July 2008

  • Raw milk sickens infant; lawsuit filed

    Posted: August 1st, 2008 - 12:37am by Doug Powell

    It’s always the kids.

    As a father with four daughters and a fifth on the way, I relate to the let’s not make kids sick aspect of raw milk.

    Proponents of raw milk say that is just so much statistical shit, and that hardly anyone gets sick from raw milk.

    Except it is entirely preventable, and well-meaning people get sucked in by nutritional gobbledygook.

    Like Angela Pedersen, who says her almost one-year-old Larry contracted E. coli O157:H7 from raw milk she bought at the Herb Depot and Organic Market in Monett, Miss.

    "It was a living hell. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. I don't know how many days I would look at my son and I didn't know if he was going to take another breath.”

    The family's now suing that business. Pedersen says back in April she went to the store to buy almond milk. She says she was then told about the benefits of raw milk.

    "We were approached and told that the goat's milk would be a better alternative. It's healthier than breast milk and it would be wonderful for him. We agreed to try it," says Pedersen.
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    E. coli, Raw Food  |  Comments
  • There's a lot of poop in produce

    Posted: July 31st, 2008 - 2:05pm by Doug Powell

    I know there’s lots of serious stuff going on in Washington, where a bunch of food safety suits are playing advocates for whatever lobby they represent – and they all represent a lobby – and a lot of politicians are spinning stuff way beyond what any data suggests, but has anyone noticed, there’s a lot of poop on produce?

    Last night, NewStar Fresh Foods  of Salinas, Calif., issued a voluntary recall for fresh cilantro because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.

    Back on July 18, Salmonella Oranienburg was found in both North Carolina and Texas on jalapenos and avacados.

    And on July 9, 2008, Lucky Green Trading, Inc. of Garden Grove, CA, recalled its Thai Basil , because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella. Not the Saintpaul, but still Salmonella.

    While the suits are playing armchair quarterback and asking for money, they seem to be completely ignoring the microbiological positives that keep showing up in their product.

    At what point will the politicians, crusading under the rubric of food safety, begin to ask, what’s with this don’t test, don’t tell policy?

    Cause now that FDA and others are looking, there sure seems to be a lot of poop on produce.

    Various suits: Clean up your own backyard before shitting in someone else’s.

    And as I’ve written before, when it comes to the safety of the food supply, I generally ignore the chatter from Washington, and I’m increasingly ignoring the chatter from the various usual suspects and hangers on, like academics and others looking to promote their own agenda (many in the food safety world are heading to Columbus, Ohio, for the IAFP meeting and I just really don’t want to be there – and won’t). Will any of this grandstanding actually make food safer? Will fewer people get sick?



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    Food Safety Policy, Salmonella  |  Comments
  • Salmonella Saintpaul in Mexican pepper: 'The rose goes at the front, big guy'

    Posted: July 31st, 2008 - 10:47am by Doug Powell

    I watch movies in the background while I work on the couch.

    Great movies can be watched hundreds of times – American Beauty, Starman, High Fidelity, Almost Famous, Wonderboys, The World According to Garp, The Departed – as a comforting narcotic, but only as background.

    Bull Durham was on the other day as part of a Kevin Costner marathon, cause I guess they’ve let him make movies again after Waterworld

    OK, not fair, Costner had a good turn as the washed up jock in Mike Binder’s underrated 2005 film, The Upside of Anger.

    The Bull Durham sports clichés apparently carried over to an interview I did with the L.A. Times yesterday about Salmonella Saintpaul and the performance of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

    "There's been a bunch of armchair quarterbacks out there who should really think first and walk a mile in the FDA's shoes," said Powell, the food safety expert, in an interview. "FDA has done a good job keeping its eye on the ball and managed to track it down in the face of a lot of barriers."

    Maybe I should have added that everyone’s been giving it 110 per cent. And that there is no “I” in team.

    At least I didn’t say, as Costner does to pitcher Tim Robbins, who has taken to wearing lingerie to help focus his erratic pitching,

    “The rose goes at the front, big guy.”

