May 2007

  • Sure, it's not food safety, but this is Barfblog

    Posted: May 30th, 2007 - 10:27pm by Ben Chapman

    The Associated Press has a yuck factor-worthy story about a couple suing Wal-Mart over slip in a puddle of vomit

    The story goes on to say that June Medema, slipped in the vomit at a Davenport, IA Wal-Mart on June 13, 2005 and was seriously injured in the fall.
    The lawsuit alleges that Wal-Mart's negligence led to Medema's fall, but it does not specifically say how the store was negligent.

    Slipping in a puddle of vomit is pretty nasty
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  • British man eats dog -- food safety risk?

    Posted: May 30th, 2007 - 5:47am by Doug Powell

    Mark McGowan, a British artist who has previously eaten a swan as part of a performance art show, ate a corgi dog, famous for being Queen Elizabeth II's favourite breed, in protest Tuesday after a group including her husband Prince Philip allegedly killed a fox earlier this year.




    McGowan was quoted as saying, "I know some people will find this offensive and tasteless but I am doing this to raise awareness about the RSPCA's inability to prosecute Prince Philip and his friends shooting a fox earlier this year, letting it struggle for life for five minutes and then beating it to death with a stick," as Yoko Ono, the widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon, sat beside him during a London radio broadcast

    The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said they found "no evidence" that any offence had taken place in January, when the incident took place.

    McGowan said the dog, which died at a breeding farm, tasted "really, really disgusting," and added that Ono "looked a bit strange" as she also tasted the dog.
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  • Jacko has food poisoning?

    Posted: May 28th, 2007 - 10:42am by Ben Chapman

    Rumour has it that Michael Jackson ate something bad at the Prince of Brunei's 25th birthday party:

    Michael Jackson Ducks Early Out From Brunei Party

    From the article:

    Michael Jackson had to duck out of a lavish party held by his pal the Prince of Brunei this weekend - despite apparently being paid £5 million to turn up.
    The eccentric popstar withdrew from Prince Azim’s 25th birthday at an English country estate after claiming food poisoning caused by the buffet had caused him to vomit.
    The Mirror quotes him as telling a fellow guest, “I am feeling ill and so weak. I had to go to the bathroom to vomit. I think it must be the food. I feel terrible. I want to go now! Please call the prince, I want to say goodbye."

    Hopefully Jacko feels better, but I think he'd be a great spokesperson for food safety month.
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  • What's a consumer to do?

    Posted: May 27th, 2007 - 7:21am by Doug Powell

    Adulterating food, recycling out-of-date foods, fake foods, they've been with humans for … a long time.

    Madeleine Ferrières a professor of social history at the University of Avignon, France, writes in Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, first published in French in 2002, but translated into English in 2006, that "as soon as man learned how to write, he left evidence of his fear of poisoning himself with toxic food."

    I started reading this book last year, but was stalled. Now, traveling in France with Amy and steeping myself in the history of the area, I've revisited it with a new vigor.

    Audrey Brown reported on May 23, 2007 for the BBC that after working undercover for a couple of major U.K. supermarkets, she observed staff all too willing to change best-before dates, repackage dated food, and generally show a disregard for any potential health impacts.



    But Ferrières reminds us in the introduction to the American edition that "the fear of poisoning has never been reserved for the world's great and powerful. It is a collective fear, shared socially. Furthermore, we still experience it."

    Today it's produce, pet food and peanut butter.

    In 1184 Toulouse, France, from where I write this, city leaders "took three archetypal measures regarding butchering: the profit of the butchers must be limited to one denier out of 12 (eight per cent); partnership between two butchers was forbidden, and selling the meat of sick animals was likewise forbidden unless the buyer was warned." Similar articles on butchering were created in Montpellier (1204), Avignon (1246), Marseilles (1253) and Salon (1293).

    Below is the public slaughterhouse in Toulouse, which was closed in 1989 and reopened as an art museum in 1997. This slaughterhouse, opened in 1831 just outside of town, consolidating the dozens of slaughterhouses which were located in the center of the city like other French cities, beginning in the 12th century, to observe the health of animals before slaughter and to facilitate the collecting of taxes.



