Tag Archives: Mammoth Burger

Sydney Pizza Hut fails third cockroach inspection by the Australian name-and-shame squad

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Think a few small bugs won’t hurt you?  Think again. Cockroaches are one of the most commonly noted pest insects.  They can cause chaos in the food safety standards of a restaurant because they transport harmful microbes on their body surfaces and through their droppings.  Cockroaches are also found to be a common allergen for humans.

Last week, after two previous warnings about cockroaches in the kitchen, food safety inspectors returned to a Sydney, Australia Pizza Hut only to discover a cockroach in the food preparation area of the kitchen.

The store was issued with a $650 fine for not taking steps to eradicate the pests, and a second fine for not having warm running water in the kitchen for staff to wash their hands…The Pizza Hut was one of 22 premises the Food Authority fined in its blitz in recent days, in which it issued a total of 27 fines.
They will join more than 175 outlets on the authority’s website, launched last year to "name and shame" businesses that do not comply with NSW hygiene laws.

The best way to deal with cockroaches is to prevent them before they become present.   Keep kitchen surfaces clean and store food off the ground.  However, if a restaurant already suffers from cockroaches, the problem should be eliminated and the reason behind the infestation should also be addressed.  There are various chemicals and traps available for cockroaches, some more traditional than others.

For more information about cockroach infestations, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001201-d001300/d001251/d001251.html
You can also view an FSN infosheet about cockroaches at http://bp3.blogger.com/_Pzk3AzZPULs/R1cP6_KHaiI/AAAAAAAAAFA/MwcjU8l0_y0/s1600-h/iFSN-infosheet-12-5-07.jpg

Kitchen Confessional: What happens in restaurant kitchens

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I hear stories about what happens in kitchens. We even started a blog on it, Kitchen Confessional, but it was difficult to sustain and it got merged with barfblog.

Matthew Evans has heard a lot of stories. Evans, who was the chief restaurant reviewer for the Herald for five years and whose autobiography, Never Order Chicken On A Monday, includes a sometimes-frightening look inside restaurant kitchens, writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that with poop allegedly being served in ice cream at the Coogee Bay Hotel, everyone in Australia is talking.

Evans says most Sydney food is great, cooked well and served with care. But a tiny minority of restaurants are incredibly dangerous.

“Some of the milder things that go on in NSW restaurants include chefs visiting the dunnies in their aprons. Or dipping odiferous chicken breasts in a mild bleach solution to whiten them and eliminate the smell. But when I went on Sydney radio to talk about these kinds of things last year, the comments turned even the hairs on my neck.

"Seeing the chef sitting on the toilet as they peeled prawns, perhaps? The slightly dodgy drip tray from the pub being used in the beer batter? The chef wiping the steak inside their Y-fronts or running it around the rim of the toilet because the customer had complained that their medium-cooked steak was still pink? It has happened.

"As an apprentice I’ve been asked to take leathery-skinned pre-opened oysters, too old and whiffy to offer as natural, and top them with mornay sauce and sell them. I’ve been witness to steaks stamped on with heavy boots and retrieved from the bins, and met people who’ve dipped food in the toilet before serving it, but I’ve never seen someone pick their nose and put it in food.

"Of course I’ve seen chefs over-season food because it was off, using it in curries and the like," says one Sydney chef I spoke to who did not want to be named.

"But the worst thing I’ve ever seen with my own eyes was in England. This guy always came in late. He’d order sea bass every night right on last orders at 11.30pm and then send it back and ask for it to be recooked.

"One day [the chef] did a huge hock and put a great big greenie under it. The customer reckoned it was the best sea bass ever."
 

Pediatrics warns against pets for toddlers

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Young children should not keep hedgehogs as pets — or hamsters, baby chicks, lizards and turtles — because of risks for disease.

That’s according to the nation’s leading pediatricians group in a new report about dangers from exotic animals.

Besides evidence that they can carry dangerous and sometimes potentially deadly germs, exotic pets may be more prone than cats and dogs to bite, scratch or claw — putting children younger than 5 particularly at risk, the report says.

Young children are vulnerable because of developing immune systems plus they often put their hands in their mouths and are awkward at handling animals, the report says.

The report appears in the October edition of the American Academy of Pediatric’s medical journal, Pediatrics.

A spokesman for the International Hedgehog Association said there’s no reason to single out hedgehogs or other exotic pets.

