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Humane handling and video recording: Should you share the recordings?
I’ve long been an advocate of video observation in slaughterhouses to verify and improve and food safety and animal welfare.
Steve Sayer of Meatingplace apparently agrees, writing, What’s there to conceal?
An interminable proverbial snag linked with our industry has been the unwillingness to be transparent. Keeping all communication channels wide-
open is always the prudent passageway for companies to take.
Full and unabridged transparency, indelibly evinces a company’s veracity and intent to run ones business within defined demarcation lines of legality and integrity.
An adopted full transparency stance projects to the PETA’s of the world, including the susceptible public, that when egregious acts to livestock occur – and they do – that it’s going to be corrected in a timely manner with future preventive actions planned, documented and executed in order to preclude a similar occurrence in the future.
Cut! Case closed. That’s a take.
I like video cameras at meat and poultry plants.
A lot.
That is, if a company makes it a policy to share video footage.
Video cameras are an exceptional all-around deterrent as well as a useful tool for plant security, occupational safety, human resources, quality assurance, production efficacy, HACCP and SSOP Systems, and the humane handling of livestock.
I’ve written in the past how the USDA can shut down slaughter plants entire operations in a nanosecond with leaving no recourse for the establishment to stay open.
If a slaughter company has video cameras in place, their recordings could help preclude a plant closure, truncate NR’s, while making the USDA 
inspector think 3 or 4 times on her/his sometimes subjective call involving egregious treatment of livestock.
If a slaughter company is equipped with video cameras and they really want to claim fame to having the USDA’s proclaimed robust humane handling program, then sharing video footage from the continuum of receiving livestock to the shackling and sticking stages of a slaughter HACCP flow chart is a must.
Like it or not, video cameras in one form, (smart phones) or another, (hidden fiber-optic cameras) are here to stay. They’re never going away.
Ask PETA or HSUS’ Oscar winning undercover cameramen, (and women) under the category of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir cinematography if they’d like your company having well-managed video cameras.
They don’t. It’s the last thing they want.
But if you do have video cameras, and you fail to share your video recordings, then you’re doing precisely what they’re hoping you’d do. You’re promulgating suspicion that you’re hiding something.
Today, many food folks are held hostage by their worst employees, agenda-oriented foodies, and their own stupidity.
Whether it’s a restaurant inspection, a farm, a slaughterhouse, provide that data to the public; I don’t care who does it, as long as it’s open to public scrutiny by mere mortals. Sorta what Jefferson was getting at when he said,
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education.”
Thomas Jefferson
Would you like me better if I paid you? $1 to watch a graphic food safety video? $1 to watch graphic anti-meat video?
Activists of all types may suck at science but are successful when it comes to street theater, attracting attention, on-line or in the park.
The Los Angeles Times reports the folks at Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) found a way to get people to watch disturbing animal cruelty videos: pay them.
Operating on the premise that watching a four-minute video could persuade a viewer to drastically and permanently reduce the amount of animal products consumed in their diet, FARM launched a national tour in 
early May to show the public a graphic “Farm to Fridge” video, made with hidden-camera footage showing farm animals, including cows, chickens and pigs, living in factory farm conditions and being processed at slaughter. Participants are paid $1 to watch the video, displayed on a vehicle specially equipped to host up to 32 simultaneous viewers.
The 10-Billion Lives Tour (named after the estimated 10 billion land animals raised and killed every year for food in the United States) began in Portland, Ore., and has traveled south, stopping at colleges, universities and fairs along the way in Eugene, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara.
Dirty conditions at another egg producer
In conditions similar to the Iowa egg farms involved in the 2010 salmonella-in-eggs outbreak – without the salmonella outbreak – the Humane Society of the U.S. plans to release on Thursday the results of an undercover investigation into Kreider Farms, which produces 4.5 million eggs each day for supermarkets like ShopRite.
