Ireland: 1 in 3 don’t wash hands after toilet

One of my graduate students, Manoelita Warkenten, did a great job this morning presenting a departmental seminar about the use of gross-out information to increase handwashing compliance rates in various settings.

Sarah Reasoner, another of my graduate students, who had already gone through the seminar fire, did an outstanding job prepping Manoelita. I didn’t have to do much. I like it that way.

Irish Health reports today that one in three people in Ireland don’t wash their hands after going to the toilet.

That’s gross.

Humanure: It’s extreme, like Mountain Dew, if it was derived from human poop

For more than a decade, 57-year-old roofer and writer Joseph Jenkins has been advocating that we flush our toilets down the drain and put a bucket in the bathroom instead.

When a bucket in one of his five bathrooms is full, he empties it in the compost pile in his backyard in rural Pennsylvania. Eventually he takes the resulting soil and spreads it over his vegetable garden as fertilizer.

"It’s an alternative sanitation system," says Jenkins, "where there is no waste." His 255-page Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure is in its third edition and has been translated into five languages, but it has only recently begun to catch on. His message? Human manure, when properly managed, is odorless. His audience? Ecologically committed city dwellers who are looking to do more for the earth than just sort their trash or ride a bike to work.

Night soil is rumored to be used in the production  of fresh veggies , especially for upscale restaurants, in many large cities.

I’ll stick with riding my bike to work, and thank engineers for sewage treatment.
 

Peyton Manning, call an audible on the mice at your football field

A worker at Lucas Oil Stadium, home to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League, told WXIN she’s blowing the whistle on continual food safety issues at the stadium.

"The pictures are actually showing mice droppings in the food pantry, on the floor, on the shelves, on the counters, there’s been some on the carts. I brought these pictures forward because I felt people should know where their food’s coming from. It’s not safe."

Fox59 contacted Centerplate, the caterer for the stadium, but they did not respond.

Centerplate Catering and Lucas Oil Stadium have been cited for food safety violations dating back to 2008. In January 2009, health investigators found dead rodents hadn’t been removed from food service areas. In March, investigators found mice feces by coffee urns. In April, a report showed mice running through a Stadium Kitchen. In September, there were violations for improperly storing toxic materials and for "unsafe food" that wasn’t being kept cold or hot enough at Lucas Oil.

Australian hepatitis A outbreak still linked to semi-dried tomatoes

Hepatitis A is one of the few causes of foodborne illness that only cycles through humans – and their poop.

So any outbreak of hepatitis A means human sewage came into contact with the food (which then wasn’t cooked) or someone shedding the virus had a poop, failed to adequately wash their hands, and then prepared an uncooked food.

Either could be happening in this on-going outbreak of hepatitis A in Australia that has sickened about 130 people and appears to be linked to semi-dry tomatoes.

Victorian health authorities revealed a further 23 cases of the infectious disease diagnosed in the past week.

Victoria’s chief health officer Dr John Carnie said that so far this year there had been 200 notifications of hepatitis A, compared to 74 at the same time last year.

A study into the increase of cases indicates that more than two thirds of people that have become ill recalled eating semi-dried tomatoes, he said.

Local producers had promised the Department of Human Services they were doing their best to reduce the risk, while importers of the tomatoes had also been instructed to ensure appropriate quality control measures were in place, he said.

Bottled semi-dried tomatoes in supermarkets were pasteurised and considered safe along with any of the cooked product such as in pizzas or quiches.

The greatest risk would appear to be at restaurants and cafes, where semi-dried tomatoes are served in foods such as salads and sandwiches.

Don’t eat poop. Or at least cook it.
 

From the douchebag files

Some people are lawyers and specialize in rhetoric. It’s that Plato thing.

Some of us submit our opinions to cat scratching peer review, take our lumps and get better.

There’s this bunch of lawyers who say they’re Defending Food Safety.

Probably the worst blog name since Maple Leaf’s “Our Journey to Food Safety Leadership.”

One of them, Shawn Stevens (stevens@gasswebermullins.com) wrote on Oct. 22/09 that each year, American families eat somewhere in the neighborhood of 328.5 Billion safe meals – and countless more safe snacks. While any illness or death linked to the consumption of food is one too many, the fact remains that (at three meals a day) you and I are 20 times more likely to die this year from pneumonia or drowning than from a food-borne illness. Although not perfect, the statistics are quite impressive.

