Tag Archives: Usda

USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture funds University of Nebraska-Lincoln (and Kansas State and NC State) to investigate STECs

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In January 1993 I was in 10th grade. I had just discovered the Violent Femmes and punk rock; was worried about figuring out calculus (I eventually did); and spent most of my time being uncool and longing to be cool. Probably pretty similar to every other awkward teenager. I didn’t have a clue that a tragic foodborne illness outbreak was unfolding in the Pacific Northwest and that the event would eventually define a bunch of what I focus on every day.

I had never even heard of Jack-in-the-Box.

The outbreak was linked to four deaths, over to 700 illnesses and almost 200 hospitalizations. E. coli O157:H7 contaminated hamburger was then undercooked and served to thousands from 73 Jack-in-the-Box restaurants. Jack-in-the-Box will forever be linked to this event – and over the past 18 years has become a prominent force in food safety risk reduction.

News of this outbreak hit on President Clinton’s inauguration day and as Doug has written,

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.

And the first focus went to E. coli O157:H7 – the serogroup linked to the Jack-in-the-Box illnesses. Food microbiologists and epidemiologists have seen lots of other equally dangerous shigatoxin-producing serogroups (shigatoxin is what makes E. coli O157:H7, along with its ability to stick to cells so devastating). Here’s a list of the non-O157 STEC outbreaks we’ve been able to find going back to the mid-1990s.

Later this afternoon I will be on my way to Lincoln, NE to meet with a group of academics, researchers, extension folks and regulators to talk about a large 5-year integrated project focused on reducing STECs from farm-to-fork that USDA NIFA has funded. Through the wonders of the Internet, Doug will be Skyping in.

LINCOLN, Neb. — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today that it has awarded a research grant to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) to help reduce the occurrence and public health risks from Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) along the entire beef production pathway. Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young, acting director of USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), is scheduled to award the $25 million grant to the UNL-lead research team today at the university in Lincoln.

"Shiga toxin-producing E. coli are a serious threat to our food supply and public health, causing more than 265,000 infections each year," said Chavonda Jacobs-Young, acting NIFA director. "As non-O157 STEC bacteria have emerged and evolved, so too must our regulatory policies to protect the public health and ensure the safety of our food supply. This research will help us to understand how these pathogens travel throughout the beef production process and how outbreaks occur, enabling us to find ways to prevent illness and improve the safety of our nation’s food supply."

Dr. James Keen at UNL, along with a multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary team of researchers, educators and extension specialists, will use the $25 million grant to improve risk management and assessment of eight strains of STEC in beef. This work will include the O104 strain that caused the recent outbreak in Germany. The project will focus on identifying hazards and assessing exposures that lead to STEC infections in cattle and on developing strategies to detect, characterize and control these pathogens along the beef chain. This knowledge will then be used to find practical and effective STEC risk mitigation strategies. The five main objectives of the project include:

Detection: develop and implement rapid detection technologies for pre-harvest, post-harvest and consumer environments.

Biology: characterize the biological and epidemiological factors that drive outbreaks of STEC in pre-harvest, post-harvest, retail and consumer settings.

Interventions: develop effective and economical interventions to lessen STEC risk from cattle, hides, carcasses, and ground and non-intact beef and compare the feasibility of implementing these interventions for large, small and very small beef producers.

Risk analysis and assessment: develop a risk assessment model for STEC from live cattle to consumption to evaluate mitigation strategies and their expected public health impacts.

Risk management and communication: translate research findings into user-friendly food-safety deliverables for stakeholders, food safety professionals, regulators, educators and consumers.

For more check out the full PR here.
 

Poultry inspection changes proposed; see me, hear me, touch me, feel me don’t work so well with bacterial detection

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In about three hours, as I blissfully sleep, U.S. ag-types will take to the PR circuit to advance a new program for poultry inspection.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. would increase oversight of poultry processors’ sanitary practices and contamination controls instead of visually checking each chicken and turkey for scabs and sores under a plan that would save the industry $250 million a year.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the proposal, to be presented today, may prevent 5,200 foodborne illnesses a year by modernizing and making the system more efficient by taking the emphasis off visual imperfections that can harm poultry sales rather than improve safety.