Nicholas Kristof writes in today’s N.Y. Times that he’s reviewed footage and photos taken by the investigator, who says he worked for Kreider between January and March of this year. In an interview, he portrayed an operation that has little concern for cleanliness or the welfare of hens.
“It’s physically hard to breathe because of the ammonia” rising from manure pits below older barns, said the investigator, who would not allow his name to be used because that would prevent him from .jpg)
taking another undercover job in agriculture. He said that when workers needed to enter an older barn, they would first open doors and rev up exhaust fans, and then rush in to do their chores before the fumes became overwhelming.
Mice sometimes ran down egg conveyer belts, barns were thick with flies and manure in three barns tested positive for salmonella, he said. (Actually, salmonella isn’t as rare as you might think, turning up in 3 percent of egg factory farms tested by the Food and Drug Administration last year.)
In some cases, 11 hens were jammed into a cage about 2 feet by 2 feet. The Humane Society says that that is even more cramped than the egg industry’s own voluntary standards — which have been widely criticized as inadequate.
“These allegations by the Humane Society are a gross distortion of Kreider Farms, our employees and the way we care for birds,” Ron Kreider, the president of Kreider Farms, told me in a statement. He acknowledged that three barns had tested positive for salmonella but said that consumers were never endangered.
“The reality of food processing can be off-putting to those not familiar with animal agriculture,” added Kreider, the third-generation family leader of the company. “When dealing with millions of birds, there is always a small percentage of dead birds. Older-style chicken houses will inherently contain a level of fly and rodent activity.” Kreider added that his company was leading the industry in replacing old barns with state-of-the-art.
Smile: you’re on camera; McDonald’s, Carrefour sorry for food violations in China
Staff at McDonald’s and Carrefour outlets in China were caught on camera selling expired chicken products and meat that fell on the ground.
The report by China Central Television offered no evidence of widespread problems with the China operations at either company. But their quick apologies highlight the pressures foreign companies can face in China, as well as rising food-safety worries there.
CCTV reported late Thursday that a Beijing branch of McDonald’s sold chicken wings an hour and 24 minutes after they had been left on a warming tray, compared with the 30-minute limit .jpg)
that the store sets. The report also said outlet personnel cooked and sold beef that had fallen on the outlet’s kitchen floor.
China’s Food and Drug Administration said late Friday that it sent health investigators to the McDonald’s outlet featured in CCTV’s report and ordered the company to act in accordance with food-safety laws and to boost employee food-safety awareness. The incident should be a warning to all McDonald’s outlets, it said.
The network also said a Carrefour outlet in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, in central Henan province, sold expired chicken and labeled regular chicken as more the expensive free-range variety.
CCTV’s report came as part of an annual broadcast feature marking World Consumer-Rights Day on March 15, or what is known in China as "315." Analysts say that China has historically used the day as an educational tool to give Chinese consumers more information on the products they use and as an outlet for their complaints.
Hospital handwashing compliance with video: the video; increases meat safety too
This is a CBS News video of the Arrowsight handwashing video monitoring system that has been used to dramatically increase handwashing compliance rates at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.
The same system is now being widely used by meat companies in an effort to reduce E. coli and other contamination inside processing plants.
According to a Wall Street Journal article earlier this month, the new technique allows remote auditors to watch whether plant workers follow safety protocols aimed at reducing the spread of deadly bacteria.
JBS SA, the world’s largest beef processor, saw a 60% drop in the level of E. coli found by company inspectors after it installed monitoring cameras, said John Ruby, head of technical services for the company’s beef division. The Brazilian meat processor started with a pilot program after it recalled 380,000 pounds of beef that sickened 23 people in nine states in 2009.
A trial run at its Souderton, Pa., plant showed an immediate improvement in results, so the company placed cameras in all eight of its U.S. plants.
"We are seeing increased interest among meat companies in remote video auditing as part of their food safety and animal welfare programs," said J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, which represents most beef and pork packing companies. "Those who have implemented these programs have reported very good results."
