In a few weeks we’ll be leaving for a month of seaside (Gulf-side) writing in Florida.

As food safety dude and axman Roy Costa has pointed out, I sure hope I don’t end up in a Florida hospital, because no one is doing food inspections.

The Department of Health told Associated Press yesterday it's working with other agencies to figure out who will handle inspections at the state's 286 hospitals and 671 nursing homes. Meanwhile, the Department of Children & Families is temporarily taking over the inspection of day-care centers, which were also part of the cuts.

The health department had been inspecting facilities four times a year until Gov. Charlie Crist signed a bill (HB 5311) stopping them. Experts say people at these facilities are the most vulnerable for foodborne illnesses.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon said his agency decided to fill the gap at day cares and will temporarily oversee inspections because ``it was the right thing to do.''

DCF employees already inspect day-care facilities for safety issues. Sheldon said the Legislature was trying to consolidate inspections to prevent multiple state agencies from visiting the same facilities to inspect different standards.

The health department inspected more than 15,000 day-care centers last year, finding nearly 12,000 violations, including food from unsafe sources, poor hygiene and contaminated equipment.

I don’t really care who inspects as long as there is accountability in the system through -- at a minimum -- public availability of results and mandatory training for anyone who handles and prepares food.
 

Whenever I go to a cottage or a camp – rare these days -- I always ask about the water source, how often it is tested and whether it is chlorinated. Most people can readily answer; some can’t.

County and state health officials on Friday said several people have become ill after consuming water from a privately owned public water supply near Hebgen Lake, Montana (right, exactly as shown).

The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services has confirmed 14 cases of campylobacter gastrointestinal illness. Information collected about the cases "strongly suggests that exposure occurred at the Campfire Lodge Resort," according to the statement. At least 70 more cases are considered "probable."
Along with county health agents and DPHHS, the Montana Department of

The owners of the resort are cooperating with the probe, and have taken action to prevent future illnesses.

Mugshot hall-of-famer and deliberate vomiter on other people at baseball games, Matthew Clemmens, 21 (right, exactly as shown), was sent to prison for at least 30 days, given two years probation, and ordered to serve 50 hours of community service, and pay $315 in restitution after the incident.

Reuters cited the district attorney's office as saying in a statement that,

"Clemmens pleaded guilty to making himself throw up on a young girl at a Phillies game.”

USA Today reported in April, 2010, the barf started brewing when the man’s friend was kicked out of the stadium after the police captain complained to security about their drunktard ways which included cursing and spitting at people. When the man’s friend was escorted out of the place, he retaliated by putting his fingers down his throat and barfing all over an off-duty police captain and his 11-year-old daughter.

When police arrived to arrest the man, he spewed on another officer. In addition to attacking the officers with the insides of his stomach the man also punched a couple of cops.

Baseball is so boring.

In the wake of several high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness at catered events – 180 people barfing after 3 events prepared by an unlicensed caterer in North Dakota last year, and 57 people barfing at events at an Illinois catering hall this month – MSNBC reports today catered events make more people sick than outbreaks involving meals at restaurants or prepared at home.

Uh-huh.

The story says that new figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control “show that illnesses from reported outbreaks of food poisoning linked to catering outpace those from restaurants or home cooking. 36 illnesses per catering outbreak; 13 at restaurants or home-prepared meals.

Between 1998 and 2008, there were 833 outbreaks of foodborne illness traced to caterers, incidents that sparked 29,738 illnesses, 345 hospitalizations and 4 deaths, according to Dana Cole, a CDC researcher.

Proportionately, the outbreaks from catering are higher than the 22,600 illnesses from 1,546 reported home cooking outbreaks and the 101,907 illnesses from 7,921 outbreaks in restaurants and delis.

“Partly that’s because at larger banquets and weddings the number of people served tend to be larger,” Cole said.

Uh-huh.

I hadn’t heard about this new data, and can’t comment on its validity because it hasn’t, as far as I can tell, been published anywhere. One, Dana Cole, and a couple of others from CDC are scheduled to present results next Tuesday at the annual meeting of the International Association for Food Protection in a talk entitled, Sources and settings: contaminated food vehicles and the settings of foodborne disease outbreaks.

