If I owned a fake zoo store, like a pet store, I’d probably call it Serpent Safari. Reminds me of the scene in the 2003 movie, Almost Famous, when the lead guitar player goes off to meet real people, in of all places Topeka, Kansas, just down the road, and after doing some acid, a basement-dwelling dude asks the guitar player if he wants to watch him feed a mouse to his pet snake.

Yes.

Topeka. Real people.

A lawsuit has been filed in Lake County circuit court claiming that a 2-year-old boy contracted salmonella after touching an albino Burmese python.

A lawsuit seeking $50,000 in damages has been lodged against a reptile store and zoo in Gurnee Mills after a 2-year-old boy purportedly contracted salmonella after petting a snake there in December 2007.

Serpent Safari Inc. violated state laws by not providing liquid sanitizer for patrons or having a sign warning of infection risk to children younger than 5 who touch or handle reptiles, according to the complaint, filed Dec. 11 in Lake County circuit court.

Lawyer Michael Maher, who didn't return telephone messages Tuesday, filed the suit on behalf of Sara Wirtz and her son, Trevor, and Judith Penoyer, all of McHenry County. Without providing specifics, the suit alleges Penoyer also contracted salmonella.

Serpent Safari owner Lou Daddono countered that he's confident the albino Burmese python that Trevor would have petted did not pass on salmonella. The snake lives at the store and is not for sale.

Daddono, who also denied the negligence claims, estimated more than 400,000 visitors have touched the python without a problem in his 11 years in business. He questioned why it took two years for the salmonella suit to be filed.

Serpent Safari's lack of sanitizer or signs noting the need for hand-washing after coming in contact with reptiles amounted to negligence, the complaint alleges. More than $50,000 in damages are sought from the business.

Penoyer suffered "severe and permanent illness and/or injuries, externally and internally," says the suit. The complaint states Trevor's hospital expenses and other medical care will require his mother to pay large sums of money.
 

Italian authorities have seized some 500 tons of bad seafood and shellfish believed to be largely destined for New Year's Eve dinner parties.

Agriculture Minister Luca Zaia said Wednesday that worms were found in some of the fish seized across Italy between Dec. 10-23. In other cases, mussels defrosted months earlier were passed off as fresh, and fish coming from Asia was passed off as domestic.

Zaia described the food as "garbage" including brine jellyfish, and said organized crime was likely behind it.
 

Today’s USA Today asked a bunch of food safety types what the government could do to improve the school lunch program.

My full answer included,

“Does it have to be government? They’re not very good at this stuff.”

 What got published this a.m., along with a photo by Dave Adams of Kansas State, was,

"Government should set minimal standards and demand continuous improvement from all of its suppliers. More importantly, every cafeteria needs to make microbial food safety -- from hand washing to food handling -- part of the daily culture." 

Douglas Powell, professor of food safety at Kansas State University and the publisher of barfblog.com.

The story explains that in 1982, hamburgers from McDonald’s fast-food chain sickened at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan. No one died, but the pathogen that caused the severe cramps, abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea turned out to be a little-known, especially dangerous form of the common stomach bacteria E. coli. The new subtype, E. coli O157:H7, produced a toxin that destroyed red blood cells and, in later cases elsewhere, caused kidney failure or death.

Confounded by the discovery, McDonald's hired one of the nation's best-known food safety scientists, Michael Doyle, and told him, he recalls, "to bulletproof their system so E. coli never happened to them again."

McDonald's reconsidered its old assumptions about food — from how often beef-processing plants should test ground beef to how well a hamburger must be cooked to kill off pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella.

The results helped change the industry. For years, the federal food code said burgers had to be cooked only until their internal temperature reached 140 degrees; McDonald's tests showed the safe standard was 155 degrees and that the meat must register that temperature for at least 15 seconds.

Microbial data also altered the demands McDonald's imposed on its suppliers.

After a couple of years, the company saw that "about 5% of the suppliers could not get down to what we considered a reasonable level for salmonella and E. coli," says Doyle, now director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety. "McDonald's worked hard with them, but they couldn't get there, so McDonald's let them go."

The lesson, many analysts say, is that organizations with great buying power — such as fast-food chains or the school lunch program — can set higher standards, and industry ultimately will meet those standards because that's where the money is. The school lunch program purchases huge volumes of commodities such as beef, poultry and other staples –– $830 million worth in 2008.
 

Chapman asks me the other day, “How do we fight the dogma?”

Is that like fight the power? Fight the man? Fight for your right to party?

What he was talking about was food safety dogma, the kind where seemingly good people give bad food safety advice. Like the Brits and their piping hot turkey.

But this was directed at home. Why do good people reference bad advice, such as the cumbersomely named U.S. Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education, and their Holiday food safety success kit, which says people should always wash their hands for 20 seconds with warm water and never defrost turkey on the counter (with exclamation marks, so readers know they are seriously serious).

When washing hands, water temperature doesn’t matter, 10 seconds is sufficient. Turkey can be thawed on the counter, don’t leave it there forever and don’t let the cat nibble on it.