Cargill Inc., another major U.S. beef producer, uses video cameras to make sure its cattle are treated humanely before they are slaughtered. The Minneapolis-based company is now considering an expansion to monitor for food safety in its pork and turkey operations, according to Mike Siemens, head of the company’s animal welfare division.
Aurora, Ill.-based OSI Group LLC., a meat processor, for several years has used video cameras to monitor employees in three of its five U.S. plants for general food-safety practices. The company, which supplies McDonald’s and other companies with bacon, sausage and chicken, decided in June to expand the monitoring to its other two plants.
After the JBS results, the Agriculture Department—the government agency responsible for overseeing the safety of the U.S. meat supply—in August released voluntary guidelines for video monitoring at meat companies.
In some cases, companies are watching to see if sloppy work is allowing meat contamination. They are also using the cameras to make sure employees aren’t mistakenly sending the expensive cuts into hamburger grinders.
Arrowsight has two facilities—one in Huntsville, Ala., and one in Visakhapatnam, India—employing 50 people to monitor meat-cutting operations. The company was wary about using workers in India, where parts of the country outlaw cattle slaughter, to monitor beef production.
But it hasn’t had problems with that, Mr. Aronson said. Arrowsight routes the most graphic slaughter video to its staff in Huntsville, he said.
Video monitors hospital handwashing with dramatic improvements in compliance; works for meat processing and dry cleaning too
Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times writes that in the intensive care units at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., two L.E.D. displays adorn the wall across from each nurses’ station. They show the hand hygiene rate achieved: last Friday in the surgical I.C.U., the weekly rate was 85 percent and the current shift had a rate of 91 percent. “Great Shift!!” the sign said. At the medical I.C.U. next door, the weekly rate was 81 percent, and the current shift 82 percent.
Those L.E.D. displays are very demanding — health care workers must clean their hands within 10 seconds of entering and exiting a patient’s room, or it doesn’t count. Three years ago, using the same criteria, the medical I.C.U.’s hand hygiene rate was appalling — it averaged 6.5 
percent. But a video monitoring system that provides instant feedback on success has raised rates of handwashing or use of alcohol rubs to over 80 percent, and kept them there.
Hospitals do impossible things like heart surgery on a fetus, but they are apparently stymied by the task of getting health care workers to wash their hands. Most hospitals report compliance of around 40 percent — and that’s using a far more lax measure than North Shore uses.
How do hospitals even know their rates? Some hospitals track how much soap and alcohol gel gets used — a very rough measure. The current standard of care is to send around the hospital equivalent of secret shoppers — staff members who secretly observe their colleagues and record whether they wash their hands.
This has serious drawbacks: it is expensive and the results are distorted if health care workers figure out they’re being observed. One reason the North Shore staff was so shocked by the 6.5 percent hand-washing rate the video cameras found was that measured by the secret shoppers, the rate was 60 percent.
The North Shore study, published this week in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, is the first use of video in promoting hospital handwashing, and the first controlled study in a peer-reviewed journal of a high-tech effort to increase hand hygiene rates.
North Shore instead uses a video monitoring system made by a company called Arrowsight. Cameras on the ceiling are trained on the sinks and hand sanitizer dispensers just inside and outside patient rooms. (Patients are not photographed.) A monitor at each door tracks when someone enters or leaves the room — anyone passing through a door has 10 seconds to wash hands. Arrowsight employees in India monitor random snippets of tape and grade each event as pass or fail.
What makes the system function is not the videotaping alone — it’s the feedback.
The nurse manager gets an e-mail message three hours into the shift with detailed information about hand hygiene rates, and again at the end. The L.E.D. signs are a constant presence in both the surgical and medical I.C.U.s
This is Arrowsight’s first foray into health care. The company’s main business is meat: half the (4).jpg)
beef processing plants in America use its video system to monitor workers’ hygienic practices.
