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.


Thank you for barfing; no money for US food safety changes

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The ink hasn’t dried on the new U.S. food safety bill – because it won’t be signed until Jan. 2011 – but many are already saying there’s no money to implement the proposed changes, and Republicans are going to make sure of it.

I still don’t care; it’s all political claptrap.

Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Food and Drug Administration, told the Washington Post today the number of cases of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. does not justify the $1.4 billion the new law is estimated to cost over the first five years, adding,

"I would not identify it as something that will necessarily be zeroed out, but it is quite possible it will be scaled back if it is significant overreach. We still have a food supply that’s 99.99 percent safe. No one wants anybody to get sick, and we should always strive to make sure food is safe. But the case for a $1.4 billion expenditure isn’t there."

Iowa Republican Rep. Tom Latham said the same thing a few days ago.

“We simply don’t have the money to pay for it.”

FDA also released a Food Bill For Dummies guide to the proposed changes a couple of days ago.

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) gives FDA a mandate to pursue a system that is based on science and addresses hazards from farm to table, putting greater emphasis on preventing food-borne illness. The reasoning is simple: The better the system handles producing, processing, transporting, and preparing foods, the safer our food supply will be.

I thought FDA was already supposed to do this.

The legislation, which FDA experts say transforms the food safety system, includes the following major provisions:

* Food facilities must have a written preventive controls plan that spells out the possible problems that could affect the safety of their products. This plan would outline steps that a food facility would take to prevent or significantly minimize the likelihood of those problems occurring.

* FDA must establish science-based standards for the safe production and harvesting of fruits and vegetables. These standards must consider not only man-made risks to fresh produce safety, but also naturally-occurring hazards—such as those posed by the soil, animals, and water in the growing area.

* FDA is directed to increase the frequency of inspections. High-risk domestic facilities must receive an initial inspection within the next five years and no less than every three years after that. During the next year, FDA must inspect at least 600 foreign food facilities and double the number of those inspections every year for the next five years. With the availability of resources, FDA will build the inspection capacity to meet these important goals.

* FDA is authorized to mandate a recall of unsafe food if the food company fails to do it voluntarily. The law also provides a more flexible standard for administrative detention (the procedure FDA uses to keep suspect food from being moved); allows FDA to suspend the registration of a food facility associated with unsafe food, thereby preventing it from distributing food; and directs the agency to improve its ability to track both domestic and imported foods.

In testimony before Congress in March, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said that user fees collected from food companies and farms would pay for most of the increased inspections and other costs associated with the legislation. But a provision for user fees in the House version was cut from the final language, leaving the government to foot the entire cost.

Mark McClellan, who served as FDA commissioner from 2002 to 2004, said that without additional funding, Congress is unfairly raising expectations, adding,

"It’s relatively easy to pass legislation that the FDA needs to do more things. It’s very hard to back that up with resources. And problems may be compounded by legislation like this, which raises expectations that the FDA should be doing this, that or other things."

Producers, processors, retailers, restaurants, mere mortals, take care of food safety. And if you do, tell the world about it, market it, promote microbiologically-safe food. People care about this stuff. Politicians, not so much.
 

Merry Christmas from The Trailer Park Boys

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Holidays are all about tradition. After five years in Kansas, Amy and Sorenne and I have settled into a routine of lamb (that was last night), fish, cognac and champagne and no barfing, except 2006, when Amy was so sick we got married.

There’s the television shows: It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Scrooged, endless children’s specials. TBS runs a 24-hour marathon of nothing but the quirky 1983 holiday entry, A Christmas Story. But for us, nothing captures the true meaning of Christmas better than the 2004 Trailer Park Boys Christmas Special.

In this scene (language warning), Ricky extols to the congregation in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (that’s in Canada), about the true meaning of Christmas.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I just had one of those brain-learning things pop into my head. … What is Christmas? I just got out of jail, which was awesome, you know, they don’t have presents and lights and tress, we just get stoned and drunk, it’s the best time. And I get out here and I’m all stressed out.

“… That’s not what Christmas should be, you should be getting drunk and stoned with your friends and family, people that you love. … That’s Christmas. … Getting drunk and stoned with your families and the people that you love. And if you don’t smoke or drink, just spend time with your families. It’s awesome. Merry Christmas.”

Or as Sorenne says, don’t make your friends and family barf with bad food safety.

Sprouts are safe if they are local? Not

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Since no one publicly knows anything about the supplier or source of sprouts linked to a 15-state wide salmonella outbreak with 89 sick, I have no idea why a Jimmy John’s owner in Montana thinks local is safer.

Dan Stevens, the owner of the Missoula and Great Falls Jimmy John’s, decided to share his knowledge of microbiological risk reduction in raw sprouts by e-mailing KRTV and stating,

“…the sprouts for our Great Falls store are grown right here in MT. Right outside of Billings. I would like to stress that fact. Our sprouts are a few states and over 1000 miles removed from Illinois. Sprouts have not been taken off our local menu as we have encountered zero problems since our opening over a year ago.”

Not.
 

Gratuitous food porn shot of the day – Xmas eve edition

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Christmas Eve dinner in Manhattan with a couple of Kansas State modern languages graduate students from Senegal (they speak French there).

Oven-roasted French-cut lamb ribs – cooked to 140F but still needed a quick zap in the microwave to bring out the flavor — with roasted herb-garlic potatoes, Frenchy cheese, whole grain bread and salad.
 

