134 sickened; Outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg infections linked to a single poultry producer — 13 States, 2012–2013

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Douglas Powell

In June 2012, the Oregon Health Authority and the Washington State Department of Health noted an increase in the number of Salmonella enterica serotype Heidelberg clinical isolates sharing an identical pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) pattern. In 2004, this pattern had been linked to chicken from Foster Farms by the Washington State Department of Health; preliminary 2012 interviews with infected persons also indicated exposure to Foster Farms chicken.

Margaret Grinnell et al. write in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that on August 2, 2012, CDC’s PulseNet detected a cluster of 19 Salmonella Heidelberg clinical isolates matching the outbreak pattern. This report summarizes the investigation by CDC, state and local health departments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and reinforces the importance of safe food handling to prevent illness. A total of 134 cases from 13 states were identified, including 33 patients who were hospitalized. This multifaceted investigation used standard epidemiologic and laboratory data along with patient shopper card purchase information, and PFGE data from the retail meat component of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS)†, a relatively novel tool in outbreak investigation, to link the outbreak strain to chicken from Foster Farms.

Epidemiologic data, traceback investigations, and product testing support the conclusion that Foster Farms chicken was the likely source of this outbreak. Shopper card records collected from patients provided specific brand information for chicken, a commonly consumed food product, and were critical to linking this outbreak to a single chicken producer. The NARMS retail meat surveillance program not only isolated the outbreak strain from Foster Farms retail chicken samples purchased in Oregon and Washington during the current outbreak, but also demonstrated that 98% of historic isolates matching the outbreak strain were from Foster Farms retail chicken samples. One limitation to these findings is that they might not reflect all establishments that produce Foster Farms chicken or all brands of chicken produced by each establishment.

Lowering loads: Campylobacter limits in chicken meat chain would reduce illness

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Douglas Powell

A critical limit of 1,000 Campylobacter bacteria per gram of chicken would reduce the number of human disease cases by two-thirds, according to the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in the Netherlands.

The Poultry Site reports that Campylobacter illness largely happens via cross-contamination in the kitchen from chicken meat to product that are consumed raw, like salads, and to a lesser extent undercooked meat. Research by RIVM has shown that a large point of these illnesses can be prevented if the number of bacteria on chicken meat after industrial production is reduced.

Recently, there has been increased attention for hygiene in the farm to fork production check including slaughterhouses. In this context, the Dutch government intends to limit the level of Campylobacter bacteria on chicken meat, a so-called ‘process hygiene’ criterion. If higher levels are repeatedly found, the slaughterhouse needs to improved processing hygiene RIVM has evaluated the impact of different (more or less stringent) criteria, both on public health and on the costs for the poultry industry.

A critical limit of 1,000 Campylobacter bacteria per gram would reduce the number of human disease cases by two-thirds. The costs to the poultry industry to meet this criterion (estimated at €2 million per year) are considerably lower than the averted costs of illness (approximately €9 million per year).

Authors of the report are A.N. Swart, M.J.J. Mangen and A.H. Havelaar.

224 sick mainly kids; more chicks more Salmonella

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Douglas Powell

A total of 224 persons have been infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium in 34 states, up from 146. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control:

• 26% of ill persons have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported;

• 62% of ill persons are children 10 years of age or younger;

• epidemiologic, laboratory, and traceback findings have linked this outbreak of human Salmonella Typhimurium infections to contact with chicks, ducklings, and other live baby poultry purchased from multiple feed stores and sourced from multiple mail-order hatcheries;

• investigations are ongoing to determine the source of the live poultry linked to this outbreak;

• this outbreak of human Salmonella Typhimurium infections is not related to the current outbreak of human Salmonella Infantis, Lille, Newport, and Mbandaka infections linked to live poultry; and,

• among the persons who reported the date they became ill, illnesses began between and March 4, 2013 and May 20, 2013.