As the Sloan song says

When you find you’re a conformer
Take pride and swallow whole

Stevens goes on to say,

As consumers, we are inundated by media “fear-mongering,” and made to believe that with each meal consumed, we draw closer to the precipice of some fathomless tragedy. We are also taught to be suspicious and wary of the people who have dedicated their lives to ensuring that our families are fed, and that our food is wholesome.

You see, food safety is a complicated and dynamic issue. It is easy to be a cynic. It is easy to attack others with the benefit of extended hindsight. It is easy to simplify things to a level that a third grader would find devoid in both substance and fact. The real challenge, however, lies in embracing a reasoned and proactive approach that not only recognizes the limits of technology and science, but, at the same time, within these limits, best reduces the risks most likely to occur to the greatest extent possible.

Dude, you just failed my intro class for most horrible and unsubstantiated metaphors.

But why not reference  our paper, Where does foodborne illness happen–in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere — and does it matter? Because that would conflict with your world-view?

In any event, for those who continue to ignore science and reason, who contend that food safety is the responsibility of food producers alone, and who wrongly proclaim that food safety is only as simple as “not eating poop,” I say this: given the statistics, what goes into one mouth is often far less harmful than what comes out of another.

I e-mailed the lawyer in question on Friday about the don’t eat poop line, and he decided not to answer. Seriously I don’t want to know what is coming out of his mouth.

 

Dancing in the Loo wins, wins, wins at the Gloden Poo awards

Occasional guest barfblogger and handwashing advocate Michéle Samarya-Timm, now with the Somerset County Health Department in central New Jersey – represent – writes:

Usually poo is an undesirable thing. Regular readers barfblog.com know about the focus on poo avoidance – through proper farm-to-fork food handling, through sound regulatory practices, and through increased handwashing. We inform using po(o)p culture. We use humor. We use reality.

And it doesn’t get much more real than this — The International Golden Poo Awards were held in London last week.

Imagine, a red-carpet paparazzi filled evening at a majestic theatre, to view a program full of short animated films about hygiene and poo – culminating in the presentation of a coveted golden statuette. How better to increase awareness of handwashing and heap praise on those who are helping to spread the clean hands message in unique, humorous and gross ways?

Golden Poo Award nominees included:

•    For your convenience

•    Symphony Number Two

•    A Film about Poo

•    Poo in Passing

•    Are you spreading poo?

•    Toilet Plant

And the winner: Dancing in the Loo (above).

The winning videos can be found at thegoldenpooawrds.org.

Several of my colleagues already commented that these videos were a little too focused on fecal matter. Perhaps. But as noted in the recent UK study – the perception of gross seems to increase handwashing amongst some audiences.

Alicia Silverstone will teach you how to poo

She was great in those Aerosmith videos, cute in Clueless, terrible in 1997’s Batman and Robin, and insufferable as a vegan spokesthingy.

And now she can teach you how to poop.

Alicia Silverstone,
who has been a vegan for ten years, has a new book, The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight and Saving the Planet.

Some Alicia-isms:

"Remember, dairy was designed to make little baby calves turn into 400-pound cows, so that’s what it does to you. …

"Most people aren’t pooing. I know two girls in my life who are good friends, who were not pooing, but now they’re pooing ’cause I helped them. I taught them how to poo."
 

UK child’s face smeared with fox poop after playing in sandbox at garden center

I have some great memories of my kids growing up, playing in the sandbox, covered in runny snot and saying, Dad, is this cat poop?

Cats view sandboxes as giant litterboxes.

Foxes too.

This Is Gloucestershire reports,

Two-year-old Jasmine Westgate was playing in the sandpit at Highfield Garden World in Whitminster when she put her hands in a pile of fox mess.

Jasmine’s father Bruce said,

"It was absolutely vile. Jasmine didn’t know what she was doing and ended up with fox mess all over her face. She ingested some of it too which could have had harmful consequences. There are potentially life-ruining diseases linked with coming into contact with animal faeces. The sandpit shouldn’t have been left in such a state. It obviously hadn’t been cleaned properly by staff.”

Staff at Highfield Garden World, which offers a range of activities for children, said the sandpit was now out of use until further notice.

Managing director Joan Greenway said,

"We would like to apologise to the Westgates for what happened.”