Tag Archives: Raw

Raw water: It’s a thing

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In Australia, communities at the suburb level have the power to decide whether to fluoridate water or not.

Every time I go to the dentist, he tells me the same story: I can tell where you’re from by your teeth, no fluoride means more business for me.

In an America dominated by indulgence, privilege and the nonsensical, raw water is a thing.

Nellie Bowles of the New York Times writes at Rainbow Grocery, a cooperative in Culver, Oregon, one brand of water is so popular that it’s often out of stock. But one recent evening, there was a glittering rack of it: glass orbs containing 2.5 gallons of what is billed as “raw water” — unfiltered, untreated, unsterilized spring water, $36.99 each and $14.99 per refill, bottled and marketed by a small company called Live Water.

“It has a vaguely mild sweetness, a nice smooth mouth feel, nothing that overwhelms the flavor profile,” said Kevin Freeman, a shift manager at the store. “Bottled water’s controversial. We’ve curtailed our water selection. But this is totally outside that whole realm.”

Here on the West Coast and in other pockets around the country, many people are looking to get off the water grid.

Start-ups like Live Water in Oregon and Tourmaline Spring in Maine have emerged in the last few years to deliver untreated water on demand. An Arizona company, Zero Mass Water, which installs systems allowing people to collect water directly from the atmosphere around their homes, began taking orders in November from across the United States. It has raised $24 million in venture capital.

And Liquid Eden, a water store that opened in San Diego three years ago, offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a “mineral electrolyte alkaline” drinking water that goes for $2.50 a gallon.

What adherents share is a wariness of tap water, particularly the fluoride added to it and the lead pipes that some of it passes through. They contend that the wrong kind of filtration removes beneficial minerals. Even traditional bottled spring water is treated with ultraviolet light or ozone gas and passed through filters to remove algae. That, they say, kills healthful bacteria — “probiotics” in raw-water parlance.

The quest for pure water is hardly new; people have been drinking from natural springs and collecting rainwater from time immemorial. The crusade against adding fluoride to public water began in the 1950s among Americans who saw danger in the protective measures that had been adopted over decades to protect the populace from disease and contamination.

But the off-grid water movement has become more than the fringe phenomenon it once was, with sophisticated marketing, cultural cachet, millions of dollars in funding and influential supporters from Silicon Valley.

10 family members sick with Salmonella in Israel: Probably raw egg mousse

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The Yeshiva World reports that 10 family members, adults and children, visited the emergency room of Mayanei HaYeshua Hospital in Bnei Brak on Monday, 7 Teves, presenting with severe intestinal illness. Three of them were hospitalized in the pediatric ward. The illness began after eating homemade mousse prepared from raw eggs.

The microbiological laboratory at the hospital identified the suspicious growth as salmonella and tomorrow, Tuesday, the suspicions of doctors will be confirmed. For the time being, the family is ill and suffering.

Jazz is music in hell: Odwalla founder finds second life in Califia almond and plant-based beverages

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Geoffrey Mohan of the LA Times writes that Greg Steltenpohl, 63, heads Califia Farms, an almond and plant-based beverage company he co-founded in 2010. With about $100 million in annual sales, the company is something of a redemption for the Stanford graduate, whose first lightning strike in the beverage business, Odwalla, started as a way to fund his avant-garde jazz band, and ended with a fatal food poisoning and recall that eventually left the company in the hands of Coca-Cola.

“Odwalla got started because I didn’t really have a plan. I was focused on music and just thought, ‘Hey, I can make some juice on the side, play music and all that.’”

The band’s eclectic mixtures of unpasteurized juice were far more popular than the band’s music and, by 1993, Steltenpohl and his partners took Odwalla public.

Accidental success met accidental fall in 1996, the year Odwalla hit its peak sales of $59 million. An E. coli outbreak traced to Odwalla’s raw apple juice sickened dozens and killed a child in Colorado. Federal criminal charges, fines, lawsuit settlements and a precipitous drop in sales left the company so short of cash it wound up controlled by new investors who eventually sold the brand to Coca-Cola.