‘‘Our recommendation is that no animal should be a pet for kids 5 and under,’’ said Z.G. Standing Bear. He runs a rescue operation near Pikes Peak, Colo. for abandoned hedgehogs, which became fad pets about 10 years ago.

Abstract

Exposure to animals can provide many benefits during the growth and development of children. However, there are potential risks associated with animal exposures, including exposure to nontraditional pets in the home and animals in public settings. Educational materials, regulations, and guidelines have been developed to minimize these risks. Pediatricians, veterinarians, and other health care professionals can provide advice on selection of appropriate pets as well as prevention of disease transmission from nontraditional pets and when children contact animals in public settings.
 

Listeria has been my worst nightmare for the past 9 months

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I’m a self-described food safety nerd. I don’t hide from this obsession, I embrace it.  But my fixation on everything food safety has led to much stress lately — for the past 9 months my food safety spidey-sense has been heightened more than normal as Dani and I have been expecting a baby.

And he finally arrived last week.

Our little dude, Jack Neil Chapman, showed up Friday morning at 4:11am (Yes, the Neil part is named after the greatest Canadian singer/songwriter, Neil Young — I’ll fight anyone who disagrees, Ari Gold style, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGVoLsDS3t8&e)

Throughout Dani’s pregnancy I became the food police in our house — no soft cheeses or cold deli meats made it to Dani’s plate, most didn’t even make it in the house. Everything (and I mean everything) has been temped during cooking. I read pretty well every paper I could on listeria, and Doug and I discussed the merits of broad food surveys and listeria growth in blue-veined cheese. It was a bit ridiculous, but I hear that first time parents sometimes can be obsessive.

During the recent Canadian listeria outbreaks I selfishly felt vindicated for keeping the products out of our house — our view was that no matter what type of food safety system food processors had, we weren’t taking the risk. Maple Leaf is a huge company that can afford lots of food safety controls, spoke about their commitment to food safety, and even used the food safety culture term Doug and I are so fond of. But 18 people have so far died from listeria in their products.

When I held Jack for the first time, about 30 seconds after he was born, I first thought "Wow, you’re tiny and light, and you don’t smell as manky as I had thought you would" and soon after I thought about the parents, people just like us, who have been recently affected by listeria.  The victims include at least one miscarriage and  six babies born prematurely in Quebec resulting from the consumption of soft cheeses. A 6-week old Manitoba infant born with a listeria, not linked to either Maple Leaf or Quebec soft cheeses outbreak, also died last week. Those are the ones we know about.

And then I realized that, although I thought I did a great job managing risks in our house, I and the rest of the food safety world have probably failed many out there who haven’t reduced risks.  Not the individuals who made the choice to eat risky foods, but the parents who have never heard about listeria, the ones who ate risky foods without knowing that listeria is 20 times more likely to infect pregnant women or that listeria infections during preganancy are likely to cause miscarriages or stillbirth.   Who knows what effect our risk-reduction practices had on Dani’s pregnancy. Maybe things would have been fine without being so strict, but we weren’t interested in taking the chance.

I’m all about informed decisions around risk. I even think there is a place for raw milk consumption for adults.  But we had the info to make the decisions.  Info that came from a variety of places (for us it was primary resources, outbreak reports and review papers). Other parents rely on food safety professionals, like the health authorities, for info.

Last weekend was all about Jack, and I didn’t get back into reading FSNet until yesterday morning (I’m getting quite good at holding him and reading emails at the same time) and I came across Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones’ advice concerning listeria, including the below:
*Wash your hands. This will help avoid many kinds of infections. Wash your hands in warm soapy water before preparing food, afterwards, and again before eating.
*Read labels and follow cooking and storage instructions for all foods. Make sure to check the “best before” date.
*Freeze or consume leftovers within four days of cooking. Always reheat leftovers until steaming hot before eating.
*Keep refrigerators clean and at a temperature below 4 C, or 40 F. Listeria can grow in the fridge, but the colder it is, the slower it grows. Install a thermometer in your fridge to be sure.
Those tips apply to all of us, all the time, and not just during an outbreak.

There are so many holes in his list of advice, many have nothing to do with listeria, and I don’t think there is evidence that supports many of his statements. Following the list of consumer blames, Butler-Jones did get into listeria with feel-good language: "For seniors, pregnant women, and those with weakened immune systems, or for those serving or caring for anyone in these groups, some extra precautions are very important as [various] foods pose some risk."  He ended his advice with "these steps form a simple approach to food safety."