    Ferrières provides extensive documentation of the rules, regulations and penalties that emerged in the Mediterranean between the 12th and 16th centuries. But rules are only as good as the enforcement that backs them up. The owners of the supermarkets documented by the BBC would have been subject to fines, flogging or banishment.

    As today's society grapples with how best to validate that food is indeed what it says it is -- and safe -- and as the huskers and buskers emerge with cure-alls, I find some comfort in Ferrières' incisive words:

    "All human beings before us questioned the contents of their plates. … And we are often too blinded by this amnesia to view our present food situation clearly. This amnesia is very convenient. It allows us to reinvent the past and construct a complaisant, retrospective mythology."
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  • What's your score, mate?

    Posted: May 25th, 2007 - 2:43am by Doug Powell

    Sydney, Australia is a great city. I go there regularly and will return in July.




    And it'd be even better if restaurants and regulators provided the public with information about the safety of the city's restaurants.
    Restaurants and food service establishments are a significant source of the foodborne illness that strikes up to 30 per cent of citizens in so-called developed countries each and every year.
    Sydney officials are now being pressured to release information about the safety of local restaurants and bolster restaurant safety in general.
    After watching the mish-mash of federal, state and local approaches to restaurant inspection in a number of western countries for the past decade, I can draw two broad conclusions:
    • Anyone who serves, prepares or handles food, in a restaurant, nursing home, day care center, supermarket or local market needs some basic food safety training; and,
    • the results of restaurant and other food service inspections must be made public.
    Here's why.
    Parenting and preparing food are about the only two activities that no longer require some kind of certification in Western countries. For example, to coach little girls playing ice hockey in Canada requires 16 hours of training. To coach kids on a travel team requires an additional 24 hours of training.





    It's unclear how many illnesses can be traced to restaurants, but every week there is at least one restaurant-related outbreak reported in the news media somewhere. Cross-contamination, lack of handwashing and improper cooking or holding temperatures are all common themes in these outbreaks -- the very same infractions that restaurant operators and employees should be reminded of during training sessions, and are judged on during inspections. Some jurisdictions -- such as the city of Fort Worth, Texas -- place so much importance on teaching these lessons they require mandatory food handler licenses and have invested in an infrastructure of training that demonstrates the city's commitment to public health. Other cities and states have no training requirement.
    There should be mandatory food handler training, for say, three hours, that could happen in school, on the job, whatever. But training is only a beginning. Just because you tell someone to wash the poop off their hands before they prepare salad for 100 people doesn't mean it is going to happen; weekly outbreaks of hepatitis A confirm this. There are a number of additional carrots and sticks that can be used to create a culture that values microbiologically safe food and a work environment that rewards hygienic behavior. But mandating basic training is a start.
    Next is to verify that training is being translated into safe food handling practices through inspection. And those inspection results should be publicly available.
    A philosophy of transparency and openness underlies the efforts of many local health units across North America in seeking to make available the results of restaurant inspections. In the absence of regular media exposes, or a reality TV show where camera crews follow an inspector into a restaurant unannounced, how do consumers -- diners -- know which of their favorite restaurants are safe?
    Cities, counties and states are using a blend of web sites, letter or numerical grades on doors, and providing disclosure upon request. In Denmark, smiley or sad faces are affixed to restaurant windows.





    Publicly available grading systems rapidly communicate to diners the potential risk in dining at a particular establishment and restaurants given a lower grade may be more likely to comply with health regulations in the future to prevent lost business.
    More importantly, such public displays of information help bolster overall awareness of food safety amongst staff and the public -- people routinely talk about this stuff. The interested public can handle more, not less, information about food safety.
    Lots of cities still do not disclose restaurant inspection results, worried about the effect on business, but they aren't great cities.
    Sydney is.
    And instead of waiting for politicians to take the lead, the best restaurants, those with nothing to hide and everything to be proud of, will go ahead and make their inspection scores available -- today.
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  • Sprouts again

    Posted: May 24th, 2007 - 10:30pm by Ben Chapman

    Salad cosmo has just recalled sprouts because they may be contaminated with Salmonella.  The consumption of raw sprouts has been linked to over 30 outbreaks of foodborne illness throughout North America in the past 15 year affecting tens of thousands of people. The first consumer warning about sprouts was issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 1997. By July 9, 1999, FDA had advised all Americans to be aware of the risks associated with eating raw sprouts and that the best way to control the risk was to simply not eat raw sprouts.