Steltenpohl tried his hand at several other businesses before getting a call from Berne Evans, the head of Sun Pacific packing, who had helped pioneer easy-peeling mandarins — trademarked Cuties.

Steltenpohl blanches at the idea that he has some knack for catching food preference waves just as they crest — with Odwalla, then with almond milk, and now with a line of almond-based cold brew coffee drinks.

“It sounds like that,” he admitted with a laugh. “But you figure I’ve been doing it for 37 years. You could say I hit the waves, but there’s a lot of paddling in there.”

“It’s not always the important thing to be the first,” Steltenpohl said. “I think it’s more important to solve a number of other problems.… The way we talk about it is: something different, something better — that’s kind of the hurdle we have to pass internally. If we can’t answer to ourselves why is it different, why is it better, how does it move the bar higher, then why are we doing it?”

Too bad you didn’t apply that to juice business.

 In late Oct. 1996, an outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 was traced to juice containing unpasteurized apple cider manufactured by Odwalla in the northwest U.S.Sixty-four people were sickened and a 16-month-old died from E. coli O157:H7. During subsequent grand jury testimony, it was revealed that while Odwalla had written contracts with suppliers to only provide apples picked from trees rather than drops – those that had fallen to the ground and would be more likely to be contaminated with feces, in this case, deer feces — the company never verified if suppliers were actually doing what they said they were doing. Earlier in 1996, Odwalla had sought to supply the U.S. Army with juice. An Aug. 6, 1996 letter from the Army to Odwalla stated, “we determined that your plant sanitation program does not adequately assure product wholesomeness for military consumers. This lack of assurance prevents approval of your establishment as a source of supply for the Armed Forces at this time.”

Raw is risky: Norovirus in raw oysters sickens 10 in Denmark

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Joseph James Whitworth of Food Quality News writes 10 people have been sickened by norovirus after eating raw oysters at Danish restaurants.

Fødevarestyrelsen (Danish Veterinary and Food Administration) said oysters are from Lemvig.

The agency has closed the area in Lemvig for commercial harvest of mussels and oysters and is monitoring it.

Illnesses can be avoided if oysters are cooked to an internal temperature of 90° Celsius/194° Fahrenheit for a minimum of 90 seconds.

E. coli: Flour fights not such a good idea

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In June, 2009, an outbreak of shiga-toxin producing E. coli (primarily O157:H7) in Nestle Toll House cookie dough sickened at least 77 people in 30 American states. Thirty-five people were hospitalized – from cookie dough.

The researchers could not conclusively implicate flour as the E. coli source, but it remains the prime suspect. They pointed out that a single purchase of contaminated flour might have been used to manufacture multiple lots and varieties of dough over a period of time as suggested by the use-by dates on the contaminated product.

The study authors concluded that “foods containing raw flour should be considered as possible vehicles of infection of future outbreaks of STEC.”

So it wasn’t much of a surprise when 56 people fell sick from with the outbreak strain of E. coli O121 from Dec. 2015 to Sept. 2016 were linked to raw General Mills flour.

The peer-reviewed summary of the outbreak investigation was published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Abstract below:

In 2016, a multijurisdictional team investigated an outbreak of Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC) serogroup O121 and O26 infections linked to contaminated flour from a large domestic producer.

Methods

A case was defined as infection with an outbreak strain in which illness onset was between December 21, 2015, and September 5, 2016. To identify exposures associated with the outbreak, outbreak cases were compared with non-STEC enteric illness cases, matched according to age group, sex, and state of residence. Products suspected to be related to the outbreak were collected for STEC testing, and a common point of contamination was sought. Whole-genome sequencing was performed on isolates from clinical and food samples.

