Jim Prevor, sometimes known as the Perishable Pundit, has offered a plan to improve food safety. Writing in The New Atlantis, Prevor says sure, government has an important role in food safety, but the current focus on legislation is misguided. Or at least that’s my summary. Here’s some more summarized stuff from Prevor’s article. The first two suggestions caught my attention – the rest is boilerplate stuff. (The complete article has also been translated into French by Albert Amgar and is available here.)

1. Switch to a negligence standard from a strict liability standard, and switch primary liability to the trade buyer

Because of strict liability, the primary food safety concern among retailers in the U.S. is that their vendors carry sufficient liability insurance. By contrast, in the United Kingdom and certain other foreign countries, supermarkets can be held liable in court if a person becomes ill or dies and it is shown that the retailer did not exercise proper due diligence in vetting suppliers.

Second, because the standard is strict liability, farmers and processors get no return on their investment in food safety if they have the bad luck to have an outbreak. In other words, the liability is strictly theirs whether they invested millions, going above and beyond all food safety standards, or they did nothing at all.

Combining this strict liability standard with a concentrated buying environment, where large chains such as Wal-Mart, Costco, Kroger, Safeway, and Supervalu account for the vast majority of purchases, results in a potentially troublesome situation. At these big buyers, although official corporate policy may place a priority on food safety and the individuals employed may care about food safety, the day-to-day institutional imperative is to get lower prices from vendors. Most producers are more than willing to give buyers exactly as much food safety as they are willing to pay for. But buyers, who are not liable for food safety problems, have precious little incentive to pay extra for higher food safety standards. …

In other words, food safety is primarily a tradable good in the marketplace. In deciding that the producer is liable no matter how diligent his efforts and that the retailer is not liable no matter how lax his efforts, the judicial system has distorted the way the market meets the consumer interest in food safety. Solving this problem is far more likely to enhance food safety than giving the FDA additional power. After all, the FDA doesn’t produce or buy food; it is always going to be a much more indirect player in moving the needle on food safety than members of the industry.

2. Root out bribery and corruption in food safety certification

The best federal agency to enhance food safety is not the FDA but the FBI. Few buying operations have the capability to have their own personnel inspecting and monitoring producers along today’s global supply chains. The solution is to rely on third-party certification agencies. Trade buyers can establish their own standards or agree to accept other well-recognized standards, such as those of the British Retail Consortium. Adherence to these standards is then confirmed by various independent auditing groups. This is essentially the same mechanism the USDA uses to implement organic certification. The problem is that there is widespread corruption associated with these certifications, especially in areas such as China, Eastern Europe, and many developing countries, though auditors that are less than rigorous are also well known in the United States.

The corrupt sale of certifications poses a fundamental threat to food safety, and switching to government inspectors doesn’t solve the problem. First, the U.S. government has no authority to run inspections in China. Second, if the government were to use locals in other countries to run inspections, it would face the same problems as a private auditor — keeping the loyalty of local employees whose family, clan, and national interests all compel them to approve facilities and products. Third, whether through sloth or corruption, there are all too many examples of government inspectors not doing their jobs right here in the United States — from rats running wild in a KFC that had been inspected just the night before to horrid conditions at the 7th Street Market in Los Angeles to a payola scandal at the Hunts Point Produce Market in New York.

Beyond establishing a proper liability regime, increasing the reliability of food safety certifications by rooting out bribery and corruption is perhaps the single most valuable contribution the federal government could make toward food safety.

Many countries have a Food Safety Week or Month, which seem primarily designed to circulate bad information and blame consumers for getting sick.

The U.K. celebrates Food Safety Week 2010 from June 7-13 (I can hear the monster truck radio promo dude doing the voice-over for the commercials – ‘experience the thunder, Food Safety Week 2010 will rock your world’).

This year, the focus is on Campylobacter, which, at 55,000 reported cases annually, causes the greatest number of foodborne illnesses in the UK. The key messages for this year’s campaign are to cook thoroughly and avoid cross-contamination.

The communication types at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) have come up with a draft press release that local councils could use to promote the good deeds of Food Safety Week (or in bureau-speak, FSW!) entitled, Take simple steps to avoid food poisoning.

If avoiding food poisoning was so simple, why do so many people get sick?

“People should not worry unduly about food poisoning; there are some simple common sense steps people can take to avoid getting ill. Just storing, handling and cooking food properly will minimise the risk.”

Can I duly worry about barfing from the food I eat?

Bob Martin, a food safety expert at the FSA, said,

“Proper cooking will kill food bugs. It's especially important to make sure poultry, pork, burgers and sausages are cooked all the way through. If there's any pink meat or the juices have any pink or red in them, germs could be lurking! Check your food is steaming hot all the way through before serving.”

