In a bid to divert attention from the lack of a June Stanley Cup parade in Toronto, councillor and city board of health chairman John Filion announced today that new food options will be available at street vendors throughout the GTA this summer.

Souvlaki, salsa karahi, jerk chicken and pad thai will be on the menu this May when the city of Toronto rolls out a street-food program to showcase the multicultural dishes of Canada's biggest city.

[Filion] said the new street food, offered in addition to the familiar hot-dog stands on Toronto street corners, “will be healthy, personal, interesting and may introduce us to cultures we are not familiar with.”

The Globe article notes that carts will be visited by public health inspectors regularly.  Good.  But what's more important is what happens when the inspectors aren't around.

Operators must know (and care) about the risks associated with the products they sell, More complicated foods come with complicated preparation and handling steps.  Multiple raw ingredients need to be kept at the right temperature, operators have to avoid cross-contamination and, keep bacteria and viruses off of their hands. 

A program specific to the new types of permissible street foods should supplement these inspections, so vendors and public health inspectors can discuss potential issues well before the first pad thai is served. Allowing vendors to sell new foods with minimal facilities without providing resources to help them learn how to create them safely is a potential recipe for disaster.

Courtlynn’s here and that meant a quick meal at Subway last night on our way home from the airport. The restaurant was fairly deserted and we only saw one male employee working. After we received our order to go, I ducked into the women’s restroom. While washing my hands, I reached for the soap and saw the sign pictured here. I rinsed with water and hoped the friction from the paper towel would be of some benefit. But I’m not serving meals to others and only had to hand Doug his sandwich in the car before eating my half. Proper handwashing requires the proper tools: water, soap, paper towels.

Katie, a.k.a. the woman who lives under our stairs, used to be a sandwich artist at Subway in the Soo. She says they got “into a lot of shit” if they didn’t keep the soap dispensers filled.
 

Eat fresh. Use soap.

Organic produce is so virtuous that UK writer Lucy Siegle had to ask, Does organic produce need to be washed?

“Health professionals are adamant that all fresh produce should be cleaned to remove potential pathogens. … Even produce sold as ‘pre-washed’ needs to be washed. … As organic produce has been annexed by big commercial enterprises, it is increasingly scrubbed up in huge pack houses that bring together produce from large numbers of farms for a good dousing.”

Siegle needs to research beyond the big ag conspiracy. A panel of scientists with expertise in microbial safety of fresh produce concluded in 2007 prewashed bagged salads should not be washed again at foodservice or at home.

"Leafy green salad in sealed bags labeled “washed” or “ready-to-eat” that are produced in a facility inspected by a regulatory authority and operated under cGMPs, does not need additional washing at the time of use unless specifically directed on the label. The panel also advised that additional washing of ready-to-eat green salads is not likely to enhance safety. The risk of cross contamination from food handlers and food contact surfaces used during washing may outweigh any safety benefit that further washing may confer."

Jon Stewart did a nice job trashing stereotypes of big ag, stem cells and that scientific discovery is planned – all at once. See about 1:48 minutes into the video below.

During an inquiry last year, Prof Hugh Pennington heard how John Tudor and Son, known on barfblog as 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.

Sharon Mills, Mason's mother and vocal food safety activist, was quoted in the Western Mail today as saying,

“There should be zero tolerance of rogue traders like Tudor.
“Health inspectors should not give people so many chances. Tudor fobbed them off so many times.
“Some meat producers could be dicing with death and they shouldn’t be given a second chance or allowed a few weeks to make things better because it can have a devastating effect. The inspectors should shut them down until they get it right.”

Ms Mills, also mum to Chandler, 11, and Cavan, four, said she hopes Professor Pennington will also recommend a change in the law to force butchers to have entirely separate areas for the processing of raw and cooked meat with separate sets of equipment for each.

“I would also like to see better training for GPs and hospitals, so they become more aware of the bacterium and more aware of the signs of infection so they can hospitalise people as soon as possible,”

“My little boy is lying in a cemetery. He died for nothing, so some good has got to come out of it. We also need to be looking at the health inspectors themselves and asking if they have the right training and if they are the right people to do the job. Are they strong enough to stand up to the people who break the rules?”

Inspection is part of the solution, but is only one factor in safe food production. Lowering the incidents of foodborne illness is not going to happen with increased inspection alone -- what Mills suggests about the quality of inspection, and looking for the right indicators is more important.  Having inspectors, auditors, coaches, etc. who know the production, processing and preparation systems and who can be the bug is the key to risk reduction.

Baby Sorenne is already taking an interest in colorful books and images. Soon it will be storytelling.

The Whole Foods blog had a particularly fantastical and derogatory tale today.

Joe Dickson writes in a piece entitled, Standards Even A Kid Can Understand, that he couldn’t figure out how to write about the complexity of quality in one post so he gets to do a series.

Joe, it’s called editing. You’re a terrible writer.