    Sprouts, by nature, present a special food safety challenge because the way they are grown -- high moisture and high temperature -- is also an ideal environment for bacterial growth. In addition they are just about impossible to wash.

    A complete list of sprouts-related outbreaks can be found here.

    I wonder if this recall is related to the unknown illnesses we saw earlier in the month.


    --
    California warns that Salad Cosmo sprouts may have salmonella
    The Associated Press

    SACRAMENTO, Calif.- State health officials warned Thursday that alfalfa sprouts sold by a Northern California company to stores and restaurants in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington may be contaminated with salmonella bacteria.

    The company, Salad Cosmo USA Corp., of Dixon, announced a voluntary recall after routine tests found salmonella in alfalfa seeds.

    Click here to read the full story.
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  • Food -- fashion over facts

    Posted: May 24th, 2007 - 11:15am by Doug Powell

    The N.Y. Times is once again promoting the fashionable over the factual when it comes to food safety. Yesterday, Mark Bittman wrote in his quest for a good burger, that, "well-done meat is dry and flavorless, which is why burgers should be rare, or at most medium rare. The only sensible solution: Grind your own. You will know the cut, you can see the fat and you have some notion of its quality."

    Dangerous microorganisms like E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella cannot be sensed by sight and are equal opportunity pathogens -- they will happily adulterate so-called quality cuts of meat.

    Bittman also says that "if you grind your own beef, you can make a mixture and taste it raw," adding that, "To reassure the queasy, there’s little difference, safety-wise, between raw beef and rare beef: salmonella is killed at 160 degrees, and rare beef is cooked to 125 degrees."




    Kids, don't try this at home. Or anywhere else. Ground beef of any sort needs to be 160F.

    Even with quality cuts like steaks or roasts, dangerous bugs can contaminate the exterior of the meat. That's why rare steak is relatively safe with an external searing. In the process of grinding, whatever pathogens are on the outside become internalized in the burger -- whether the meat is ground at a factory or the kitchen counter-top.

    Bitman concludes by saying that cooking time depends on the size of the burger but that his take about 6 to 8 minutes total, for rare to medium-rare.

    Except that color or time are lousy indicator of doneness. The only way to properly tell if a burger is microbiologically safe is to stick it in, using a digital meat thermometer (preferably a tip-sensitive one). Most people, trying not to sicken their family or guests, overcook burgers. A 160 F burger, verified with a thermometer, satisfies and is safe.





    Bittman joins Nina Planck, who at the height of the fall 2006 E. coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak, wrote in the Times that E. coli O157:H7 "is not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. … It's the infected  manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater  and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on  neighboring farms."
    The natural reservoirs for E. coli O157:H7 and other verotoxigenic E. coli is the intestines of all ruminants, including cattle -- grass or grain-fed -- sheep, goats, deer and the like. The final report of the fall 2006 spinach outbreak identifies nearby grass-fed beef cattle as the likely source of the E. coli O157:H7 that sickened 200 and killed 4.

    Being a fashionable foodie is fun for some; a few facts can keep it safe. Don't eat poop.
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  • Are Manhattan's (KS) Houlihan's staff still acclimatizing?

    Posted: May 23rd, 2007 - 4:10pm by Brae Surgeoner

    Across North America where restaurant inspection results are made available to members of the public, they are done so using a patchwork of food safety disclosure systems. In Los Angeles County, a restaurant must post a letter grade in its front window (A, B or C). Whereas in Toronto, a restaurant must post a color placard in its front window (green, yellow or red). In addition to onsite notification, both cities provide a searchable online database for a hungry public to look up inspection results by restaurant name, address or borough. A "carrot and stick" approach to improving food safety standards, public disclosure of restaurant inspection results are intended to reward operators who make food safety a pillar of success, and punish those who scramble when the inspector arrives on the premise.

