Restaurant disclosure systems, like letter grades in L.A. or coloured cards in Toronto, communicate restaurant inspection results to patrons. This week Durham Region in Ontario launched DineSafe, a food safety inspection disclosure program that uses coloured cards to communicate inspection scores. Green, yellow or red cards must be posted at food establishments, similar to the disclosure system in Toronto.

According to newsdurhamregion.com, during the first day 30 restaurants were inspected, with only two receiving yellow cards, and the remainder receiving green cards. 

On Monday March 2, the first round of inspections under DineSafe resulted in two yellow cards, for the Akashia Japanese and Korean restaurant on Kingston Road West in Ajax and Wie Geht's Amigo on King Avenue East in Newcastle.

Ken Gorman, director of environmental health for Durham, said the Ajax restaurant received a yellow because of the level of cleanliness of food contact surfaces, food storage issues which could result in possible contamination and temperature abuse. The Newcastle restaurant's citations included food not being stored at the proper temperature, lack of paper towels and soap at the food and hand sink areas and sanitation problems with the floor, walls and equipment.

Both restaurants have been re-inspected and received green cards.

Gorman indicated he expects about 80 per cent of establishments will earn a green this year, and things are going well with the new program. He continued,

"Some people are very excited ... one got their green sign and they were cheering and clapping.”

In Durham Region the frequency of restaurant inspection is based on risk. High risk establishments are inspected three times per year, moderate risk twice a year, and low risk once a year. Overall inspection scores determine the colour of the sign issued to an establishment, green indicating a pass, yellow indicating substantial incompliance with provincial rules, and red indicating establishment closure.

 

Some people will do anything for a quick buck. Fake health inspectors in the Greater Toronto Area have been targeting mom and pop food stores in purchasing food safety tests. If managers do not comply, they would be faced with severe health code violations. Now I have heard everything. Health inspectors are required to present valid identification prior to inspecting an establishment. If something does not look right, contact your local health authority.  Food and water tests should also be performed in an accredited laboratory and not on site.

The Toronto Star writes this morning Mom-and-pop food stores and restaurants across the GTA are being scammed by fake health inspectors pushing unnecessary food and water tests, authorities say.

Dozens of convenience store and restaurant owners, most of them new Canadians, have told Peel, Halton and Toronto health departments that they were contacted by a "food and water safety technician" wanting to sell them $30 to $40 safety tests.

The so-called technicians reportedly say the tests are mandatory, and hand out what looks like "old meat plant inspection forms" from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, said Matt Ruf, Halton Region's manager of food safety.

Halton and Toronto officials said the people typically identify themselves as representatives of the Canadian Food Safety Institute or the Canadian Food Safety Resource Centre, which the institute founded according to the website www.cfsrc.com.

The CFSI "is not an agency we would deal with," said Rob Colvin, manager of healthy environments for Toronto Public Health.

So far, only a handful of business owners – including two in Toronto – have paid for the tests, officials said.

The cases started emerging first in Peel and Halton in mid-January, then in Toronto about three weeks ago, Colvin said.

Jalal Hadibhai, who owns the Down Under convenience store in Yorkville, said a woman called Monday, saying she would send a technician the next day to perform E.coli tests in the store.

She wanted $39.95 in cash or cheque, he said.

Hadibhai called Toronto Public Health to ask if the tests were legitimate and was told no, he said.

In the end, no one came to the store.

"I would have asked for I.D.," the store owner said. "I would never give them cash."

Sgt. Brian Carr said Halton police are looking for a woman who attempted to sell the tests in a Hasty Market in Oakville yesterday.

She allegedly told the manager that without the tests he could face fines for health code violations.

The woman presented a business card indicating she was from the CFSRC, police said. The organization has addresses in Mississauga and Ottawa.

"There's no such unit out there," Carr said. Messages left for the CEO of the safety institute were not returned.

A toll-free number listed on both organizations' websites is out of order.

