On Christmas Eve, 2009, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced some 248,000 pounds of tenderized beef were being recalled and was eventually linked to 21 E. coli O157:H7 infections in 16 states.

Needle or blade tenderized beef is typically used on tougher cuts of beef or pork to break down muscle fibers or to inject marinade into meat. About 50 million pounds of needle- or blade-tenderized meat is produced in the U.S. each month, according to a federal study, but it’s not required to be labeled.

All hamburger should be cooked to a thermometer-verified 160F because it’s all ground up – the outside, which can be laden with poop, is on the inside. With steaks, the thought has been that searing on the outside will take care of any poop bugs like E. coli and the inside is clean. But what if needles pushed the E. coli on the outside of the steak to the inside?

Luchansky et al. wrote in the July 2009 Journal of Food Protection that based on inoculation studies, cooking on a commercial gas grill is effective at eliminating relatively low levels of the pathogen that may be distributed throughout a blade-tenderized steak. But others recommend such meat be labeled because it may require a higher cooking temperature.

Today, members of the Safe Food Coalition wrote today to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urging him to immediately approve a proposal to label mechanically tenderized beef products. The proposal must be approved by the Secretary before it is sent to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

Without labeling to identify these products as mechanically tenderized and non-intact products, and information on how to properly cook these products, consumers may be unknowingly at risk for foodborne illness. Labeling of mechanically tenderized products would allow consumers to identify these products in the supermarket.

Based on estimates from the Food Safety and Inspection Service’s 2007 Beef Checklist, approximately 18% of all beef steaks and roasts sold in the U.S. are mechanically tenderized. This means that approximately 50 tons of mechanically tenderized products are produced each month.

USDA has known about this potential threat for many years. As early as 1999, USDA/FSIS publicly stated that mechanically tenderized meat products were considered non-intact products because the product had been pierced and surface pathogens could have been translocated to the interior of the product.

USDA/FSIS further stated, “As a result, customary cooking of these products may not be adequate to kill the pathogens.” At that time, USDA/FSIS said that they would not require a label for these products but strongly encouraged industry to label all non-intact, mechanically tenderized meat products with safe food handling guidance. To date, industry labeling of these products is rare.

In June 2010, the Conference for Food Protection petitioned FSIS to put forward regulations that would require mechanically tenderized products to be labeled.

The letter to Secretary Vilsack is available at http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/Comments.SFC.Vilsack.Mech.Tenderized.Meat8.23.12.pdf

On August 17, 2012, Protica Inc. of Whitehall, PA had undertaken a voluntary product withdrawal of four products including Body Choice "Protein Shots", Nutritional Resources "Protein Wave", ProBalance "Protein to Go French Vanilla Latte" and "Protein to Go Milk Chocolate Shake" because they have the potential to be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum.

Consumers are warned not to use the product even if it does not look or smell spoiled. Botulism, a potentially fatal form of food poisoning, can cause the following symptoms: general weakness, dizziness, double-vision and trouble with speaking or swallowing.

No illnesses have been confirmed to date.

The problem with the lots below were discovered when investigating the processing parameters for all manufactured products. The products withdrawn were distributed nationally through retail and direct mail and are limited to specific lots of the branded products.

More than 110 people have been struck down by gastroenteritis in the Darfield area after drinking contaminated water.

The notifications come one week after the Selwyn District Council issued a boil-water notice after E. coli was found in some parts of the Waimakariri River.

Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) medical officer of health Alistair Humphrey today said six cases had been confirmed as campylobacter.

Yesterday, there had been 19 notifications. Today, there had been more than 110.

''It's a pretty big increase and it's a fairly major waterborne outbreak,'' Humphrey said.

He said all notifications had come from the Darfield Medical Centre and the outbreak was ''highly concentrated'' in and around the township.

The water supply was the ''main suspect.''

''Children who are only a few months old up to people in their 70s and 80s have been affected.''

An outbreak of a gastrointestinal illness at the Stanhope Beach Resort and Conference Centre last weekend is being investigated by the Department of Health, according to P.E.I.'s chief health officer.

Dr. Heather Morrison told CBC News about 60 people had symptoms of nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps or diarrhea after attending events at the resort. Morrison says it could possibly be a norovirus-like illness.

“No cause has been identified to date. Food histories have not identified a likely food source of the illness. And no bacterial cause of the illness has been identified to date,” she said.

The health department says there were three different weddings at the resort on the weekend.

Audrey Firth, the general manager of the resort, says the facility has always maintained a high degree of cleanliness in all parts of the property and has re-doubled its efforts to ensure this doesn't happen again.

There was this one time, Chapman came to Manhattan (Kansas) and lasted one quarter of a Kansas State football game before rushing home with explosive diarrhea.

My whiny kid didn’t help either.

He spent the rest of the visit holed up downstairs, sucking back Gatorade and sitting on the toilet.

When he got back to North Carolina he had the wherewithal to donate a stool sample, and eventually found out he was part of a state-wide antibiotic-resistant campylobacter outbreak.

In light of the German-based E. coli O104 outbreak in raw sprouts last year, researchers in Germany and Sweden are now calling for all stool samples from patients with diarrhea to be tested for enteropathic E. coli.