    Last night as I was flipping through the local newspaper for Manhattan, Kansas (population ca. 50, 000) I stopped when I came across its 'foodSAFETY' column for area food inspections which (evidently) is published weekly in Tuesday's Food & Drink section. Very cool. Even cooler was that the paper published the inspection findings for one of the town's newest restaurants -- Houlihan's -- which is but a 5 minute walk from where I'm living. Ouch... the findings are not good. See for yourself. When the restaurant opened on February 2nd, the Kansas State Collegian, reported that managers chose not to advertise the opening of the restaurant to allow employees to acclimate to the full 170-person capacity. Based on this report, I would say that almost three months later employees are still acclimatizing. It will be interesting to see (and hear about) the impact that this report has on the restaurant's business, and of course on the staff's attention to food safety.
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  • Marketing food safety

    Posted: May 22nd, 2007 - 2:22am by Doug Powell

    Greg Blonder writes in Business Week about how a tracking system meshed into our existing food distribution networks would identify toxic or infectious dangers in their early stages, communicate their various locations, then support a rapid reaction before the threat spreads, thus intercepting pandemics or poisonings before they spiral out of control.




    I'm all for any system that accurately markets food safety -- not like the implied safe food messages littering grocery store shelves and the publications of the food pornographers. Such a system would compel everyone beginning on the farm right through to the fork to take microbial food safety seriously, rather than sugar-coat the topic with happy talk and turn a blind eye when poop gets on the food.

    Blonder  goes on:

    "We already have at hand much of the logistics infrastructure and technology that such a system would require. Radio Frequency Identification tags have reached a degree of sophistication where, if we wanted to, we could bar-code all food—whether tomatoes grown on an Amish farm outside town or broccoli from Mexico.

    Similarly, sensor technology that lets us tag gold nanoparticles with DNA or miniaturized spectrometers has attained enough sensitivity that we can accurately identify a wide range of dangerous bacteria and toxic chemicals by smell or even color. If we communicated the collected data via the Internet, expert systems could then quickly identify unusual disease trends.

    Aside from protection against bioterrorism, such a system would offer enough value to justify its cost through improved logistics. Local restaurants and grocery stores could provide assurance they were offering safe food—even food free of accidental E. coli contaminations.

    Your supermarket could advertise: "Each morning we rescan every product in our aisles to assure you our produce is free of 27 diseases. And we can tell you the exact farm where it was grown. Enjoy!"





    And don't eat poop.
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  • Raw deal from raw, unpasteurized milk

    Posted: May 20th, 2007 - 10:48pm by Brae Surgeoner

    Every week in the U.S. there is a report of unpasteurized milk testing positive for listeria or salmonella or E. coli or campylobacter (see Contamination shows up in dairy, Capital Press, May 18/07); every month there is a report of people, largely children, sickened after consuming unpasteurized milk in the misguided belief that all things natural are good.
    For example, in September, two children who drank raw milk from a Whatcom County dairy in Washington State became ill with E. coli O157:H7. At the same time, four children, including two 8-year-olds in San Diego County, Calif., were hospitalized with E. coli infection after consuming raw milk products.
    In December 2005, 18 people in Washington and Oregon, including six children, were infected with E. coli O157:H7 after drinking unlicensed raw milk. Two of the kids almost died.
    In April 2005, four cases of E. coli linked to unpasteurized milk were reported to Ontario, Canada health officials -- in this case, from an individual who routinely sold raw milk from the back of a vehicle parked in a city north of Toronto (see raw milk outbreak listings).
    Unpasteurized milk is legal to sell in 28 U.S. states, in part due to the lobbying efforts of Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation (see Advocate of fatty foods puts dietitians in a stew, Sydney Morning Herald, May. 20/07).
    Fallon and her supporters claim that it is foods other than raw milk which are responsible for the hundreds of illnesses linked to raw milk.
    Such claims are nonsensical and endanger public health.
    Fallon and her disciples also claim that consumers should be free to choose.
    Choice is good. But as the 19th-century English utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill, noted, absolute choice has limits, stating, "if it (in this case the consumption of raw unpasteurized milk) only directly affects the person undertaking the action, then society has no right to intervene, even if it feels the actor is harming himself." Excused from Mill's libertarian principle are those people who are incapable of self-government -- children.
    Science can be used to enhance what nature provided. Further, society has a responsibility to the many -- philosopher Mill also articulated how the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one — to use knowledge to minimize harm.
    Adults, do whatever you think works to ensure a natural and healthy lifestyle, but please don't impose your dietary regimes on those incapable of protecting themselves: your kids.
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  • Doggy Dining

    Posted: May 19th, 2007 - 3:38am by Amy Hubbell

    Pictured: Restaurant in Nîmes, France


    In France dining with your dog is a part of every day life.  Dogs go in restaurants, grocery stores, and even on trains with their owners.  The other night at dinner at a table next to us, a couple sat with their ‘tween son and a tiny doggy that they passed from person to person until the food came.  Then he was expected to sit calmly under the chair.  He started yelping quickly afterwards when a very big dog came wondering around the restaurant’s terrace looking for handouts (see above photo).

