It’s one thing to sicken and kill humans with food like Maple Leaf cold cuts – just don’t mess with people’s pets.

Carrie Pich of Windsor, Ontario, (right, photo from Windsor Star) is convinced her beloved Tigger -- a two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever --  fell ill over the weekend because he ate Maple Leaf hotdogs that might be tainted with bacteria.

"This could have been a human. I mean, (Tigger) is human to us. But it could've happened to you. My husband could've ate two. He loves hotdogs."

Pich said she bought three packages of hotdogs last week: two packs of Maple Leaf Original Wieners and one pack of Shopsy's Deli-Fresh.

Both products are among those listed in the recall.

But Pich didn't know that on the evening of July 31, when she cut up three Maple Leaf Original Wieners to put in Tigger's supper, and gave him one more as a late-night treat.

On Saturday morning, Pich woke to find Tigger vomiting blood.

Dr. Ameer Ebrahim, the owner and veterinarian at Cabana @ Howard Pet Hospital said he can't confirm that Tigger suffered from listeriosis, but the dog's symptoms were "very consistent" with bacterial infection, and he wouldn't rule out a connection with the recalled wieners eaten by Tigger.

"That's a very strong coincidence.”
 

Montreal-native William Shatner – Captain Kirk, Boston Legal dude, Priceline negotiator and spoken-word enthusiast -- has written Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking that salmon farms be removed from wild-salmon migration routes in the Broughton and Discovery islands area of British Columbia.

Shatner, who filmed an episode of the Boston Legal series in the Broughton Archipelago off northern Vancouver Island, says in his letter that salmon farms are having a disastrous impact on "one of Earth's most precious assets, the wild salmon and steelhead of B.C."

Mary Ellen Walling, executive director, B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, responded that while Shatner’s acting credentials are solid (really?) -- his understanding of fisheries research is less stellar.

Activist groups should, at least, be able to meet the same standards of scrutiny applied to industry. And for journalists who often see themselves as the guardians of the public interest, it seems prudent to be wary of being manipulated, even by those who appear to walk on the side of the public good rather than the side of corporate self-interest. Beam me up, Scotty.

That didn’t go over too well with the locals. Several letter writers pointed out that T.J. Hooker was entitled to his views, didn’t represent industry, and there were lots of ways to do research. Aquaculture folks – facts are important, but are never enough.
 

Eurosurveillance reports today on a March 2008 outbreak of Salmonella Muenster in 25 laboratory confirmed cases in France.

Four patients were admitted to hospital. … S. Muenster was isolated from both cases and the incriminated goat's cheese. …

The place of purchase of the goat's cheese was known for 10 cases: Seven cases had purchased unpasteurised goat's cheese at an agriculture exhibition that was held in Paris from 23 February until 2 March, and three cases had purchased this type of cheese at a local market in south-eastern France….  During the same period, a household cluster of salmonellosis involving three cases was reported through the mandatory notification system. The investigation of this cluster incriminated unpasteurised goat's cheese (consumed on 8 February 2008) as the source of infection. The isolates of these cases were later shown to be positive for S. Muenster.
 

And no I am not talking about Johnny Depp. Time and time again food safety communicators promote the use of digital tip sensitive thermometers to determine doneness of food. But how often is this practice being done in restaurants? If so, is it being done correctly? From my experience, it seems that restaurant operators depend on color far too often and the operators that use thermometers do not use them correctly. This simply boils down to a need of properly train staff. It is imperative that front line food service staff are physically shown how to correctly use thermometers rather than just explaining the concept and theory behind it. Health inspectors, in particular, must take the time during routine inspections to demonstrate the proper usage of thermometers and compel restaurant managers to train their staff accordingly.

There have been too many cases of raw chicken burgers being served to the public and ultimately making people barf.  At times, food service staff are stressed and end up getting food orders wrong and are therefore rushed to correct the problem. In doing so, corners are cut resulting in burgers not being cooked long enough. Take the time to properly cook chicken burgers and remember stick it in.

From cream soup to cancer treatment, I discovered many interesting uses for surplus breast milk after learning that PETA requested Ben & Jerry's use it to replace cow's milk in ice cream products.

"Whatever floats your boat," I said, "as long as it’s pasteurized for the kiddos."

