Traducido por Gonzalo Erdozain

Resumen del folleto informativo mas reciente:

- Mas de 200 enfermos de norovirus en una competencia de chiroleras.
- Los mas probable es que el brote se haya iniciado cuando un participante acudió a la competencia enfermo.
- Los oficiales de salud creen que el brote empeoro por culpa de algunos individuos que vomitaron en publico.
- El cloro puede inactivar al norovirus; la amonia cuaternaria no se recomienda porque no es efectiva.
- Una mezcla con una concentración de 5,000 ppm (25 cucharas soperas de cloro (5.25%) en un galón de agua) debe ser aplicada al área afectada por un mínimo de 4 minutos.

Los folletos informativos son creados semanalmente y puestos en restaurantes, tiendas y granjas, y son usados para entrenar y educar a través del mundo. Si usted quiere proponer un tema o mandar fotos para los folletos, contacte a Ben Chapman a benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.

Puede seguir las historias de los folletos informativos y barfblog en twitter
@benjaminchapman y @barfblog.

The Moscow Times reports that E. coli bacteria has been found in butter at four kindergartens in the city of Samara, following the hospitalization this week of almost 30 children in the neighboring city of Tolyatti from food poisoning, Itar-Tass reported Friday.

The bacteria was discovered during a food safety check initiated after a raft of food-poisoning cases in Tolyatti, which were apparently caused by dairy products, including tvorog and kefir. In total, 37 children under the age of two fell ill, with 28 of them being hospitalized.

A criminal investigation has been opened in connection with the Tolyatti poisonings, with the charge of failing to meet safety standards in work with young children.

Amy and I went on a date at 2:30 in the afternoon, cause that’s how we roll when Sorenne is in school.

And, when the Dutton Park Fish Market has an e-mailed special for dine-in only, whole chilli mudcrabs on Friday night, I called them and asked, can you seat us at 2:30 p.m.?

Shurely.

After another day of pink slime, listeria, sick kids, bad corporate behavior and food safety nerd stuff, I do like to eat. And I like Amy. So we continued our crustacean sampling of Brisbane with the whole chilli mudcrab. And a date.

It was messy. And outstanding.

Tomorrow it’s scallops on the half-shell, grilled on the barbie, after the school’s lunchtime open house and sausage sizzle (I cook, and temp the sausages with my tip-sensitive digital thermometer).

Food is to be enjoyed and cherished.

In March, 2011, an outbreak of salmonella was first identified after a nursing home in Rhode Island reported that 15 residents and two staff members had fallen ill. Investigators discovered that all had eaten zeppole from DeFusco’s Bakery to commemorate St. Joseph’s Day; store owners closed the bakery the same day.

Over the next week, the state received dozens of similar reports of salmonella symptoms, and all but one person had eaten zeppole from DeFusco’s, which supplied the pastries to other bakeries and catered events for the holiday.

WPRI reports that one year later, four new health inspectors have been hired, giving the Food Inspection Department a total of 11 to cover more than 2,000 food establishments.

The Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health refused an interview but, based on inspection reports, there have been numerous inspections at bakeries statewide in the past month, which found:

• "Pizza, calzones and pork pies stored at 65 degrees..."
• "Temperatures need to be 41 degrees"
• "Raw beef stored with deli meats"
• "Mouse droppings found"

A number of lawsuits have been filed against DeFusco's Bakery and some of those are still pending.

Others have been dropped due to the fact the bakery was not insured.

Last year, The Boston Globe reported state inspectors found a host of health violations at DeFusco's, from gallons of pastry cream left unrefrigerated for hours to pastry shells stored in egg crates tainted with salmonella bacteria. It was most likely the shells, which had come into contact with the salmonella-infected eggs, that ignited the outbreak, disease detectives said. The state issued an immediate recall of the bakery’s goods, and the shop agreed to close its two locations immediately.

Fresh Del Monte is ending its lawsuit against Oregon health officials who linked a salmonella outbreak to its Guatemalan cantaloupe.

In August, Coral Gables, Fla.-based Del Monte Fresh Produce NA Inc. said it would sue the Oregon Health Authority’s Public Health Division and the agency’s top scientist over how it handled the investigation of the February and March 2011 outbreak that sickened 20 people in the western U.S. and Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Lynne Terry of The Oregonian reported yesterday that Del Monte Fresh Produce said in a letter e-mailed to the state earlier this month that it would not act on its notice to sue William Keene and Oregon Public Health.

"Obviously, it's a relief for us that that's withdrawn so now we can focus on the job we're supposed to do which is to protect the public's health," said Dr. Katrina Hedberg, state epidemiologist. The tort claim filed last August had gobbled up time of state scientists and lawyers dealing with it, she said.

