According to Ben Muessing of AOL, North Carolina's food safety laws create visions of a nanny state: restaurant patrons can't legally get a rare or medium rare burger.

Muessing writes:
There may be no food more American than the burger. And according to meat lovers, there may be no health code regulation less American than North Carolina's rare and medium rare burger ban.
From Winston-Salem to Nags Head, meat eaters are unable to order their burgers rare or even medium rare thanks to a state restriction that requires restaurants to cook ground beef to an internal temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit (for 15 seconds -ben).
That's enough heat to sufficiently kill dangerous bacteria like E. coli, according to state health officials. But it's also enough heat to kill all of the flavor, according to Raleigh resident and rare burger aficionado Steven Elliot. "I don't believe in a nanny state when it comes to food," said Elliot, who told AOL Weird News he would order his burgers "bloody" or "ready to moo" if he could. "I don't like the government telling us what we can and cannot eat," he added.
My Twitter friend Kathleen Purvis of the Charlotte Observer, also comments on why the regs are currently in place:

"People complain about it," said Purvis, "but I understand where the concern is on undercooked beef. There is a concern about putting your kid at risk." Though she wants the state to keep undercooked meat from being served to children and the elderly (two groups that face heightened risks of serious infections from E. coli O157:H7), Purvis sees ordering a rare or medium rare burger as the kind of decision adults should have the right to make.

I get that. Undercooked beef is analogous to unpasteurized apple cider, raw oysters and sprouts --  all foods that carry increased risks for foodborne illness. When I have the choice, I'm still ordering burgers to 160F.

North Carolina is on track to adopt the FDA food code in the next couple of years and that legislative change will result in the dropping of the temperature requirements. The new regs will place the choice to provide undercooked, risky product in the hands of the businesses who sell them. Restaurants will have to judge how much risk they are comfortable with. Serving a burger that contains pathogens and makes patrons ill, regardless of the law and disclaimers, is bad business.

As an added bonus to the AOL post, there's a companion video on how to make juicy burgers at home. Food safety apparently still isn't sexy enough when it comes to recipes, cooking shows and instructional YouTube videos (In 2004 we heard similar comments from the Food Network after publishing on food safety mistakes by celebrity chefs).

The video provides a nice instruction on how to indirectly cross-contaminate (raw meat-y hands grabbing the bbq lid, hands to tongs. Hands back to the lid.  Who knows whether there was any handwashing before the same hands touched garnish and buns). Since not using a thermometer was a central theme to the article, it's also appropriate that the BBQ dude used the squish test to evaluate doneness, "Firm but not too squishy -- they're done."

What temperature is not too squishy?
 

Between 2001 and 2008 the number of Australians sickened by egg-related salmonella outbreaks rose from 96 to a staggering 753. The rate fell to 358 in 2009, but eggs are still responsible for more than a third of all foodborne outbreaks linked to the pathogen.

So says The Sydney Morning Herald tomorrow (today, depending on time zone) based on records that show the increase can be, in part, traced to lax food safety practices, inadequate farm regulations and the power of retailers to influence food laws.

Martyn Kirk, a senior lecturer in epidemiology at the Australian National University, said eggs had become the most common cause of food-related disease outbreaks.

Restaurants are responsible for the bulk of poisonings: 40 per cent. And while cooking will kill salmonella, restaurants are allowed to serve foods containing raw eggs.

''Most of the vehicles we see associated with outbreaks are foods where the eggs are completely uncooked; things like chocolate mousse, tiramisu, hollandaise sauce and aolis,'' Mr Kirk said.

While egg producers in NSW are now required to be licensed with the NSW Food Authority, no government body conducts regular bacterial tests on eggs, or monitors the presence of salmonella on farms.

''In recent years there has been less surveillance in animal populations unless there has been a commercial interest,'' said Dr Kirk, who believes salmonella monitoring should be undertaken on farms.

After washing and grading, many eggs are sent to retailers where they are placed on the shelf for sale.

A risk assessment commissioned by the Australian Egg Corporation in 2004 found refrigerating eggs could reduce outbreaks of salmonella. The lead author of the report, the microbiologist Connor Thomas, told the Herald salmonella cannot grow in temperatures below seven degrees, and refrigeration reduces the breakdown of protective membranes inside the egg that stop the bacteria's growth.

''There can be no denying that keeping eggs cooled substantially increases their storage life and their safety,'' said Dr Thomas, of the University of Adelaide.

But last month Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) quietly introduced changes to the food standards code, omitting any regulations related to temperature control.

A spokeswoman for FSANZ said it chose to exclude refrigeration requirements from the standard, in part, because of ''the substantial cost of implementing such an option.''

A Winnipeg child who ate ground beef tainted with deadly E. coli bacteria -- commonly known as hamburger disease -- will never see again or be able to look after himself. The nine-year-old child, who is a permanent ward of Winnipeg Child and Family Services, is suing Westfair Foods, Superstore and XL Foods for general damages, including care costs throughout his life and loss of future income.

"This is a child with catastrophic injuries," lawyer Norm Cuddy said on Monday.

Cuddy said the child was hospitalized in June 2004, but all of his injuries weren't known until a few years later.

Another lawyer working on the lawsuit, Chris Wullum, said the child is a permanent ward of Winnipeg CFS because the mother wasn't able to look after him with all of his special needs.

According to the statement of claim, filed in Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench last week, the child's mother bought the ground beef at the Superstore on McPhillips Street.

The child suffered hemolytic uremic syndrome, received a kidney transplant, has spastic triplegia, severe and ongoing pain and has developmental delays, including not being able to take care of himself.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency initiated a recall of the ground beef products in August 2004 after two people in Manitoba were poisoned with E. coli bacteria in July 2004 and after tracing back those and other cases across the country to find the source of the meat.

