The Courier-Mail reports more than 14 Brisbane (that's in Australia) food businesses have been prosecuted by Brisbane City Council and fined a total of $338,000 for breaching food safety and hygiene standards during the past 13 months.

Photographs taken inside some Brisbane businesses during snap inspections by council officers revealed messy work benches, cobwebs, rusty pipes, dirty utensils and dead rodents in traps.

One South Brisbane restaurant was fined $22,000 in July after it was found guilty of six breaches of the Food Act.

The findings come as council finishes inspecting the last of Brisbane's eateries in preparation for the launch of its Eat Safe food rating program.

From November, the city's food businesses will voluntarily place ratings from two to five stars in their windows, under the scheme first revealed by The Courier-Mail in February.

So far, 4028 businesses have been inspected in preparation for the launch.

About 2504 received a rating of three stars or more and 1524 businesses scored two stars or less.

Of those, 493 businesses received a poor rating because they did not have a nominated food safety supervisor.

Eat Safe Brisbane will award five stars for excellent compliance with the state's Food Act and Food Safety Standards.

The same third-party auditor that approved salmonella-tainted peanut paste that killed nine and sickened 600 also gave DeCoster egg operations a “superior” rating and “recognition of achievement” in June 2010, just as thousands of Americans began barfing from salmonella in DeCoster eggs.

Beyond the theatre of yesterday’s House hearing about the salmonella-in-eggs outbreak that has sickened well over 1,600 was the revelation that DeCoster’s Iowa egg operations had been audited by the American Institute of Baking based in Manhattan (Kansas).

The N.Y. Times reports that documents released by the committee showed that Wright County Egg achieved a “superior” rating and “recognition of achievement” from AIB International, a private inspection company based in Manhattan, Kan., after a June inspection of its processing facility. That came just as the company was causing thousands of illnesses from contaminated eggs.

In 2008, AIB gave a “superior” rating to a Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Ga., that was later found to be riddled with salmonella that caused a nationwide outbreak and the largest food recall in American history. A spokesman for AIB could not be reached.

Elizabeth Weise of USA Today reported today that Wright County Egg, one of the Iowa farms at the center of this summer's recall of 550 million eggs, earned "superior" ratings for its facilities from a third-party auditor the past three years.

But the auditor was the same one that gave a superior rating to the Peanut Corp. of America, whose shipments were linked to a salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds a few years ago.

AIB International, of Manhattan, Kan., audited Wright's egg-packing plant twice in 2008, four times in 2009 and at least once in 2010, and every time found it to be "superior," Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said during the hearing. … Calls to AIB were not returned Wednesday.

AIB International also gave the Peanut Corp. of America's Plainview, Texas, plant a "superior" rating. An outbreak of salmonella linked to some peanut products shipped from that plant and another PCA plant in 2007 and 2008 sickened as many as 600 people and may have contributed to nine deaths.

This is beyond embarrassing. It’s criminal.

A Kansas State student wrote in 2009 that after a March 6, 2009 article in the N.Y. Times sorta shattered the myth of third-party food safety audits, he couldn’t get anyone at AIB to talk.

Since the release of the Times article, AIB now requires a minimum of two days or longer to complete an inspection at a food processing facility. AIB has also announced it will change the name of its Good Manufacturing Practices inspection certificates from “Certificate of Achievement” to “Recognition of Achievement.”

Is that like Homer Simpson winning the First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence?

Apparently, the answer is yes, given the salmonella-in-eggs poopfest.

Third-party food audits, like restaurant inspection, are a snapshot in time. Given the international sourcing of ingredients, audits are a requirement, but so is internal food safety intelligence to make sense of audits that are useful and audits that are chicken poop.

The third-party food safety audit scheme that processors and retailers insisted upon is no better than a financial Ponzi scheme. The vast number of facilities and suppliers means audits are required, but people have been replaced by paper.

Audits, inspections, training and systems are no substitute for developing a strong food safety culture, farm-to-fork, and marketing food safety directly to consumers rather than the local/natural/organic hucksterism is a way to further reinforce the food safety culture.

After the salmonella-in-peanut paste crap, Costco, a retail store, which previously limited AIB’s inspections to its bakery vendors, has now instructed suppliers to not use AIB at all.

“The American Institute of Baking is bakery experts,” said R. Craig Wilson, the top safety official at Costco. “But you stick them in a peanut butter plant or in a beef plant, they are stuffed.”

Or as Mansour Samadpour of Seattle said at the time,

“The contributions of third-party audits to food safety is the same as the contribution of mail-order diploma mills to education.”

Who were the buyers of DeCoster eggs who used AIB audits to justify putting salmonella on grocery store shelves? Any retailers want to step forward?

Coincidentally, Enreco Inc., a maker of flaxseed flours, bragged in a press release yesterday they had earned a “superior" rating from a recent AIB inspection at its Wisconsin production facility.

Enreco president Sean Moriarty said, “We are absolutely pleased to have achieved AIB’s highest rating for four consecutive years now, even while incidents of food product recalls in the last two years have caused AIB to toughen their inspections considerably."

Sean, you may want to rethink that PR.

Gonzalo Erdozain, a first-year veterinary student at Kansas State University, writes:

You may be familiar with stories about people – or aliens -- wearing meat bikinis, chicken heads in McNuggets, flies in soup and even used tampons in food (which makes me want to barf just writing about it), but I have now joined the ranks of the bizarre when I discovered a staple in my Pretzel M&M.

