directly into a bowl of mashed potatoes, for instance, this could cross-contaminate foods and spread foodborne illness.

“If you were pregnant and contracted Listeria from these unsanitary practices, it could be disastrous. …

“Try saying: ‘Mom, I’m very concerned about hand washing in the kitchen and I notice you’re pretty casual about it. Can you help me out here? I feel like I can’t eat comfortably unless the cook washes her hands often.’"

Other suggestions?
 

Who doesn’t slaughter their own pigs

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On Dec. 6, 2010, Karen Selick wrote in Canada’s National Post about the plight of an Ottawa-area man charged with home slaughtering and distribution in a story titled, Drop The Pig And Put Your Hands In The Air.

M. Milstein, doctor of veterinary medicine, Vancouver, responds in today’s National Post in a memo to veterinary colleagues at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency:

You wasted your time getting a veterinary degree and spending your professional lives working towards ensuring that Canadians have a wholesome food supply. All you had to do, according to Karen Selick, was grow up on a farm, hunt, join the Armed Forces and get a degree in biomedical toxicology.

Then you "could tell a healthy animal from a sick one." Who knew?
 

Health Canada hopeless at PR; prefers blaming consumers

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In November, 1998 along with the tragically flawed consumer food safety education program, FightBac, Canadian government-types repeatedly stated that, “Research shows that improper food handling in the home causes a major proportion of foodborne illnesses.”

I had a research associate first e-mail the Canadian Food Inspection Agency via its web site, because the federal agriculture minister had used the line. She was referred to Health Canada. After a few messages, a couple of tables with an explanatory note arrived.

At last, the data. Except it showed that known outbreaks happen pretty much everywhere except the home.

Of the 23,322 known cases of foodborne illness in Canada between 1990 and 1993, 18,450 or 79 per cent were of unknown origin. Of the cases of known microbiological origin, 70 per cent were traced to food service; 11 per cent were traced to the home; four per cent were retail in origin.

The second table contained data on foodborne illness cases due to mishandling. Of the cases of known microbiological origin, 61 per cent were due to mishandling at the food service level; 11 per cent in the home; six per cent at retail; and six per cent on farms or dairies. I remain unconvinced.

Things don’t change, and making fun of Health Canada is like shooting ducks in a barrel – except for the millions of taxpayer dollars wasted.

The food safety geniuses at Health Canada said in Sept 21, 2010 press release advising pregnant women to be super-extra careful about food safety and that of the 11 million cases of foodborne illness that strike Canadians each year,

“Many of these illnesses could be prevented by following proper food handling and preparation techniques.”

I blogged and wrote,

Please, please, oh please. Show us mortals the data on which that statement is based?

And since Health Canada advises pregnant women to “make sure to cook hot dogs and deli meats until they are steaming hot before eating them,” please, please, oh please, stand up and say the advice provided by the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children Motherrisk program is complete nonsense.

After posting, I decided, it’s unfair to expect important government types to read my musings, so I called media relations at Health Canada at 1:40 pm central time on Sept. 21.

My call went to a machine, and I left a detailed message.

They called back a couple of hours later. I told them I wanted to know the scientific evidence to support the claim, “Many of these illnesses could be prevented by following proper food handling and preparation techniques” and that my deadline was in two days.

Two days later, someone from media relations at the Public Health Agency of Canada called to tell me she was working on my request, and she understood my deadline was early next week (this was Thursday); I said it was today, but could wait. She said she was working on it but couldn’t promise anything.

I said the statement, “Many of these illnesses could be prevented by following proper food handling and preparation techniques,” was a line in your press release, so maybe you’d have the supporting documentation handy.

The senior media relations thingy at the Public Health Agency of Canada (seriously, the senior bit is in her sig) e-mailed me today to say (and I don’t want to edit anything to take it out of context):

Below, please find the responses to your questions about the following statement: "It’s estimated that there are approximately 11 million cases of foodborne illnesses in Canada every year. Many of these illnesses could be prevented by following proper food handling and preparation techniques.."

1. What is this statistic based on?

The estimate of 11 million cases of food-borne illness per year in Canada is based on research from the National Studies on Acute Gastrointestinal Illness (NSAGI) combined with literature from the United States.

From the NSAGI population surveys, it was estimated that on average there are 1.3 episodes of acute gastrointestinal illness (AGI) per person per year in Canada. Using this estimate and given the size of Canada’s population along with estimates from the United States (Mead et al, 1999) that 25% of AGI could be due to respiratory infections and that 36% of enteric GI is foodborne, there would be an estimated 11 million episodes of foodborne disease in Canada annually.

The calculation is 1.3 episodes of AGI per person-year X 32 million Canadians = 42 million episodes of AGI per year X 0.75 due to enteric pathogens X 0.36 foodborne = 11 million episodes of foodborne disease in Canada annually


2. What report? Looking for the scientific basis behind this statement.

You may wish to review the reference document for this estimate found in the Public Health Agency’s Canada Communicable Disease Report (Vol. 34, Number 5) at this link: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/08vol34/dr-rm3405b-eng.php

Yes, I get the 30 per cent of people get sick from food and water each year. We use that number and cite it endlessly. Yes, I’ve reviewed the report. No where does the report or the PR thingy answer the claim, “Many of these illnesses could be prevented by following proper food handling and preparation techniques.”