It's unclear how many people are involved, but "it seems there's a whole team of people out there," said Colvin.

Mark Nesbitt, spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long- Term Care, said restaurant and store health inspections lie "entirely in the hands of local public health units."

Any private inspections purchased by business owners would be non- binding and, he added: "Buyer beware."

While New Zealand’s Flight of the Conchords charmed the critics lat year, the best television show in recent times is Australia’s Summer Heights High. And while the show is set in Melbourne, a school in Australia’s Northern Territory has, according to The Courier-Mail, been battling sewage in its canteen sink, water contaminated with dog poo, and piles of rubbish that are causing public health risks.

The school, at Palumpa, near Wadeye in the Northern Territory, has been in the news because students have been forced to wade through a crocodile-infested billabong to get to classes and the school "bus" - a Toyota TroopCarrier - has been stalked by a crocodile.

The new findings are contained in a Health Department report, completed last month, which was obtained by the Northern Territory News.

The Northern Territory News also revealed that two Palumpa children were airlifted to Royal Darwin Hospital this week suffering gastro.
 

For years, stories have circulated about the outrageous demands rock stars – even Celine Dion – make for their backstage accommodations as part of concert contracts or riders.

Most famously, Van Halen included in the rider for its 1982 world tour that absolutely no brown M&Ms be found backstage (the band insists this was not rock star excess, but an easy way to check if concert promoters completely read the riders and paid attention to important things like the stage and lighting).

The satirical rockumentary  Spinal Tap contains a scene where Nigel complains about the backstage food and the little pieces of bread (below). They also insist on blue M&Ms only.

Fox News is reporting that an Atlanta woman took a bite of a blue peanut M&M and discovered what a local biologist says is a vertebra from a small mammal.

Potts is not currently pursuing a lawsuit against Mars, the global giant that owns M&Ms, but the issue kept gnawing at her, so on Tuesday she said she took the object to Professor Larry Blumer, director of environmental studies in the biology department of Morehouse College in Atlanta, for an examination.

"It's definitely bone, and it came from some type of mammal," Blumer told FOXNews.com. "This isn't [a] tail vertebra — it's something higher up, and the reason I'm certain for that is because it's hollow. The nerve cord would run through there."

On Wednesday upon learning of the incident, Mars issued a statement noting that food and product quality is of "paramount importance to Mars."
  

Does anyone else notice the sanitized crap that spews forth from various industry associations? I know that being in an association means striving for the lowest common denominator, but why, in 2009, 11 years after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first proposed Good Agricultural Practices for fresh produce, and hundreds of outbreaks later, is the United Fresh Retail-Foodservice Board patting itself on the back for endorsing the importance of efforts to harmonize produce food safety audits to reduce cost and duplication of efforts, while enhancing overall safety?

Maybe I’m missing something but shouldn’t this have been initiated about 10 years ago? I’m all for exposing the Ponzi scheme that is food safety audits and the burden that repeated and replicated audits place on individual growers. I fought for audits that make sense to buyers when I chaired a Canadian Horticulture Council committee on the topic back in 2002ish. They didn’t like the recommendations of my committee because they wanted money from the federal government.

How’s that working out for ya?

At some point, the folks growers elect to represent them will ask, why would I pay hundreds of dollars to attend a conference that should have happened at least 10 years ago? How did we growers get into this mess of multiple audits? Why didn’t you tell the retailers what they needed to know, instead of the retailers imposing some stupid standard on growers?

Thanks for the leadership.

Whenever a group says the public needs to be educated about food safety, biotechnology, trans fats, organics or anything else, that group has utterly failed to present a compelling case for their cause.

I cringe, and remember a Lewis Lapham column I read in Harper’s magazine in the mid-1980s about how individuals can choose to educate themselves about all sorts of interesting things, but the idea of educating someone is doomed to failure. Oh, and it’s sorta arrogant to state that others need to be educated; to imply that if only you understood the world as I understand the world, we would agree and dissent would be minimized.

