Tag Archives: Wales

Wales E. coli O157 parents: All food safety inspections should be unannounced

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In his report into the 2005 epidemic that struck down more than 150 people, most of them children, across the South Wales Valleys and claimed the life of Mason Jones, aged five (right), Professor Hugh Pennington found that all of the inspections made at the premises of the butcher responsible in the months before people became ill had been pre-arranged.

This allowed Bridgend-based William Tudor time to clean up and to doctor cleaning records to mislead Bridgend Council’s inspectors.

Prof Pennington has now recommended all inspections, primary and secondary, must be unannounced unless “there are specific and justifiable circumstances or reasons why a pre-arranged visit is necessary”.

The parents of four of the victims want to go further and Julie Price, Jeanette Thomas and Mason’s mother Sharon Mills, are re-forming an action group in a bid to achieve their aim.

“We want to make it illegal for hygiene inspectors to carry out announced visits of butchers and other places where food is prepared,” said Mrs Price, mother of 13-year-old Garyn, who was left fighting for his life after contracting the food poisoning bug which spread through school dinners.

“We want that set in stone.”

Unannounced inspections are recommended in The Food Law Practice Guidance (Wales). But announced inspections remain lawful and continue to happen.

Should food safety inspectors get fired if they screw up? Welsh parents say yes

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Ya can’t inspect your way to a safe food supply.

For all those in Canada and America clamoring for more inspectors, please, read the report Bill-Murray-in-Groundhog-Day impersonator Professor Hugh Pennington wrote after the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in Wales, which sickened 160 and killed 5-year-old Mason Jones (right).

The Western Mail reports this morning that the parents of those kids want the inspectors – the environmental health officers who failed to shut down the butcher responsible for the E .coli outbreak – fired.

Julie Price, 44, whose son Garyn, 13, was left fighting for his life after his kidneys failed when he contracted E.coli O157, said:

“At the end of the day, the buck stops with (butcher) Tudor, but these people were in place to protect our children and they didn’t. I would like to see them sacked.”

Jeanette Thomas, 37, from Mountain Ash, whose sons Garyn ,10, and Keiron ,13, both contracted the bug, said,

“These environmental health officers shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, especially considering what these poor kids have been through."

Pennington’s report noted that the inspectors, could and should have stopped Tudor using a single vacuum-packing machine for raw and cooked meat.

The butcher was HACCP-trained, inspected and in the business for 30 years, but apparently didn’t know or care about cross-contamination between raw and cooked product. Neither did the imspectors.
 

Lessons from Wales; fallacy of food safety inspections

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Do more inspectors make food safer?

No.

The latest evidence is from Professor Hugh Pennington, who concluded in a report last week that serious failings at every step in the food chain allowed butcher William Tudor to start the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak, and that while the responsibility for the outbreak, “falls squarely on the shoulders of Tudor,” there was no shortage of errors.

Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan picked up on that theme yesterday and pledged to do everything possible to prevent a repeat of the E.coli outbreak of 2005 – for the sake of the families affected.

“Poor hygiene practices at the abattoir and the butcher’s premises” caused the outbreak, but he added,

“These failings were not dealt with effectively by the Meat Hygiene Service or local authority environmental health officers. …” Environmental health inspectors need to “sharpen up” and “drill down beyond the box-ticking part of the inspection process to the potential danger of the reality beyond.”

In his report Pennington said an inspector who made four pre-arranged visits to Tudor’s in the run-up to the outbreak, should not have allowed him to continue using one vacuum-packing machine for both raw and cooked meat because of the risk of cross contamination.

Among his 24 recommendations, Pennington said all checks should be unannounced, unless there were exceptional circumstances.

Don’t tell mom the babysitter’s dead.
 

E. coli report: lots of blame to go around in Wales

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Five-year-old Mason Jones died a painful and unnecessary death.

Mason (right) died Oct. 4, 2005, from E. coli O157 as part of an outbreak which sickened 161 — primarily schoolchildren — in south Wales.

