The Venus café in Hobart, Tasmania, was the epicenter of a Salmonella outbreak that sickened about 100 people in Feb. 2008.

Seems the owner, Maree Little, didn't know that raw eggs could carry Salmonella. On Feb. 7, 2008, owner Little cried as she spoke of the devastation of knowing food prepared at her Hobart, Tasmania, eatery had made at least 79 people seriously ill, including mourners at funerals which her business had catered for.

She too became ill after eating food from the cafe, which had been made  with raw eggs.

Now, with her business down by 60 per cent, Ms. Little says,

"I would like to have some sort of recognition to our business because we have been caught in all of this, and I would like the government to come out and say we're thinking about you also, but again that hasn't happened. I don't know whether we can demand it but we will, we will consider what appropriate action we need to take, We need to build our business, and that's what's important."

The Tasmanian Greens jumped in, calling on the government to develop new protocols to lessen the impact of Salmonella outbreaks on retail food outlets, which have often been devastated by negative publicity despite not being responsible in any way for an outbreak.

Wow. Not sure Salmonella knows which party to vote for.  But if you're serving food to a bunch of people, don’t use raw eggs.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Professor Hugh Pennington has become unstuck in time.

More like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, than Billy Pilgrim.

In November 1996, over 400 fell ill and 21 were killed in Scotland by E. coli O157:H7 found in deli meats produced by family butchers John Barr & Son. The Butcher of Scotland, who had been in business for 28 years and who was previously awarded the title of Scottish Butcher of the Year, was using the same knives to handle raw and cooked meat. That's a food safety no-no.

In a 1997 inquiry, Prof. Pennington recommended, among other things, the physical separation, within premises and butcher shops, of raw and cooked meat products using separate counters, equipment and staff.

In the past two weeks, Prof. Pennington has heard in a new inquiry how John Tudor and Son, the Butcher of Wales, used the same machine to vacuum package both raw and cooked meats, leading to an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak beginning in Sept. 2005, which sickened some150 children in 44 schools in southern Wales and killed five-year-old Mason Jones.

How can the good professor awaken from this recurring national nightmare?

The inquiry into the 2005 outbreak, which began in Feb. 2008, is again chaired by Prof. Pennington and has again heard testimony highlighting gross managerial failures and shocking levels of complacency.

So far, the Butcher of Wales has been shown to have:

• encouraged staff suffering from stomach bugs and diarrhea to continue preparing meat for school dinners;
• known of cross-contamination between raw and cooked meats, but did nothing to prevent it;
• used the same packing in which raw meat had been delivered to subsequently store cooked product;
• operated a processing facility that contained a filthy meat slicer, cluttered and dirty chopping areas, and meat more than two years out of date piled in a freezer;
• a cleaning schedule at the factory that one expert called "a joke;"
• falsified crucial health and safety documents and lied about receiving hygiene awards; and,
• supplied schools with meat that was green, smelly and undercooked.

Professor Chris Griffith, head of the food research and consultancy unit at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, told the inquiry the culture at the premises was “dominated by saving money.”
This would explain why Tudor retained his contract to supply schools: because he was the cheapest.

So who allowed Tudor to operate under such conditions?

Government inspectors.

(This is why I get substantially nervous when any food producer, such as California lettuce and spinach growers, says they meet inspection standards.)

Prof. Pennington has heard that Tudor and Son was visited several times in the months leading up to the Sept. 2005 outbreak, that inspectors knew there was only one vac-pac machine being used for both cooked and raw meats but, despite Pennington's 1997 recommendation, inspectors decided the business did not pose "an imminent risk" to human health.

A retired senior Food Standards Agency official, who now works as a freelance food safety consultant, told the inquiry that the use of a single vac-pak for both raw and cooked meat was “like playing Russian Roulette."

The official also chided inspectors for failing to note deficiencies in Tudor's written food safety plan and stated, rather bluntly, "There was a failure in the series of inspections to identify poor hygiene and working practices and a failure to take action."

The inspectors also took on "face value" explanations offered by Tudor and his staff for various food safety failures.

