Tag Archives: Poop

Don’t trick kids into eating poop; even if it’s dried moose poop (and you are on a canoe trip)

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In an effort to curb a crying fit as I was leaving to play hockey a few months ago, I told almost-4-year old Jack that he could watch me on TV when I left (a Carolina Hurricanes game was about to start). He believed me and apparently watched 5 minutes before getting bored. He still thinks the guys I play with every Monday night are Jeff Skinner and Eric Staal.

I’m sure Jack will be crushed when he finds out I tricked him (and play adult beer league hockey, fairly poorly). While the hockey trick won’t get me a parent of the year award,  I’ve never convinced either of my kids (or anyone else’s kids) to eat moose poop, or anything else that might contain a bunch of pathogens.

According to the National Post (that’s from Canada) an adult chaperone of a 8th-grade canoe trip is accused of telling two Winnipeg students that dried moose droppings was ‘a nutritious mix of wild berries and grass.’ 

The allegations stem from a May 25 trip involving about two dozen students from Walter Whyte School, accompanied by teachers and other adult chaperones.

Angie Jonski said her nephew was one of the victims.

“They all laughed — he ran to the river to wash his mouth out,” Jonski said.

Lord Selkirk superintendent Scott Kwasnitza confirmed he has been conducting an investigation, but would not discuss any details.
“We’re trying to deal with it internally,” he said.

Moose are ruminants, and often carry pathogenic E. coli in their poop. Authors of a 2005 Norwegian survey of wild cervid poop found E. coli O103 in over 20 per cent of tested turds.
 

Julia Roberts covered in bird poop

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I do not like the actress Julia Roberts.

Her movies suck, and she wasted a marriage to real talent, Lyle Lovett, back in the 1990s (but it did help Lyle create great art).

Julia now says it was "torture" being covered in bird poo for her latest role in Mirror Mirror.

“All that ‘beauty’ stuff was so disgusting.”

Was it sterilized bird poop? Otherwise Salmonella and Campylobacter. Don’t follow the cooking or food advice of a celebrity wearing bird poop.

Stop pooping in pools; cryptosporidium outbreak in Minnesota sickens 9

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The Minnesota Health Department says three people have tested positive for cryptosporidium and another six cases are suspected — all had recently been swimming at the Edgewater in Duluth in March.

Of those nine possibly affected, seven are kids and two are adults.

The Edgewater responded to concerns by closing pools and super chlorinating them to kill any parasite, ahead of getting water testing results back.

"Our pools are the cleanest, you know, that they’ve been because of the super chlorination, and we do take it very seriously and are very controlled about how often we test the water and what to do with issues," said Leanne Joynes of ZMC Hotels.

"The people should not be changing diapers at poolside. They should take a shower before and after swimming and that when they’re swimming, they should take frequent bathroom breaks," said Trisha Robinson of the Minnesota Department of Health.

The Minnesota Department of Health is also investigating a pool facility in Brainerd for the same parasite, but did not say which one.

One person who swam there was confirmed to be infected, while two others are suspected.

So far, officials believe the cases in Duluth and Brainerd are not related.

Sewage burgers and the human future

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Don’t eat poop.

But if you do, make sure it’s cooked.

Comforting or not, we eat poop in a variety of forms. Dogs seem to enjoy it.

D.C. Innes of World Magazine reports Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda has developed a way to turn human feces into simulated beef. He takes “sewage mud,” which is high in protein on account of its bacteria content, adds soy proteins and food coloring, puts it through his machine, and out comes chuck.

Now, there is reason to believe that this story might be a hoax, but Douglas Powell, a food safety expert at Kansas State University, views it as technologically plausible. So it’s worth considering the idea.

Innes asked me if I would eat a burger made out of poop.

Maybe, but it would have to be safely cooked.

Innes cites a bunch of philosophy I thought was cool about the same time I thought The Doors were musical and poetic genius — everyone experiments in college – and concludes that even if “harvesting scat for food would be efficient, there is this problem: It’s beneath human dignity. Dignity is not a “scientific” concept. You can’t isolate dignity in a Petri dish, but empirical science is not our only window onto reality.

Is what we leave behind after evacuating only so much protein, carbohydrates, lipids, and minerals? Are we? If we are, then God is dead and all is permitted. But no one lives that way. That summary of life does not account for life as we know it. In that respect, it’s bad science. C.S. Lewis argues that seeing man through only this lens means “the abolition of man.”

Powell, the food safety professor, is fine with this new fare, so long as we cook it thoroughly. We eat plants that grow in soil fertilized with dung, don’t we? But we don’t eat the dung.

Of course not.

World magazine: Today’s News, Christian Views.

Don’t add poop: how to prevent norovirus in oysters

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 The most effective public health measures to protect consumers from exposure to norovirus in oysters are to produce oysters in areas which are not contaminated or to prevent contamination of mollusc production areas.