    Oh, and below is almost an exact recreation of the first time I met Amy.



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    Salmonella  |  Comments
  • Beijing: Serving up water buffalo penis, yak's testicles, and deer penis juice at the Guo-li-Zhuang restaurant

    Posted: July 31st, 2008 - 12:29am by Michelle Mazur

    China has been known to have a wide array of food items available at markets and restaurants.  Beijing's Guo-li-Zhuang restaurant offers something even more exotic than fugu (puffer fish)  or fried whale. Here the menu consists almost entirely of penis and testicle dishes  — made from the private parts of deer, snakes, yaks, horses, seals and ducks, among others.

    “Chinese eat anything with four legs, except tables. And everything that flies, except airplanes,” says business student Zhaoran, quoting a well-known Chinese saying. This may be true, but even in China a penis restaurant is unusual.

    Guolizhuang's owner, who set it up in November 2005, is proud to combine his own surname (Guo), his wife's (Li) and his son's nickname (Zhuang) into its title.  A booking comes with a trained waitress and a nutritionist in attendance, to explain the menu and to boast its medicinal virtues.

    At the first thought of eating animal penises, most cringe.  But the Chinese consider it a health treatment for the libido, and repeatedly eating the penis and testicles of an animal is said to help raise the libido of men and cure kidney and erection problems.  For their medicinal effect to work, the dishes have to be consumed regularly.

    There is also a wine available that is fast-acting and is said to work better than Viagra (without the side effects).  The wine contains extracts of heart, penis, and blood from a deer; it is said to taste like a bitter lemon.  Ladies are even invited to try some of the dishes.  Penis is said to be good for the skin, but women do not eat testicles in order to prevent masculine features from developing.

    The meals served do not come cheap: A yak penis costs €179, while a hotpot with 10 different penis-and-testicle selections served on an attractive, four-sided plate tower with little statues of animals will set you back €89. For particularly discerning palates, the menu also offers deer and sheep fetuses (€36 and €9, respectively).

    If you’ve made travel plans to enjoy the Olympics in Beijing, I suggest this restaurant as an adventurous dining experience.

    BBC Reporter Stefan Gates speaks with one of the chefs about their menu items.


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    Wacky and Weird  |  Comments
  • Name and Shame of restaurants: works in Sydney, sucks in Melbourne

    Posted: July 30th, 2008 - 5:28pm by Doug Powell

    Amy and I spent a week in Melbourne in July. We ate out a lot. And it was simply dining on faith.

    As Jason Dowling reports in Melbourne’s daily paper, The Age,

    Dozens of city food businesses, including restaurants and cafes, have been prosecuted for breaching food hygiene laws in the past five years — but Melbourne City Council will not reveal who they are. …

    The council's inability to name restaurants with poor hygiene records comes as a "name and shame" food hygiene website in New South Wales had attracted 25,000 visitors in its first month.

    The NSW Government has boasted the new website improved consumer information and "provides a powerful incentive for the food industry to boost its performance".

    Melbourne City Councillor David Wilson was cited as saying the council did not support wider disclosure of poor hygiene discoveries at restaurants, adding,

    "We believe that it is not appropriate for details of prosecutions to be released as restaurants may have changed management since the prosecution or they may not have breached food safety regulations since the initial prosecution and publication of a past prosecution could severely impact the viability of the current business.”

    Councillor Wilson, I bet you won’t have the vote of my friend, Melbourne Milton (left, exactly as shown) next election. Milton wants to see the results of restaurant inspections and is so astute he said he knew the results didn't really meant anything, didn’t make the food any safer and were just a snapshot in time, but the public disclosure made people more aware of food safety issues and people talked about it.

    Even Durham Region in Ontario, Canada, is going to start with the red, yellow, green system of restaurant inspection disclosure.

    Melbourne, figure it out. People who spend money in your restaurants should have access to inspection data if they want. Or they should take their money elsewhere.


