Amy and I don’t really disagree about much. But we can each get moody and self-absorbed and go after each other. Especially at the end of 20-hour drives. That’s about how long it takes to go from Manhattan (Kansas) to Guelph (Ontario) and at the end of one epic journey back from Guelph two years ago, tired and driving through Kansas City with a trailer full of my crap that I just had to have in Kansas, Amy decided to entertain herself by asking me, who are you to publish an opinion, or something like that.

I’ve always thought that academic-types had a responsibility to share their knowledge in a compelling manner with the public, rather than just complain about people’s opinions of things scientific and otherwise. But really, who the hell am I? Why should anyone listen? Or care?

I questioned myself for a couple of months and didn’t do much public stuf. Then I got over it. But I still question myself and try to do my homework.

I’m not so sure about Dr. Dave in the video below.

This is from some mommy television show in Canada that Ben sent me. It’s called, The Mom Show. In the clip below, Dr. Dave, appears to have no clue about botulism in babies less than a year old.

Clostridium botulinum can cause sickness in very young children, and infants under the age of 1 years old are most at risk. Honey may contain Clostridium botulinum spores that can grow in the digestive tract of children less than one-year-old because their digestive system is less acidic. The bacteria produces toxin in the body and can cause severe illness. Even pasteurized honey can contain botulism spores and should be not be given to children under the age of 12 months.

The advice is clear: do not give any honey to children less than one-year-old.

But maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

In possibly the worst – or most incongruent – press release ever written, the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education, the group with the excessively explanatory name, says they have "issued some simple guidelines to reduce the risk of microbial foodborne illnesses. This is of special interest to Canadians in light of recent coverage of listeriosis.”

So for all the money this group gets from government and industry, they can’t be bothered to say, hey, if you’re pregnant or immunocomprimised, you shouldn’t eat this stuff.

Instead,  just more messages funded by taxpayers telling them to feel good about the food they buy.

This is the same group that wanted to use a Mrs. Doubtfire-inspired food safety spokesthingy to reach out to university students, until the trans-generders in Canada got word and forced the campaign to disappear.

I did a phone-in interview with Sun TV (Toronto) yesterday which focused on what we can learn from the outbreak and what consumers could do to protect themselves.  Irradiation seems to be coming up a lot in coverage and interviews that we are doing, likely fueled by the FDA's announcement to allow the irradiation of certain ready-to-eat leafy greens and Health Canada's Jeff Farber saying that the government is considering approving the irradiation of meats early next year.  Irradiation has been approved for certain specific single-ingredient meats (like ground beef) in the U.S. since 1997, with the USDA approving it's commercial use in 1999 though it's use in deli meats is not currently approved. Last night I said that irradiation is a tool that can be used to reduce risk and impact public health, but by no means is a magic bullet in pathogen control.

The best part of the interview wasn't the content (YouTube vid below) but was my huge head appearing over Janette Luu's shoulder as if I was going to eat her (right, exactly as shown).  Janette, probably sensing some impending doom appears to be leaning away from my picture as well. 

Below is the original pic where the headshot came from.  I think it is less creepy.

U.S. college football kicks off Saturday. Time to put on your favorite school’s colors and brush up on that fight song. Thousands of students and alumni will be heading out to the stadium, tailgating, and firing up those grills. Hamburgers, chicken, ribs, or beans, there will be plenty of food on hand.

Use a food thermometer to make sure you aren’t serving your friends and family undercooked meats. Make sure to cook ground beef to 160°F(1), while chicken needs to reach 165°F(2). That way when your team takes the field, you aren’t puking or stuck on the toilet. And using a thermometer will make you a better cook. People are impressed by this. Good food safety will allow you to fully enjoy the tailgating atmosphere, so you can cheer your school onto victory.

It’s all on video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmyMmjfFo5Y

References

1: Ryan, Suzanne M., Mark Seyfert, Melvin C. Hunt, Richard A. Mancini. Influence of Cooking Rate, Endpoint Temperature, Post-cook Hold Time, and Myoglobin Redox State on Internal Color Development of Cooked Ground Beef Patties. Journal of Food Science. Volume 71 Issue 3 Page C216-C221, April 2006
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2621.2006.tb15620.x?prevSearch=authorsfield%3A%28M.C.+Hunt%29

2: Focus On: Chicken. Food Safety and Inspection Service. United States Department of Agriculture. April 4, 2006. http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/chicken_food_safety_focus/index.asp
 

Maple Leaf president Michael McCain told the media today that,

“I once again wish to express my deepest personal sympathies to those Canadians who have been affected by this tragedy. While this is the most unfortunate of events possible, I absolutely do not believe that this is a failure of the Canadian food safety system or the regulators.

“Certainly knowing that there is a desire to assign blame, I want to reiterate that the buck stops right here.

“As I've said before, Maple Leaf Foods is 23,000 people who live in a culture of food safety. We have an unwavering commitment to keep our food safe, and we have excellent systems and processes in place. But this week it's our best efforts that failed, not the regulators or the Canadian food safety system.”