What nonsense.

Yet millions are wasted weekly on such campaigns.

Industry, government, academia, activists, they all resort to the same language when it comes to providing information: them folks need to get edumacated.

In the past year:

• the American Ag & Energy Council said it believed in promoting all the good the industry does through education;

• Shell Malaysia chairman Datuk Saw Choo Boon told Malaysians efforts should concentrate on educating the public to become twice as efficient in energy use by 2050;

• an industry type said food irradiation is safe, but its adoption by the industry would require a massive consumer education campaign;

• the U.S. beef checkoff supported the efforts of federal agencies in promoting beef safety through educational activities;

• the Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education has it right in their horribly bureaucratic name;

• as does the U.S. Partnership for Food Safety Education, dedicated to improving public health through research-based, actionable consumer food safety education; and,

• retailers are joining the group effort to educate millions of consumers about food safety.

A long time ago, I wrote,

There is a dearth of scientific studies applying proven risk communication concepts to issues of microbial food safety. There is, however, an abundance of academic, industrial and government pronouncements on how to improve communications activities related to food safety, based on anecdotal evidence and almost always citing the need for “educated consumers” or “a better-educated public.”

Such proposals invoke a one-way, authoritarian model of communication that is characteristic of scientists and engineers in general. Further, exactly how this mythical consumer will become better educated remains a mystery. What is known is that the traditional approach of scientists clearly explaining the facts is “naive—and probably a recipe for failure. ... Effective communication
“Too often, risk communicators are more concerned with educating the public, rather than first listening to them and then developing communication policies.”

So it’s not surprising that the organic industry is also lacking in imagination and has launched a national consumer education and marketing campaign.

The Organic Agriculture and Products Education Institute (Organic Institute) has launched "Organic. It's worth it."

"The mission of this campaign is to answer consumer questions about organic with the clear message that organic is worth it in every way from health care and economics to farming and the environment. It will increase consumer trust, knowledge and purchase of organic products," said Christine Bushway, president of the Organic Institute and executive director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the sponsor of the campaign.

Designed to be of service to families with young children at home, the campaign especially seeks to reach new mothers, the primary gateways to organic, according to OTA Marketing Director Laura Batcha, who developed the campaign with Haberman, the Minneapolis brand public relations firm, on behalf of the Organic Institute.

"Helping mothers make the connection between the personal health of their families and the health of the environment is key to this education and marketing initiative," explained Batcha. "It gives them the rationale they need to make the organic purchase."

Of course, as the N.Y. Times points out this morning, organic has nothing to do with food safety. It’s a production standard, and a porous one at that. But consumers believe that organic is healthier and safer, according to surveys. The organic industry will never come out and say it’s safer, but they hint at it through marketing (see above).

So it’s a shock to some that Peanut Corporation of America plants in Virginia and Texas were certified organic, revealing the same Ponzi scheme of inspection and auditing that failed to catch Salmonella problems in the plants.

As the Times states,

Although the rules governing organic food require health inspections and pest-management plans, organic certification technically has nothing to do with food safety. …

A private certifier took nearly seven months to recommend that the U.S.D.A. revoke the organic certification of the peanut company’s Georgia plant, and then did so only after the company was in the thick of a massive food recall. So far, nearly 3,000 products have been recalled, including popular organic items from companies like Clif Bar and Cascadian Farm. Nine people have died and almost 700 have become ill.

The private certifier, the Organic Crop Improvement Association, sent a notice in July to the peanut company saying it was no longer complying with organic standards, said Jeff See, the association’s executive director. He would not say why his company wanted to pull the certification.

A second notice was sent in September, but it wasn’t until Feb. 4 that the certifier finally told the agriculture department that the company should lose its ability to use the organic label.

To emphasize that reporting basic health violations is part of an organic inspector’s job, Barbara C. Robinson, acting director of the agriculture department’s National Organic Program, last week issued a directive to the 96 organizations that perform foreign and domestic organic inspections that they are obligated to look beyond pesticide levels and crop management techniques.

