In 2005, Chapman and I went on a road trip featuring a lot of food and funny hats (I also met my wife, got a job at Kansas State and we birthed barfblog.com; 10 years, over 10,000 posts and 42,000 direct subscribers).
First stop was Prince George, British Columbia (that’s in Canada) where Chapman was afraid he would get eaten by bears and they had foam parties.
Our host was Lynn Wilcott (on the left, wearing a funny hat).
In 2002, Lynn and Lorraine McIntyre investigated two outbreaks of Listeria related to soft cheese.
They weren’t allowed to publish for a while because the cases were in litigation, and then well, 10 years went by.
Soft ripened cheese (SRC) caused over 130 foodborne illnesses in British Columbia (BC), Canada, during two separate listeriosis outbreaks. Multiple agencies investigated the events that lead to cheese contamination with Listeria monocytogenes (L.m.), an environmentally ubiquitous foodborne pathogen. In both outbreaks pasteurized milk and the pasteurization process were ruled out as sources of contamination. In outbreak A, environmental transmission of L.m. likely occurred from farm animals to personnel to culture solutions used during cheese production. In outbreak B, birds were identified as likely contaminating the dairy plant’s water supply and cheese during the curd-washing step. Issues noted during outbreak A included the risks of operating a dairy plant in a farm environment, potential for transfer of L.m. from the farm environment to the plant via shared toilet facilities, failure to clean and sanitize culture spray bottles, and cross-contamination during cheese aging. L.m. contamination in outbreak B was traced to wild swallows defecating in the plant’s open cistern water reservoir and a multibarrier failure in the water disinfection system. These outbreaks led to enhanced inspection and surveillance of cheese plants, test and release programs for all SRC manufactured in BC, improvements in plant design and prevention programs, and reduced listeriosis incidence.
McIntyre, L., Wilcott, L and Naus, M. 2015. Listeriosis outbreaks in British Columbia, Canada, caused by soft ripened cheese contaminated from environmental sources. BioMed Research International, vol. 2015, Article ID 131623, 12 pages, 2015. doi:10.1155/2015/131623.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2015/131623/
 
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