The photo, posted on Facebook and Twitter Monday, shows a student pulling back the lid of an individually packaged cream cheese to find the top covered in thick, green mold.
Isaiah York, a senior at Central, said it was his friend who found the cheese at breakfast. They took it to the principal, who then talked to the cafeteria staff.
“I was a bit grossed out about it, it made me a bit uneasy,” York said Tuesday. “When we opened it, I was a bit in shock to be honest. … That’s my first time encountering that.”
Dianna Choate, director of food services at MCS, said her staff called the manufacturer as soon as they saw the package. The cheese arrived at the school in individual, sealed packages and was within the expiration date, she said.
She said they opened several other containers and didn’t find another molded one, but threw them all away as a precaution.
The district is in the process of outsourcing its cafeteria staff to a national food service company, Chartwells. MCS spokesperson Ana Pichardo confirmed “this has nothing to do with Chartwells.” The company is set to fully take over operations after spring break.
Jammie Bane, a Delaware County Health department administrator, said the situation was brought to the department’s attention and is being investigated. Although the investigation is ongoing, Bane said he personally felt that it was not the schools’ fault because the product came prepackaged from the manufacturer.
“I feel it’s a shame that MCS is being made out negatively for something that could occur anywhere, at any time, whether a school, business, or personal home,” Bane said via email. “An incident occurring does not point towards a trend, and does not point towards the schools not caring or not taking actions in an effort to ensure it doesn’t occur again. As a matter of fact, our local schools excel at food safety.”
This isn’t the first time pictures of inedible food at Muncie Community Schools have been on social media. During a school board meeting last month, when the board was considering hiring Chartwells, board member Kathy Carey said she was “appalled” at pictures of rotten food that had been shared with her on social media.
Two texts. That’s all it takes to avoid potential stomach pains in Evanston, Ill.
Or at least, that was the goal behind an endeavor that pairs the city’s restaurant inspection scores on Yelp with text message alerts for diners. When the SMS program launched early in 2015 it was a quiet release. In fact, Erika Storlie, Evanston’s deputy manager, described the undertaking as more of a four-month side project than anything else.
The city had just completed a project with Yelp to feed restaurant inspection scores to the review site and wanted to investigate joining the scores with its 311 non-emergency texting app. The problem was, Evanston’s 311 app required a person on the other end to retrieve or record data and submit replies.
“So then, that began the exploration of, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be cool if we could text the restaurant name to 311 and automatically get the inspection score back?’” Storlie said. “It kind of came from the fact we were using these two different types of technologies and we wanted to marry them.”
Whether it’s Evanston’s Kafein coffee house on Chicago Avenue or the Peckish Pig on Howard Street, finding scores is simple. Diners just text “food” to the city’s 311 number, and after a prompt, enter a restaurant name and they’re returned the recent score and inspection date.
It’s simple and much easier than Yelp’s mobile app, which compels users to tap and swipe their way to a restaurant’s “More Info” tab and deep dive through a list of miscellaneous information.
Since Yelp and the texting services launched, Evanston officials said there’s an interest in tracking how public scoring influences health inspections.
No one’s Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account is an even remotely accurate representation of their lives, because the overall point of social media is to craft likability; you post things you’ve determined other people might want to see. (Whether or not you are old enough to instinctively understand this surely influenced your level of surprise around this recent, viral “story” about a teenage Instagram model telling it like it is.)
There’s a veritable traffic jam of interesting case studies at this intersection of intimacy and bullsh*t. But today I’d like to pay homage to one in particular: The undercelebrated world of government social media accounts.
No, I’m not talking about President Obama getting a personal Facebook account. Of course Obama got Facebook. No one cares. I’m talking here about what the conversation must have sounded like in the office the day the USDA Food Safety program decided it needed a social media presence through which to share tips for proper poultry preparation.
A brief spin through this Twitter feed shows you the USDA Food Safety Social Media Person making very earnest work of what Social Media People are supposed to do: He or she jumps on trending topics, name-checks celebrities and the pop culture events du jour, and gets in line with holiday-themed and otherwise seasonally appropriate content.
Underlying the patently insane tone of most of these tweets is this blanket assumption that every business, every organization that wants to be successful absolutely must have social media accounts. That’s where the kids are, after all — might as well meet ’em where they live and teach ’em a thing or two about proper meat temperatures while you’re at it!
The question of whether anyone has actually been saved from foodborne illness via tweet is, on the other hand, surely up for debate. Is a guy who doesn’t know to wash his hands after handling raw chicken really a guy who’s following USDA Food Safety on Twitter? Is an irony-appreciating millennial who might not otherwise be open to messaging about listeria going to sit up and pay attention because of the hashtag #Sharknado3?