Mason’s mother, Sharon Mills, said in 2005 that her son’s death was "avoidable" and that lessons "have to be learnt."

"There was nothing wrong with him, only that he ate a dinner – an innocent child eating a dinner. I never thought you could die from E. coli. Never. I had heard of E.coli and I just thought it was food poisoning. I never ever thought Mason would die from it."

Today, Professor Hugh Pennington concluded that serious failings at every step in the food chain allowed rogue butcher William Tudor to start the 2005 E.coli O157 outbreak, and that while the responsibility for the outbreak, “falls squarely on the shoulders of Tudor,” there was no shortage of errors, including:

• local health types did not sufficiently assess or monitor John Tudor & Son’s food safety management or HACCP plan;

• the abattoir was allowed to continue slaughtering despite longstanding and repetitive failures, in breach of legislative requirements and without significant improvements; and,

• the procurement process was “seriously flawed in relation to food safety”

Prof Pennington said he was disappointed that the recommendations he made more than 10 years ago, following the E.coli O157 outbreak in Wishaw, Scotland, which killed 17 people had failed to prevent the South Wales Valleys outbreak.

“I was very disappointed that the more we looked into what happened in South Wales, the greater the number of parallels between Scotland and Wales. That was disappointing for me personally because I had spent a lot of time coming up with the recommendations in 1996 and 1997 – they were implemented but somewhere things fell down in the way they were implemented. I am looking for these recommendations to be implemented as soon as possible because E.coli is as powerful a threat now as it was in 2005.”
 

Mud with sheep poop sickens mountain bikers

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Hundreds of mountain bikers competing in separate races in British Columbia and Wales in the past year were stricken by campylobacter, apparently from contact with feces-laden mud.

Now, the National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) and Environmental Health officers at Powys County Council have concluded the Welsh outbreak was probably caused by campylobacter, spread to the cyclists by mud which was contaminated with sheep feces.

The report acknowledged that, given the nature of mountain bike events, it would be impossible to eliminate the risk of catching such an infection, but made the following recommendations:

* Participants should avoid using soiled drink and food containers
* Pre-packaged food should be eaten out of the wrapper
* Where possible, hands and utensils should be washed before consuming food and drinks
* No open food should be served at events.
* Drinks produced in large volumes for consumption by participants should be dispensed using a method which does not require the repeated immersion of utensils.
* Organisers should consider providing facilities to wash hands and water bottles with clean, running water
* Wherever possible, courses should be re-routed to avoid areas which are heavily contaminated with animal faeces
* Mountain bikers, particularly those who are vulnerable to infection, should be alerted to the potential risk of acquiring zoonotic illnesses from participation in events which cross land used by agricultural and other animals.

 To comment on the report, email bikes.outbreak@nphs.wales.nhs.uk.

Groundhog Day continues for Hugh Pennington; lashes out a delay in E. coli reporting — again (and again and again)

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“In November 1996, over 400 fell ill and 21 — largely pensioners who had attended a church supper — were eventually killed in Scotland from infection with E. coli O157:H7.

Health authorities quickly linked the outbreak to cooked meat sold by family butchers John Barr & Son in Wishaw, who had been in business for 28 years and in September was awarded the title of Scottish Butcher of the Year. … It was concluded by investigators that the contamination occurred probably because knives used to separate raw product were also being used to open packages of cooked product.”

Professor Hugh Pennington was called in to handle a public inquiry.

Then another E. coli O157 outbreak struck, this time in Wales in 2005, killing a five-year-old and sickening some 150 schoolchildren. Another public inquiry was held earlier this year, chaired again by Prof. Pennington.

Then another outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in Scotland killed one and sickened seven in Aug. 2007, again in cold cuts, and again Prof. Pennington said there was no excuse for allowing contaminated cold meat to be sold.

