Canning season throughout the U.S. will start in the next month or so. In the past couple of years I've taken up the science-based art of preserving food in glass jars.  At first, it was out of necessity, so I'd know a bit about some of the questions I was getting from folks across the state; it's now a hobby. I've got a weighted gauge pressure canner, a bunch of accessories and I think I'm going to get into dehydrating stuff this summer.
Like cooking, I'm getting better at it with practice. Unlike cooking, I don't mess around with experimenting. I don't pretend to be Bobby Flay in the kitchen (guessing at ingredient amounts, etc.) when it comes to preserving stuff in an anaerobic environment. I prefer to stick to the tested, evidence-based recipes. Mainly because I don't want botulism.
Though reliable data is often hard to access, recent outbreaks linked to the potentially complicated processes of home preservation have contributed to the national burden of foodborne illness. In 2009, a Spokane, WA nurse and her two children became ill with botulism reportedly acquired from canned green beans; the mother’s illness was so severe that she required a ventilator to breath for months. In September 2008, an Ohio man and his grandson were hospitalized as a result of botulism toxin poisoning caused by improperly canned green beans. In 2007 a Virginia couple died after consuming improperly canned foods that also contained botulism toxin.  There have been at least seven other outbreaks of botulism linked to home preservation practices across the U.S. since 1995. Improperly processed home-dried jerky products have also recently been linked to Salmonella and pathogenic E. coli outbreaks.
A historic C. botulinum-linked outbreak was featured in Sunday's Detroit Free Press turn-back-the-clock column. According to the Freep, one of the largest botulism outbreaks in the U.S. began on March 28, 1977. 59 Illnesses were linked to hot sauce served at a Mexican restaurant. The sauce was made with jalapenos that were improperly canned:
Trini and Carmen's restaurant had previously used fresh peppers, but switched to canned ones March 28.
The vegetables were canned in the fall of 1976, in anticipation of an expected shortage of jalapeños that winter. The outbreak was the second one in the U.S. that year caused by incorrectly canned jalapeños.
In a paper in published in the Am. Journal of Epidemiology detailing the outbreak, investigators found that some of the jars of jalapenos were filled and sealed with no processing. Peppers, a low acid vegetable, need to be processed using a pressure canner to inactivate C. botulinum spores. A boiling water bath wont do the trick (as it wont get the product hot enough). Filling and storing on the shelf is definitely a risky practice.
According to the investigators, the restaurant had some risk management practices in place, "After a number of days, some of the jars began to explode on their shelves. ... The jars that did not explode were kept."





 

Dr. Donald W. Schaffner, extension specialist in food science and professor at Rutgers University writes in this guest blog post:

A colleague emailed me a link the other day and asked for my opinion. He's a raw milk advocate, so I was curious. The title was intriguing -- The Complex Origins of Food Safety Rules, Yes, You Are Overcooking Your Food, a chapter precis from Modernist Cuisine -- and one of the author’s names was familiar; famous in a famous Internet nerd sort of way. Sure enough Nathan Myhrvold is a famous nerd. And I do love me those Internet nerds. So, as I often do, I saved the link to read later. As I started reading several things impressed me, most notably, a rather clear description of D-values in an article written for the general public. Unfortunately, after that the article began to fall apart. I marked up a pdf copy on my iPad and emailed the comments off to my colleague.

The next day, I was still thinking about the article. I emailed Doug to let him know I was interested in blogging about it. He was encouraging, and shared with me what he'd written already, which included a clip of Myrvold's appearance on the always entertaining Colbert Report. Essentially, I agreed with Doug, so if you are one of those TL;DR blog readers, you can stop now and get back to work.

The book chapter has a light and breezy style, and who doesn't love that, but in their attempt to be conversational, the authors miss the mark.

"Right away, you can see that decisions about pathogen-reduction levels are inherently arbitrary because they require guessing the initial level of contamination."

