The alleged drug-smuggling operation was discovered at the cargo facility at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in southern Texas on Feb. 16, a release says. Officers found 906 pounds of the drug concealed in a trailer, CBP says.
A 42-year-old man who is a Mexican citizen was arrested in connection with the seizure, according to the release.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, 87 percent of methamphetamine seized along the border in the first 11 months of the 2018 fiscal year was caught trying to be smuggled in at legal crossing points.
A new report into Australia’s 2018 strawberry tampering crisis, which caused catastrophic economic damage to the industry, has found food-tracing protocols need to be strengthened.
Lucy Stone of The Sydney Morning Herald reports the report also found that food safety expertise in the horticulture industry was “variable” due to there being many small businesses, with no regulatory or industry oversight particularly for strawberry farmers (uh, I’m right here).
The “fragmented nature” of the sector also complicated matters with no regulation tracking strawberry farm locations during the crisis, and the use of seasonal or contract pickers muddying traceability.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) was commissioned by Health Minister Greg Hunt to review the response to the strawberry contamination crisis, which began on September 9 when a man swallowed a needle hidden inside a strawberry.
Within days more reports had been made to Queensland Health and Queensland Police of similar incidents, sparking copycat actions of needles being hidden in fruit across Australia and New Zealand.
The crisis saw strawberry production nationally grind to a halt, with Queensland growers dumping thousands of tonnes of fruit that could not be sold.
Is there a better approach to both protect and enhance consumer confidence in the wake of an outbreak, tampering, or even allegations of such?
On June 12, 1996, Dr. Richard Schabas, chief medical officer of Ontario (that’s a province in Canada), issued a public health advisory on the presumed link between consumption of California strawberries and an outbreak of diarrheal illness among some 40 people in the Metro Toronto area. The announcement followed a similar statement from the Department of Health and Human Services in Houston, Texas, which was investigating a cluster of 18 cases of cyclospora illness among oil executives.
Turns out it was Guatemalan raspberries, not strawberries, and no one was happy.
The initial, and subsequent, links between cyclospora and strawberries or raspberries in 1996 was based on epidemiology, a statistical association between consumption of a particular food and the onset of disease.
The Toronto outbreak was first identified because some 35 guests attending a May 11, 1996 wedding reception developed the same severe, intestinal illness, seven to 10 days after the wedding, and subsequently tested positive for cyclospora. Based on interviews with those stricken, health authorities in Toronto and Texas concluded that California strawberries were the most likely source. However, attempts to remember exactly what one ate two weeks earlier is an extremely difficult task; and larger foods, like strawberries, are recalled more frequently than smaller foods, like raspberries.
By July 18, 1996, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared that raspberries from Guatemala — which had been sprayed with pesticides mixed with water that could have been contaminated with sewage containing cyclospora — were the likely source of the cyclospora outbreak, which ultimately sickened about 1,000 people across North America. Guatemalan health authorities and producers vigorously refuted the charges. The California Strawberry Commission estimated it lost $15-20 million in reduced strawberry sales.
The California strawberry growers decided the best way to minimize the effects of an outbreak – real or alleged – was to make sure all their growers knew some food safety basics and there was some verification mechanism. The next time someone said, “I got sick and it was your strawberries,” the growers could at least say, “We don’t think it was us, and here’s everything we do to produce the safest product we can.”
There is a lack – a disturbing lack – of on-farm food safety inspection; farmers need to be more aware of the potential for contamination from microbes (from listeria in rockmelon, for example) as well as sabotage.
There is an equally large lack of information to consumers where they buy their produce. What do Australian grocery shoppers know of the food safety regulations applied to the produce sold in their most popular stores? Do such regulations exist? Who can they ask to find the answers?
The Sydney Morning Herald also notes that in the report published on Friday, FSANZ made several recommendations to prevent similar crises in the future, including greater regulation for the industry.
The lack of a peak soft fruits regulatory body left the small Queensland Strawberry Growers Association “inundated with calls”, while national horticulture body Growcom later helping manage communication.
The crisis prompted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to announce legislation to extend the jail time for anyone convicted of food tampering to 15 years.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand made seven recommendations in its final report, including a recommendation that all jurisdictions review food incident response protocols.
A central agency should be engaged to manage national communication in future food tampering incidents, and communication between regulators, health departments and police should be reviewed, the organisation found.
Triggers for “activation and management of intentional contamination of food” under the National Food Incident Response Protocol (NFIRP) should also be reviewed.
This recommendation was despite the NFIRP not being activated during the strawberry contamination issue. The protocol is a national incident response that can be activated by any agency to manage food incidents.
