Tag Archives: Washington

Burger King bolstering food safety after failed inspections

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 A week after Washington State health types made Burger King Corp. aware of a problem with its burger cooking process, the company says that it’s inspecting its systems on the West Coast to determine what changes need to be made.

Most of the undercooking was due to problems with a flame broiler and employees failing to discard undercooked patties.

Susan Shelton, environmental health specialist for the Benton Franklin Health District, said the problem in a nutshell was one of being unfamiliar with the new technology.

"It wasn’t cooking to temperature because there were a lot of controls. When we started working with them, it was resolved."

The health district received no complaints about undercooked food or illnesses, and no lab samples were positive for bacteria or other illness-causing contaminants, she added.

Sushi joint shuttered after salmonella illnesses

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County health inspectors closed Marinepolis Sushi Land in downtown Bellevue, Washington, at 4 p.m. Thursday after two separate patients with salmonella were connected to the restaurant, according to Seattle and King County Public Health.

The two people who fell ill were not hospitalized and have recovered from their illnesses, said James Apa, spokesman of Seattle and King County Public Health.

Marinepolis manager Keith Negley told the Bellevue Patch the restaurant, a conveyor belt style sushi restaurant, is cooperating with the investigation fully, and could be reopen as soon as Friday.

"We’re doing everything we can to assist, even if it’s a potential that it could have been through here," he said.

22 sick with vibrio from raw oysters in Washington state

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The Washington State Department of Health reports that 18 people have been sickened with Vibrio parahaemolyticus after eating raw oysters linked to commercial operations and four illnesses to recreational harvesting in Puget Sound and on the Washington coast.

Cooking shellfish thoroughly will prevent vibriosis illness and is always a good idea. This is especially important during the summer months of July and August when warm temperatures and low tides along ocean beaches and in Puget Sound allow the bacteria to thrive.

If you harvest oysters recreationally this summer, follow these steps to avoid vibriosis:?
• Put oysters on ice or refrigerate them as soon as possible after harvest.
• If a receding tide has exposed oysters for a long time, don’t harvest them.
• Always cook oysters thoroughly. Cooking oysters at 145° F for 15 seconds destroys vibrio bacteria. Rinsing fully-cooked oysters with seawater can recontaminate them.

For commercial harvesters, special control measures are in place from May through September to keep people from getting sick if they eat raw oysters.

Guess those special measures didn’t work this time.
 

4 cases of E. coli in visitors to Wash. petting zoo

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The Snohomish Health District confirms four suspected cases of E. coli found in people who visited the Animal Petting Farm at Forest Park in Everett, Wash.

Two adults and two children reported symptoms after visiting the farm on opening day June 4th. One of the children was hospitalized for three days but is now recovering.

It is believed that the suspected E. coli poisoning originated with the animals who naturally carry bacteria. The Health district believes the infected people did not properly wash their hands.

The city bleached the entire farm and enhanced fences around the animal cages to further limit contact between children and animals. No animals are in quarantine.

Proper handwashing requires access to proper tools. Were sinks with running water, soap and paper towels available near the animals, as is now being recommended, or was it just some sort of wipe that was available.

An updated table of international petting zoo outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks
 

DC don’t know food safety

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Washington, D.C. is always on the cutting edge of food safety.

Not.

Which is why 13 years after Los Angeles started posting restaurant inspection grades, nine years after Toronto started posting red-yellow-green restaurant inspection grades, and a year after New York City started posting letter grades, someone in D.C. decided, hey, we should do that too.

D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) has introduced a bill that would require D.C. restaurants to publicly display letter-grade report cards on their premises, based on Department of Health inspections.

Cheh believes the grades would decrease the number of hospitalizations caused by foodborne diseases.

Not.
 

Salmonella and sprouts again – but just a few sickies

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Clover and clover mix products from Sprouters Northwest Inc. of Kent, Wash., have been recalled because they have the potential to be contaminated with salmonella. The company reports that a few cases of salmonella might be linked to sprouts.