The official Instagram account of the TSA, meanwhile, takes a more detached stance. This account delivers to its 374,000 loyal followers a mostly objective window into the assorted grab-bag of concealed knives, guns and narcotics the governmental body confiscates daily from travelers at airports all over the country.
Also, portraits of cute drug-sniffing TSA dogs.
Sometimes the photos are accompanied by tips and information about which items, exactly, are kosher to carry onto an aircraft (hint: no knives, guns, or narcotics), but mostly this account seems to operate from a place of gleeful voyeurism: Someone thought they were gonna get that onto a plane?
Connecting with customers is a key aim of social media, and these posts do that, to be sure — but the wrench in these interactions is that federal agencies don’t have customers. We’re not choosing the USDA Food Safety regulations over some other available option; we don’t compare prices and decide to get searched by the TSA, specifically, when we fly. So why do they care if we like them?
Okay, so likability might be the wrong noun here — we could say their primary motive is to simply humanize an otherwise sterile, standardized and thoroughly regimented chunk of government, and to show that they are in fact performing a useful function; in the case of the TSA, especially, you’re talking about an organization with whom most of the American populace positively dreads interaction. Yes, they’re helping to keep us safe. They’re also basically the dentists of the government world — ones that can get you thrown in jail. (Related: The U.S. Border Patrol’s Twitter feed is similar, but methier.)
So: Is it working? Unlike brand loyalty, which can be measured by what products we actually purchase following a social media interaction, there’s pretty much no way to track whether John Doe is feeling more warmly toward his TSA agent during a full-body search at SFO than he did prior to following the agency on Instagram. And, again, it’s not exactly going to affect the TSA’s bottom line.
What we’re left with, then, is a snapshot of a specific moment in our collective understanding of social media’s purpose as it evolves. Side by side with landmark social movements like Black Lives Matter — which arguably coalesced and gained steam predominantly in the online world, with an aim of affecting real change in the tangible one — we have brick-and-mortar agencies that perform self-evident functions feeling obvious pressure to contribute something, anything, to the jumble of self-promotion and online noise that is social media, regardless of the value. No matter if a Twitter feed makes sense for your organization: Does your organization even exist, if it doesn’t tweet? It’s a vignette that I think will become more telling with time, as the first generation that has never known a world without Twitter or Instagram comes of age, and as businesses (hopefully) learn to wield social media as a tool without embarrassing themselves(or us) anymore than they already have.
In the meantime, if they’re going to post it, we’re going to enjoy it. And hey: once we surgically remove our palms from our faces, we might even learn something.
And now, the U.S. government’s definition of social media (check your brain at the door):
Social media are web or mobile based third-party platforms that facilitate interaction and engagement among individuals in a network or virtual community. Social media offers a participatory environment and includes user-generated content such as videos, photos, videos, microblogs, blogs, and wikis.
Scope and Applicability
Federal agencies utilize social media platforms to engage with the public and to extend the reach of messages beyond traditional email notifications and websites. It is vital that a policy be created and implemented to ensure the Agency is appropriately represented in this space. The FDA encourages the use of social media technologies to enhance communication, collaboration, and information exchange in support of FDA’s mission to protect and promote public health. This policy applies to FDA employees, contractors, and other personnel acting in an official capacity when using social media to communicate with the public regarding FDA-related matters:
Using accounts that the FDA maintains on third-party platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) or,
In forums or blogs where FDA does not have an official presence (e.g. replying to comments in a blog post where FDA was a guest blogger)
(For discussion on the personal use of social media, please see “Personal Use of Social Media by FDA Employees and Contractors” on page 4). FDA-related matters are topics or issues that relate to (1) data or information only available to the social-media user through his or her employment at FDA, (2) products within FDA’s jurisdiction, (3) analyses of FDA programs, policies, regulations, actions or initiatives, or (4) positions or opinions that could reasonably be perceived to reflect FDA’s view on issues within its jurisdiction. This policy does not supersede or replace existing legal obligations in effect. Roles and Responsibilities The Office of External Affairs (OEA) Web and Digital Media Staff and Office of Information Management and Technology (OIMT) are jointly responsible for ensuring that the FDA’s use of social media complies with Federal laws, policies, and best practices. Office of External Affairs:
Develops the overall communications strategy and priorities for the Agency.
OEA Web & Digital Media Staff (OEA Web):
Develops policy and procedures for social media use in consultation with OIMT.
