Shigella, E. coli on sugar snaps in Sweden

Posted on by
1

Eurosurveillance today reports an outbreak of Shigella dysenteriae type 2 infections during May-June 2009 in Sweden, involving 47 suspected cases of whom 35 were laboratory-confirmed.

The epidemiological investigation based on interviews with the patients pointed at sugar snaps from Kenya as the source. Shigella was not detected in samples of sugar snaps. However, Escherichia coli was confirmed in three of four samples indicating contamination by faecal material.

During April to May 2009 outbreaks with Shigella connected to sugar snaps from Kenya were reported from Norway and Denmark. In the three countries trace back of the indicated sugar snaps revealed a complex system with several involved import companies and distributers. In Sweden one wholesale company was identified and connections were seen to the Danish trace back. These three outbreaks question whether the existing international certification and quality standards that are in place to prevent products from contamination by faecal pathogens are strict enough.

No, they’re not.
 

E. coli and Salmonella found on goat penis in Vietnam; not fit for human consumption

Posted on by
2

Ho Chi Minh City destroyed nearly 1.5 tons of goat penis, imported from Australia and contaminated with bacteria.

Nguyen Thi Thu Nga, chief inspector of the HCMC Animal Health Agency, said the products were contaminated with bacteria, including Salmonella and E.coli, and also failed to meet other food safety criteria.

However, inspectors said 47 of the 72 boxes imported had been sold as food. The inspectors issued fines against the company for trading animal products contaminated with bacteria.

In addition to a reproductive organ and Asian meat, GoatPenis is also a heavy metal band from Brazil formed in 1991 and performing under the Satanic Skinhead label. Sounds as bad as Journey.
 

Emirates chef fined $27,000 for expired (by 1 day) yoghurt

Posted on by
Reply

Before the widespread use of refrigeration, fresh milk was often fermented into yoghurt, chesse and other dairy products for long-term storage.

So in what seems an excessively harsh penalty, if true, a British chef at a restaurant in the Emirates Palace hotel is appealing his U.S. $27,000 fine after inspectors from Abu Dhabi Municipality found the yoghurt during a routine visit to the kitchen of the Etoiles restaurant and lounge about a month ago. ??????

The head chef, identified as PH, was convicted and ordered to pay Dh70,000 for not educating his staff on the emirate’s food expiration laws and Dh20,000 for storing expired food. He also had to pay another Dh2,000 for the municipality’s fees.

PH appealed the court sentence in the past few weeks, and the case was referred to the Criminal Court of Appeal, where it was heard yesterday. ??????His attorney said the food was only one day past its use-by date; court documents do not specify when the food expired.
 

MarlerBlog: Dave Theno had it right – Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius should pay attention

Posted on by
Reply

Bill Marler writes:

Lauren Beth Rudolph (below, right) died on December 28, 1992 in her mother’s arms due to complications of an E. coli O157:H7 infection – Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. She was only 6 years, 10 months, and 10 days old when she died. Her death, the deaths of three other children, and the sicknesses of 600 others, were eventually linked to E. coli O157:H7 tainted hamburger produced by Von’s and served at Jack in the Box restaurants on the West Coast during late 1992 and January 1993. Roni Rudolph, Lauren’s mom, I have known for 16 years.

Dave Theno became head of Jack in the Box’s food safety shortly after the outbreak. I too have known Dave for 16 years. However, I only learned recently a significant fact about Dave – one that made me admire him even more – one that I think, not only that all leaders in corporate food safety should emulate, but one that both Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius should pay attention too.

Dave and I shared the stage at the Nation Meat Association annual convention a few months ago. The NMA is an association representing meat processors, suppliers, and exporters. Dave, spoke just before I did and was rightly lauded as someone who takes food safety to heart. However, it was his story about Lauren Rudolph and his relationship with Roni that struck me. Dave told the quiet audience about Lauren’s death. Dave also told us that the death of Lauren and his friendship with Roni had changed him. He told us all that he had carried a picture of Lauren in his brief case everyday since he had taken the job at Jack in the Box. He told us that every time he needed to make a food safety decision – who to pick as a supplier, what certain specifications should be – he took out Lauren’s picture and asked, “What would Lauren want me to do?”

