I don’t know what a Ring Pop is but the candy (right) probably shouldn’t contain metal.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is investigating after a Calgary boy found pieces of metal in two Ring Pops bought at an Ogden corner store.

Dean Anderson and his son Sloan, 11, stopped at the Bella Food Store on Ogden Rd. on Sunday to buy a Ring Pop candy.

“He took a lick on it and immediately flinched and said ‘ouch.’ We examined it and picked out a little piece of metal. It scratched his tongue.”

So he let his son go back to the store to get a second Ring Pop and when he opened it, found another piece of metal.

“It was jagged in shape, not like a pin.”

A spokeswoman for the CFIA confirmed Wednesday night the agency is looking into the matter.

I used to go on this annual golf trip that originated out of Guelph and ended up somewhere in Virginia or North Carolina about this time of year because it was relatively warm to people from Ontario and ridiculously cold to people in the south.

We got cheap rates.

I don’t golf much anymore. I like my wife.

One of the guys I used to regularly golf with worked for one of those financial ratings companies. He gave everyone golf balls. He was a bit tense last year, what with the financial meltdown and my endless taunting.

I thought of that person watching this bit from The Daily Show last night where Jon Stewart attempts to explain the underpinnings of the U.S. financial crapshoot.

And I couldn’t help think about the role of third-party food safety auditors in some of the spectacular (and tragic) outbreaks of foodborne illness in the past few years.

In the video below (takes a few minutes to get into it) use the words “food safety auditor” instead of third-party financial rating whenever it comes up.

Substitute money with safe food.

The Consumer Protection Agency is like the proposed single-food inspection agency; do people in Washington, D.C. really just play shuffle the chairs?

Substitute Peanut Corporation of America for Lehman Brothers, and Jimmy for AIB.

Sigh …

Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities.

There’s lots of other definitions, but Amy and I spent some time figuring this one out so that’s what we’re going with. (That’s Amy, right, talking about language, culture, memory and Pied-Noirs, the former French inhabitants of Algeria, at her undergraduate alma mater, Truman University in Kirksville, Missouri, where she was feted Monday night.)

Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart wrote in his aptly named 2009 book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture, and that culture is patterned ways of thought and behaviors that characterize a social group which can be learned through socialization processes and persist through time.

Yiannas also writes:

• The goal of the food safety professional should be to create a food safety
culture – not a food safety program.

• An organization’s culture will influence how individuals within the group
think about food safety, their attitudes toward food safety, their willingness
to openly discuss concerns and share differing opinions, and, in general, the
emphasis that they place on food safety.

• When it comes to creating, strengthening, or sustaining a food safety culture
within an organization, there is one group of individuals who really own it –
they’re the leaders.

• Having a strong food safety culture is a choice. The leaders of an organization
should proactively choose to have a strong food safety culture because
it’s the right thing to do, as opposed to reacting to a significant issue or
outbreak.

• Creating or strengthening a food safety culture will require the intentional
commitment and hard work by leaders at all levels of the organization,
starting at the top.

• Although no two great food safety cultures will be identical, they are likely to
have many similar attributes.

• Identifying food safety best practices can be useful, but one major drawback
to creating such a list is that it doesn’t really demonstrate how these activities
are linked together or interrelated. It misses the big picture – the system.

• To create a food safety culture, you need to have a systems-based approach to
food safety.

Chris Griffith, formerly of the University of Wales in Cardiff, and colleagues, have just published three papers in the British Food Journal with their take on food safety culture.

Griffith proposes that food safety culture is,

The aggregation of the prevailing, relatively constant, learned, shared attitudes, values and beliefs contributing to the hygiene behaviours used within a particular food handling environment.

Griffith also writes there are many attributes from organizational safety culture that can be applied to food safety culture, including:

• it describes beliefs shared by members in an organization;

• it requires a contribution from people at all levels;

• it has an impact on work performance/behaviour, practices or behavioural norms;

• it concludes a set or subset of values and attributes that are relatively stable and which may be resistant to change;

• there are likely to be a range of factors contributing to culture and that business
with a strong culture can achieve this in a range of ways;

• culture is communicated to and learned by new staff;

• an organization can be composed of several subcultures; and,

• there maybe different food safety cultures at different levels within an
organization, especially in larger ones.

