Monthly Archives: December 2010

Ham knuckles with staph, oysters with noro fell 94 at French rugby cocktail party

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I thought rugby match cocktail parties only happened with cans of Brockman’s beer after the games; I have seen Invictus. It’s the way hockey players do it – especially the girls.

The Institut de Veille Sanitaire in France reports today (thanks Albert) that on Feb. 20, 2010, the Fire and Rescue Service of the Hérault district informed the Regional Health Authorities that symptoms such as stomach ache, nausea, vomiting were diagnosed among around 15 people taking part in a rugby match cocktail party.

One person was taken to the local emergency hospital service. … A total of 94 cases and 110 controls were reported among the people taking part in the cocktail party. Two successive epidemic events were identified with distinct symptoms and median incubation periods of 3.5 and 30 hours. The results of the epidemiological, biological and veterinary investigations were in favor of an intoxication of the early cases due to the ingestion of knuckle of ham pieces contaminated by Staphylococcus aureus (OR=3.75; IC=[1.91; 7.35] p=0.001) and an intoxication of late cases due to the ingestion of oyster contaminated by Norovirus (OR=32.22; IC=[7.09 ; 146.34] p<0.001). In this investigation, food and pathogens at the origin of the contamination were identified. This outbreak stresses the importance of respecting hygiene measures in collective catering and defining first management measures as soon as the results of the investigation are known.

Full report only in French, http://www.invs.sante.fr/publications/2010/Tiac/Rapport%20Tiac.pdf
 

Dining in Denver: new safety rules served to restaurants

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Denver is going forward with a lousy restaurant inspection disclosure system that is more protective of restaurant owners than consumers.

Bob McDonald, director of the city’s public health inspections division, told the Denver Business Journal the idea is to more quickly penalize and bring about correction of the most severe health violations, and to allow restaurants with less health-endangering issues to correct theirs with less public notice. McDonald worked with the Colorado Restaurant Association for 18 months to create the new rules.

Under the new rules, critical violations will leave restaurants subject to fines for a second citation but not public notices.

Pete Meersman, president/CEO of the Colorado Restaurant Association, said his members have lobbied for changes to what they saw as an “unfair” system.

Under the new rules, the most-serious violators will be punished the most seriously, and the less-serious violators will be punished with fines but not the massive loss of business that can come with a public notice on their front doors.

“Owners … felt the adverse effect the postings had on their business was overly punitive for the issues involved.”

Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness

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Snappy title, eh? But not bad for a peer-reviewed journal article in Food Control that was published on-line today ahead of print publication.

Almost two decades ago, E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food chain in the U.S. and propelled microbial food safety to the forefront of the public agenda. However, it remains a challenge to compel food producers, processors, distributors, retailers, foodservice outlets and home meal preparers to adopt scientifically validated safe food handling behaviors, especially in the absence of an outbreak.

Readers of barfblog.com will be familiar with the details surrounding the three case studies of failures in food safety culture documented in the paper: E. coli O157:H7 linked to John Tudor & Son in Wales in 2005; listeria linked to cold-cuts produced by Maple Leaf Foods of Canada in 2008; and salmonella linked to Peanut Corporation of America in 2009.

But anyone can be a critic, so we offer suggestions to enhance food safety culture, such as food safety storytelling through infosheets (Chapman, et al., 2010). And we end with my usual plea to actively promote food safety efforts, coupling a strong food safety culture with marketing to the world.

We conclude:

Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems. It requires commitment by an organization’s leaders, middle managers and food handlers. It also must be supported and demonstrated by sharing information within the organization and with customers. The food safety failures of John Tudor & Sons, Maple Leaf Foods, Inc. and PCA are illustrative of an emerging recognition that the culture of food safety within an organization is a significant risk factor in foodborne illness (Griffith et al., 2010a; Yiannis, 2009).

Individuals focusing on food safety risks within an organization with a good food safety culture:

• know the risks associated with the foods they handle and how those should be managed;
• dedicate resources to evaluating supplier practices;
• stay up-to-date on emerging food safety issues;
• foster a value system within the organization that focuses on avoiding illnesses;
• communicate compelling and relevant messages regarding risk reduction activities and empower others to put them into practice;
• promote effective food safety systems before an incident occurs; and,
• do not blame customers (including commercial buyers and end consumers) when illnesses are linked to their products.

The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent – whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website – to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

I’ll add more as the paper becomes available, and if Chapman has anything witty to add (that takes time).

Enhancing food safety culture to reduce rates of foodborne illness

Douglas A. Powella, Casey J. Jacoba and Benjamin J. Chapmanb,
a Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA
b Department of 4-H Youth Development and Family and Consumer Sciences North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7606, Raleigh, NC 27695-7606, USA
Received 2 August 2010;
revised 29 November 2010;
accepted 7 December 2010.
Available online 24 December 2010.