Results

A total of 56 cases were identified in 24 states. Univariable exact conditional logistic-regression models of 22 matched sets showed that infection was significantly associated with the use of one brand of flour (odds ratio, 21.04; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4.69 to 94.37) and with tasting unbaked homemade dough or batter (odds ratio, 36.02; 95% CI, 4.63 to 280.17). Laboratory testing isolated the outbreak strains from flour samples, and whole-genome sequencing revealed that the isolates from clinical and food samples were closely related to one another genetically. Trace-back investigation identified a common flour-production facility.

Conclusions

This investigation implicated raw flour as the source of an outbreak of STEC infections. Although it is a low-moisture food, raw flour can be a vehicle for foodborne pathogens.

Shiga toxin–producing E. coli infections associated with flour

N Engl J Med 2017; 377:2036-2043, November 23, 2017, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1615910

Samuel J. Crowe, Ph.D., M.P.H., Lyndsay Bottichio, M.P.H., Lauren N. Shade, B.S., Brooke M. Whitney, Ph.D., Nereida Corral, M.P.H., Beth Melius, M.N., M.P.H., Katherine D. Arends, M.P.H., Danielle Donovan, M.S., Jolianne Stone, M.P.H., Krisandra Allen, M.P.H., Jessica Rosner, M.P.H., Jennifer Beal, M.P.H., Laura Whitlock, M.P.H., Anna Blackstock, Ph.D., June Wetherington, M.S., Lisa A. Newberry, Ph.D., Morgan N. Schroeder, M.P.H., Darlene Wagner, Ph.D., Eija Trees, D.V.M., Ph.D., Stelios Viazis, Ph.D., Matthew E. Wise, M.P.H., Ph.D., and Karen P. Neil, M.D., M.S.P.H.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1615910

Australia: still has an egg problem: 17 major salmonella outbreaks for Adelaide in 2016/17 linked to pork and eggs

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The almost southern most state of Australia, South Australia has a population of 1.7 million people, and yet almost 1,200 South Australians were stricken by food poisoning in the past 12-months.

Katrina Stokes of The Advertiser writes that according to the 2016/17 Health Department report, 17 food poisoning investigations conducted by officials revealed that dairy, poultry and meat products were responsible for the salmonella outbreaks.

New figures from SA Health reveal there have been a total of 1182 salmonella cases so far this year, compared to a total of 1561 in 2016.

Alarmingly, of this year’s cases, 17 per cent have been in children aged five or younger.

The biggest outbreak was at the InterContinental Hotel on July 31 last year after guests ate the buffet breakfast — and the cause was linked to cross contamination from eggs.

Of 140 people who reported feeling unwell, 85 were confirmed cases of salmonella and 20 were admitted to hospital.

Patients were treated for vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and headaches.

Other food poisoning cases in 2016/17 included:

CHILDREN at an out-of-hours care facility were struck down with gastroenteritis and an investigation identified one source was inadequate sanitation procedures in the kitchen. Some of the children also reported consuming eggs in an uncooked cupcake mixture. A total of 24 children were sick and 12 cases confirmed.

WEDDING guests fell ill after eating food, including chicken liver parfait and chicken galantine, at a restaurant. One food poisoning case was confirmed and a total of 12 people were sick.

DODGY egg sandwiches and wraps from a bakery caused a total of eight people to get sick. The source was the egg supplier.

Earlier this year, at least 14 people got sick after eating pork pies from the Pork Pie Shop at Victor Harbor.

An inspection of the bakery identified problems including possible contamination from raw egg wash used on the pies, inadequate storage temperature and cleaning of sanitising of equipment.

A total of 33 people got sick from a rare form of salmonella after eating rockmelon from an interstate producer in July 2016.

SA Health director of food and controlled drugs Dr Fay Jenkins said the exact cause of salmonella was often hard to pinpoint — but eggs, and egg handling, were often the culprit.