Usually the media stuff happens after the data is at least presented, and preferably after the paper is peer-reviewed and published. I look forward to reading the scoring system the researchers uses: if spinach is contaminated on a farm with E. coli O157:H7 and makes people barf after eating at a catered event, a restaurant, or a home, how is that scored? And does it matter?

Jacob, C.J. and Powell, D.A. 2009. Where does foodborne illness happen—in the home, at foodservice, or elsewhere—and does it matter? Foodborne Pathogens and Disease, 6(9): 1121-1123.
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2008.0256



Foodservice professionals, politicians, and the media are often cited making claims as to which locations most often expose consumers to foodborne pathogens. Many times, it is implied that most foodborne illnesses originate from food consumed where dishes are prepared to order, such as restaurants or in private homes. The manner in which the question is posed and answered frequently reveals a speculative bias that either favors homemade or foodservice meals as the most common source of foodborne pathogens. Many answers have little or no scientific grounding, while others use data compiled by passive surveillance systems. Current surveillance systems focus on the place where food is consumed rather than the point where food is contaminated. Rather than focusing on the location of consumption—and blaming consumers and others—analysis of the steps leading to foodborne illness should center on the causes of contamination in a complex farm-to-fork food safety system.

Food is 21st century snake oil.

And shopping for food can be so confusing.

Natural, organic, local, antioxidants, welfare-friendly, whole wheat made predominantly with white flour, hormone-free, hucksterism of whatever kind.

Juliana Barbassa of Associated Press reports today that a disagreement among poultry producers about whether chicken injected with salt, water and other ingredients can be promoted as "natural" has prompted federal officials to consider changing labeling guidelines.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture had maintained that if chicken wasn't flavored artificially or preserved with chemicals, it could carry the word "natural" on the package.

But the agency agreed to take another look at its policy after some producers, politicians and health advocates noted that about one-third of chicken sold in the U.S. was injected with additives that could represent up to 15 percent of the meat's weight, doubling or tripling its sodium content. Some argue that could mislead or potentially harm consumers who must limit their salt intake.

The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service plans to issue new proposed rules this fall.

Perdue, the nation's third largest poultry producer, is among those pushing for a change. The company has joined a group called the Truthful Labeling Coalition, which has hired a lobbyist and launched an advertising campaign.

The two largest chicken processors, Pilgrim's Pride and Tyson Foods, are among those that affix "natural" labels to chicken injected with extra salt and water.

A buyer perusing the chicken counter at a San Francisco supermarket agreed.

Muembo Muanza, 30, said he read the label and considered the price but never thought to check the salt content when buying fresh chicken.

"If it says natural, I expect it to be all natural - nothing but chicken," he said.

I’d be more interested if food-types would start marketing based on microbial food safety.

“I never thought that a mouse could have salmonella. It just never entered my mind.”

So says Steve Gilfillan, 51, a deputy sheriff in Council Bluffs, Iowa, who, according to the New York Times this morning, keeps “a couple hundred” garter snakes in several neat rows of roomy enclosures in his basement. The snakes, he said, are like part of the family, which leads to a certain familiarity.

“As far as precautions, I don’t know,” said Mr. Gilfillan, adding his three children helped feed and care for his pets. “Snakes got to eat and snakes got to poop and you got to clean it up. It’s just the nature of keeping them.”

More than 400 people, many of them snake owners or their children, in the United States and Britain, have been sickened by salmonella outbreaks, all traced to frozen mice sold over the Internet as food for exotic pets by a small Georgia company called MiceDirect.

The company announced this week a recall involving millions of frozen mice and said that it would begin irradiating future shipments to kill infectious bacteria.

MiceDirect also recalled frozen rats and baby chickens used as pet food by reptile fanciers, although those products had not been linked to the salmonella outbreaks.

Health officials said that owners of reptiles should be mindful that such pets, including snakes and turtles, often carry salmonella and have been the cause of outbreaks in the past. Rodents carry similar risks, whether kept as pets or used as food for other animals.

Snakes can become infected after eating tainted mice, although the snakes may show no signs of illness, said Dr. Casey Barton Behravesh, a veterinarian and epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Snake owners can become sick from handling the frozen or thawed mice, handling infected snakes or cleaning feces from an enclosure.