Abstract
A culture of food safety is built on a set of shared values that operators and their staff follow to produce and provide food in the safest manner. Maintaining a food safety culture means that operators and staff know the risks associated with the products or meals they produce, know why managing the risks is important, and effectively manage those risks in a demonstrable way. In an organization with a good food safety culture, individuals are expected to enact practices that represent the shared value system and point out where others may fail. By using a variety of tools, consequences and incentives, businesses can demonstrate to their staff and customers that they are aware of current food safety issues, that they can learn from others’ mistakes, and that food safety is important within the organization. The three case studies presented in this paper demonstrate that creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated food safety messages using multiple media.

Keywords: behavior change; foodborne illness; marketing; organizational culture; risk communication
 

Restaurant redemption: UK kebab shop owner cleans up

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Who hasn’t made mistakes? Mine are documented in all sorts of ways and places.

Resat Gundogdu, a U.K. restaurant owner who was fined £24,000 after E. coli was found in his kebab shop, has now been praised for his impeccable hygiene standards, earning the maximum five stars in his latest Scores On The Doors hygiene inspection.

This is Sussex reports Mr Gundogdu pleaded guilty to six charges of failing to maintain proper standards in food hygiene and health and safety, when he appeared at Crawley Magistrates’ Court last November.

The court was told how council officers found high levels of the bacteria on food surfaces, taps, food boards and floor tiles.

But in just over a year, Mr Gundogdu, 51, has transformed the restaurant and even renamed it, calling it Real Barbecue and Bar.

"I know I have made mistakes. All I can do is apologize for what happened last year. I have apologised to customers about the way the restaurant was kept."

Now, Mr Gundogdu is looking forward to being presented with his five star Scores On The Door window sticker and certificate, in the new year.

“I will be making sure I put my sticker proudly in my window. What matters is I have learnt from my mistakes."

Salmonella in sprouts now sickens 94

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports today that:

* from November 1 through December 27, approximately 94 illnesses linked to infection with the outbreak strain of Salmonella I 4,[5],12:i:- were reported from 16 states and the District of Columbia;

* Ppreliminary results of the investigation indicate a link to eating Tiny Greens brand Alfalfa Sprouts at Jimmy John’s restaurant outlets; and,

* consumers should not eat Tiny Greens brand Alfalfa Sprouts or Spicy Sprouts, and restaurant and food service operators should not serve them. Consumers, retailers and others who have Tiny Greens Alfalfa Sprouts or Spicy Sprouts should dispose of them in a closed plastic bag placed in a sealed trash can. This will prevent people or animals from eating them.

Silence from Jimmy John’s and Tiny Greens, other than, hey, our tests were negative.

Epidemiology still works.
 

Fantastical food safety tales

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Examiner.com is some web site that has published fantastical food safety tales over the years.

A correspondent from Tampa Bay writes that, “by pledging to only use wholesome, organic foods … the chance of foodborne illness is lessened as you are buying from a trusted source. Buy organic when possible – Markets such as Whole Foods and your local farmers market are good sources for quality earth-grown produce."

Whole Foods sucks at food safety. Organic is a production standard that has nothing to do with food safety. Enjoy the Armstrong and Miller Farmer’s Market. 

Yuck factor: leafy greens loaded with E. coli in Dubai

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The National reports that every sample of rocket salad leaves tested from 64 shops in Dubai and Sharjah was contaminated with high levels of potentially deadly E. coli bacteria, researchers have found.

The leaves – also called jarjeer, or arugula – came from outlets ranging from small stores to large supermarket chains. Millions of faecal coliform cells and hundreds of thousands of E. coli bacteria were found in samples of one gram, about the size of a small leaf.

The samples were analysed by Dr Dennis Russell, a researcher at the American University of Sharjah. After washing the leaves three times he still found hundreds of thousands of viable faecal coliform microorganisms per gram, and thousands of E. coli bacteria.

Washing with diluted chlorine bleach did not remove the bacteria.

Dr Russell’s research is published in the current issue of the Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences.

Dr Tibor Pal, a professor of microbiology and immunology at United Arab Emirates University, said that although E. coli was not always harmful, high levels indicated faecal contamination and risk of other serious diseases.

Dr Russell said he had been unable to determine where the rocket leaves had been grown – whether they were from UAE farms or imported – but he said he suspected they all came from the same farm or a group of farms that had used liquified raw faeces for fertiliser rather than compost soil.
 

Cone of silence popping up in botulism-risk soup recall

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The Waterloo Region Record has an update on the botulism-risk, soup recall from Southern Ontario (that’s in Canada) that led to 9,600 litres of soup being pulled from shelves and estimated loss of greater than $100,000 to Barrie Bros. Local Food Company. The recall was initiated after indicator organisms were found in samples of broccoli soup processed by a co-packer/processor in Guelph. Health officials believe that the co-packer’s processing time for this product was inadequate.

