‘I look just like Mary Tyler Moore’ Now the Germans are copying us

Posted on September 24, 2018 by Douglas Powell

Regarding peer-reviewed papers about cooking shows and food safety and something about integrity: There’s a lot of hucksters out there – especially in academia.

I’ve articulated where the idea came from (my father), how we set out to do the research in 2002, how the Canadian Food Network loved us and then threatened to sue us.

I’m, uh, unaffiliated, so sue away.

The rest of youse are posers, but at least the Germans cited us.

Which sorta freaks me out, given that my infant father had his surrounding landscape bombed away in Newport, Wales, in 1940 (some of my relatives may have owned the Red Lion, no one really wants to talk about it).

Since a few years, cooking shows have enjoyed great popularity in Germany. Currently, about 60 different formats are broadcasted on German television. In the field of food preparation and nutrition, they represent a significant passive source of information. This study aims to assess food safety practices in German TV cooking shows and to identify potential differences between professional and amateur chefs.

With the help of an observational sheet, three trained evaluators examined 100 episodes of eight popular TV cooking shows. On average, the evaluators observed 1.2 hygiene mistakes per minute or one hygiene lapse every 50 seconds. The most common mistakes include the use of unwashed cutting boards, adding ingredients with unwashed hands and wiping dirty hands with tea towels.

A lack of handwashing before beginning food preparation and after coughing, sneezing, wiping the nose or sweat or touching their hair, eyes, etc. was also frequently observed. No significant differences between professional and amateur chefs were found for the overall frequency of food safety mistakes, but professional chefs more often complied with specific personal hygiene measures.

Findings suggest that little attention is paid to safe food handling practices in German TV cooking shows. However, they may be particularly suited to convey safe food handling practices to a broad audience, not least because of their popularity.

Food safety behavior observed in German TV cooking shows

17.sep.18

Food Control https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2018.09.017

JasminGeppert, Sarah SchulzeStruchtrup, RainerStamminger, ClaudiaHaarhoff, VolkerEbert, SeverineKoch, MarkLohmann, Gaby-FleurBöl

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713518304705

Food safety indifference

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Douglas Powell

When I repeat a breakout drill on the ice rink for 6-9-year-olds playing hockey – in Australia — I can see the parents rolling their eyes, yet the same parents marvel at the improvement when it comes to games.

It takes time. It takes effort. It takes fun.

I’ve been playing, coaching and sometimes administrating hockey for almost 50 years.

I’ve been playing, coaching and sometimes administrating microbial food safety things for 23 years (I’m old – two grandsons).

There’s not much difference.

Except one group is little kids trying to learn things, and the other is adults, paid money, who seem to want to make money.

And not learn.

Food safety indifference is the biggest challenge I’ve faced in my professoring or professional career: How to get people to care in the absence of an outbreak?

I’ve had the good fortune to work with industry types around the globe who recognized risk and were proactive – but it was really about trade, not fewer sick people.

From Sara Lee in 1998 to Maple Leaf Foods in 2008 to Blue Bell today, companies act with shock and compassion when they find out they sickened people – in all these cases with Listeria — but a reflective glance is more critical.

They all had Listeria positives, but no one got sick yesterday, so the assumption is there’s a greater probability no one will get sick tomorrow.

Nice approach, until you get caught.

In Sept. 2014, 130 Canadians were sickened with E. coli O157 in pork.

Not the usual vehicle.

When a Canadian television station tried to do a follow-up in 2015, they were blocked by government and industry at every step.

Global News went through a years-long access-to-information process to obtain incident reports on E. coli found in Canadian food plants, most of it redacted.

How is it that 22 years after Jack-in-the-Box, North Americans seem to be adopting an attitude of indifference to food safety?

There’s lots of outbreaks, and communications research would suggest people are overloaded, so what’s a food safety type to do?

There is so much bad food safety advice that circulates in the PR-driven media, I’m not sure: How many years can anyone spend saying, you’re scientifically full of crap, stop it.

Food safety types need to persevere against the push for profit and stick with the message and the medium.

The best companies will do more than have manufactured soundbites about how food safety is their number 1 priority.

It doesn’t match up with reality, and food safety types, you’ll be needed sooner than you think.

Make food safety data public; market microbial food safety at retail; and repeat.

We won the game last week because the kids knew the drill, we’d practiced it, and we had fun.

Food safety should be the same.