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    Food Safety Policy, Restaurant Inspection  |  Comments
  • Salmonella Saintpaul found in irrigation water and serrano pepper at a Mexican farm

    Posted: July 30th, 2008 - 3:09pm by Doug Powell

    Follow the poop. And it usually leads to water. Poop in the water, which then gets on produce.

    Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's food safety chief, has just told a congressional hearing in Washington that the Salmonella Saintpaul strain that has sickened 1,307 people in 43 States and Canada has been found in irrigation water and a serrano pepper at a Mexican farm.

    Acheson said the farm is in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Previously, the FDA had traced a contaminated jalapeno pepper to a farm in another part of Mexico.

    Associated Press reports that if it turns out the tainted irrigation water was also used on tomatoes, it could provide some of the evidence that federal authorities are looking for to back their original focus on the fruit.
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    Salmonella  |  Comments
  • New International Food Safety Network Infosheet -- Food safety at festivals and fairs

    Posted: July 30th, 2008 - 1:52pm by Ben Chapman

    It's fair and festival season.  For the past 25 years, the last weekend of July has marked the Hillside Festival, a weekend-long outdoors concert at Guelph Lake.  I've never been.  I've had lots of friends attend and have often felt like I've missed out on hearing some great bands.  Part of the reason is that I'm not a huge camping fan; it always seems to rain when I camp.  And then I whine to whomever I'm camping with.

    Prior to an ultimate frisbee game on Monday night, I was warming up with a friend who attended this year's installment of Hillside.  As we jogged she told me all about the weekend: The bands were great, but the best part of the weekend was the food.  She described a set-up where many local restaurants have temporary booths and were serving up selections of their normal menus to the hungry concert-goers. 

    This conversation made me think about last year's Salmonella outbreak linked to the Taste of Chicago.  Temporary kitchens can be problematic for the staff who work in them when it comes to controlling food safety risks.  Equipment may not be readily available, line-ups add to the time pressure, spaces can be cramped and handwashing sinks might be hard to access (or even find).

    Coupling my conversation with a link that Doug came across about fair food safety in Wisconsin led to today's infosheet, which can be downloaded here.

    After the infosheet was created, Doug sent on another link about a Shigella outbreak in Oregon -- which has been linked to visiting the Oregon County fair.  Depending on the information that follows in the upcoming days, maybe next week's infosheet with focus on that outbreak.

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    Food Safety Policy  |  Comments
  • This ain't no CSI: tracking down foodborne illness

    Posted: July 30th, 2008 - 3:59am by Doug Powell

    While others bitch, whine and moan -- and armchair quarterback -- about the investigation into the outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul, Elizabeth Weise of USA Today decided to spend a couple of days in the shoes of an epidemiologist. Or two.

    There are the pit bulls, chained and unchained. The scary-looking guy with bloodshot eyes. The 37 houses in a row with people who don't want to talk. The trailers in the middle of the desert with only a TV watching over a couple of kids.

    And that’s just the lede. Seriously, this is a great story.

    Elizabeth Russo, 32, and Kanyin Liane Ong, 28, arrived in Albuquerque two weeks ago, one of three CDC teams sent to New Mexico to interview people who have become sick in the past few weeks. Their mission is to gather data to answer a troubling question: Why did the first surveys done of salmonella patients in New Mexico point so strongly to tomatoes when later cases seemed to implicate jalapeños?

    Russo, a doctor, is one of 70 young scientists admitted each year to the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a pre-eminent training ground for public health staff.

    "This is applied public health," says Ian Williams, chief of CDC's Outbreak Net Team, which tracks illnesses nationally.

    "The way you learn is you go out in the field, and you do it in the trenches. …You can sit in your office and speculate all you want, but it takes people out in the field to really get to the bottom of it."


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    Food Safety Policy, Salmonella  |  Comments
  • Want a rare burger in Dubai? Sign for it

    Posted: July 30th, 2008 - 2:44am by Doug Powell

    Neil Rumbaoa, director of communications at the Shangri-La Hotel in Dubai, told The National that hamburgers served anything less than well-done come with a legal waiver.