“Due to the unique criminal nature of this case and associated investigation, the protocol was not triggered,” the report said.
The horticulture sector also needs a representative body to “support crisis preparedness and response”, and traceability measures to track food through the sector needed greater work.
“Government and industry should work together to map the current state of play and identify options and tools for enhancing traceability,” the FSANZ report recommended.
A single national website for food tampering should be set up to give the public clear information, the report found.
The report found greater regulation of the horticulture sector was needed and cited the complexity of small farm and distribution operations as making the investigation difficult.
A suggestion that strawberry farms should be fitted with metal detectors also raised concerns about cost and practicality, while tamper-proof packaging risked shortening shelf life, and criticisms about increased use of plastic packaging.
For 20 years, I have been advising fruit and vegetable growers there are risks: Own them: Say what you do, do what you say, and prove it. The best producers or manufacturers can do is diligently manage and mitigate risks and be able to prove such diligence in the court of public opinion; and they’ll do it before the next outbreak.
Charlie Peel of the Australian writes that the woman accused of sparking the nationwide fruit contamination crisis by sticking sewing needles into strawberries will remain behind bars for at least 10 days.
The weird thing in Australia is food safety types won’t go public with what they know when they know it because they are afraid it will upset some British-modeled court case; I say bullshit.
So does all the risk communication literature.
Public needs to know.
Prosecutors opposed the bail application of Caboolture woman My Ut Trinh, 50, who appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court this morning, because they feared she may suffer retribution from those angered by her alleged actions.
Following a two-month police investigation, she was charged on Sunday with seven counts of contamination of goods with intent to cause economic loss.
Ms Trinh, who was born in Vietnam but came to Australia as a refugee 20 years ago, worked at the Berrylicious/Berry Obsession fruit farm in southeast Queensland as a supervisor.
The court heard Ms Trinh was allegedly motivated by spite and revenge when she inserted needles into strawberries between September 2 and 5.
Mr Cridland said the alleged reason for her wanting to seek revenge was “not articulated” by the police.
Arguing for bail, Mr Cridland said the extensive publicity around the case, which included copycat actions throughout Australia, should not influence his client’s ability to be released on bail.
He denied she was a flight risk.
“She has been aware that she has been a person of interest for over two months and she has not changed phone number or address,” he said.
“I might add, other people working on these farms have left the country. She has not.”
Mr Cridland said it was too early to say whether forensic evidence, which found Ms Trinh’s DNA on a contaminated punnet of strawberries in Victoria, was a direct match or a mixed profile.
Prosecutor Cheryl Tesch said bail was “strongly opposed” because there was a “high risk of witnesses being interfered with”.
She said the strawberry farm owner had suffered significant financial loss and reputational damage.
Magistrate Roney said the alleged offending was unusual.
“It is a most peculiar way to go about promoting or agitating a workplace grievance, to sabotage an employer,” she said.
The matter will return to court on November 22.
This is what I wrote when all the unknows were out there.
Last Sunday, Sept. 16, 2018, I had a requested op-ed published in the Sydney Morning Herald. I was a little rusty, so Amy did more than just clean it up, and I haven’t gotten around to posting it until now because there was some medical stuff last week, but all is well and here it is:
My 9-year-old daughter and I were watching the news on Saturday morning and she asked, why would someone put a needle in strawberries?
Some people are not nice.
A couple of years ago a food safety type asked me, what’s the biggest risk to the food supply.
I didn’t hesitate.
Deliberate tampering and food fraud.
Food safety has traditionally been faith-based – especially when it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables. Consumers cannot control how food is handled before it gets to them. This is why consumers need to know their suppliers and know what they are doing to keep people safe.
This latest food tampering scare – 11 cases of contaminanted strawberries reported nationally so far, the first in Sydney on Saturday – makes that clear.
Faith-based food safety sucks. It always has. Risks have always been present. As Madeleine Ferrieres, the author of Mad Cow, Sacred Cow: A History of Food Fears, wrote, “All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates.”
But contemporary consumers forget that contamination risk has always been with us: “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.”
“We still live with the illusion of modernity, with the false idea that what happens to us is new and unbearable,” she has said in an interview.
What’s new is that we have better tools to detect problems. This also presents an opportunity: those who use the best tools should be able to prove their food is safe through testing and brag about it. They can market food safety measures at retail.
The days of faith-based food safety are coming to a protracted close.
There is a lack – a disturbing lack – of on-farm food safety inspection; farmers need to be more aware of the potential for contamination from microbes (from listeria in rockmelon, for example) as well as sabotage.