Arbitrary is defined as, "Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system" and while I'll be the first to note that food safety standards often lack consistency, they are not random. The problem is historical standards were developed at a time when understanding of risk, including microbial risk, was rudimentary. Quantitative microbial risk assessment applied to food has only been around for 10-15 years, while food safety laws have evolved over centuries. As a former CTO (nerd speak for chief technology officer) for a company that had to deal with backward compatibility of Microsoft operating systems (operating systems that I not longer use - sorry, I’m that guy), you'd think Myhrvold might have a better appreciation of that fact. Further, it’s not a matter of "guessing" the initial contamination level, it's a matter of understanding that the initial contamination level in foods is variable, and for any food in question, is unknowable without testing that food for the presence of pathogens. As a physicist, Myhrvold should understand that we can't observe a system (test for pathogens) without disturbing its state (have nothing left to cook).

Myhrvold and his cookery co-authors do make good points that show a level of understanding sometimes lacking in food safety professionals that were asleep during the lecture on D-values. They are completely correct that, "No matter what the standard is, if the food is highly contaminated, it might still be unsafe" after cooking. Because bacterial survival during cooking is a probability game, if a food is contaminated at the low level, it might contain pathogens after "proper" cooking just by bad luck alone.

Myhrvold et al. state "To compensate for this inherent uncertainty, food safety officials often base their policies on the so-called worst-case scenario," yet inherently contradict themselves by stating, "There are no guarantees and no absolutes.” Instead, food safety policy makers base their recommendations on conservative assumptions. Exactly how conservative to make those assumptions, and what other factors come in to play, is a risk management discussion, and not a discussion solely based on science.

One of the problems with Myhrvold and his co-authors is while they might understand the mathematics of microbial destruction, as well as the culinary arts, their understanding of food microbiology is sorely lacking. They talk about, "required pathogen reductions ... range from a 4D drop for some extended-shelf-life refrigerated foods... to a 12D drop for canned food, which must last for years on the shelf" and they imply from this, that somehow these regulations are flawed. As any food microbiologist knows (even the ones that slept through the lecture on D-values), the risks posed by extended-shelf-life refrigerated foods are quite different that the risks posed by canned food. The target pathogen in extended-shelf-life refrigerated foods is likely Listeria monocytogenes or perhaps nonproteolytic Clostridium botulinum, while the target for canned foods is proteolytic Clostridium botulinum for safety and Clostridium sporogenes for spoilage.

Myhrvold and friends have a complete lack of citations and references. For a book about the art and science of cooking, some degree of citation back to the literature or the relevant regulations would be appreciated. Some of the best writing being done today, whether long form or short recognizes the need to cite primary sources. This is hardly new, as one of my favorite science writers of all time (SJG RIP) pointed out more than 20 years ago.

For example Myhrvold et al. talk about something called "General FDA cooking recommendations" and note that "fresh food are set to reach a reduction level of 6.5D," and from the context I'm going to google-guess they mean the FDA model food code recommendations for cooking to eliminate Salmonella. In that same paragraph, Myhrvold et al. state that "Many nongovernmental food safety experts believe this level is too conservative." While this might be true, I have no way to check this supposed fact.

Myhrvold et al. go on to talk about "An expert advisory panel... 2003 report [that] questioned the FSIS Salmonella reduction standards for ready-to-eat poultry and beef products." I'm pretty sure they mean the 2003 book entitled Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food. I was part of that National Academy of Sciences committee that authored the book, and yes, we did call out the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service for "an excessively conservative performance standard.” We did this on page 9 (executive summary), in the body of the book on page 161 and on page 262 on our summary. The particular quote that I'd like to mention from the book however appears on page 148. Here we say, "Regulatory agencies need to properly set performance standards. This is a balancing act between setting a highly conservative performance standard and setting an excessively tolerant one." So, yes, while we did call out FSIS in that particular instance, we also recognize that there is a balance to be struck.

