Tag Archives: Mammoth Burger

‘Change culture to avoid E. coli’

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Amy’s father and stepmom came for a visit and yesterday we went to a local eatery for a late lunch.

When Amy’s dad ordered a burger, the server asked how he would like the burger cooked.

He said medium-well.

The server said he could get the burger as rare as he wanted.

Amy said really, and started asking, just what was a medium-rare burger.

The server said it all had to do with color, and after some back and forth with the cooks, said the beef they get has nothing bad in it anyway.

Color is a lousy indicator.

During the same meal, a reporter called to ask, why do companies – big companies, huge chains and brand names — knowingly follow or ignore bad safety practices? (that story should appear Sunday).

It comes down to culture – the food safety culture of a restaurant, a supermarket, a butcher shop, a government agency.

Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.

Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously? ??????Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of American meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.??????

Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.

The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales that killed 5-year-old Mason Jones and sickened another 160 school kids.

Yesterday, the board of the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA), in response to Pennington’s report, approved a five-year plan that will push food businesses to adopt a food safety culture and comply with hygiene laws, and urge stricter punishments for those that do not. The FSA will also ensure health inspectors are better trained.

A report put before FSA board members in London stated “culture change in all of the relevant parts of the food supply chain” is necessary.

Mason Jones’ mum Sharon Mills said she is pleased with the action being taken by the FSA.

“This sounds promising and shows they are moving in the right direction. … Things are slowly changing and hopefully we will all see the benefits sooner rather than later.”

Maybe. I’m still not convinced FSA understands what culture is all about. And how will these changes be evaluated. Is there any evidence that social marketing is effective in creating food safety behavior change? Those issues get to the essence of food safety culture, yet are glossed over with a training session – more of the same.

And why wait for government. The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent — whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website — to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

Pic of mouse in doughnut shop allows Tim Horton’s to enter New York City – giv’r

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Tim Hortons, which the N.Y. Times described yesterday as “a Canadian purveyor of doughnuts and coffee that has won a wide following,” is making a sudden entry into New York City, primarily because of a picture of a mouse.

Between Friday night and dawn on Monday, the Riese Organization intends to convert 13 Dunkin’ Donuts stores into the city’s first Tim Hortons restaurants, including early-morning, high-traffic shops like the one in Pennsylvania Station and another next to the New York Stock Exchange. The switch may surprise regular customers of the shops, said Dennis Riese, chief executive of the Riese Organization.

“You take down one sign and put up another. The biggest challenge will be to get New Yorkers to know what Tim Hortons is.”

Tim Hortons Inc. is a Canadian fast food restaurant known for its coffee and doughnuts, founded in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario by Canadian hockey player Tim Horton. In 1967 Horton partnered with investor Ron Joyce, who quickly took over operations and expanded the chain into a multi-million dollar franchise. There are almost 3,000 Tim Hortons in Canada, and another 5-0 in the U.S. The chain accounted for 22.6 per cent of all fast food industry revenues in Canada in 2005. Canada has more per-capita ratio of doughnut shops than any other country.

Tim Horton was a bruising defenceman who won 4 Stanley Cups with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1960s. Born in 1930 in Cochrance, Ontario, Horton spent his formative years playing in mining communities surrounding Sudbury, Ontario. He got noticed by the Leafs organization and moved to Toronto when he was 17-years-old. He died in a car accident in 1974 after a 24-year National hockey League career.

Horton had a reputation for enveloping players who were fighting him in a crushing bear hug. Boston Bruins winger Derek Sanderson once bit Horton during a fight; years later, Horton’s widow, Lori, still wondered why. "Well," Sanderson replied, "I felt one rib go, and I felt another rib go, so I just had—to, well, get out of there!”

The Times reports that the arrival of Tim Hortons to N.Y. City comes after a decade of contention between Riese and Dunkin’ Donuts that peaked after The New York Post published a photo of a mouse munching on a doughnut in a shop operated by Riese on 46th Street at Fifth Avenue. The chain sued Riese, and the sides eventually agreed that the relationship would end this week in what Dunkin’ Donuts called a “disenfranchisement.”

In Canada, owning a Tim Hortons is like owning a license to print money.
 

Can food safety culture be taught? UK Food Standards Agency responds to E. coli O157 report

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Two days ago, the parents of 5-year-old E. coli victim Mason Jones called the Welsh government response to an inquiry into the 2005 outbreak, “a bit disappointing.”