Mr. Gilfillan and many other snake owners thaw mice to serving temperature in warm water. Dr. Barton Behravesh said people should not use a microwave oven, because the bacteria could spread to other food.

She also said that mice and reptiles should be kept out of the kitchen and away from areas where food is served. Reptile cages should not be cleaned in the kitchen sink, she said, and mice should not be kept in a freezer with food for humans.

And she said that reptile owners should wash their hands thoroughly after handling their pets or the rodents the pets eat.

The first salmonella outbreak linked to MiceDirect began in Great Britain in August 2008. Since then, more than 400 people have fallen ill there, about two-thirds of them have been children under 10, according to Chris Lane, a senior epidemiologist of the Health Protection Agency’s Center for Infections in London. Although the shipments of tainted mice were halted last year, people continue to get sick there, Mr. Lane said.

The first case in the United States appeared in January 2010, according Dr. Barton Behravesh. The C.D.C. has identified more than 30 cases in 17 states with the same strain as the British outbreak. She said the cases were not concentrated in one region but spread across the country. Half the victims were under 12.
Accounts from both sides of the Atlantic suggest that American authorities were slow to react to indications of a problem.

British investigators looking into the outbreak found that many of the victims came from families where snakes were kept as pets. They eventually began looking at the frozen mice fed to the snakes and found shipments from MiceDirect that contained the same strain of salmonella as that isolated from the victims.

British officials contacted MiceDirect, Mr. Lane said, and the company promised to act to prevent further contamination.

On July 21, 2010, the F.D.A. told the company that tests of its products and plant had found salmonella. Two days later, the agency said, MiceDirect agreed to a recall.

But the recall effort has been haphazard. The company’s recall notice was not prominently posted on its Web site until Thursday. And neither the company’s site nor the F.D.A.’s site gave clear instructions on what to do with mice that customers still had.
 

Chicago Breaking News reports that at least four people were hospitalized and 53 others reported illnesses after attending wedding parties this month at a banquet hall in south suburban Mokena, Illinois, leading Will County health officials to try to determine the cause.

The Health Department is looking for others who may have gotten sick after attending weddings at Di Nolfo's Banquet Inn and Catering on July 16 and 17.

Health officials believe the source of the illness is norovirus. Health officials collected and tested food from Di Nolfo's, 9425 W. 191st Street, but did not find any significant violations. None of Di Nolfo's employees have reported illnesses, officials said.
 

In Jan. 2010, Michelle blogged about the popularity of squirrel meat in the U.K. and someone commented,

“I live in the U.K. and have never ever seen squirrel being sold in any supermarket or shop and would be quite surprised if I ever did! As far as I’m aware its not popular at all.”

The Daily Mail reports this morning that a British supermarket has started selling squirrel, and is reporting "huge interest" in the cheap and healthy meat.

Grey squirrel meat is high in protein and low in fat, and is selling for just £3 ($5.25) at budget supermarket Budgens, reports.

Once a staple of English cooking, squirrel is said to have a nutty flavour and can be cooked in soups, pies and casseroles.

The North London branch of the supermarket selling the meat said there had been "huge interest" but admitted that more customers were looking rather than buying so far.

Animal welfare group Viva has accused Budgens of cashing in on a "massacre" by putting grey squirrel back on the menu, with founder Juliet Gellatley saying,

"If this store is attempting to stand out from the crowd by selling squirrel, the only message they are giving out is that they are happy to have the blood of a beautiful wild animal on their hands for the sake of a few quid.”

Health Canada is reminding Canadians that raw or undercooked sprouts should not be eaten by children, older adults, pregnant women or those with weakened immune systems.

Health Canada used to say raw sprouts should be avoided if concerned about illness, but now they are more direct. That 2005 outbreak in Ontario involving more than 648 cases of Salmonella linked to mung bean sprouts may have something to do with the newfound directness.

Fresh produce can sometimes be contaminated with harmful bacteria while in the field or during storage or handling. This is particularly a concern with sprouts. Many outbreaks of Salmonella and E. coli infections have been linked to contaminated sprouts.

Children, older adults, pregnant women and those with weakened immune systems are particularly vulnerable to these bacteria and should not eat any raw sprouts at all. They should also avoid eating cooked sprouts unless they can be sure the sprouts have been thoroughly cooked.