Myhrvold et al. make the statement that "in food safety, cross-contamination is often the weakest link." While it's true that cross-contamination is being increasingly realized as a means by which foodborne pathogens can cause disease, a research effort to which we have contributed, I'm curious how Myhrvold et al. determine that it is often the weakest link. They go on to state, "One powerful criticism of food safety standards is that they protect against unlikely worst-case scenarios yet do not address the more likely event of cross-contamination." While it's true that a cooking standard does not offer any protection against cross-contamination, other standards may reduce cross-contamination risk. For example, that 2003 book, Scientific Criteria to Ensure Safe Food, does note that "the Norwegian Agriculture Department is testing broiler flocks for Campylobacter and requiring positive flocks to be slaughtered after negative flocks to avoid cross-contamination at the plant; carcasses from positive flocks are then cooked or frozen under supervision," page 49, in case you'd like to check my facts. Check page 51, same book, and you'll learn than "In Denmark... pork herds that have a high prevalence of Salmonella... are slaughtered separately from animals that come from herds with a low prevalence of Salmonella in order to avoid cross-contamination during slaughter and dressing; they are also used only in cooked products."

Myhrvold et al. call out "Another conservative tactic used by health officials" which is "to artificially raise the low end of a recommended temperature range." Myhrvold himself demonstrates this fact in his appearance on the Colbert Report where he feeds Stephen pastrami cooked for 72 hours at 130 F. However, I disagree with the implication that this is somehow a vast conspiracy designed to insure people eat overcooked foods. A quick check of the USDA FSIS Appendix A guidelines shows that USDA does indicate that meat processors can cook meat at 130 F and that a 7D cook for Salmonella is reached in 121 minutes. Myhrvold et al. go on to state that “Most food pathogens can be killed at temperatures above 50 degrees C / 120 degrees F, yet food safety rules tend to require temperatures much higher than that.” The authors further state, “Technically, destruction of Salmonella can take place at temperatures as low as 48 degrees C / 120 degrees F given enough time” and “There is no scientific reason to prefer any one point on the reduction curve.”

This is where the authors’ complete lack of food microbiology experience shines through. They provide no proof of their assertion that most pathogens are killed above 120 F, but here’s the rub: some pathogens, including those like C. perfringens that might have been present in Colbert’s pastrami actually start to multiply at temperatures between 120 and 130 F, so in fact there is a very good reason to use cooking temperatures above 130 F. Hopefully Myhrvold used a calibrated thermometer, we don’t want to see Stephen on the celebrity food poisoning list.

Myhrvold et al. rail about "unscientific food safety standards." Any such standard is a policy or risk management decision. While it’s good to have science or risk-based standards, there is no such thing as a “scientific standard” because any standard, guideline or criteria must consider far more than the science.

Myhrvold et al. further rant against  “public health authorities” in what I assume was the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in fresh spinach claiming that they “told consumers, retailers, and restaurants to throw out all spinach, often directly stating in public announcements that it could not be made safe by cooking it.” According to my search I don’t see any Food and Drug Administration statement about cooking at all. FDA did “advise consumers to not eat fresh spinach or fresh spinach-containing products until further notice.” A search of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control found this advice for consumers: “E. coli O157:H7 in spinach can be killed by cooking at 160 Fahrenheit for 15 seconds.”

Myhrvold et al. note "The authorities must have decided that the benefits of avoiding multiple accidental deaths far outweighed the costs of simply tossing out all spinach," and I think they are probably correct. If you’d like to read a thoroughly researched discussion of the outbreak (with actual references!) focusing on what did consumers know, where did they get that information, and what did they do in response to the advisories issued by the FDA warning them not to eat fresh spinach, this article from my colleagues at Rutgers University would be a good place to start.

Rather than focus on whether or not advice was provided about cooking, if one were to criticize “public health authorities,” a better place to start might be whether any recall at all was needed. A review of the epidemic curve shows that by the time of the first FDA announcement on September 14, 2006, the outbreak was essentially over. In defense of my hard working colleagues in public health, as I once heard Paul Mead say, “Food safety recalls are always either too early or too late. If you're right, it's always too late. If you're wrong, it's always too early.” At least I think I heard him say that. The only source for that quote that I could find on the Internet is me.

Myhrvold et al. then move from a discussion about E. coli in spinach to Trichinella in pork, calling the recommendations (which ones? citation please) “ridiculously excessive." While it does appear from the literature that incidence in pigs is declining over time and is generally low, that unlike bacterial pathogens, Trichinella larvae are found in the muscle, not just on the surface. In any event, it appears that a microbial risk assessment is possible and if Myhrvold et al. have completed one, please do submit it for publication, and request me as an editor.

