The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has received word that the five isolates sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control match the multistate listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak.
Rocky Ford cantaloupes from Jensen Farms were distributed in Kansas and several other states.
Kansas has eight cases of listeriosis reported since Aug. 26, with 5 cases now matching the multistate outbreak. Two of these eight patients have died and the causes of death are being investigated.
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Executives with the Iowa egg farms at the center of last year’s salmonella outbreak that sickened nearly 2,000 and led to the recall of 500 million eggs are locked in a legal battle.
Austin "Jack" DeCoster, the man who owns the egg farms, and his former right-hand man, John Glessner are bickering to the tune of $40 million in lawsuits.
In one lawsuit Glessner claims that the DeCoster family has mismanaged its Iowa egg production facilities and deprived him of more than $40 million, including more than $10 million in rent for use .jpeg)
of his Hardin County facility, defaulted on bank loans, been "blackballed" by food vendors and been barred from bidding on contracts with retailers.
Clark Kauffman of The Des Moines Register writes in today’s USA Today that DeCoster’s Ohio Fresh Egg company is suing Glessner, accusing him of looting the company before he was fired this summer.
An executive with Hillandale Farms of Iowa, which was forced to recall 170 million eggs, sent an e-mail to Glessner in August 2010 saying DeCoster had become a liability to Hillandale.
"Unfortunately, Hillandale Farms can have absolutely no association with Jack, anywhere," wrote Orland Bethel, Hillandale’s founder. "We have been told by Costco and Wal-Mart that they will not be doing any business if Jack and his people have any involvement in management."
So much for the cold-chain.
13 Investigates – the voice of Indiana – found beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk, and produce being transported in hot trucks that do not have proper refrigeration.
"If it’s happening here in Indiana," it’s happening in Texas and North Carolina and California," said Capt. Wayne Andrews, who oversees Indiana State Police’s Motor Carrier Enforcement Division. "This is not just an Indiana problem and we need to do more to address it."
"It’s just not working properly and it had approximately a 94.7 degree reading at the time of the traffic stop," explained ISP Trooper Ashley Hart, standing next to a hot truck she pulled over along Interstate 65 near Lafayette. The truck was carrying raw meat, eggs and produce from a warehouse in Chicago to restaurants in Indianapolis.
"It’s absolutely disgusting," she added.
13 Investigates first exposed the problem in July as state police partnered with local health departments to keep spoiled food from hot trucks off Hoosier dinner plates. Since then, the danger has not gone away.
"The problem is growing," said Andrews, whose motor carrier inspectors have found more hot trucks than they ever expected.
Last week, on a 92-degree day, state police stopped a food truck heading northbound on Interstate 69 near Muncie. The truck’s refrigeration unit was broken and inside, eggs, pork, shrimp, and fish were found to be 66 degrees. Food safety inspectors from the Delaware County Health Department say that is both dangerous and illegal.
Indiana’s effort to crack down on hot trucks is about to get some national exposure. After seeing WTHR’s investigation, NBC’s TODAY Show has decided to highlight this problem as a national issue. TODAY sent a crew to Indiana last week and will feature a special report on hot trucks September 22 — this Thursday morning. You can see the report on Channel 13.
Health officials have confirmed 11 individuals who visited the lunch restaurant Manteli in Salmisaari, Finland, at the turn of the month have contracted Salmonella Oranienburg.
The owner of the restaurant, Jouko Pirttimaa, says that he is waiting for the results of the studies by the 
health authorities.
“If the salmonella originated from this restaurant, it must have been in the raw materials, but which ones, I have no idea.”
As a Canadian citizen with permanent U.S. residency living in Australia, I get confused.
Even with a language professor by my side, I can barely understand a damn word anyone says – especially the Canadians.
Fellow Queenslander Pat Dignam also appears confused when he writes in the Irish Times that food irradiation “is routine in some countries, including the U.S., so eating rare hamburgers there is safe.”
No. A small fraction of American ground beef is irradiated, and almost none of that is available at retail or food service.