Dr. Douglas Powell is a former professor of food safety at the University of Guelph in Canada and Kansas State University in the U.S., who shops, cooks and ferments from his home in Brisbane, Australia.

dpowell29@gmail.com

0478 222 221

Engineer develops real-time Listeria biosensor prototype

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Douglas Powell

A Texas A&M AgriLife Research engineer and a Florida colleague have developed a biosensor that can detect listeria bacterial contamination within two or three minutes.

“We hope to soon be able to detect levels as low as one bacteria in a 25-gram sample of material – about one ounce,” said Dr. Carmen Gomes, AgriLife Research engineer with the Texas A&M University department of biological and agricultural engineering, College Station.

The same technology can be developed to detect other pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7, she said. But listeria was chosen as the first target pathogen because it can survive even at freezing temperatures. It is also one of the most common foodborne pathogens in the world and the third-leading cause of death from food poisoning in the U.S.

“It can grow under refrigeration, but it will grow rapidly when it is warmed up as its optimum growth temperature ranges from 30 to 37 degrees Celsius — 86 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit,” Gomes said. “This makes it a particular problem for foods that are often not cooked, like leafy vegetables, fruits and soft cheeses that are stored under refrigeration.”

Currently, the only means of detecting listeria bacteria contamination of food requires highly trained technicians and processes that take several days to complete, she said. For food processing companies that produce and ship large quantities of foodstuff daily, listeria contamination sources can be a moving target that is often missed by current technology.

The biosensor she is working on is still in the prototype stage of development, but in a few years she envisions a hand-held device that will require hardly any training to use.

Gomes is collaborating with Dr. Eric McLamore at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

“I do the biological and polymer engineering; he does the electrochemistry and nanostructures,” she said.

As for the biological component, Gomes said she is using “nanobrushes” specially designed to grab particular bacteria.

The nanobrushes utilize “aptamers,” which are single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules that bind to the receptors on the target organism’s cell outer membrane, Gomes said. This “binding” is often compared to the way a key fits into only one lock.

In this manner, the nanobrushes select for only a specific type of cell, which in the case of her work is the listeria bacterium.

Gomes noted that the inspiration for the nanobrushes comes from the Hawaiian bobtail squid, a football-sized creature that forms a symbiotic relationship with bioluminescent bacteria. Microscopic, hair-like structures, called cilia, on the squid’s light organ select and capture the bacteria from a very complex microbial soup of the ocean.

“The squid feeds the bacteria sugar and amino acids and in return, the bioluminescent bacteria allow the squid to produce light, which then allows the squid to escape from things that might want to eat it,” she said. “To predators, the bioluminescence is very similar to the light coming from the moon and stars at night, which acts as a ‘camouflage’ when observed from below.

“The selection process the polymers use to select for specific bacteria in the listeria biosensor is very similar to the squid’s cilia. We are trying to mimic the same mechanism of bacteria’s capture used by the squid’s cilia.”

Currently, the listeria biosensor is about the size of a postage stamp, with two wires leading to two etched conductive areas. After a few minutes, when the polymer nanobrushes have had time to grab the selected bacteria, the rest of the sample is washed away and the impedance, or resistance, between the two surfaces is measured electronically.

Gomes and McLamore are moving on to refining the electronics to something that can be handheld and easily used. Also in the works is a disposable paper-based biosensor that can be disposed of after one use.

In early April, they were awarded a three-year $340,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue their work on nanobrushes for pathogen detection.

New biosensor enables rapid detection of Listeria

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Douglas Powell

A Texas A&M AgriLife Research engineer and a Florida colleague have developed a biosensor that can detect listeria bacterial contamination within two or three minutes.

What is collaboration?

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Douglas Powell

My latest column for the Texas A&M Center for Food Safety:

Me and Chapman have been working together and writing for 15 years.

We ain’t the Beatles but we’ve had our moments. Lots of research, coaching girls’ hockey together, and he once bailed me out of jail.

He would be the calm and steady Paul (although he’d rather be George) to my erratic John.

Me and Amy have been writing and working together for nine years.

She also is the steady Paul. And there’s a couple of others that I repeatedly work with, who balance the yin-and-yang.

But what is it that makes a collaboration?

As Joshua Wolf Shenk wrote in The Atlantic earlier this year, “Paul was the diplomat; John was the agitator. Paul was soft-spoken and almost unfailingly polite; John could be a right loudmouth and quite rude. …

“The ancient Greeks gave form to these two sides of human nature in Apollo, who stood for the rational and the self-disciplined, and Dionysus, who represented the spontaneous and the emotional.”

I keep reading how food safety is a collaborative effort, but, as Margaret Mead wrote, “Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All societal movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.”

Food safety collaboration is over-rated, especially if it’s driven by a top-down organization.

Individuals create and innovate, and bring others to the table.