The most important message missing from his list was: Don’t eat this stuff unless you are cool with the risks.

I sent an email to Doug (the subject line was "what a f*ing joke"), saying where was Dr. Butler-Jones when the outbreak was announced a month ago.  Did it really take a month for his staff to wake up and get some info out there?  A question echoed in the upcoming Canadian Medical Association Journal which says that the Public Health Agency of Canada should be the primary source of information for the public during a crisis and that Canada’s chief public health officer has not been the lead voice to inform the public.

So I guess my preachy message is along the lines of don’t eat poop (especially baby poop, though Jack’s hasn’t started to smell yet).We need to do a better job of creating a dialogue around food safety risks with specific target audiences — especially those at higher risk for foodborne illnesses.  And though the bureaucrats talk a lot, they need to be the real leaders in information — and forget about the fuzzy language that will make the minister happy.  Tell people to stay away from the risky stuff.
 

Don Schaffner, guest barfblogger: Looking for ugly in the food industry

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One of my favorite books of all time is "Out of Control" by Kevin Kelley.  It’s a non-fiction book that deals with understanding complex  systems.  Kelley is a bit of a polymath.  He was a hippie, who edited the hippie bible, the whole earth catalog.  He was there at the beginning of the internet with the creation of the Whole Earth ‘Lectric Linkup.  I’ve starting reading his blog recently, and he  always has something interesting to say… like how to build foam robots.

Anyway, he recently blogged about "Looking For Ugly" where he writes "Preventing errors within extremely complicated technological systems is often elusive. The more complex the system, the more complex the pattern of error".  He’s writing generally, but I immediately thought about the food system.

Kelley goes on to write specifically about the airline industry, saying "The safety of aircraft is so essential it is regulated in hopes that regulation can decrease errors. Error prevention enforced by  legal penalties presents a problem, though: severe penalties discourages disclosure of problems early
enough to be remedied.  To counter that human tendency, the US FAA has generally allowed airlines to admit errors they find without punishing them."

Hmmm.  "severe penalties discourages disclosure of problems early enough to be remedied".  Sounds to me like he’s talking about a "zero tolerance" vs. regulatory limit for Listeria.

Of course the counter argument (for the airline industry) also maps well to the food industry, as Kelley writes "The general agreement in the industry is that a policy of unpunished infractions encourages quicker repairs and reduces the chances of major failures. Of course not punishing companies for
safety violations rubs some people the wrong way."

Yup.  He’s nailed it.  This idea dovetails nicely with Doug’s call to "make all data of Listeria testing in plants public so others in the industry can improve and consumer confidence can be enhanced with data not just words."

Should doctors’ scrubs be as clean as their hands?

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The New York Times reports that,

“Amid growing concerns about hospital infections and a rise in drug-resistant bacteria, the attire of doctors, nurses and other health care workers — worn both inside and outside the hospital — is getting more attention. While infection control experts have published extensive research on the benefits of hand washing and equipment sterilization in hospitals, little is known about the role that ties, white coats, long sleeves and soiled scrubs play in the spread of bacteria.

“The discussion was reignited this year when the British National Health Service imposed a “bare below the elbows” rule barring doctors from wearing ties and long sleeves, both of which are known to accumulate germs as doctors move from patient to patient.

“But while some data suggest that doctors’ garments are crawling with germs, there’s no evidence that clothing plays a role in the spread of hospital infections.”

Apparently there are some textiles being manufactured with  antimicrobial components. I really have no opinion. But when it comes to Scrubs, Everything Comes Down to Poo.

 

Pink Floyd and Fargo Rock City: food service and music

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PhD student Ben Chapman went and worked in a restaurant as part of his food safety research. He saw lots of things, but his most memorable description of kitchen work was that he had to listen to a lot of Pink Floyd.

There was some Tom Petty, and The Clash, but a lot of Pink Floyd. So it was with a nod and a lighter raised in the air to food service workers everywhere upon hearing the nears that founding Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright passed today.

But Pink Floyd doesn’t get much airplay in the Midwest. For a full accounting of why the Midwest is home to terrible hair metal, check out Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City, which Chapman loaned me a couple of years ago. And today, a barfblog reader e-mailed me to say,

“What I find most amusing about these Listeria posts is the album cover from the (very horrible and untalented) metal band.”
 
