How safe are free-range eggs?

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Years ago – before we moved here and put a dog inside – the shed out back was a chicken coop. These were the original backyard chickens. A resurgence of small-flock rearing has led many to wonder (and make assumptions) about the safety of free-range eggs.

Joel Keehn wrote on Consumer Reports’ Health blog this weekend that,

"About a year ago I took my 11-year-old daughter to the emergency room with what turned out to be salmonella poisoning. My first thought when I heard the diagnosis: Did she pick up the infection from our flock of chickens? But the public-health outreach worker at the local department of health said that was unlikely.

"While eggs are indeed a leading cause of salmonella poisoning, the bacteria that causes the infection may be more likely to breed in the cramped confines of factory farms than in free-range, backyard chicken runs like ours."

Oh? That’s an interesting assumption. And Keehn doesn’t provide anything to support it.

As far as I can tell, salmonella contamination of eggs from various farming methods has not been well-researched…save for one study rumored in January 2008 to have been conducted by the UK government that "showed that 23.4 per cent of farms with caged [egg-laying] hens tested positive for salmonella compared to 4.4 per cent in organic flocks and 6.5 per cent in free-range flocks."

The closest thing I could find was a report by the UK Food Standards Agency in March 2004 of testing results of 4,753 containers of six eggs each (with 16.9% from free-range production systems) that found "no statistically significant difference…between the prevalence of salmonella contamination in samples from different egg production types."

Keehn’s blog post concluded by saying,

"By the way, the health department official who called me up said the most likely source of my daughter’s salmonella poisoning was our pet turtle. That critter is now gone. But I’m picking up four new hens from my neighbor down the road later this week."

I have no reason to believe their eggs will be any safer than those of caged hens. Keehn’s reason is not good enough.

Don’t try to be Rachel Ray if you’re canning

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Home food preservation is seeing a resurgence across North America. Some of this is due to economics, some is linked to eating local (and others are just curious what all the buzz is about). Earlier this year seed companies reported increases in home garden sales (potentially leading to more canning) and North Carolina extension agents have told me that canning inquiries have almost doubled over previous years.

I’ve even been challenged to a pickle making throw-down (more on that later).

The New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today have all recently covered home food preservation. My contribution to the coverage was reinforcing the importance of following tested recipes (and not messing around with them). Kim Painter of USA Today used my money-shot quote:

"This is one area where you don’t want to be Rachael Ray. You don’t want to add your flair" to recipes and techniques backed by good science and rigorous testing, says Ben Chapman, a food safety specialist at North Carolina State University.

Keep your flair out of home food preservation and stick to methods that have been evaluated for safety.

Egypt and Kansas – food brings us together

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I’ve been hanging out with the visiting Egyptians since Thurs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has this Cochran Fellows program that provides U.S.-based agricultural training opportunities for senior and mid-level specialists and administrators from public and private sectors who are concerned with agricultural trade, agribusiness development, management, policy, and marketing.

After spending over 30 hours to reach Kansas from Egypt, with a variety of travel headaches, the three food scientists and one professor have been taking in the best Manhattan has to offer: dinner at the Little Apple Brewing Company, viewing the animals at the Riley County Fair, shopping, taking in the Kaw Valley Rodeo Saturday night, and my lectures.

Sunday, the Fellows came to our house for some American-style BBQ and hospitality. I showed them how to cook a hamburger with a tip-sensitive digital thermometer, they told me about cooking and hospitality in Egypt.

Baby Sorenne was the star attraction.

And it’s been a huge honor hanging out with the accomplished gentlemen and learning.

 

Not-so-Happy Meals in Illinois

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While Brad and Angelina were treating their kiddies to some McDonald’s Happy Meals this weekend (see right), the Rock Island County Health department revealed repeat violations for the Milan, Illinois McDonald’s linked to a Hepatitis A outbreak, reports WQAD Online.

Rock Island County Health inspectors typically go to restaurants like a McDonalds once or twice a year. That’s all that is required by law. But the Milan McDonald’s because of violations last year was told in February they would be visited as many as four times this year.

The Milan McDonald’s was shut down last Wednesday after the Rock Island County Health department realized an employee was working while sick with Hepatitis A and exposing customers to the disease. (Possibly 10,000 people were exposed.) When a violation occurs it’s the inspectors job to find out why.

Paul Guse the Direcor of Environmental Health said there had been violations in the past, and a letter sent to the establishment in February, saying,

"We have identified your establishment as being below desired compliance levels and posing an increased risk for a foodborne illness outbreak."

