Tag Archives: Communication

‘I’m gonna educate you’ – or so says FDA

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Whenever a group says the public needs to be educated about food safety, biotechnology, trans fats, organics or anything else, that group has utterly failed to present a compelling case for their cause. Individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. And it’s sorta arrogant to state that others need to be educated; to imply that if only you understood the world as I understand the world, we would agree and dissent would be minimized.???

On the same day the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its Strategic Plan for Risk Communication, which outlines the agency’s efforts to disseminate more meaningful public health information and has lots of pretty words about “two-way communication through enhanced partnerships,” FDA said its “new web videos educate consumers about food and medical product safety.”

No evidence is provided that anyone found the videos educational. And the language in the headline is not consistent with ”two-way communication.” What’s with the dualities? Good and bad, heaven and hell? How about multiple communications with a variety of audiences, to use bureau-speak; and chew gum at the same time.

It’s important to tell people how information is developed and released. We updated the bites.ksu.edu information protocol last week. But actions speak louder than words.

One of the tenets of effective risk communication to inform, discuss and participate in give and take when it comes to information, rather than educate. I co-wrote a book about it, 1997’s Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk. And people learn through stories, not facts.

There is a dearth of scientific studies applying proven risk communication concepts to issues of microbial food safety. There is, however, an abundance of academic, industrial and government pronouncements on how to improve communications activities related to food safety, based on anecdotal evidence and almost always citing the need for “educated consumers” or “a better-educated public.”

Such proposals invoke a one-way, authoritarian model of communication; and exactly how this mythical consumer will become better educated remains a mystery. What is known is that the traditional approach of scientists clearly explaining the facts is “naive—and probably a recipe for failure. … ???Too often, risk communicators are more concerned with educating the public, rather than first listening to them and then developing communication policies.”

Food Safety Education Month, whatever that is, ended yesterday. People are still eating this morning. I wonder if they got educated?

An honest Food Safety Education month would include food safety stories, tragic or otherwise, and a rigorous evaluation of what has worked, what hasn’t worked and what can be improved, rather than a checklist of ineffective and often inaccurate food safety instructions with the cumulative effect of blaming consumers. Telling people to wash their hands isn’t keeping the piss out of meals. ??????
 

Fat Duck criticizes health types at chef conference

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From the this-guy-just-can’t-shut up file, Heston Blumenthal whined, err, told a conference in London yesterday that the Health Protection Agency (HPA) should do more to support the industry, stating,

“There is a real lack of support to restaurants from the HPA when it comes to handling something like a norovirus outbreak and it is only because of the status of the Fat Duck that we survived this. If we were a small independent restaurant, we would have been forced to close as a result of this. Our industry is so fragile and there is so little support.”

The HPA released a report on its investigation into the norovirus outbreak at the Fat Duck, which affected more than 500 diners, earlier this month stating the official cause was contaminated shellfish. Among the findings:

• oysters were served raw;

• razor clams may not have been appropriately handled or cooked;

• the outbreak continued for at least six weeks (between January 6 and February 22) because of ongoing transmission at the restaurant – which may have occurred through continuous contamination of foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners or a mixture of both??????; and,

• several weaknesses in procedures at the restaurant may have contributed to ongoing transmission including delayed response to the incident, staff working when they should have been off sick and using the wrong environmental cleaning products???

Blumenthal went on to tell the conference that both the experts appointed by the Fat Duck and those by its insurers believed that there were a number of flaws in the HPA report, including its criticism of the restaurant’s staff sickness policy and its use of anti-bacterial cleaning agents.

“Some of the elements in the report were supposition,” he said.

Blumenthal also criticized HPA for the way it released the report, arguing he and his team of insurers and legal experts were given no time to analyse its findings before it was released to the public.

“We were told we would be given 24 hours to analyse the report before it would be released to the public but in fact we were only given three hours,” he said.

That’s more warning than the 529 people who were barfing on widely expensive food porn received.

And Heston, there’s nothing that builds consumer confidence more than have a government agency in tight with the industry it regulates. It’s the Health Protection Agency, not the Boost Restaurant Revenues Agency. HPA is to protect human health, and encourage places like restaurants to do the same. Making 529 customers sick is bad for business, but not the fault of the HPA.

This guy provides so much material I don’t have to resort to calling him the love child of Alton Brown and longtime Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player Mats Sundin.
 

Mother of Canadian E. coli toddler questions E. coli response at BC petting zoo

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The number of E. coli cases believed to be linked to the PNE has climbed from 13 last week to 18, and the mother of one sick child is questioning health officials’ response.