For all the salaries involved these people really suck at their job.

Bad food safety reporting I. Would your home kitchen fail a food safety inspection? Mine would

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There has been a proliferation of terrible food safety reporting, especially nonsensical stories targeting the home as the overall number 1 super-duper source of foodborne illness.

The most recent round started with a study published in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control weekly report on Sept. 3, 2010, by the folks in Los Angeles who popularized letter grades for displaying the results of restaurant inspections. This time they used the same criteria to grade home kitchens, and concluded “at least one in seven home kitchens would flunk the kind of health inspection commonly administered to restaurants.”

So what? Based on the way the study was done, my kitchen would fail.

The problem with many of the results garnered from the L.A. study is that home kitchens where food is prepared for a few family members and friends are not restaurants where food is prepared daily for thousands of strangers: the risk is amplified, and so are the required precautions.

The results are based not on actual inspections, but  an Internet quiz taken by about 13,000 adults. So it’s the same self-reported nonsense, and only by people who surf the Intertubes, and could be bothered to take the quiz.

Direct video observation is a far more reliable indicator of human behavior in the kitchen, and yes, people make mistakes all the time, especially me.

But how those mistakes are defined can really mess up the results; food safety is not simple, so basing scores on answers to 45 questions could be erroneous and magnify the error rate.

I went through the survey and spotted some possibly problematic questions, depending on how the answers were scored and weighted (that information is apparently not available to mere mortals).

Q. I cook meat thoroughly until the juices are clear, not bloody.

I cook meat until it reaches the safe temperature endpoint as verified by a tip-sensitive digital thermometer. Color is a lousy indicator of meat food safety. Do I lose points?

Q. I defrost frozen foods by either storing them inside the refrigerator, under cold running water, using a microwave oven, or during the cooking process.

I would never defrost under cold running water because that is a microbial cross-contamination disaster and is not recommended by the federal government. Do I lose points?

Q. I check to make sure that there are no foreign objects such as glass, hair, etc., in my food.

I pay attention. I don’t specifically check for glass or hair using my special glass and hair goggles. Do I lose points?

Q. I thoroughly rinse my fruits and vegetables before cooking or eating them.

Depends. If it’s pre-washed bagged salad, I do not rewash because scientists have said the re-washing process is more likely to cross-contaminate the greens with whatever crap was previously in my sink. The paper is in Food Protection Trends and available here. Do I lose points?

Q. I always have soap and paper towels available for hand washing.

At home I use tea towels and go through a couple a day, ensuring they are routinely washed and cleaned. Do I lose points?

Q. I remove all jewelry from my hands and maintain my fingernails trimmed before I prepare foods.

No. I’m not a sandwich artist making subs for thousands. I’m preparing food for my family. Do I lose points?

The authors conclude, “Use of interactive, online learning tools such as the Food Safety Quiz can be used to promote home food safety in the community” but provide no evidence to support this claim, and state in the next sentence, “further research is needed to evaluate and improve the program content and to assess its effect on changing food handling and preparation practices in the home kitchen.”

The study was crap. Worse, blaming people is a lousy motivator for behavior change, if that was indeed the goal.

The Associated Press, and every other story about the study stated, “experts believe the bulk of food poisonings are unreported illnesses from food prepared at home.”

Experts believe foodborne illness has multiple causes from multiple sources. Casey Jacob and I tried to contribute to the public conversation about foodborne illness, where it happens and who’s to blame, with the appropriately titled paper, Where Does Foodborne Illness Happen—in the Home, at Foodservice, or Elsewhere—and Does It Matter? in the journal, Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. The paper has been published online ahead of print. We conclude, ??While some occurrences of foodborne illness result from unsafe practices during final preparation or serving at the site where food was consumed, others are consequences of receiving contaminated food from a supplier, or both. Data gathered on instances of contamination that lead to illness make greater contributions to the development of programs that reduce the risk of foodborne illnesses, than data or assumptions that describe locations where contaminated food is consumed. The abstract is below:

Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.

Are catered meals the biggest source of foodborne illness in America?

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In the wake of several high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness at catered events – 180 people barfing after 3 events prepared by an unlicensed caterer in North Dakota last year, and 57 people barfing at events at an Illinois catering hall this month – MSNBC reports today catered events make more people sick than outbreaks involving meals at restaurants or prepared at home.

Uh-huh.

The story says that new figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control “show that illnesses from reported outbreaks of food poisoning linked to catering outpace those from restaurants or home cooking. 36 illnesses per catering outbreak; 13 at restaurants or home-prepared meals.

Between 1998 and 2008, there were 833 outbreaks of foodborne illness traced to caterers, incidents that sparked 29,738 illnesses, 345 hospitalizations and 4 deaths, according to Dana Cole, a CDC researcher.

