What’s a consumer to do?

Adulterating food, recycling out-of-date foods, fake foods, they’ve been with humans for … a long time.

Madeleine Ferrières a professor of social history at the University of Avignon, France, writes in Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, first published in French in 2002, but translated into English in 2006, that "as soon as man learned how to write, he left evidence of his fear of poisoning himself with toxic food."

I started reading this book last year, but was stalled. Now, traveling in France with Amy and steeping myself in the history of the area, I’ve revisited it with a new vigor.

Audrey Brown reported on May 23, 2007 for the BBC that after working undercover for a couple of major U.K. supermarkets, she observed staff all too willing to change best-before dates, repackage dated food, and generally show a disregard for any potential health impacts.

But Ferrières reminds us in the introduction to the American edition that "the fear of poisoning has never been reserved for the world’s great and powerful. It is a collective fear, shared socially. Furthermore, we still experience it."

Today it’s produce, pet food and peanut butter.

In 1184 Toulouse, France, from where I write this, city leaders "took three archetypal measures regarding butchering: the profit of the butchers must be limited to one denier out of 12 (eight per cent); partnership between two butchers was forbidden, and selling the meat of sick animals was likewise forbidden unless the buyer was warned." Similar articles on butchering were created in Montpellier (1204), Avignon (1246), Marseilles (1253) and Salon (1293).

Below is the public slaughterhouse in Toulouse, which was closed in 1989 and reopened as an art museum in 1997. This slaughterhouse, opened in 1831 just outside of town, consolidating the dozens of slaughterhouses which were located in the center of the city like other French cities, beginning in the 12th century, to observe the health of animals before slaughter and to facilitate the collecting of taxes.

Ferrières provides extensive documentation of the rules, regulations and penalties that emerged in the Mediterranean between the 12th and 16th centuries. But rules are only as good as the enforcement that backs them up. The owners of the supermarkets documented by the BBC would have been subject to fines, flogging or banishment.

As today’s society grapples with how best to validate that food is indeed what it says it is — and safe — and as the huskers and buskers emerge with cure-alls, I find some comfort in Ferrières’ incisive words:

"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."

What’s your score, mate?

Sydney, Australia is a great city. I go there regularly and will return in July.

And it’d be even better if restaurants and regulators provided the public with information about the safety of the city’s restaurants.
Restaurants and food service establishments are a significant source of the foodborne illness that strikes up to 30 per cent of citizens in so-called developed countries each and every year.
Sydney officials are now being pressured to release information about the safety of local restaurants and bolster restaurant safety in general.
After watching the mish-mash of federal, state and local approaches to restaurant inspection in a number of western countries for the past decade, I can draw two broad conclusions:
• Anyone who serves, prepares or handles food, in a restaurant, nursing home, day care center, supermarket or local market needs some basic food safety training; and,
• the results of restaurant and other food service inspections must be made public.
Here’s why.
Parenting and preparing food are about the only two activities that no longer require some kind of certification in Western countries. For example, to coach little girls playing ice hockey in Canada requires 16 hours of training. To coach kids on a travel team requires an additional 24 hours of training.

It’s unclear how many illnesses can be traced to restaurants, but every week there is at least one restaurant-related outbreak reported in the news media somewhere. Cross-contamination, lack of handwashing and improper cooking or holding temperatures are all common themes in these outbreaks — the very same infractions that restaurant operators and employees should be reminded of during training sessions, and are judged on during inspections. Some jurisdictions — such as the city of Fort Worth, Texas — place so much importance on teaching these lessons they require mandatory food handler licenses and have invested in an infrastructure of training that demonstrates the city’s commitment to public health. Other cities and states have no training requirement.
There should be mandatory food handler training, for say, three hours, that could happen in school, on the job, whatever. But training is only a beginning. Just because you tell someone to wash the poop off their hands before they prepare salad for 100 people doesn’t mean it is going to happen; weekly outbreaks of hepatitis A confirm this. There are a number of additional carrots and sticks that can be used to create a culture that values microbiologically safe food and a work environment that rewards hygienic behavior. But mandating basic training is a start.
Next is to verify that training is being translated into safe food handling practices through inspection. And those inspection results should be publicly available.
A philosophy of transparency and openness underlies the efforts of many local health units across North America in seeking to make available the results of restaurant inspections. In the absence of regular media exposes, or a reality TV show where camera crews follow an inspector into a restaurant unannounced, how do consumers — diners — know which of their favorite restaurants are safe?
Cities, counties and states are using a blend of web sites, letter or numerical grades on doors, and providing disclosure upon request. In Denmark, smiley or sad faces are affixed to restaurant windows.