Develops the social media strategy for OEA.
Provides oversight for all social media activities in the Agency.
Reviews/authorizes all social media channel/account requests for the Agency. Authorization is based on the request meeting Federal/FDA requirements and providing a social media strategy and social media plan.
Reviews all Agency procurements and contracts, including Terms of Service (TOS) agreements, related to social media tools and services to ensure necessity and reduce duplication.
Coordinates and manages the Agency’s primary social media channels (currently Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter account @US_FDA, and Pinterest).
Leads the monthly meeting of the FDA Social Media Working Group.
Serves as the Agency liaison for social media to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Digital Communications Division and GSA Social Media Community of Practice.
Office of Information Management and Technology:
Applies the requirements of this policy in its functions of providing appropriate Agency-wide web technology services and security, including technical assistance, to program offices.
Centers/Offices:
Prior to initiating social media accounts or procurement actions and contracts, Centers/Offices meet with OEA Web.
Develops the social media strategy for the Center/Office and ensures that it aligns with Agency priorities, their office or center communications strategy, and is coordinated with OEA Web. The strategy should include why social media is being used to meet the stated goals. The social media strategy must be submitted to OEA Web for review.
Develops social media plan in order to most effectively implement and manage the Center/Office’s social media presence including best practices, guidelines for consistency, how these mechanisms will support the goals outlined in the social media strategy.
The social media plan must be submitted to OEA Web for review.
Completes a privacy impact assessment and operates in compliance with HHS and the FDA’s social media policies.
Coordinates with and contributes content to OEA Web for posting on the FDA’s Agency-wide social media channels (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, @US_FDA, Pinterest).
Assists with the dissemination of information on the FDA’s social media policies, guidelines, and best practices within the Center/Office.
Follows approved procedures for collecting and managing records associated with any social media accounts owned by the Center/Office.
Office of the Chief Counsel (OCC):
Provides legal advice relating to the web and social media.
Office of Operations, Division of Ethics and Integrity:
Oversees ethics requirements for FDA employees, including requirements pertaining to the use of social media.
Office of Information Management (OIM), Records Management Staff:
Oversees records management requirements for the FDA, including requirements pertaining to web records.
Personal Use of Social Media by FDA Employees and Contractors
FDA recognizes the right of employees to express their personal views via social media and encourages employees to use social media to share information that may benefit the public health, consistent with the following.
Principles, guidelines, and standards of conduct that apply to FDA employees in their official duties may apply to employee participation in social media, even in their personal capacity. For example, employees are bound by the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, the conflict of interest statutes, the Hatch Act, 5 U.S.C. §§7321-7326,1 and the FDA Policy on Use of Government Electronic Equipment and Systems, FDA SMG 3140.1.2 Moreover, employees must understand that non-public information (e.g., personal privacy information, trade secrets, confidential commercial information, or information subject to government privilege) may not be conveyed via social media unless its release to the public is lawful and has been authorized by FDA management in accordance with the law.
To use social media in his or her personal capacity, an employee does not need to obtain permission or approval from supervisors or agency management and does not need to obtain outside activity ethics clearance pursuant to the HHS Supplemental Standards of Ethical Conduct at 5 CFR § 5501.106(d).
However, the ethical restrictions on receipt of compensation, disclosure of nonpublic information, and improper use of government title or official authority still apply to this activity.
She said she bought the chicken nuggets from ALDI and had contacted the store about the incident.
An ALDI spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they were investigating the matter.
Any mummy’s that have bought chicken nuggets from Aldi please be careful,’ she wrote.
‘This is what I found in one tonight.
‘I have contacted Aldi but just want to warn people.’
Many people said it was not ALDI’s ‘fault’, but the suppliers.
Except ALDI chooses their suppliers.
An ALDI spokesthingy said: “ALDI Australia is committed to providing our customers with safe products of the highest quality.
“We take any concerns with our products seriously, logging and monitoring all reports to ensure we track any potential trends.
“ALDI places high expectations on our suppliers to ensure they provide products that are manufactured to the highest possible food safety standards. Only after they meet our stringent criteria are they added to our range of exclusive brands.
“All production facilities of ALDI food and beverage products and pet food products are required to be certified to a Global Food Safety Initiative recognised standard.
assessments of all products.
“We also conduct regular audits to ensure supplier compliance with our high standards.”
As a supplement to or extension of methods used to determine trends in foodborne illness over time, we propose the use of Internet search metrics.