Myhrvold et al. call out, "Cooking standards for chicken, fish, and eggs, as well as rules about raw milk cheeses, all provide examples of inconsistent, excessive, or illogical standards.” Inconsistentcy is to be expected, given that different people developed different standards at different times and for different reasons. Is this a good thing? Probably not. Is it starting to change? I’d say that I’m cautiously optimistic, and kudos to those who are trying to move forward and use risk-based or risk-informed decision making processes.

While it’s true that, “A chef’s livelihood may depend on producing the best taste and texture for customers,” it’s also true that a chef’s livlihood livelihood requires customers that remain alive.

Myhrvold et al. state, “so if that meat were inherently dangerous, we’d certainly know by now.” Barbara Kowalcyk has some idea on the inherent risks from meat, the difference is that she’s actually doing something about it. Myhrvold et al. go on to state, “Scientific investigation has confirmed the practice [eating raw steak] is reasonably safe -- almost invariably, muscle interiors are sterile and pathogen free. That’s true for any meat, actually, but only beef is singled out by the FDA." Except some steaks are subject to blade tenderization, a practice that can internalize any pathogens on the surface, so just because it’s an apparently intact piece, doesn't meant that it’s pathogen free. And FDA doesn’t regulate beef, USDA FSIS has that responsibility. Assuming that Myhrvold et al. didn’t get the name of the agency wrong, then they must be talking about the FDA model food code, which is in fact not a regulation at all but model that “assists food control jurisdictions at all levels of government by providing them with a scientifically sound technical and legal basis for regulating the retail and food service segment of the industry.” And if Myhrvold et al. don’t like what the FDA model code says, they can change it (see below).

Myhrvold et al. note “Traditional cheese-making techniques, used correctly and with proper quality controls, eliminate pathogens without the need for milk pasteurization.” As they themselves have remarked earlier in the chapter, “There are no guarantees and no absolutes.” So it’s not that the French “eliminate pathogens” its just that they reduce pathogens to levels that the French consumer finds acceptable. Myhrvold et al. actually go on to make my point for me when they say "Millions of people safely consume raw milk cheese in France, and any call to ban such a fundamental part of French culture would meet with enormous resistance there." This is exactly why it doesn’t come down to science in the end. Science informs, but policy makers then deliberate, considering the science and other factors (including cultural preference), before making a decision.

Myhrvold et al. go on to note a variety of issues around raw milk cheeses including standard for import into the U.S., crossing state lines and sale within individual states and the province of Quebec, ending with, "How can these discrepancies among and even within countries persist?" It comes down to politics. And they are right; it is politics, or at least it’s food safety policy. The situation persists in the U.S. because FDA governs interstate commerce, while in-state commerce is the province of the state (or the province) and good policy considers the science, evaluates the risk and then makes a decision that is viable within that geographical boundary. They are absolutely spot on when they say “changing a regulation is always harder than keeping it intact, particularly if the change means sanctioning a new and strange food or liberalizing an old standard.” But change is possible, especially when it’s based on science.

Not content with making misstatements about food microbiology, Myhrvold et al. venture in to epidemiology, noting that many people apparently incorrectly believe “that chicken is the predominant source of Salmonella” and that "In a 2009 analysis by the CDC, Salmonella was instead most closely associated with fruits and nuts, due in part to an outbreak linked to peanut butter in 2006." Foodborne disease attribution is actually kind of complicated and while many Salmonella cases in the U.S. in 2006 might have been due to fruits and nuts, that doesn’t mean that this is always the cases year over year, or that somehow chicken is risk free.

Myhrvold et al. bring things to a close by providing the closest thing to a real citation by mentioning a National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) publication in the Journal of Food Protection in 2007 where they discover some “amazing admissions” from this panel of “health officials” that at least to my untrained eye looks to be mostly food microbiologists and one biostatistician. I was a member of that committee.