Publicly available grading systems rapidly communicate to diners the potential risk in dining at a particular establishment and restaurants given a lower grade may be more likely to comply with health regulations in the future to prevent lost business.
More importantly, such public displays of information help bolster overall awareness of food safety amongst staff and the public — people routinely talk about this stuff. The interested public can handle more, not less, information about food safety.
Lots of cities still do not disclose restaurant inspection results, worried about the effect on business, but they aren’t great cities.
Sydney is.
And instead of waiting for politicians to take the lead, the best restaurants, those with nothing to hide and everything to be proud of, will go ahead and make their inspection scores available — today.

Food — fashion over facts

The N.Y. Times is once again promoting the fashionable over the factual when it comes to food safety. Yesterday, Mark Bittman wrote in his quest for a good burger, that, "well-done meat is dry and flavorless, which is why burgers should be rare, or at most medium rare. The only sensible solution: Grind your own. You will know the cut, you can see the fat and you have some notion of its quality."

Dangerous microorganisms like E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella cannot be sensed by sight and are equal opportunity pathogens — they will happily adulterate so-called quality cuts of meat.

Bittman also says that "if you grind your own beef, you can make a mixture and taste it raw," adding that, "To reassure the queasy, there’s little difference, safety-wise, between raw beef and rare beef: salmonella is killed at 160 degrees, and rare beef is cooked to 125 degrees."

Kids, don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else. Ground beef of any sort needs to be 160F.

Even with quality cuts like steaks or roasts, dangerous bugs can contaminate the exterior of the meat. That’s why rare steak is relatively safe with an external searing. In the process of grinding, whatever pathogens are on the outside become internalized in the burger — whether the meat is ground at a factory or the kitchen counter-top.

Bitman concludes by saying that cooking time depends on the size of the burger but that his take about 6 to 8 minutes total, for rare to medium-rare.

Except that color or time are lousy indicator of doneness. The only way to properly tell if a burger is microbiologically safe is to stick it in, using a digital meat thermometer (preferably a tip-sensitive one). Most people, trying not to sicken their family or guests, overcook burgers. A 160 F burger, verified with a thermometer, satisfies and is safe.

Bittman joins Nina Planck, who at the height of the fall 2006 E. coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak, wrote in the Times that E. coli O157:H7 "is not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. … It’s the infected  manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater  and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on  neighboring farms."
The natural reservoirs for E. coli O157:H7 and other verotoxigenic E. coli is the intestines of all ruminants, including cattle — grass or grain-fed — sheep, goats, deer and the like. The final report of the fall 2006 spinach outbreak identifies nearby grass-fed beef cattle as the likely source of the E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 200 and killed 4.

Being a fashionable foodie is fun for some; a few facts can keep it safe. Don’t eat poop.

Where will genetically engineered food place in history?

I’m working on a book chapter about genetically engineered foods while sitting in the shadows of a First century, AD, still functioning Roman coliseum in Nimes, France, while Amy is off working on her research.

In reviewing the past decade of apocalyptic predictions related to all foods genetically engineered, I can only conclude, what a massive waste of well-meaning time, energy and money that could have been instead devoted to fewer people sick from microbial foodborne illness.

A story out of Canada once again fawningly reported that all things organic were booming.
What caught my eye was the statement by the spokesthingy for Loblaw Companies Ltd., who said, "As long as you are in the business of giving consumers choice, I think you have to have organics as part of your offering."

This from the same company who, when asked in 1999, and 2000, if they would be interested in giving consumers choice and offer a genetically-engineered Bt sweet corn — the benefit being significantly reduced pesticide use — responded with, no, we can’t tell consumers that pesticides are used to grow sweet corn.

Whatever kinds of food production, processing and distribution system we humans come up with, what matters is not the technology, but whether the results make people sick. There’s lots of food-related things that sicken 30 per cent of all citizens in developed countries each and every year — genetically engineered food isn’t one of them.

