UK man in court facing 9 charges after 2009 E. coli outbreak

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Ramazan Aslan, 35, the former owner of a Wrexham, U.K. takeaway, the Llay Fish Bar, has appeared in court to face nine charges of breaching food hygiene regulations, following an E. coli outbreak last year.

The case was adjourned until December after a brief hearing at Wrexham magistrates’ court.

The fish bar was at the centre of a major investigation when four people were taken ill.

Barrister Anthony Vines, for Wrexham council, said it was a serious and complex case that was not suitable to be dealt with by magistrates.
 

Where does zoo poo go?

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Steve Bircher, curator of mammals at the Saint Louis Zoo, told KSDK,

"It’s probably thousands of pounds that we collect and it’s recycled so we can use it as fertilizer and compost.”

Corrine Kozlowski, an endocrine lab technician, said,

"So we can determine whether an animal is pregnant or not from it’s poop. If it’s having regular reproductive cycles, so it allows us to time breeding appropriately for that animal. We can also look at whether an animal might be stressed based on hormones in the poop.”

Everything comes down to poo.

Wal-Mart to buy more locally grown produce

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“No other retailer has the ability to make more of a difference than Wal-Mart.”

That’s what Wal-Mart president and chief executive Michael T. Duke said at a meeting Thursday morning, according to prepared remarks, as he announced a program that would focus on sustainable agriculture among its food suppliers, as the retail giant tries to expand its efforts to improve environmental efficiency.

The program is intended to put more locally grown food in Wal-Mart stores in the United States, invest in training and infrastructure for small and medium-sized farmers particularly in emerging markets and begin to measure the efficiently of large suppliers in growing and getting their produce to market.

The New York Times reports that given Wal-Mart is the world’s largest grocer, with one of the biggest food supply chains, any changes that it makes would have wide reaching implications. Wal-Mart’s decision five years ago to set sustainability goals that, among other things, increased its reliance on renewable energy and reduced packaging waste among its supplies, send broad ripples through product manufacturers. Large companies like Procter & Gamble redesigned packages that are now also carried by other retailers, while Wal-Mart’s measurements of environmental efficiency among its suppliers helped define how they needed to change.

I don’t know anything other than what I’ve read in the media, but it’s a fair guess that food safety culture Frank is going to have a lot to do with making sure any sustainability gains are coupled with enhanced food safety.

Michelle Mauthe Harvey, project manager for the corporate partnerships program at Environmental Defense Fund, said,

“This is huge. Once people are asked those questions, if they haven’t been measuring, they measure more.”

Go big or go home.

Is porn industry more responsible than food industry?

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Justin Rohrlich of Minyanville argues the food industry can learn a few things from the adult entertainment industry, which doesn’t wait for a massive outbreak of disease before taking corrective action.

Rather than wait for disaster to strike, then go about shredding documents and deleting emails as the investigators close in, "more than half a dozen pornographers in California’s multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry have halted production after an actor tested positive for HIV — and more shutdowns were expected," according to the Associated Press.

"From Vivid’s perspective, there was no question that when we heard this, we immediately shut down production and said let’s get the facts and evaluate them before we move forward," Steven Hirsch, the founder of Vivid, one of the largest makers of adult films, said.

Brit kids avoid school toilets because of dirt and bullies; hard to wash hands

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U.K. children are deterred from using school toilets in secondary schools because they are dirty – and occupied by smokers and bullies, a survey warns.

BBC reports that a quarter of the 300 children surveyed by experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said they avoided toilets if at all possible.

Speaking before Friday’s Global Handwashing Day, the scientists said facilities were "dirty and inadequate."

More than a third (36%) said their toilets were never clean, with 42% saying soap was only available sometimes, and almost a fifth (19%) said there was never any soap.

Nearly 40% of secondary school girls reported ”holding it in” so they didn’t have to go to the toilet.

And 16% of secondary school boys reported "bad things" happening in the toilets, making them wary of going in there.

Around 150 primary school children were also questioned in the survey, but they reported far fewer problems with their toilets.

Dr Val Curtis, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Hygiene Centre, who led the research, said,

"It would be easy to blame laziness on the part of the kids for this state of affairs, but clearly the problem lies with inadequate and dirty facilities, particularly in secondary schools."

Proper handwashing requires access to proper tools.

Doping body dismisses Contador’s contaminated meat claims

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Hot off the presses from today’s issue of Cycling News, World Anti-Doping Agency director general David Howman has dismissed Alberto Contador’s (right, sorta as shown) claims that his positive test for Clenbuterol at this year’s Tour de France was caused by contaminated meat bought in Spain.

Speaking to journalists during a meeting at the WADA headquarters in Montreal, Howman pointed out that the contaminated meat excuse has been used in the past but rejected during anti-doping hearings.