Today, the U.K. Food Standards Agency published its own response and, it’s a bit disappointing.

After a cursory reading, the FSA folks seem to acknowledge some of the major points raised by Prof. Pennington, but in the end promised more of the same (but gosh-darnnit, a bit tougher on enforcement).

Here are a few highlights:

This understanding of ‘food safety issues’ culture and ‘what works’ are core to the Food Hygiene Delivery Programme. This will be a particular challenge as local authorities’ regulatory services are facing declining resources, and increasing demands for their services. We must push more effectively in all appropriate national forums for food safety to be given more prominence by local political bodies and their officials. Our own project-based approach to delivering responses to this Inquiry, coupled with the restructuring of the Agency’s Food Safety Group, is designed to concentrate on a coordinated set of actions to achieve the desired outcomes in a holistic rather than piecemeal way.

Culture and holistic are nice words but the FSA says:

In May 2009 the FSA announced a new training course on social marketing and behavioural change for food enforcement officers. It aims to develop skills to acquire an insight into the behaviours of food business operators and consumers in order to successfully disseminate food safety messages.

What does disseminate mean in this context? What if the messages suck? How will this be evaluated. Is there any evidence that social marketing is effective in creating food safety behavior change? Those issues get to the essence of food safety culture, yet are glossed over with a training session – more of the same.

From the we’ve never had a problem file: Salmonella in lasagna edition

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NBC 29 reports that a group of central Virginia guests have Salmonellosis that appears to be linked to frozen lasagna from a popular pasta shop. In a classic blame game maneuver and "wha happened?" defense, the owner of Mona Lisa (the pasta shop) says that if his food is the source of the outbreak, it was likely customer error.

The owner of Mona Lisa pasta says his kitchen is not to blame for six central Virginia dinner guests coming down with salmonella. While he says he sold the frozen lasagna, it was not his kitchen that was responsible for cooking it to code.

Chef Jim Winecoff has been creating Italian dishes at his Mona Lisa Pasta Shop on Preston Avenue in Charlottesville for years. Winecoff said, “We’ve been here for eight years now providing lasagna, fresh pastas, sausage, ravioli, through the company.”

Winecoff is confident his kitchen is not to blame. Winecoff stated, “We’ve had no trouble whatsoever with our food in the past and I hope this is not a problem with our food. The customer has written instructions as to how to prepare the food, to bake at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time, and that’s a food-safe temperature.”

It’s early on in the investigation and not much information is available but the "we’ve been doing things this way for a while and never had a problem" optimistic attitude doesn’t do much to build trust.

Especially in an outbreak situation.

An operator with a good food safety culture knows about the microbial risks associated with their products and who might screw up, whether it is suppliers, staff or customers. Blaming the customers is never a good thing, especially if you happened to sell them something with a pathogen in it. Ask the ConAgra pot pie folks. Or the Nebraska Beef ground beef folks.

Telling a customer the time of baking and at what temperature misses the measurable risk reduction step — endpoint temperature. Food businesses selling this-needs-to-be-cooked items should be stating what temperature the dish needs to be cooked to and how the temperature needs to be measured.

Bittman article updated: now includes safety information

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Maybe it was barfblog influenced, maybe not. My previous post on Mark Bittman’s garlic and other stuff in oil was a letter to the editor I submitted to the New York Times on Friday night. As the Times likes to have exclusive first printing right I held off on posting the letter until last night (since I hadn’t heard whether it was going to be printed).

This morning, esteemed New York Times watch-dog blogger NYTpicker, noted that the botulism-promoting Bittman article has been updated to include some safety tips:

Correction: July 1, 2009
A recipe on Page 4 today with the Minimalist column, about infused oils, corrects two errors that appeared in the recipe when it was published at nytimes.com on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The online recipe misstated the amount of time the oil should cook after it bubbles and the length of time it is safe to use after being refrigerated. The oil should be cooked five minutes, not “a minute or two,” and it should be kept in the refrigerator no more than a week, not “a month or so.” The corrected version can also be found at nytimes.com/dining.

New York Times’ Bitman promotes unsafe practice

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In the June 26 Minimalist column and accompanying video about herb and garlic flavored oils barfblog favorite Mark Bittman suggests a frugal trick to add flavor to a meal. And possibly a frugal method to create a serious foodborne toxin.