    “We just want to make sure that we serve the best quality food and the safest. And so if it’s rare, obviously there are factors that will contribute to how safe the food is.”

    Levent Tekun, the director of marketing at Shangri-La Hotel in Abu Dhabi, said it is a worldwide policy for the hotel chain.

    “As a company, globally, when a burger is ordered and a guest is asking for it to be medium or rare or something along those lines, our verbal phrase on that would be that the hotel prefers for the burgers to be well-done. Then it’s down to the guest to choose whether he wants it well-done or rare or whatever.”

    In both Abu Dhabi and Dubai, customers who ask to take prepared food away from the hotel premises or use hotel facilities to store food from outside must sign a disclaimer. That practice is used in other hotel restaurants in the UAE, such as the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

    It’s all part of the Shangri-La Hotel’s HACCP plan and has been in place for several years. But I wonder, how are rare and medium defined? Are they using meat thermometers and the right ones?




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  • Topeka, KS: Poop in Lake Shawnee

    Posted: July 29th, 2008 - 11:53pm by Michelle Mazur

    Lake Shawnee in Topeka, Kansas recently had a code brown: poop in the lake.  Lakes with swimming areas should have a safe policy in place, but two year lifeguard Gray Botswell was told to go into the water and retrieve the fecal matter with his bare hands.  When he refused, he was asked to go home and not to return. Girlfriend Kristen Whithorn who has been a lifeguard at the lake for four years also walked off the job after she was told that she couldn’t speak to media about her boyfriend’s incident.

    It sounds like there was no proper policy in place, so the guys in charge decided that the lifeguards would just have to take care of the problem.  However, removing fecal matter with bare hands isn’t ideal. It’s much better to try to protect the hands somehow or to fish out the poop with a scoop.

    The director of parks and recs for Shawnee County, John Knight, says that a new policy is in place for lifeguards at Lake Shawnee if poop is found in the lake again.  The lake water has been tested for E. coli but results have not been released.

    Public beaches on the coast are often tested     for fecal coliforms and E. coli.  Both are indicator organisms of the presence of harmful bacteria in the water.  If the levels of bacteria are too high, the swimming area may be closed for a period of time.  But the same system does not exist for many lakes with swimming areas.

    When swimming in lakes, oceans or rivers, children should not drink the water they are swimming in.  There is the possibility of human fecal matter and also wildlife fecal matter in the water.

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    E. coli, Food Safety Culture  |  Comments
  • Be wild - and safe

    Posted: July 29th, 2008 - 4:50pm by Mayra Rivarola

    I am planning on going to Yellowstone Park next weekend. I read this story and got a little worried.

    About 30 people came down with symptoms consistent with the norovirus infection at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge and High Sierra camps in the area, said Shane Sims, a specialist in the safety office at Yosemite National Park…

    The hiker camps are particularly vulnerable to the spread of norovirus illness, because people enjoying the outdoors aren't always careful about hygiene, Sims said.

    So I decided to put together a few tips on how to keep your hygienic standards from home in the wild - especially if you have children or grandparents around.

    1 - Pack one of those hand sanitizer bottles and use it as often as you can – before and after handling food, after bathroom breaks – you know it, whenever you would normally wash your hands with soap.

    2 – While you’re at it, take a pack of wipes or moist towels (can probably be found at the baby section) and use it to clean your body (focus on face, underarms, groin, buttocks, and feet). You will not only kill bacteria that could make you sick, you will smell good and feel much better too.

    3 – Take a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol and some cotton balls. Soak a cotton ball in alcohol and use it to rub your feet. This eliminates dangerous bacteria that could be forming around blisters or wounds. Change to clean socks.

    4 – Quick bathroom tips: when going number one go directly into running water if possible or far away from the camp if not. When going number two go far away from the camp, and bury your poop like cats do. (Remember to use your hand sanitizer afterwards)

    5 – Do not handle food if you have open sores on your hands, if you have diarrhea, or if you’re feeling sick in general. This will prevent a spread of infection.