These are not recommendations for proper cooking; these are recommendations for food safety failures. Is steaming hot an improvement on piping hot? How do I check if food is steaming hot, won’t I burn something? Do hamburgers and chicken legs steam when they are cooked? Is color really the best way to tell if food is cooked? Why do bureaucrats have to excessively use exclamation marks?

As part of the interactive learning section, the British feds ask,

Q4. How can you tell that chicken is properly cooked? (Tick all that apply.)

1. It’s hot on the outside
2. It’s not pink
3. The juices run clear
4. After the time stated on the instructions
5. It’s golden brown
6. It’s steaming hot all the way through

A. It’s not pink, the juices run clear and it’s steaming hot all the way through, 2,3, and 6.

To ensure chicken is properly cooked, you should check the thickest bit of meat, either large pieces in something like a curry, or with a roast bird at the thickest part between the breast and leg. The meat should be steaming hot, with no pinkness and any juices should run clear.

Check it with your eyes? Your finger? Your tongue? How about, check it with a tip-sensitive digital thermometer because color is a lousy indicator for food safety.

“During 2010, the Agency will be developing a new campylobacter risk management programme. Although this new programme is expected to involve extensive work with industry to reduce the prevalence of campylobacter in UK-produced retail chicken, the promotion of messages about good food hygiene to consumers through initiatives such as Food Safety Week will remain an important factor in reducing human campylobacter infections.”

There is no evidence such information programs do anything but lower the credibility of a supposedly science- or evidence-based agency.

On this Memorial Day, which can be traced back to Decoration Day at the end of the American civil war, stick with some of the cooking advice from the Americans and Canadians – use a tip-sensitive thermometer and stick it in.

Albert Amgar, blogmaster of France’s coolest food safety blog, wrote me after I posted about the 88 people sick with Salmonella from dry sausage in France.

What I had missed was that although the outbreak had been on-going for at least 10 weeks, the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance did not publicly report the outbreak until May 28, 2010, and used a Salmonella naming system that would mean nothing to most people (Salmonella 4,12 :i :-).

No company was named, no statement was released by anybody telling consumers to beware certain foodstuffs.

It was the Belgians who did that, through a press release entitled, La société Salaisons du Lignon adopte le principe de precaution et lance un plan de rappel sur un produit: Saucisse sèche droite La Pause Auvergnate, that identified the Lou Mountagnard brand of dried sausages.

The pdf press release file is linkable through Albert’s blog at http://amgar.blog.processalimentaire.com/?p=8937, where he asks, in my broken English summation, why do French citizens, 88 who are confirmed ill, have to learn details about contaminated product from a city in Belgium? (The image, below left,  is from Albert's blog.

Our man in France, Albert Amgar passed along this report of an on-going outbreak of Salmonella; translated by Amy Hubbell.

Forty-four cases have been investigated to date. Among these, 18 people have been hospitalized and have since returned home.

For the investigated cases, the symptoms appeared between March 15 and May 9, 2010.

The questioning of patients about the food they consumed during the 7 days preceding their illness showed a high frequency of consumption of dry sausage bought from the same brand.

A traceback showed that these sausages came from the same batch produced in a single firm in France, distributed nationally during the first two weeks of March 2010. The best by date for this batch extends from June 1 to 15, 2010.

The identified batch of dried sausage was recalled (consumer information was posted and communicated in a press release) by the producer on May 27, 2010.

Translator’s Note: A subsequent news search reveals that the recall is for the Lou Mountagnard brand of dried sausages. (France 24, May 28, 2010).

In a return to the I-like-Ike 1950s, chicken salad contaminated with Clostridium perfringens was confirmed as killing three and sickening more than 40 at Central Louisiana State Hospital in Pineville.

Dr. David Holcombe, medical director for Region 6 of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals' Office of Public Health, said C. perfringens is a naturally occurring organism, but it can spread to unsafe levels with improper food storage and handling.

The bacteria form spores that spread through food that has not been properly stored and become hard to completely cook away, Holcombe said, and they begin producing a toxin that makes people sick once they enter the lower intestine.

A friend of mine, who has a background in food safety (and counter insurgency warfare) writes again about his experiences in Afghanistan:

Recent concerns over water quality in Nashville and Boston brought this story to mind. There I was, Davudsi, Zabul Province, Afghanistan. My interpreter, another U.S. soldier and I left the base with the Afghan Army company we mentored to embark on an Afghan Brigade-planned mission.

I soon realized it would be a long day. I was wearing all necessary army equipment, plus a bag with extra ammo, food, and bottled water for myself, the Sergeant who kept me out of trouble, and my interpreter. By lunch time I was being laughed at by my Afghan counterpart who carried only his rifle and a radio.