“Is everything here organic?” and Paige said “no” but that everything was natural. And then fumbled through various attempts at explaining what natural means - realizing as she rambled that a typical 11-year-old doesn’t have the background to understand how much junk is in our conventional food supply. Paige eventually came up with this: “You won’t find blue catsup here because catsup comes from tomatoes and tomatoes aren’t blue in nature.” And the friend got it: “So, catsup is red here?” Yes.

Joe the former nursery school teacher then introduces those readers who haven’t fallen asleep or clicked elsewhere to Quality Standards Storytime.

Once upon a time there were only natural foods. I know this is obvious, but one of my most strongly-held beliefs about food is that we should pay attention to the diets that humans have followed for 200,000 years or so. Our bodies and brains evolved on a diet of unprocessed foods — mostly plants and nuts, some animal protein and very little else. The 50-100 years since the advent of food processing and artificial preservatives occupies about .05% of that timeline. I think it’s fairly logical to play it safe and stick to the diets that have proven safe and healthful for most of recorded time.

Then, sometime in the twentieth century, Artificial Preservatives, Colors and Flavors were invented by “food scientists,” devoted to improving the quality of our lives through science. The ability to color, flavor and preserve food indefinitely made it possible to recreate authentic-seeming foods and make them last virtually forever. …

The Organic and Natural Products movements were born in opposition to these changes, based on the belief that natural food is healthier, better for you and better tasting. As the conventional grocery industry got weirder and weirder, the group of resisters got bigger and bigger. Whole Foods Market was born out of that opposition, founded in 1981 as a natural alternative to mainstream grocery stores. Organic agriculture also followed a similar route, rising as a resistance movement to chemical/industrial agriculture during the 1970s and 80s.

What a fairytale. Maybe Whole Foods should worry first about keeping dangerous bacteria out of the food it sells – it’s part of that food science thing – so its customers don’t barf.

And leave the storytelling to experts like Robert Munsch of Guelph, Ontario, whose 1986, Love You Forever, is one of the most popular children’s books ever, with some 8 million copies sold (my kids preferred The Paper Bag Princess, while I preferred Good Families Don’t, because it’s about farts).

Shortly before baby Sorenne was born I gave an animated telling of the story to our prenatal class, complete with bad singing, based on years of practice, and because I’d seen Munsch tell the story a few times.

An employee of a Ferndale, Washington, Dairy Queen says she “accidentally” poured Ajax into the malt dispenser, sickening two customers, according to court documents.

Detectives obtained surveillance video and saw the employee, Dale, pouring the Ajax into the malt dispenser, documents said.

Meanwhile, officials at an Arkansas hospital reported Friday that 10 children drank windshield wiper fluid after a staffer at an Arkansas day care mistakenly put the liquid in a refrigerator and served it.

A hospital toxicologist said,

"All we know was that the individual at the day care had recently shopped and had come back to the day care with a lot of different products. This product was mistakenly grabbed and thought to be Kool-Aid and put in the refrigerator."
 

Yet another cool application for the iPhone. 

COEDmagazine.com raves about Have2P:
 
You panic, you sweat, your mouth runs dry as painful bubbles round bends in your irritated intestines causing you to fall to curl into a squatting fetal position on the side walk - needless to say, it’s not pretty.

But with the new Have2P iPhone app, all your problems are solved! Using the phone’s internal GPS, this free application automatically finds available bathrooms in your vicinity in a matter of seconds.

I wonder if the bathrooms are fully stocked with running water, soap and paper towels?
 

KGAN reports that the outbreak linked to SunSprout Enterprises is now at 76 confirmed cases in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas (Missouri is missing from the list -- although has been mentioned by other sources).

Health officials have confirmed at least 76 cases of salmonella in four states as part of an outbreak linked to alfalfa sprouts.

Cases of salmonella in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota have been tied to SunSprout Enterprises' sprouts that were distributed to grocery stores and restaurants.

The Omaha company voluntarily recalled its products. Shipments were resumed after an inspection found no cause of salmonella.

Nebraska health officials say at least 45 cases of Salmonella saintpaul have been confirmed near Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney.

Iowa officials confirmed 21 cases. South Dakota and Kansas officials have both confirmed at least five cases in their states.

A selection of past sprouts-related outbreaks can be found here.

On Days of Our Lives today, Victor Kiriakis gave his opinion about Chloe Lane, “Hell, botulism is better than being married to her.” In food safety terms, that’s a very low blow.

Botulinum is a deadly toxin that comes from bacteria in soil and grows in warm, moist environments with no oxygen and low acidity. For example, it can grow on a baked potato wrapped in foil and left out on the counter. There have also been cases of poisoning in carrot juice, home-canned green beans, and enchiladas in France.

Botulism can cause serious complications such as paralysis and death.

Common symptoms include difficulty swallowing or speaking, facial weakness, double vision, trouble breathing, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and paralysis.

In infants, symptoms include constipation followed by "poor feeding, lethargy, weakness, pooled oral secretions, and wail or altered cry. Loss of head control is striking."

If having botulism is better than being married to Chloe, then Lucas better hope Victor, Kate, Sammy or even Daniel will ruin that wedding (you can vote online at nbc.com).

And p.s., Victor Kiriakis is played by John Aniston, the father of Jennifer Aniston IRL.