I thought how powerful that image was. The thought of a senior executive holding the picture of a dead child seeking guidance to avoid the next possible illness or death is stunning, but completely appropriate. I wonder if Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius do anything similar when they do their work on President Obama’s Food Safety Working Group? If they do not, perhaps they should?

Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius right now there are hundreds of families struggling right now due to illnesses and death related to food that you oversee that has been tainted with E. coli O157:H7.
Yesterday, I spent time with a family in South Carolina whose 4 year old ate cookie dough and suffered months of hospitalizations, weeks of dialysis and seizures. She faces a lifetime of complications. And, there is a woman in Nevada who is still hospitalized, who has lost a portion of her large intestine, was on dialysis until a few days ago. She faces months if not years of rehabilitation.

Both ate cookie dough that was watch over by Secretary Sebelius’s FDA.

Today I sat across the kitchen table with a family who lost their only daughter because she died from an E. coli O157:H7 infection from meat inspected by Secretary Vilsack’s USDA/FSIS. I then visited families in a Cleveland hospital whose children are struggling in their battle against Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome – again E. coli O157:H7 tainted hamburger is to blame.

Secretaries Vilsack and Sebelius you should be like Dave Theno. Run your departments like Dave ran food safety at Jack in the Box. Go meet these families. Sit across their kitchen tables. Go to their child’s hospital room and see more tubes and wires than you can count. Understand what these people have lived though. Take their stories into your heart. It is hard, very hard, but it will give you a real reason to do your jobs.

Martha Stewart tries to kill Matt Lauer?

Posted on by
2

On the 7/14/09 edition of the Today Show, Martha Stewart cooked “Zesty Chicken Burgers” for Meredith Viera and a somewhat reluctant Matt Lauer. While Martha was going on about how special chicken burgers are, Matt quietly asked a food safety question.

Matt: “Obviously people are going to say you have to be careful how to cook a chicken burger. You have to get it to a certain temperature. Is that about right?”

Martha: “Um. Yeah. Well, you’ll see. It’s… It’ll won’t be pink inside. It’ll get …

Meredith: “It will have to be white inside.”

Martha: “Yeah, all the way.”

And then on to how beautiful they are. Martha went on from touching raw chicken to touching the bun she served Matt’s finished burger on. He turned away from the camera both times he “took a bite” and claimed they were very good. Who knows if he really ate the potentially killer chicken burger. I wouldn’t have.

If you cook chicken burger, use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer to make sure they reach an internal temperature of 165F. Wash your hands between touching raw meat and anything that is going to be served, especially if the person you are feeding is famous.

Many thanks to the barfblog fan who signaled Katie about yesterday’s Today Show.

Guidelines for foodborne disease outbreak response

Posted on by
Reply

Proving there is a Council for everything, the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response released its Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response today.

The guidelines in this document are targeted to local, state and federal agencies and provide model practices used in foodborne disease outbreaks, including planning, detection, investigation, control and prevention. Local and state agencies vary in their approach to, experience with, and capacity to respond to foodborne disease outbreaks. The guidelines are intended to give all agencies a common foundation from which to work and to provide examples of the key activities that should occur during the response to outbreaks of foodborne disease. The guidelines were developed by a broad range of contributors from local, state and federal agencies with expertise in epidemiology, environmental health, laboratory science and communications. The document has gone through a public review and comment process.

The Guidelines document is not intended to replace current procedure manuals for responding to outbreaks. Instead, it is designed to be used as a reference document for comparison with existing procedures; to fill in gaps and update site-specific procedures; to provide models for new procedures where they do not exist; and to provide training to program staff. The document is available in electronic and hard-copy formats for state and local health departments.

 

Sprout producer found their own listeria

Posted on by
Reply

After Listeria monocytogenes was found in their sprouts at a retail store about two months ago, Chang Farms started looking for the pathogen themselves.

And now they’ve found it.

The recalled products are packaged in 10-pound bulk bags and 12-ounce retail plastic bags, labeled under the Chang Farm brand as soy sprouts. The products were distributed to retail stores and wholesalers throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

Being the first to find a problem in your own product shows a certain degree of food safety culture.