Potential health violations like rats — which were reported by federal inspectors and former workers at the Texas and Georgia plants — must be reported to the proper health and safety agency, the directive said.

Wow. Organic inspectors have to be told by the feds that rats may pose a health risk and should be reported.

Arthur Harvey, a Maine blueberry farmer who does organic inspections, said agents have an incentive to approve companies that are paying them.

“Certifiers have a considerable financial interest in keeping their clients going,” he said.

OMG. Organic, like other food systems, is about making money.

Is there a better way? Yes, market microbial food safety and hold producers and processors – conventional, organic or otherwise – to a standard of producing food that doesn’t make people barf. That’s something shoppers will support, instead of being told they have to become better educated about someone else’s limited perspective.
 

An Algerian-born chemist has been found guilty in a British court of contaminating food and wine by using his own urine and feces.

The court had heard man sprayed the mixture in the Air Balloon Pub, in Birdlip, near Cheltenham on 14 May, 2008.

He then moved on to the Waterstones bookstore in Cirencester, Tesco in Quedgley and Morrisons in Abbeydale.

The court also heard shoppers and staff in both stores saw the man with a black lap top computer with a vapor coming from the bag being sprayed on the shelves. He is likely to be deported.
 

In yet another example of America’s slide toward Idiocracy, a Florida woman called 911 after paying for 10 Chicken McNuggets and told that no deep-fried chicken bits were available and would she like something else because all sales are final.

She called 911 three times.

"This is an emergency, If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one. This is an emergency."

Once police arrived, the woman told police,

"I called 911 because I couldn't get a refund, and I wanted my McNuggets.”

The police report states the woman,

"maintained the attitude 'this is an emergency, my McNuggets are an emergency.'"

And why do these food-related 911 calls keep recurring in Florida?

WOWT TV in Omaha and AP are reporting that an outbreak of Salmonella in Nebraska has been linked to a local fresh sprouts producer.

Nebraska Health and Human Services says the initial testing links the outbreak to source-alfalfa sprouts from a local grower, CW Sprouts in Omaha.

Public health workers have been interviewing individuals involved in the outbreak, as well as people in a control group that helps interviewers determine the food source. The interviews led epidemiologists to conclude that sprouts were reported in a high number of food histories of ill people, thus there was a strong association with sprouts.

Nebraska's chief medical officer Joann Schaefer held a press conference Tuesday releasing the following information:

- As of Tuesday, the state health department had confirmed 14 cases of Salmonella in Nebraska.

- The cases were reported from Feb. 2 to Feb. 23.

And in a great example of good communication, the health authorities said that there really wasn't much a consumer could do once they had the product (other than cook it):

While the health department recommended consumers wash all fruits and vegetables before consumption, Schaefer acknowledged that doing so likely would not have prevented the most recent outbreak.  Schaefer said officials believe the salmonella was probably within the alfalfa sprouts, and therefore, could not be washed off. 

"The company does all sorts of washing procedures in its plant," Schaefer said. "It's state of the art. It's probably one of the cleanest facilities we've seen."

A clean facility doesn't do a whole lot if the seeds come in contaminated. The warm and humid environment that sprouting plants grow in provide a fantastic situation for pathogens to thrive. Pathogens have been shown to attach and survive within the layers of the sprout, making washing virtually useless.

The FDA offers the following advice to all consumers concerning sprouts:

• Cook all sprouts thoroughly before eating to significantly reduce the risk of illness.
• Sandwiches and salads purchased at restaurants and delicatessens often contain raw sprouts. Consumers who wish to reduce their risk of foodborne illness should specifically request that raw sprouts not be added to their food.
• Homegrown sprouts also present a health risk if eaten raw or lightly cooked. Many outbreaks have been attributed to contaminated seed. If pathogenic bacteria are present in or on seed, they can grow to high levels during sprouting even under clean conditions.

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