We compared Internet query data for foodborne illness syndrome–related search terms from the most popular 5 Korean search engines using Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service inpatient stay data for 26 International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, codes for foodborne illness in SouthKorea during 2010–2012. We used time-series analysis with Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) models. Internet search queries for “food poisoning” correlated most strongly with foodborne illness data (r = 0.70, p<0.001); furthermore, “food poisoning” queries correlated most strongly with the total number of inpatient stays related to foodborne illness during the next month (β = 0.069, SE 0.017, p<0.001).
This approach, using the SARIMA model, could be used to effectively measure trends over time to enhance surveillance of foodborne illness in South Korea.
Emerging Infectious Diseases, Volume 21, Number 11—November 2015
Research studies show that social media may be valuable tools in the disease surveillance toolkit used for improving public health professionals’ ability to detect disease outbreaks faster than traditional methods and to enhance outbreak response.
A social media work group, consisting of surveillance practitioners, academic researchers, and other subject matter experts convened by the International Society for Disease Surveillance, conducted a systematic primary literature review using the PRISMA framework to identify research, published through February 2013, answering either of the following questions:
Can social media be integrated into disease surveillance practice and outbreak management to support and improve public health?
Can social media be used to effectively target populations, specifically vulnerable populations, to test an intervention and interact with a community to improve health outcomes?
Examples of social media included are Facebook, MySpace, microblogs (e.g., Twitter), blogs, and discussion forums. For Question 1, 33 manuscripts were identified, starting in 2009 with topics on Influenza-like Illnesses (n = 15), Infectious Diseases (n = 6), Non-infectious Diseases (n = 4), Medication and Vaccines (n = 3), and Other (n = 5). For Question 2, 32 manuscripts were identified, the first in 2000 with topics on Health Risk Behaviors (n = 10), Infectious Diseases (n = 3), Non-infectious Diseases (n = 9), and Other (n = 10).
Conclusions
The literature on the use of social media to support public health practice has identified many gaps and biases in current knowledge. Despite the potential for success identified in exploratory studies, there are limited studies on interventions and little use of social media in practice. However, information gleaned from the articles demonstrates the effectiveness of social media in supporting and improving public health and in identifying target populations for intervention. A primary recommendation resulting from the review is to identify opportunities that enable public health professionals to integrate social media analytics into disease surveillance and outbreak management practice.
Using social media for actionable disease surveillance and outbreak management: a systematic literature review
PLoS ONE 10(10): e0139701
Lauren E. Charles-Smith, Tera L. Reynolds, Mark A. Cameron, Mike Conway, Eric H. Y. Lau, Jennifer M. Olsen, Julie A. Pavlin, Mika Shigematsu, Laura C. Streichert, Katie J. Suda, Courtney D. Corley
“Our school meals are healthy, nutritious and safe. And food safety is our top priority,” says Sherrie Johnson, spokeswoman for Prince George’s County Public Schools.
The student, Tamera Perry, a senior at Friendly High School in Fort Washington, made her complaints about school food public. Other students took to social media, posting pictures including undercooked hamburgers and moldy sandwich rolls.
But Johnson insists most of the pictures are of food from other school districts.
“We actually met with members of our Food and Nutrition Team [Tuesday] morning, and we examined the photos and they were quite clear: some of those are not ours. We could tell by the color of the food tray and we don’t use milk cartons — we have bottled milk,” Johnson says.
Among the complaints the girl made to Fox5 was that the Rojo Fiesta Pizza she was served Friday, Sept. 11, “wasn’t pizza at all, it was disgusting.”
Johnson says there’s a reason the pizza looked different.
“This is a new product this year. It’s a vegetarian pizza in which mashed kidney beans and cheese are part of the protein source,” Johnson says.
A few weeks ago, NBC Los Angeles released an interactive map with confirmed food poisoning cases in L.A. county over the last 18 months. The map was published as a public service, so consumers know which restaurants to possibly avoid. But does this information really help consumers avoid food poisoning?
“We’re only able to associate 25 cases each year [in L.A.] where we’ve had an outbreak that is more than a couple of people, and we’re able to verify the restaurant,” Bellamo said. “This is a big problem. It’s really under-reported, and our methods for actually determining whether or not restaurants are causing foodborne illnesses aren’t perfected yet. They’re nowhere near being perfected.”
The issue of concern is the collection of data. Right now, tips of potential contamination are collected through complaints people send to the office. Unfortunately, the information is few and far between. (Seriously, when was the last time you even considered calling the department after a particularly queasy meal?) So, rather than waiting for tips to hit their desks, officials are looking for ways to obtain it themselves.