Portland food detectives crack E. coli mystery, finger Sally Jackson cheese

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The three weeks I spent in France in 2007 with my French-professor wife were memorable on many accounts. Like anywhere else, when I met people and they found out I was involved in food safety, they would tell me their worst barf stories. What was unique was the patriotic-like duty many of the sufferers felt about not reporting any foodborne illness to health-types.

Dr. Mathieu Tourdjman, a French physician who’s currently working at Oregon Public Health in Portland, helped investigate the Sally Jackson cheese mess under the supervision of Bill Keene.

As reported by Lynne Terry of The Oregonian, food is recalled in France but that country does not have a wealth of epidemiologists to investigate outbreaks.

"We don’t have such a developed public health system," said Tourdjman, "and all those epidemiologists know each other and are perfectly happy to cooperate."

To help identify the woman who made raw milk cheese while covered in cow poop, Keene (below, right, photo from The Oregonian) and colleagues at Oregon Public Health offered a unique case study in epidemiology 101.

To this day, no one sickened remembers consuming Sally Jackson cheese. But epidemiologists managed to pinpoint it anyway.

"I can’t recall another outbreak with so many cases and a multi-state outbreak with none of the cases remembering eating the food," said William Keene, senior epidemiologist with Oregon Public Health.

About two weeks ago, Keene found out about two cases of E. coli O157 in Roseburg. Both were women in their early 60s. They didn’t know each other but their demographic similarity sent up red flags, indicating a possible wider outbreak.

Tourdjman quickly caught on. Under Keene’s guidance, he discovered another E. coli case in Vancouver. Turns out that that woman and one of the women in Roseburg had dined one day apart at Clarklewis Restaurant in Southeast Portland.

Not only that, they had both ordered the artisan cheese plate as a starter.

Clarklewis officials could not identify the cheese they ate. But the restaurant’s invoices provided a list of suspects. They included Sally Jackson cheese.

"That was the start, and it turned out to be critical," Keene said. "We assumed that whatever was causing the outbreak was at the restaurant."

Then another Washington connection popped up with a woman who had shopped at Calf & Kid, an artisan cheese store in Seattle.

The shop’s website mentioned Sally Jackson cheese — yet another coincidence.

Then, Keene and Tourdjman discovered that Jackson, an artisan cheesemaker in Oroville near the Canadian border, was threatened with a possible shutdown by Washington state over sanitation concerns.

With Sally Jackson on their radar, the Oregon epidemiologists discovered more cases, including a man in Vermont and one in Seattle.

The Vermont man had visited his uncle in Seattle and eaten at Palace Kitchen, a high-end restaurant that serves Sally Jackson cheese. And the man in Seattle had attended a wedding in Tonasket, Wash., just south of Oroville. The wedding featured local cheese — probably from Sally Jackson.

The scientists had circumstantial evidence. Now, they needed proof. Keene sought Sally Jackson cheese from Oregon restaurants to test for E. coli. Very few had any. Tina’s Restaurant in Dundee had thrown some away. The owner retrieved it by diving into her Dumpster.

In the end, at least two samples of Sally Jackson’s cheese tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, confirming it was the source of the outbreak that sickened eight and involved investigators from four states and the Food and Drug Administration.

Last Friday, less than two weeks after Tourdjman started the investigation, Jackson pulled all her cheese off the market.

Thank-you, call again: creepy crawly turns stomachs at NZ noodle restaurant

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A girls’ night out to a Newmarket noodle restaurant turned into a "revolting" nightmare before Christmas after a creepy-crawly was found in their soybean dish.

Brodie Reid told the New Zealand Herald her group had nearly finished their bowl of edamame at Wagamama on Nuffield St when they spotted "something white" in one of the beans.

Miss Reid claimed she was "thanked for her feedback" when she told staff.

The 26-year-old said she felt "absolutely revolted" at the thought that she and her two friends could have been "popping maggots into our mouths".

"It’s just disgusting," Miss Reid said.

Plant and Food Research identified the bug as a caterpillar pupa, and not a maggot.

Miss Reid said she brought it to the attention of the restaurant manager, who did not appear shocked.

"Her first reaction was saying, ‘Thank you for your feedback. I’ll contact my supplier’.

Miss Reid said they were not charged for their mains and the beans, and were offered a $20 voucher for a return visit.

Newmarket manager and head chef Julie Pensaber said she believed the pupa came from a frozen pack of imported edamame beans.

"It was found inside an unopened soybean pod, so it is impossible for us to know if it was in there before we served the beans," she said.

"This is a case that’s just beyond our control, and we are sorry that it has happened at our restaurant."

Ms Pensaber said the edamame came from Tokyo Food.

Tokyo Food spokesman Mark Whiteman apologised. "Even with the strictest measures in place, there is always a small possibility of an event like this happening … We are doing everything possible to prevent it from happening again."

Tainted desserts sicken 100, Illinois bakery pulls products

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Sucks to be in public health in Illinois these days. Maybe there’s sprouts on cupcakes in some new foodie trend.

The Illinois Dept. of Public Health announced today that over 100 people in at least four separate outbreaks have been sickened with Staphylococcus aureus after dining on desserts from Rolf’s Patisserie, a wholesale and retail sales bakery in Lincolnwood, just outside Chicago. No mention of the outbreaks on the company website.

Some became ill after eating the desserts at an unnamed restaurant while others were sickened after a holiday party, a catered party or company event.

Initial laboratory tests shows one food item to be contaminated with high levels of, a bacteria that produces toxins in foods that can make people ill. The bacteria can spread if a person with a staph infection has an uncovered lesion or sore that comes in contact with food or food processing equipment, the release said.