My first university job was at an Ontario Center of Excellence (that’s in Canada) in 1990, involving four universities big in the information technology biz.

After a couple of years of handing out money – and ridiculous amounts of process – a leading artificial intelligence researcher told me, why don’t you just give us researchers an extra $10,000 a year, and get rid of the BS.

He had a point.

So much so that I quit my cushy job shortly after that to go get a PhD and throw my own ideas into the world – not some government-mandated spin.

But what I observed in those couple of years was that individuals made connections, and produced great stuff. And that committees generally produced crap.

That continued on into 15 years of academia, where I observed good people trying to contort themselves for funding agencies.

Several department chairs have said I didn’t play well with others, yet my collaborative publication record is strong; I just have a low tolerance for BS.

And when people throw around phrases like global teamwork for a safer food supply, or international regulatory harmonization, I roll my eyes and wonder, what is this money being spent on? What is the real goal?

I love working with the people I work with, and we share ideas, but there’s a lot more people I won’t work with.

Maybe it’s an age thing.

The steady and focused need someone to take them out of their comfort zone, as much as the erratic need a steadying support.

That is the challenge of any collaboration, bringing those elements together, and being better than the individual.

Dr. Douglas Powell is a former professor of food safety who shops, cooks and ferments from his home in Brisbane, Australia.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the original creator and do not necessarily represent that of the Texas A&M Center for Food Safety or Texas A&M University.

STEC on beef; Texas A&M investigators develop research to reduce dangerous E. coli

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Douglas Powell

Texas A&M investigators are part of a research effort working on ways to inhibit the growth of Shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) on beef.

Carolina Gonzalez, a graduate student at TAMU, studied the use of fermentative microorganisms to produce natural antimicrobial compounds that can inhibit the growth of STEC on beef top sirloins.

Using this methodology, Gonzalez was able to reproduce the production of lactic acid by these organisms on beef surfaces during product aging, which will help producers understand how the non-pathogenic microorganisms can inhibit the growth of pathogenic microbes on major pieces of beef before preparation.

Tamra Tolen, a Ph.D. student, studied the ability of different plant-derived, antimicrobial essential oils such as clove and oregano to not only to restrain the growth of STEC on ground beef, but also exhibit antimicrobial properties. Such essential oils are identified as generally safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service, and may be particularly relevant in both beef transportation and retail.

The results of the new research will be presented at the 2014 Governor’s Conference/STEC CAP Annual Conference May 27-29, in Lincoln, Neb. Attendees at the conference will also discuss progress in prevention and control of microbials. “The Texas A&M AgriLife Research team is pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with such a prestigious research group working to help assure the safety of our food,” said Dr. Gary Acuff, director of the Texas A&M Center for Food Safety in College Station and one of the collaborative research team members.

“The long-term goal of the project is to reduce the occurrence and public health risks from Shiga toxin-producing E. coli in beef, while preserving an economically viable and sustainable beef industry,” said Dr. Rod Moxley, project director from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “This can only be accomplished by a multi-institutional effort that brings together complementary teams of the nation’s experts whose expertise spans the entire beef chain continuum and then sharing the research findings through conferences such as this.”

Texas A&M is one of the 15 universities engaged in STEC research, which was funded by a five-year, $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Serving up food safety

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Douglas Powell

I sleep at weird hours.

There’s a lot of things to be seen in the middle of the night.

Like all the food service trucks arriving at restaurants.

Do consumers know where their food comes from? Do restaurants?

These are the things I look for.

• When I order meat and the server asks, how would you like it done, I always say the appropriate temperature. Only once over the past decade has a server been able to say, we can do that, and pulled out a tip-sensitive digital thermometer she carried around. I returned to that establishment.

• If the restaurant or market advertizes their food as local/natural/sustainable/organic/GE free/wild seafood, etc., I ask, how is that verified? Is there any testing for microbial food safety?

• Inspection reports are only a snapshot in time, but patterns can be detected over time. Recurring problems mean, go somewhere else.

• When diners ask to take leftovers home, does the restaurant take the remains to the kitchen (bad) or bring a clamshell to the table for the diner to take care of her own food (good). And maybe some food safety stickers on that clamshell with date, time and reheating guidelines. It has been done.

d• A restaurant that cares about food safety will have its own auditors and secret diners, to ensure that what management says is happening with front-line servers.

• Does management support food safety with rapid, reliable, relevant and repeated food safety information so front-line servers can at least attempt to answer basic food safety questions?

•Do staff have access to the proper tools for proper handwashing – vigorously running water, soap and paper towels?