The pathogen of concern, Clostridium botulinum, could exist as spores on the suggested ingredients. Heating the foods may activate the spores and placing the flavor-making components into certain oils can create the perfect environment (oxygen-free and low acid) for cell growth and botulinum toxin formation. Mr. Bittman’s suggestions of a little of this and a little of that into oil could create a nasty situation.

Information missing from the print article, but included in the video, is that he keeps his oil in the refrigerator. Keeping oil mixtures below 41F is a critical step and will not allow the botulism spores to form cells. Holding the oil mixture at room temperature allows for cell formation and growth.  In 1999, three Floridians were admitted to hospital with nausea, blurred vision and eventual paralysis after eating a home-bottled infused oil concoction similar to what Mr. Bittman suggests. The commercially available (and more expensive) flavored oils that Bitman scoffs at include U.S. Food and Drug Administration-mandated microbial inhibitors or acidifying agents.

Flavored oils made right are scrumptious, botulism is not.

How to greenwash food packaging; market food safety instead

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Eat Me Daily is fast becoming one of my go-to sites. They write today:

This illustration by Lunchbreath is basically a checklist for corporate greenwashing: Earth tones, sans serif type, unbleached paper, and emotional messaging are essential components of the deceptive marketing techniques employed by corporations that rebrand their products.
We liked the customer benefit: "Be selfish while appearing progressive."

Market food safety instead. People are interested in not barfing.

Soft-serve sucks in Belgium

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Not just a problem for Toronto or Tori Spelling, Belgium also apparently has some issues with soft-serve and regular ice cream.

Albert sent along a link to a recent report by Test-Achats, a Belgian-based consumer group that anonymously sent researchers to 69 points of sale for ice cream and soft-serve in Belgium during the summer of 2008. Amy translated, and highlights of the report are below.

“Attention was essentially directed towards touristic sites like the Côte, the Ardennes, and various country towns. They bought ice cream cones and soft-serve. While making the purchases, they took the opportunity to evaluate the hygiene at the point of sale as well as of the personnel, the place where the counter or the soft-serve dispenser was located, the conditions for rinsing the ice cream scoop, etc. Immediately after the purchase, and in appropriate sterile and temperature conditions, the ice cream was taken to the laboratory to undergo detailed bacteriological testing. …

Apparent cleanliness was rarely noted during our visits: only 18 points of sale received a good or very good score for this category. In 8 cases, general hygiene at the point of sale was simply unacceptable… and added to that was a serious lack in the staff’s personal hygiene. A serious problem that was already underscored by Test Achats: the ice cream scoop. It was only rinsed under running water in 6 of the points of sale. This is however fundamental for serving ice cream in good hygienic conditions. Too often, the scoop was left resting in obviously unclean water or it wasn’t, in any case, cleaned before service. Finally, it is unacceptable that the ice cream counter or the soft-serve machine be located in full sunlight, exposed to outside air or that the ice cream be accessible to or touched by clients. However, this was the case in 11 locations.

The testing of 5 specific bacteriological parameters as well as the number of total germs gives a realistic image of the hygienic quality of the 70 samples analyzed. Fortunately the presence of Salmonella and Listeria was never detected, on the other hand, Escherichia coli (which can provoke enteritis or diarrhea) was detected in three cases. In two cases, staphylococcus was present, proof of a lack of the personnel’s hygiene.  …

Throughout the years and through successive studies, the results are obvious: the hygienic quality of ice cream is getting worse: 35% of ice cream cones and 61% of soft-serve are bad to mediocre. This is a completely unacceptable situation."

Soft-serve safety redux

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In part two of the Toronto Star’s investigation of soft-serve ice cream safety reporters have stumbled upon a snack bar with an extraordinary amount of coliform in the treats. The biggest offender found during the blitz was the Kew Gardens snack bar (with coliform above 1000000 cfu/gram). When I was growing up, I probably visited that snack bar 10-15 times a summer.

When asked about the 1000000 cfu/g measure, Rick Holley, microbiologist from U of Manitoba responded:

"Oh my God. This is not good," With results this high, "the product is hazardous," said Holley, adding the spectre of serious health implications is also magnified.

"The real concern here is listeria," he said. "And it’s going to happen."