The claim was unprecedented. State epidemiologists investigate dozens of foodborne illness outbreaks every year and name the culprits to prevent more people from getting sick. No other company has ever filed a suit or threatened to sue Oregon over one of those investigations.

"There have been lots of outbreaks," Hedberg said. "Why some companies choose to work with public health and others want to fight it -- I can't answer that."

Del Monte Fresh Produce wouldn't either. A spokesman said the company "does not comment on ongoing or closed investigations."

The company's letter said the withdrawal marked "a show of good faith" in its discussions with Oregon Public Health over food safety. It asked for another meeting with Oregon's top food safety detectives.

The state agreed to a meeting in Portland.

"I'm not sure why they want it," Hedberg said. "We work with businesses and companies but that does not preclude us from notifying the general public if we find a food item that's been responsible for an outbreak or cluster of illnesses."

The saga dates to January 2011 when people started getting sick. In March, the company recalled nearly 60,000 whole cantaloupes imported from its facility in Guatemala. The recall notice, published on the Food and Drug Administration website, said the melons could be contaminated with Salmonella Panama, the strain involved in the outbreak.

In July, the FDA imposed an import alert, effectively banning the sale of the Guatemalan melons until the company demonstrated they were safe. Located in Coral Gables, Fla., Del Monte Fresh Produce is a major importer of cantaloupe. A third of its supply comes from Guatemala.

The company, which is not part of the Del Monte Foods conglomerate, responded to the alert by filing suit against the FDA. Then in August, it filed the tort claim against Keene and Oregon Public Health along with a separate ethics complaint against Keene.

The documents said Keene conducted a shoddy investigation. They said he never found salmonella in its cantaloupes but named the company anyway. Del Monte Fresh Produce also blamed Keene for the recall, saying he pushed the FDA to take action.

But Keene was not the only epidemiologist who concluded that Del Monte Fresh Produce was to blame in that outbreak. His peers in Washington state reached the same conclusion.

In September, the FDA lifted its import alert and Oregon's Government Ethics Commission dismissed the ethics claim against Keene.

At the time, Kirk Smith, epidemiology supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Health, told the Washington Post it’s rare for scientists investigating foodborne illness outbreaks to test the exact food suspected of carrying pathogens. By the time symptoms occur and a foodborne illness is reported and confirmed, the product in question has likely been consumed or has exceeded its shelf-life and been thrown away.

Instead, scientists, like detectives, interview victims, collect data, analyze patterns and match food “fingerprints” to determine the likely source of an outbreak.

“The majority of outbreaks, we don’t have the food to test,” Smith said. “Laboratory confirmation of the food should never be a requisite to implicating a food item as the vehicle of an outbreak.

Epidemiology is actually a much faster and more powerful tool than is laboratory confirmation.”

Listeria is scary stuff, especially for pregnant women. Pregnant women make up nearly one-third of all cases of listeriosis, due to natural hormonal changes of pregnancy that weaken the immune system. While the mother normally survives an infection during pregnancy, the perinatal/neonatal mortality rate is greater than 80%.

According to an alert sent from the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services to a couple of barfblog readers, El Ranchero del Sur, LLC of South River, NJ has a listeria problem in their cheese products. Consumption of their products have been linked to listeriosis in a pregnant woman and investigators have confirmed the presence of the pathogen. In queso fresco, again (here, here, etc).

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSS) Food and Drug Safety Program (FDSP) is warning the public not to consume any cheese products produced by El Ranchero del Sur, LLC of South River, NJ. On March 2, 2012, a 38-week pregnant woman was diagnosed with Listeria monocytogenes infection at a New Brunswick hospital. Subsequent investigation by the Middlesex County Health Department and product analysis by NJDHSS Public Health Environmental and Agricultural Laboratories confirmed the presence of L. monocytogenes in a sample of Los Corrales Queso Fresco Fresh Cheese and Banana Leaf code dated 03/16/12.

Listeria monocytogenes is an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.

FDSP, with assistance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has obtained a voluntary closure by the firm’s owner while the products and facility are investigated for the presence of L. monocytogenes. All products and ingredients at the facility have been placed under embargo pending the outcome of laboratory testing for L. monocytogenes.

El Ranchero del Sur, LLC has pledged to conduct a voluntary recall through the FDA and is contacting its customers to arrange for the retrieval of all of their cheese products. El Ranchero del Sur cheese products can be found primarily in Mexican and Latin American grocery stores, restaurants, and other hispanic food establishments under the name brands El Ranchero, Los Corrales, and Carnes Don Beto with the plant number 34-0013669 marked on the label. All products are 14 ounces in weight except for the Queso Hebra Oaxaca String Cheese ball in 10 pound packages.
FDSP is requesting local health departments to investigate retail food establishments, in their respective jurisdictions, which are likely to sell or use these products in food service, and take actions to remove from sale or service all of the products described above, of all types and code dates.