    We are the owners of two dogs and two cats who live with us in Kansas.  Our lives would be more convenient if we could live like the French and both walk our dogs and sit in restaurants with them on the patio.  We used to be able to do this at one of our favorite restaurants in Manhattan, but the management there recently changed and they told us we would have to attach the dogs on the outside of the railing rather than have them at the table with us.  They even brought us cups of water for the pooches so they wouldn’t get too hot.  Sadie, who was a puppy at the time, dug up their herb garden, and we decided we’d better leave.

    Around the same time that rule changed last fall, a reporter called Doug and asked what he thought about the doggy dining laws in Florida.  My reaction was that I would frequent a restaurant that allowed me to bring my dog, but if I were a restaurant owner, I would not allow dogs on the patio.  Beyond the liability issues of “What if a customer’s dog bit one of my staff or other clients?” I see people do all sorts of strange things with their pets.  I confess, I too am guilty of letting my dog lick my plate, but some people even share their food while they’re eating it.  As a restaurant owner, knowing I am liable if someone gets sick in my restaurant, and knowing that dogs do often eat poop and live to …err.. tell about it, I wouldn’t trust that a customer wouldn’t sue me for their E. coli poisoning if they got sick from their dog’s germs.  The U.S. has strict liability laws when it comes to food safety.  If I served the food with poop, I’d be hard pressed to prove where it came from.
     
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  • Salmonella linked to baby chicks, ducks

    Posted: May 19th, 2007 - 3:24am by Doug Powell

    Health officias reported at least eight cases of salmonella in Utah linked to baby chicks or ducks.




    Tests show the salmonella strain in Utah matches cases in other states. The common link appears to be a hatchery in New Mexico, the Weber-Morgan Health Department said in a statement. No other details were disclosed.

    Tina L’Estrange, a nurse at the health department, said, "birds often carry salmonella and shed it in their stool. People forget that when they pick up the cute baby chicks. This could happen in any store, petting zoo or your own backyard."
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  • Don't eat poop

    Posted: May 18th, 2007 - 9:16am by Doug Powell

    In today's poop news, an Austin, Minnesota man who allegedly put his dog's feces in the same envelope he used for the payment of a parking ticket has now been charged with disorderly conduct.

    The story explains that police ticketed the vehicle of this 22-year-old on April 18 while it was parked in front of his residence, and to show his annoyance, the man put an envelope containing his payment and dog feces in a drop box at the law enforcement center.

    AP was cited as reporting that at first he was charged with the misdemeanor on May 11 after an office employee for the Austin Police Department smelled a bad odor as she collected envelopes from the box and then later fell ill.

    As she opened the envelopes on April 25, the woman noticed one leaking brown fluid, which got onto her hands and her desk. The next morning the woman awoke with a headache and vomited repeatedly and had to be hospitalized for about two days with an undetermined illness.





    Officials in Nantucket, Mass. are concerned about the potential health problems caused by irresponsible owners who leave behind dog droppings in public places. Although there is no law prohibiting dogs or other animals from town land, and Park and Rec acknowledges it cannot enforce its request, it is nonetheless putting up signs on its properties asking users to refrain from bringing their pets.

    One official was quoted as saying, "It’s a concern that dogs leave their great little gifts all over the beach in general. Walking barefoot seems to be traditional and it’s a real surprise when you don’t notice it. A lot of times dogs leave their great little gifts below the high tide mark, it gets scooped up, carried out and you get bacteria all over the place. One dog’s mistake can close a beach. If I happen to be sampling in that area, it’s surprise city when the results come back.”

    Park and Rec director Jimmy Manchester was quoted as saying “You have so many people and so many animals, it’s an unhealthy thing when you walk around on the beach and step in poop. You can say it until you’re red in the face, but the best thing to do is educate people.”