Clinton rides the food safety wave — again

At noon on Jan. 19, 1993, William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd President of the U.S. A few hours later, the King County Health Department in Washington State issued a public warning linking consumption of undercooked hamburgers with an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7, sometimes known as hamburger disease. What came to be known as the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak eventually killed four young children and sickened over 700.

Those two events, more than any other, dramatically changed the public discussion of food safety in the U.S. The Jack-in-the-Box outbreak had all the elements of a dramatic story: children were involved; the risk was relatively unknown and unfamiliar; and a sense of outrage developed in response to the inadequacy of the government inspection system. The newly inaugurated President Clinton made microbial food safety a Presidential issue.

Today, the N.Y. Times is reporting in a larger story about food safety and federal regulatory oversight, that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first presidential candidate to make food safety reform a part of a campaign platform.

In addition to signing on to a bill to create a single food inspection agency by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, Senator Clinton said in a telephone interview that she would double the agency’s budget over five years, double the number of inspectors, mandate a minimum frequency for inspections and provide mandatory recall authority.

Hillary Clinton told the Times that, "We’ve had a long history of problems with food safety because of the divided system,  But it was not as acute a problem in the minds of many Americans because we didn’t have so many outbreaks of food-related illness. There has not been much support from the Bush administration, and now we are playing catch-up. We need a new system of food safety prevention.”

Training Day

Tailgaters Sports Bar & Grill in South Bend IN, has faired as well in recent health inspections as the local college football team has in bowl games: not very good.
But, the head coach of the Fighting Irish football team and the manager of Tailgaters differ on placing blame.   Whereas Miki Young, Tailgater’s owner, suggested that the poor work habits of her staff led to the poor inspection results, Charlie Weis hasn’t publicly blamed his Fighting Irish players for the breakdown in the Sugar Bowl against LSU. This quality, Weiss’ responsibility for his team’s performance would make him a pretty good restaurant manager.

When Weis and the Irish lose, thousands of fans may be disappointed, school officials may get angry and some staff may lose their jobs, but it’s really not a big deal. When Miki’s (or any other restaurant’s) staff screw up it can be a really big deal: patrons get ill, and could die.  The World Health Organization estimates that up to 30 per cent of citizens in so-called developed countries get sick from the food and water they consume each and every year.  However, coaching is valued much more than food safety in North America. For example, to coach youth house league hockey in Ontario requires 16 hours of training. To open the doors behind the bench requires 4 hours of prevention services training. To coach kids on a travel team requires more. Shouldn’t some minimal requirements be established for those running a restaurant or preparing food?

It’s unclear how many illnesses can be traced to restaurants, but almost every week there is at least one restaurant-related outbreak reported in the news media somewhere in North America.   Cross-contamination, handwashing and improper temperatures are all common themes in these outbreaks — the very same infractions that restaurant operators and employees should be reminded of during training sessions, and are judged on during inspections.  Some jurisdictions — such as the city of Fort Worth, Texas — place so much importance on teaching these lessons that they have mandatory training for all food handlers.  Fort Worth requires food handler licenses and has invested in an infrastructure of training that demonstrates the city’s commitment to public health. If they can do it why can’t others? The Fort Worth Public Health Department’s promotion of food safety garnered the the coveted Crumbine Consumer Protection Award for Excellence in Food Protection in 2004, the Super Bowl of food safety.

Running a restaurant is like running a sports team. The kitchen and the wait staff operate like offensive and defensive units. Each staff member has her own job, and each depends on another’s performance, one bad move can lead to a foodborne illness. The inspectors are the referees, and they show up to make sure that everyone is playing by the rules.

Managers, like coaches, need to provide the tools, set examples, and foster the culture of the team, in this case, food safety.   In the Chicago area in 2003 a Chili’s restaurant was linked to over 160 confirmed cases of Salmonella.  Health officials determined the Salmonella was due to employees who were unable to follow proper hand washing techniques as management had made a decision to keep the restaurant open for two days even though its water supply was interrupted. Hot water isn’t needed for effective handwashing, it’s just that people don’t like washing their hands in cold water — and in the absence of hot water Salmonella was passed on.