Reducing loads reduces risk; farm-to-fork food safety in poultry

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Douglas Powell

Researchers at the University of Georgia, Athens, have identified a strong link between the prevalence and load of certain foodborne pathogens on poultry farms, and later downstream at the processing plant. They report their findings in a manuscript published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

“This study suggests that reducing foodborne pathogen loads on broiler chicken farms would help to reduce pathogen loads at processing, and
may ultimately help to reduce the risk of foodborne illness,” says Roy Berghaus, an author on the study. “This is important because most of our efforts towards reducing foodborne pathogens are currently focused on what happens during processing. Processing interventions are effective but they can only do so much.”

The team suggests that fewer pathogens on the farm would reduce contamination levels at the processing plant, and notes that “vaccination of breeder hens, competitive exclusion products and the use of acidified water during feed withdrawal” have all reduced Salmonella in commercial broiler flocks. However “reliable approaches to reduce Campylobacter colonization are currently unavailable,” although post-processing freezing has reduced Campylobacter loads on carcasses.

A copy of the manuscript can be found online at http://bit.ly/asmtip0513a. The paper is scheduled to be formally published in the June 2013 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

(R.D. Berghaus, S.G. Thayer, B.F. Law, R.M. Mild, C.L. Hofacre, and R.S. Singer, 2013. Enumeration of Salmonella and Campylobacter spp. in environmental farm samples and processing plant carcass rinses from commercial broiler chicken flocks. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. published ahead of print 26 April 2013 ,doi:10.1128/AEM.00836-13.)

Scotland seeks to address Campylobacter in poultry meat through super freezing

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Ben Chapman

Those who work with Campylobacter say that it’s delicate and doesn’t respond well to stress, like freezing. Those who have had campylobacterosis say that it makes your intestines delicate and your gastrointestinal tract doesn’t respond well to stress, like eating. I’m one of them. In 2009 a campy infection gave me the worst November I can remember which led to me retiring a salad spinner after collecting a stool sample (it’s all detailed here).

Folks in the UK are dealing with their own Campylobacter crisis and are looking to super freezing (which sounds a bit like double secret probation) to address the situation according to The Scotsman,

Food safety experts plan to “superfreeze” chickens to halt the rise of campylobacter food poisoning. The Food Standards Agency is currently looking into a procedure which involves exposing the surface of slaughtered chickens to extreme cold, known as rapid surface chilling.

The FSA aims to reduce the proportion of birds in the highest category of contamination at UK poultry houses from 27 per cent to 10 per cent by 2015.

Dr Jacqui McElhiney, policy adviser on food-borne disease at the FSA in Scotland, said: “This process acts to temporarily cool only the very outer surface of the chicken carcass without freezing the meat itself. It involves exposing the surface of poultry carcasses to very low temperatures for a very short time, which reduces the numbers of campylobacter bacteria on the surface, as they are sensitive to an extreme cold shock treatment of this type.”

Although it performed well during trials, the “superfreezing” procedure has yet to be approved by the European Union and its legality is still to be determined, said McElhiney.
Professor Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, said: “I think it’s about the only thing on the table to get rid of campylobacter contamination. The bacteria don’t like being messed around with the cold. Anything that shows any promise of eradicating campylobacter is a good thing to get the number of infections down.”

Since freezing poultry seems to matter (resulting in significant reductions) I guess super freezing will really matter – and preserve quality. Reducing the Campylobacter loads entering a kitchen, whether it’s just 1-log or up to 3-logs, is a good thing and puts less of an emphasis on relying on consumers to be a critical control point in the home.

Can oregano make healthier chickens?

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Douglas Powell

There’s lots of stories about food safety miracle spices and cures, but often in the absence of valid verification.

So the New York Times decided to further erode its scientific credibility by running a story about Bell & Evans, a Pennsylvania poultry producer that feeds chickens a specially milled diet laced with oregano oil and a touch of cinnamon.

Scott Sechler swears by the concoction as a way to fight off bacterial diseases that plague meat and poultry producers without resorting to antibiotics, which some experts say can be detrimental to the humans who eat the meat.