“It’s obviously about safer food and fewer foodborne illnesses,” Vilsack said in an interview. “It’s also about reducing the cost of production in an effective way without redundancy or compromising safety.”

The U.S. would save as much as $40 million a year within two or three years, in part through the elimination of inspection jobs, Vilsack said. Last week, the secretary announced a reorganization of his agency that would lower spending by about $150 million a year, or 1 percent of the department’s budget. The public will have 90 days to comment on the proposal.

The USDA would continue to inspect poultry carcasses at the end of the production line before they are chilled and will be on site at all times, Vilsack said. Slaughter operators have the option of requesting the U.S. continue visual inspections for blemishes, according to the proposed regulation.

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), in an e-mail. Tyson, based in Springdale, Arkansas and the largest U.S. chicken producer by volume, participated in the pilot program testing the new inspection rules.

“This modified system reduces redundancies between company and USDA inspection efforts and gives USDA’s staff more flexibility to focus on other things that verify the effectiveness of our food safety activities,” said Mickelson, adding that Tyson has not yet seen the proposed regulation.

The pilot program with 25 poultry processors conducted over more than a decade found no increased risk of injuries to workers from the faster production line and showed the effort to be successful, said Elisabeth Hagen, undersecretary for food safety at the USDA, in an interview.

Inspectors began visually inspecting poultry for physical defects in 1906, before it was possible to detect microbial contamination that can’t be seen and poses a hazard, he said.

Inspections don’t make safe food, holds people accountable; FSIS food safety inspection presence unaffected by office closures

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“Offices don’t inspect, even then inspections don’t make food safe. It is up to the producers, the processors and the retailers. Inspections only hold people accountable. It is up to the industry to make food safe, not the inspection services -they are ultimately responsible for the products they produce.”

Or something like that as I, described as US-based food safety professor and blogger Doug Powell, chatted to the British reporter in France in the late Australian hours about a U.S. food safety policy decision.

Mark Astley of Food Quality News writes that US food safety and inspection efforts will not be hit, despite plans to close a third of Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) district offices, according to the US government.

The closures are part of the USDA’s Blueprint for Stronger Service plan, which will see the closure of almost 260 offices, facilities and labs across the US.

FoodQualityNews.com understands that the changes will impact inspection reporting structure but will not affect the inspection duties performed in the districts.

Tongue-testing dangerous: microwaves that heat unevenly can pose food safety problems

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I expect companies like ConAgra and government agencies like the department of agriculture to blame consumers when their 50 cent pot pies make hundreds of people barf – just follow the instructions.

I don’t expect Consumer Reports to blame the consumer when microwave cooking makes people sick. But I have low expectations, especially of so-called consumer groups.

Consumer Reports latest tests of microwaves found fewer models that aced our evenness test.

When food isn’t cooked evenly to an internal temperature that kills harmful bacteria that might be present, illness can result, according to the USDA. So using a microwave that delivers even heating is important.

You’ll need to cook food longer if your microwave’s wattage is lower than the cooking instructions requires. Our Ratings indicate wattage, and you’ll find it on the serial number plate on the back of the microwave, inside the microwave door, or in the owner’s manual.

The USDA also recommends using a food thermometer to test food in several spots, but the survey found most people don’t, and nearly a third said nothing would change their mind. Using a food thermometer is a good idea, but at the very least, make sure there are no cold spots in your food.

How? With your tongue? Frozen foods that are going to be cooked in the microwave should contain pre-cooked ingredients.

USDA’s ministry of truth

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USDA has entered into some serious 1984-style rhetorical weirdness.

The PR-types at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) wrote that an Ohio firm had recalled ready-to-eat beef and pork products produced “without benefit of federal inspection.”

So what is it called when outbreaks of salmonella or E. coli are linked to meat products that had the benefit of inspection?

E-Z Shop Kitchens, Inc., a Fremont, Ohio, establishment, is recalling an undetermined amount of ready-to-eat, seasoned beef and shredded pork products that were sold for institutional and/or individual consumer use and are listed below.

