The Contador Excuse

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Teaching a recitation class for a General Psychology class is hard work.  It involves choosing appropriate material to cover, presenting that material accurately and grading papers. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is discerning students’ real excuses from made-up ones. I have heard stuff that you probably wouldn’t make up just to get out of class and a lot of stuff that sounds a little unlikely, if not straight out of a high school movie.

One of my fellow recitation teachers got the Contador excuse from a student; “It was the food.”
The student claimed food poisoning prevented her from making it to class – right before class time during tailgating Thursday. The excuse wasn’t entirely unlikely since food during tailgating might be cooked improperly, or cross-contamination might occur. However, alcohol poisoning is not entirely unlikely either.

To believe or not to believe, that is the question. While you can test athletes’ blood for illegal substances, you can’t ask students for stool samples. If it had been my student I would have asked for a doctor’s note, but the excuse worked for her (Contador, it seems, will not be so lucky).
 

Ice can cause food safety headache; Savannah vendors pay a hefty price

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Amy and I were talking about Savannah, Georgia, yesterday – the self-proclaimed home of southern charm and hospitality — and how we stopped and walked around town while traveling in 2009, did some sightseeing, and left unimpressed.

Curt Bridgett likes the place and decided to open an Italian ice cart.

The Savannah Morning News reports that in a town teeming with tourists, especially during the sweltering summer months, Bridgett thought Little Jimmy’s Italian Ices would be a hit. What he hadn’t counted on was that getting a business off the ground takes a lot more than a good idea and the willingness to work hard.

Dealing with zoning ordinances, health codes, licenses and permits and a host of other paperwork has become a job in itself. He’s realizing what many small and micro-business owners have learned — that entrepreneurship comes with a price.

Bridgett said, "I don’t understand why my business is illegal. Why can’t I just make a living?"

According to the Chatham County Mobile Food Service Unit Checklist, Bridgett must have:

— A hand-washing sink with hot water
— An electric cooler/freezer
— A bricks-and-mortar home base such as a restaurant or commercial kitchen in which food containers or supplies are kept, handled, prepared, packaged or stored for transport, sale or service elsewhere

Bridgett currently has a solar-heated gravity water tank, an insulated cooler and a storage facility for his product, but those don’t meet the standards.

"It’s just flavored ice," Bridgett said. "It has no dairy, nothing to spoil."

C. Todd Jones, Chatham County environmental health director said,

"Just because something isn’t cooked doesn’t mean that it isn’t prone to cross-contamination or harboring bacteria. The rules apply equally, whether we are inspecting a large, well-known restaurant or a small mom-and-pop operation. Although it may seem like a blanket approach, it is our job to make sure that anyone selling food items — and ice is considered food — is taking the proper steps to avoid contamination."

And he argued there have been cases where something as innocuous as ice has caused harm including outbreaks involving hepatitis, E. coli, norovirus and salmonella
 

Bagged salad: press release before publishing a bad idea

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In Sept. 2000, I called Procter & Gamble to substantiate claims their consumer-oriented FIT Fruit and Vegetable Wash removed 99.9 per cent more residue and dirt than water alone.

The PR-thingies hooked me up with some scientists at P&G in Cincinnati, who verbally told me that sample cucumbers, tomatoes and the like were grown on the same farm in California, sprayed with chemicals that would be used in conventional production, and then harvested immediately and washed with FIT or water. The FIT removed 99.9 per cent more, or so the company claimed.

One problem. Many of the chemicals used had harvest?after dates, such as the one tomato chemical that must be applied at least 20 days before harvest. Residue data on produce in North American stores reveals extremely low levels, in the parts per million or billion. So that 99.9 per cent reduction was buying consumers an extra couple of zeros in the residue quantity, all well below health limits.

I also asked why the results hadn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the P&G types said it was an important advance that had to be made available to consumers as soon as possible, without the delays and messiness of peer-review.

Maybe Chiquita Brands, the owners of Fresh Express and also based in Cincinnati, are using the same PR flunkies as P&G because the public relations around the new produce rinse – FreshRinse – is strikingly familiar and equally lame as FIT in 2000.

For the most part, pathogens and chemicals in fresh produce need to be controlled on the farm, and in transportation and distribution.

The new rinse, for use in the packing shed and which the company says removes microorganisms from leafy greens more effectively than conventional chlorine sanitizers, was unveiled yesterday at a news conference at the Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit to gushing reviews.