Coquitlam, B.C., mother Caroline Neitzel says her 14-month-old daughter, Jacklyn (right), was infected with E. coli after a visit to the annual Vancouver fair on Sept. 5.

Neitzel said her daughter touched a number of different animals at the petting farm. She said she did her best to wipe her daughter’s hands with wet wipes during that visit.

Despite her efforts, Jacklyn became very ill. At first doctors thought the toddler had the flu. Jacklyn was sent home twice before being admitted to Royal Columbian Hospital, according to her family.

"By that time, her eyes were rolling into the back of her head. She was just so lethargic," Neitzel told CTV News on Friday.

The toddler spent four days in hospital. Neitzel said she thinks her daughter would have been diagnosed earlier if health officials had issued a public warning when a cluster of E. coli cases was discovered.

Anna Marie D’Angelo, a spokeswoman for Vancouver Coastal Health, said the public was not alerted because there was no risk at the time.

"We became aware of the situation three days after the PNE had closed. So there was no risk to any future people getting this E. coli," she said.

Health officials say an alert would not have changed how a patient was treated at the hospital.

The PNE says E. coli has never been a problem in the past at the petting farm and that the fair has stringent hygiene measures in place, including signs and staff directing visitors to hand-washing stations.
 

Fat Duck still spinning but sorry for making 529 diners sick 7 months ago

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I don’t know who does public relations for the Fat Duck restaurant but they should be fired.

Seven months after sickening 529 customers with norovirus, Fat Duck chef Heston Blumenthal today said,

"I am relieved to be able to finally offer my fullest apologies to all those who were affected by the outbreak at the Fat Duck. It was extremely frustrating to not be allowed to personally apologise to my guests until now.

"It was devastating to me and my whole team, as it was to many of our guests and I wish to invite them all to return to the Fat Duck at their convenience."

Wow. Saying sorry is not an expression of guilt. It is an expression of empathy. Like, that really sucks you and 528 other people are barfing. I barfed once and it felt awful. Hope you feel better.

Some spokesthingy for the restaurant said,

"The Fat Duck, its insurers, experts and legal advisers only received a copy of this report a few hours before its publication and have only now had time to consider its contents. This meant that until all these parties had had the opportunity to review it and take expert advice it wasn’t appropriate or indeed possible to comment in detail on its contents or respond fully to our customers.”

Of course, that didn’t stop  Blumenthal from issuing his own delusional statement on Sept. 10, 2009, as soon as the Health Protection Agency report was released:

“We are glad that the report has finally been published and draws a conclusion to the closure of the Fat Duck and more importantly that the norovirus has been identified as the cause and not due to any lapse in our strict food preparation processes. We were affected by this virus during a national outbreak of what is an extremely common and highly contagious virus. The restaurant has been open as normal since March 12 and I would like to reassure our guests that they can continue to visit us with total confidence.”

All apologies aside, the report clearly stated that the norovirus outbreak – linked to the consumption of raw oysters — continued for at least six weeks because of "ongoing transmission at the restaurant” through "continuous contamination of foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners or a mixture of both." The report also identified poor reporting and sick staff showing up and working as factors in making the outbreak far worse than it should have been.

Saying sorry is nice but never enough. The Fat Duck should be judged on its food safety actions.

64 UK kids now sick from Godstone petting zoo; 3 other farms closed; is telling people to wash their hands really enough?

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With 64 kids now stricken with E. coli O157 related to visits at the Godstone farm in Surrey, the responses from the folks who run petting zoos could be a little more sympathetic, a little more reflective.

Instead, as reported by the Guardian tonight (tomorrow in the U.K.), Geoff Ford, who runs Docker Park farm in Lancashire, where children can feed pygmy goats (see 1999 Ontario Western Fair outbreak, below) by hand and stroke rabbits, said any ban would affect "children’s environmental education” stating,

"It’s going to get hyped up out of all proportion. It does away with children’s environmental education. It’s important that children realise what a chicken is, what a calf is – often they come here and ask ‘is that a horse?’… We have run our farm for 20 years with no problems. But there is only so much you can do if people don’t listen. The farm at the source of the outbreak in Surrey had big signs all over the place telling people to wash their hands, but some people don’t give a damn."

The U.K. Department of Health responded today by announcing that the advisory committee on dangerous pathogens would be reviewing the current guidance on open farms and will advise on the need for additional precautions "in the light of the current outbreaks of E coli O157."

A Department of Health spokesman told the Telegraph,

“The risk of infection from E-coli O157 through petting farm animals can be prevented by following everyday good hand hygiene measures.”

All of these statements have serious problems.