    6 – If you want to be sure about the water you’re drinking, carry with you a water filter or purification tablets like Iodine. Regular unscented liquid chlorine bleach also works. Follow the instructions on the label.  Most water sources are contaminated in North America and may contain guardia or cryptosporidium therefore are not safe to drink.

    7 – Drink lots of fluids, rest plenty, and keep warm.

    Follow these tips and reduce your chances of getting norovirus like the hikers above, or any other sickness that could ruin a fun trip. Enjoy the wild!
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    Food Safety Policy, Norovirus  |  Comments
  • Setting Boundaries: Pets and your newborn baby

    Posted: July 29th, 2008 - 3:41pm by Amy Hubbell

    My ex mother-in-law once told me that if I had a baby I would have to get rid of my cats. I replied, “No cats, no baby.” My step-brother's cats mysteriously disappeared once his firstborn was old enough to crawl. Doug and I have two cats and two dogs and no intention of giving them up or sending them outdoors once the baby arrives. Sure, there’s dog hair all over the floors and it’s going to be a hassle learning to manage new and old responsibilities – and much more difficult to keep pet hair out of the baby’s mouth once she’s mobile. But we committed to the pets long ago and have been working on teaching them their order in the home.

    The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan, recommends that the dogs not even be allowed near the baby’s belongings at first to teach them that Baby is Alpha. Let them sniff at a distance until they know their place. When the dogs go for a walk, it should be behind the stroller, and they shouldn’t get unsupervised visitation, if they are allowed at all, in the baby’s room. It’s all about setting boundaries.


    The Worms and Germs Blog by Doug’s ex-hockey buddy Scott Weese (he’s still a buddy but no hockey for Doug in Manhattan) recommends in “Old pet, new baby...new problems?” that we visit our veterinarian and the humane society to get advice on introducing the dogs and cats to the baby. Scott provides relevant downloadable pamphlets from the Calgary Humane Society in his blog post.
    We want all four pets and the three of us to survive the transition without nips, scratches, or territory marking. We get enough of that from our friends and colleagues.

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    Food Safety Culture  |  Comments
  • Produce leadership: memories of convenience?

    Posted: July 29th, 2008 - 3:11pm by Doug Powell

    The produce industry in the U.S. deserves better leadership. Or at least better writers.

    At least that’s my take-home message after reading the screed by Bryan Silbermann, president of the Produce Marketing Association, Newark, Del., and Tom Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, Washington, D.C., who are preaching the it’s-time-to-change message at least 10 years too late.

    The title itself -- We can't go back, so let's charge straight ahead -- suggests a memory of convenience or a preference of forgetfulness.

    “Our industry's key focus now should be to exert as much control as possible over our destiny moving forward. We are, after all, in the best position to lead the task at hand.”

    Amy, my French literature wife says,

    “When a trauma occurs such as the one that just took place in the produce industry with the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak, people generally take one of two paths, according to psychoanalytic theory. They either dwell in the past, in the time before the rupture occurred, and pretend that the past was perfect, or they focus solely on the future. In either case, they ignore the painful present and the immediate working out of the trauma at hand.”

    I’m not so literate. More literal. Literally, shouldn’t the produce industry have taken control of their destiny after any of the 20-some outbreaks in leafy greens or the 12 outbreaks in tomatoes since 1990? What about after all the other outbreaks in fresh produce?

    Casey Jacob, Benjamin Chapman and I have a chapter in a book coming out later this year. It goes something like this:

    From the October, 1996, E. coli O157:H7 in Odwalla fresh juice outbreak to the Sept. 2006 E. coli O157 in spinach outbreak,

    “almost 500 outbreaks of foodborne illness involving fresh produce were documented, publicized and led to some changes within the industry. … (But) at what point did sufficient evidence exist to compel the fresh produce industry to embrace the kind of change the sector has heralded since 2007? And at what point will future evidence be deemed sufficient to initiate change within an industry? …

    “A decade of evidence existed highlighting problems with fresh produce, warning letters were written, yet little was seemingly accomplished. The real challenge for food safety professionals, is to garner support for safe food practices in the absence of an outbreak, to create a culture that values microbiologically safe food, from farm-to-fork, at all times, and not just in the glare of the media spotlight.”