Having a problem twice in two months says something a little different, but they’re moving in the right direction.

The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond the minimal government standards, which, as the company pointed out after the discovery at retail, do not require L. monocytogenes testing for sprouts.

Now, they can tell consumers about the extra control measures they’ve got in place… should they one day have a website.

‘Change culture to avoid E. coli’

Posted on by
Reply

Amy’s father and stepmom came for a visit and yesterday we went to a local eatery for a late lunch.

When Amy’s dad ordered a burger, the server asked how he would like the burger cooked.

He said medium-well.

The server said he could get the burger as rare as he wanted.

Amy said really, and started asking, just what was a medium-rare burger.

The server said it all had to do with color, and after some back and forth with the cooks, said the beef they get has nothing bad in it anyway.

Color is a lousy indicator.

During the same meal, a reporter called to ask, why do companies – big companies, huge chains and brand names — knowingly follow or ignore bad safety practices? (that story should appear Sunday).

It comes down to culture – the food safety culture of a restaurant, a supermarket, a butcher shop, a government agency.

Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.

Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously? ??????Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of American meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.??????

Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.

The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales that killed 5-year-old Mason Jones and sickened another 160 school kids.

Yesterday, the board of the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA), in response to Pennington’s report, approved a five-year plan that will push food businesses to adopt a food safety culture and comply with hygiene laws, and urge stricter punishments for those that do not. The FSA will also ensure health inspectors are better trained.

A report put before FSA board members in London stated “culture change in all of the relevant parts of the food supply chain” is necessary.

Mason Jones’ mum Sharon Mills said she is pleased with the action being taken by the FSA.

“This sounds promising and shows they are moving in the right direction. … Things are slowly changing and hopefully we will all see the benefits sooner rather than later.”

Maybe. I’m still not convinced FSA understands what culture is all about. And how will these changes be evaluated. Is there any evidence that social marketing is effective in creating food safety behavior change? Those issues get to the essence of food safety culture, yet are glossed over with a training session – more of the same.

And why wait for government. The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent — whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website — to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

Inspection results at the door, but in what form?

Posted on by
3

This morning, while drinking morning tea and perusing my Google Alerts, I came across a few stories on restaurant inspection disclosure systems. Another district in Connecticut has adopted symbols to aid consumer interpretation of inspection scores, while a city in New Mexico proposes changing from a pass-fail system to letter grades.

Stamford, CT will be the third district in the state to use symbols to disclose restaurant inspection results to the public, reports the Stamford Advocate Online. While Farmington Valley and Norwalk districts use waiter and lighthouse symbols respectively, Stamford will use smiling chef faces.

Three beaming hats is excellent and translates into a score from 90 to 100 with no four-point (the most serious) hygiene or storage violations. Two hats is acceptable and either mean a score of 80 to 96 with up to one four-point violation and less than four risk factors. One hat indicates poor levels of compliance with a score below 80 or more than two four-point violations or more than four risk factor violations…The idea has been in the works for six years, health department director Dr. Johnnie Lee said.

Results for Stamford are also available online, here.

Meanwhile, restaurants in Albuquerque, NM may be changing from a pass-fail disclosure at the door system to an A, B, C system, reports DukeCityFood.com.

Go to any other large city and you’ll see lots of restaurants with big “A”s or “B”s in their windows. Sometimes you’ll see a “C”. In fact, many chowhounds will insist that an ethnic restaurant graded “A” can’t really be all that good or authentic – it’s the B and C ones worth seeking out. To bring the Duke City in line with all of these other progressive urban areas, it has been proposed that we, too, use the ABC method. And let the battle begin!

It’s the New Mexico Restaurant Association vs. City of Albuquerque and city councillor Trudy Jones! Each has their own talking points, arguments, and rebuttals. Here they are in a nutshell:

City of Albuquerque: “The old rules are outdated and behind the times and we must change them.”

NMRA: “The new rules embrace new technology but badge restaurants for six months based on inspection results that were likely fixed on the spot.”

Why doesn’t someone ask consumers, operators and inspectors which disclosure method they like?