Buried in a N.Y. Times piece on the demand for cage-free eggs is this nugget that Ben found while editing AnimalNet tonight:

"Officials at Notre Dame turned down a request by a campus animal rights group to switch to cage-free eggs after investigating the issue for six months.

The university, which serves 16,000 meals a day in its dining halls, visited both cage and cage-free operations, examining animal welfare, food safety, environmental impact, taste and other issues. Both operations they toured appeared to take equally good care of their chickens, said Jocie Antonelli, nutrition and safety manager.

The university decided that its current source of eggs, which uses a cage system, had the edge in food safety.

“There are pros and cons to each system,” Ms. Antonelli said. “Either way, these are not free-roaming chickens living out in a pasture.”

The story does not explain what constituted the edge in food safety, but the mere mention of food safety - microbial food safety - is encouraging.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Rebecca J. Gray Causey, a regional food safety and defense coordinator for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control could be my new personal hero.

The Myrtle Beach Sun News reported on restaurant inspection today and cited Causey as doing a food inspection, when the salad bar worker stopped chopping lettuce, commenced scratching his bottom and then returned to chopping lettuce.

Causey found the eatery's manager and told him,
 
"Let's have a talk with Stinky Hands. He needs to know that if he has an itchy butt, he doesn't scratch it on the [salad bar] line."

Causey, shut down the salad bar 30 minutes before the eatery's opening time. All the food on the bar had to be thrown away.

On another occasion, Causey saw Stinky Hands' brother popping pimples on his chest while he was grilling meat.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

UK and New Zealand researchers report in the current issue of the medical journal Gut that people who experience high levels of stress and anxiety appear to be more likely to develop irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) following a severe gastric infection.

Dr. Rona Moss-Morris of the University of Southampton and Dr. Meagan J. Spence of the University of Auckland were cited as noting that a variety of studies have suggested that the cause of IBS has psychological and behavioral components.

Moss-Morris was quoted as telling Reuters Health that, "This study shows that various psychological factors, particularly stress, anxiety and a tendency to push oneself to keep going when ill and then collapse in response, interact with the physical illness in causing IBS."

According to Reuters Health, the researchers looked at 620 patients who tested positive for stomach inflammation from a bout of infection with Campylobacter. None of the participants had previously suffered from IBS or serious bowel conditions.

The subjects completed a questionnaire, covering aspects of personality and their behavior at the time of the initial infection. They were then checked 3 and 6 months later to see if they had developed IBS. The researcher found that 49 of the patients had the condition at both follow-up points.

Depression and perfectionism were not significantly associated with the onset of IBS. However, a variety of other factors were.

These included significantly higher levels of perceived stress and anxiety. IBS patients were also significantly less likely to rest in the face of their illness, and exhibited "all-or-nothing" behavior by continuing their activities despite their symptoms until they were forced to stop.

These patients were prone to view illness in a particularly pessimistic fashion. Being female was also an important risk factor.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Denver is the latest big city to pursue doggie dining.

In response to a petition on behalf of a local café, Denver Department of Environmental Health spokeswoman Ellen Dumm said the meeting was pushed back to Sept. 13 so the city can research possibilities for a variance or a rule change, "We would rather have a rule change. That would allow restaurants that are interested in doing it to pursue it."

We say, the evidence suggests that dogs can and should be allowed on restaurant patios -- but only at the discretion of restaurant staff and only if staff and owners follow the Florida protocol.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Following the lead of the Washington Post, the New York Times is the latest to write about the market demands and push to legalize raw milk sales.

In today's Times, Joe Drapes highlights the Organic Pastures Dairy Company in the San Joaquin Valley near Fresno, which in 2000 became California’s first raw milk dairy with certified organic pasture land. The story says co-founder, Mark McAfee, expects it to gross $6 million — up from $4.9 last year. And while his raw milk is sold in 300 stores in California, where it is legal, McAfee has an $80,000 a month mail order business, shipping creams and cheese as well as milk to all 50 states under the pretense that it's pet food.

Despite staggering sales and demand as reported by Drape, outbreaks associated with the consumption of raw milk continue to be recorded. But of course that doesn't bother advocates.

“I think the bigger risk is having a salad from Wendy’s,” said a raw milk supporter from a farmers’ market in New Hampshire this past weekend.

And again, from yesterday's Post, Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, was quoted as saying, "We're not talking about raw milk from a typical conventional dairy," she says. "That milk could pose a danger. But milk from cows fed on pastures actually have their own antimicrobial components that keep it safe."

Our response at iFSN: 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.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

That's the state slogan for New Hampshire, one which the raw milk foodies have adopted as a rallying cry, especially when confronted with cases of children sickened from raw milk.

But this is coming from the "vitriolic barfblog" as labeled by one advocate of all things raw.

Sure, we may be vitriolic but always point back to the microbial food safety issue and we can always cite the best available evidence.

Sally Squires of the Washington Post writes this morning that,


"From 1998 to 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tied 45 outbreaks of food-borne disease to raw milk or to cheese made with unpasteurized milk. More than 1,000 people became ill, 104 were hospitalized and two died, according to the CDC."