There is an equally large lack of information to consumers where they buy their produce. What do Australian grocery shoppers know of the food safety regulations applied to the produce sold in their most popular stores? Who can they ask to find the answers?
The best solution is for farmers and retailers to market food safety. If they have a great food safety program they should be promoting it. Consumers can handle more information rather than less.
Douglas Powell is a retired professor of food safety in Canada and the US who now lives in Brisbane. He blogs at barfblog.com
BTW, the Eagles are terribly overrated, but this song has relevance; maybe not to this story, maybe to me.
Last Sunday, Sept. 16, 2018, I had a requested op-ed published in the Sydney Morning Herald. I was a little rusty, so Amy did more than just clean it up, and I haven’t gotten around to posting it until now because there was some medical stuff last week, but all is well and here it is:
My 9-year-old daughter and I were watching the news on Saturday morning and she asked, why would someone put a needle in strawberries?
Some people are not nice.
A couple of years ago a food safety type asked me, what’s the biggest risk to the food supply.
I didn’t hesitate.
Deliberate tampering and food fraud.
Food safety has traditionally been faith-based – especially when it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables. Consumers cannot control how food is handled before it gets to them. This is why consumers need to know their suppliers and know what they are doing to keep people safe.
This latest food tampering scare – 11 cases of contaminanted strawberries reported nationally so far, the first in Sydney on Saturday – makes that clear.
Faith-based food safety sucks. It always has. Risks have always been present. As Madeleine Ferrieres, the author of Mad Cow, Sacred Cow: A History of Food Fears, wrote, “All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates.”
But contemporary consumers forget that contamination risk has always been with us: “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.”
“We still live with the illusion of modernity, with the false idea that what happens to us is new and unbearable,” she has said in an interview.
What’s new is that we have better tools to detect problems. This also presents an opportunity: those who use the best tools should be able to prove their food is safe through testing and brag about it. They can market food safety measures at retail.
The days of faith-based food safety are coming to a protracted close.
There is a lack – a disturbing lack – of on-farm food safety inspection; farmers need to be more aware of the potential for contamination from microbes (from listeria in rockmelon, for example) as well as sabotage.
There is an equally large lack of information to consumers where they buy their produce. What do Australian grocery shoppers know of the food safety regulations applied to the produce sold in their most popular stores? Who can they ask to find the answers?
The best solution is for farmers and retailers to market food safety. If they have a great food safety program they should be promoting it. Consumers can handle more information rather than less.
Douglas Powell is a (sorta?) retired professor of food safety in Canada and the US who now lives in Brisbane. He blogs at barfblog.com.
And in memorandum, Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, the Blues Brothers’ guitarist and longtime blues sideman who died Friday at 88.
Queensland, with its sub-tropical climate, has fabulous produce and seafood.
Even if regulators are a bit dopey about food safety.
Jill Poulson and Tanya Westthorp of the Courier-Mail report health authorities are warning people who have bought strawberries in Queensland, NSW and Victoria to throw the punnets out after several incidents of needles being found in strawberries sold at Woolworths.
Queensland Health and Queensland Police today took the extraordinary step to urge people who bought strawberries across the eastern seaboard in the past week to throw them out after three separate incidents in Queensland and Victoria.
Police suspect the ground-down needles were deliberately planted in the punnets with the culprit intending to cause ‘grievous bodily harm or other objectives’.
The needle allegedly found in strawberries purchased from Woolworths at northside Brisbane. Pic: Supplied.
The contaminated strawberries come from one farm and are sold under the brands ‘Berry Obsession’ and ‘Berry Licious’. They are sold from Woolworths and it’s believed they may also be sold at other stores. A product recall is underway.
It comes as a 21-year-old Burpengary man ended up in hospital after he swallowed part of a needle when he bit into a strawberry bought from Strathpine in Brisbane’s north on Sunday.
Two more incidents in Victoria were confirmed yesterday.
The survival of Salmonella and Escherichia coli O157:H7 on strawberries, basil leaves, and other leafy greens (spinach leaves, lamb and butterhead lettuce leaves, baby leaves, and fresh-cut iceberg lettuce) was assessed at cold (<7°C) and ambient temperatures. All commodities were spot inoculated with E. coli O157:H7 or Salmonella to obtain an initial inoculum of 5 to 6 log and 4 to 5 log CFU/g for strawberries and leafy greens, respectively. Samples were air packed. Strawberries were stored at 4, 10, 15, and 22°C and basil leaves and other leafy greens at 7, 15, and 22°C for up to 7 days (or less if spoiled before).