Did the health department see this outbreak coming?

Guse says, "No."

Mcdonald’s owner Kevin Murphy says he did not know of the outbreak until Monday the 13th and was not told the names of the infected employees until Wednesday, July 15th after his restaurant was closed.

Restaurant inspections aren’t predictive of foodborne illness outbreaks, but they can provide information on an establishment and management’s culture of food safety.

My fake basbeball team impacted by swine flu scare

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At some point a few years ago video games were replaced by fantasy sports as my free time diversion of choice. I’m not really into cycling, but I love fantasy baseball and fantasy football (referred to by Dani as fake baseball and football).

This is a bit of a hectic time of year, the fantasy baseball trade deadline is looming in both of my leagues and football research is gearing up. Some infectious disease news is impacting my trade plans as the Texas Rangers (one of the American League’s surprising teams) have one confirmed case of H1N1/swine flu in the clubhouse (Vicente Padilla) and potentially 3 more including one of my catchers, Jarrod Saltalamacchia.

Infectious diseases like influenza and norovirus are often transferred between teammates on major sports teams.

Not good news. I was hoping to make a run for the final playoff spot in one of my leagues and not having Salty for a week or so might eliminate all hope for me.

From CBS sportsline:

News: Texas C Jarrod Saltalamacchia sat out again on Saturday against the Royals with the flu. It was the second straight game he missed with the illness and he remains questionable for the series finale with the Royals on Sunday.
Analysis: Salty is hitting .242 this season with seven homers and 30 RBI. His teammate Vicente Padilla has come down with swine flu and it’s not known if he also has that illness. 

‘Multiple little failures add up’ and cause outbreaks

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This is a food safety story with no dead bodies, no sick people, and a company responding appropriately to questions raised by inspectors.

Mike Hughlett writes in tomorrow’s Chicago Tribune today that,

When food-safety inspectors called on Panera Bread Co.’s Chicago dough plant earlier this year, they found a host of manufacturing deficiencies.

For instance, a worker was spotted welding near a batch of bread dough — a contamination risk — while some dough was observed in dirty containers.

Panera’s records also indicated that in just over a year, the Chicago plant, which makes bread dough for 124 outlets in four states, fielded 10 complaints from consumers who had found foreign objects, mostly metal, in their food, including a washer discovered in a whole-grain bagel. …

The lesson is: Deviations from good manufacturing practices, which are at issue at Panera’s plant, often are at the heart of food-safety fiascoes. Companies either learn from the errors, as Panera said it did, or the risk increases that the next incident will be more serious.

Doug Powell, a food safety expert at Kansas State University, said,

"It’s multiple little failures that add up; these are warning signs.”

Martin Cole, who heads the Illinois Institute of Technology’s National Center for Food Safety and Technology agreed, adding,

such failures are "fairly common, I’m afraid."
 

Don’t kill your neighbor with undercooked hamburger

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It seems everyone in the media is bent on cross-contaminating and undercooking their food this summer. On Monday night’s “Great American Road Trip” (a poor replacement for the Amazing Race), the first challenge was for the men to cook hamburgers on a charcoal grill in 30 minutes for all the families to judge. The challenge took place in Sedan, Kansas at the Red Buffalo Ranch.

First, host Reno Collier made a cooking demonstration. No handwashing stations are present anywhere in sight (see right). After Collier explained how he likes to talk to his meat as he formed a raw patty, he threw it on the grill and wiped his hands on a towel. The condiment station was well stocked, but there were no meat thermometers and no safety instructions. The DiSalvatore dad said he’d never cooked anything in his life. Silvio quickly asked for tips from his wife Amy who said, “Just don’t overcook it.”

 

Silvio: “How do I know when it’s cooked?”

Amy: “A little bit of pink inside. Good luck.”

 

The father of the Rico family made the decision to cook his entire 5 lbs of meat and he commented, “I really misjudged how long it would take to cook those things.” Ricardo’s giant burgers were far from being done when it was time to serve. Host Collier yelled out, “Feel free to check these things out before you go sticking them in your mouth.” [Katie, that was for you.] One of the kids commented, “I was more nervous about barfing than about winning the challenge.”

 

It’s mindboggling how much cross-contamination took place in this highly edited clip (see approximately minutes 11 to 20). I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth while watching. In the end, the Ricos went home, but surprisingly they did not receive the lowest score for their burger.