The second paper concludes that food safety does not happen by accident and to produce safe food consistently, especially on a large scale, requires management. Management includes the systems that are used and the organizational food safety culture of compliance with those systems. Food poisoning will never be totally prevented however to a considerable extent a business does get the food poisoning it deserves.

I’m thinking Peanut Corporation of America, and about 100 other examples.

Finally, Griffith et al. develop six potential groupings to assess food safety culture within an organization including ; food safety management systems and style, food safety leadership, food safety communication, food safety commitment, food safety environment and risk perception.

These are valuable contributions to the emerging concept of food safety culture. Chapman and I look at how best to influence and nurture that culture – how to keep the mundane aspects of food safety relevant for all those communities in the farm-to-fork food safety system including farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens.

Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages. That’s why we create food safety infosheets (in several languages), blog posts (even the silly ones) and get out in the field to figure out what works best. Talking with people helps.

The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

A kitchen porter at a £27,000-a-year private school has been arrested for allegedly poisoning soup meant for pupils and teachers with diesel.

Staff raised the alarm after noticing the food had a chemical smell while carrying out routine checks at Stowe school.

A 58-year-old man was arrested at his home near Brackley, Northamptonshire, yesterday on suspicion of administering poison. He was later bailed and also suspended by the school.

A school source said students were told to keep quiet and not even discuss it with friends or on Facebook.

A pupil told the Mirror,

The guy involved has been at the school's catering department for years. The soup was ditched straight away when another member of catering smelled it. We were told not to discuss it outside school.
 

New York City is going to adapt a Los Angeles-style display and disclosure system to, according to the Board of Health, “to give consumers more information on the sanitary condition of New York City restaurants.”

Good for them, although no research has been done comparing the effectiveness of various disclosure systems – letters (proposed NYC display, right), colors (like in Toronto), smiley faces (like in Denmark), and the prominence of the display (big signs in front windows or little signs behind the greeters table).

But we’re working on that, with barfbloggers Katie, Rob and Ben (and sometimes me) all conducting such research in Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. respectively.

In New York City,

The new initiative requires all restaurants to publicly display letter grades that summarize the results of Health Department food-safety inspections. Besides helping New Yorkers make informed choices, letter grades will promote food safety by making restaurants directly accountable to consumers.

Under the new system, restaurants will receive grades based on the number of violations documented during their sanitary inspections. Each establishment will post a placard at the point of entry, showing its current sanitary grade, and restaurants receiving A grades will be inspected less often than those receiving lower marks.

Letter grades will make the inspection process more transparent, giving every potential customer instant access to important information. At the same time, the risk-based inspection schedules will focus City resources on restaurants that warrant the most scrutiny. The Health Department plans to enact the new system in July.

AP reports the New York State Restaurant Association has called the system gimmicky and unfair.

Marc Murphy, a vice president of the association and the owner and chef at the Manhattan restaurants Landmarc and Ditch Plains, said,

They're doing a disservice to the public,” and that the letter grading system will serve to embarrass restaurateurs without giving the public a true picture of the establishment's cleanliness.

Those are familiar complaints, popping up every time a city or county or region or state tries to do something. I see little or no evidence to support the complaints.

The Board of Health also said the ultimate goal is to improve sanitary conditions and reduce the risk of food-borne illness. Tainted restaurant food causes several thousand hospitalizations in New York City each year, and as many as 10,000 emergency-room visits. After Los Angeles instituted a letter grading system, the proportion of restaurants meeting the highest food-safety standards rose from 40% to more than 80%, and hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses fell.

Robert Bookman, counsel for the restaurant association, assailed the city's claim that incidents of food-borne illness dropped in Los Angeles after the implementation of a similar system there, noting that that city had also simultaneously begun requiring restaurant staff to take food safety classes for the first time.

Providing demonstrable evidence linking disclosure with a decline in foodborne illness is a stretch – there are too many mitigating factors to control for. I argue disclosure enhances the food safety culture of restaurants and the community because people really talk about these things, which may indirectly result in fewer people getting sick. And disclosure provides information that citizens in a democracy are entitled too.

Now, how to make these disclosure systems better.

More information on the proposed NYC restaurant grading system is available at
www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/notice/notice.shtml
 

Where is the unintentionally funny and still, inexplicably, Minister of Agriculture in Canada, Gerry-death-by-a-1,000-cold-cuts-and-isn’t-my-moustache-awesome Ritz as the latest listeria outbreak unfolds in Canada. He was front and center last time. How about the Canadian Food Inspection Agency? What about the Public Health Agency of Canada or Health Canada?