The problem was discovered by FSIS personnel when following up on a complaint and is the subject of an on-going investigation. FSIS may take additional regulatory action based on the results of this investigation.

FSIS has received no reports of illness due to consumption of these products.

Find the problem, fix the problem, then restart production; same salmonella again found in Cargill ground turkey

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On July 29, 2011, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a public health alert due to concerns about illnesses caused by Salmonella Heidelberg that may be associated with use and consumption of ground turkey produced by a Cargill plant in Arkansas.

On August 3, Cargill recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey that had been linked to the outbreak through microbiological testing. By Aug. 18, 2011, 111 persons infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Heidelberg were identified in 31 states. The outbreak had been apparently going on for months, and no one knew the source.

But that didn’t stop Cargill from restarting the Arkansas plant on Aug. 16, and establishing a blue-ribbon science advisory panel on Aug. 26. Steve Willardsen, president of Cargill’s Wichita-based turkey processing business said at the time, the company has implemented the most aggressive salmonella monitoring and testing program in the poultry industry.

Guess they found something.

A couple of hours ago, Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation of Springdale, Ark. recalled approximately 185,000 pounds of ground turkey products that may be contaminated with a strain of Salmonella Heidelberg.

USDA-FSIS said, “The strain of SalmonellaHeidelberg in question is identical to that of an outbreak of Salmonellosis that resulted in an August 3, 2011 recall of ground turkey products. Although a sample tested positive for the outbreak related strain ofSalmonella, including the identical XbaI and BlnI PFGE patterns matching the August 3 outbreak strain, at this time, neither FSIS nor the plant is aware of any illnesses associated with product from the above dates. An FSIS incident investigation team collected samples at the establishment following the previous recall. Today’s recall occurred after a product sample collected on August 24 tested positive for the outbreak strain ofSalmonella Heidelberg. The firm is recalling product from August 30 based on pending positive match samples. The products subject to recall are derived from bone-in parts.”

The products subject to recall include:

Fresh Ground Turkey Chubs
• 16 oz. (1 lb.) chubs of Fresh HEB Ground Turkey 85/15 with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/12/2011, 09/13/2011, 09/19/2011 and 09/20/2011
• 16 oz. (1 lb.) chubs of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Fresh Ground Turkey with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/19/2011, 09/20/2011 and 09/21/2011

Fresh Ground Turkey Trays
• 19.2 oz. (1.2 lb.) trays of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Ground Turkey with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/10/2011 and 09/12/2011
• 48.0 oz. (3 lb.) trays of Kroger Ground Turkey Fresh 85/15 with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/17/2011, 09/18/2011 and 09/19/2011
• 48.0 oz. (3 lbs.) trays of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Ground Turkey Family Pack with Use or Freeze by Dates of 09/11/2011, 09/12/2011, 09/13/2011, 09/15/2011, 09/17/2011 and 09/18/2011
• 16 oz. (1 lb.) trays of Honeysuckle White 85/15 Ground Turkey with a Use or Freeze by Date of 09/11/2011

Fresh Ground Turkey Patties
• 16.0 oz. (1 lb.) trays of Honeysuckle White Ground Turkey Patties with a Use or Freeze by Date of 09/18/2011
16 oz. (1 lb.) trays of Kroger Ground Seasoned Turkey Patties Fresh 85/15 with a Use or Freeze by Date of 09/17/2011The products subject to recall today bear the establishment number “P-963” inside the USDA mark of inspection. The products were produced on August 23, 24, 30 and 31 of this year.

Deceit and deception: just another day for PR flunkies and their overlords

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 “I’m sorry you feel that way” is the super-supreme of backhanded apologies.

