Tag Archives: Sprouts

Sprouts still suck: FDA says do not eat Evergreen Produce brand alfalfa sprouts or spicy sprouts

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The FDA is warning consumers not to eat alfalfa sprouts or spicy sprouts from plastic bags labeled “Evergreen Produce” or “Evergreen Produce Inc.”

The sprouts are possibly linked to 20 reported cases, including one hospitalization, of Salmonella Enteritidis in Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota and Washington State.

The elderly, infants and those with impaired immune systems are more likely to have a severe illness from Salmonella infection.

Consumers, retailers and others who have alfalfa sprouts or spicy sprouts in plastic bags labeled “Evergreen Produce” or “Evergreen Produce Inc.” should discard them in a sealed container so people and animals, including wild animals, cannot eat them.

Where did the sprout seeds originate

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As the death toll in the German E. coli O104 outbreak reached 48 and the sick approached 4,000, investigators have provided no clues on a key question: where did the seeds for sprouting originate?

Does anyone know?

"Investigations are ongoing, but the first findings suggest that locally grow sprouts might be involved," the WHO said in a statement Monday of the outbreak. It said that, of eight French cases so far, three of them carried the same bacteria strains as in Germany.

"Intensive traceback is under way to identify a possible common source of the German and French sprout seeds," it added. But "other potential vehicles are also under investigation

There was "no direct supply relationship" between the farm in Germany at the center of the outbreak and the British company, Thompson & Morgan, German spokeswoman Bansbach said.

Paul Hansord, managing director of Thompson & Morgan, said last night that it was “highly unlikely” that seeds supplied by his firm were to blame for the outbreak and insisted he had no plans to recall the products from shops and customers who have already bought them.

Environmental health officers have taken samples of the seeds from the company’s premises in Ipswich, Suffolk, so they can be tested for any trace of the E coli bug. The results are expected within four days.

“We have sold many hundreds of thousands of packets of sprouting seeds to home gardeners for several years without any reported problems.
“In particular we have sold around 100,000 packets of sprouting seeds in France from more than 500 outlets just since last November.

“All of the seeds came from the same batch and have been on sale in France for many months so if there had been a problem with them, we would have expected it to have emerged earlier.”

That’s nice. Where do the seeds come from? And are they circling the globe so that more outbreaks can be expected?
 

UK seeds linked to E coli outbreak

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This is what not to say during an outbreak of foodborne illness.

The U.K. Times reports that Britain’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) was investigating possible links between vegetable seeds supplied by a British company and an outbreak of E coli in south-west France.

French authorities have identified Thompson & Morgan, a British mail order seed and plant company, as being the supplier of seeds from which rocket, fenugreek and mustard vegetable sprouts were grown and served at a party at a creche near Bordeaux.

Ipswich-based Thomson & Morgan told the BBC in a statement it was "highly unlikely" the seeds were responsible.

The company had sold "thousands of packets and have had no reported problems." It was more likely that "the way that they were used and handled" had caused the contamination.

What Thomson & Morgan may want to say is a detailed accounting of where the sprout seeds are grown and all the fabulous food safety steps that are taken by the producers and distributors, including test results of germinated seeds to verify the controls are working.

And the Brits just announced sprouted seeds should only be eaten if they have been cooked thoroughly until steaming hot throughout; they should not be eaten raw.

Steaming hot, piping hot, whatever that means. And does not warn against the risk of cross-contamination while handling those little natural plants in a home or food service kitchen. Get rid of them.

A table of international sprout outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.
 

Irish say do not eat raw sprouts

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The Food Safety Authority of Ireland gets it right, and said this morning, don’t eat sprouts.

The German outbreak of E. coli O104 that has killed 45 and sickened some 3,800 has now spread to the Bordeaux region of southern France and sickened at least 10 people.

The N.Y. Times reports this morning what food safety types have been saying all along: a common supplier sprout seed might be the ultimate source of the E. coli O104 and if those seeds are still in circulation, other outbreaks could occur.

William E. Keene, a senior epidemiologist at the Oregon Public Health Division, said it was urgent to find out if the seeds used by the German grower had come from the same source as the seeds linked to the French cases.

At least five of the French cases involved kidney failure, and tests on two of those people showed they were infected with the O104:H4 strain. The eight people infected in the Bègles area were adults, age 31 to 78. In addition, two children were sickened in another town and they were presumed also to have E. coli infections, although it was not clear if they had the same strain.

The source of the bean sprouts or the seeds from which they were sprouted is not known at this time and is the subject of ongoing investigation. The implicated bean sprouts are unlikely to have originated in the German organic bean sprout farm as this farm is closed and it is known not to have exported bean sprouts.

This raises the possibility that contaminated seeds are on the market. Therefore as a precautionary measure, and until investigations are concluded, FSAI advises, for the time being that consumers should not to eat raw bean sprouts or other sprouted seeds and caterers should not serve raw bean sprouts or other sprouted seeds.

Who knows what kind of crap is sprouting by your kitchen windowsill or in your herb garden.