Probably, the most widely-accepted use for extra breast milk is as a supplement for nursing infants whose mothers are unable to produce enough safe breast milk to sufficiently feed them. Several human milk banks exist in the US for this purpose.

One such bank opened this week at the Portland Adventist Medical Center and has a plan in place to ensure the safety of all donations before use.

"We'll do a blood screen on the moms who are going to donate," said Angel Pyles, a lactation nurse. "The milk is pasteurized and rescreened before given to babies who are in need of it."

Young children are one group whose health and well-being are most greatly affected by the culture around them. Those babies are lucky this organization recognizes that even a woman's breast milk has risks that should be controlled.

The idea that food grown and consumed locally is somehow safer than other food, either because it contacts fewer hands or any outbreaks would be contained, is the product of wishful thinking.

Barry Estabrook of Gourmet magazine is the latest to invoke the local is pure fantasy, writing,

“There is no doubt that our food-safety system is broken. But with the vast majority of disease outbreaks coming from industrial-scale operations, legislators should have fixed the problems there instead of targeting small, local businesses that were never part of the problem in the first place.”

As soon as someone says there’s “no doubt” I am filled with doubt about the quality of the statement that is about to follow.

Foodborne illness is vastly underreported -- it's known as the burden of reporting foodborne illness. Someone has to get sick enough to go to a doctor, go to a doctor that is bright enough to order the right test, live in a state that has the known foodborne illnesses as a reportable disease, and then it gets registered by the feds. For every known case of foodborne illness, there are 10 -300 other cases, depending on the severity of the bug.??????

Most foodborne illness is never detected. It’s almost never the last meal someone ate, or whatever other mythologies are out there. A stool sample linked with some epidemiology or food testing is required to make associations with specific foods. ??????Newsweek has an excellent article this week about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and its Disease Detective Camp, where teenagers learn how to form a hypothesis about a disease outbreak and conduct an investigation. The key lies only partly in state-of-the-art technology. At least half the challenge is figuring out the right questions to ask. Who has contracted the disease? Where have they been? Why were they exposed to this pathogen?

Maybe the vast majority of foodborne outbreaks come from industrial-scale operations because the vast majority of food and meals is consumed from industrial-scale operations. To accurately compare local and other food, a database would have to somehow be constructed so that a comparison of illnesses on a per capita meal or even ingredient basis could be made. ???

 

Whole Foods Market has terrible food safety advice, blames consumers for getting sick, sells raw milk in some stores, and offers up fairytales about organic and natural foods.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Whole Foods chief John Mackey is now going to reposition the Austin, Texas, chain as a champion of healthy living in a return to its natural-foods roots.

"We sell a bunch of junk," he said, vowing to promote healthier lifestyles for its customers and employees. "We've decided if Whole Foods doesn't take a leadership role in educating people about a healthy diet, who the heck is going to do it?"

Given the track record outlined above, almost anybody and any group would be better qualified than Whole Foods. Besides, as soon as someone says they’re going to educate someone else, it’s propaganda rather than compelling, evidence-based information,

I look forward to the whoppers being offered up as educational material in Whole Foods' future.
 

A three-year-old girl who needed dialysis after being caught up in an E coli outbreak is beginning to recover in hospital, her parents said today.

Abigail Hussey suffered kidney failure after eating from a takeaway in Wrexham, north Wales, and is one of two people undergoing hospital treatment after the outbreak last month. Karen Morrisroe-Clutton, a new mother who also had kidney failure, remains in a medically induced coma at Wrexham Maelor hospital. The North East Wales NHS trust said she was in a serious but stable condtion.

She is in Alder Hey Children's hospital in Liverpool, which today released a statement from her mother, Sarah, who also fell ill, and her father, Jeff.

"Abigail's condition deteriorated and she was eventually referred to Wrexham hospital, who transferred her immediately to Alder Hey on Monday 27 July. She tested positive for E coli and was placed on dialysis. We are very relieved that Abigail is beginning to recover, is off dialysis and is eating and drinking quite well."

Sharon Mills, the mother of E. coli victim Mason Jones (left) said the latest Wales outbreak has brought horrific memories flooding back.

“It’s terrible that more people are having to go through this. Mason fought for two weeks until he couldn’t fight any more and ever since I have fought on for him as I don’t want his death to be in vain.”