• Are foods properly stored and thawed (this appears in restaurant inspection reports routinely)?

• Are steps taken to prevent cross-contamination (also shows up repeatedly in restaurant inspection reports)?

• What’s in that dip, has become my standard question at many Australian restaurants. Usually they use raw eggs, and the outbreaks keep piling up. I choose something else.

• Raw produce is problematic. Does that sandwich have raw sprouts? Where did that lettuce or spinach come from? Was it grown with good agricultural practices because washing ain’t going to do much?

• Are employees vaccinated against Hepatitis A. Do employees work when they are sick with norovirus (happens every week somewhere in the U.S.)?

• Does the restaurant welcome questions and support disclosure systems?

That’s a lot of questions when I just want to go out on the town with Amy.

But I ask these routinely and learn a lot. Curiosity has its benefits.

The interested public can handle more, not less, information about food safety. The best restaurants will not wait for government; they will go ahead and make their food safety practices available in a variety of media and brag about them — today.

Dr. Douglas Powell is a former professor of food safety who shops, cooks and ferments from his home in Brisbane, Australia.

Food safety types – practice what you preach

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Douglas Powell

My first column from the Texas A&M Center for Food Safety:

I dream about thermometers.

In the latest combination of fact and fiction, accuracy and amalgamation, I was at a roadhouse-style restaurant and settling the bill with an assistant manger who had seen it all and stopped having fun years ago, when smoke started billowing from the open grill.

A waitress tried to serve the burger — black on the outside, raw on the inside – when my food safety nerd friend went to intervene.

I joined the fray, and insisted a thermometer was necessary to determine if the burger was safe.

The assistant manager said, “I heard you were the biggest loser in town.”

Then the dream ends.

In 1998, the U.S. Department of Agriculture very publicly began to urge consumers to use an accurate food thermometer when cooking ground beef patties because research demonstrated that the color of meat is not a reliable indicator of safety.

USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety at the time, Catherine Woteki, said, “Consumers need to know that the only way to be sure a ground beef patty is cooked to a high enough temperature to destroy any harmful bacteria that may be present is to use a thermometer.”

At the time, I said, no one uses a meat thermometer to check the doneness of hamburgers. The idea of picking up a hamburger patty with tongs and inserting the thermometer in sideways was too much effort (others insist the best way to use a tip sensitive digital thermometer is to insert into the middle of the patty at a 45 degree angle).

I was wrong.

Shortly thereafter, I started doing it and discovered, not only was using a meat thermometer fairly easy, it made me a better cook. No more extra well-done burgers to ensure the bugs that would make me sick were gone. They tasted better.

By May 2000, USDA launched a national consumer campaign to promote the use of food thermometers in the home. The campaign featured an infantile mascot called Thermy that proclaimed, “It’s Safe to Bite When the Temperature is Right.”

Fourteen years later, the converts are minimal. Canada came to the thermometer table a few years ago, but the laws of physics are apparently different north of the 49th parallel, with a safe temperature for poultry being 180F in Canada, but 165F in the U.S.

The Aussies are slowly warming to the idea of thermometers but the UK is still firmly committed to piping hot (cue Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins).

Science-based depends on whose science is being quoted to whose ends. The fancy folks call it value judgments in risk assessments; Kevin Spacey in the TV series House of Cards would call it personal advancement.

Food safety is losing to food porn with thermometers.

Many celebrity chefs actively denigrate the use of a thermometer when cooking. Some claim to know meat is safe using the finger method, which is akin to a shaman curing a sick child, or dowsing to find water (chance figures heavily –even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while).

Gordon Ramsey says, “A thermometer? The day we need that to cook a breast of chicken — you, get out.”

Seamus Mullen, the chef and an owner of the Boqueria restaurants in the Flatiron district and SoHo in New York City uses a wire cake tester, or any thin, straight piece of metal. “We stick it in the middle through the side. If it’s barely warm to the lips, it’s rare. If it’s like bath water, it’s medium rare. The temperature will never lie. It takes the guesswork out of everything.”

Why not stick in a thermometer — a thin piece of metal?

I can no longer cook without a meat thermometer; I feel naked, like in a dream.

Yet almost everyone else in the U.S. can, where only 7 per cent of the population report using a thermometer on a regular basis — and some of those are surely lying.

We’ve known the basics for increasing thermometer use for over a decade: people care more about being better cooks than serving safe food, and lead by example.

Tip-sensitive digital thermometers need to be widely available, and food safety types need to use them properly. Not just at home, but at school events with the kids, at potlucks, at any gathering that involves food.

Stop dreaming, start doing.