Adam Aronson, Arrowsight’s chief executive, said that at one plant cameras focused on a hand sanitizer dispenser right outside the bathroom. With monitoring and feedback, hand hygiene rates went from about 4 percent to over 95 percent, and the achievement was sustained.
At first Farber feared he wouldn’t be able to get approval; the conventional wisdom was that employees don’t like being videotaped. But then he thought about a recent experience at the dry cleaner: he had picked up some of his daughter’s clothes, but one of her suits was missing. He went back to the shop and told them the date and approximate time of his visit. They pulled up a video that indeed showed him leaving her suit behind. “If dry cleaners are doing that, we need to do that in the hospital,” he thought.
We don’t need no education: burger preparation, what consumers say and do in the home
I cringe when someone says, ‘food safety is simple.’
A review of existing studies by the U.K. Food Standards Agency found that, although people “are often aware of good food hygiene practices, many people are failing to chill foods properly, aren’t following advice on food labels and aren’t sticking to simple hygiene practices that would help them avoid spreading harmful bacteria around their kitchens.”
Yes, individuals are impervious to risk; been known for decades.
And there’s that word, ‘simple’ again.
I especially cringe when someone says, ‘cooking a hamburger is easy with these simple food .jpg)
safety steps.’
Ho Phang and Christine Bruhn report in the current Journal of Food Protection that in video observation of 199 California consumers making hamburgers and salad in their own kitchens, handwashing was poor, only 4% used a thermometer to check if the burger was safely cooked, and there were an average of 43 cross-contamination events per household.
There’s some good data in the paper about what consumers do in their own kitchens, and the results are an additional nail in the self-reported-food-safety-survey coffin: people know what they are supposed to do but don’t do it.
But what the paper doesn’t address is how to influence food safety behaviors. Instead, the University of California at Davis authors fall back on the people-need-to-be-educated model, without out providing data on how that education – I prefer compelling information – should be provided.
The authors state:
• educational materials need to emphasize the important role of the consumer in
preventing foodborne illness and that foodborne illnesses can result from foods prepared in the home.;
• the gap between the awareness of the importance of hand washing and the actual practice of adequate hand washing should be addressed by food safety educators.
• food safety educators should address the lack of reliability of visual cues during cooking (stick it in — dp);
• food safety educators should emphasize faucet cleaning with soap and water as a way of preventing cross-contamination; and,
• ignorance about food irradiation point to a further need for education.
The authors do correctly note that program to promote the use of thermometers when cooking .jpg)
burgers, initiated by the introduction of Thermy in 2000, has not been successful. So why do more education?
And the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers happened in Jan. 1993, not 1994 as stated in the paper; someone should have caught that.
Burger preparation: what consumers say and do in the home
01.oct.11
Journal of Food Protection®, Volume 74, Number 10, October 2011 , pp. 1708-1716(9)
Phang, Ho S.; Bruhn, Christine M.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2011/00000074/00000010/art00017
Abstract:
Ground beef has been linked to outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria like Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella. Consumers may be exposed to foodborne illness through unsafe preparation of ground beef. Video footage of 199 volunteers in Northern California preparing hamburgers and salad was analyzed for compliance with U.S. Department of Agriculture recommendations and for violations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Food Code 2009. A questionnaire about consumer attitudes and knowledge about food safety was administered after each filming session. The majority of volunteers, 78%, cooked their ground beef patties to the Food Code 2009 recommended internal temperature of 155°F (ca. 68°C) or above, and 70% cooked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture consumer end-point guideline of 160°F (ca. 71°C), with 22% declaring the burger done when the temperature was below 155°F. Volunteers checked burger doneness with a meat thermometer in 4% of households. Only 13% knew the recommended internal temperature for ground beef. The average hand washing time observed was 8 s; only 7% of the hand washing events met the recommended guideline of 20 s. Potential cross-contamination was common, with an average of 43 events noted per household. Hands were the most commonly observed vehicle of potential cross-contamination. Analysis of food handling behaviors indicates that consumers with and without food safety training exposed themselves to potential foodborne illness even while under video observation. Behaviors that should be targeted by food safety educators are identified.
