Chester’s Chicken & Pizza in Blackburn was fined £27,000 after a March 2008 inspection found disgusting conditions in the takeaway’s kitchen. According to the Lanchester Telegraph,

On Wednesday Blackburn magistrates court was told the inspection last March found:
* Two dead cockroaches stuck to the door seal of the fridge, and more scuttling around the floor;
* Lettuce stored under raw meat, posing a “very high” risk of food poisoning;
* Staff did not have food hygiene training and had no facilities to wash their hands;
* Food was stored in unsuitable containers;
* There was no food safety management plan in place.

Executive member for regeneration and environment, Coun Alan Cottam, said of the establishment,

 “This takeaway was a serious illness waiting to happen and magistrates have reflected that in this very stiff penalty.”

A quick glance at Scores on Doors, a website in the UK to disclose inspection results to the public, indicates that Chester’s Chicken & Pizza received two poor inspections in Oct. 2006 and March 2008. The image, right, is a snapshot of the posting for Chester’s Chicken & Pizza, and indicates the establishment had poor hygiene, safety and structural compliance, with little confidence in management. Furthermore, the establishment received zero out of five possible “hygiene stars”, giving this establishment one of the poorest possible hygiene standards.
 

Here’s the most important point in a column written by long-time Toronto Globe and Mail medical reporter Andre Picard:

The trial of Ontario raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt has garnered media coverage far beyond its importance.

Oh, and the outcome is largely irrelevant.

It seems somewhat absurd to jail a man for selling a product that clients desperately want and which, on the surface at least, seems harmless. But, hey, it happens to pot dealers every day.

What is not harmless is Mr. Schmidt's attack on pasteurization and on food-safety regulations more generally.

Under the guise of civil liberties and freedom, he and his supporters have uttered all kinds of nonsense and portrayed themselves as martyrs for pure food. …

Farmer Schmidt and his acolytes can suckle the milk from the teat of a cow, a goat, a cat, or any other lactating mammal to their hearts' content.

Their rights and freedoms are in no way compromised.

What the law restricts is the commercial sale of raw milk.

Mr. Schmidt tried to circumvent this fact by selling "cow shares" and arguing that his clients were actually proprietors and free to consume raw milk from their own cows.

Whether that little manoeuvre exempts him from the law is up to the courts to decide. But it seems unlikely. After all, bar owners tried this technique to sidestep anti-smoking laws, selling "shares" in their establishment and arguing that patrons were smoking in a private club. Judges saw through the subterfuge. …

Another argument is that meat - which can also contain pathogens - is sold raw, so why not milk? The practical reason for this is obvious. It is easy and efficient to pasteurize milk; it is not practical to cook meat before selling it, but its refrigeration (designed to minimize the growth of bacteria) is mandatory and regulated.

KETV.com reports tonight that 14 cases of Salmonella have been linked together by DNA fingerprinting in Douglas County, Nebraska:

The first cases were reported earlier this week, in which women younger than 50 -- and all the way into their teens -- were getting infected, said Dr. Ann O'Keefe.
Health experts know all illnesses have been connected to the same strain, but they don't know where it originated.
The strain has been submitted to the Centers For Disease Control and has an identical serotype to the jalapeno and tomato outbreaks in the fall  (which was Saintpaul) but a different genetic fingerprint. 
Officials are reviewing detailed information from multiple victims in hopes of targeting the strain's source, said state epidemiologist Dr. Tom Safranek.
 

In the past, Salmonella Saintpaul has been linked to tomatoes/peppers, melons, paprika and sprouts.

I will never forget my very first restaurant inspection after I graduated from the Environmental Health program. I was this little nervous man geared up and ready to save the world from foodborne illness. Upon strolling into my first restaurant, it turned out that the operators were more nervous than I was. I kind of felt like my hero Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness ready to unleash fury on them. This should never be the case. Apparently, the establishment did not have a good relationship with the previous inspector.

There are two different types of inspectors, the black and white regulators who essentially enforce the law without explanation and the one who spends time discussing food related issues and guides operators. An inspection, whether announced or unannounced, is a snapshot in time and is not indicative of what actually goes on. It is far more important that inspectors discuss food safety issues in conjunction with health regulations. Inspectors throw words around such as cross contamination or danger zone, but does the operator even knows what those words actually mean? It is easy for an inspector to enter an establishment and tell the cook, listen you need to use a digital thermometer to verify that your burger is properly cooked. In some jurisdictions, an offence notice will accompany that statement. Sure the cook can probe the burger when the inspector is around, but do they know what temperature they should be aiming for? It is important to work with food operators and discuss food safety issues to compel them rather than scare them.