Andrew Barrie, co-owner of Barrie Bros. Local Food Company talks about some of the challenges dealing with this type of a crisis:

“You can’t just dump it on the fields,” Barrie said. “You can’t pour it down the drain.” [Barrie] found a beef and hog operation in Wellington County that is able to feed waste food products like the soup to their animals, mixed with regular feed.

A cone of silence is starting to pop-up around who the copacker is. This information isn’t for finger pointing or laying blame (Barrie Bros. have already negotiated a deal with the processor to share the recall costs) but it is important information for other small business who currently (or would like to) use the facility for their products. Food safety risk reduction and business protection is  about making informed decisions about processes, inputs and suppliers. Without identifying the business at the center of the recall, and providing a forum for them to demonstrate how they’ve changed/fixed their process, businesses and buyers are in the dark.

In November 2006, Hershey Canada announced a major recall in Canada and shut down its Smith Falls, Ontario, plant for three weeks after Salmonella was found in their products. The contamination was linked to lecithin, an ingredient used in chocolate production. CFIA who was all over the national airwaves refused to release the lecithin supplier’s information – and left many companies wondering if their supplies were also contaminated.

Health officials and the co-packer in question are doing themselves a disservice by not going public. Take the Barrie Bros. Local Food Company lead and let folks know that there was a problem and show them how it’s being addressed.

The sprouts stop here: Jimmy John’s salmonella-in-sprouts source IDed

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Tiny Greens’ Organic Farm in Urbana, Illinois (below, left, exactly as shown), talks a lot on its web page about being sustainable, natural, organic and using a crap-load of crap in their sprout production.

“The farm is certified by the Global Organic Alliance, which helps with finding a supply of organic seeds, which can be surprisingly hard to acquire. We grow the seeds in compost that we create ourselves, made of a mixture of year old woodchips and leftover sprouts. We have never had to find an outside source for compost. As long as you keep the sprouts healthy, there is no need for using chemicals. Healthy growing materials also mean an end product that is higher in vitamins, minerals and enzymes.”

Tiny Greens’ Organic Farm does not mention microbiological food safety on its web site, but I suspect they will be in the future.

Why a national sandwich chain like Jimmy John’s would buy an identified high-risk product – raw sprouts – from such an outfit is beyond me; it’s their business to lose now that at least 89 people have been sickened with Salmonella serotype I 4,[5],12:i:- in 15 states, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers not to eat Alfalfa Sprouts and Spicy Sprouts (which contain alfalfa sprouts mixed with radish and clover sprouts) from Tiny Greens Organic Farm of Urbana, Ill. The sprouts were distributed in 4 oz. and 5 lb. containers to various customers, including farmers’ markets, restaurants and groceries, in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and possibly other Midwestern states.

Preliminary results of the investigation of a multistate outbreak of Salmonella infections indicate a link to eating Tiny Greens’ Alfalfa Sprouts at Jimmy John’s restaurant outlets.

Approximately half of the illnesses occurred in Illinois, where nearly all of the ill individuals ate sandwiches containing sprouts at various Jimmy John’s outlets. The CDC has posted epidemiological information about this outbreak at http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/i4512i-/.

Jimmy John’s has stopped serving sprouts on its sandwiches at all Illinois locations.

Sprouts are a known source of foodborne illness. Since 1996, there have been at least 30 reported outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with different types of raw and lightly cooked sprouts. Most of these outbreaks were caused by Salmonella and E. coli. The FDA advises children, the elderly, pregnant women, and persons with weakened immune systems should avoid eating raw sprouts of any kind (including alfalfa, clover, radish and mung bean sprouts). To reduce the chance of foodborne illness, FDA advises consumers to cook sprouts thoroughly and to request raw sprouts not be added to your food.

The original table of North American raw sprout-related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprout-associated-outbreaks-north-america-1990-2009.
 

I went to Costa Rica for Christmas and all I got was diarrhea

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Not me. We’re enjoying the balmy Kansas weather and an empty college town as the rest of the country fights snow and rain.

But as reported by HotelChatter, Costa Rica’s Barcelo Tambor Beach hotel had to close after a nasty diarrhea outbreak last week.

The health ministry shut it down after 150 people reportedly sought treatment late last week at a local clinic after suffering from such symptoms as nausea, cramps and vomiting, though the hotel only reported 37 cases of the runs.

The hotel, which has a picturesque beach location on the on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula in Ballena Bay, isn’t allowed to accept new guests and is supposed to evacuate current hotel guests within 24 hours. However, the health ministry said it could take up to a week to do that properly.

Initially, officials thought it was food poisoning. But now the hotel is looking to see if the pool was the culprit.