As our mission progressed, I saw something that made my stomach turn – in the ditch that ran through town, my interpreter bent down and took a deep drink (Below, exactly as shown).  After warning him he would get sick from it and reminding him I had brought water for him, I was able to lighten my load and hand off a bottle.  Thirty minutes later, I saw him filling the empty bottle in the stream again. Oh, boy…

The day passed without incident, and we returned to the base that night.  However, the night was not incident free for my interpreter -- most of it was spent on the toilet seat. This base was a “poop-in-a-bag-and-burn-it” kind of place. So there was a toilet seat that you hung a plastic bag under, take care of business into the bag, tied it up, and threw it into the burn pit.  I can only assume this is much worse with diarrhea.

Chapman occasionaly has lunch at Taco Bell with the writer.

I’ve never been on a cruise. I like to think that I have a few outfits that would qualify as cruise wear but that’s about as close as I’ve been. Dani and I have discussed maybe going sometime, especially since we live within a four-hour drive of Charleston, but we’re going to try out an NC beach vacation first.  After my campylobacter experience last Fall (that I use in pretty well every talk I give), maybe a cruise would be a good place to generate some more material.  Through cleaning and sanitizing after an outbreak is one of the biggest noro control measures for vessels, but if that doesn’t work, like was seen earlier this year with the Celebrity Mercury in three straight voyages, maybe it’s time to move the ship to Europe and rename it?

The most recent food safety infosheet addresses Norovirus outbreaks on cruiseships and cleaning up vomit as noro control.

You can download the infosheet here.

Over 10 years after the Dirty Dining series of articles appeared in the Toronto Star, which led to the creation of the red-yellow-green restaurant inspection disclosure system, and the arguments haven’t changed: people want the information, good restaurants promote their good food safety scores, and the various lobbies think the system is silly.

After watching for 10 years, I figure no politician is going to restrict this kind of information to the public; so figure out the best way to make such information available.

As New York City prepares to adopt a letter-grading disclosure system, similar to that in Los Angeles, the N.Y. Times reports that at a public hearing Tuesday, the health-department announced it had received 280 written public-hearing comments — 273 for, 6 against and one ambiguous. But none of the 80 who attended the hearing came to the plan’s defense.

Vincent J. Mazzone, owner of the Chicken Masters restaurant in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, told the hearing,

“The premise of the letter-grading is sophomoric, and punitive and demeaning to restaurateurs, as if they are schoolchildren who must be graded.”

Marc Murphy, chef and owner of Landmarc Restaurant in TriBeCa, said that average diners “will see a C grade and no one will come in — they might as well close shop. Everyone in our business is not against health inspections, but we don’t want bad letter grades from trivial infractions.”

In March the board voted 6 to 2, with one abstention, to rate cleanliness in the city’s more than 24,000 restaurants using publicly posted letter grades, compelling operators to post inspectors’ ratings that were previously available only at the department or online.

Under the program the city will supply the placards to restaurants rated with a blue A for the highest grade (from 0 to 13 points under the old system), a green B for a less sanitary but still passing rating (13 to 27 points), and a yellow C for a failing grade (28 points or more). The signs are to be dated, and prominently posted in windows or restaurant vestibules.

Thomas Slattery of the United Restaurant and Tavern Owners of New York told the commissioners

“In L.A., it’s basically a joke — everyone gets an A.”

Guess he’s never heard of C is for Chinese in L.A., but people show up anyway.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that as of 11:00 AM EDT on May 26, 2010, a total of 28 individuals infected with a matching strain of Salmonella Newport have been reported from 10 states since March 1, 2010. The number of ill people identified in each state with this strain is as follows: AZ (2), CA (14), CO (1), ID (3), IL (1), MO (1), NM (1), NV (2), OR (1), and WI (2). Among those for whom information is available about when symptoms started, illnesses began between March 1, 2010 and May 7, 2010. Case-patients range in age from <1 to 75 years old, and the median age is 32 years. Sixty-four percent of patients are female. Among the 20 patients with available hospitalization information, 6 (30%) were hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

Collaborative investigative efforts of many local, state, and federal public health, agriculture, and regulatory agencies have linked this outbreak to eating raw alfalfa sprouts. Interviews of case-patients found that most reported eating raw alfalfa sprouts before becoming ill. Some case-patients reported eating sprouts at restaurants; others purchased sprouts at grocery stores. The initial investigation traced the implicated raw alfalfa sprouts to a single sprout processor in California. Investigations are currently ongoing at the sprout processor.

On May 21, 2010, J.H. Caldwell and Sons Inc. of Maywood, CA, recalled several brands of alfalfa sprouts distributed to wholesale distributors, restaurants, delicatessens, and grocery stores.