A few e-mails later, and she says,

“There is at least one metal band for every disease, especially those involving vomit, blood, decay, puss, gangreen or amptutation.

“I just found ascaris, a death metal band in denver.  i think this should be an ongoing theme – each post should have an accompanying death metal promotion."

But the best was when she linked me to a Strongbad post – Amy’s been a fan for years – about cliché metal bands. The comments section of barfblog.com is developing nicely.
 

Does Maple Leaf read barfblog?

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They’ve got pictures now.

After posting on Sunday night about the confusion around Maple Leaf’s multiple brands and differing packaging, and seeing consumer reaction to the same, I’m happy to see that Maple Leaf has stepped up with some better comminication. In the below clip from CBC Toronto, one concerned Canadian shopper shows her frustration by saying "it’s kind of hard to tell… a lot of things you don’t know if they come from the Maple Leaf thing". 

My favourite Maple Leaf thing has always been Doug Gilmour, circa 1993.

Maple Leaf foods has posted a viewer-friendly graphic (at the bottom of the notice) of how to determine if a product is part of the recall.  I especially like the inclusion of variances of the establishment code.

Maple Leaf Listeria developments

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The coverage of this outbreak isn’t really going away as more details came out yesterday.

Earlier in the day, Maple Leaf spokesperson Linda Smith was cited as saying that inspectors failed to detect listeria in this case, but they are constantly swabbing for the bacterium. "Did we find it? Absolutely not. We did not find that listeria," she said. "Did we let people down? Yes. But we were doing the right things."

On CBC’s National tonight (clip below), Smith was quoted as saying "We would occasionally find a listeria positive swab, at which case we sanitize that complete area and swab again."

So which is it?

In legal news, and the lead story on Canada AM this morning, is that class action lawsuits in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have been launched according to Tony Merchant, of the Merchant Law Group LLP, who says residents in each of the provinces have contacted his firm about representation.

As I wrote this post, I saw Michael McCain’s Maple Leaf apology on TV three times.

Listeria recall: We’ve got pictures, Maple Leaf doesn’t

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Maple Leaf’s CEO Michael McCain says his company has a culture of food safety.  I’ve written about the food safety culture concept and believe that a big part of it is being ready for outbreaks and recalls.  They happen.  A lot.

I’m not sure what Mr. McCain and his team has done in preparation for this outbreak, but in March  I wrote about Quaker Oats handling of a recall due to Salmonella in some of their Aunt Jemima products:

"Quaker Oats has great information on their website already [less than 4 hours after the recall], with a nice graphic on how to handle the recall…. Especially love that people can sign-up for ongoing info — good preparation on Quaker Oats’ part."

It looked like they were ready for a problem, and already had the resources in place to get information out to their customers.

The thing I liked the most about Quaker Oats’ Aunt Jemima situation was that they had pictures of the recalled product. A company with a culture of food safety is ready for a recall, has a website with pictures and consumer-friendly information ready to go in anticipation, like Quaker Oats did.

Maple Leaf has a big list of recalled products (220, check it out here) but they don’t have any pictures of them. It’s not a superficial request to have some nice pictures to show folks what this stuff looks like, and where you can find the sometimes elusive codes/dates/establishment code.  It’s just good communication.  The FDA realized this, and last year started including pictures on their recall notices for products that they have deemed to be high health risks (after the Castleberry’s chili sauce recall). 

Sometimes I buy lunch meat.  Sometimes I even get the prepackaged stuff.  I don’t always know what brand it is, and I don’t know all the intricacies of the food system and get mixed up as to which parent company makes Shopsy’s.  The list system is confusing.

The Globe and Mail is reporting tonight that:
Maple Leaf is working with distributors to track down all 220 products from the Toronto site, which Mr. McCain told reporters could be anywhere in Canada. That could take as long as three to five days, he said during a news conference at the firm’s Toronto head office.

At about 7:50pm this evening I thought I’d take a look at whether I could find any of these recalled products at the grocery store and get some pictures to demonstrate where the codes can be found.

I found some.

About 2 minutes after entering Ultra Food and Drug in Guelph, I was able to find the recalled Maple Leaf’s EZee Sub Dagwood products, with the establishment code (denoted, I assume, by the "EST. 97B" still on the shelves.  That’s the bad news.

The good news is that I can use a real example of what one of the recalled products looks like and where the establishment code is.  Something that Maple Leaf hasn’t done.