    The produce leaders also write in their letter that, now, after all these fresh fruit and vegetable outbreaks,

    “Working together with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state departments of agriculture and foreign governments, there must be extensive industry training and education, to help every employee at every company understand the role they play in creating a food safety culture.”

    Wow, sounds like something I’d write. Except I’d throw in an evaluation component to see if the training and education actually work. But I see no evidence the industry wants to undertake such work.

    I take that back. Lots of individual growers, and I’ve had the privilege of working with several, want to do the basic work and whatever they can to ensure a safe harvest. They want to know if their people know how to wash the shit off of their hands, and how to keep the shit out of fields of fresh produce.

    The associations, the industry leaders, have apparently given up, and now “support fair but mandatory produce food safety rules.” They want government to do their job.
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  • Salmonella Saintpaul found in Colorado human and her jalapeno

    Posted: July 28th, 2008 - 8:47pm by Doug Powell

    The outbreak of Salmonella Saintpaul, which has sickened 1,304 in 43 states and Canada, has revealed any number of instant experts, armchair quarterbacks and food safety posers advancing their own agendas.

    Tonight, the Laboratory Services Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has confirmed that a jalapeno pepper provided by an ill individual from Montezuma County has tested positive with the same DNA pattern of Salmonella Saintpaul-the strain that has caused a large, multistate outbreak of salmonella.

    The pepper was purchased at a local Wal-Mart, likely on June 24, and the individual became ill on July 4. This is the first pepper linked directly to an ill person in this outbreak.

    The state health department is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to determine the origin of the pepper.
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    Salmonella  |  Comments
  • Jamie Oliver: Slaughtering chickens to raise awareness about slaughtering chickens

    Posted: July 28th, 2008 - 6:31pm by Michelle Mazur

    I’ve never been much of a fan of cooking shows.  The chefs talk, they cook, they even sometimes teach poor food safety.  Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has taken the typical format of a cooking show and added an extra twist; audience members witness the killing of the chicken used in the meal.  Animal rights groups and poultry farmers are outraged over his new television show “Jamie’s Fowl Dinners.”

    The show serves up a giant dose of shock and awe as chicks are gassed to death and an adult chicken is killed for the meal.  Yet throughout the show Oliver insists that he is trying to raise awareness about how chickens are treated in the poultry industry.

    "I don't think it's sensational to show people the reality of how chickens live and die at the moment. It may be upsetting for some people but that's how things are. And if seeing some of the practices helps to change the shopping habits of just 5 per cent of people watching, then it will be worth it.”

    Channel 4 factual entertainment boss Andrew Mackenzie said: "Jamie's simple message, in quite an overt way, will be: 'If you know what happens to a chicken before arriving on your plate, would you change the way you think about chicken? Would you still eat it?'"

    Oliver had criticized Sainbury’s supermarket over its involvement on his show and has since apologized for it.  It appears that his main goal to is encourage people to purchase free-range and organic chicken raised in less intensive facilities.  However I found that most of the program depicting the slaughter of chickens seems to push people towards vegetarianism rather than purchasing their chickens from another source.  You be the judge.

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    Animal Welfare, Celebrity  |  Comments
  • A food safety audit does not ensure safe food

    Posted: July 28th, 2008 - 2:38pm by Doug Powell

    I’m not a fan of third-party food safety audits. Sure, there’s lots of good people out there, especially the ones who can coach and assist, but straight audits of food producing facilities – beginning on the farm and through to the fork – can be fraught with inadequacies.

    And too often, it’s about the paycheck, not the food safety (and that comes from years of working with farmers and others and watching various auditors show up and not knowing too much).

    Crain's Detroit Business     has a story about the expanding empire of NSF International's testing and certification services, which expects sales to increase 29 percent, to $155 million this year.

    NSF CEO Kevan Lawlor says that as companies develop more global supply chains, there's an increased risk of health and safety issues.

