We’ve got the best babysitter for Sorenne. We had two, but one went to France. The other is an early childhood development student, incredibly outgoing, and entertains Sorenne from 8-12 a.m. weekday mornings.

There are lots of great day cares and child care centers out there. But they need to be the bug, to think about how dangerous microorganisms move around in the environment, involving care givers, kids, food and poop.

Over the past week, one confirmed and two suspected E. coli illness cases have been reported to the Kittitas County Public Health Department. The confirmed case, a 5-year old Ellensburg resident, does not attend a child care facility. This child was hospitalized and has since recovered. The two suspected cases, siblings, attend Creative Kids Learning Center and Little Tot Town child care facilities, both in Ellensburg.

During a public health investigation, staff discovered that there are multiple other children and staff members with symptoms of the illness. Since some people with E. coli will have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, and there is the potential for person-to-person spread of the illness, Kittitas County Health Officer Dr. Mark Larson is requiring a temporary closure of both facilities, effective immediately.

“We understand that the temporary closure of Creative Kids Learning Center and Little Tot Town will create a hardship for working parents. The decision was not made lightly. We believe that temporarily closing these facilities is the best option to protect the health of these children,” said Dr. Larson. An outbreak of E. coli in April 2010 associated with a child care facility in Clark County, Washington resulted in the hospitalization of four children, including one who died from the illness.

Children who attend Creative Kids Learning Center or Little Tot Town will not be able to attend any child care facility until they have two tests showing they are free of illness. These tests must be given at least 24 hours apart. Testing will be free for children who attend either of the affected child care facilities, and test kits can be picked up at the Kittitas Valley Community Hospital laboratory at any time.
 

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Hong Kong Department of Health has received reports of 11 more people in food poisoning cases related to a restaurant in Jordan.

As with the earlier clusters, they ate food from the restaurant on or before June 27.

Stool specimens from six affected people in earlier clusters yielded positive result for Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

Snakes shouldn’t be on a plane. And 50 of them shouldn’t be living with young kids (or anyone).

City officials in Albuquerque, New Mexico, say three kids, ages 8, 6 and 2, along with their mother, were found on Monday living with more than 50 live snakes and some lizards.

A city public safety spokesperson called the conditions "deplorable," saying there was pet feces and urine all over the apartment. He also says the people inside were hoarders making it difficult for investigators to move around.

Animal Welfare officials say the snakes were being bred to be sold and were found in boxes.

Cages of mice and rats were also found in the apartment. Animal welfare officials say they were being used to feed the snakes.

CYFD investigators made the discovery after one of the children showed up at school smelling of urine. CYFD then checked out the apartment and found the animals.

City officials say the mother is charged with child abuse. The children are now staying with relatives.
 

When I was a student at Truman State University (then Northeast Missouri State) in Kirksville, Missouri, I would have loved to have access to a store like the planned “Near and Far, the Downtown Grocery Store. Locally Grown, International, and Bulk Foods.” I was a French major who loved to make French and Senegalese dishes with my friends, but I was limited to Walmart and Hyvee ingredients, as well as a strict budget.

Now, many years later, and married to a food safety expert, I have to giggle at the subtitle of this new shop. I know locally grown food is all the rage. We attempt to grow our own vegetables, although we are admittedly pathetic gardeners (Sorenne popped off two of my baby eggplants on Sunday and said, “Baby crying. Baby happy”). The problem with buying into the myth of farmers markets is that while it is sold locally, it is not necessarily produced locally. When the farmers market opens here in late spring, it’s rather unlikely those huge tomatoes were grown outdoors in Manhattan, Kansas. Near and Far … that is how you get the best of produce, the best variety, the best quality, and who knows about food safety. Near or far – food safety has to be taken into account on the farm, wherever that farm may be.

While the store’s name clearly represents what it is, the owner, Steve Salt (there aren’t many better names or beards for this line of business) reported to local Heartland news, “We’re going to try to stress locally produced foods. That will include fruits, vegetables, herbs, dairy products, meats, from the area surrounding Kirksville about a 50-mile-radius. Condiments, jams, jellies, baked goods.” Salt is apparently planning to use his own farm, year round, to provide produce.

Kirksville is surrounded by farming communities and there will undoubtedly be a decent supply of many locally grown items. It’s also great that they will be sold so close to campus, on the Square at 111 South Franklin. But Steve, please don’t make the students and faculty at Truman sick. Take into account the on-the-farm food safety practices, at your own farm and at neighboring farms. Be able to tell your clients not only where their food comes from, but how it was produced in a microbiologically safe environment.

4th of July is coming up and Arizona is holding it’s annual sidewalk-frying egg contest. I don’t know who comes up with these contests but whoever it is should properly inform people about the risks involved, namely salmonella.

The spokesperson for the event doesn’t “recommend” anyone actually eat the eggs but with kids hanging around and adults acting like kids, recommendations might go unheeded.

Food safety legend takes on Pulitzer-prize winning N.Y. Times reporter: who you gonna call?

About three-quarters of the way into a snoozefest of an article in QSR Magazine  about the usual Washington BS about food safety reform, things get lively, because the reporter talked to someone who actually works in microbial food safety.

David Theno gets much of the credit for saving Jack in the Box from its E. coli disaster in 1993, in which four children died and hundreds of people got sick from eating undercooked meat contaminated with the bacteria. He went on to serve at the San Diego–based company for 15 years, during which he was known as an innovator in the realm of foodservice safety procedures.

Now working as a consultant to the government and the foodservice industry, Theno has concerns about the Obama administration’s ambitions on the food-safety front.