Given the number of dead and dying related to this outbreak, the traceback has been an enormous failure.

A table of international sprout outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.
 

Don’t eat sprouts: Idaho version, 19 sick with salmonella

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Idaho state public health officials are investigating a number of salmonella cases
believed to be connected to the consumption of alfalfa sprouts.

The investigation is ongoing and includes 19 ill persons from northern Idaho, eastern Washington and western Montana.

Of the persons reported with salmonella infection linked to the outbreak, six have reported consumption of sprouts obtained from a northern Idaho grower, Evergreen Produce, located in Moyie Springs, Idaho.

A listing of international raw sprout outbreaks is available at:
http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.
 

French say it’s British sprout seeds: how about don’t eat sprouts

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Who wouldn’t want to hang out in Bordeaux, southwestern France. We did on our way back from the ocean-and-lake-side retreat of Maubuisson a few years ago and had probably the best lunch any friends could ever serve.

Unfortunately, 10 cases of E. coli poisoning have emerged in Bordeaux in the past few days, linked to raw spouts, and the same strain that walloped Germany.

Early on in the German outbreak, a U.S. science-type told me, it’s the seed that’s probably infected and more outbreaks will appear; that’s what happened in the U.S. over the past 15 years.

At least six out of the 10 people were found to have eaten the sprouts at a local fete in Begres, southeast of Bordeaux, said a police statement, citing health authorities.

Health authorities said tests had shown two of the patients were infected by the same potentially deadly strain of the disease as that found recently in Germany, but did not say whether there was a link between the two outbreaks.

Frederic Lefebvre, secretary of state for consumer affairs, said the sprouts were purchased at a Jardiland store and were produced by Thompson & Morgan based in Ipswich, England.

The minister called for the company’s sprouts, mustard and roquette to be withdrawn from sale while an analysis was conducted.

Lefebvre also recommended that "consumers who bought these same products not use them," he said in a statement.

Madeleine Ferrieres on German sprout outbreak: the fear of dying poisoned has been around a long time

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That’s my rough translation.

Madeleine Ferrieres’ 2002 book, Mad Cow Sacred Cow is my favorite food safety book. And she’s French. So that puts me in good with Amy.

As the death toll from E. coli O104 reached 43 in Europe, with 3,688 people sick in Germany, including 823 suffering from hemolytic uremic syndrome and an additional 114 cases in other countries, Madeleine Ferrières, professor of modern history at the University of Avignon told Le Point, “There is a curious game of ping-pong where the consumer discards the health authorities and the authorities send us back to our own behavior.”

That’s fairly astute, even if the translation might be slightly off.

There’s lots of media noise about this new strain of E. coli O104, but no one seems to be asking questions of the farming practices: if this organic sprout farm was the source of the E. coli O104, how did it get there? Was the farm fertilizing with night soil (human crap); was the irrigation water on the farm ever tested; were the seeds contaminated and another outbreak will show up somewhere?

As Ferrieres wrote in her book,

"All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates. … And we are often too blinded by this amnesia to view our present food situation clearly. This amnesia is very convenient. It allows us to reinvent the past and construct a complaisant, retrospective mythology."
 

2 unusual traits blended in Germany’s E. coli strain

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Gina Kolata of The New York Times writes in tomorrow’s paper that the E. coli O104 that killed 40 people in Germany over the past month have a highly unusual combination of two traits and that may be what made the outbreak among the deadliest in recent history.

One trait was a toxin, called Shiga, that causes severe illness, including bloody diarrhea and, in some patients, kidney failure. The other is the ability of this strain to gather on the surface of an intestinal wall in a dense pattern that looks like a stack of bricks, possibly enhancing the bacteria’s ability to pump the toxin into the body.

With the two traits combined in one strain of E. coli bacteria, “now they are highly virulent,” said Dr. Matthew K. Waldor, an infectious-disease expert at Harvard Medical School who was not connected with the new research.

The new findings, by a team led by Helge Karch of the University of Münster, are being published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases. They result from two days of fevered work to characterize the bacteria causing the illness that raced through Germany in May.

Experts in the United States praised the German scientists’ work. The work and the entire outbreak are “a real game-changer,” said Dr. Philip I. Tarr, a professor of pediatrics and expert in gut infections at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. John Mekalanos of Harvard called the paper “extremely important.”

Dr. Karch, a well-known expert in E. coli, infections, got the first stool samples on May 25. Over the next few days, more and more samples flooded his lab, 50 to 100 a day. “You can’t imagine,” he said.

He isolated the strain that was causing the illness and analyzed it to determine that it was strain O104:H4. Then he began investigating the bacteria’s DNA. First he determined what kind of Shiga toxin it made. Then he did adherence tests and found that the bacteria stuck to surfaces in the bricklike pattern. It is an unmistakable phenomenon: “Once you see it you will never forget it,” Dr. Karch said.
He posted the results and provided detailed information so most labs that had a suspicious stool sample could analyze it immediately and see if the stool contained O104:H4 bacteria. Until he posted that information, most labs would be at a loss. The strain is so rare that there are no standard tests to find it.