In April 2005, a 25-year veteran employee at the popular burger-joint, Peter’s Drive-In, in Calgary, AB, reported to work ill. Sixteen people got sick from E. coli O157:H7 after drinking marshmallow-flavored milkshakes that said worker had prepared – 15-year old Sara Burgess was in the hospital for two weeks and had to undergo dialysis treatment because of kidney failure due to infection.  The then-owner of the restaurant asked rhetorically "what was I supposed to do?"  A training program for restaurant operators might have been good(thanx for the pic Michelle).

But even ensuring that sick workers stay at home won’t always protect patrons from harmful bacteria. Some of the pathogens associated with foodborne illness, such as hepatitis A and Salmonella can be passed on with out symptoms. According to research published in the Journal of Food Protection last information, and a training regime that is supported by regulators, which focuses on food safety risk year, 12 per cent of staff associated with restaurant outbreaks in Minnesota tested positive for Salmonella, but only half reported feeling sick. Managers and food handlers need to know this factors could lead to reduced risk.

Miki Young told the St. Joseph County Health Department representatives at a hearing about her inspection record, "Everybody knows I mean business; If you don’t take care of business, you’ll be let go."  In the words of Randy Bachman, food safety training can help food handlers and managers ensure that they are takin’ care of business.

Blogging at iFSN

Twelve days in and we’re all enjoying blogging and hope the readers are as well. The folks at Lexblog — thanks Bill Marler —  wrote a nice story about iFSN and barfbolg today.

See how happy we look — or at least how happy we looked when we were all together in Kansas City in Feb.

And Brae too.

With about 500 unique visitors so far, it’s been fun to watch how people find barfblog and why. It’s predominantely celebrity news and other pop culture stories, like various takes on the 5-second rule.

Amy and I are looking forward to blogging from France for five weeks, beginning Monday. Just like when met a year-and-a-half ago.
dp

Americans more concerned about food safety

The Food Marketing Institute reports in its anhual bellweather survery that number of consumers "completely" or "somewhat confident" in the safety of supermarket food declined from 82 percent in 2006 to 66 percent — the lowest point since 1989 when the issues of pesticides in apples and contaminated grapes were widely reported, and that consumer confidence in restaurant food is even lower at 43 percent. "These findings send a strong message to the entire food industry," said FMI President and CEO Tim Hammonds.

www.fmi.org/media/mediatext.cfm

No kidding. The seven produce outbreaks sickening over 700 and killing at leat four in fall 2006 have raised American awareness of where food safety problems arise
http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=1030

and created a public hungry for microbiologically safe food

http://foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=1018

Single food safety agency for the US?

Reuters is reporting this evening
www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN0847466620070508
that Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration,  said on Tuesday that one independent agency with broad power would do a better job of protecting U.S. food safety than the current piecemeal system, and that the food safety system was "fragmented" and needed reform, citing the ongoing investigation of melamine in pet food and livestock feed, adding, "I believe it’s time we now move to create a single food agency."

Are single food inspection agencies really the answer? The Canadian Food Inspection Agency certainly has its problems (Sorry, bureaucrats aren’t really that into you, http://foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=963)
and competition amongst agencies has its merits. But maybe a single agnecy can marshall resources and help foster a culture that respects microbial food safety.

Maybe Bureaucrat Man will become the food safety seal of approval
dp

Blaming consumers

Natalie Hoffman of the Napa Valley Register in California reported this a.m. that Little League baseball spectators in St. Helena will no longer be able to buy a hamburger during game time after three Napa Valley children got sick with E. coli O157:H7 from  hamburger patties sold at a St. Helena Little League snack shack.

Jim Gamble, president of St. Helena Little League, said the organization’s snack shacks now serve only pre-packaged and pre-cooked food, although I suppose they could get pre-cooked patties if they really wanted them.

The patties were supplied by the Richwood Meat Company of Merced, Calif., which has been involved in a recall since the illnesses came to light a few weeks ago. Recently, a company official said consumers just needed to cook their hamburgers thoroughly. A Napa County Environmental Health echoed those statements in the story today, saying that the public can avoid E. coli contamination by cooking all beef — especially ground beef — thoroughly.