The dogma part is, where are the references? How do groups like the horribly named Partnership come up with food safety advice? Is it some magical mystery tour or is there some reference to something credible? Who knows. It’s not publicly available.

So why anyone would reference the awkward Partnership as a credible source is bizarrely baffling.

 

Like pretty much every other county or town that has implemented some form of restaurant inspection disclosure, the system is way popular in Windsor, Ontario.

About 1,300 locations have been inspected under the star ratings, including all of the premises in the highest-risk categories, said Deb Bennett, Windsor-Essex County Health Unit’s health protection director.

“We’ve gone six months now with the star ratings. What we’ve seen is much positive comment from owners and consumers,” Bennett said.

The 500 premises still to be inspected with star ratings are all considered low-risk and include establishments such as convenience stores.

“We have seen a dramatic improvement in the level of compliance,” she said.

As well, she said she’s hearing more from restaurants about receiving four stars when they expected five than from locations with fewer stars. The places seem to accept their lower ratings, she said.

Enzo Mancuso, who owns Mancuso’s Trattoria, 555 Erie St. E.  said,

“It’s like anything else, sooner or later you get used to it.”

His restaurant recently received its second five-star rating since they were introduced. Customers applauded when they saw him receive an inspection notice with the stars, which he can post in his window.

But this last bit sucks.

Customers may not know about a restaurant’s inspection and rating, and Bennett said the health unit will focus on efforts to make the public aware they can find out by contacting the health unit.

Market food safety achievements. People may be more concerned about whether their food will make them barf or not.
 

Meatingplace reports this morning that two approved red food dyes, FD&C No. 3 and No. 40, stain the protein and fat in bologna and turkey lunchmeat and may help deli managers quickly determine areas of listeria contamination, according to a study by University of Arkansas researchers funded by the American Meat Institute Foundation.

Researchers noted that use of a 1:1,000 dilution of the dyes could enable deli managers to determine whether additional cleaning is required before sanitizing the slicker or beginning operations.

Researchers also found that heating deli slicer components in moist oven conditions caused a five-log reduction of listeria within three hours at 82 degrees C. However, because this treatment would not be feasible to use on an assembled deli slicer because of potential damage to the electrical components, continuing research involves using various sanitizers alone and in combination with moist heat to reduce potential listeria contamination of disassembled stainless steel and aluminum deli components.
 

In my continuing quest to watch children’s TV and become addicted to every infectious kids song out there – because 1-year-old Sorenne has a cold and insists on being held -- we watched an episode of Special Agent Oso, the unique stuffed bear.

3 special steps, that’s all you need

wash the vegetables

chop the vegetables

toss the salad

Jade has to help make a salad for cousin Rachel, who can’t eat cheese or bread because she has food allergies – no pizza for Rachel.

Special Agent Oso -- the unique stuffed bear -- and Jade wash their hands before preparing the salad, and wash the lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber, straight from the garden, but eventually use a vegetable brush because the veggies are so naturally dirty. Problem solved.

BTW, the songs on these kids' shows are bizarrely infective, like a foodborne pathogen.

The Hot Dog song on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was written and performed by They Might Be Giants, and the Handy Manny theme song was written and performed by Los Lobos.
 

The cafeteria in the Pennsylvania capital building where the governor and other state legislators hang out, form cliques and toss around tater tots, has not been inspected in four years – despite a state law requiring annual checks -- and is now closed after an infestation of rodents was discovered.

Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner said Thursday he received assurances in 2005 that the state Agriculture Department would inspect the facility, and his auditors later received false assurances that it was being inspected regularly.

Last week, Agriculture Department inspectors finally arrived at the ground-floor cafeteria, a popular coffee and lunch spot. They found a "severe" rodent infestation, including an "excessive" amount of rodent droppings on food preparation equipment and in cabinets, utensil bins and elsewhere. The droppings indicate the presence of live mice and are considered an imminent health risk.

The ground-floor cafeteria is now closed and is not expected to reopen until January.

I like potlucks because of the social interaction and sampling different kinds of foods.

I don’t like potlucks because who knows how various dishes are prepared, how they’ve been stored, and the dreaded double dipping.

I told Erin Quinn of the Waco Tribune-Herald in Texas Monday that,

Maybe you don’t want to eat the turkey noodle casserole made in the kitchen of the woman who you notice never washes her hands before leaving the bathroom.

And maybe you should avoid the pumpkin cheesecake brought by the guy whose shirts are always covered with cat hair.

“There is a lot of blind trust in it. Potlucks are really popular because they bring people together and do a lot of good things. But all of that fellowship can turn into a lot of sick people.”

Powell recommends bringing a digital thermometer to potluck parties. He jokes that this is the reason he is hardly invited to potluck parties.

Still, he said these parties are not inherently riskier than eating at restaurants. And most people, he said, wash their hands properly, have clean kitchens and cook food at the proper temperature.

Allison Lowery, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said she, herself, eats at potlucks and is not too concerned about any risks.

“You can’t go around being scared of everything. You’ve just got to have faith.”