Dr. Karch also realized that the O104:H4 strain had been seen before in bloody diarrhea and kidney failure, but only on rare occasions — first in Germany in 2001, then sporadically in a few other countries. And in each outbreak, at most a few people were ill.

Dr. Karch thinks it smoldered in human populations, causing mild illnesses in most and occasionally causing severe disease. Then, somehow, it was passed to the bean sprouts by someone who harbored the bacteria. And since sprouts are eaten raw, they were highly infectious.

He himself does not like sprouts, he says, though his wife does. Aware that sprouts have always been “a high-risk food” for bacterial illnesses, he will not touch them unless they have been cooked.

Commercially grown sprouts risky: UBC study

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Full-time hockey goon Kevin Allen (right, exactly as shown), who unfortunately lives in Vancouver and had to tolerate the indignity of the Boston Bruins stealing the Stanley Cup (that’s hockey) has decided to drown his misery by focusing on his real job and talking about the risks of raw sprouts.

He was even nice enough to mention me, although he had no trouble shooting pucks off my head, skating by, and going, uh, sorry.

Didn’t care, the equipment was better and you don’t score goals shooting off the goalie’s head.

Although it can be unnerving.

Sorta like the faith-based food safety system that has evolved around fresh produce, especially sprouts.

Randy Shore of the Vancouver Sun reports that a University of British Columbia.-led study of microorganisms on domestic produce found detectable levels of bacteria on 93 per cent of samples of sprouts taken from grocery stores across Canada.

Sprouts are grown in a warm, moist environment for three to five days, a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, said lead researcher Kevin Allen, a UBC food microbiologist, who likens the risk associated with eating commercially grown sprouts to consuming uncooked seafood.

Although the enterococcus bacteria detected on the sprouts poses no direct threat to health, the growing conditions that allow it to thrive can also encourage the growth of more harmful bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella.

Nearly 80 per cent of sprout samples — including bean, alfalfa, broccoli, garlic and onion — showed microbial loads too numerous to count. Herbs, salad greens and spinach showed far fewer positive results and generally lower microbial loads.

Allen’s produce testing revealed that seven per cent of fresh herb samples and two per cent of sprout samples contained a generic non-deadly form of E. coli, while about half of all samples of herbs, spinach, sprouts and leafy greens contained detectable levels of coliform, which may indicate fecal contamination of soil or water.

The distribution and concentration of enterococcus in the sprouts was much higher than expected, Allen said. Samples of produce were collected from grocery stores in five Canadian cities, including Vancouver, in March.

Kansas State University food safety professor Doug Powell, a collaborator with Allen, has recorded 38 outbreaks of illness associated with the consumption of raw sprouts over the past 20 years.

“From a consumer’s perspective, if produce is contaminated when it comes into the household, there is almost nothing they can do short of cooking it that will reduce or eliminate that risk,” said Allen.

But a note from the old prof to the former student: publish before press release.
 

Sprouts sicken many, even if it’s ‘impossible to happen’

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This is the only advice I’ve given my daughters: keep your stick on the ice, don’t take wooden nickels, and when someone says, “trust me,” immediately distrust that person.

When a sprout grower involved in an outbreak that sickened 140 people says, “it’s next to impossible for anything to happen," giggle knowingly and walk away.

Tiny Greens’ Organic Farm in Urbana, Illinois, the source of a Jimmy John’s related sprout outbreak that sickened at least 140, talks a lot on its web page about being sustainable, natural, organic and using a crap-load of crap in their sprout production.

“The farm is certified by the Global Organic Alliance, which helps with finding a supply of organic seeds, which can be surprisingly hard to acquire. We grow the seeds in compost that we create ourselves, made of a mixture of year old woodchips and leftover sprouts. We have never had to find an outside source for compost. As long as you keep the sprouts healthy, there is no need for using chemicals. Healthy growing materials also mean an end product that is higher in vitamins, minerals and enzymes.”

Why a national sandwich chain like Jimmy John’s would buy an identified high-risk product – raw sprouts – from such an outfit is beyond me; it’s their business to lose.

Yesterday, the owner of Tiny Greens’ went on the PR offensive, telling The News-Gazatte he has taken several corrective actions to address food safety concerns raised by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Why didn’t he do that previously, what with all the raw sprout outbreaks over the past two decades?

"After the changes we made, it’s next to impossible for anything to happen," said Bill Bagby Jr., owner of Tiny Greens in Urbana.

According to the FDA, a sample of compost runoff from outside the Urbana farm turned up a salmonella strain "indistinguishable" from the one responsible for the outbreak.

After agency inspectors noted that Tiny Greens employees, who were wearing boots, pushed carts through compost water runoff outside the facility and did not sanitize boots or carts before returning through a greenhouse door to the production area, Bagby said now the outside carts and boots never come inside the production facility, and inside boots and carts never go outside the facility. The greenhouse door also is now for exiting the building only.

Bagby consulted with an epidemiologist to help him throughout the process, and a new food safety manager is now on staff.