Skeptics of herbal medicines abound, as any quick Internet search demonstrates. “Oil of oregano is a perennial one, advertised as a cure for just about everything,” said Scott Gavura, a pharmacist in Toronto who writes for the Web site Science-Based Medicine. “But there isn’t any evidence, there are too many unanswered questions and the only proponents for it are the ones producing it.”

The oregano oil product Mr. Sechler uses, By-O-Reg Plus, is made by a Dutch company, Ropapharm International. In the late 1990s, Bayer conducted trials on the product, known as Ropadiar in Europe, comparing its ability to control diarrhea in piglets caused by E. coli with that of four of the company’s products.

In all four test groups, Ropadiar outperformed the Bayer products. “Strange but true!” Dr. Lucio Nisoli, the Bayer product manager, wrote in his report on the trial. “Compared to the various anti-infectives, with Ropadiar I have obtained much more effective and quicker results. Furthermore, piglets treated with Ropadiar look much more healthy and were not so dehydrated and wasted.”

Astrid Köhler, a spokeswoman in Monheim, Germany, for Bayer Healthcare’s animal health business, confirmed that the company had done the trial but said that “in further evaluations the results of the first study could not be replicated with the same species, nor with other species.”

Other testing is rare. A test of oregano oil on four small farms in Maine, which was financed by a $9,914 grant from the Agriculture Department, found it was effective in controlling the parasites and worms that afflict goats and sheep.

After a chicken flock leaves a barn at Bell & Evans for slaughter, for instance, the facility is hosed down, its water lines are cleaned out and everything is disinfected. It sits empty for two to three weeks to allow bacteria to die off and to ensure that the rodents that carry salmonella and campylobacter are eliminated.

“You can’t just replace antibiotics with oregano oil and expect it to work,” Mr. Sechler said.

Don’t wash raw chicken, use a thermometer for safety; Australian food safety types catching on

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Douglas Powell

Surveys still suck, but they can give an indication of food safety practices to investigate more rigorously.

The Australian Food Safety Information Council has released national survey data that shows 60% of home cooks in Australia are putting themselves at additional risk of food poisoning by washing whole poultry before it is cooked which spreads bacteria around the kitchen. A further 16% of those surveyed incorrectly tasted chicken to see if it is cooked properly rather than use a safe and accurate meat thermometer.

Food Safety Information Council Chairman, Dr Michael Eyles, says 6 in 10 home cooks in a national Newspoll survey washed whole chicken before they cooked it, with 5 in 10 washing chicken pieces with skin on and 4 in 10 washing skinless chicken pieces.

“According to a Food Standards Australia New Zealand survey 84% of raw chicken carcasses tested positive to the food poisoning bacteria Campylobacter and 22% to Salmonella. This is similar to the findings of other surveys overseas. Notified cases of illness from Campylobacter and Salmonella in Australia have almost doubled over the last 20 years. OzFoodnet estimates there are approximately 220,000 cases of Campylobacter infection each year with more than 75% transmitted by food and 50,000 cases of Campylobacter infection each year can be attributed either directly or indirectly to chicken meat.

”Home cooks are probably following what their parents or grandparents did in the past by washing poultry, not to mention probably patting it dry with a tea towel. Washing poultry splashes these bacteria around the kitchen cross contaminating sinks, taps, your hands, utensils, chopping boards and foods that aren’t going to be cooked like salads or desserts.

“Cooking poultry right through kills these bacteria, making it safe. However, 16% of those surveyed, rather than using a meat thermometer or checking if juices run clear and are no longer pink, say they eat some chicken to see if tastes cooked, with males significantly more likely to do this than females,’ Dr Eyles concludes.

Color is still a lousy indicator of safety, but at least they mention thermometers.

Any agency that wants to say it’s science-based should provide credible evidence; otherwise it’s just another food huckster hiding behind the impartir of science. Consumers can handle more information, not less, and some credible references would boost, uh, credibility.