In the U.S. there are no “consumer regulations” that govern how people are to prepare foods in their own homes. If there were such regulations, they wouldn’t be administered by FSIS. Assuming this is a typo and they meant to write “recommendations,” these recommendations are in fact written by USDA FSIS Food Safety Education Staff whose mission is to inform consumers about the importance of safe food handling. The charge to NACMCF was in response to a real problem, as noted in the JFP article. “The questions were generated in response to foodborne illnesses from Salmonella related to the consumption of processed chicken products that appeared to be ready to eat (RTE) but contained poultry that was not ready to eat (NRTE).” And the FSIS staffers listened to our recommendations, reducing the whole muscle instantaneous cooking temperature from 180 F to 165 F, quite an impressive feat to “liberalize an old standard.” And while I’m delighted to learn that apparently “chicken cooked at 58 degrees C /136 degrees F and held there for the recommended time is neither rubbery nor pink,” I’d feel more confident if Myhrvold et al. provided a citation.

I’m all for letting “chefs and consumers be the ones to decide what they would prefer to eat.” I’m a food libertarian. You can eat what you want, whether you are a consumer or a chef, but if you are a chef, and you are cooking for me, I’d prefer that you calibrate your thermometer and that you follow a validated cooking protocol.

It seems that much of what Myhrvold et al. object to are the recommendations in the FDA Model Food Code. The Food Code is developed in a transparent and public process. Details can be found on the Conference for Food Protection Web site. Nathan Myhrvold, are you busy April 13 - 18, 2012? We are always chronically short of consumer representation on each of the three councils. Do you want to add to your already impressive resume? If you come to Indianapolis, Indiana, I’ll buy the beer.

Dr. Donald W. Schaffner is Extension Specialist in Food Science and Professor at Rutgers University. His research interests include quantitative microbial risk assessment and predictive food microbiology. In his free time, he reads blogs on the Internet.
 

When outbreaks of foodborne illness are suspected, health types struggle with how much information to publicly provide and when. There are so many uncertainties, and every situation has its own specifics based on potential future exposure, lethality of the agent, and getting it wrong. There aren’t any guidelines, and every county, state and federal department seems to make it up with each outbreak.

What about the collateral damage?

The St. Petersburg Times reports this morning that two days after the Hernando County Health Department (that’s in Florida, north of Tampa) issued an alert that people had gotten sick after eating at an unidentified restaurant on U.S. 19 in Spring Hill, independent restaurant owners along the busy corridor began to feel the ripple effects of the announcement.

Nadia Gauthier, manager of The Restaurant, said Thursday that business dropped by nearly half of what she was expecting as word quickly spread through the community.

"People were definitely talking about it," Gauthier said from the eatery at 3438 Commercial Way. "It seemed like they were scared to eat in a restaurant."

In the following days, concerned diners flooded the Health Department and local media with calls. Most demanded the name of the suspect eatery, noting that by not identifying the place, it painted all Spring Hill restaurants with unfair suspicion.

C.P. Damon, owner of Nellie's Restaurant in Weeki Wachee, said he saw a 50 percent decline in business.

"It hurt us really bad," Damon said. "Our customers stopped coming because they thought they were going to get sick eating here."

Perhaps his worst day was St. Patrick's Day, when his staff had prepared corned beef and cabbage for what he expected would be a robust holiday crowd. By 3 p.m., Damon decided to send two cooks and other workers home.

On Wednesday, the Health Department confirmed that more than 100 people had been stricken with norovirus after dining at or coming in contact with someone who dined at Kally K's Steakery & Fishery, 3383 Commercial Way, Spring Hill.

But when the agency released its original alert on March 15, it declined to name the restaurant, citing its ongoing joint investigation with the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

Damon thought that was bad policy.

"It became a guessing game that was based on a lot of rumors," Damon said. "No one wants to eat where they think they're going to get sick. And with no way of knowing, they just stopped coming."

In a statement, Health Department spokeswoman Ann-Gayl Ellis defended the agency on Thursday, saying, "In any event of this type, until the health department has confirmed clinical results that provide a credible link to the source, it will not issue specific information on the restaurant in question."

Does that apply to something like a listeria outbreak, with its 30 per cent kill rate? Doubtful.