Mr. Dignam is correct when he says, “During the butchering process, the surface of cuts of meat may become contaminated with bacteria, notably E. coli, from the intestines of the animal .jpg)
(regardless of the standards applied by the farmer and butcher). Cooking an intact piece of meat on the surface is sufficient to kill any such bacteria. However, when a piece of meat is minced, contamination on the surface can be spread to any part of the product. … Irish mince is not irradiated, so the process of cooking through is crucial. E. coli infection can be fatal, so anyone who wishes to eat rare or raw minced beef in Ireland should take note of these facts.”
Well said, except for the U.S. bit. And things get confusing when intact cuts like steaks are needle-tenderized.
The facts are ground beef in the U.S. needs to be cooked to 160F (71C) as verified by a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.
Stick it in.
Not the 1957 Gershwin film starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, but more along the lines of what Denmark has been using as a form of restaurant inspection disclosure (left).
Xinhua News Agency reports China’s food safety watchdog plans to use cartoon faces — smiling or unhappy — to grade restaurants and delis based on the evaluation of their food safety conditions.
According to a draft plan compiled by the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), the "smiling 
face" will represent excellent, the "straight face" means good and the "unhappy face" indicates average, according the draft which is currently opening for public opinions.
The grading will be based on evaluations on food safety factors ranging from environment, facilities, food materials, processing, to food additive and tableware disinfection, according to the draft.
Catering businesses scoring 90 and above will be rated as excellent, and between 75 to 90 will be classified as good. Those with scores above 60 but under 75 will be regarded as average.
The food safety authorities will conduct both from-time-to-time checks and evaluations on yearly basis. The draft said catering businesses will be required to placed the cartoon faces on visible positions to inform diners.
The plan has met mixed reactions among the public, with many suspecting if the proposal could be implemented substantially.
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Continuing with all things melon, did Del Monte cantaloupes, imported from a farm in Guatemala, sicken at least 20 people in 10 states with Salmonella Panama beginning in Feb. 2011?
Or was the link a result of zealous health types in Oregon and at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?
William Neuman of the N.Y. Times writes a lawsuit filed by Del Monte Fresh Produce against FDA is being cheered by many in the produce industry, who often complain about what they call overreaching by regulators and welcome a company with resources pushing back.
Aside from suing the F.D.A., the company has threatened legal action against a leading state food-borne disease investigator in Oregon, where the Del Monte cantaloupes were identified as the .jpg)
cause of the salmonella outbreak. And it has challenged some of the basic techniques of food safety investigations, like relying on ill people’s memories of what they ate when microbiological testing does not find pathogens on food.
Dennis Christou, vice president of marketing for Del Monte Fresh Produce, which is based in Coral Gables, Fla., said, “It’s got to be a comprehensive and reliable investigation, and in our opinion this was neither. There’s absolutely no basis in the claim that this was done intentionally to intimidate or bully anyone.”
The company said Wednesday that it was in talks with the F.D.A. to resolve the dispute and expected an agreement soon.
When the outbreak was emerging, epidemiologists used data from Costco membership cards and found that the melons came from one farm in Guatemala, called Asunción Mita, owned by Del Monte Fresh Produce.
The investigators, working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA asked Del Monte Fresh Produce for a recall, following the usual procedure. The company at first resisted but, according to its lawsuit, eventually agreed to a limited recall to prevent the FDA from issuing a broad warning about contaminated melons that could have affected the entire cantaloupe market. The recall was announced on March 22.
But in mid-July the FDA issued an import alert, saying that the conditions that caused the contamination might still exist on the Asunción Mita farm. The alert allowed inspectors to stop cantaloupes grown on the farm from entering this country.
Del Monte Fresh Produce fired back, filing its lawsuit and accusing federal and state inspectors of conducting a slipshod investigation. And it questioned the validity of the results because .jpg)
investigators had not found a cantaloupe contaminated with the bacteria that had made people sick.
The company’s filings include an audit report of the Guatemala farm, submitted to the FDA last month, which raises questions about the company’s practices.