Proportionately, the outbreaks from catering are higher than the 22,600 illnesses from 1,546 reported home cooking outbreaks and the 101,907 illnesses from 7,921 outbreaks in restaurants and delis.

“Partly that’s because at larger banquets and weddings the number of people served tend to be larger,” Cole said.

Uh-huh.

I hadn’t heard about this new data, and can’t comment on its validity because it hasn’t, as far as I can tell, been published anywhere. One, Dana Cole, and a couple of others from CDC are scheduled to present results next Tuesday at the annual meeting of the International Association for Food Protection in a talk entitled, Sources and settings: contaminated food vehicles and the settings of foodborne disease outbreaks.

Usually the media stuff happens after the data is at least presented, and preferably after the paper is peer-reviewed and published. I look forward to reading the scoring system the researchers uses: if spinach is contaminated on a farm with E. coli O157:H7 and makes people barf after eating at a catered event, a restaurant, or a home, how is that scored? And does it matter?

Jacob, C.J. and Powell, D.A. 2009. Where does foodborne illness happen—in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere—and does it matter? Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, 6(9): 1121-1123.
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2008.0256

??Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.

Faith-based food safety: States ease food safety rules for homemade goods

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The most astute point comes at the end of an AP wire story this morning about how various states are letting anyone sell anything food-wise.

Ken Ruegsegger of New Glarus, Wis., bottles about 20 kinds of pickled fruits and vegetables such as peppers and carrots. He already invested in a commercial kitchen that meets licensing requirements and is charging $4 to $7 for his products to try to make back the money.

Unlicensed competitors can now make the same product in uninspected kitchens and sell it for half the price, he said.

"That could cost me thousands of dollars per year," he said. "And I’m inspected four times a year. These people could be making it in their kitchens with cats walking around. It’s not fair."

Why should people who play by the rules suddenly be penalized by letting anyone who makes some claim to local, natural or organic sell whatever they want for political expediency.

The story says that at Wisconsin farmers markets, vendors no longer need licenses to sell pickles, jams and other canned foods, while small farmers in Maine can sell slaughtered chickens without worrying about inspections.

Federal and state laws require that most food sold to the public be made in licensed facilities open to government inspectors. But as more people become interested in buying local food, a few states have created exemptions for amateur chefs who sell homemade goods at farmers markets and on small farms.

Robert Harrington, director of the Casper-Natrona County Health Department in Casper, Wyo., said,

"The two major failures in food production are temperature control and personal hygiene. If someone says they shouldn’t have to follow regulations because they’re making food in their home, I’d say, ‘Why is your home so safe that it doesn’t need that level of oversight and control?"

I’ll still go to the biggest supermarket I can find. And when I do shop at the market, vendors can expect a lot of microbiologically-based questions.
 

Hasn’t hit this lawyer yet — no references but lots of rhetoric

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When I first met Amy in 2005, I tried to impress her with some mixed tapes – because I’m a total nerd – of music like Weezer, and the Tragically Hip and Neil Young, and Blue Rodeo.

The later is a Toronto-based band I’ve seen many times, but not as many as Chapman, who has sortofa cult thing going on with them.

Amy really likes the 1993 Blue Rodeo song, Hasn’t Hit Me Yet, for its evocative nature –I agree the band hit their peak on this album – and it applies to yet another food industry lawyer type who just doesn’t seem to get it.

One of the Defending Food Safety lawyerly dudes – they represent companies – said today that current statistics confirm that approximately 70 percent (sic) of all food-borne (sic) illnesses (or, about 50 million illnesses annually) have nothing to do with the underlying safety of food. Rather, the majority of illnesses are caused by contamination where food products are prepared. As a result, if consumers and those who handle foods simply wash their hands, and prepare foods appropriately, most food-borne (sic) illness can be eradicated.

Reference?

There is none. This is a rhetorical rather than an actual argument based on data.

The dude also says,

“… in most instances, (foodborne illness can) be virtually eliminated in the kitchen.”

People who believe this stuff are stuck in 1993.

Nosestretcher alert: how much foodborne illness is the fault of home cooks?

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Does the majority of foodborne illness really happen in the home?

The statement is repeatedly repeated, but usually with no supporting data.

A story most recently proclaimed, “More than 50 percent of foodborne illnesses come from food prepared in the home.”

There was no reference.

The stats that have been reported in peer-reviewed journals are all over the place: anywhere from 15-90 per cent of foodborne illness apparently happens in the home.

So if a consumer ate bagged spinach in fall 2006 at home, would that mean they possibly got sick at home, or that the contamination originated on the farm and there was little consumers could do?

Casey Jacob and I attempted to tackle this question in the journal, Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, and concluded,






“Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.”

Robert Tauxe of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control noted in a recent talk there have been 10 new food vehicles indentified in multistate outbreaks of foodborne illness since 2006: bagged spinach, carrot juice, peanut butter, broccoli powder on a snack food, dog food, pot pies, canned chili sauce, hot peppers, white pepper and raw cookie dough.

Few, if any of these have to do with consumers.