Monthly Archives: January 2011

The truth about sleeping with cats and dogs

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It was a come-and-meet-a- real-live Canadian event when I first met Amy in Kansas in 2005, and when I first told her that sleeping with her dog was a microbiological risk.

I also told her French food was overrated and she shouldn’t eat rare hamburgers.

She asked me out on a date.

In a study to be published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, veterinary scientists say sleeping with your pets increases the chances of contracting everything from parasites to the plague.

Andrew Schneider of AOL News reports most U.S. households have pets, and more than half of those cats and dogs are allowed to sleep in their owner’s beds.

Personal note: our dogs do not sleep in the bed, but the cats do, primarily in the winter when it’s too cold to go outside; in the summer we are of no use and the cats can disappear for days.

Drs. Bruno Chomel, a professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine, and Ben Sun, chief veterinarian for California’s Department of Health, say they wanted to raise the attention of people, as sleeping with a pet is becoming quite common, and there are risks associated with it, even if it is not very frequent.

The authors found that "the risk for transmission of zoonotic agents by close contact between pets and their owners through bed sharing, kissing or licking is real and has even been documented for life-threatening infections such as plague, internal parasites" and other serious diseases.

This study and several others show that disease from cats is far more prevalent, and often more serious.

The number of cats snuggling up with their owner is far greater, which may explain the larger number of people acquiring feline-spawned diseases, Chomel explained.

Sharing our resting hours with our pets may be a source of psychological comfort, but because pets can bring a wide range of zoonotic pathogens into our environment, sharing is also associated with risks, the authors of the current study reported.

• A 9-year-old boy from Arizona got the plague because he slept with his flea-infested cat.
• A 48-year-old man and his wife repeatedly contracted MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which their physicians eventually attributed to their dog. The animal "routinely slept in their bed and frequently licked their face," the California experts reported.
• A Japanese woman contacted meningitis after kissing her pet’s face.
• A study published last August in the journal Pediatrics tracked an outbreak of salmonella in 79 people between 2006 and 2008 that was caused by contaminated meat in dry cat and dog food.

Half of the victims were children, who CDC investigators said "might also have played with the pet food and then put their hands — or the food itself — in their mouths."

Tuscon restaurant to offer lion meat tacos

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Why aren’t there more meats on a stick?

And why aren’t there more lion-meat tacos?

The Arizona Daily Star reports Boca Tacos y Tequila, a Tucson taco restaurant, will start accepting orders for African lion tacos, to go along with previous tacos featuring alligator, elk, kangaroo, rattlesnake and turtle.

According to the US Food and Drug Administration, lion and other game meat can be sold as long as the species isn’t endangered.

Most of Boca’s exotic tacos range between US$3 and US$4. The lion tacos will cost US$8.75 apiece.
 

B.C. meat plant covers up positive E. coli test; we’re sorry but it was a disgruntled ex

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Who hasn’t used that line.

And why wasn’t Kevin Allen interviewed for this story?

CBC News reports that one of British Columbia’s largest meat processing plants (that’s in Canada) covered up lab results that showed a sample of its product was contaminated with E. coli O157.

The coverup came to light when Daniel Land, who oversaw the plant’s quality assurance, contacted CBC News, saying officials at Pitt Meadows Meats Ltd. told him to keep quiet about the positive test result obtained on Sept. 9.

Daniel Land says the Pitt Meadows plant manager ignored a positive test for E. coli.

"[The plant manager] said this does not leave the room … and I don’t want nobody talking about this," said Land. "He crumpled [the test finding] up and threw it into my garbage can."

Plant officials, however, say they didn’t report the test results because they suspected the whistleblower was trying to sabotage the plant and questioned his general sampling procedures. Officials also say later tests were negative for E. coli, suggesting the public was never in danger.

"Under normal circumstances, the CFIA would have been informed immediately," the plant said in a written statement. "But due to the suspect sample handling, the decision was made to handle this issue in house. If the second test result would have been positive, the CFIA would have been notified immediately."