And current methods used to remove norovirus in shellfish are not an effective means of reducing contamination.

So says the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Panel on Biological Hazards (BIOHAZ Panel) in a new risk assessment.

The Panel recommends establishing acceptable limits for the presence of virus in oysters that are harvested and placed on the market in the European Union. In addition, an EU-wide baseline survey on norovirus in oysters should be carried out to provide information on overall consumer exposure as well as the public health impact of control measures.

Norovirus is transmitted through the consumption of food or water contaminated with fecal matter or through person-to-person contact or contact with infected surfaces. Oysters contaminated with norovirus pose a particular risk to human health as they are often consumed raw.

EFSA’s BIOHAZ Panel concludes that norovirus is highly infectious and that the amount of the virus detected in oysters linked to human cases can vary greatly.

Scientists highlight that norovirus is frequently detected in oysters in Europe which comply with existing EU control standards for bivalve molluscs.

13 sickened with norovirus; sewage spill linked to bad oysters in 2009 NZ outbreak

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Don’t eat poop. And if you do, cook the poop. Thoroughly.

Which is why I don’t eat raw oysters. Who knows what poop they’ve filtered through their bivalves.

In 2009 public health authorities traced the source of two outbreaks, in Auckland and Waikato, back to the Coromandel, according to today’s New Zealand Medical Journal.

Ten people were infected at a catered event in Auckland and three at a Cambridge restaurant. Four more at the Auckland event ate oysters but did not fall ill. Neither venue nor the oyster farm is named in the journal report.

In Cambridge, two of the unlucky diners ate their oysters raw while the third consumed cooked oyster Kilpatrick but complained the shellfish was undercooked and sent it back for re-cooking.

The Food Safety Authority closed the growing area where the oysters came from in late July 2009 following the Auckland outbreak but eight days before the Cambridge diners had their contaminated meal.

The journal report says the leaking sewer was found only by chance. In early August 2009 the Thames Coromandel District Council reported the sewer had been disturbed during maintenance of the wastewater treatment plant near the oyster growing area.

"The pipe had been leaking partially treated effluent into the stream that flowed into the affected growing area," says the report by public health doctor Richard Wall and colleagues.

Dr Wall and colleagues say temperatures above 60C deactivate norovirus, although cooking oysters has not been shown to reliably inactivate viruses.

In 2006 imported Korean oysters were blamed for five outbreaks of the disease. One of these was at Eden Park in which it was estimated more than 300 corporate guests at an All Blacks-Ireland test were poisoned after eating the raw oysters.

Whole Foods says Miami Beach has poop problem; store mess was promptly cleaned

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Whole Foods has denied any wrongdoing after firing an employee who complained about poop in the cheese aisle at the Miami Beach store.

Libba from Whole Foods Market took to the Eater blog to say:

“Here are the facts regarding the plumbing issue: that area of Miami Beach has problems with pipes backing up during high tide when there’s been significant rainfall. The backup in our store equated to about an inch of water that encompassed about a three-foot span over one of the drains. The entire area was closed for complete cleaning as soon as the problem was discovered, and was cleaned and sanitized again the next day by a professional cleaning service.

“When it happened again the same professional cleaners were back at the store in less than 24 hours and the entire area was sanitized again.

“At all times, the areas of the store open to customers were clean and safe."

Whole Foods sucks at food safety, so I look forward to disclosure in the lawsuit filed on behalf of the former employee by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Ted Allen’s Pretentious Foodie BS; for people who rave about poo coffee

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If cat poop coffee is just too passé, then coffee made from beans that have passed through the digestive tract of the rare South American Jacu bird may be for you.

The bird apparently eats only the best, ripest Arabica berries and excretes the beans in piles under the coffee trees, which are then collected, washed, dried and roasted in the usual way.

It’s being sold in Brisbane at Merlo cafes during December (they claim to be the only importers of the coffee in Australia). This particular Jacu coffee comes from Camocim Estate, a certified biodynamic/fairtrade farm in Pedra Azul, Espirito Santo, Brazil.

For those who lwant to pay $10 for a cup of poop coffee, Food Network star Ted Allen teamed up with The Onion’s “Today Now!” to prepare a meal to try and impress pretentious asshole friends with.

Ingredients include:
• stupid ass trendy piece of fish?some kind of nut you never heard of?; and,
• puree of baby something or other.

1. Chose the most expensive piece of fish you can find?
2. Spend way too much time processing nuts?
3. Dredge fish in nuts?
4. Cook for 3 minutes per side?
5. painstakingly prepare turnips when you could just have gotten them from a can.

The video promoting Ted’s book is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RMUDw4_e93Y. Language warning.