I’m writing this while flying to Boston and baby Sorenne just let out three sneezes and a fart. Cloth diapers make wonderful spit rags, and I usually have one in my back pocket or over my shoulder. Last week I discovered another use – to control my draining eyes and nose while sitting through a meeting.

Which raises the question: is it bad manners to blow your nose at the table, even if you’re not using your napkin?

Helena Echlin of Chow magazine responds:

According to Peter Post, director of the Emily Post Institute and an allergy sufferer, you should leave the dinner table to blow your nose if possible. … Blowing your nose in public is acceptable, if not very charming. But don’t do it at the table. When you blow your nose in other situations—on the subway, for instance—people can edge away. At the table they’re stuck next to you and your germs. Though they don’t have to see your snot, they may be able to hear it when you snuffle, and that can be almost as bad. …

According to Elizabeth Bernstein, a San Francisco writer, “If a guy blew his nose in his napkin on a date, it would be pretty much a deal-breaker.”

A recent survey by Mintel found that Americans choose to buy kosher foods because of perceptions of quality (62%), healthfulness (51%), and safety (34%) over religious reasons.

Similar trends have also been seen in the UK and Canada.

Krista Faron, a senior new product analyst at Mintel, was quoted by meatprocess.com as saying,

“Particularly in the recent past, Americans have been overwhelmed by food safety scares. People are very concerned and having some certification on the foods they buy can appease some of those fears.”

She also explained where many consumers find that comfort.

“The presence of the kosher mark itself suggests that there is [an inspection] process in place. It is all about consumer perception that there is some sort of formalized methodology...My sense is that consumers probably couldn’t tell us what kosher meant, but the kosher mark is reassuring,” she said.

While kosher processing meets certain religious standards, there is no scientific basis for the perception of heightened safety. Imagine, then, what the marketing of actual food safety measures within a company could do for business.

Since a Mintel report in December 2007, kosher has continued to be the number one individual claim for new American food products.

"Microbiologically safe" could blast it out of the water.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Farmer John’s Herbs are warning the public not to consume Farmer John’s Herbs brand Organic Basil Leaf because the product may be contaminated with Salmonella.

All lots of Farmer John’s Herbs brand Organic Basil Leaf, sold in 6 gram packages, bearing UPC 7 73353 50002 1 are affected by this recall.

This product was distributed in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.

There has been no reported illness associated with the consumption of this product.

This summer at the Kansas State Fair, I felt like I was getting a lot of strange looks. I tried to brush it off, telling myself that it was no crime to have never slopped a pig or stolen eggs from under a roosting a hen—I should still be welcome at the fair.

I was positive there were other non-farm girls there. Probably even some that grew up in the city; I, at least, shared a property line with a cow pasture. But people just kept staring.

I really got embarrassed when a representative from the Farm Bureau Federation started to laugh out loud and point at me.

When it finally donned on me that I was wearing my Don’t Eat Poop t-shirt that day, I turned to let him read the back: Wash Your Hands.

I explained that I worked for an organization that wants to turn the public’s attention to food safety.

He seemed to think that particular method was effective. “But do you make farmers look bad?” he asked while raising one eyebrow.

I told him we felt it was important that everyone does their part, from the farm to the fork.

He smiled, but I think he remained skeptical.

I raised my eyebrow today at a press release in which the director of congressional relations in the California Farm Bureau National Affairs and Research Division, Josh Rolph, was quoted as saying,

"Congress and the new administration will be sure to consider changes to the way the government oversees the safety of food production. We want to make sure that any changes don't prove to be burdensome to farmers, who are growing the safest food supply in the world."

I wish I could meet this guy and stare strangely at him. If anyone’s going to claim to grow the safest food in the world, they’re going to have to take some pains to prove it.

“The nation's farming community understands the need to improve food safety, Rolph said, but the farm-level impact to producers must be considered in any new food safety proposals.”

Salinas vegetable farmer Dirk Giannini referred to the surge in food safety action plans following the outbreak of E. coli from spinach in 2006, and explained that a frenzy of “non-scientific ideas” were putting farmers out.