The Public Health Agency of Canada could not immediately say whether any listeriosis cases in other jurisdictions are under investigation for a link to Siena meats.

Can’t say or won’t say? It’s OK, you can tell me, I’m a doctor.

Canwest News Service reports that the Canadian province of Ontario is left to poke around the latest listeria mess and will now be investigating five listeria deaths for connections to Siena Meats.

Spokesman Andrew Morrison said the deaths are not linked to two previously recalled meat products from Siena Foods Ltd. which were matched, through a genetic fingerprint, to two non-fatal listeriosis cases in the province, adding,

“It’s important to note that those new products they recalled have a different genetic fingerprint than the first two. Regarding these newly recalled products, Ontario’s investigation is underway to determine any linkages to that.”

A string of reviews into the Maple Leaf listeriosis outbreak showed major gaps in the oversight of Canada’s food system and co-ordination problems with public health officials, including a report by independent investigatory Sheila Weatherill.

In her final report released last July, Weatherill — appointed by the federal government — zeroed in on a “vacuum in senior leadership” among government officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that caused “confusion and weak decision-making.”

She also called on PHAC to take the communications lead during foodborne illness outbreaks.

Which is why it is notable the apparently poorly named Public Health Agency of Canada has once again zoned out during an outbreak.

Introducing the Foodscan 3000, which is way better than the Foodscan 2000 -- or at least by a thousand -- and completely blows away the Foodscan 1814.

According to a press release from the Israeli-based company, “MS Food Safety is currently developing the FOODSCAN 3000, a hand-held and portable food contamination detector. The development program of the FOODSCAN 3000 addresses the current gaps in food safety & product inspection. It uses the most advanced scientific and technological approach to identify potential foodborne illnesses ahead of time. This helps protecting consumers from unintentional or deliberate contamination.”

Any company going by MS Food Safety is suspect; a company called PhD Food Safety would be much more credible.

“You need to have an instrument by your beside that can detect the food contaminants real-time without the need to rely on the lengthy and costly lab analysis process. The FOODSCAN 3000 is the only hand-held and portable food contamination detector than can detect the contamination caused by common pathogens such as Salmonella, E.coli O157:H7, Listeria and others.”

You bet I want an instrument by my beside.

As one notable food safety type said,

“The company should be sued for false advertising.”

Traducido por Gonzalo Erdozain
Resumen del folleto informativo mas reciente:
- 7 de los 21 casos relacionados requirieron hospitalización
- La Shigella estará presente en la materia fecal del individuo infectado por hasta dos semanas luego de haberse recuperado de los síntomas. El lavado de manos es un factor importante para controlar el riesgo de contagio.
- Ron y Sarah Bowers han presentado la querella en nombre de su hijo de dos años de edad, quien empezó a manifestar síntomas de shigelosis (nausea 
y calambres estomacales) el 
27 de Febrero.
Los folletos informativos son creados semanalmente y puestos en restaurantes, tiendas y granjas, y son usados para entrenar y educar a través del mundo. Si usted quiere proponer un tema o mandar fotos para los folletos, contacte a Ben Chapman a benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.
Puede seguir las historias de los folletos informativos y barfblog en twitter
@benjaminchapman and @barfblog.

Traduzido por: Manoelita Warkentien
O mais novo folheto de Segurança Alimentar, que é uma página gráfica de histórias relacionadas a segurança alimentar – direcionadas para manipuladores de alimentos, está agora disponível em
www.foodsafetyinfosheets.com
Destaques do novo folheto:
- Foi necessário hospitalizar 7 dos 21 casos.
- A Shigella é eliminada nas fezes de indivíduos contaminados até duas semanas depois do sintomas terminarem. Lavar as mãos é um fator preventivo.
- Ron e Sarah Bowers abriu processo em nome de seu filho de dois anos de idade, que começou apresentar sintomas de shigellosis (náusea, e cólica abdominal) em 27 de Fevereiro.
Folhetos de Segurança Alimentar são criados semanalmente e são colocados em restaurantes, atacados, fazendas e usados em treinamentos por todo o mundo. Se você quiser solicitar qualquer tópico para o próximo folheto ou foto, por favor, contatar Ben Chapman em Benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu . Você pode seguir as histórias dos folhetos de segurança alimentar e barfblog em twitter @benjaminchapman e @barfblog.