WADA is reportedly monitoring the Contador case very closely and is ready to step in if a disciplinary hearing is not arranged swiftly by the UCI and the Spanish Cycling Federation.

Howman added, "It took a year to set the Landis hearing up the first time around. … At some stage somebody is going to have to say, ‘here is the hearing date’."?
 

Listeria-positive Tyson plant in Buffalo shut down by USDA

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The Buffalo News reports that a Tyson meat processing plant on Perry Street has been shut down by federal regulators after inspectors found violations during follow-up testing stemming from an August recall of deli meat produced at the Buffalo facility.

The plant suspended operations Tuesday after an inspection by the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the federal agency said Wednesday.

The shutdown was triggered by the results of sampling that the federal inspectors conducted during a food safety assessment, the agency said. That assessment was linked to the USDA’s activities at the Perry Street plant since the deli meat recall, said Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman.

The plant employs 560 workers. About 480 workers are affected by what Mickelson described as a “temporary suspension of operations.”

In August, about 380,000 pounds of deli meat produced at the plant and sold at Walmart was voluntarily recalled after a sample tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes.

The plant had two similar recalls in 2004. Tyson first voluntarily recalled 442 pounds of cooked ham in August 2004 after a sample tested positive for Listeria. In November 2004, the company recalled another 50,000 pounds of hot dogs, prompted by an unspecified customer complaint. There were no reports of consumer illnesses in either case.
 

8 cases of salmonella confirmed at Ohio school

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Clearview High School in Ohio sounds like the ideal setting for a Proactiv commercial. Katy Perry or Avril Lavigne (right, pretty much as shown) could shoot their next acne removal spot at the high school while disinterested teens go about their business – or barf in the background like 100 students from the school did a couple of weeks ago.

In one of the slowest investigations of a possible foodborne illness outbreak,
The Morning Journal reports Lorain County Health Department officials have confirmed eight cases of Salmonella B at Acne-High, believed to be connected with a dinner served to the football team two weeks ago.

Health Commissioner Ken Pearce said,

“Our focus is on that little football dinner. But it’s not confirmed that that’s what caused it.”??

Last week, health investigators interviewed Clearview students to find any commonalities in sickness and collected voluntary stool samples. Pearce said not all the illnesses were related to diarrhea and norovirus has been discounted.
 

Roaches are dead, but problems remain at St. Paul restaurant

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A popular St. Paul restaurant (that’s in Minnesota, in the U.S., dontchaknow?) is fighting to stay open no longer has live cockroaches in its kitchen, city inspectors have reported, but there are dead ones nearby, as well as other problems.

TwinCities.com reports that days after the owner of Kim Huoy Chor Asian Cuisine publicly pledged his University Avenue eatery was sparkling clean after two years of failing inspections, city inspectors found numerous problems remained, from food being left out for hours to "dozens of dead roaches in an unused hallway in the basement," according to an inspection report.

Last Wednesday, council member Dave Thune was the lone holdout on a city council that was short a couple members. He prevented his colleagues from closing the restaurant after city attorneys and inspectors reported that two years of violations at Kim Huoy Chor amounted to the worst chronic violation in the history of city food inspections. At least two patrons reported being sickened after eating at the restaurant at 1664 W. University Ave.

Since Taing assumed ownership two years ago, inspectors documented a "cockroach infestation" and persistent food safety violations that they said could lead to food poisoning.

NY restaurants argue their grade at Night Court

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The health department tribunal is, according to the New York Times, a little-publicized court system that metes out penalties for violations of the city sanitary code.

It has been there for years, in a nondescript government office in Lower Manhattan where more than a dozen administrative law judges escort their charges into cramped rooms and hear them wrangle over infractions, in a ritual reminiscent of visiting the principal’s office.

But in the weeks since the city adopted a new system requiring restaurants to post large, brightly colored letter grades rating their cleanliness and safety, the tribunal has become a high-stakes food court of last resort where hundreds of restaurant owners and their representatives trudge each day to defend what they say are their very livelihoods.

Whether from Dunkin’ Donuts or Le Bernardin, whose case was called last week, they stand in line behind two strips of grimy gray tape on the floor to check in at a reception desk. Then they wait, sometimes all day, to defend their kitchens, many in hopes of nudging a humiliating C up to a bearable B, or turning that middle-of-the-class B into a gold-star A.

At one recent hearing, the judge asked Jay Gavrilov, director of dining services at a residence for the elderly in Battery Park City, if he had anything to say. He responded with an impassioned speech: he was not seeking to reduce his fines or dismiss the violations that had earned him a B.

“My purpose here is to try to get an A to put up,” he said plaintively, “for the well-being and mental well-being of my 80-to-105-year-old residents.”