Both Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 showed a gradual decrease in numbers if inoculated on strawberries, with a similar reduction observed at 4, 10, and 15°C (2 to 3 log after 5 days). However, at 15°C (and 10°C for E. coli O157:H7), the survival experiment stopped before day 7, as die-off of both pathogens below the lower limit of detection was achieved or spoilage occurred.
At 22°C, strawberries were moldy after 2 or 4 days. At that time, a 1- to 2-log reduction of both pathogens had occurred. A restricted die-off (on average 1.0 log) and increase (on average , 0.5 log) of both pathogens on basil leaves occurred after 7 days of storage at 7 and 22°C, respectively. On leafy greens, a comparable decrease as on basil was observed after 3 days at 7°C. At 22°C, both pathogens increased to higher numbers on fresh-cut iceberg and butterhead lettuce leaves (on average 1.0 log), probably due to the presence of exudates. However, by using spot inoculation, the increase was rather limited, probably due to minimized contact between the inoculum and cell exudates.
Avoiding contamination, in particular, at cultivation (and harvest or postharvest) is important, as both pathogens survive during storage, and strawberries, basil, and other leafy green leaves are consumed without inactivation treatment.
Survival of Salmonella and Escherichia coli O157:H7 on strawberries, basil, and other leafy greens during storage
The objective of this study is to determine whether human NoV surrogates, murine norovirus (MNV-1) and Tulane virus (TV), can attach and become internalized and disseminated in strawberries grown in soil.
The soil of growing strawberry plants was inoculated with MNV-1 and TV at a level of 108 PFU/plant. Leaves and berries were harvested over a 14-day period, and the viral titer was determined by plaque assay. Over the course of the study, 31.6% of the strawberries contained internalized MNV-1, with an average titer of 0.81 ± 0.33 log10 PFU/g. In comparison, 37.5% of strawberries were positive for infectious TV, with an average titer of 1.83 ± 0.22 log10 PFU/g. A higher percentage (78.7%) of strawberries were positive for TV RNA, with an average titer of 3.15 ± 0.51 log10 RNA copies/g as determined by real-time reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR).
In contrast, no or little virus internalization and dissemination were detected when TV was inoculated into bell peppers grown in soil.
Collectively, these data demonstrate (i) virally contaminated soils can lead to the internalization of virus via plant roots and subsequent dissemination to the leaf and fruit portions of growing strawberry plants and (ii) the magnitude of internalization is dependent on the type of virus and plant.
Evidence of the Internalization of Animal Caliciviruses via the Roots of Growing Strawberry Plants and Dissemination to the Fruit
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, April 2015, Volume 81, Number 8, doi:10.1128/AEM.03867-14
A total of 14 European Union (EU)-European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries reported 107 cases. Twenty-one cases from six countries were affected by strains of sub-genotype IB harbouring identical RNA sequences, suggesting a common source outbreak.
An international outbreak investigation team interviewed a number of cases with a trawling questionnaire to generate hypotheses on potential exposures. Some of these exposures were further tested in a case–control study based on a more specific questionnaire. Both trawling and case–control questionnaires aimed to collect cases’ vaccination details as well as epidemiological information. Most cases participating in either questionnaire (35/43) had been staying in all-inclusive hotels located along the Red Sea.
The case–control study found cases associated with exposure to strawberries or mango (multivariable analysis p value: 0.04). None of the 43 cases interviewed in any of the two questionnaires had been vaccinated. The most common reasons for non-vaccination was unawareness that HAV vaccination was recommended (23/43, 53%) and perceiving low infection risk in all-inclusive luxury resorts (19/43, 44%). Vaccination had not been recommended to five of the six cases who sought travel medical advice before travelling.
Public health authorities should strongly reinforce measures to remind travellers, travel agencies and healthcare providers of the importance of vaccination before visiting HAV-endemic areas, including Egypt.
Multistate foodborne hepatitis A outbreak among European tourists returning from Egypt– need for reinforced vaccination recommendations, November 2012 to April 2013
Eurosurveillance, Volume 20, Issue 4, 29 January 2015
Sorenne was quick to the fruit at the compact market in Melbourne tonight: 2 punnets of strawberries.
She gets it from her father, who got it from his mother, except the strawberry season in Australia is almost year round, while in Ontario, it’s five weeks.
I do love my berries.
I’m not alone: according to statistics published by the United States Department of Agriculture and cited in the New York Times, percent since 2000.