    And finally, cats in the Swedish town of Söderköping are facing a crackdown, after the council issued a ban on free sex and on pooping in the flowerbeds.

    Environmental and planning officers in the town, 180 kilometres south of Stockholm, have demanded that cat owners place litter trays outdoors, and that cats not being used in breeding programmes should be castrated.

    The story says that local cats have been blamed for destroying plants, polluting sandpits, damaging cars, and tearing cushions on outdoor furniture.

    The main problem, the officials claim, is "cat owners and the myth that cats can manage on their own."




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  • Where will genetically engineered food place in history?

    Posted: May 17th, 2007 - 6:48am by Doug Powell

    I'm working on a book chapter about genetically engineered foods while sitting in the shadows of a First century, AD, still functioning Roman coliseum in Nimes, France, while Amy is off working on her research.





    In reviewing the past decade of apocalyptic predictions related to all foods genetically engineered, I can only conclude, what a massive waste of well-meaning time, energy and money that could have been instead devoted to fewer people sick from microbial foodborne illness.

    A story out of Canada once again fawningly reported that all things organic were booming.
    What caught my eye was the statement by the spokesthingy for Loblaw Companies Ltd., who said, "As long as you are in the business of giving consumers choice, I think you have to have organics as part of your offering."

    This from the same company who, when asked in 1999, and 2000, if they would be interested in giving consumers choice and offer a genetically-engineered Bt sweet corn -- the benefit being significantly reduced pesticide use -- responded with, no, we can't tell consumers that pesticides are used to grow sweet corn.

    Whatever kinds of food production, processing and distribution system we humans come up with, what matters is not the technology, but whether the results make people sick. There's lots of food-related things that sicken 30 per cent of all citizens in developed countries each and every year -- genetically engineered food isn't one of them.
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  • Clinton rides the food safety wave -- again

    Posted: May 16th, 2007 - 8:30am by Doug Powell

    At noon on Jan. 19, 1993, William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as the 42nd President of the U.S. A few hours later, the King County Health Department in Washington State issued a public warning linking consumption of undercooked hamburgers with an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7, sometimes known as hamburger disease. What came to be known as the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak eventually killed four young children and sickened over 700.





    Those two events, more than any other, dramatically changed the public discussion of food safety in the U.S. The Jack-in-the-Box outbreak had all the elements of a dramatic story: children were involved; the risk was relatively unknown and unfamiliar; and a sense of outrage developed in response to the inadequacy of the government inspection system. The newly inaugurated President Clinton made microbial food safety a Presidential issue.

    Today, the N.Y. Times is reporting in a larger story about food safety and federal regulatory oversight, that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first presidential candidate to make food safety reform a part of a campaign platform.






    In addition to signing on to a bill to create a single food inspection agency by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, Senator Clinton said in a telephone interview that she would double the agency's budget over five years, double the number of inspectors, mandate a minimum frequency for inspections and provide mandatory recall authority.

    Hillary Clinton told the Times that, "We’ve had a long history of problems with food safety because of the divided system,  But it was not as acute a problem in the minds of many Americans because we didn’t have so many outbreaks of food-related illness. There has not been much support from the Bush administration, and now we are playing catch-up. We need a new system of food safety prevention.”
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  • Training Day

    Posted: May 15th, 2007 - 8:15am by Ben Chapman

    Tailgaters Sports Bar & Grill in South Bend IN, has faired as well in recent health inspections as the local college football team has in bowl games: not very good.
    But, the head coach of the Fighting Irish football team and the manager of Tailgaters differ on placing blame.   Whereas Miki Young, Tailgater's owner, suggested that the poor work habits of her staff led to the poor inspection results, Charlie Weis hasn't publicly blamed his Fighting Irish players for the breakdown in the Sugar Bowl against LSU. This quality, Weiss' responsibility for his team's performance would make him a pretty good restaurant manager.

    When Weis and the Irish lose, thousands of fans may be disappointed, school officials may get angry and some staff may lose their jobs, but it's really not a big deal. When Miki's (or any other restaurant's) staff screw up it can be a really big deal: patrons get ill, and could die.  The World Health Organization estimates that up to 30 per cent of citizens in so-called developed countries get sick from the food and water they consume each and every year.  However, coaching is valued much more than food safety in North America. For example, to coach youth house league hockey in Ontario requires 16 hours of training. To open the doors behind the bench requires 4 hours of prevention services training. To coach kids on a travel team requires more. Shouldn't some minimal requirements be established for those running a restaurant or preparing food?