“We’re in a government mode today where the reigning authority seems to think that government is going to fix everything. I’m not sure the government should be overseeing much of anything.”

As for the Modernization Act, Theno characterizes it as a power grab, a way for Washington to be able to tell food companies how to run their plants. He says the government already has the authority “to do what it needs to do.” For example, the FDA’s ability to recommend recalls shouldn’t be turned into a mandate, Theno says, because companies “would have to be mentally insane” to ignore a recall recommendation in light of the ensuing legal liabilities. When asked about the New York Times article, “The Burger That Shattered Her Life,” a 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner describing how food giant Cargill ignored federal recommendations, Theno says the article contained “about 1,000 misstatements of fact.”

Rather than the government increasing its oversight of the foodservice industry, Theno would like to see companies that already do a good job with food safety—the “good guys,” he calls them—helping government establish a set of best practices to which all companies would have to adhere. In fact, Theno believes such a public-private partnership is the future of food-safety policy.

The Telegram & Gazette reports from Worcester, Massachusetts – always from Worcester, as the Coast Guard types attempted to rescue the stranded sailors in the movie, A Perfect Storm (and it was actually Gloucester) – that Robert Vanzant had just sat down to a meal at the Happy and Lucky Super Buffet on Mill Street last year when he saw a most unappetizing sight — a mouse darting across the floor under the tables.

Then he saw another one.

“They were running through the whole store. I didn't finish. I made them give my money back,” Mr. Vanzant recalled. “The girls who work there were running around and screaming.”

Mr. Vanzant, who lives in Sutton, called in a complaint to the Worcester Board of Health from his cell phone that day in March 2009.

Two days later, in response to Mr. Vanzant's call (that’s responsiveness - dp), a city restaurant inspector visited Happy and Lucky and found numerous violations of the state sanitary code. His handwritten list of violations covered more than three pages.

In addition to instructing the restaurant to clean and sanitize almost every surface in the kitchen, the inspector noted in his list of requirements: “Remove cockroach infestation throughout the establishment.”

Five months later, in response to another complaint, this time about a cockroach in lo mein, a city inspector returned to the restaurant.

“Inspected establishment and found cockroaches throughout the buffet tables and found the kitchen in unsanitary conditions,” the inspector noted in his report.

While the majority of the city's roughly 1,300 restaurants, markets, convenience stores, bakeries and other holders of food permits get high marks for cleanliness and food safety, a Telegram & Gazette review of thousands of pages of routine and complaint inspection reports found that a number of establishments fail to meet the most basic health requirements.

So at what point will the inspectors shut these places?
 

It isn’t even food as I understand the definition. Which is why I always bring my own.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter on the merits of airplane food.

Who buys food on airplanes anymore? It’s ridiculously expensive and crap.

But in furthering honoring the 30th anniversary of the release of the movie, Airplane, today’s USA Today has a story about the sorry state of food on airplanes.

Six months ago, Food and Drug Administration inspectors say, they found live roaches and dead roach carcasses "too numerous to count" inside the Denver facility of the world's largest airline caterer, LSG Sky Chefs.

They also reported finding ants, flies and debris, and employees handling food with bare hands. Samples from a kitchen floor tested positive for Listeria, a bacteria that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. It's also dangerous to pregnant women.

LSG Sky Chefs, which annually provides 405 million meals worldwide for more than 300 airlines, says conditions at the Denver plant didn't meet company standards. It took immediate measures to remedy the problems, says spokeswoman Beth Van Duyne.

The Denver facility is one of many catering operations that provide food to airlines where FDA inspectors saw unsanitary and unsafe conditions in the last two years, according to inspection reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by USA Today.

The reports show "caterers for many of the nation's air carriers are contaminating foods in a number of ways," says Roy Costa, a consultant and public health sanitarian who voluntarily agreed to review the reports.
 

“The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner.”

The nominal plot of the 1980 movie, Airplane! recounts the efforts of a stalwart flight crew trying to land a commercial airliner after spoiled fish incapacitates most of the crew and passengers.

I first saw the movie Airplane at the drive-inn on the edge of Brantford, Ontario (that’s in Canada) when it came out in 1980.

I thought it was stupid.

But that’s because I was more interested in the blond next to me.

When I saw Airplane again, I thought it was hilarious.

I’ve seen the movie so many times, I can better recite the lines from Airplane than nerds who do Monty Python sketches. And Leslie Neilson, good Canadian that he is, stole the show (he’s from Saskatchewan; that’s in Canada, his brother was deputy Prime Minister of Canada for awhile in the 1980s).

As reported in the N.Y. Times today, within months of its release in July 1980, Airplane! became the highest-grossing comedy in box office history, a distinction that held until “Ghostbusters” came along in 1984. And it remains one of the most influential. Its anything-goes slapstick and furious pop culture riffs can be seen in the 20-gags-a-minute relentlessness of “The Simpsons,” “South Park” and “Family Guy” and grab-bag big-screen parodies like “Epic Movie, “Date Movie” and the “Scary Movie” franchise.

Back in 1979, when “Airplane!” was being shot on Universal’s back lot in Los Angeles, it didn’t seem like a potential blockbuster. The three Wisconsin-born filmmakers were rather amazed that anybody would give them a budget — and $3.5 million at that — to make such a lark, one that had no big stars. A follow-up to their 1977 cult film “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” which they had written, this was an extended riff on “Zero Hour!,” a glum thriller from 1957 about an imperiled aircraft that set the template for the next half-century’s worth of disaster pictures.

Food poisoning can be awesome.