Good for McCain. He runs a company with world-class aspirations, so he’s not weaseling away from the spotlight.

And he unshackled the company of any political or bureaucratic commentary – which has been fairly hopeless all along.

But if McCain is going to step up, he’s also going to get some questions,

McCain says, “a comprehensive study done at the University of Regina gave Canada one of five superior ratings out of 17 top-tier OECD countries in a world review of food safety. This highlights that Listeria is a particularly challenging bacteria for the entire food industry to manage, including the United States and Europe, simply because it is pervasive."

That study was fairly challenged and has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Don’t cite shit.

And you didn’t address any of the tough issues.

Will you release the results of the 3,000 listeria swabs your company takes every year to provide some data, some meaning, to your claims that public health is your top priority?

 Will you back some kind of point-of-sale initiative – warning labels or otherwise – to explicitly warn pregnant women and immunocomprimized Canadians that, as you say, listeria is so widespread in the environment, that vulnerable people should not eat your products.

Michael McCain, you’ve taken some great first steps and gone way beyond what government has done. The sooner you lose them the better; they’re deadweight and not very good hockey players. They don’t lose their jobs, and they don’t lose sleep about falling stock prices. 

Me, Ben, Amy and the rest of our team are here to help you actually implement that culture of food safety you and your folks are so fond of citing. We’ve noticed you liked the pictures of recalled products idea. We’re not just armchair quarterbacks, and we’re just an e-mail away.
 

My friend Marty will think this is hilarious, but I’m a bit of a fancier of words.

Really.

Except I have a habit of using an apt sounding word that means something totally different from what I was trying to convey. Marty has been making fun of that quirk for 25 years, going back to our university newspaper days. Fortunately, the computer dictionary has helped.

So has Amy. She’s really sharpened my word usage and helped me become a better writer. One of Amy’s greatest pleasures is identifying when people mix up it’s and its.

So when a wire story came out this morning with the lede,

“As Canada grapples with a deadly outbreak of listeriosis, a leading food safety expert says the federal government has not done enough to educate pregnant women and seniors about the potential dangers of eating deli meats.???”

I went a bit nuts.

I would never say that anyone needs to be educated. It’s arrogant. Sure, I’m perceived as arrogant about lots of things, but on this I’m clear: provide information, preferably in a compelling manner, and individuals will decide whether they want to be educated or not. I’m writing a paper about this. I’ve brought students to tears for using the educate people line.

???"Maybe we need warning labels (on the food), because the message isn't getting out there," said Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University.???"

The Health Canada response was typically bureaucratic.

"There are a number of food safety tips and fact sheets and a lot of consumer education on this," said Paul Duchesne of Health Canada.

Show me the data. Show anyone the evaluation you’ve done with your big budgets to ensure Canadians at risk are aware. Demonstrate the effectiveness of your fact sheets and consumer education which are best used as a sleep aid.

Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has publicly admitted, new strategies are required to reach people about food safety issues. As I said earlier this year,

"The CDC data show existing efforts to reduce fodborne illness have stalled. We need new messages using new media to really create a culture that values microbiologically safe food."

It’s not like this stuff is hard. We wrote a paper on it last year.

Powell, D.A., Surgeoner, B.V., Wilson, S.M. and Chapman, B.J. 2007. The media and the message: Risk analysis and compelling food safety information from farm-to-fork. Aust. J. Dairy Tech. 62(2), 55-59.

Abstract
The potential for stigmatization of food is enormous. Well-publicized outbreaks of foodborne illness through traditional and new media demonstrate the rapid and dependent interactions between science, policy and public perception. Current risk management research indicates that it is essential for risk managers from farm-to-fork to demonstrate they are reducing, mitigating or minimizing a particular foodborne risk. Those responsible must be able to effectively communicate their risk reduction efforts in multiple media and to provide evidence that these efforts are actually reducing levels of risk.

Guess the folks at CFIA didn't get that paper. A well-meaning staffer at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency sent me an e-mail the other day, stating,

“The Media Monitoring Team here at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has been asked by our Director to start monitoring reputable food safety related blogs.
 
“I was wondering if you would happen to have a prepared list of any of these sites, and, if so, if you would be willing to share these with us?”
 
Sure. Always ready to help the government when asked. I told him barfblog.com and marlerblog.com. The other posers just run headlines.

But maybe I’m just a crazy Kansas-type. Jennie Garth, who is reprising her role as Kelly Taylor on a new 90210, enlightened the world as to why the new "90210" is likely to resonate with young viewers.

"It's going to reflect teenagers as they are. It's not going to sugarcoat it. You know teenagers are teenagers no matter if they live in Beverly Hills or if they live in crazy Kansas somewhere. All the kids are the same. They're going through the same elemental issues and problems."
 

Michael McCain, president and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, when it comes to the communication and building trust aspects of what must be your listeria nightmare, stay away from government.

Shortly after the first death was announced last Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, various politicians and bureaucrats said the surveillance system was working. Robert Clarke, the assistant deputy minister of the Public Health Agency of Canada, said Friday that the government's actions in this case were quite rapid and an illustration of success.