    It's unclear how many illnesses can be traced to restaurants, but almost every week there is at least one restaurant-related outbreak reported in the news media somewhere in North America.   Cross-contamination, handwashing and improper temperatures are all common themes in these outbreaks -- the very same infractions that restaurant operators and employees should be reminded of during training sessions, and are judged on during inspections.  Some jurisdictions -- such as the city of Fort Worth, Texas -- place so much importance on teaching these lessons that they have mandatory training for all food handlers.  Fort Worth requires food handler licenses and has invested in an infrastructure of training that demonstrates the city's commitment to public health. If they can do it why can't others? The Fort Worth Public Health Department's promotion of food safety garnered the the coveted Crumbine Consumer Protection Award for Excellence in Food Protection in 2004, the Super Bowl of food safety.

    Running a restaurant is like running a sports team. The kitchen and the wait staff operate like offensive and defensive units. Each staff member has her own job, and each depends on another's performance, one bad move can lead to a foodborne illness. The inspectors are the referees, and they show up to make sure that everyone is playing by the rules.

    Managers, like coaches, need to provide the tools, set examples, and foster the culture of the team, in this case, food safety.   In the Chicago area in 2003 a Chili's restaurant was linked to over 160 confirmed cases of Salmonella.  Health officials determined the Salmonella was due to employees who were unable to follow proper hand washing techniques as management had made a decision to keep the restaurant open for two days even though its water supply was interrupted. Hot water isn't needed for effective handwashing, it's just that people don't like washing their hands in cold water -- and in the absence of hot water Salmonella was passed on.


    In April 2005, a 25-year veteran employee at the popular burger-joint, Peter’s Drive-In, in Calgary, AB, reported to work ill. Sixteen people got sick from E. coli O157:H7 after drinking marshmallow-flavored milkshakes that said worker had prepared – 15-year old Sara Burgess was in the hospital for two weeks and had to undergo dialysis treatment because of kidney failure due to infection.  The then-owner of the restaurant asked rhetorically "what was I supposed to do?"  A training program for restaurant operators might have been good(thanx for the pic Michelle).



    But even ensuring that sick workers stay at home won’t always protect patrons from harmful bacteria. Some of the pathogens associated with foodborne illness, such as hepatitis A and Salmonella can be passed on with out symptoms. According to research published in the Journal of Food Protection last information, and a training regime that is supported by regulators, which focuses on food safety risk year, 12 per cent of staff associated with restaurant outbreaks in Minnesota tested positive for Salmonella, but only half reported feeling sick. Managers and food handlers need to know this factors could lead to reduced risk.

    Miki Young told the St. Joseph County Health Department representatives at a hearing about her inspection record, "Everybody knows I mean business; If you don't take care of business, you'll be let go."  In the words of Randy Bachman, food safety training can help food handlers and managers ensure that they are takin' care of business.
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  • Blogging at iFSN

    Posted: May 11th, 2007 - 8:08pm by Doug Powell

    Twelve days in and we're all enjoying blogging and hope the readers are as well. The folks at Lexblog -- thanks Bill Marler --  wrote a nice story about iFSN and barfbolg today.

    See how happy we look -- or at least how happy we looked when we were all together in Kansas City in Feb.




    And Brae too.




    With about 500 unique visitors so far, it's been fun to watch how people find barfblog and why. It's predominantely celebrity news and other pop culture stories, like various takes on the 5-second rule.

    Amy and I are looking forward to blogging from France for five weeks, beginning Monday. Just like when met a year-and-a-half ago.
    dp



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  • My Chemical Romance follow-up #2

    Posted: May 11th, 2007 - 11:01am by Ben Chapman

    Best food safety headline of the week for sure (thanks Brae): Muse and My Chem Fans Respond to Shitty News Rationally, With Death Threats. This is the best one I've seen since the Buffalo News used Peanut Butter Lawsuits Spreading as a headline for an editorial in February.

    It appears that My Chemical Romance are over their Salmonella infection -- they play in Toronto tonight.