Yesterday, Prof Pennington told the Sunday Mail that a Scottish hospital taking three days to report three cases of E. coli O157 to the local public team was unacceptable, adding,

"I’d only find a delay of hours acceptable. Finding the source must be done quickly, especially after what happened in Wishaw years ago."

Maybe one day the good prof will awaken from this repeating nightmare.

 

Another campylobacter outbreak from mud at a mountain bike race

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From Canada to Wales, if you’re racing mountain bikes, try not to swallow the mud – apparently there’s a lot of shit in mud.

In June 2007, hundreds were stricken and 18 tested positive for campylobacter during the annual Test of Metal mountain bike race in Squamish, B.C.

Dr. Paul Martiquet, the chief medical officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, said,

"This was an outbreak with a high attack rate. Our future advice to the race organizers is to inspect the route prior to the race to ensure it is not littered with animal feces, and not end the race at the horse ring. If there is any horse poop, they have to remove it."

Now, a preliminary report by the National Public Health Service for Wales estimates that up to 160 people who attended the Merida Bikes mountain bike Marathon July 5-6, 2008, based on Builth Wells, fell ill, and 10 of the riders tested positive for campylobacter.

The report described the course as,

“very muddy and contaminated with sheep slurry in certain areas, leading to significant amounts of mud splashing over participants and their equipment. … The most statistically significant risk was the inadvertent ingestion of mud. The nature of this sport means that riding through muddy, agricultural land is unavoidable. The risk of infection from zoonotic organisms such as campylobacter will therefore always be present. Clearly the weather conditions on the day of this event compounded the problem by making contamination by mud inevitable.”


 

Hygiene horrors in Cardiff, Wales takeout restaurants

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Bill Marler’s going to London, and if he gets to Wales, beware the Cardiff takeaway.

The South Wales Echo reports that cockroaches, dirt, poor personal hygiene and congealed fat are just some of the shocking  details uncovered in health inspector reports on kebab shops and chippies in Caroline Street.

Hundreds of hungry revellers regularly use the street, widely known as Chip Alley (below), after nights out on the town.

But the most recent kitchen hygiene inspection reports, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show the street’s takeaways broke food safety regulations more than 70 times.

Wales: E. coli lessons ‘were not learned’

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The families of the 150 sickened and one killed in the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in Wales told a public inquiry today it was "galling" that lessons from other outbreaks were not learned and that the events caused "lasting and untold harm" to many families.

Mark Powell QC (no relation but a fine Welsh name), representing the families, said warnings had not been heeded following an E.coli outbreak in Scotland between 1996 and 1997 which left 21 elderly people dead.

"It is galling to the families that many of the observations the Sheriff’s inquiry, with the substitution of the name of Tudor for that of Barr, the butcher involved in that outbreak, could be written about the 2005 outbreak. Much of what was said then could equally be said now."

The inquiry, chaired by Professor Hugh Pennington, who also chaired an inquiry following the 1996 outbreak in Scotland, is hearing final submissions on Wednesday and Thursday.

It was as if the report following the Scottish outbreak was never written, he told Professor Pennington, adding, "The families are determined that in 10 year’s time, the same might not be said of your inquiry."

The inquiry’s findings and any recommendations are not expected to be published until later this year.

Bureaucrats: We were told to take a “softly softly” approach to food safety plans in Wales

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The families of the E. coli victims in the 2005 outbreak in Wales believe the public officials charged with protecting their families failed in their duty, but that butcher William Tudor “motivated by greed and profit bears the principal responsibility for the outbreak."

Bridgend County Council responded by saying it made a "reasonable" decision to allow William Tudor, the Butcher of Wales,  to use one vacuum-packing machine for both cooked and uncooked meat and that the rules on the issue were "unclear."

The BBC reports that Bridgend council do accept that there were deficiencies in the way its officers worked with the factory to introduce a hazard assessment plan, but it says that the government had intended the scheme to be introduced on a "softly softly" basis.

It also says that Mr Tudor’s "undoubted attempts at deceit" gave their officers the impression that he was a "competent and informed food operator."