The audit, done by a company hired by Del Monte Fresh Produce, found that a pipe containing raw sewage and wastewater emptied into an open ditch about 110 yards from the farm’s packing house. The ditch led into a lagoon containing additional sewage, more than 220 yards from the packing house. The audit recommended that the ditch be eliminated.
Mr. Christou said the ditch was protected by barbed wire to keep large animals from tracking the waste into fields. He said the lagoon contained chemicals to speed decomposition of the waste and was away from fields and wells. After the audit, he said, the company extended the pipe all the way to the lagoon and discontinued use of the open ditch.
Asked if having raw sewage in an open ditch near its packing house was consistent with high food safety standards, Mr. Christou said that tests on melons had found no pathogens.
Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, “There’s no doubt the data are very tight. Del Monte caused that outbreak.”
And he said that many investigations involving sickness from produce did not find contaminated food because by the time officials became aware of the outbreak, the tainted produce had been eaten or discarded.
A table of cantaloupe- (or rock melon) related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/cantaloupe-related-outbreaks.
As of 5 p.m EDT on Sept. 20, 2011, a total of 55 persons infected with the 4 outbreak-associated strains of Listeria monocytogenes have been reported from 14 states. All illnesses started on or after August 4, 2011. The number of infected persons identified in each state is as follows: 
California (1), Colorado (14), Illinois (1), Indiana (1), Maryland (1), Montana (1), Nebraska (4), New Mexico (10), Oklahoma (8), Texas (9), Virginia (1), West Virginia (1), Wisconsin (2), and Wyoming (1).
Expect those numbers to go up. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says listeriosis illnesses in several other states are currently being investigated by state and local health departments to determine if they are part of this outbreak.
Among persons for whom information is available, illnesses began on or after August 4, 2011. Ages range from 35 to 96 years, with a median age of 78-years-old. Most ill persons are over 60-years-old or have health conditions that weaken the immune system. Fifty-nine percent of ill persons are female. Among the 43 ill persons with available information on whether they were hospitalized, all were hospitalized. Eight deaths have been reported, 2 in Colorado, 1 in Maryland, 4 in New Mexico, and 1 in Oklahoma.
Collaborative investigations by local, state, and federal public health and regulatory agencies indicate the source of the outbreak is whole cantaloupe grown at Jensen Farms’ production fields in Granada, Colorado.
A table of cantaloupe- (or rock melon) related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/cantaloupe-related-outbreaks.
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The E. coli O104 outbreak that killed 53 people and sickened over 4,000, primarily in Germany, was apparently caused by – nothing.
While strong epidemiological evidence pointed to raw sprouts grown from fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt and distributed anywhere and everywhere, a European fact-finding commission has, at least according to this story, cleared Egyptian fenugreek seeds as the source.
All tests conducted by a technical team sent by the European Union and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to Egypt last month to probe allegations on the presence of highly-toxic E. coli bacteria in Egyptian fenugreek seed have turned up negative, said Salah Mu`awad, the chief of the Egyptian Agriculture Ministry services and follow up division.
The EU had banned the entry of Egyptian grains after suspecting a batch of Egyptian fenugreek seeds was the source of the E. coli outbreak in Spain and Germany in May.
Egypt has since been repeatedly calling for lifting the ban, saying that its fenugreek imports to Europe do not carry the E.coli microbe and promising to fully cooperate with the EU in investigating the real cause of the outbreak.
The always helpful Canadian Food Inspection Agency warned the public this morning not to eat cantaloupes sold from Food Basics, located at 2452 Sheppard Ave. E., North York (that’s near Toronto), Ontario on September 12, 2011 because they may be contaminated with Salmonella.
No word on where the cantaloupes originated, why the warning was issued, if there was a positive salmonella test, or who did the testing.
Even more helpful, the affected cantaloupes were sold unwrapped. There is no lot code sticker, UPC .jpg)
or product name on the individual cantaloupes.
The retailer, Metro Ontario Inc, Etobicoke, Ontario, is voluntarily recalling the affected product from the marketplace.