Regulations require federally licenced plants to report positive findings of E. coli O157 strain to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

CFIA inspection manager Joseph Beres called the plant’s coverup a serious breach of regulations, but said no evidence of E. coli was found on subsequent tests of the plant’s products.

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.
 

New York inspections reveal new A-list for restaurants

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Charlie Sheen may have texted a porn star that, “I’m an A-lister” but that don’t mean much when it comes to food safety.

Glenn Collins writes in the New York Times tomorrow that after six months of restaurant inspection grading in New York City, nearly 60 per cent of some 24,000 restaurants in the city have inspection scores that rate an A, from a liberal sprinkling in Chinatown to a true sanito-palooza of nine blue A placards in the food court at Grand Central Terminal.

Meanwhile, some of the city’s most highly regarded restaurants have struggled to get on the A list. In December an inspector disturbed the hushed precincts of Corton, which The New York Times gave three stars, to dispense 48 points for a possible C grade. Similarly, restaurant Daniel, the winner of four stars, received an initial B score of 19 in November. Even the haute Bernardin, another four-star winner, received a B score of 22 in August. Each endured derision from food bloggers for a few weeks before earning A grades on later inspections.

Fancy food don’t mean safe food.

Two other three-star restaurants — Le Cirque, with a score of 30, and Gramercy Tavern, with a score of 35 — were assessed enough violation points to earn C grades. On Dec. 7, Esca, another three-star restaurant, received 25 points on its first inspection and 18 points on a reinspection three weeks later. (The scores would earn the restaurant a B.)

If there is an apparent preponderance of A’s, it is not because the city is trying to be generous, said Daniel Kass, a deputy health commissioner. “There are more A’s at this point,” he said, “because the A’s get issued immediately.”

The mayor is expected to address the issue of letter grading today in his annual State of the City address.

But the Web site, nyc.gov/health/restaurants, shows that, as of Tuesday, 12,469 restaurants had scores that would give them an A; 7,892 earned scores that would rate a B; and 1,665 have scores that would qualify as a C.

Mr. Mazzone of Chicken Masters is expecting an inspection “any day,” he said, and is looking forward to it “like root canal.” What would he tell restaurants with a more complex menu array than his inventory of chicken, ribs and burgers?

“That’s simple,” he said. “They should move to Jersey.”
 

Faith-based food safety not enough, Dublin restaurant told to cook burgers

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A Dublin restaurant has been told by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to stop serving burgers cooked rare and medium-rare or face legal action.

The Rathmines restaurant Jo’burger has been warned by the Environmental Health Officer with the HSE to serve only well-done burgers or prove that undercooked meat can be served without the risk of E. coli bacteria and other contamination.

Jo’burger received a written warning this month that continuing to serve burgers cooked rare or medium rare could represent a “risk to public health.”

Restaurant owner Joe Macken said he had first been warned about the issue of undercooked burgers when the restaurant opened over three years ago. He responded by putting a disclaimer at the bottom of the menu, telling customers: “We will serve your burger as you request it, rare to well-done. Rare and medium-rare burgers are undercooked. Note eating of undercooked or raw meat may lead to food borne illness.”

He said the rare and medium-rare burger was a popular choice among his customers.

Asked how he could be sure his customers would not get sick, he said he was not sure. “But we have a belief in our product,” he said, and in the abattoir that produces the mince and sends it to them vacuum-packed. “The last thing they want is an E.coli outbreak.”

Cyclist positive for clenbuterol, claims contamination

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Another cyclist has been caught eating at the Mark McGwire café and another is blaming Mexican meat for testing positive for clenbuterol.

The Danish cycling federation Tuesday revealed that Philip Nielsen, 23 (right, exactly as shown), of the continental Concordia team, tested positive for clenbuterol during the 2010 Vuelta a Mexico.

Nielsen won stage 8 of the Mexican tour in April and both A and B samples have come back positive. His case now is making its way through the Danish disciplinary process.

Nielsen claims he was not doping, but did offer an excuse of how the banned product found its way into his system.

Italian Alessandro Colo also tested positive, but he claimed that his test was triggered by eating contaminated meat in Mexico.