Kally K's manager Christina Malo said her restaurant has suffered as well, and laments that so many people were affected by the norovirus.
 

Adelaide Now reports that 28 people carrying cryptosporidium may have infected public pools, but South Australia Health has issued no public warning.

Between January and March, SA Health was notified of 28 cases of cryptosporidium where the person reported swimming at a public pool.

SA Health asked seven swimming centres across the metropolitan area to decontaminate their pools to prevent transmission of the infection.

The Advertiser was alerted to the situation when it obtained a copy of a text message sent to members of the Adelaide Aquatic Centre advising them the pool would be closed for super-chlorination.

Adelaide City Council confirmed the Aquatic Centre was aware an infected person had used the pool.

An SA Health spokesman said, "This is within the normal levels we would expect to see - there has certainly been no spike. If there were large numbers then we would issue a public alert.

"SA Health emphasises the importance of observing hand hygiene and people with diarrhoea not sharing baths or swimming in public pools for 14 days after their symptoms have stopped."

ABC News set out to find what bystanders would do if they witnessed a waiter drop food on the floor and serve it to unsuspecting patrons. We set up hidden cameras at Holsten's Confectionary in Bloomfield, N.J. -- a popular, well-regarded restaurant that would, of course, never tolerate such behavior from its own staff -- and hired actors to play a clumsy waiter and a hungry couple, out with a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches. We found people were quick to warn our couple when they saw the disservice. But would anyone alert our couple if they became obnoxious and impolite?

What They Said:
"He picked up the pickles and everything and pit it back on the plate…just dropped it on the floor and brought it over." 

-- a shocked Holsten's customer after witnessing our actor server's spill
"I should have called him on it, but I didn't."

-- a sympathetic customer who was a former waitress
"Why don't you get our food. You're incompetent…I don't care if you're sorry, I just want our food."

-- our "What Would You Do?" offensive couple
"He deserved to eat the food that fell on the floor."
-- a customer that kept quiet about the tainted food
"Let him eat the dirty food. He was being a dirty man."
-- Holsten's patron reacting to our rude actors

Who goes to a restaurant for a grilled cheese sandwich?
 

Modernist Cuisine is a six-volume, 2,438-page set that is destined to reinvent cooking. And it may. The reviews have been glowing.

Sam Sifton of the New York Times writes today that Modernist Cuisine “is the first modern cookbook to range into the territory of the Larousse Gastronomique, a heretofore unparalleled culinary reference book first published in 1938, and of Escoffier’s expansive Guide Culinaire, from 1903. It is larger and more far lavishly illustrated than either, with photographs that make both deep-frying and the extrusion of gel noodles appear to be miracles on the order of Caravaggio.”

One of the authors got the Colbert bump last night (see video below).

I’m all for science and cooking, although I wonder what the authors would have to say about science used to bolster the quality and supply of ingredients – genetically engineered foods, growth promotants, pesticides and others.

I don’t know because I haven’t read the book, but I have read a piece the three authors -- Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technology officer at Microsoft and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Chris Young, who opened the experimental kitchen at The Fat Duck, and Maxime Bilet, who was head chef at Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar and then on the development team with Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck – penned for Scientific American chastising U.S. regulators for babying consumers and recommending cooking temperatures and times far beyond those supported by science.

The Scientific American blog post is best characterized by selective referencing and incomplete claims – the playbook for rhetorical argumentation.

The authors say that “during a recent outbreak of Escherichia coli linked to contaminated fresh spinach in the United States (is 2006 recent?), public health authorities initially told consumers, retailers, and restaurants to throw out all spinach, often directly stating in public announcements that it could not be made safe by cooking it.

“This assertion is scientifically incorrect: E. coli is very easy to kill with heat.
Evidently the officials decided that oversimplifying the public message was better than telling the truth. They may have feared that if people cooked contaminated spinach to make it safe to eat, but either didn’t cook it sufficiently or cross-contaminated other food or kitchen surfaces in the process, more fatalities would result. The authorities must have decided that the benefits of avoiding multiple accidental deaths far outweighed the costs of simply tossing out all spinach. In this case they probably were right to make that decision. The cost of some spinach is small compared to the misery and expense of hospitalization.”