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  • Salmonella and turtles and me

    Posted: May 10th, 2007 - 9:49pm by Doug Powell

    Growing up in late-1960s suburbia, my parents thought dogs should run on farms like their dogs had, and cats were a nuisance.

    So I had a turtle.

    Turtles were inexpensive, popular, and low maintenance, with an array of groovy pre-molded plastic housing designs to choose from. Invariably they would escape, only to be found days later behind the couch along with the skeleton of the class bunny my younger sister brought home from kindergarten one weekend.





    But eventually, replacement turtles became harder to come by. Reports started surfacing that people with pet turtles were getting sick. In 1975, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned commercial distribution of turtles less than 4 inches in length, and it has been estimated that the FDA ban prevents some 100,000 cases of salmonellosis among children each year.
    Maybe I got sick from my turtle.

    Maybe I picked up my turtle, rolled around on the carpet with it, pet it a bit, and then stuck my finger in my mouth. Maybe in my emotionally vacant adolescence I kissed my turtle. Who can remember?
    Apparently I wasn't the only pet-deprived child getting cuddly with a turtle. Last year, Josh Kiefer of Du Quoin, Ill. tapped into yet another form of baby-boomer nostalgia and sold hundreds of supposedly salmonella-free red-eared slider turtles each month at his Sea Creatures shop.

    And now, just a month after the FDA issued an urgent reminder to consumers that baby turtles can pose a serious health risk after a four-week old infant in Florida died of infection traced to Salmonella pomona, a bacteria that was also found in a pet turtle in the home the $9.4 million Louisiana turtle industry and two Louisiana Republican politicias have introduced legislation directing the FDA to lift the ban.







    Sen. David Vitter was quoted as saying, "I believe this legislation is important because it puts an end to the FDA's unfair standards that limit the livelihood of our Louisiana farmers. The FDA is holding pet turtles to a standard that is impossible to reach — one that even food products are not expected to attain."

    Americans do expect food products like peanut butter and tomatoes to be free of salmonella; they sue if salmonella is present.

    Each spring, some children become infected with salmonella after receiving a baby chick or duckling for Easter -- probably like their parents before them.

    Pocket pets, including rats, mice, rabbits, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs and ferrets, as well as rodents that are bought to feed other animals (such as snakes), can also carry potentially dangerous bacteria.
    Contact with reptiles and amphibians accounts for an estimated 74,000 (6 per cent) of the approximately 1.2 million sporadic human Salmonella infections that occur annually in the United States.

    Perhaps it is possible to raise and live with salmonella-free turtles. But that's up to the suppliers to prove. Nostalgia is nice, but it's not a cure for salmonella.

    Douglas Powell is an associate professor and scientific director of the Food Safety Network at Kansas State University
    dpowell@ksu.edu
    foodsafety.ksu.edu
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  • A new way to blame consumers

    Posted: May 10th, 2007 - 4:07pm by Doug Powell

    Did you know that watching TV while putting away groceries can increase your risk of foodborne illness? This according to the so-called "experts that staff the Canada-wide consumer line operated by the Food Safety Information Society" in Alberta who were cited as saying in an Alberta newspaper yesterday that multitasking, when handling food, could increase the risk of foodborne illness.





    Maybe the experts took info from this press release
    http://www.umich.edu/~bcalab/articles/APAPressRelease2001.pdf and imagined that it would apply to foodborne illness, leading the group to conclude that:

    "Juggling multiple chores can result in other food safety problems as well. Food safety can be compromised in situations such as:
    - Filling up the car with gas on the way to shop for food could contaminate groceries with chemicals on unwashed hands;
    - Eating while working at a desk or driving a car can spread bacteria from unclean surfaces into food;
    - Watching TV while unpacking groceries or while doing after-meal clean-up can delay refrigerating perishable food within two hours, thus allowing harmful bacteria to start developing."

    There are many factors which can increase the risk of foodborne illness, like putting poop on fresh produce,  having poop get into processed peanut butter, or leaving poop on your hands, but I've never heard of multitasking increasing the risk of foodborne illness.





    If someone knows of a study examining multitasking and increased risk of foodborne illness, please forward the information. Until then, it's just another example of the ways various groups -- check out FSIS's supporters and you'll get an idea of the various groups, http://www.foodsafetyline.org/english/about.html -- blame consumers for foodborne illness
    (http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=1030).



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