Writing in Eurosurveillance, the authors state:

Following an outbreak of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) in Germany 2011, we observed increases in EHEC and non-EHEC E. coli cases in Bavaria. We compared the demographic, clinical and laboratory features of the cases reported during the outbreak period, but not related to the outbreak, to the cases reported before and after. The number of EHEC and non-EHEC E. coli cases notified per week during the outbreak was fivefold and twofold higher respectively, compared to previous years. EHEC cases notified during the outbreak were more often reported with bloody diarrhoea, and less often with unspecified diarrhoea, compared to the other periods. They were more often hospitalised during the outbreak and the following period compared to the period before. Their median age (26.5 years, range: 0–90) was higher compared to before (14.5 years, range: 0–94) and after (5 years, range: 0–81). The median age of non-EHEC E. coli cases notified during the outbreak period (18 years, range 0–88) was also higher than before and after (2 years, p<0.001). The surveillance system likely underestimates the incidence of both EHEC and non-EHEC E. coli cases, especially among adults, and overestimates the proportion of severe EHEC cases. Testing all stool samples from patients with diarrhoea for enteropathic E. coli should be considered.

It’s sometimes fun to jibe at health types – local, state, federal – but they have a tough job and I’d be lousy at it.

JoNel Aleccia of NBC News reports Chinese government officials overseeing plants that make chicken jerky pet treats blamed for thousands of illnesses and deaths among American dogs have refused to allow U.S. inspectors to collect samples for independent analysis, newly released records show.

Investigators with the federal Food and Drug Administration came away empty-handed after conducting April inspections at four jerky treat manufacturing sites in Liaocheng and Jinan, China, according to the records.

The plants make pet treats sold by the St. Louis-based Nestle Purina PetCare Co., including the popular Waggin’ Train jerky brands.

Chinese officials stipulated that FDA officials could collect samples only if they agreed to specific conditions, including a requirement that the samples be tested in Chinese-run laboratories.

As a result, “no samples were collected during this inspection,” wrote Dennis L. Doupnik, an FDA investigator who visited the sites.

In addition, the reports showed that the Chinese plants conducted either no laboratory tests or only sporadic tests of the raw materials, including meat used in treats fed to many of the 78.2 million pet dogs in the U.S.

But where’s the company at the center of some 2,000 pet illnesses, Nestle Purina? Hiding behind government, although the company makes the profit.

Elizabeth Mawaka, 57, a Hartford, Conn., woman who says her two Boston terriers, Max and Toby, died after eating tainted treats, got it right when she called on Nestle Purina to demand that samples be released to the FDA.

“It really comes down to the company,” said Mawaka, who is suing jerky treat makers and retailers. “We can talk all we want about China, but it’s really the company.”

However, a Nestle Purina spokesthingy said the inspections demonstrated no problems with the firm's products, no evidence that they’ve led to illnesses in animals in the U.S., and that the terms of the inspection were set by the U.S. and Chinese governments, not by Nestle Purina or the manufacturing site officials.

Traducido por Gonzalo Erdozain

Resumen del folleto informativo mas reciente:
- 2 muertes y 178 enfermos asociados con melones distribuidos por un granjero de Indiana.
- Refrigere el melón luego de cortarlo. Bacterias como la Salmonella y Listeria pueden proliferar rápidamente en temperaturas mayores a los 41°F (5ºC).
- La piel áspera del melón dificilita la eliminación de bacterias a través del lavado.
- Un cepillo debe ser utilizado durante el lavado para disminuir el riesgo de introducción de patógenos durante el corte.

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 Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) and Hoffman Town & Country Meat Market of Detroit Lakes today issued a consumer advisory for whole-muscle turkey jerky after state investigators linked the product to four cases of illness caused by Salmonella bacteria.

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) determined that there have been four cases of infection with the same strain of Salmonella in Minnesota residents.

All four individuals reported eating turkey jerky during the week prior to becoming ill (onsets of illness from August 2 through August 7). One of the cases lives in the Twin Cities metro area, and three in Greater Minnesota. One of the cases was hospitalized, but all have recovered.

Hoffman Town & Country Meat Market has issued a voluntary recall of all whole-muscle turkey jerky product sold on or before August 21, 2012. This product was sold wrapped in white butcher paper. Consumers should not eat any product they still have on hand. Instead, they are advised to return these products for a full refund. Anyone requiring more information about the product is advised to contact the company at (218) 847-7207. Hoffman Town & Country Meat Market is cooperating with MDA and MDH in this investigation.

The newest food safety infosheet, a graphical one-page food safety-related story directed at food businesses, is now available

Food Safety Infosheet Highlights:

- Outbreak has led to 2 deaths and 178 illnesses and is associated with cantaloupes sold by Chamberlin Farms, located in Owensville IN.

- Chamberlin Farms has announced a recall; the investigation is continuing as it is possible that there are other sources of illnesses.

- Refrigerate cantaloupes quickly after slicing. Bacteria such as Salmonella and Listeria can grow quickly on the orange flesh of the fruit when held above 41°F.

- Due to the roughness of the rind, it is difficult to wash away much of the bacteria.

- Using a scrub brush under running water (especially at the cut point) can reduce the risk of pathogen introduction.

Food safety infosheets are created on a regular basis and are posted in restaurants, retail stores, on farms and used in training throughout the world. If you have any infosheet topic requests, or photos, please contact Ben Chapman at benjamin_chapman@ncsu.edu.
 

Click here to download.