Eater reports that last night on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, actor Nick Offerman and Jimmy Fallon ate the Ron Swanson Turkey Burger, a fried turkey leg inside a grilled hamburger.

Inspired by a recent episode of Parks and Recreation in which the character Ron Swanson had a different idea about what, exactly, a turkey burger was, last month during Burger Week we went ahead and made the beastly thing (with a recipe even).

Leaving the bone in the turkey leg (and in the burger) was somewhat of a åcontentious issue, but Offerman gets it: "The bone is still in there," he said. "It's a great source of fiber." The drink pairing? Scotch, of course. Also, according to Offerman, he "showed up early to prepare the Ron Swanson Turkey Burger for everybody to see." And we have it on good authority that there's a making-of video on the way.

Would-be epidemiologist and school principal Agnes Camacho figures it was the school breakfast of egg salad and melon that made almost 300 students ill at Marcial A. Sablan Elementary School in Guam.

Sablan told PNC News, "At around 9:45 several students came into the office complaining about stomach aches and they were vomiting and then another 15 minutes several more came in and we said that's a high number right so we started documenting their vomiting and stomach aches and then another fifteen minutes they were just coming in students were coming in we had a total of 102 students who were registered with the vomiting.”

Anxious parents flooded the schools with phone calls while others came in person to find out if their children had been sent to the hospital.

At Marcial Sablan elementary school hallways were lined with vomit, "It's just very scary the hallways here this wall this wall behind and both sides were filled with students sitting and then in the nurses office also... and each of them had trash bags and they were all vomiting,” said Camacho.

The food was outsourced from King's Restaurants. According to Principal Camacho, Public Health arrived and took a sample of the food for testing.

The Kane County Health Department said Tuesday it is investigating an outbreak of a form of salmonella poisoning, possibly linked to a Portillo’s restaurant in St. Charles.

In approximately the past two weeks, 10 cases of Salmonella ser. Typhimurium with a matching PFGE, or genetic, pattern have been reported In Illinois. This pattern is rare in Illinois. At least two additional cases of S. Typhimurium are pending the PFGE results. Cases in other states have also been identified.

The Kane Health Department said a common potential link is that seven of the people affected reported having eaten at Portillo’s at 3895 E. Main St. in St. Charles during April. No specific food item has been identified to be source of the illness.

The management of Portillo’s is actively cooperating with state and local health officials in the investigation, the Kane department said. The restaurant was sanitized overnight Monday and is having all its food handlers tested for possible infection.

After making 529 people sick in a March 2009 outbreak of norovirus at his Fat Duck restaurant, Heston Blumenthal says he has stopped serving raw oysters.

At least that’s what he told the New Zealand Herald yesterday.

"I've not served an oyster in here, in the Crown, in the Duck or in London since that happened. I don't know if I'll ever change."

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised consumers, restaurant operators, commercial shippers and processors of shellfish not to eat, serve, purchase, sell or ship oysters from Area 1642 in Apalachicola Bay, Fla. because the oysters may be contaminated with toxigenic Vibrio cholerae serogroup O75.

• Nine persons have been reported with illness. For eight, the illness was confirmed as caused by toxigenic Vibrio cholerae O75; laboratory confirmation is pending in the other person. No one was hospitalized or died.

• All ill persons reported consumption of raw or lightly steamed oysters.

• Traceback indicates that oysters harvested from Area 1642 in Apalachicola Bay, Fla., between March 21 and April 6, 2011, are associated with illness.

Nathan Hale School in New Haven had an inspection in March that found chicken was being served to children at a temperature that can carry bacteria. Inspectors did not go back to the school to re-inspect until December, when they found the same problem.

In October 2010, local health inspectors in Meriden found rodent droppings in the cafeteria of Maloney High School, as well as dirty cabinets and other health violations. Inspectors didn’t go back last year to check to see if the problems were remedied.

In Stamford last year, nine of 32 schools did not have their cafeterias inspected, with the remaining schools inspected fewer than the three times a year required under state regulations.

Those are the findings of a team of journalists and interns reporting for the New Haven Independent.

Paul Kowalski, New Haven’s environmental health director, said, “There is no way we are meeting the state mandate on inspections. I have three sanitarians and over 1,100 food establishments to inspect.”

A review of more than 1,700 inspection reports from 103 cities and towns in 2010 found that many local health agencies, responsible for ensuring that school cafeterias are safely preparing and serving food to children, are not meeting the state Public Health Code on mandated annual inspections. Of the 38 health agencies overseeing those towns, at least half were not meeting the state requirement, the review shows.

In addition to failing to meet the required number of inspections, the review found that timely re-inspections of cafeterias cited for violations were rare.

Swedish researchers have tracked a human outbreak of the parasite, microsporidia, to raw cucumbers, and propose the most likely source was human manure during growing.