The complete story is available at:
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2007/05/06/news/local/iq_3936802.txt

But are consumers really the problem, or just part of the problem? My thoughts below.
dp

Produce, pet food and peanut butter — what’s a consumer to do?
06.may.07
Commentary from the Food Safety Network
foodsafety.ksu.edu
Produce, pet food and peanut butter.
Once home, there was nothing individual Americans could have done to prevent any of the illnesses and deaths associated with these products.
Yet there are a multitude of well-meaning groups who preach to the masses that food safety begins at home.
Since 1998, American consumers have been told by government- and industry-types to FightBac, that is to fight the dangerous bacteria, viruses and parasites by cooking, cleaning, chilling and separating their food. Solid advice, but limited.
For example, in 2004, Salmonella-contaminated Roma tomatoes used in pre-made sandwiches sold at Sheetz convenience stores throughout Pennsylvania sickened over 400 consumers. The FightBac folks told the public in a press release that, "In all cases, the first line of defense to reduce risk of contracting foodborne illness is to cook, clean, chill and separate."
Consumers were effectively being told that when they stop by a convenience store and grab a ready-made sandwich, they should take it apart, grab the tomato slice, wash it, and reassemble the sandwich.
Which would have done nothing to remove the Salmonella inside the tomatoes.
Are consumers really expected to cook all their fresh tomatoes and leafy greens untill 165F to kill salmonella? Fry up peanut buter? Bake the cat food (not that it would do any good)?
Food safety begins on the farm, and extends through processing, distribution, retail, food service and the home. And everyone has a responsibility to reduce the number of harmful bugs that may be present in food.
Yet last week, a California meat processor involved in another E. coli O157:H7 recall said the illness could be avoided if consumers just handled their beef correctly. He was blaming consumers, something most in the meat industry abandoned in the years following the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box outbreak. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture dropped the blame game in 1994.
In mid-1994, Michael Taylor was appointed chief of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.  On Sept. 29, 1994, USDA said it would now regard E. coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef as an “adulterant,” a substance that should not be present in the product. By mid-October, 1994, Taylor announced plans to launch a nationwide sampling of ground beef to assess how much E. coli O157:H7 was in the marketplace. The 5,000 samples would be taken during the year from supermarkets and meat processing plants “to set an example and stimulate companies to put in preventive measures.” Positive samples would prompt product recalls of the entire affected lot, effectively removing it from any possibility of sale.
That’s the long-winded version for what a USDA official said in a 1994 television interview: we’ll stop blaming consumers  when they get sick from the food and water they consume.
Thirteen years later and the same message was stressed by Barbara Kowalcyk, who visited Kansas State University last month. Barbara’s life was profoundly shaken in 2001 following the death of her two-and-a-half year old son, Kevin, from complications due to an E. coli O157:H7 infection.
"What happened to my child was horrific," said Kowalcyk, "and afterwards, I was appalled at how little attention is focused on this very serious public health issue that affects millions of Americans each year."
After years of tireless volunteering and advocacy on behalf of the 76 million Americans sickened each year by the food and water they consume, Kowalcyk has formalized her activities by creating the Center for Foodborne Illness (http://www.foodborneillness.org).
In her talk and during our conversation afterwards, Kowalcyk emphasized that she always stressed safe food handling and found it particularly galling when groups directly — or indirectly — blamed consumers. Today, such accusations usually take the form of unsubstantiated statements such as, "The majority of foodborne illness happens in the home." This, coupled with the cook, clean, chill, separate messages targeted at consumers (available at your grocer’s meat and seafood counter), perpetuates the myth that consumers are the primary cause of foodborne illness.
But as produce, peanut butter and pet food demonstrate, such messages are incomplete. The World Health Organization recognized this back in 2001 and included a fifth key to safer food: use safe water and raw materials, or, source food from safe sources (http://www.who.int/foodsafety/consumer/5keys/en/index.html).
The first line of defense is the farm, not the consumer. Every mouthful of fresh produce, processed food or pet food is an act of faith. And every grower, packer, distributor, retailer and consumer needs to put aside the paternal proclamations and work instead on developing a culture that actually values and protects microbiologically safe food.
Douglas Powell is scientific director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University.
dpowell@ksu.edu