Fernando Aguirre, Chiquita’s chairman and chief executive officer, said,

"Based on our extensive research, we are proud to introduce the biggest invention since the creation of prepackaged salads. … Compare FreshRinse technology to current wash standards. Chlorine is the abacus and FreshRinse is the iPad. An abacus is what people use with the beads, a great thing at the time, just like chlorine rinse was. We believe FreshRinse sets a new standard in food safety.”

Also jumping aboard the metaphor train, Mike Burness, vice president of global quality and food safety said,

“As a matter of magnitude, that’s the equivalent of chlorine walking a mile and FreshRinse making two round trips to the moon. If chlorine walked one mile, FreshRinse would have walked a marathon. We have seen a significant reduction of potential foodborne organisms that cause disease.”

Scientific advisors who gave more qualified endorsements included project advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, Dr. David Acheson, managing director of food and import safety for Leavitt Partners and the former the Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner for food protection and chief medical officer, and Dr. Robert Buchanan, director and professor, University of Maryland Center for Food Safety & Security Systems.

Did any of you esteemed science types say to Fresh Express, we should publish these results in a peer-reviewed journal first, because that’s the way this credibility thing works?

I told Ilan Brat of the Wall Street Journal yesterday that I couldn’t judge whether the new wash worked better or not without publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Fresh Express had three recalls of its bagged salads this year, and was the source of a Salmonella typhirmirium outbreak that sickened eight people in May, but decided it wasn’t worth telling anyone about it.

Metaphor-man Burness, told the Journal the company chose to market the product before submitting supporting research for publication in peer-reviewed journals because "anything that advances food safety, we believe we need to leverage that for our consumers."

Sounds familiar.

He added that the company plans to submit its research to the Journal of Food Protection by the end of the year.

Dude, I’ve got a bunch of graduate students who say they have papers they are going to prepare for the Journal of Food Protection. I have about a dozen in my head too. Except that doesn’t count for shit.

If the company had instead spent the time it used coming up with terrible risk communication metaphors preparing the results for publication, they would at least have a paper submitted. Until then, I’m thinking cold fusion.

"All this data is nice—why isn’t it published in a peer-reviewed journal?" Powell said.

Still, he added, "if it does what it says it can do, that would be important, because it would be an additional tool to lower the risk" that eating salad greens could cause outbreaks of disease.

Fresh Express, you’re an industry leader and this year’s winner of the International Association for Food Protection’s Black Pearl award for food safety leadership. But I don’t get this. I’m all for marketing food safety, but with a strong caveat: be able to back it up.

A table of leafy green foodborne illness outbreaks is available at:

http://bites.ksu.edu/Outbreaks%20related%20to%20leafy%20greens%201993-2010
 

Lessons learned from E. coli outbreak in UK nursery

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In Feb. 2010, the Feltham Hill Nursery and Infant School was closed for three weeks when E. coli O157 was contracted by pupils, affecting 18 people in all.

A report to the Hounslow Council contained 28 recommendations to improve future responses to emergency situations, including:

• the situation should have been declared ‘an emergency’ sooner than it was;
• there were delays in stopping the spread of the outbreak because the school had no emergency plan;
• information sharing between the school and the health authorities was poor;
• confusion over information given to parents resulted in many being worried that the outbreak was not being controlled.

Two children were treated in hospital for the bug, one of which was for a prolonged period of time. The report reveals that the source of the outbreak was never discovered.

The complete report is available at:
http://democraticservices.hounslow.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=53762
 

Scores on Doors too clear for UK restaurant grading schemes

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Only a Lord could get away with a report titled, Common Sense Common Safety.

It ain’t common sense if it hasn’t been thought of.

The report, published today in the U.K. by Lord Young, the Prime Minister’s adviser on health and safety law and practice, puts forward a series of policies for improving the perception of health and safety, to ensure it is taken seriously by employers and the general public, while ensuring the burden on small business is as insignificant as possible.

Wouldn’t it be better to improve health and safety, and then the perception would be improved – if there was actual data to back up the claims of improved health and safety?

The report is written in a snooty tone that apparently only the British can achieve, and was deliberated in the context of the compensation culture – those vulgar lawyers looking for recompense for slighted victims.

