As food safety month kicks off in parts of North America tomorrow, the Aussies, always ahead (where it's already September) push out cool food safety information for food handlers that's more than just prescriptive. Taking a page from our food safety infosheets, New South Wales Food Authority has three case studies of actual (semi) recent outbreaks that put food safety into context for businesses. These case studies tell the story of an outbreak; focus on what was found during the investigation; and, what the business could do to avoid it. All they are missing are pictures of Dirty Finger Al or toilets.

Check out the three case studies here:


   * aioli prepared from raw eggs: Salmonella Typhimurium
   * fried ice cream using raw egg: Salmonella
   * pre cooked meats: Clostridium perfringens


One of the criticisms I've had in the past around social marketing campaigns around food safety is the generic, sanitized nature of the messages. These case studies do a great job telling folks what the specific consequences are if things go wrong and how to reduce risks.
 

In an attempt to be topical and current, I'm getting together every couple of weeks with Don Schaffner via Skype to talk about what strikes our food safety fancy.

The tagline is: Don and Ben on the interwebs and talk food safety. Sometimes there are guests (we'll get Doug on to talk about throwing up before hockey games and stealing toilet paper in a few weeks).

In this episode, which is sort of the pilot for this experiment, we discover that we can indeed talk about food safety for an hour, figure out how to record our ramblings and post the podcast to the magnificent Internet. This episode we talk about why they decided to do a podcast and about restaurant inspection. And the utility of Peter Frampton's vocoder when interviewing public health and regulatory folks.

Direct link to the podcast.

Show notes (some of the things we talked up) :

• Ben's work homepage
• Don's work homepage
• Governmental food safety podcast that shall remain unnamed.
• Barfblog, Where Ben and Doug mostly and Don rarely blogs.
• Don's super secret National Academy of Sciences panel on publishing FSIS establishment specific data.
• USDA FSIS Freedom of Information Act page
• Indicator organisms background information
• The book Poisoned on the Jack-in-box-Outbreak.
• An article by Cruz et al. on the ability of routine restaurant inspections to predict food-borne outbreaks.
• Another article by Jones et al. on restaurant inspection scores and foodborne disease.
• The awesome International Association for Food Protection - IAFP
• StoryCorps, who recently interviewed folks from IAFP for our 100th anniversary.
• Mandated labels on raw meat that are perhaps not all that useful.
• Frampton Comes Alive, which came out when Don was in High School and Ben wasn't.
• FDA Listeria risk ranking
• A food safety expert we'd like to interview.
• North Carolina's restaurant inspection system.
• Wake county restaurant sanitation grades.
• The sort of restaurant inspection results that Don used to read back when there were newspapers.
• A popular chain, let's call them Billi's
• The 5by5 network, our inspiration.
• And some of our 5by5 appearances.

This was Sorenne and sister Courtlynn at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary outside Brisbane last Sunday, which included a large field with about 100 kangaroos. And endless piles of 'roo poop the kids were stomping through and perhaps sitting in.

I looked up kangaroo zoonoses but didn't find much. Any concerns?

Del Monte Fresh Produce, a company that recalled its cantaloupes in March after health investigators in several states linked them to a Salmonella Panama outbreak, said yesterday that is plans to sue Oregon Health Authority and, Dr William Keene, one of the nation's most well-known disease outbreak investigators (right, exactly as shown), claiming that the company's products were wrongly singled out.

Lisa Schnirring of CIDRAP news at the University of Minnesota interviewed several public health types, who say the company's suit is unprecedented, and some worry that it may inhibit future foodborne illness investigations.

Lon Kightlinger, MPH, PhD, state epidemiologist with the South Dakota Department of Health, said some of his department's disease investigations have involved legal tug-of-wars. "Although we do have some worries of legal threats, that does not drive our investigation, but causes us to do a better job," he said.

In Iowa, laws require public health officials to treat the names of entities such as restaurants or companies the same as people, said Patricia Quinlisk, MD, MPH, medical director and state epidemiologist for the Iowa Department of Public Health.

She said that, before going public with names, health officials must discuss the issue with the state attorney general's office to make sure the action complies with a "necessary for public health" clause. "Thus something like this might have more scrutiny here than other places," she said, adding that she's never seen a legal threat like Del Monte's.

Tim Jones, MD, MPH, state epidemiologist for the Tennessee Department of Health, said he's been bullied and subjected to implied threats in the course of epidemiologic investigations. "I've never taken them seriously, and legally I've never been worried," he said.

Though Del Monte's legal threat could create an inhibitory effect, epidemiologists take pride in being able to respond to outbreaks faster and freer than federal agencies, which are often bound by legal restrictions, Jones said.

"Our job is to protect people."

Some measure of immunity is needed for investigators, Jones said. "If anyone in public health is nervous about getting sued, it could be dangerously inhibitory."