"And don't get me wrong,” said Giannini, “The farmers do not want to jeopardize anyone's health or life—we have the safest food supply in the world. But the scientific-based decisions are the ones that we need to move forward."

Of course any actions to increase the safety of the food supply should be backed by scientific evidence, but public claims of safety should have the same foundation.

To the farmers who grow the food I appreciate every day: In your products and in your claims, Don’t Sell Poop.
 

Rachael Ray (right, sampling goods in Florida last weekend) offered up some suggestions for so-called healthier cooking in that annoying USA Weekend insert to many local newspapers, including this gem:

"Look at labels. ... If you can't read an ingredient, chances are you should not be putting it in your body."

Dr. Dean Cliver, who officially retired October 1, 2007 and is winding down from 46 years in academia, battling infectious agents in food and water, realized that he had come up to the solution to this very problem some 20 years ago and decided to once again share his thoughts with barfblog.com. Dr. Cliver’s proposed label is left, bottom.

The following was originally published in University of Wisconsin-Madison AG LIFE LINES, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 2, page 6, and republished in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol. 34, No. 4, Mar-Apr 1989, page 18.

A subtle and probably pernicious trend in the U.S. food supply seems to be occurring virtually unnoticed.  If one reads the information on a food package, as it seems few do, one finds that many food in the U.S. today are composed almost entirely of ingredients.  The use of ingredients in foods has become so widespread and flagrant that one can hardly guess what will appear next on the growing list of polysyllabic horrors printed on packages.  Through insouciance or ineptitude, we have let the situation get quite out of hand.

Labels seem to be intended rather to obfuscate than to inform.  Aside from water, which evidently abounds in these products (though who knows where it has been before it goes into the food?), hardly any of the names that appear on these lists are comprehensible to the average consumer or even pronounceable.  The acronyms are even worse.  It is not enough to know that “BHA” stands for “butylated hydroxyanisol.”  How are we to know where and by whom the hydroxyanisole we are about to ingest was butylated or whether the hydroxyanisole itself was natural or synthetic? 

Though most consumers apparently do not read labels at all, those who do seem to have become jaded.  My son asked me recently whether the “regular”-flavored generic toothpaste we had just purchased contained natural or artificial regular.  And what about the blind — should lists also appear in Braille?

There is little doubt that most of these ingredients are harmful, at least at some level, in foods.  Why, for example, would salt be listed as “sodium chloride” if there were nothing to hide?  Would any of us willingly be called “The Sodium Chloride of the Earth"?  Sugar now comes in enough forms to confound the ablest pancreas.  Fats are listed as though they were all polyunsaturated, without any indication of the degree of polity.  Plain, American English is nowhere to be found.

Not only are we consuming ingredients ourselves, but we are inflicting them on our unsuspecting children, mindless of potential harm to all future generations.  Small wonder that behavioral problems abound in the society whose children have been fed ingredients virtually from birth!  For example, many young people today are probably essentially addicted to calcium propionate in their bread.  What becomes of them if their supply is cut off?  Packages marked “no preservatives” should probably be viewed with extreme caution.

Time and the press have made it clear that the predominance of ingredients in U.S. foods is largely due to the greed of profit-hungry food manufacturers.  There is little doubt that this is true: if one travels to parts of the world where the profit motive has been outlawed, one finds that foods are virtually free of ingredients.  This has such a favorable effect on quality that people are willing to stand in long lines for food every day.  By contrast, hardly anyone stands in line to get food in the U.S. — with all those ingredients why bother?

I submit that the time has come for action on this matter.  Consumer groups and enlightened members of the general public must bring pressure to bear on Congress and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to mandate reduced levels of ingredients in foods, probably with a view to an eventual complete ban.  Nowadays, virtually the only food one can buy that is almost certainly free of ingredients is an egg in its original shell, and we are now being told not to eat more than one of them per week.  How are we to survive on such a diet?

American food manufacturers, in their cupidity, must not be allowed to continue perpetrating this sesquipedalian atrocity on the indifferent or benighted public.  Let us speak out now, so that those in government will recognize their duty to regulate, reduce, and eventually eliminate ingredients from the US food supply!  Let's get the American public back on real, ingredient-free food, before accumulated subtle deficiencies and abnormalities put us all under the table to stay.  Our posterity and their posterity demand this of us.