• 64 kids sick with E. coli O157 is not hysteria, it sucks;

• anyone who says, “we have run our farm for 20 years with no problems” is unwilling to learn and a hazard to public health;

• telling people to wash their hands is insufficient – proper handwashing requires access to proper tools;

• even with proper tools, signs are not enough, as we showed with our recent handwashing compliance study at a university residence when everyone was barfing and awareness was high; and,

• the best handwashing may not be enough — the E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 82 people in 2002 at the Lane County Fair in Oregon appears to have spread through the air inside the goat and sheep expo hall.

Scott Weese, a clinical studies professor at the University of Guelph (Canada) and colleagues reported in the July 2007 edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases that in a study of 36 petting zoos in Ontario between May and October of 2006, they observed infrequent hand washing, food sold and consumed near the animals, and children being allowed to drink bottles or suck on pacifiers in the petting area.

He observed similar failures yesterday.

So after 159 people, mainly children, were thought to be sickened with E. coli O157:H7 traced to a goat and a sheep at the 1999 Western Fair in London, Ontario, and eight years after all Canadian fairs were urged to adopt 46 recommendations to enhance petting zoo safety, many are still doing a lousy job.

Bill Marler has compiled a list of outbreaks related to petting zoos. We’ve previously reported at least 29 petting zoo related outbreaks in North America alone.

These petting zoo experiences raise questions: how best to motivate fair managers to provide petting zoos that are microbiologically safe? Should the urban public be allowed to interact with livestock at all? Should petting zoos be inspected, as restaurants are, and the results displayed?

If 64 sick kids is hysteria, conversation is useless and regulation required.
 

Poisoned diners start lawsuit against ‘unapologetic’ celebrity chef Blumenthal; response called ‘pathetic’

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The UK Health Protection Agency report into an outbreak of norovirus that felled 529 diners at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant on Sept. 10, 2009, clearly identified poor reporting and employees working while sick as contributing factors to the outbreak.

Blumenthal decided to ignore this and take to the Interwebs with his own revisionist version of what went wrong earlier this year.

This has upset some of the victims, who are now taking Blumenthal to court.

This morning, London’s Daily Mail online reports many are furious that Mr Blumenthal has refused to pay a penny in compensation, and at least two legal firms have initiated legal action.

Television presenter Jim Rosenthal, who was sickened, called Blumenthal’s response, “pathetic.”

“He has basically attempted to re-write the HPA report and its conclusions in his favour. It is pathetic and a complete PR disaster. There isn’t even a hint of apology.

“At first I was extremely sympathetic to Heston Blumenthal, but the way this has been mishandled beggars belief. I could not believe what I was reading in this email – it was like we had been sent different reports. I am taking them to court and a lot of other people are too. A simple apology might have ended all this a long time ago.”

Mr Blumenthal’s spokesman said:

“We are reviewing the report, which we only received on September 10, and won’t comment until we have completed that review.”

But they did comment, on Sept. 10. Clueless.

I learned about the outbreak from Puking Veronika

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That’s one of the responses Brae Surgeoner, Doug and I received when we asked University of Guelph students how they got information that a norovirus outbreak was happening on campus a couple of years ago. The kids were getting information through non-official channels and rumours were high. A lesson that was learned from the outbreak was to communicate with the target audience (whether it be college students or folks in a long-term care facility) with mediums they are already comfortable with.

I got an email from a couple of folks at Guelph this morning saying that our recently published Journal of Environmental Health article where the above results and conclusions were shared is making the rounds on campus. Here are some of the highlights from the interview I did with Katie Mangan at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

"We couldn’t follow students into the bathroom, because that leads to ethical problems," Mr. Chapman says. So the researchers focused on whether students were using a plastic bottle of hand-sanitizing gel placed at the entrance of a cafeteria that had been described to them as "ground zero" of the outbreak.

"What people do and what they say with regard to hand hygiene are two different things," Mr. Chapman reports.

He says health officials should aim their messages at specific audiences, such as students living in a particular residence hall. Instant messaging and other social-media tools should be used as well.

"It really hits home," he notes, "when their classmates start changing their IM names to something like Puking Veronica."

Gotta know how to reach the kids with health messages; make it relevant and compelling. Check out www.foodsafetyinfosheets to see how we attempt to do that.

Dubai supermarkets start direct food safety messaging at deli counters

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Dubai is hot, with daytime highs at this time of year regularly exceeding 40C (104 F). Local public health types determined that with the super shopping mega malls, people were buying food, placing it in the incubators they called cars, and then some more leisurely shopping.

So, after a few meetings, all supermarkets in Dubai will now be offering warnings, similar to these, regarding ready-to-eat foods. The sign says, ‘Cold Food Consume Immediately Or Refrigerate Within One Hour.’