The Nielsen case comes as Spanish officials consider what to do with Alberto douchebag Contador (left), who is facing a two-year ban and disqualification of his Tour de France crown after he tested positive for the substance en route to winning last year’s Tour.

Slime in the icemaker makes me gag

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Or it makes Larry Hicks of Pennsylvania’s York Dispatch gag.

Hicks says there are numerous restaurants in York County he wouldn’t patronize if he was starving to death because they’ve done poorly on their food inspections, and that in reading recent restaurant inspection reports, "slime inside the icemaker or ice bin is enough to make me gag. No excuse for that. Same for food prep personnel not frequently washing their hands. …

“Having food storage refrigerators that don’t maintain the proper temperatures or failing to keep food preparation areas clean does not cut it with me.

"One failing restaurant had bottles of liquor with dead insects inside the bottles. How can that happen? The same place stored raw chicken over ready-to-eat foods in the refrigerated walk-in. C’mon, we know better than that if we’re in the food business, don’t we?

"I understand it’s practically impossible for any and all restaurants not to occasionally have a mouse find its way into the kitchen. The occasional bug (even a cockroach) is to be expected, as well. But an infestation of those critters is not acceptable under any circumstances. If I know there’s been an infestation, I cross the place off my list. I just don’t go there.

"Because it indicates to me that there’s a lack of attention to detail in that particular restaurant. It’s not focused on what is important.

"I’m not only glad food safety regulations are enforced but that the results of the inspections are made a matter of public record. I read those stories every time.

"Otherwise, we’d have no clue what’s going on in the back of the restaurant.
Unless … restaurants start telling us when they score well on their food safety inspections.

"Maybe that could be the next trend in the food service industry."

Sounds like marketing food safety. Bring it on.
 

Food safety silliness from Fox

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Fox News does lots of dumb things. Reprinting food safety nosestretchers from askmen.com is a public health liability.

Among the top 10 food safety tips – which are primarily lifestyle choices, not food safety – is that people should avoid buying ground beef at Whole Foods “unless you watch them grind it.”

Whole Foods sucks at food safety, but how the writer got groovy E. coli goggles to see bacteria beyond the horoscope-level of superstition is worthy of scientific investigation.
 

Salmonella-in-sprouts sick climbs to 125, water sample positive

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As soon as Tiny Greens of Illinois was fingered as the source of the suspect sprouts in a salmonella outbreak largely linked to Jimmy John’s sandwiches, an astute public health-type e-mailed me and said, “check out their water supply.”

I’m not sure what water is being used where and for what, but according to the Tiny Greens website, they recycle all water.

“At Tiny Greens, we have one of the only complete systems that we are aware of to clean, improve, and re-use our water. The natural biological processes that are continually present in the undisturbed eco-systems around us are utilized in a controlled environment to clean and re-cycle our water.”

Here’s what looks like the important point:

“Next, the middle layer of clarified wastewater liquid flows out of the septic tank into a sand filter. The sand filter uses outside air, thus further treating the water aerobically (using bacteria requiring oxygen). Sand filters provide a high level of treatment and normally produce effluent that tests 99.9% bacteria and virus-free. … Sand filters are the preferred treatment method at Tiny Greens and their nutrient-rich, disinfected water can be utilized as free fertilizing water for growing plants."

99.9 per cent may sound impressive, but may also mean crap (literally).

On Friday, CDC announced that from Nov. 1, 2010, through Jan. 11, 2011, 125 individuals infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella serotype I 4,[5],12:i:-, whose illnesses began since November 1, have been reported from 22 states and the District of Columbia. Results of the investigation indicate a link to eating Tiny Greens Alfalfa Sprouts or Spicy Sprouts at Jimmy John’s restaurant outlets.

Testing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of one environmental (water run-off) sample identified Salmonella serotype I 4,[5],12:i:- that is indistinguishable from the outbreak strain.

Tiny Greens’ owner Bill Bagby criticized testing by the FDA and the Illinois Department of Public Health as not being comprehensive enough.

“The [FDA statement] is misleading. That burns me up! … I learn something from every single inspector that comes here. Looking at all of this in a positive way, this is a chance for us to do something better.”