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has published guidelines for the safe production of sprouted seeds to be consumed raw, following the recent outbreaks of E. coli O104:H4 in Germany and France linked to the consumption of these seeds.

These guidelines introduce pathogen control measures for seed suppliers and sprouted seed producers. These include testing and certification requirements for seeds and a disinfection step and testing for sprouted seeds. The measures are being introduced to reduce risks to consumers’ health.

Most sprouted seed outbreaks have been attributed to contamination of the seeds used for sprouting. The moist, warm conditions of sprouting can allow small numbers of pathogens present on seeds to multiply by several orders of magnitude during the sprouting period.

To avoid confusion among consumers, the FSAI is advising producers of sprouted seeds who are using these guidelines; to label their products as ‘ready-to-eat’. Sprouted seed producers who cannot implement the control measures specified in the new guidelines should continue to ensure that their products are labelled as ‘cook before consumption’. Retailers and caterers should check that their suppliers of ready-to-eat sprouted seeds are following these FSAI guidelines.

The FSAI is advising members of the public who choose to sprout seeds at home, that they should continue to cook these products before consumption. This is because seeds certified free of pathogenic bacteria are unlikely to be widely available for some time. These guidelines can be accessed on our website on the following link http://bit.ly/o9VWuW.

Unfortunately, no one knows if any particular sprouter is following the guidelines.

A table of sprout-related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/sprouts-associated-outbreaks.

U.S. and Mexican officials have been working closely together to find the source or sources of contamination of Salmonella in fresh papayas entering the U.S. from Mexico. From May 12, 2011, to August 18, 2011, FDA analysis found a 15.6 percent Salmonella contamination rate. The positive samples were from 28 different firms and include nearly all the major papaya producing regions in Mexico.

Papayas from Mexico have been linked to approximately 100 cases of Salmonella Agona in 23 U.S. states.

Under a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Import Alert issued today, papayas from each source in Mexico may be denied admission into the United States unless the importer shows they are not contaminated with Salmonella, such as by using private laboratories to test the papayas. FDA may consider five consecutive commercial shipments over a period of time, analyzed from a validated laboratory, as being adequate for removal from the Import Alert.

Simultaneously, FDA and Mexican officials are stepping up their joint effort to trace recent contamination incidents back to their source and discover their cause or causes, in order to inform future prevention strategies. FDA and Mexican officials also are collaborating on laboratory methodologies used in Mexico for testing fresh papayas for Salmonella.

Beyond these immediate steps, the Mexican government and papaya industry have agreed to a longer range action plan that will define proper food safety procedures throughout the chain of production and distribution in Mexico and verify that the procedures are working effectively through product testing and other government oversight. Mexican officials are overseeing the industry’s implementation of the action plan and the FDA is collaborating with the Mexican government in this effort.

Reducing the risks of catching E. coli O157 in the countryside is everyone’s problem, but it’s someone else’s problem according to individuals questioned by researchers.

In one-to-one interviews conducted by the Research Councils UK Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU), researchers found that people believed others should do more to reduce the risk of infection. While farmers thought that abattoirs should do more to prevent outbreaks, abattoir owners said that farmers should do more through better cleaning of livestock before slaughter, and butchers claimed that meat inspectors could be more effective.

In a survey of over two thousand rural residents and visitors, around 45 per cent of all respondents thought that health authorities as well as central and local government should be taking more action to protect the public. But the researchers say that E. coli O157 infection isn’t a problem that is easily solved, and the most effective way of addressing it would be for everyone to adopt behaviors and strategies to reduce risks.

It’s that farm-to-fork thing.
 

KRISTV.com of Corpus Christi, Texas, reports the Nueces County Health Department is now investigating a refrigeration problem at a local wing restaurant, after a 2-year old girl spent the last week in the hospital after her mother says she contracted salmonella and E. coli.

The girl's mother said at first, doctors weren't exactly sure what was wrong with Ava. After subjecting her to a myriad of tests, she was found to have E. coli and salmonella. Her mother said she was then placed in isolation at Driscoll Children's Hospital for three more days.

Her mother said the last meal Ava ate was chicken strips from Wings-N-More.

She contacted the health department, who soon launched in an investigation.

According to a health inspection report, the raw chicken strips being stored in the deli case were at 68-degrees. That's almost 30 degrees above the maximum recommended temperature.

We tried to contact Wings-N-More for a comment on the investigation, but our calls were not returned.
 

A diner threatened to return to an English pub armed with a knife after being served a "below par" beef and onion sandwich, a court has heard.

Clive Davies, 54, left the White Horse pub in Cambridge and showed employees at a nearby grocery store a seven-inch blade he said he planned to use on the staff who had served him the unsatisfactory sandwich, the Cambridge News reported today.

Employees at the store called police and Davies, who has a previous conviction for manslaughter, was apprehended in another local pub, the Lion and Lamb.

He pleaded guilty to threatening and abusive language, possessing a bladed article in a public place, and possession of cannabis.