But if you compare apples and oranges, you’ll find we now eat 9 percent less of each, and 11 percent fewer bananas. The decline in those three mainstays, which still account for 49 percent of the fresh fruit we eat, has made room in our diets for more berries, pineapples (up 99 percent), mangoes (up 42 percent), papayas (up 41 percent), tangerines (up 40 percent), lemons (up 56 percent) and avocados (up 139 percent), which, yes, the agriculture department says are fruit.
per capita consumption of fresh raspberries grew 475 percent from 2000 to 2012, the most recent year for which data are available. Blueberry consumption is up 411 percent, and strawberries are up 60 percent.
Before you pat yourself on the back for your healthy eating habits, you should know you’re probably not eating a lot more fresh fruit in total: The latest reading is 48 pounds per person per year, up just 1
If people are eating more of some kind of fruit, it’s probably because farmers have figured out how to deliver more of it, at higher quality, throughout the year.
Of course, there is the “superfood” factor: Both raspberries and blueberries have been praised for their nutrient value. But Chris Romano, who leads global produce procurement for Whole Foods, attributes the boom in berries largely to taste and availability.
“Techniques in growing raspberries, blueberries and blackberries have gotten much better over the last 15 years,” he said. Growers are planting better breeds of berry, with higher sugar content; they’re using pruning and growing techniques that extend the season, including growing berries inside greenhouse-like structures called tunnels that retain heat; and most important, they’re growing berries in places they didn’t used to, where production is possible at different times of year.
Historically, blueberries needed to be grown in regions that get cold weather for part of the year, because rising temperatures bring the plants out of dormancy. But newer “low-chill” blueberry varieties have helped make berries available all year by expanding production to formerly inappropriate areas like coastal California. That helps make more berries available in months like November.
While the U.S. imports many of its fresh fruits, Australia is its own island.
So much so that on my flight back from Japan the other day I was sitting beside a 21-year-old Japanese kid who was going to pick fresh strawberries in Bundaberg (north of Brisbane), because it was that lucrative (and they probably can’t get locals to do the work).
Food safety, and microbial transmission are increasingly international.
Fruit trade officials plan to submit comments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asking for additional allowances on proposed irrigation water quality standards called for by the Food Safety Modernization Act.
“It’s still complicated and still going to be costly for your grower,” said Chris Schlect, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, a trade group that represents the fruit industry in federal affairs and international trade.
The Food Safety Modernization Act, or FSMA, is a 2011 federal law that mandated sweeping changes to the entire food production system to prevent the spread of food-borne illnesses, which kill 3,000 people a year nationwide and hospitalize 128,000, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It includes everything from hand washing to preventing acts of terrorism.
The FDA is charged with implementing the law and is taking public comments on its second attempt to impose the nuts and bolts of the regulation, spelled out in mind-numbing, scientific detail over several subsections that together would take up thousands upon thousands of pages.
“I don’t think any normal person can understand it,” Schlect said. “George Orwell would roll over in his grave.”
Growers objected most to a suggested stipulation that would prohibit any fruit from contact with water that does not meet the swimming quality standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency and would also require farmers to periodically test their water. If the test came back negative, the growers would have to shut off irrigation.
Most of the Yakima Valley farms rely on open canals and though many orchards use low sprinklers that water under the tree canopy, they also employ overhead sprinklers to cool fruit during the scorching peak of summer.
In the first round of public comments last year, Schlect and other grower groups argued the proposed rules would hold orchardists responsible for contamination upstream, and treat fruit that hangs on the trees the same as produce grown in the dirt.
While FDA officials didn’t soften the water quality standards in their revised proposal, they have suggested granting allowances for the time between the last round of irrigation and harvest. They also might allow growers to test water collectively, maybe at certain points in the canal.
Meanwhile, The Produce News reports that different standards for packinghouses under the Food Safety Modernization Act based on their location will cause confusion within the industry and are not science-based, produce industry groups told officials at the Food & Drug Administration during a Thursday public meeting on FSMA changes.
Under the FDA’s current interpretation of FSMA, on-farm packinghouses would need to meet produce safety standards, but off-farm operations, which must register with the FDA, would have to meet more extensive and costly preventive control requirements.
Registered facilities that only handle raw agriculture commodities and don’t conduct further processing should be covered under the produce safety rule, Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange, argued during the meeting held in College Park, MD. Food safety and public heath benefits are likely to be best served by a single rule, he said.
My friend and collaborator, farmer Jeff Wilson addressed this issue over 10 years ago, long before youtube existed. We found the video.
The alleged drug-smuggling operation was discovered at the cargo facility at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in southern Texas on Feb. 16, a release says. Officers found 906 pounds of the drug concealed in a trailer, CBP says.