“I’m having an affair with a younger, hotter, smarter person and want a divorce.”
“That’s really hurtful.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I’ve appreciated working with you for 20 years but am going to join a startup and cash in on all our corporate secrets because you have bad breath.”
“That’s really ungrateful.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I’d like to invite you, as a valued food blogger, to Sotto Terra, an intimate and underground Italian restaurant in New York City, where you will enjoy a delicious four-course meal hosted by George Duran, the chef who hosts the Ultimate Cake Off on TLC and learn about food trends from a food industry analyst, Phil Lempert. But really we’re going to serve Three Meat and Four Cheese Lasagna and Razzleberry Pie, by Marie Callender’s, a frozen line from ConAgra Foods, and record your reaction on hidden camera.”
“That’s really deceitful.”
“(We) understand that there were people who were disappointed and we’re sorry — we apologize that they felt that way.”

The last one actually happened.

The backhanded apology came from PR-type Jackie Burton at the Ketchum public relations unit of the Omnicom Group, hired by ConAgra to orchestrate the stunt.

As usual, ConAgra is behind the times. The bloggers were having none of it and took to the Intertubes to vent their gastronomic rage.

As reported in the N.Y. Times:

“Our entire meal was a SHAM!” wrote Suzanne Chan, founder of Mom Confessionals, in a blog post after the event. “We were unwilling participants in a bait-and-switch for Marie Callender’s new frozen three cheese lasagna and there were cameras watching our reactions.”

On FoodMayhem.com, a blog by Lon Binder and Jessica Lee Binder, Mr. Binder wrote that during a discussion led by Mr. Lempert before the meal, Mr. Binder spoke against artificial ingredients while Ms. Binder mentioned being allergic to food coloring. When the lasagna arrived, Ms. Binder was served a zucchini dish, while Mr. Binder was served lasagna.

“We discussed with the group the sad state of chemical-filled foods,” wrote Mr. Binder. “And yet, you still fed me the exact thing I said I did not want to eat.” (Among the ingredients in the lasagna: sodium nitrate, BHA, BHT, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate.)

On the evening she attended, Cindy Zhou wrote on her blog, Chubby Chinese Girl, that during the pre-meal discussion, she “pointed out that the reason I ate organic, fresh and good food was because my calories are very precious to me, so I want to use them wisely. … Yet they were serving us a frozen meal, loaded with sodium.” (An 8-ounce serving of the lasagna contains 860 milligrams of sodium, 36 percent of the recommended daily allowance.) I’m NOT their target consumer and they were totally off by thinking I would buy or promote their highly processed frozen foods after tricking me to taste it.”

Four years ago next month, ConAgra Banquet pot pies sickened at least 272 people in 35 states with salmonella. When the outbreak was initially announced, Con Agra said, don’t worry, just follow the instructions and everything will be fine.

Those instructions sucked. And didn’t work, as shown in my kitchen-experiment at the time. So ConAgra finally decided to recall the suspect pies, changed a few things, and everyone went back to sleep.

In June 2010 a variety of ConAgra’s Marie Callender frozen food thingies sickened at least 29 people in 14 states with salmonella.

And now this month, the entire PR apparatus of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the International Food Information Council, and the other usual suspects is using its bully pulpit of Consumer Food Safety Education month to tell consumers that when it comes to frozen meals, ‘cook it safe.’

The press materials are akin to a users manual for a $0.50 pot pie. And if someone gets sick, it’s their own fault for not knowing how to properly measure the wattage of their microwave using a measuring cup, water and ice (did MacGyver write the instructions?)

Officially, USDA gave up blaming consumers for cooking mishaps with ground beef back in 1994 as E. coli O157:H7 burst onto the scene. Not so with frozen thingies.

“Frozen or refrigerated convenience foods are popular items in many Americans’ homes, but there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to cooking these foods,” said FSIS Administrator Al Almanza. “Some of them can be microwaved, but others can’t. The ‘Cook It Safe’ campaign is designed to heighten awareness of this problem and correct misconceptions, putting an end to needless, preventable illnesses.”

If consumers get sick and have grudges about complicated instructions, the lack of clear differentiation between raw, frozen meals and cooked, frozen meals, and questions about why raw hazardous ingredients are in frozen meals, no worries: everyone will be really sorry you feel that way.

Is it in the sauce? Single pork product responsible for 23 per cent of USDA salmonella-positives

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 Pork barbecue with vinegar and pepper-based sauce is the source of 23 per cent of salmonella-positive samples the U.S. Department of Agriculture reviewed from 2005 to 2010. The contamination has not caused any known illnesses.

