When I turned 16 years old my dad and I (below, exactly as shown) took a trip around the somewhat North Eastern U.S. and caught a bunch of baseball games at MLB parks. In the summer, baseball dominated the TV in our house (my dad was a Yankees fan, and in a true reflection of rebellion, I grew up a Mets fan) so this was the trip of a lifetime for both of us.

This was back before the tubes of the Interwebs were in everyone’s homes (we did have a 1200 baud modem on a 486) so getting tickets was tricky. We picked up a Street & Smith’s baseball preview magazine (complete with schedules and box office contact information) in March and over the Easter weekend planned out the route. We called to order tickets and waited a few weeks.

Steven Weiss, of Aramark, one of the stadium food providers focused on in the story was quoted as saying,"The most important thing for people to know is that food safety is our top priority. There’s nothing more important." That’s a great start, but unless everyone in the organization knows and values food safety in the same way food safety slips down the priority list, and as Bob said, bad practices can become systemic. And investigative reporters will find the multiple and repeated transgressions.

Last fall I took my dad to a Carolina Hurricanes game and we debated getting a bbq sandwich after the first period but the price tag was a bit steep ($7). My dad asked me "So, how do you think they are doing, food safety-wise".

I told him that it’s tough to say, anytime you eat you put trust in a food handler somewhere and hopefully they know somthing about risks and risk reduction. After the game I dug up some inspection reports. I couldn’t find the Carolina BBQ stand in question but was able to browse through 20 or so other RBC Center sites from the past couple of years. Temperature abuse, especially hot-holding seemed to be a common violation.

The bbq looked and smelled good, and judging by the lineups, was moved out of the pans to patrons’ sandwiches pretty fast. But who knows at what temperature, and how long it was held before we came by. I hope that someone did.

At pretty well every conference or meeting I went to in 2008 and 2009 I was given a reusable grocery bag. A decent registration gift to hold programs, promotional materials and goodies – that served some post-meeting utility as well. Not a bad replacement for the laptop bags that were ubiquitous in the five years before. Lately meeting organizers have been giving out aluminum water bottles, another usable item. We’ve collected 6 or 7 reusable grocery bags and they are now in rotation for our weekly shops. 

A couple of weeks ago a press release about a study looking at the handling and microbiological content of a select group of bags was released.  What I wrote then was:

The study, when and if it is published will provide some nice baseline results on what people say they do, demonstrates the effect of washing, and doesn’t like some try to point out really say that plastic bags are any safer (there was no comparison) but there are a couple of things missing that could really have been useful. Two big questions still need to be answered:

– What effect does drying have on the bags, if at any? According to Gerba et al., washing works, no one reports doing it; but what about flipping them inside out and drying bags for a few days after use?

After that post, a local TV station called about the study and conclusions and wanted to know a bit more about potential risks what people could do in their homes to reduce the chance of foodborne illness. My tips were what we do in our house: Wrap raw meats in a secondary plastic bag to create a barrier and catch any dripping juices; washing our bags every couple of weeks to remove anything that might be floating around and dedicating a reusauable bag as the “meat bag” and washing it more often, usually after every shop.
 

North Carolinians love their BBQ. As a relatively new transplant to the south I’ve embraced BBQ and have been learning the different nuances of both Eastern and Western NC BBQ (Eastern is vinegar based, Western has more tomato, both are pork). I like BBQ and while I travel around the state working on extension stuff I try to sample the local fare. Last week, while in Nash Co. NC, my team grabbed some lunch at Doug Saul’s BBQ and Seafood (Audrey and Ted are in the picture below, exactly as shown). It seemed like the local hangout, not unlike a rural Tim Horton’s in Canada, and the patrons were dressed in everything from suits to overalls. BBQ is a community thing.

A couple of months ago, Bullock’s BBQ in Durham was the source of a Salmonella-linked outbreak that caused 65 illnesses and resulted in 7 hospitalizations. Early on in the outbreak investigation the owner of the place initially blamed temperature abuse of a takeout order. After the outbreak sales dropped 80% and the usually busy restaurant was close to empty, but the source of the illness didn’t seem to matter to some community members as they rallied around.  At the time Sam Poley, marketing director for the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau said, "This is a long-standing restaurant … 58 years in business … never had anything less than an ‘A’ health rating. Today is an important step in helping Bullocks solve a consumer confidence problem." Sure. But inspection results aren’t a great indicator of whether a business is going to have an outbreak or not.

Today, WRAL news reports that the Durham Co. Health Department has released information that suggests that supplier issues, not employees were the cause of the outbreak.

Initial tests found Salmonella bacteria in foods containing egg, and further investigation determined the likely source of the outbreak was bacteria in a commercially made egg white product the restaurant used to make meringue.

Tests conducted by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and other labs couldn’t conclusively prove that the product was contaminated with Salmonella.

Bullock’s BBQ did the right risk management step purchasing a pasteurized egg product to be used for a raw egg containing dish and couldn’t avoid illnesses, because these things happen and there is never a guarantee of 100% risk-free. It looks like the eggs but blaming their patrons initially wasn’t the best practice, a better plan would have been to say that they were sorry their food made people sick.
 

Smithfield, NC has been under a boil-water advisory for the past couple of days as a result of the presence of coliform detected during routine testing. After further sampling, generic E. coli was found in the system (but water treatment seems to be working fine now).

Maybe I’m a bit sensitive to boil-water advisories because of my connections to Walkerton (the Ontario, Canada town where seven died and over 3000 became ill from E. coli O157 in the municipal water supply). In addition to marking my introduction to risk communication, I played hockey and baseball with a bunch of great dudes from the area while in Guelph and heard personal stories about the effects of the outbreak.

As I worked on my MSc and hanging out with the greenhouse vegetable industry in Leamington, Ontario, there seemed to be a boil-water advisory in the area every couple of months. Since there was a lot of municipal water used in packing sheds (mostly for washing tomatoes) each of the incidents triggered some sort of response by the on-the-ball producers. While some increased the amount of chlorine they were adding to the washing tanks (and implementing more frequent monitoring) the really keen producers removed water from the sorting system entirely for a couple of days — citing too much risk from introducing non-potable water.

Businesses that rely on potable water for production face a tough decision when the safety of supplies are in question.  In Smithfield,

health officials made the call for over 100 food-related businesses ordering closures until the boil-water advisory was lifted.

Larry Sullivan is director of the Environmental Health Division at the county’s health department. He said that while using bottled or boiled water works for households, it’s not a good enough solution for restaurants, which depend heavily on tap water.
"You still have hand washing, food prep and other things to consider," he said. "There’s also ice making."