From the paper:
Our investigations suggest that cucumber slices in both cheese sandwiches and a salad were the most probable vehicle of transmission. Since no leftover food samples were available for testing and because little is known about E. bieneusi in the context of foodborne outbreaks, it is difficult to conclusively
implicate this organism as the agent responsible for the outbreak. However, the finding that all six samples available for genotyping were genetically indistinguishable (genotype C) together with the fact that, despite extensive testing, no other organisms were identified in the stool samples strongly suggest that E. bieneusi was the causative agent. Furthermore, the finding that all 19 stool samples from persons belonging to the same professional group who had not attended the event were negative for microsporidia provides additional evidence that the detection of E. bieneusi was not a chance finding. Although these samples were taken 7 months after the event, they nevertheless provide an indication of the prevalence of microsporidia in a population with similar demographic characteristics.

We cannot state with certainty how and where the sliced cucumbers were contaminated. Contamination during final preparation at the hotel seems unlikely because the cucumbers were not processed any further but were added directly to the sandwiches. Furthermore, a high contamination dose is suspected (due to high attack rate in a healthy population) which is unlikely to have occurred because preparation of the sandwiches was carried out by an asymptomatic food handler. The sealed bags of cucumber slices had been
refrigerated before use so it is improbable that contamination took place during storage. Similarly, contamination during initial processing at the wholesale supplier, although possible, seems unlikely based on the description of the procedures used. The most likely hypothesis of contamination is that it occurred before harvest, either by contaminated manure, manure compost, sewage sludge, irrigation water, runoff water from livestock operations or directly from wild and domestic animals. These potential contamination events are all plausible and consistent with the assumption that the level of contamination must have been high. Unfortunately, because we were unable to trace the cucumbers back to the farm where they were grown, we could not investigate these
possible contamination routes further. However, additional information is provided by the genotyping results. While there have been several cases of genotype C identified in humans, predominantly in HIV-negative organ transplant recipients in Europe [25, 26], there is only one report on animals in the
literature [27]. Thus, while a zoonotic link cannot be ruled out, the involvement of this genotype suggests that the source of contamination in this outbreak was
of human (fecal) origin.

While thorough washing of fresh produce remains of utmost importance in preventing foodborne illness and should continue to be emphasized, sometimes washing may be insufficient to remove all pathogens.

In this instance, it may have been that the level of contamination was so high that washing was unable to remove enough of the microbial load so as to prevent infection. Alternatively, it may be that microsporidian spores are capable of strong adhesion to, or internalization in, certain types of produce, thereby
successfully evading the effects of washing and disinfection.

A recent paper by researchers in the USA demonstrated that Cryptosporidium oocysts were capable of strongly adhering to spinach plants after contact with contaminated water and were also internalized within the leaves, thus making
entirely ineffective [28].
Abstract:
First reported foodborne outbreak associated with microsporidia, SWEDEN, October 2009
Epidemiology and Infection
V. Decraene, M. Lebbad, S. Botero-Kleiven, A.-M. Gustavsson and M. Löfdahl
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8271787
Abstract
Microsporidia are spore-forming intracellular parasites that infrequently cause disease in immunocompetent persons. This study describes the first report of a foodborne microsporidiosis outbreak which affected persons visiting a hotel in Sweden. Enterocytozoon bieneusi was identified in stool samples from 7/11 case-patients, all six sequenced samples were genotype C. To confirm that this was not a chance finding, 19 stool samples submitted by healthy persons from a comparable group who did not visit the hotel on that day were tested; all were negative for microsporidia. A retrospective cohort study identified 135 case-patients (attack rate 30%). The median incubation period was 9 days. Consumption of cheese sandwiches [relative risk (RR) 4·1, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1·4–12·2] and salad (RR 2·1, 95% CI 1·1–4) were associated with illness. Both items contained pre-washed, ready-to-eat cucumber slices. Microsporidia may be an under-reported cause of gastrointestinal outbreaks; we recommend that microsporidia be explored as potential causative agents in food- and waterborne outbreaks, especially when no other organisms are identified.

In June 1996, initial reports of an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 in Japan surfaced in national media.

By July 1996, focus had centered on specific school cafeterias and two vendors of box lunches, as the number of illnesses approached 4,000. Lunches of sea eel sushi and soup distributed on July 5 from Sakai's central school lunch depot were identified by health authorities as a possible source of one outbreak. The next day, the number of illnesses had increased to 7,400 even as reports of Japanese fastidiousness intensified. By July 23, 1996, 8,500 were listed as ill.