The fact that it was a pretzel inside an M&M was edgy enough, but to my surprise, this one last M&M came with another treat inside, a staple. After chewing on something that at first felt like a plastic strip, I decided it was time to pull it out of my mouth, and to my amusement, and that of my lab mates, it was a regular, metal staple. I would rather take my chances with Salmonella or E. coli that I know I can cook to death rather than bleeding internally to death.
 

The BBC reports that 68 people in England and 15 people in Scotland tested positive for salmonella bareilly in recent weeks.

The outbreak came to light after routine testing by a salad producer found the bacteria in bean sprouts.

The Food Standards Agency said the outbreak's source was still unknown.

They have advised that anyone planning to eat bean sprouts should cook them until steaming hot before consumption.

There’ll be the usual posturing, handwringing and contrition for the cameras at today’s Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.

Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports this morning that Jack DeCoster and his son, Peter, will apologize at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee meeting today to the 1,608 confirmed victims of a salmonella outbreak and pledge not to resume selling fresh eggs until their farms are free from disease.

“While we always believed we were doing the right thing, it is now very clear that we must do more,” said Peter DeCoster, who is chief operating officer of the Wright County Egg operations, which his father owns.

In a 10-page statement obtained by The Des Moines Register, the men point to a feed ingredient purchased from an outside supplier as the likely source of the salmonella contamination. Federal investigators have reported finding salmonella in several areas of the farms in addition to the feed mill.

This is a terrible strategy. Blaming others and failing to outline what DeCoster and Son were actually doing in terms of testing and other steps to manage the risk of salmonella – before the outbreak -- will be a rhetorical playground for even the most addle-minded Congressional-types.

It’ll be like angry parents scolding a teenager who says, sorry, I won’t do it again.

The accused is sorry he got caught.

Again.

The N.Y. Times documented this morning the 1987 salmonella-in-eggs outbreak that killed nine and sickened 500, linked to farms owned by … Austin Jack DeCoster.

Farms tied to Mr. DeCoster were a primary source of Salmonella enteritidis in the United States in the 1980s, when some of the first major outbreaks of human illness from the bacteria in eggs occurred, according to health officials and public records. At one point, New York and Maryland regulators believed DeCoster eggs were such a threat that they banned sales of the eggs in their states.

How many others were sickened by DeCoster and Son eggs over the intervening 23 years, in the absence of an outbreak?

Government’s hopeless.

Market microbial food safety at retail so I, as a consumer, have a choice, so I can reward those egg producers who effectively manage salmonella – before there’s an outbreak.
 

Health Canada said today while telling pregnant women to be especially careful about the 11 million cases of foodborne illness that strike Canadians each year that,

“Many of these illnesses could be prevented by following proper food handling and preparation techniques.”

Please, please, oh please. Show us mortals the data on which that statement is based?

And since Health Canada advises pregnant women to “make sure to cook hot dogs and deli meats until they are steaming hot before eating them,” please, please, oh please, stand up and say the advice provided by the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children Motherrisk program is complete nonsense.
 

If someone’s going to barf, why does it always seem to be at the beginning of a road trip?

Less than an hour into our final 13-hour leg to return to Manhattan (Kansas), Sorenne hurled up waffles and curdled milk from the Sleep Inn breakfast earlier that morning (but do like the Sleep Inn, friendly and good value) all over herself and car seat. It had been a barf-free five weeks on the road, so perhaps it was inevitable.

The Lysol spray we got at a truck stop seemed to mask the odors, but with 90 minutes remaining, it was strawberry barf.

Today was spent cleaning.

It’s probably too much to expect of an almost-2-year-old, but revelers who drunkenly vomit in taxis must cough up the cleanup costs, according to an Oktoberfest-related court decision published by a Munich district court on Monday.

The case involved a lawsuit brought by a taxi driver in the Bavarian capital following a nasty 2009 incident in his vehicle, a court statement said.

After picking up a Munich couple on their way home from the city's annual beer festival, the driver said the man threw up in his vehicle, which cost a combined €241 for cleanup and missed work.

The taxi driver attempted to charge the passenger, but he alleged that the driver had not obliged his request to pull over, and had berated him instead.

The ruling, made on September 2, is effective immediately, meaning drunken revelers at this year’s ongoing 200th Anniversary Oktoberfest celebration should think twice before they stumble into a cab.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Nestlé Canada Inc. are advising the public that some cans of powdered infant formula found in the Nepean, Ontario area have been tampered with.

Three cans of Nestlé Good Start Iron Fortified Infant Formula, 900g size,
UPC: 0 65000 36614 3, have been found to contain a powder which appears to be flour. These cans were found at the following retail locations: Your Independent Grocer on Strandherd Drive and Sobeys on Greenbank Drive in Nepean, Ontario.

There has been one reported illness associated with the consumption of this product.

Consumers using powdered infant formula products should look under the plastic lid of the cans and ensure the metal/foil top is sealed properly. The CFIA is conducting an investigation and the case has been referred to the police.
 

NBC Chicago reports a woman finally had enough after she stepped in her neighbor’s dog’s poop. Again.

Susan Miller first took the offending poop off her shoe, and wiped it on her neighbor’s porch.

Police report that Miller next "threw dog feces at the [dog owner's] sliding patio screen."

On the grounds was a sign informing dog walkers to pick up after their pets.

Miller reportedly "uprooted it and placed it on the dog owner's patio."

As if that weren't enough, the angry woman topped it all off by allegedly placing several small, green plastic bags of dog poo "on various places on the patio," reports the Naperville Sun.