Is that like saying monkeys might fly out of my butt? Sprouters Northwest does offer this mission statement on its website:

“To provide our customers and the public with the freshest, healthiest, and best tasting sprouts available. We pride ourselves in the quality of our product while strictly adhering to all local, state, and federal regulations and guidelines.”

And only a few will get salmonella.

This is the problem with setting standards with everything. The growers say, “we meet all stringent standards,” without bothering to go above and beyond. Ford may have once said the Pinto met all federal standards.

The recall includes the following products, all with a "best by" date of 1/16/11 and earlier:
—4 oz. (UPC 8 15098 00201 6) and 5 oz. (UPC 0 33383 70235 3) containers of Clover sprouts.
—1-lb. bags of Clover (UPC 0 79566 12351 5), and 2-lb. trays of Clover (UPC 0 79566 12362 1).
—Clover Onion sprouts in 4 oz. (UPC 0 79566 12361 4) and 5 oz. (UPC 0 79566 12361 4) containers.
—Deli sprouts in 4 oz. (UPC 8 79566 12305 4) and 5 oz. (UPC 0 33383 70267 4) containers.
—Spicy sprouts in 4 oz. (UPC 8 15098 00202 3) containers.
—Brocco sandwich sprouts in 4 oz. (UPC 8 15098 00028 9) containers.
For more information: Call the company at 253-872-0577.
 

Fancy food not safe food; Sally Jackson Cheese recalled, 8 sick with E. coli O157:H7

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It’s the phrase every food safety type has heard; experienced investigators will convey their disdain with a wry smile, rather than the full eye-rolling and gnashing of rookie teeth: “I’ve been making cheese (substitute your favorite food) this way for 30 years and I’ve never made anyone sick.

That’s the line Oroville, Washington, farmer Sally Jackson told a state inspector a few weeks ago as preliminary evidence linked Sally’s cheese to an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak.

The Seattle Times reports this morning that over the past week, Jackson learned that eight cases of E. coli illness are likely linked with her products. On Friday, she announced a recall and is cooperating with government agencies.

It is the second time in two months that an artisan cheesemaker in Washington was connected with a bacteria that causes foodborne illnesses, though the reaction of the two cheesemakers could not have been more different.

Inspectors found Listeria monocytogenes in cheese made by the Estrella Family Creamery, and also repeatedly identified the bacteria in swabs of its Montesano facility, yet that Grays Harbor County dairy refused a request to recall its product. In October, the Food and Drug Administration obtained a court order forcing it to shut down. The creamery is battling the court action.

To her credit, Jackson said, "I do not want to be associated with their fight. The bottom line is, I don’t want to make anybody else sick."

Four cases of E. coli O157 came to the state Health Department’s attention in the fall, including the case of one woman who was briefly hospitalized. Laboratory tests confirmed the four were linked to each other. Four additional E. coli cases in Oregon, Minnesota and Vermont also were linked to the Washington outbreak via laboratory tests.

According to the state Department of Agriculture, one unopened cheese wheel tested positive for E. coli. Investigators are awaiting the results from additional lab tests that will compare the strain of E. coli from the illnesses with that found in the cheese.

For years, Jackson operated with few problems, however in the last year, inspectors have noted several violations at her facility, including finding that she did not sanitize equipment after use. She has worked to fix the problems.

She and a part-time helper milk 40 sheep, 12 goats and a cow named Renata. They sell to high-end restaurants, as well as retail stores across the country, and the cheeses are distinctively wrapped in grape leaves from neighbors’ farms.

Over the years, her products have been served in most Seattle fine-dining establishments, including Douglas’ Palace Kitchen. Gourmets rave about the quality, so news of the problem and the listeria issue at Estrella came as a shock.

Get over it. Fancy food doesn’t mean safe food.