If you have any questions, please contact Alan Talarsky, Dairy Project Coordinator, FDSP at (609) 826-4935. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Foodborne disease outbreaks caused by imported food appeared to rise in 2009 and 2010, and nearly half of the outbreaks implicated foods imported from areas which previously had not been associated with outbreaks, according to research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presented today at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta.

“It's too early to say if the recent numbers represent a trend, but CDC officials are analyzing information from 2011 and will continue to monitor for these outbreaks in the future,” said Hannah Gould, Ph.D., an epidemiologist in CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases and the lead author.

CDC experts reviewed outbreaks reported to CDC’s Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System from 2005-2010 for implicated foods that were imported into the United States. During that five-year period, 39 outbreaks and 2,348 illnesses were linked to imported food from 15 countries. Of those outbreaks, nearly half (17) occurred in 2009 and 2010. Overall, fish (17 outbreaks) were the most common source of implicated imported foodborne disease outbreaks, followed by spices (six outbreaks including five from fresh or dried peppers). Nearly 45 percent of the imported foods causing outbreaks came from Asia.

“As our food supply becomes more global, people are eating foods from all over the world, potentially exposing them to germs from all corners of the world, too,” Gould said. “We saw an increased number of outbreaks due to imported foods during recent years, and more types of foods from more countries causing outbreaks.”

According to a report by the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS), U.S. food imports grew from $41 billion in 1998 to $78 billion in 2007. Much of that growth has occurred in fruit and vegetables, seafood and processed food products. The report estimated that as much as 85 percent of the seafood eaten in the United States is imported, and depending on the time of the year, up to 60 percent of fresh produce is imported. ERS also estimated that about 16 percent of all food eaten in the United States is imported. The types of food causing the outbreaks in this analysis aligned closely with the types of food that were most commonly imported.

The 16-year-old daughter in Guelph left for a March-break school trip to Montreal, to learn French stuff.

But I can’t make her lunch.

Fifty students and chaperones from De Soto High School near Kansas City have been treated for food poisoning symptoms at a western Pennsylvania hospital after they stopped on their way home from a band trip to New York when they became ill.

A spokeswoman for Excela Frick Hospital says 40 students and 10 chaperones have been treated at the hospital in Mount Pleasant, about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

The group ate somewhere in New York before 164 of them headed home on three buses early Wednesday.

Those sickened have been treated and were packing up to continue their return trip to Kansas by Wednesday afternoon.

That could prolong and disperse the barfing. But I’d want my daughter home too.

A salmonella outbreak has put three children in the hospital in the past few days and Ottawa's public health department is investigating a catering company that specializes in serving daycares and schools as a possible source of the contamination.

Dr. Isra Levy, the city's top public-health official. All the cases are in children between the ages of 15 months and 14 years, Levy said, and are concentrated at three schools and one daycare:

Public Health's investigation is in its early stages, Levy emphasized, with staff still interviewing children and parents to see what food sources they might have in common. But "one name that has come up" is a service called The Lunch Lady, a caterer that delivers hot meals for kids. It has three kitchens in Ottawa, two of them owned by Jonathan Morris. He said the public-health department is focusing on one of his facilities, on Boyd Avenue near Carling and Clyde.

It's possible that a particular ingredient was contaminated when it arrived, Morris said, which baffles him because all of his suppliers are properly regulated and inspected.

What’s baffling is Morris’ belief that food like produce is regulated and inspected, and that such regulations and inspections make food safe.

The investigation is homing in on one food item that the kitchen prepared, which Morris wouldn't specify because he doesn't want to alarm parents whose children might have eaten it. "If they have a sick child, the thing to do is go to the doctor," Morris said.

Inspectors from Levy's department have been all over the Boyd Avenue kitchen, he said, "and so far, they've found nothing."

The Boyd Avenue kitchen employs about 20 people, including part-timers, Morris said. In five years as a Lunch Lady franchisee, nothing like this has ever happened, he said.

According to public inspection reports from the city, Morris's Boyd Avenue kitchen has been in full compliance with health regulations in its last three inspections, including one on Monday - the one conducted after the health department knew about the salmonella outbreak - and one as recently as Feb. 21.

Shawn Ward, who runs the other Lunch Lady franchise in Ottawa, said her kitchen has been visited by a public-health inspector and given an all-clear. "None of my schools are involved," Ward said.