Rat sipping Starbucks syrup
Starbucks has instituted several new procedures in response to a YouTube video shot April 21 which shows what’s believed to be a black rat inside the Terra Nova Starbucks (that’s in B.C., in Canada), searching for food while walking on the counter amongst the syrups.
Steve Chong, Richmond’s chief public health inspector, said that an environmental health officer met with Starbucks management on Tuesday morning to deal with the concerns.
"Based on the inspection today, there is no indication that there’s a rodent infestation," Chong told The Richmond Review.
Chong said the pest control employee noted some rodent access points, which have now been pest-proofed.
Chong believes from the grainy images that it was a black rat seen foraging around the syrups in the YouTube video. They wander up to 100 yards from their home.
That rat’s got happy feet.
Hand hygiene at a petting zoo; room for improvement
OK hockey player and erstwhile blogger about all things zoonotic, Scott Weese, published a pretty cool paper about handwashing at a petting zoo on Friday.
Weese and doctoral candidate Maureen Anderson used a variation of our video observation system to watch and code the hand hygiene behaviors of visitors to a petting zoo at the University of Guelph’s annual open house, known as College Royal (that’s in Canada).
Video observation with discrete cameras has a couple of advantages: actions can be repeatedly viewed to make sure they are coded correctly, and video reduces the 
weirdness when people notice someone stalking watching whether they wash hands, in a bathroom, kitchen, or petting zoo.
As Weese writes in his Worms and Germs blog, “overall hand hygiene compliance was 58%. That means 58% of people that came into the petting zoo washed their hands or used a hand sanitizer on the way out. (It doesn’t mean they all did it well, but they at least did something). In some ways, that number’s good, when you compare to our earlier petting zoo observation study, (or even to results of hand hygiene rates of physicians in some hospitals). However, for such a short-term activity where there is easy access to facilities to wash hands or use a hand sanitizer, there’s much room for improvement.
“During the petting zoo, a few thing were changed at defined times to see if they could improve hand hygiene rates. Two things resulted in increased hand hygiene compliance; a combination of people offering hand sanitizer and improving signs, and having people at the exit reminder people to wash their hands. This suggests that people need a reminder to wash their hands. Whether they don’t think about it, or can’t be bothered unless someone points it out, is unclear, but having people encourage hand hygiene is a good think to consider. It’s practical for short-term events like petting zoos at fairs and similar exhibits, but not as practical for permanent exhibits.”
And not so practical for food service, hospitals and elsewhere. However a combination of rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated information, coupled with handwashing hall monitors, may increase rates of hand hygiene compliance. But more about that later. Some of the handwashing signs used in the Anderson and Weese experiment are shown, above right.
The abstract for the paper is below.
Video observation of hand hygiene practices at a petting zoo and the impact of hand hygiene interventions
04.mar.11
Epidemiology and Infection
M. E. C. Anderson and J. S. Weese
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8196679
Petting zoos are popular attractions, but can also be associated with zoonotic disease outbreaks. Hand hygiene is critical to reducing disease risks; however, compliance can be poor. Video observation of petting zoo visitors was used to assess animal and environmental contact and hand hygiene compliance. Compliance was also compared over five hand hygiene intervention periods. Descriptive statistics and multivariable logistic regression were used for analysis. Overall hand hygiene compliance was 58% (340/583). Two interventions had a significant positive association with hand hygiene compliance [improved signage with offering hand sanitizer, odds ratio (OR) 3·38, P<0·001; verbal hand hygiene reminders, OR 1·73, P=0·037]. There is clearly a need to improve hand hygiene compliance at this and other animal exhibits. This preliminary study was the first to demonstrate a positive impact of a hand hygiene intervention at a petting zoo. The findings suggest that active, rather than passive, interventions are more effective for increasing compliance.