The Pitch reports that eight food trucks hit the road, and one rolls home with $100,000 in prize money. That's the premise for the second season of the six-city, six-week show, The Great Food Truck Race, that is currently being filmed for the Food Network.

And the remaining trucks stopped in Manhattan (Kansas) over the weekend.

We wandered over to several of the trucks on Sunday and we’re  agog at the long lines – didn’t lots of people leave town after graduation Sunday?

I asked one of the camera dudes if this was the normal turnout and he said, “I’ve never seen lines this long. Guess in L.A. they’ve got 2,000 food trucks. Maybe it’s a novelty here.”

I wasn’t waiting in line with a two-year-old, or Sorenne, and couldn’t see much in the way of food safety because everything took place inside a truck. And most items seemed to be heavily cooked or fried.

By March 2007, salmonella in Peter Pan peanut butter had sickened 628 people in 47 states and caused the company to shut down its Sylvester, Georgia, manufacturing facility; the contamination was likely due to a leaky roof and faulty sprinklers.

Last week, ConAgra Foods announced the launch of a new line of natural peanut butter spreads from its Peter Pan brand.

The three no-stir varieties are made with 100% natural ingredients and contain no high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, trans fat or preservatives.

Hopefully, or scientifically, they won’t contain any salmonella.
 

In 2009, a four-month-old baby girl was taken to an Australian hospital emergency department after contracting salmonella through indirect contact with an eastern bearded dragon.

Testing revealed the girl had been infected with a type of salmonella known as rubislaw. A subsequent article published in the Medical Journal of Australia revealed that between nine and 19 cases of rubislaw had been detected in Australians between 2000 and 2009.

Reptile expert Robert Johnson said many pet owners were unaware of the risks posed by reptiles and needed to practice good hygiene to eliminate their chances of infection.

Dr Johnson said the risk of salmonella poisoning should not deter people from owning reptiles.

''They are great little pets. They don't create a noise and you can keep them in reasonably small areas. But you have to maintain good hygiene.''

The risks of reptiles as pets will be on the agenda at the Australian Veterinary Association's annual conference in Adelaide this week.

Growing season is in full force in North Carolina and in the next week the Opening Markets project team will be beginning on-site visits with our small farmers. Through this project, post-doc extrordinaire, Audrey Kreske will be working alongside small North Carolinian farmers (<20 acres) to collect data on economic, process and infrastructure barriers to achieving USDA GAP certification. Many of our participating producers have already put a certification date on their calendar and are starting to work towards that goal.

Below are the initial data collection tools that we'll be using. These are currently in draft form. Please send any comments to  Dr. Audrey Kreske (ackreske@ncsu.edu)  or me (benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu) and we'll adjust and incorporate into our methods. The documents are available as pdfs and can be annotated.

We'll be using an evaluation tool to determine a Good Agricultural Practices baseline score for each small farm. The tool will be a modified version of the USDA Good Agricultural Practices & Good Handling Practices Audit Verification Checklist. This checklist is intended to assess the participant’s ability to attain USDA GAPs certification (which is based on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “Guide to Minimize Microbial Food Safety Hazards for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables”). Our initial draft instrument can be found here. These will be discussed with the participants in a face-to-face in-depth discussion format and self-reported current practices and strategies will be recorded. Feel free to pick the instrument apart and send us comments.

A portion of this modified document will address the real economic affects of transitioning a farm for GAP certification. For the economic portion, we will separate the GAP requirements into categories (such as making policy/documentation, changing process, amount of time, changes in infrastructure (small/large), material cost, labor cost in time) and identify specific tasks that will need to be completed.  Growers will be asked to report what they think each requirement will cost to be implemented (in time (hrs) and money (dollars)) and the degree of difficulty associated with completing each task. This will be initially recorded in the activity tracker, which we will be providing to participants in electronic and hard copy formats.

Throughout the summer we will be working with growers to overcome the real barriers through the use of currently available resources and blogging about the process so that other growers are able to benefit from this information immediately. Future posts will be supplemented with self diaries explaining their issues on a daily basis as needed.

All through the process we’ll be posting documents, data, and anecdotes to relay the information that we identify. Since we will be working with small farms, our blog entries will also include tips and tricks that our participating farms are using to produce food that is as safe as possible. All project posts are archived at http://gapsmallfarmsnc.wordpress.com/.

This project is conducted in partnership with the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association as part of a North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services Speciality Crops Block Grant.

The New York City health code mandates that all fast food restaurant employees must wear plastic gloves when handling or serving food.

But, writes Russell Marlow in the New York Times, it seems that many of those employees in New York think that gloves — no matter how long they have been on their hands — are some sort of amulet, a magical talisman that wards off any type of germ. As long as they are wearing them, they can do anything they like with their hands.

I have often seen food servers go from cleaning to serving without changing their gloves. I have seen them eating, handling money, even smoking with their gloves on before going back to serving. I have seen them coughing and wiping their noses with their gloves. I have witnessed, on more than one occasion, gloved food servers taking out bags of garbage before returning to serving food with the same gloves.
 

Health officials say 13 people now have been confirmed as having contracted salmonella typhimurium, suspected to have come from Portillo’s, a St. Charles restaurant, in northeast Illinois.

Nine are female and four are male, with their ages ranging from 17 to 64. Three of the patients were hospitalized, but all have since been released.

Portillo’s “is actively cooperating with the investigation, having cleaned and sanitized the building Monday night and discarded all food items, except for samples that were collected by Kane County Health Department staff to send to the IDPH lab for testing.”