“Oversimplifying for the sake of public safety is a very reasonable thing to do in the midst of an outbreak or other health crisis. It may well have saved lives to lie to the public and announce things that, strictly speaking, are false (for example, that you can’t kill E. coli with heat).”

This is nonsensical. Cross-contamination while preparing the spinach was the primary concern and is by far the biggest risk in home and food service kitchens. We and others have done the research.

The authors ask, “Who pushes back against nonsensical rules? The reality is that the only groups that push back are those that have political clout.”

Blame the man.

Myself and others have been promoting an evidence-based approach to food safety guidelines for decades, and as food safety nerds, we got no political clout.

The authors say that “millions of servings of rare beef steak or completely raw steak tartare or carpaccio are served every day, so if that meat were inherently dangerous, we’d certainly know by now. Scientific investigation has confirmed the practice is reasonably safe—almost invariably, muscle interiors are sterile and pathogen-free. That’s true for any meat, actually, but only beef is singled out by the FDA. The cultural significance of eating raw and rare beef, as much as the science, accounts for the FDA’s leniency in allowing beef steak to be served at any internal temperature.”

There is a huge microbiological difference between a muscle cut that can be seared on the outside, and hamburger or any beef cut that is ground up so external pathogens are internalized. It’s not culture – it’s microbiology.

“Cultural and political factors also explain why cheese made from raw milk is considered safe in France yet viewed with great skepticism in the United States. Traditional cheese-making techniques, used correctly and with proper quality controls, eliminate pathogens without the need for milk pasteurization. Millions of people safely consume raw milk cheese in France, and any call to ban such a fundamental part of French culture would meet with enormous resistance there.”

That’s the stereotype, but when Amy and I were in France in 2007, two of France’s (and thus the world’s) top lait cru Camembert producers, Lactalis and Isigny-Sainte-Mère, announced they were forgoing the status of “Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée” and switching to cheese made exclusively with heat-treated micro-filtered milk (not quite pasteurized but still an affront to purists).

Lactilis’ spokesperson, Luc Morelon said that although they recognize the importance of Camembert traditions, they’re making the change “[b]ecause consumer safety is paramount, and we cannot guarantee it 100 per cent. We cannot accept the risk of seeing our historic brands disappearing because of an accident in production." In response to his critics Morelon added, “I don't want to risk sending any more children to hospital. It's as simple as that." Others believe that Lactilis simply cannot produce the quantities they want and keep using raw milk. According to the Telegraph, Lactilis’ and Isigny’s decision to opt out has now put pressure on the AOC to accept pasteurized milk. It all boils down to business.

Sure, blame the man.

“The United States, however, lacks a broadly recognized culture of making or eating raw milk cheeses. Not coincidentally, health officials have imposed inconsistent regulations on such cheeses. Raw milk cheese aged less than 60 days cannot be imported into the United States and cannot legally cross U.S. state lines. Yet in 24 of the 50 states, it is perfectly legal to make, sell, and consume raw milk cheeses within the state. In most of Canada raw milk cheese is banned, but in the province of Quebec it is legal.”

Do you know how many people got sick and how many miscarriaged due to listeria in raw milk cheese in Quebec in 2008? The 60-day rule is scientifically dumb; that’s why it’s being reviewed.

“Technically, destruction of Salmonella can take place at temperatures as low as 48 degrees C / 120 degrees F given enough time. There is no scientific reason to prefer any one point on the reduction curve, but the experts who formulated the FSIS ready-to-eat standards arbitrarily decided to go no lower than 58 degrees C / 136 degrees F .”

Yes, you've got the time-temperature thing down -- food safety 101. But us mere mortals don’t necessarily have endless hours to cook chicken. Or pastrami (see below).

As a sidenote, two of the authors worked at The Fat Duck, which sickened 529 diners with norovirus, not just via the raw oysters they served, but by failing to report cases of sick people to public health types, poor record keeping, and allowing sick employees to continue working.