    Which could also be an argument for developing an internal capacity to assess suppliers and internal operations.

    Chapman has written that,

    “Farmers and processors need to demonstrate to consumers they are aware of microbial risks and are taking serious steps to reduce that risk, day-in, day-out, even in the absence of an outbreak. Regulatory or even third party-audits are largely meaningless. Audits are snapshots, and auditors look for easily viewed visual mistakes and do little to look at what a farmer or staff member does. Just like restaurant inspections audits are not a good indicator of likelihood of an outbreak. Farmers need food safety resources 24/7 to help guide their production practices, and they need those best practices continually reinforced; an annual audit is hopelessly insufficient, especially since outbreaks keep happening from processors that are audited. Inspection scores for farms, like those for restaurants are subject to inspector inconsistencies and are not predictive of the likelihood of an outbreak (Cruz et al., 2001; Jones et al., 2004).”

    Or as I’ve written and stressed for years,

    “certified/verified/HACCPified/inspected/audited don't means that much unless there is a culture of food safety present farm-to-fork, 24/7.”

    How many NSF-audited farms or facilities have subsequently been involved in outbreaks of foodborne illness? How many farms or facilities audited by other third-party operators have been involved in outbreaks of foodborne illness?
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  • See and Tell restaurant inspection: Waiter, I see a fly and in soup and I'm telling (and texting)

    Posted: July 28th, 2008 - 12:39pm by Doug Powell

    Croydon Today in the U.K. reports,

    The See and Tell service, launched this month, enables people to text the Croydon Council's food safety team with concerns about food safety or labelling issues - in restaurants, shops or takeaways.

    There are 2,600 food businesses in Croydon, from takeaways to supermarkets.

    Brian Griffiths, manager of the council's food safety team, said,

    “There are various levels of action we can take, but in the worst case scenario we can go in and close a place down on the spot. We rely heavily on customers tipping us off and this new text service will make it all the easier. If you find a hair in your soup you can literally text us from the restaurant table and we'll come and investigating.

    “Sometimes I've opened bins at the back of restaurants and seen the meat moving because there were so many maggots on it. And at the moment we're dealing with a mice infestation at a high street store which sells food. It is really important we get to hear from residents about these sorts of things so we can go in and take the appropriate action.”

    The move to enlist citizen diners seems like another expansion of social networking – the power’s with the people.

    The city of Chicago has started encouraging Chicagoans who believe that a restaurant or any other licensed food establishment is operating in an unsafe manner to call 311 and report it.

    Back in Feb. 2005, customers with cameras in South Korea were reported photographing any violation of food safety standards and reporting it to authorities.

    The sikparazzi -- a combination of the word sik, meaning food, and paparazzi -- are, however, good news for the authorities.

    The Korean Food and Drug Administration said 10,567 food safety violations were reported in the first nine months of 2004, and 74.2 million won ($118,624) paid in rewards, reported the Joong Ang Daily.

    So lucrative is it to be a sikparazzi in South Korea that at least one private institute runs courses to train people for the job.

    There have also been allegations that the sikparazzi sometimes contaminate the food themselves and then demand compensation, threatening to report it.

    Mr Griffiths in Croydon also advised people to go to their GP if they think they have got food poisoning and give a poo sample, stating,

    “The proof is in the poop and if people give a sample it can be used as evidence, which helps us wrap things up much easier if we get an allegation of food poisoning.”

    Follow the poop. Everything comes down to poo.

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    Food Safety Policy, Restaurant Inspection  |  Comments
  • Buffalo meat can carry dangerous E. coli, just like grass-fed beef

    Posted: July 27th, 2008 - 6:48pm by Doug Powell

    Andrew Stormer (right, pretty much as shown) tells me his parents went to the farmers’ market yesterday and bought some buffalo meat.

    Stormer, a student who works with me but is spending the summer as an intern in the 38C (100F) heat of Salina, Kansas, says,

    “The person selling the meat said that their buffalos were not fed grain and therefore, E. coli was not a concern in buffalo meat.  The person also said that because E. coli did not appear in the meat that it didn't matter if people undercooked it.”