Exactly what part of the dish is contaminating it with salmonella isn’t clear. FSIS notes that it “may have come from the addition of contaminated ingredients (such as the pepper) to the sauce, or from cross-contamination of the product or sauce in the post lethality processing environment.”

During processing of these products, the pork was cooked first, and the barbecue sauce was added after the cooking step. The lack of a lethality treatment for the sauce or its ingredients could result in contamination of the final product.

Meatingplace.com reports inspectors were told to plan an awareness meeting on the subject, and to ensure that the plants they inspect have a HACCP plan that enables them to determine whether the establishment had a way of evaluating the safety of the ingredients added after the lethality step.

Bugs and band-aids, maggots and worms, all in Labor Day hot dogs

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Maggots, worms, metal, plastic and even a razor were just a few of the objects that horrified callers said were in their hot dogs in complaints lodged with the U.S. Department of Agriculture between 2007 and 2009.

Stephen Rex Brown of The Local East Village filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2009 asking USDA to give up its ‘dirty-dog logs.’ The 64 case files finally came in this week, just in time for the Labor Day holiday.

One report told of a “winged insect that resembled a dragonfly inside the package of hot dogs,” and noted that the insect’s “head, eyes, and wings are visible. Insect is black in color, over 1-inch long.”

In the vast majority of cases, U.S.D.A. investigators determined that the gross-out did not indicate a pattern of neglect at the packing plant, and simply notified the company that handled the hot dog.

But on at least one occasion, even the federal officials in charge of inspecting food became the subjects of an investigation. As one document from June 13, 2008 reveals, a Food Safety Inspection Service employee bit into a rogue hot dog at an “F.S.I.S. Unity Day” cookout in Maryland.

A spokesman for the Hot Dog and Sausage Council, speaking frankly about the matter, said foreign objects in hot dogs were a very rare occurrence, especially given the roughly 20 billion wieners made every year. According to the Council, between Memorial Day and Labor Day — known as “hot dog season” within the industry — roughly 818 hot dogs are consumed every second.

Government knew about salmonella at Cargill; should have warned public earlier

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Federal officials said in recent days that they turned up a dangerous form of salmonella at a Cargill Inc. turkey plant last year, and then four times this year at stores selling the Cargill turkey, but didn’t move for a recall until an outbreak killed one person and sickened 77 others.

Bill Tomson of The Wall Street Journal reports Cargill and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the recall of ground turkey from the Cargill plant in Springdale, Ark., on Aug. 3. The USDA said the third-largest meat recall in history affected 36 million pounds of ground turkey.

Food-safety specialists said the delay reflected a gap in federal rules that don’t treat salmonella as a poisonous contaminant, even if inspectors find antibiotic-resistant forms such as the Heidelberg strain implicated in the latest outbreak.

"We have constraints when it comes to salmonella," said Elisabeth Hagen, the USDA’s top food-safety official, in an interview. She said that unlike E. coli, salmonella isn’t officially considered a dangerous adulterant in meat unless that meat is directly tied to an illness or death.

Meat plants are expected to pass a performance standard that allows up to 49.9% of tests to come back positive for salmonella. A Cargill spokesman said the Arkansas plant has passed all USDA performance standards despite what he called "routine" findings of salmonella Heidelberg.

Government agencies were "clearly too slow" in informing the public that there was a contamination in ground turkey, said Doug Powell, Kansas State University professor of food safety. He said the USDA should have contacted Cargill earlier about the contaminated store samples.

The USDA didn’t contact Cargill about suspected contamination of ground turkey until July 29, officials said.

I also told reporter Tomson, but it didn’t make it into the story, that Cargill and its customers – in this case Kroger – should be doing their own testing and striving for continuous reduction in salmonella levels, from farm to processing. For Cargill to say it met government standards is like Ford saying its Pinto automobiles, which had a tendency to blow up when struck from behind, met all government standards. Government standards for food is are minimum, the lowest common denominator. Consumers should demand that food folks do better, but they can’t because food safety is not marketed at retail.