 After learning of the result on Thursday, [Kew Gardens snack bar] manager Danny Foulidis ordered the machine shut down and sanitized.

"We’ve always been a clean establishment. We’ve never had an issue. If there’s something we need to change to make things better, it’s not a problem on our part."

During the past week, Gerry Lawrence, food safety manager at Toronto Public Health, has fielded calls from worried residents asking how to tell if soft ice cream is safe.

His advice: "If I’m buying ice cream for a youngster, I don’t think I want to buy it from somebody that has greasy hands or isn’t wearing a clean smock or even a baseball cap."

 Holley, a member of a federal advisory panel struck in response to the Maple Leaf Foods listeria crisis, chuckles at the suggestion that protection comes down to gauging the cleanliness of an operator. "That’s not the complete picture. You might have one person of that kind of appearance who plays a very minor role in handling products that are risky, such as these are.

Great quote by Holley after a poor suggestion from Lawrence. Visual cleanliness isn’t a good indicator of anything, especially whether someone is going to get sick. 

"It really does require that the folks who are responsible for making sure that all of the licence requirements of these people are met are conscientious in what they do and look at the whole picture. Whether or not they have time to do that is another issue."

The Star goes on to report on one of the factors that could lead to soft-serve contamination, the infamous O-ring.

Health inspectors generally do not check the inner mechanisms of machines, and experts warn that’s where the danger lies, particularly in a $1.85 rubber O-ring that seals an area around a drive shaft that spins the ice cream. Michael Minor, former president of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Institute of Public Health Inspectors, said a worn ring can cause contamination to seep into the ice cream.

"Product that leaks from the refrigerated mixing vat into the back of the machine because of a faulty O-ring can be pulled back in to the soft-serve mix through reverse flow," Minor said.

Manufacturers suggest the rings be replaced every three months.

Minor is concerned some operators lack the knowledge or will to maintain their machines, which is central to assuring a safe product.

"This is not rocket science. It’s not statistical analysis. This is a machine that needs attention and you need to understand it."

Holley and Minor both touch on one of the tenets of food safety culture: Operators need to know the risks associated with their products and how to manage them. Good operators know about sanitation, equipment maintenance and selecting good suppliers.

Health Canada make some suggestions on reusable cloth bags: Wash ’em

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A month after posting about it on barfblog, Health Canada has some new suggestions about reusing cloth grocery bags:

When using cloth bags, make sure to wash them frequently, especially after carrying fresh produce, meat, poultry or fish. Reusable grocery bags may not all be machine washable. If you are using this type of grocery bag, you should make sure to wash them by hand frequently with hot soapy water. Plastic bins should be washed using hot soapy water on a regular basis as well.

– Put your fresh or frozen raw meat, poultry and fish in separate bins or bags from fresh produce and other ready-to-eat foods.

– Putting your fresh or frozen raw meat, poultry or fish in plastic bags (the clear bags found in the produce and some meat sections work well) will help prevent the juices from leaking out and contaminating your reusable containers and other foods. Fresh produce should also always be put in plastic bags to protect them from contamination.

– If you are using your grocery bags or bins to store or transport non-food items, they should be thoroughly washed before using them for groceries.

There are some theoretical risks, but there isn’t anything I can find in the peer-reviewed literature that suggests reusable cloth bags are any riskier or less risky than the standard one-use-only plastic or paper from a cross-contamination between-uses standpoint. It would be nice to have that data, as opposed to the plastic-industry assertions that there is a measurable bacterial load in 25 bags in Toronto (with no pathogens, or real good indicators). 

Comparisons to reusing hand towels don’t work for me (one-use-only paper vs. cloth), where the towel is part of the potential pathogen removal process (and is usually quite moist). Reusable cloth bags might be a factor in sporadic cases of Campylobacter or other pathogens, but more data is needed to make that determination.  In cross-contamination there is a dilution effect when it comes to transfer. 1000 cfus of Campylobacter on the outside of the package of raw chicken might become 100 cfus when transfered to the bag, and then only 10 cfus when transferred to ready-to-eat apples. Drying out the bags (by turning them inside-out between uses) could reduce the bacterial loads enough to reduce risk. Maybe. The data just isn’t there. Washing them frequently (as HC suggests) is a good idea, and won’t increase risk, but I wonder how much it will actually decrease risk more than just letting them dry out.