While the cause of the North Wales outbreak remains under investigation, Mills said she believes both the authorities and the public still fail to fully appreciate the terrible consequences of E.coli infection.

The Llay Fish Bar was allowed to continue business even though environmental health inspectors found poor hygiene conditions and was awarded the lowest rating of no stars during the August 2008 inspection.

Mills said:

“The threat of E.coli is not being taken on board. People really need to start listening and they need to start listening now. The message needs to be drummed home that E.coli is serious and can affect anyone, not just those with underlying health problems. it’s such a powerful bacteria.”
 

About 18 months after the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, I, the erstwhile graduate student, gave a talk to a bunch of food safety types from government and industry. I showed a clip from ABC’s 20/20 television program about a family fighting for regulatory change, and many in the audience laughed at the family when their kitchen was shown. Audience members commented that the consumers were sloppy in their cooking and of course they got sick, and if only they would cook hamburger properly E. coli O157:H7 wouldn’t happen.

I thought the response of the audience was sort of appalling.

In mid-1994, Michael Taylor was appointed chief of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.  On Sept. 29, 1994, USDA said it would now regard E. coli O157:H7 in raw ground beef as an “adulterant,” a substance that should not be present in the product. By mid-October, 1994, Taylor announced plans to launch a nationwide sampling of ground beef to assess how much E. coli O157:H7 was in the marketplace. The 5,000 samples would be taken during the year from supermarkets and meat processing plants “to set an example and stimulate companies to put in preventive measures.” Positive samples would prompt product recalls of the entire affected lot, effectively removing it from any possibility of sale.

That's the long-winded version for what a USDA official said in a 1994 television interview: we'll stop blaming consumers  when they get sick from the food and water they consume.

But the just-cook-it crowd persisted. And still does today.

A couple of weeks ago, while announcing a ground beef recall in Colorado, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service stated in a release,

FSIS would like to remind consumers of the importance of following food safety guidelines when handling and preparing raw meat. Ground beef should be cooked to a safe minimum internal temperature of 160° Fahrenheit.

I would like to remind FSIS that it ain’t so easy to handle contaminated ground beef and not spread it around a home or food service kitchen.

Jim Marsden, a former vp at the American Meat Institute and now a professor at Kansas State University, wrote in his meatingplace.com blog last week, the top-10 reasons “just cook it” does not, and will not, work.

1. E. coli O157:H7 is a unique pathogen. The levels of this organism necessary to cause infection are very low.

2. The severity of the disease E. coli O157:H7 can cause, especially in children is devastating.

3. In many cases, parents order hamburgers for their children and rely on restaurants to cook them properly.  In restaurants, parents really have no control over whether the hamburgers they order are sufficiently cooked to eliminate possible contamination from E. coli O157:H7.

4. If consumers unknowingly bring this pathogen into their kitchens, it is almost impossible to avoid cross contamination. Even the smallest amount of contamination on a food that is not cooked can cause illness. Many of the reported cases of E. coli O157:H7 have involved ground beef that was clearly cooked at times and temperatures sufficient to inactivate E. coli O157:H7.  Some other vector, i.e. cross contamination was probably involved.

5. Even if consumers attempt to use thermometers to measure cooking temperature, it is difficult to properly measure the internal temperature of hamburger patties. They would have to use an accurate thermometer and place the probe exactly into the center of the patty. In addition, the inactivation of E. coli O157:H7 is dependent on cooking time and temperature. For example, if they cook to 155 degrees F, they should hold that temperature for 16 seconds. It is not realistic to expect that consumers, many of which are children will scientifically measure the internal temperature of hamburgers.

6. The way ground beef is packaged, it is virtually impossible to remove it from packages or chubs and make patties without spreading contamination if it is present.

7. Sometimes ground beef appears to be cooked when it really isn’t. There is a phenomenon called “premature browning” that can make ground beef appear to be fully cooked when in fact it is undercooked.

8. E. coli O157:H7 may be present in beef products other than ground beef. For example, in non-intact beef products, including tenderized steaks that are not always cooked to temperatures required for inactivation.

9. There have been many cases and outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 associated with foods that are not cooked (i.e. fresh cut produce).

10. As Senator Patrick Leahy said after the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box outbreak – “The death penalty is too strong a punishment for undercooking a hamburger”.  He was right –consumers will make mistakes. There needs to be a margin of safety so that undercooking does not result in disease or death.