Prime Minister David Cameron said,

“A damaging compensation culture has arisen, as if people can absolve themselves from any personal responsibility for their own actions, with the spectre of lawyers only too willing to pounce with a claim for damages on the slightest pretext.

“We simply cannot go on like this. That’s why I asked Lord Young to do this review and put some common sense back into health and safety. And that’s exactly what he has done.”

The U.K. Food Standards Agency was quick to say the Lord backed their restaurant inspection disclosure scheme.

Under the voluntary Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, each business is given a hygiene rating (from 0-5) when it is inspected by a food safety officer from the business’s local authority. The hygiene rating shows how closely the business is meeting the requirements of food hygiene law.

I was never sure about the 0-5 rating – is 5 good or bad – whereas a letter grading has clearer meaning. The actual report contains some clues:

The good Lord says that local authority participation in the Food Standards Agency’s Food Hygiene Rating Scheme be made mandatory, and that usage of the scheme by consumers by harnessing the power and influence of local and national media.

He also says the voluntary display of ratings should be reviewed after 12 months and, if necessary, make display compulsory – particularly for those businesses that fail to achieve a ‘generally satisfactory’ rating.

“I welcome the FSA’s decision to drop the unfortunate title ‘scores on the doors’, which has been used in the past for this initiative, and its decision to drop the use of stars, which have a connotation of cost and service. I am pleased that they have decided instead to use a simple numerical scale with appropriate descriptors. These decisions were based on the results of independent research with consumers and this is what they found to be clearest and easiest to use.”

Scores on doors may be too direct for the Lord; I hope the Aussies keep using it. And I look forward to the 0-5 studies being published in a peer-reviewed journal so mere mortals can review the research.

The good Lord also cites the Los Angeles example of restaurant inspection disclosure – they use letter grades – and inflates an already dubious estimate by stating there was a 20 per cent drop in the number of people being admitted to hospital for food related illnesses after the introduction of the letter grades.

Restaurant inspection is a snapshot in time and disclosure is no panacea. It can boost the overall culture of food safety, hold operators accountable, and is a way of marketing food safety so that consumers can choose.

A new way to clean the greens

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The New York Times is reporting tonight that the produce industry — rocked by several major recalls in recent years linked to outbreaks of salmonella, E. coli and other bacteria — has been searching for a better way to wash the lettuce, spinach and other greens it bags and sells in grocery stores and to restaurants.

Now, the nation’s leading producer of bagged salad greens, Fresh Express, says that washing them in a mild acid solution accomplishes the task.

The company plans to announce on Friday that it is abandoning the standard industry practice of washing leafy greens with chlorine and has begun using the acid mixture, which it claims is many times more effective in killing bacteria. The new wash solution, called FreshRinse, contains organic acids commonly used in the food industry, including lactic acid, a compound found in milk.

Mike Burness, vice president of global quality and food safety at Chiquita Brands International, which owns Fresh Express, said,

“We do believe it provides a much higher level of effectiveness versus the chlorine sanitizers in use today. This technology was developed to raise the bar.”

Mr. Burness said the breakthrough came when researchers at the company combined lactic acid with another organic acid, peracetic acid. The two together, he said, worked much better than either one separately and also achieved markedly better results than chlorine.

Fresh Express issued three separate recalls this year of packaged salad greens after random testing found salmonella, E. coli and listeria in bags of its products.
Fresh Express said that its new cleaning mixture was 750 times as effective as chlorine in killing bacteria suspended in wash water. It is also at least nine times as effective as chlorine in killing bacteria that has become attached to the leaves of produce.

Mr. Burness said that lettuce and other greens were cut up in the company’s plants, washed in water containing the acid mixture, typically for 20 to 40 seconds, then rinsed, dried and bagged. He said another advantage is that the acid wash did not bleach the greens, making them pale in color, as chlorine can.
The company said that it planned to license the mixture for use by other producers.

Fresh Express has not published its research, so food safety experts said on Thursday that they were unable to adequately evaluate the company’s claims.
Fresh Express said that it had informed the F.D.A. about its use of the acid wash mixture, but that it was not required to get approval for the switch because the ingredients were already approved for use in the food industry.
 

Jackass dumps toilet paper on students from plane

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Never was a fan of the Jackass movies, even though Weezer did the theme to Jackass 3-D which opens Friday.