 

Raw burger is not safe to eat. Hamburger is done when it reaches an internal temperature of 160F as measured by a tip sensitive meat thermometer. (See Doug’s videos on youtube.) Color is an unsafe indicator of doneness. Wash your hands after touching raw meat and before touching ready to eat products like buns. I personally find it challenging to grill and avoid cross-contamination … so why does everyone keep saying how simple it is to make a burger?

 

If you want to risk your own stomach or life, that’s your business; but please do not try to kill your neighbors or your children with undercooked meat or cross-contaminated condiments. 

Frogs in frozen food and on Lady Gaga

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Lady Gaga’s outfits are getting wonkier and wonkier. This week’s creation involved a disturbing violation of Kermit the Frog (pictured, right). Equally as wonky, a Texas woman found a dead frog (or most of it, pictured below) in a bag of frozen vegetables, reports KLTV 7.

Chasity Erbaugh was heating up a Great Value brand of steamable green beans – making lunch for her kids when she discovered a nasty surprise.

Erabaugh explained,

"Thank goodness I had put butter in the bottom of the bowl. I went to stir it and there’s this brown clump."

After a close examination, Erbaugh was sick to her stomach at what she discovered. The "brown clump" was part of a frog… She found the whole front end of a frog, with the spinal cord and everything attached, in her green beans. The frog’s tongue was even hanging out.

Shocked, she said,
 
"That’s a frog! Or worse than that, it’s part of a frog – 75% of it. They didn’t even give me the frog legs with it."

Chasity bought the beans from the Walmart on Troup Highway. We gave the lot numbers to the health department, and Monday afternoon, they had the store pull the rest of the bags from that lot.

Brenda Elrod with the Northeast Texas Public Health District, said,

"What we try to do is coordinate with the manufacturer inspectors to make sure we can track it from our store back to the factory where it was made and back to the lot.”

Since being made aware of the incident, a Food and Drug officer is now sending the complaint up to the FDA.

"When you’re washing field vegetables, you’re going to get certain little pieces and parts, but we certainly don’t want something so large you can identify what it is."

As for Erbaugh, she says from now on, it’s fresh veggies only.

 

Poop-free cakes come from sanitary facilities, safety-minded bakers

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I once watched a grandmotherly woman dipping her fingers in a big tub of donut icing and spreading them on fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, as she explained to me that her procedure was much quicker than the spatula-method I was using. That may have been so, but we were working in a retail donut shop where bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat products wouldn’t fly with the health inspectors.

You have the right to treat your own food in any manner you please. But when feeding others, you’re obligated to do all you can to make it safe.

A mom of three in Teaneck, New Jersey, wanted to bake and sell "mortgage apple cakes" to forestall the foreclosure on her home. When more than 500 orders for the $40 cakes came in, Angela Logan was ready to get baking.

But, according to the Associated Press, Teaneck’s health officer notified Logan that it was against state law to use her house as a commercial kitchen.

She would have to bake in a kitchen subject to food safety inspections.

The AP reports that, since the notification, "the Hilton Hasbrouck Heights has allowed Logan to cook in the hotel’s kitchen, where she can produce up to 10 cakes at a time."

That’s very generous of the hotel. I wonder if they gave Logan any food safety training, or just the use of inspected facilities? Both are important if Logan’s customers are going to have their cakes and eat them, too.

Nobody wants to eat poop.

Gwyneth Paltrow needs a lesson in food safety

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Gwyneth Paltrow has an interesting life.  She’s in movies, is married to a musician, names her first born after fruit, talks about bowel movements on T.V., and has celebrity chefs as friends. And to add to her list of accomplishments, she made an online video (posted below) about cooking.

She is preparing roasted chicken and potatoes and a summer salad. I am aware of Hollywood magic and editing film, but there are several times where hands and utensils touch raw chicken and then touch other things. That is called cross-contamination.

Cross-contamination is how people get sick (there may be unknown pathogens in or on foods we eat). Washing hands before cooking and after touching raw chicken is essential. However, we must remember to consider what else has touched the chicken (the knife and cutting board) and what our hands touch if we don’t wash after touching raw meat (the pepper mill, fresh herbs, knife, kitchen shears, etc.). And once you think chicken is done cooking, use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to make sure it is cooked to the proper 165°F.

Besides the handwashing errors, it was pretty annoying how she called every type of item from the farmers market as beautiful or gorg.