Less vomit, more cheer: Top 5 ways to a barf-free Thanksgiving

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 Tips for a food safe Thanksgiving dinner are popping up, so Chapman and I, always eager to jump on a bandwagon, came up with our own.

1. Never wash the Thanksgiving turkey. Research from the U.K. and elsewhere shows that washing turkey or chicken is an ideal way to spread dangerous bacteria throughout the kitchen or food preparation area. Washing under running water can spray surface contamination up to three feet away.

2. Never place a whole turkey over your head. While it may be a popular attempt at comedy in movies and television shows like “Mr. Bean” or “Friends,” do not inspect the internal cavity of the turkey by placing it over your head. This is potentially the most contaminated part of the turkey.

3. Make sure to use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to ensure the turkey has reached 165 F. Color is an inadequate indicator of safety so always use a thermometer to test the turkey before serving.

4. Cool leftover turkey quickly. Refrigerate leftover turkey within two hours of taking it out of the oven. Some spore-forming bacteria will grow and form toxins if kept at room temperature for too long. Turkey should be cooled to 41 F quickly and this is best accomplished by placing sliced leftover turkey in reseal-able bags of one quart or smaller size. Bags should be laid flat in the refrigerator to allow cool air to circulate.

5. Do not pass babies with leaky diapers around the holiday table. This can lead to all kinds of food contamination, and does not end well for anyone at the table.

A table of holiday-meal related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/turkey-related-outbreaks.

Did deer poop kill one and sicken 15 with E. coli O157:H7 in Oregon strawberries?

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My friend Farmer Jeff e-mailed me this morning. He’s not doing so well, but still has fire in his belly and the Oregon strawberry outbreak prompted him to write.

Jeff was a pioneer in fruit and vegetable growing in southern Ontario. I’m sure he got a chuckle when he heard that Monsanto announced last week it was going to start selling a consumer-oriented herbicide-tolerant Bt sweet corn. Jeff was growing, labeling and selling Syngenta’s Bt sweet corn over a decade ago (that’s Jeff, in the white T-shirt and banana pants doing what he loves — talking farming).

But Jeff always had a receptive ear for my microbial food safety rants and he always tried to fit my theories into the practicalities of farm life: especially strawberries.

Jaquith Strawberry Farm in rural Washington County, Oregon is a 35-acre strawberry producer, has been identified as the source of an E. coli O157:H7 that has killed one and sickened 15; four people went to the hospital, including two people who suffered kidney failure.

The farm sold potentially tainted fresh strawberries to buyers who in turn distributed them to roadside stands and farmers markets in Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Yamhill and Clatsop counties.

The last of the berries were sold Aug. 1, but health officials are worried that consumers might have stored some of them in the freezer or turned them into uncooked jam.

Anyone who bought strawberries from a stand north of Marion County and as far east as Clackamas County should throw them out. They were sold in unmarked containers without labels.

According to reports in The Oregonian, once it became apparent an outbreak was emerging, epidemiologists kicked into high gear, grilling patients on what they had eaten and where to find a common link. Many said they bought strawberries from a roadside stand.

Next, epidemiologists drove to homes to collect berries from freezers for testing. They quizzed roadside stands where patients had shopped. Those questions turned up Jaquith Strawberry Farm as the likely source of the contamination.

William Keene, senior epidemiologist with Oregon Public Health, suspects the source might be deer he saw roaming through the fields. Scientists took more than 100 soil and other samples from the farm this weekend and sent them to a lab outside Seattle for testing, hoping to confirm the source of E. coli O157:H7.

In the scramble to unravel an E. coli outbreak traced to strawberries, Oregon food safety experts have spent days poring over sales information.

Jaquith Strawberry Farm provided hand-written lists of buyers, sometimes first names only, to food safety specialists. Officials then worked the phones, calling all the people on the list. But the calls didn’t stop there. What they discovered is that the berries sometimes changed hands, traveling from buyer to farmers markets and then to consumers.

And sometimes farmers bought the berries and resold them as their own crop, a practice that is illegal.

"Apparently, it is more common than we thought," said Vance Bybee, head of food safety at Oregon Department of Agriculture.

Deer, like other ruminants, are the natural reservoirs for shiga-toxin producing E. coli like O157:H7 (that’s right, Food Inc. fans, it’s not just feedlot cattle). Deer were the suspected source in the 1996 E. coli O157:H7 in unpasteurized Odwalla juice that sickened 76 and killed a 16-month-old. Deer meat has also been involved in at least two recognized E. coli outbreaks.

My friend Jeff says the pickers should have noticed the deer poop, or at least been aware, and as another farmer friend would suggest, “shoot the f***ers.”

Jeff says agriculture is going backwards.

A table of strawberry-related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/strawberries-related-outbreaks. The overwhelming majority of these outbreaks are related to handling, not growing. But, stuff happens.