Modernist Cuisine may be an awesome science-based cookbook, and I agree that rules need to be continually challenged; it’s also important to get it microbiologically correct. 

Jimmy John’s launched a new ad campaign earlier this month stressing speed instead of safety after making 130 or so people barf with salmonella-in-sprouts-on-sandwiches in two separate outbreaks.

Over the past two days, seven core members of the Jimmy John’s Workers Union were fired at five Minneapolis-area locations for distributing hundreds of posters claiming that eating at Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches puts customers at risk of food-borne illness.

The poster shows identical sandwiches, one labeled as being made by a healthy worker and one by a sick worker. The poster asks if customers can spot a difference between the two. “We hope your immune system is ready because you’re about to take the sandwich test,” it reads.

I would have gone with the sprout and ingredient angle, what with all the sick people, but having sick sandwich artists work is an excellent way to spread norovirus, salmonella and lots of other nasties.

According to The Minnesota Daily, the posters were in response to the union’s unmet demands for paid sick days, which “force” employees to come in sick, putting customers at risk, they said.’’

Union supporter David Boehnke, said, “We were fired for saying we want better working conditions for ourselves. We were standing up for ourselves.”

Boehnke said their activities were legally protected because the employees were organizing for higher wages. However Franchise Owner Mike Mulligan of MikLin Enterprises disagrees.

According to a statement from MikLin, the posters disparaged the company’s reputation and showed “extreme disloyalty and malicious intent to damage” the company.

If you want to preserve the company’s reputation, try not to make customers barf – it’s bad for business.

The workers currently have a four-point system, in which workers are deducted one point for missing work without finding a replacement and half a point for coming to work 10 minutes late.

At four points, the worker is fired.

Over 100 people who ate at an unnamed restaurant north of Tampa a couple of weeks ago have been confirmed to have been part of a norovirus outbreak.

But now they’ve named the restaurant.

(What are public disclosure procedures? When does public health have a responsibility to go public with information about an outbreak, especially if it will prevent additional people from barfing?)

Hernando Today reports local health-types have confirmed norovirus in at least three of those 100 sickies, who dined at Kally K's Restaurant between March 6-11.

Among the positive results was at least one of the employees of the restaurant.

Uh-oh.

The owner of Kally K's is complying with Health Department recommendations that no employees who tested positive for this virus will be involved in food handling or preparation until follow up tests are negative. The restaurant continues to cooperate in this ongoing investigation.
 

You can earn some credibility holding back a woman’s hair while she vomits; you can lose credibility when a 2-year-old vomits all over the car seat, and then while attempting to clean it up, you vomit in response, like in Stand By Me (see below).

I’ve done both.

Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control investigated a 2009 outbreak on a cruise ship and concluded infected passengers were significantly more likely to have an ill cabin mate, and to have resided or dined on the deck level where a vomiting incident had occurred during boarding.

That’s right: someone barfed while passengers were boarding the ship and just watching and trying to contain that little bit of throw-up that just happened in your mouth was a statistically significant risk factor.

Questionnaires about when people did or did not seek medical care, hygiene practices, and possible norovirus exposure were placed in every cabin after the outbreak began. The ship had 1,842 passengers on board, and 83 percent returned the questionnaires. Of the 15 percent of respondents who met the case definition for acute gastroenteritis, only 60 percent had sought medical care on the ship.

Less than 1 per cent of the crew reported illness, and their low attack rate may have been due to the few crew members who had direct contact with passengers. This included separate sleeping and dining areas and alternate passages for boarding and exiting the ship.

"Cruise line personnel should discourage ill passengers from boarding their ships," according to study author Mary Wikswo, MPH, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Once on board, passengers and crew who become ill should report to the ship's medical center as soon as possible. These quick actions are crucial in preventing the introduction and spread of norovirus on cruise ships and allow ship personnel to take immediate steps to prevent the spread of illness."

What I conclude, based on this and other studies, including our own, is that telling people to wash their hands has almost no effect -- and that the best way to control the spread of norovirus – on cruise ships, in restaurants, in schools – is to break the infection cycle because these noroviruses are crazy infective: stay home, isolate yourself, tie your hair in a bun, and barf away.