In an apparent outtake of the new movie, Couriermail reports that an unidentified pilot is believed to have flown over Westwood Regional Middle School in New Jersey, three separate times, releasing the soggy toilet paper onto an athletic field, trees, a school building and the ground nearby ,

There were no injuries reported, and the only evidence left of the incident was a few pieces of paper stuck high in the trees on the property, the report said.
 

FSIS issues draft guidelines on in-plant video monitoring – technology could strengthen humane handling, food safety

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Apparently the U.S. was paying attention to that whole video-in-slaughterhouses-to-improve-animal-welfare-and-food-safety discussion. They just never let me in on the details.

Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued draft guidelines to assist meat and poultry establishments that want to improve operations by using in-plant video monitoring.

(They’re saying we’re from the government, we’re here to help; run).

The purpose of the draft guidance, Compliance Guidelines for Use of Video or Other Electronic Monitoring or Recording Equipment in Federally Inspected Establishments, is to make firms aware that video or other electronic monitoring or recording equipment may be used in federally inspected establishments where meat and poultry are processed. Establishments may choose to use video or other electronic recording equipment for various purposes including ensuring that livestock are handled humanely, that good commercial practices are followed, monitoring product inventory, or conducting establishment security. Records from video or other electronic monitoring or recording equipment may also be used to meet FSIS’ record-keeping requirements.

The draft guidance can be found at: www.fsis.usda.gov/Significant_Guidance/index.asp.
 

Du jus à partir d’une compote de fruits lié à une éclosion à E. coli O157 lors d’une fête à Winnipeg

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Les jus de fruits ont par le passé déjà été mis en cause dans des éclosions :
•E. coli O157 a contaminé des jus de fruits de la marque Odwalla avec 66 personnes malades en 1996
•Salmonella a contaminé des jus de fruits des marques Orchid Island Juice Company avec 15 personnes malades en 2005
• En 2006, le jus de carottes de Bolthouse Farms a été à l’origine de 6 cas de botulisme dont un décès

Les manipulateurs d’aliments doivent faire attention à ne pas contaminer les produits prêts à être consommés ou les boissons.
Ce que vous pouvez faire :
• Lavez-vous les mains avec du savon et de l’eau potable et séchez-vous les mains avec un essuie-mains en papier avant de manipuler les aliments.
• Quand des aliments sont entreposés dans des glacières ou des réfrigérateurs, conservez les aliments prêts à être consommés couverts afin d’éviter que d’autres aliments comme la viande crue ne puisse couler dessus.
37 personnes malades et 18 personnes hospitalisées sont liés à cette éclosion
Un jus de fruit est la cause qui a probablement rendu malades les visiteurs d’une fête à Winnipeg (Canada) en août 2010. La majorité des malades a été associée à un plateau de spécialités russes qui a été servi à Folklorama, une fête annuelle du patrimoine. Le plateau russe comprenait du bortsch (soupe de betteraves), des boulettes de viande, un plat de riz et du jus de compote. L’origine de la contamination s’est resserrée autour du jus parce que des consommateurs malades ont déclaré avoir mangé à la fois un plat végétarien et non végétarien avec le jus comme seul aliment commun. Le jus de compote a été préparé en ajoutant des pommes non pelées, des myrtilles et des mûres lavées à de l’eau bouillante.
Une fois bouilli pendant cinq à 10 minutes, le jus a été décanté dans les grands seaux en plastique. Le jus est ensuite réfrigéré jusqu’au moment de servir froid.
La contamination après chauffage est probable.
Les fruits ont été lavés et bouillis dans le cadre de la fabrication du jus. Il est probable que le jus ait été contaminé, soit par un membre du personnel ou par une contamination croisée dans le réfrigérateur.
Les autorités sanitaires pensent que la viande de boeuf haché, qui a été également manipulée et préparée sur le site, a été la source la plus probable de la contamination.
Pour plus d’Information, contactez Ben Chapman, benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu ou Doug Powell, dpowell@ksu.edu
 

Possible food poisoning at Chattanooga Community Kitchen

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At least 15 people have been diagnosed with what appears to be food poisoning after eating at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen. The County Health Department is investigating.

Officials are interviewing people who have eaten there and supervising a clean-up of the food preparation area.

Until more is known about what made these people sick, the kitchen will only be serving broth and dry toast.