In July, scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported test results for raw milk collected from 861 farms in 21 states. Nearly a quarter contained bacteria linked to human illness, including 5 percent with listeria, 3 percent with salmonella and 4 percent with types of E. coli that can cause diarrhea and other gastrointestinal illnesses. Less than 1 percent of samples had the most dangerous form of E. coli, 0157:H7.

"There are definitely measurable levels [of unhealthy bacteria] and they are probably more prevalent than what we are seeing," said Jeffrey Karns, a microbiologist at the USDA's Environmental Microbial Safety Laboratory in Beltsville, who led the study."

That doesn't bother Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a District-based organization that has been leading the charge to make raw milk available to consumers.

"We're not talking about raw milk from a typical conventional dairy," she says. "That milk could pose a danger. But milk from cows fed on pastures actually have their own antimicrobial components that keep it safe."

"People say that small farms have happy cows that don't have pathogens," Karns says, but he adds that there is no evidence to support that contention.

To concur. Sally Fallon and the foundation she represents engage in scientific cherry picking, selectively citing science and ignoring the outbreak side of the equation. E. coli O157:H7 is a natural resident of approximately 10 per cent of all ruminants -- the spinach outbreak of 2006 should have put that notion that natural is by default, better, to rest.
 
Back in New Hampshire, raw milk advocates are vying for looser regulations on its sale to keep up with growing demand.

But as Brae Surgeoner and I have written,

"Raw milk producers want to afford consumers more options and 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."

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

The Montreal Gazette is the latest media outlet to plunge into the if-food-from-China-makes-us-sick-we-should-buy-local issue.

Paul Mayers, executive director of the animal products directorate at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, was quoted as saying, "Continued globalization means our responsibilities continue to grow. Regulatory systems in different countries are at different stages of evolution. We realize not all countries have systems that are as developed as ours."

I'm not sure how developed the Canadian regulatory system is. The scientific expertise is there, but when it comes to sharing that information with consumers, the system seems far from developed.

Even the story notes that "the Canadian Food Inspection Agency doesn't release numbers on how many shipments it inspects or how many inspectors it employs. Nor does it track food-safety violations by country."

The story cites me, Doug Powell, an associate professor and director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University, as saying the food supply is as safe as it's ever been, adding, "It doesn't matter whether we get our food from around the corner or around the world." Powell said it's up to consumers to ask questions, but said increased government inspection is not the answer. "You can't test your way to a safe food supply," said Powell, who believes ensuring food safety is the responsibility of the private sector. "Making people sick is bad for business."

Actually, the rest of the quote was, "you want to verify that producers and processors are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing" but the reporter didn't seem to like that.

There is a growing assumption visible in media coverage and marketing, that local equates with safe. I was at the Manhattan (Kansas, that is) market with Amy last Saturday morning. Producers, large or small, should be able to describe their efforts to manage microbiological risks. Back in Guelph, Ontario, I used to ask the guy who sold fresh apple cider what he did to control risk (this, in the aftermath of the 1996 Odwalla juice-E. coli O157:H7 outbreak) and he could describe the small microbiological lab he had set up on his farm and the testing and sampling procedures he used. If consumers want unpasteurized cider, that's the kind of question and answer they might want to be interested in.

Regardless of the source, have some sort of verification that it is microbiologically safe.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

According to a press release from the  Cornucopia Institute small-scale farmers, retailers, and consumers are renewing their call to reassess a USDA plan to "pasteurize". The press release says that all domestic almonds must have the treatments by early next year in response to outbreaks of Salmonella in 2001 and 2004.

Will Fantle, research director for The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, was quoted as saying, "The almond 'pasteurization' plan presents many harmful impacts for consumers and the agricultural community. The logic behind both the necessity and safety of the treatments processes has not been adequately analyzed."

Last Wednesday, the California Almond Board requested a delay in the treatment mandate until March, 2008, which had previously been set for September.

Fantle was further quoted as saying, "We support this delay, but a delay, due to the industry being unprepared, isn't enough. The USDA must also re-open the rule for public review and comment so that those who have been shut out of the decision-making process can have input into any almond treatment plan."

Already producers were coming up with 'nutty solutions' to offer customers the opportunity to “rent” trees for the season. In the same way that cow share programs allow raw-milk advocates to legally obtain unpasteurized dairy products,  “tree shares” would allow almond eaters to keep eating raw almonds.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Food safety has made it to Cosmopolitan magazine, in a uniquely Cosmo way. As past of its Conversation Starter series, number 80 is,

"Your kitchen sponge harbors millions of harmful bacteria like E. coli and salmonella that will make you sick. Luckily, now you can instantly sanitize the germ magnet with a zap of your microwave. Heating it for just two minutes will kill 99 percent of the bacteria, a University of Florida study found."

This could lead to additional conversations such as plastic versus wood cutting boards, the risk of raw sprouts, and soon, a relationship is forged.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None