“To reduce the risk of sickness, do not use eggs if they are cracked or dirty, wash your hands after handling eggs and keep raw egg products like aioli, mayonnaise and mousse refrigerated,” she said.

How about, cook eggs.

A table of Australian egg outbreaks is available at https://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/raw-egg-related-outbreaks-australia-5-1-17.xlsx.

Raw is risky: Over 100 oyster festival attendees ill in Maryland

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Health officials say they are investigating a stomach flu outbreak, after over 100 people are apparently ill after attending an oyster festival, in Worcester County.

The Maryland Department of Health says on Friday, that their Division of Outbreak Investigation is working with the Worcester County Health Department to investigate a gastroenteritis outbreak that happened at a Beer and Oyster Festival, in Ocean City. The festival was apparently held at Fager’s Island Restaurant, on November 4.

According to state health officials, to date, there have been 145 cases of illness reported in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey that could be connected to the outbreak. There have been no reports of hospitalizations and deaths.

Fancy food ain’t safe food: New York edition

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One of New York’s most expensive restaurants is in some trouble with the Food and Drug Administration over its fresh fish.

John Tozzi of Bloomberg writes that Masa, which earned three Michelin stars for its $595 tasting menu (before drinks and tax), received a warning letter from the FDA dated Oct. 16 alleging violations of federal rules that govern seafood imports. “Your fresh trevally and fresh Katsuwonus pelamis (Katsuo), also known as skipjack tuna or bonito,” the agency wrote in a letter published online this week, “have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby they may have been rendered injurious to health.”

“We take FDA regulations very seriously and, of course, food safety is always a priority. We are working closely with our purveyors in Japan to get this resolved quickly,” said Tina Clabbers, a representative for Masa, in an email.

While the the FDA doesn’t typically regulate individual restaurants, the agency has jurisdiction over seafood importers. Inspectors visited Masa on June 22, according to the letter, which redacted the name of the restaurant’s fish supplier.

The letter doesn’t specify the precise nature of the violation, and a spokesperson in the FDA’s New York district office was not available for comment.

1 dead, 18 sick: Raw frozen chicken thingies strike again, in Canada

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Sofina Foods Inc. of London, Ontario (that’s in Canada, not the UK), is recalling Janes brand frozen uncooked breaded chicken products from the marketplace due to possible Salmonella contamination. Consumers should not consume the recalled products described below.

This recall was triggered by findings by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) during its investigation into a foodborne illness outbreak. The CFIA is conducting a food safety investigation, which may lead to the recall of other products. If other high-risk products are recalled, the CFIA will notify the public through updated Food Recall Warnings.

Recalled products

Brand Name//Common Name//Size//Code(s) on Product//UPC

Janes//Pub Style Chicken Burgers – Uncooked Breaded Chicken Burgers//800 g//2018 MA 12//0 69299 12491 0

Janes//Pub Style Snacks Popcorn Chicken – Uncooked Breaded Chicken Cutlettes//800 g//2018 MA 15//0 69299 12542 9

The agency said frozen raw breaded chicken products may look pre-cooked, but they contain raw poultry and must be cooked correctly.

Been there, done that.

As we found back in 2007, when preparing frozen foods, adolescents are less likely than adults to wash their hands and are more susceptible to cross-contaminating raw foods while cooking.

“While half of the adults we observed washed their hands after touching raw chicken, none of the adolescents did,” said Casey Jacob, a food safety research assistant at Kansaas State. “The non-existent hand washing rate, combined with certain age-specific behaviors like hair flipping and scratching in a variety of areas, could lead directly to instances of cross-contamination compared to the adults.”

Food safety isn’t simple, and instructions for safe handling of frozen chicken entrees or strips are rarely followed by consumers despite their best intentions, said Doug Powell, K-State associate professor of food safety who led the study.

As the number and type of convenience meal solutions increases — check out the frozen food section of a local supermarket — the researchers found a need to understand how both adults and adolescents are preparing these products and what can be done to enhance the safety of frozen foods.