Buyers with the school boards were equally eager to look the other way to save a pound. One supervisor told the inquiry, “You have to have faith in people. You don’t expect them to make up stories about meat.”

Except that inspection and regulatory regimes for meat were created in Southern France in the 12th century precisely because people do make up stories about meat. Europe has almost 1,000 years of regulatory experience with shoddy food suppliers;  that experience was not applied in southern Wales in 2005. As a result, 5-year-old Mason Jones died a painful and unnecessary death. Dozens of kids were hospitalized and will suffer life-long effects.

The official purpose of the inquiry is to provide recommendations designed to prevent a similar outbreak happening again.

As Prof. Pennington knows, that was supposed to happen in 1997.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

WKRG News is reporting that at least 20 of the 300 people who attended the annual "Beast Feast and Wild Game Supper" at the Eastern Shore First Baptist Church in Alabama last weekend got sick and eight of those 20 people were infected with E. coli O157:H7.

Teresa Porter with the Baldwin County Health Department, said,

"Three of the people infected are still in the hospital. And there's an two-to-ten day incubation period for this organism so we've got a couple more days to go."

Two brothers reportedly 10- and 8-years-old sickened in the outbreak remain in fair and good condition today after being transferred from Mobile to Birmingham.

Associate Pastor Ken Wilson at the Eastern Shore Baptist Church said,

"It's affected all of us as a church family. We're doing whatever we can to help the families affected and we're cooperating with the health department."

A table of church-community-potluck style outbreaks is available at http://www.foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=2&c=5&sc=25&id=881.

We say, anyone serving food, especially in a public setting, should have some minimal food safety training.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Received an email from a company running a contest for the Scott Paper and White Cloud toilet paper today asking about a previous barfblog post on dirty bathrooms:

We are running an online contest for Scott Paper and White Cloud toiler paper in an effort to find America’s Worst Bathroom.  We have been notified by several entrants about an entry with a photo that appeared on your blog.  The link to the entry is here. Could you please contact me either via e-mail or; better yet, by phone as soon as possible?  I am trying to find out who owns the copyright for the image in question.  Did you take the photo?  If so, I have to remove this entry and replace it with another.  If not, the entry stays in the contest and I don’t have to make any changes.

Sounds like a serious contest.  I didn't take the original picture, found it somewhere on the interwebs using Google Image Search (like a lot of the barfblog photos).  Go check out the contest and vote for the dirtiest bathroom.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None (1 vote)

Dr. Doug Powell discusses on-farm food safety, the stigmatization of food products, and how reducing risk can translate into enhanced consumer confidence.

This film provides a good example of bad hair and shaky camera angles. And sheep.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

A Detroit-area restaurant owner said he believes he has broken the world record for ''largest hamburger commercially available.''

After 12 hours of preparation and baking, the 134-pound burger emerged Saturday at Mallie's Sports Bar and Grill.

The ''Absolutely Ridiculous Burger,'' made with beef, bacon and cheese, was delivered on a 50-pound bun, sells for $350, and orders require 24 hours' notice. Flipping the burger required three men using two steel sheets.

That's all nice, but did they use a thermometer to acquire data for doneness? Regardless of the size, stick it in.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Health officials said that hundreds of patrons of a posh Manhattan hot spot, including A-list celebrities who attended actor Ashton Kutcher's 30th birthday party there, may have been exposed to hepatitis A.

James Trinko, 29, received a vaccination Saturday and said,

"I just can't believe that in a restaurant as fancy as it was, that they would have this problem. It's kind of a pain in the butt to come out here and deal with this." But "you have to do it."

The story says that hepatitis A virus is found in fecal matter. If someone with the disease doesn't wash his or her hands properly and handles food or drinks, the virus can be spread.

Health department spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti said the Socialista bartender, whose name was not released, handled glasses and garnishes, and there was no soap behind the bar.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

Here's a letter to the editor I just sent in response to today's editorial in the South Coast Standard-Times. The editorial deals with the denial of a permit for the Men Who Cook fundraiser due to inadequate kitchens.