Even though radish sprouts were ultimately implicated -- and then publicly cleared in a fall-on-sword ceremony, but not by the U.S. -- the Health and Welfare Ministry announced that Japan's 333 slaughterhouses must adopt a quality control program modeled on U.S. safety procedures, requiring companies to keep records so the source of any tainted food could be quickly identified. Kunio Morita, chief of the ministry's veterinary sanitation division was quoted as saying "It's high time for Japan to follow the international trend in sanitation management standards."

Japanese health authorities were terribly slow to respond to the outbreak of E. coli O157:H7, a standard facilitated by a journalistic culture of aversion rather than adversarial. In all, over 9,500 Japanese, largely schoolchildren, were stricken with E. coli O157:H7 and 12 were killed over the summer of 1996, raising questions of political accountability.

The national Mainichi newspaper demanded in an editorial on July 31, 1996, "Why can't the government learn from past experience? Why were they slow to react to the outbreak? Why can't they take broader measures?" The answer, it said, was a "chronic ailment" -- the absence of anyone in the government to take charge in a crisis and ensure a coordinated response. An editorial cartoon in the daily Asahi Evening News showed a health worker wearing the label "government emergency response" riding to the rescue on a snail. Some of the victims filed lawsuits against Japanese authorities, a move previously unheard of in the Japanese culture of deference.

Fifteen years later, with at least four dead and 100 sick from E. coli O111 served in raw beef at the Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu barbecue restaurant chain, Japanese corporate, political and media leaders are still struggling.

Under Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry guidelines, only meat that meets strict standards--such as being processed on equipment exclusively for handling meat for raw consumption and in a meticulously hygienic environment--can be shipped to be eaten raw.

However, the decision on what meat can be served raw is left up to the restaurant serving it. The wholesaler who sold the beef in question to the Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu chain reportedly told a public health center that the meat it shipped "was supposed to be eaten after being cooked."

The sanitation guidelines have no binding power and have largely been ignored. The health ministry, for its part, has long failed to stringently push industries to comply with the sanitation standards.

To ensure people can eat raw meat without fearing for their health, the government must review the regulations for the entire meat preparation process.

Anrakutei Co., a Saitama-based yakiniku barbecue chain, stopped serving yukke at its 250 outlets, mainly in the Kanto region, on Tuesday.

"We've been providing the dish to customers based on strict quality control, but customers' concerns make it difficult to continue to serve it," a public relations official of the company said.

Anrakutei said the company conducts bacteria tests on the Australian beef it uses for yukke three times--first before it is purchased, again before it is sent to the company's meat processing plant and finally before it is shipped to outlets. At the plant, the meat is processed separately from other food materials to prevent it from coming into contact with bacteria, the company explained.

There is no discussion of what is being tested, and how valid those tests are at picking up a non-O157 shiga-toxin producing E. coli like O111 There is no verification that anyone is testing anything.

In the absence of meat goggles that can magically detect dangerous bacteria, eating raw hamburger remains a risk.
 

A mouse fell onto a patron's lap at Logan's Roadhouse in Normal, Illinois after an apparent fall from the ceiling.

The incident happened April 29 while the person was eating at Logan's, 313 S. Veterans Parkway, according to a complaint filed Monday with the McLean County Health Department. Logan's had already called pest control prior to the department receiving and following up on the complaint, said agency spokeswoman Erin Tolle Link.

"They are being very cooperative in taking the steps necessary to correct the issue," she said Friday.
 

Despite efforts to create a modern food-safety regimen in China, oversight remains utterly haphazard, in the hands of ill-trained, ill-equipped and outnumbered enforcers whose quick fixes are even more quickly undone.

So says the New York Times in Sunday’s edition.

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a food safety expert with the World Health Organization’s Beijing office, who’s usually blunt, said, “Most of them are working like headless chickens, having no clue what are the major food-borne diseases that need to be addressed or what are the major contaminants in the food process.”

In recent weeks, China’s news media have reported sales of pork adulterated with the drug clenbuterol, which can cause heart palpitations; pork sold as beef after it was soaked in borax, a detergent additive; rice contaminated with cadmium, a heavy metal discharged by smelters; arsenic-laced soy sauce; popcorn and mushrooms treated with fluorescent bleach; bean sprouts tainted with an animal antibiotic; and wine diluted with sugared water and chemicals.

Even eggs, seemingly sacrosanct in their shells, have turned out not to be eggs at all but man-made concoctions of chemicals, gelatin and paraffin. Instructions can be purchased online, the Chinese media reported.

Scandals are proliferating, in part, because producers operate in a cutthroat environment in which illegal additives are everywhere and cost-effective.

Manufacturers calculate correctly that the odds of profiting from unsafe practices far exceed the odds of getting caught, experts say. China’s explosive growth has spawned nearly half a million food producers, the authorities say, and four-fifths of them employ 10 or fewer workers, making oversight difficult.