In 2007, K-State researchers developed a novel video capture system to observe the food preparation practices of 41 consumers – 21 primary meal preparers and 20 adolescents – in a mock domestic kitchen using frozen, uncooked, commercially available breaded chicken products. The researchers wanted to determine actual food handling behavior of these two groups in relation to safe food handling practices and instructions provided on product labels. Self-report surveys were used to determine whether differences exist between consumers’ reported food handling practices and observed behavior.

The research appeared in the November 2009 issue of the British Food Journal. In addition to Jacob and Powell, the authors were: Sarah DeDonder, K-State doctoral student in pathobiology; Brae Surgeoner, Powell’s former graduate student; Benjamin Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University and Powell’s former graduate student; and Randall Phebus, K-State professor of animal science and industry.

Beyond the discrepancy between adult and adolescent food safety practices, the researchers also found that even when provided with instructions, food preparers don’t follow them. They may not have even seen them or they assume they know what to do.

“Our results suggest that while labels might contain correct risk-reduction steps, food manufacturers have to make that information as compelling as possible or it will be ignored,” Chapman said.

They also found that observational research using discreet video recording is far more accurate than self-reported surveys. For example, while almost all of the primary meal preparers reported washing hands after every instance in which they touched raw poultry, only half were observed washing hands correctly after handling chicken products in the study.

Powell said that future work will examine the effectiveness of different food safety labels, messages and delivery mechanisms on consumer behavior in their home kitchens.

 Self-reported and observed behavior of primary meal preparers and adolescents during preparation of frozen, uncooked, breaded chicken products

01.nov.09

British Food Journal, Vol 111, Issue 9, p 915-929

Sarah DeDonder, Casey J. Jacob, Brae V. Surgeoner, Benjamin Chapman, Randall Phebus, Douglas A. Powell

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=6146E6AFABCC349C376B7E55A3866D4A?contentType=Article&contentId=1811820

Abstract:

Purpose – The purpose of the present study was to observe the preparation practices of both adult and young consumers using frozen, uncooked, breaded chicken products, which were previously involved in outbreaks linked to consumer mishandling. The study also sought to observe behaviors of adolescents as home food preparers. Finally, the study aimed to compare food handler behaviors with those prescribed on product labels.

Design/methodology/approach – The study sought, through video observation and self-report surveys, to determine if differences exist between consumers’ intent and actual behavior.

Findings – A survey study of consumer reactions to safe food-handling labels on raw meat and poultry products suggested that instructions for safe handling found on labels had only limited influence on consumer practices. The labels studied by these researchers were found on the packaging of chicken products examined in the current study alongside step-by-step cooking instructions. Observational techniques, as mentioned above, provide a different perception of consumer behaviors.

Originality/value – This paper finds areas that have not been studied in previous observational research and is an excellent addition to existing literature.

8 dead, 25 hospitalized from trichinellosis in Cambodia

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Cambodia’s Ministry of Health confirmed on Tuesday an outbreak of Trichinellosis in an area in central Kampong Thom province that has left eight people dead and 25 others hospitalized.

In its statement, the ministry said 33 villagers living in Prey Long (forest) area in Sandan district had fallen ill earlier this month, about three weeks after they ate contaminated wild meat that was undercooked, and eight of them had subsequently died in recent weeks.

“The samples of 3 patients’ muscle tissue were tested by the Calmette Hospital’s laboratory and the result confirmed that there were Trichinella larvae in their muscle tissue,” the statement said.

It added that another test on the blood samples from other nine patients by a Vietnamese hospital’s laboratory confirmed that “there were eggs of Trichinalla worms” in their blood.

Cambodian Minister of Health Mam Bunheng said,  “I’d like to appeal to the people to stop eating raw or undercooked meat in order to prevent themselves from infecting Trichinellosis and other diseases.”