If only laws were like sausages

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It’s a tired analogy, but given the fantastical failings of the feds to pass the most basic food safety rules, sausage makers are fighting back.

Robert Pear writes in Sunday’s New York Times that, in defending their work, members of Congress love to repeat a quotation attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”

In other words, the legislative process, though messy and sometimes unappetizing, can produce healthy, wholesome results.

But a visit to a sausage factory here, about 10 miles from the Capitol, suggests that Bismarck and today’s politicians are mistaken. In many ways, that quotation is offensive to sausage makers; their process is better controlled and more predictable.

“I’m so insulted when people say that lawmaking is like sausage making,” said Stanley A. Feder, president of Simply Sausage, whose plant here turns out 60,000 pounds of links a year.

“With legislation, you can have hundreds of cooks — members of Congress, lobbyists, federal agency officials, state officials,” Mr. Feder said. “In sausage making, you generally have one person, the wurstmeister, who runs the business and makes the decisions.”

Sausages are produced according to a recipe. And while plenty of pork goes into many sausages and laws, the ingredients of the edible product are specified in advance, carefully measured out and accurately identified on a label. An inspector from the United States Department of Agriculture visits the plant every day.

Granted, Simply Sausage is a small, artisanal sausage maker, not an industrial-scale slaughterhouse. But the comparison is still faulty, said Mr. Feder, a political scientist who took up sausage making after retiring from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Salmonella in eggs; DeCoster and Son go to DC

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There’ll be the usual posturing, handwringing and contrition for the cameras at today’s Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.

Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports this morning that Jack DeCoster and his son, Peter, will apologize at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee meeting today to the 1,608 confirmed victims of a salmonella outbreak and pledge not to resume selling fresh eggs until their farms are free from disease.

“While we always believed we were doing the right thing, it is now very clear that we must do more,” said Peter DeCoster, who is chief operating officer of the Wright County Egg operations, which his father owns.

In a 10-page statement obtained by The Des Moines Register, the men point to a feed ingredient purchased from an outside supplier as the likely source of the salmonella contamination. Federal investigators have reported finding salmonella in several areas of the farms in addition to the feed mill.

This is a terrible strategy. Blaming others and failing to outline what DeCoster and Son were actually doing in terms of testing and other steps to manage the risk of salmonella – before the outbreak — will be a rhetorical playground for even the most addle-minded Congressional-types.

It’ll be like angry parents scolding a teenager who says, sorry, I won’t do it again.

The accused is sorry he got caught.

Again.

The N.Y. Times documented this morning the 1987 salmonella-in-eggs outbreak that killed nine and sickened 500, linked to farms owned by … Austin Jack DeCoster.

Farms tied to Mr. DeCoster were a primary source of Salmonella enteritidis in the United States in the 1980s, when some of the first major outbreaks of human illness from the bacteria in eggs occurred, according to health officials and public records. At one point, New York and Maryland regulators believed DeCoster eggs were such a threat that they banned sales of the eggs in their states.

How many others were sickened by DeCoster and Son eggs over the intervening 23 years, in the absence of an outbreak?

Government’s hopeless.

Market microbial food safety at retail so I, as a consumer, have a choice, so I can reward those egg producers who effectively manage salmonella – before there’s an outbreak.
 

E. coli hits third day care in Washington

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Maybe it’s the summer interns, but reporters in Washington state should know that E. coli O157:H7 is a bacterium, not a virus. The crap that passes for journalism.

Whatever it’s called, two children at a third day care operation in Kittitas County are suspected of having contracted E. coli (not a virus, as repeatedly stated in this story).

The third facility, Foursquare Church Daycare and Preschool in Ellensburg, will remain closed through Friday, said Amy Diaz, spokeswoman for Kittitas County Public Health.

Eight youngsters have been confirmed to have the virus bacterium since the first case was reported June 25. Six additional cases are suspected, with test results pending.