“The use of social media is vital,” Bellamo said. He mentions a recent investigation where an investigator logged onto Yelp and found a number of complaints directed at a facility. The investigator contacted the reviewers and built the case from there. This is one way of using social media to further investigations, but also a strategy that’s far from perfected. “A lot of information in social media is not very useful, some is not credible, but there are nuggets in there,” Bellamo said. “If we found a way to selectively screen certain words or certain locations, there could be some real value there.” (Other cities have already begun using Twitter to identify outbreaks, which Bellamo believes will soon be part of L.A.’s efforts as well.)
One thing consumers shouldn’t do is simply trust the grade letter on the front window.
“It represents a snapshot in time,” Bellamo said. “That letter grade reflects the last inspection, which took place over the course of a couple of hours. You can’t look at just the letter grade.” Bellamo wants to change the current system, so that instead of simply showing how the last inspection went, to make it include an average of the last six inspections. “Good and bad days can happen to the best and poorest of restaurants,” he said. “An average score would be a lot more indicative of how that restaurant actually operates.”
The food service at Memorial University in St. John’s, N.L. is looking into complaints of spoiled meals, after photos of mouldy and raw products allegedly served at a campus dining hall were posted to social media.
A collection of photos and complaints were posted online Monday, alleging that the students were being served spoiled, unsafe food. The photos include images of a fly on a taco plate, undercooked pork chops, and a mouldy lemon.
The author of the lengthy post complained that students living in residence are forced to purchase meal plans that cost between $2,200 and $2,300 per semester, but the food being served to them is not edible.
According to the post, the school’s dining services are now being handled by Aramark, a U.S.-based food services company.
“Over the course of this year, every meal is a gamble,” the post read. “The only truly safe foods which pose no threat of food poisoning/disgusting experiences are toasts and cereals. I personally have had uncooked eggs, raw cod fish, uncooked chicken breasts/chicken pot pie, food with hair baked in, and several other equally disgusting occurrences.”
The lengthy post also included complaints that were posted to the MUN Dining Services Facebook page, and responses from the page administrators.
An online petition has also been created, calling on the university to enforce higher food quality and health standards at the dining hall.
In response to the complaints, a statement was posted Wednesday to the MUN Dining Services Facebook page, stating that the dining services department is “very concerned” about the images posted to social media.
“We have brought in a team of food safety experts to assess our operations and ensure that we are providing a positive, safe and healthy dining environment for students, faculty, visitors and staff,” the statement said.
A town hall meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, for students to voice their concerns about the university’s food services.
Why is the university responding with an antiquated town hall meeting instead of aggressively circulating proof of the safety of the food? Oh, maybe that doesn’t exist.
While cities like Guelph, Ontario, are being dragged into the age of public disclosure, countries like Singapore have been training and using restaurant patrons as gumshoes for a decade to help public health types identify possible infractions through the use of cell phones (with nifty cameras).
Local governments increasingly are turning to social media to alert the public to health violations and to nudge establishments into cleaning up their acts. A few cities are even mining users’ comments to track foodborne illnesses or predict which establishments are likely to have sanitation problems.
“For consumers, posting inspection information on Yelp is a good thing because they’re able to make better, informed decisions about where to eat,” said Michael Luca, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in the economics of online businesses. “It also holds restaurants more accountable about cleanliness.”
In recent years, dozens of city and county health departments have been posting restaurant inspection results on government websites to share with the public. Turning to Yelp or other social media, or using crowd-sourced information to increase public awareness, is the next logical step, some officials say.
“Yelp is a window into the restaurant. The restaurateurs don’t want a bad (health) score on Yelp. They’ll be more attentive about getting the restaurants cleaned up and safer,” said Rajiv Bhatia, former environmental health director for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
“It’s also valuable because it allows the public to see the workings of a government agency, and puts some pressure on the agency to do its job,” said Bhatia, a physician who is now a public health consultant.
The National Restaurant Association, the industry’s trade group, said that while it supports transparency and consumers’ access to information, it worries that because inspection standards differ from city to city, Yelp users might not be familiar with rating terminology and therefore could draw incorrect conclusions.
David Matthews, the association’s general counsel, also said the timing of postings is crucial because restaurants often correct findings and generate different ratings after a re-inspection.
Luther Lowe, Yelp’s director of public policy said putting health scores and inspection results in an accessible place where consumers already are searching for restaurant information makes a lot more sense than “relying on those clunky (health department) dot-gov websites.”
Nobody’s fault.