163 now sick from live chicks

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Douglas Powell

A total of 163 persons infected with the outbreak strains of Salmonella Infantis, Salmonella Newport, and Salmonella Lille have been reported from 26 states, associated with live poultry.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports epidemiologic, laboratory, and traceback findings have linked this outbreak of human Salmonella infections to exposure to chicks and ducklings from Mt. Healthy Hatchery in Ohio. This is the same mail-order hatchery that was associated with the 2011 outbreak of SalmonellaAltona and Salmonella Johannesburg infections. In May 2012, veterinarians from the Ohio Department of Agriculture inspected the mail-order hatchery and made recommendations for improvement.

Mail-order hatcheries, agricultural feed stores, and others that sell or display chicks, ducklings, and other live poultry should provide health-related information to owners and potential purchasers of these birds prior to the point of purchase. This should include information about the risk of acquiring a Salmonella infection from contact with live poultry.

Cross-contamination: washing chicken or any meat is a bad idea

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Douglas Powell

Michael Formichella is a chef who blogs for Meatingplace.com, sponsored by the American Meat Institute (the views and opinions are strictly those of the author).

This past Friday, Formichella wrote, “Some basic common sense plays a huge role in safe outdoor dining and picnics.”

Except common sense isn’t common unless you’ve thought about it.

“With chicken being one of the popular proteins of choice here in the U.S., some simple precautions can go a long way. Safe temperature, washing and drying any meat before use must be done.”

Washing and drying of raw meat was abandoned as recommended practice years ago.

In a Dec. 24, 2004 article in the National Post, Fergus Clydesdale at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and who was on the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, said, "The risk of cross-contamination through washing poultry is far greater than shoving it in the oven without washing it, which makes the risk almost zero.”

Even the Brits agree, stating, ”Washing raw poultry is a common kitchen mistake, and it simply isn’t necessary. … By washing your raw bird, you’re actually more likely to spread the germs around the kitchen than get rid of them.”

Why didn’t they find more? One in five UK chickens contaminated with campy; just cook it say lobbyists

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Douglas Powell

One in five supermarket chickens is contaminated with campylobacter, according to an investigation – spurring claims of "scaremongering" by a retail consortium.

The study involved poultry bought from nine of the UK’s major supermarkets by the Which? consumer group.

As well as 18% of the samples containing campylobacter, 17% of them were contaminated with listeria, with salmonella present in 1.5% of the 192 chickens tested.

Whole chickens and chicken portions – standard, free range and organic, and all reared in the UK – were tested.

Sky News contacted all nine of the supermarkets tested in the survey. Most of them referred us to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

The BRC’s food director Andrew Opie said: "Which? is scaremongering. Campylobacter is completely killed by normal cooking so providing people prepare chicken properly and follow sensible hygiene practices they’re at no risk."

There’s always a risk; especially with cross-contamination in home and food service kitchens.

In 2009, the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) found (in a similar but not directly comparable test) that 65% of chickens were contaminated with campylobacter at the point of sale.

FSA said that tackling campylobacter was a “key issue” but warned that, despite the reduction in contamination, seasonal variations made it difficult to assess the merits of the decline.

Campylobacter was responsible for over 371,000 cases of food poisoning, including 88 deaths in the UK in 20009.

Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: "We want to see the risk of contamination minimised at every stage of production, because for far too long consumers have been expected to clean up mistakes made earlier in the supply chain."

British Poultry Council chief executive Peter Bradnock said: "This report makes it clear that chicken is a safe and healthy product when properly cooked. These welcome findings show a big reduction in campylobacter presence on chicken, demonstrating the effectiveness of the biosecurity measures being taken by producers and processors against this naturally occurring bacteria."

Lidl issued a separate statement to Sky News saying: "All farms used to produce our fresh poultry range are members of the Assured Food Standards scheme for poultry, commonly known as the Red Tractor scheme, and are subject to independent third-party audits.

So what.

And journos repeated bad UK food safety advice to cook chicken until the juices runs clear: color is a terrible indicator of food safety in eat. Use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer and stick it in.

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