Community gatherings around food awaken nostalgic feelings of the rural past -- times when an entire town would get together monthly, eat, enjoy company and work together. The Men Who Cook fundraiser seems like it's just that, an event created 20 years ago to promote community building, not spread foodborne illness (OUR VIEW: Taking food safety too far, February 22, 2008).
Despite the sense of kinship and best intentions, there have been at least 37 reported outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with homecooked products and community dinners in North America since 1973 (http://foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=32&sc=419&id=890)
In 1997, two elderly people died, more than 100 made a trip to the emergency room, and 700 more reported feeling ill after an annual church dinner of stuffed ham, turkey and fried oysters at Our Lady of the Wayside Parish in Chaptico, Md., population 100.
Tests showed that salmonella in the ham likely caused the illnesses. The nasty bugs that cause foodborne illness don't distinguish between commercial and charitable food operations.
In September 2004, near Buffalo, N.Y., 28 confirmed cases of salmonella infection were reported following an annual community roast-beef dinner. Volunteers were not trained in food service and "didn't quite understand the importance of maintaining a hot or cold temperature," investigators said. The beef was roasted on spits. The juices, collecting in a 5-gallon bucket at room temperature over the course of the day, was poured over the surface of ready-to-eat beef sandwiches. Scrumptious -- except that the sandwiches were being drenched with salmonella bacteria. Interviews with attendees indicated about 1,500 of the 3,000 present were ill.
Community potluck dinners, where food is prepared behind the closed doors of private homes and church kitchens, can be hazardous. Unlike a restaurant kitchen, which is visited and approved by health inspectors, there's little control over how the food is prepared, stored, handled or transported.
It's possible to produce food safely in homes and non-commercial kitchens to continue these important community-building functions, but a strong (not adversarial) relationship between event organizers, home chefs and the health department is necessary. What is more important than the location of food preparation is knowing that the dedicated volunteers play by the rules when it comes to food safety.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None

That's the conclusion from an extensive feature in Men's Health on last year's increase in E. coli O157:H7 in the U.S.

Author Tom Groneberg quotes several folks with their theories for the increase.

Richard Raymond, M.D., the USDA's undersecretary for food safety, says,

"The amount of product we test that's positive has gone up about 33 percent this year from the past 3 years. I don't think it's that the agency has fallen asleep at the switch. I don't think it's that the industry has gotten sloppy. I think it's the cows."

Specifically, Dr. Raymond cites high corn prices for prompting a switch to cheaper feeds for fattening cattle. "When you change their feed, their intestinal flora change."

T.G. Nagaraja, Ph.D., a professor of microbiology at Kansas State University and the leader of a team of researchers targeting ways to decrease levels of E. coli in cattle before they reach the slaughterhouse, says,

"We found that cattle consuming distiller's grains as 25 percent of their diet had about a twofold higher incidence of E. coli O157:H7. Our observation is preliminary, but we've done three studies that show a positive association between this feed and increased levels of O157."

David Smith, D.V.M., Ph.D., a professor of veterinary and biomedical science at the University of Nebraska, says,

"One factor associated with cattle shedding the E. coli organism is wet and muddy pen conditions. I suspect the slaughterhouses may have had cattle arrive this summer with a higher probability of shedding E. coli, or the cattle had it present on their hides, which led to greater opportunities for ground-beef contamination than during droughts."

Michael Doyle, Ph.D., director of the center for food safety at the University of Georgia and one of the world's leading authorities on E. coli and other foodborne pathogens, says,

"There is often an increase in bacterial contamination when experienced workers on the slaughter line are replaced with less-experienced workers, such as before and after holidays, and raids this year on illegal slaughterhouse workers by the INS led to replacement with less-experienced line workers."

Doug Powell, Ph.D., an associate professor of pathobiology and scientific director of the International Food Safety Network, says,

"You're not going to eliminate E. coli O157:H7. Down-line processors have to be operating under the assumption that they're going to get some E. coli just like we expect consumers to operate under the assumption that they're going to have some in their product, which is why we tell them to cook it."

So cook that burger. And stick that thermometer in it.

User Rating: Select ratingPoorOkayGoodGreatAwesome

Your rating: None