Cool stuff.
 

Telling students to wash their hands isn’t enough: new research identifies barriers to handwashing compliance in a university residence

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Food safety researcher and talk-show host Jon Stewart got it right back in 2002 when he said,

“If you think the 10 commandments being posted in a school is going to change behavior of children, then you think “Employees Must Wash Hands” is keeping the piss out of your happy meals. It’s not.”

Instead, getting college students to wash hands, halt disease, requires giving them proper tools and spreading the word in ways that get attention: the path to poor hand sanitation is paved with good intentions, according to researchers from Kansas State and North Carolina State Universities.

As college campuses prepare for an expected increase in H1N1 flu this fall, the researchers said students’ actions will speak louder than words.

"Many students say they routinely wash their hands," said Douglas Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University. "But even in an outbreak situation, many students simply don’t."

In February 2006, Powell and two colleagues — Ben Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, and research assistant Brae Surgeoner — observed hand sanitation behavior during an outbreak. What was thought to have been norovirus sickened nearly 340 students at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Hand sanitation stations and informational posters were stationed at the entrance to a residence hall cafeteria, where the potential for cross-contamination was high. The researchers observed that even during a high-profile outbreak, students followed recommended hand hygiene procedures just 17 percent of the time. In a self-reported survey after the outbreak had subsided, 83 of 100 students surveyed said they always followed proper hand hygiene but estimated that less than half of their peers did the same.

The results appear in the September issue of the Journal of Environmental Health.

Powell said that in addition to providing the basic tools for hand washing – vigorous running water, soap and paper towels — college students, especially those living in residence halls, need a variety of messages and media continually encouraging them to practice good hand hygiene.

"Telling people to wash their hands or posting signs that say, ‘Wash your hands’ isn’t enough," said Ben Chapman, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. "Public health officials need to be creative with their communication methods and messages."

Most students surveyed perceived at least one barrier to following recommended hand hygiene procedures. More than 90 percent cited the lack of soap, paper towels or hand sanitizer. Additional perceived barriers were the notion that hand washing causes irritation and dryness, along with just being lazy and forgetful about hand washing. Fewer than 7 percent said a lack of knowledge of the recommended hand hygiene procedures was a barrier.

"Providing more facts is not going to get students to wash their hands," Powell said. "Compelling messages using a variety of media – text messages, Facebook and traditional posters with surprising images — may increase hand washing rates and ultimately lead to fewer sick people."

University students’ hand hygiene practice during a gastrointestinal outbreak in residence: What they say they do and what they actually do
01.sep.09
Journal of Environmental Health Sept. issue 72(2): 24-28
Brae V. Surgeoner, MS, Benjamin J. Chapman, PhD, and Douglas A. Powell, PhD
http://www.neha.org/JEH/2009_abstracts.htm#University_Students%92_Hand_Hygiene_Practice_During_a_Gastrointestinal_Outbreak_in_Residence:_What_They_Say_They_DO_and_What_They_Actually_Do
Abstract
Published research on outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness has focused primarily on the results of epidemiological and clinical data collected postoutbreak; little research has been done on actual preventative practices during an outbreak. In this study, the authors observed student compliance with hand hygiene recommendations at the height of a suspected norovirus outbreak in a university residence in Ontario, Canada. Data on observed practices was compared to post-outbreak self-report surveys administered to students to examine their beliefs and perceptions about hand hygiene. Observed compliance with prescribed hand hygiene recommendations occurred 17.4% of the time. Despite knowledge of hand hygiene protocols and low compliance, 83.0% of students indicated that they practiced correct hand hygiene during the outbreak. To proactively prepare for future outbreaks, a current and thorough crisis communications and management strategy, targeted at a university student audience and supplemented with proper hand washing tools, should be enacted by residence administration.

Yahoo Food sucks at food safety advice

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Among the six most common ways to ruin a burger, which Yahoo Food is promoting ahead of Labor Day, is this nose-stretcher:

Overcooking: This should be a crime recognized by the federal government. For the popular medium-rare, grill the meat exactly three minutes on one side (keeping the grill lid closed) and two minutes on the other. If you’re going to add cheese, let it melt on top for another minute (and keep that cover closed!).  We like our burgers medium rare, so much we’ve even sent them back at restaurants when they go beyond medium.

Nonsense. Using time make no allowances for variation in grill temperature, thickness of the hamburger patty and composition of the hamburger. A tip-sensitive digital thermometer is the only way to get a burger to the correct temperature of 160F, without overcooking.

Thanks to the barfblog reader who sent along the tip.