    A quick look on the Internet found that many purveyors of buffalo meat shared similar views; that somehow is doesn’t need to be sufficiently cooked to control dangerous bugs.

    This sounds like a variation on a similar fantasy that shiga-toxin or verotoxin-producing E. coli like E. coli O157:H7 don’t occur in grass fed cattle. They do. And lots of other places.

    Hazarika and colleagues at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, Public Health &, Hygiene, CVSc, AAU, in India reported in the Journal of Food Safety in 2005 that,

    “The emergence of Verotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC) as zoonotic foodborne pathogens in recent years has become a public health concern because of its life threatening human diseases. In the present investigation, out of 87 strains of E. coli, 22 (25%) belonging to 13 different serotypes isolated from raw buffalo meat and its products were found to be verotoxic as tested by Vero cell cytotoxic assay. Serotype 026 followed by O153 and 0157 were the predominant VTEC. …  VTEC in cooked buffalo meat products, namely shami kabab and kabab, appears to be a matter of concern and a potential threat to public health.”

    That means handle ground buffalo like ground beef, and cook to 160F.



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  • Sus vide cooking is safe if you follow a plan

    Posted: July 27th, 2008 - 5:41am by Doug Powell

    The New York Times reported last week that in 2006,

    “the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene inspected restaurants using the sous vide method, in which food is vacuum-sealed in plastic for slow cooking at low temperatures. Because of concerns about bacteria growth in the sealed pouches, restaurants were told to stop using vacuum-sealing machines until they filed plans detailing their processes. … Afterward, restaurants like Blue Hill, Per Se and WD-50 filed sous vide plans that were approved by the city as officials developed formal regulations.

    “In March the Board of Health approved those regulations. They require restaurants that cook sous vide to have an approved Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plan. …

    “Some chefs say the health department is overzealous in its regulation of sous vide, which is safe when properly practiced. But others agreed with officials who said it was important that correct procedures were clearly followed, because anaerobic bacteria can thrive in the airless environment of a vacuum bag if techniques are not done properly.

    “Sous vide, which means ‘under vacuum’ in French, refers to a technique where foods are vacuum-sealed to carefully calibrated degrees of pressure so they can be suffused with flavors in a marinade or submerged in temperature-controlled water baths. …

    “Bruno Goussault, the chief scientist at Cuisine Solutions, an industrial sous vide company, was one of the developers of sous vide and has trained many famous chefs in the technique. He said that he understood the need for health department oversight and that he consulted with the city to help draft the regulations. …

    “It’s very easy to work with the top chefs, but when you are making regulations you need to take care of all the chefs, not just the top chefs,” Mr. Goussault said. “Perhaps sometimes it’s excessive, too much regulation for the top chefs, but I think it’s necessary.”
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  • Super foods, super expensive

    Posted: July 25th, 2008 - 10:49pm by Mayra Rivarola

    I read this story yesterday

    …many super foods like blueberries are popular because they allow you to enjoy health benefits without skimping on taste. They're not alone: Super food lists widely vary, but here's a list of 10 that show up on many nutritionists' lists and on various Web sites.

    The list included: acai, salmon, swiss chard, cherries, green tea, walnuts, blueberries, kefir, brown rice, ground flax seed. Varied ingredients with a common goal – to make you super healthy.

    I quickly pulled my shopping list and added a few of those.

    I spotted the blueberries – (yes!) - $6 for 2 lb. No way. I’ll stay with strawberries, they are probably almost as healthy anyways.

    Walnuts were almost $10 a pack. I’m a college student, I can’t afford a $10 pack of nuts.

    I chose the salmon fillets at the fish section, then saw the tilapia filets. It was $8 for salmon vs $3 for tilapia. Guess who won.

    I ended up with only two items of my super food list: green tea and brown rice (which was actually a bit more expensive than regular, but bearable).

    I guess it was super food, not super cheap. Sorry to find out I can’t afford being super healthy.
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