I’ve been harping ever since that it’s impossible to tell from the various public statements who became sick when, and whether the system really worked or not. If you’re going to brag about how the system is working, you have to provide dates for onset of illness and deaths.

Today I got some company.

Toronto’s Globe and Mail wrote in an editorial that officials claiming surveillance success, “doth self-praise too much, too soon.

“Did the surveillance system work? No independent voice has said so yet, and it is hard to see why Mr. Clement's or Mr. Clarke's word should be taken at face value. The two-year-old Public Health Agency, which reports to Mr. Clement, has yet to distinguish itself for independence. And everyone - government health officials and the company involved, Maple Leaf Foods Inc. - considered it enough that the first warning of possible contamination went out to distributors, not the public. For four days, the loop was closed. Whether that was the right or the wrong approach, it does not do much for the public's confidence in Canada's food-safety system.”

Columnist Tom Brodbeck of the Winnipeg Sun wrote that,

“Federal Health Minister Tony Clement says the recent tainted meat outbreak that killed six people and caused at least 14 more serious illnesses is a shining example of how well Canada's food inspection system works.

Pardon? …

“If this is what Clement calls a success story, I'd hate to see what he considers a system failure. … I don't think six deaths and 14 serious illnesses is anything to be proud of.”

These comments about success are even more bizarre and appalling now that the confirmed and probable death toll has been raised to 15.

So this afternoon, Dr. David Butler-Jones, MD, Chief Public Health Officer (that’s a lot of capitals), who had previously lauded the success of the surveillance system,  wrote in a press release that,

“As Canada's Chief Public Health Officer, I want to update Canadians on the state of the ongoing listeriosis outbreak.”

He really seems to enjoy that title; and he then proceeded to provide less than no information.

“We are all understandably concerned whenever we hear that something as precious as the food we eat may pose a danger. Years of effort to ensure safe and secure food supplies have allowed us to be confident in what we eat. …

“While not everything is preventable, fortunately there are some simple steps that can be taken to reduce the risk of illness for ourselves and our families. There are the usual things we should always be doing, like washing hands, storing and cooking food properly, washing fruits and vegetables well, and avoiding unpasteurized milk and milk products. …

“Canadians should be confident that the Government of Canada, through the
Public Health Agency of Canada, Health Canada and the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency, is working closely with all provinces, territories, and with Maple Leaf Foods to respond to this outbreak and protect the public's health.

“We can never be completely immune to the risk of contaminations and outbreaks, even with the best food safety system in the world. That is why we operate surveillance and other systems to identify potential outbreaks and do the detective work that helps us to find the cause and stop further problems. And what we learn from each experience helps us to improve the system further.”

As Napoleon Dynamite sorta  said, “That’s like, the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

Why should Canadians have any confidence when the public servants at all these agencies with their six-figure salaries can’t provide basic information like who got sick when? How arrogant is it to tell someone they should be confident in an alphabet soup of agencies, in the absence of any data or statements that inspire confidence?

Ben sent me a sports headline regarding the Olympics, which also fits for food safety: Canada remains happily mediocre.

That’s me and Ben, above right, not exactly as pictured.

And here's me with a clean shirt talking to CBC News.

The Tulsa World reports that Chad Ingle married the love of his life June 21.

He died just nine weeks later, on Sunday, of what is suspected to be E. coli poisoning. He was 26.

His sister, Laura Claypool, said Ingle ate a meal Sunday Aug. 17 at the Country Cottage in Locust Grove, a popular family-owned buffet-style restaurant.

Ingle fell ill Wednesday night with severe stomach pain and diarrhea and went to Integris Mayes County Medical Center. On Thursday, he began to pass blood.

An ambulance took him to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa on Friday. He underwent a colonoscopy, and doctors concluded that he had acute colitis, Claypool said.

Ingle felt better Friday evening and urged his parents to return home. But his condition grew worse, and his mother-in-law called Ingle's parents Saturday morning to return to St. Francis.

"By the time Mom and Dad got there, they had called a code blue," Claypool said. Ingle was placed on kidney dialysis, but he died Sunday, she said.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health said it is investigating an outbreak of severe diarrheal illness among residents of several northeastern Oklahoma communities. At least 17 cases have been hospitalized and 40 or more potential cases are under investigation. One person has died.
 

The coverage of this outbreak isn't really going away as more details came out yesterday.

Earlier in the day, Maple Leaf spokesperson Linda Smith was cited as saying that inspectors failed to detect listeria in this case, but they are constantly swabbing for the bacterium. "Did we find it? Absolutely not. We did not find that listeria," she said. "Did we let people down? Yes. But we were doing the right things."

On CBC's National tonight (clip below), Smith was quoted as saying "We would occasionally find a listeria positive swab, at which case we sanitize that complete area and swab again."

So which is it?

In legal news, and the lead story on Canada AM this morning, is that class action lawsuits in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have been launched according to Tony Merchant, of the Merchant Law Group LLP, who says residents in each of the provinces have contacted his firm about representation.

As I wrote this post, I saw Michael McCain's Maple Leaf apology on TV three times.