Tim Chamberlain seems like a nice enough guy. According to the Indianapolis Star he started growing cantaloupe and watermelon on an acre of land and now, 30 years later, he and his wife, Mia, have built Chamberlain Farms into a midsized melon-growing operation, with 500 acres and about 20 employees.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced earlier this week that the Chamberlains' southwestern Indiana farm "may be one source of contamination" in the salmonella outbreak that has killed two people in Kentucky and sickened 178 people in 21 states.

The story says it's difficult for the 48-year-old father of four to imagine that his farm could have been a source of such tragedy. He doesn't believe his farm was the source of contamination, though he emphasized that he is not disputing anything public health authorities have said.

Dan Egel, a Purdue Extension specialist in Vincennes, Ind., said Chamberlain
has worked closely with the Extension Service over the years on disease and pest control though not specifically on food safety.

And that could be the biggest clue until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration releases its inevitable report documenting faith-based food safety.

(Updated: Dan Egel writes, "The reason that Tim Chamberlain and I never spoke about food safety is because food safety is not my specialty. I know for certain that Tim interacted with other Purdue University specialists that are experts on food safety.")

The effect on others is staggering: Vernon Stuckwish of Stuckwish Family Farms in Jackson County said that initial stigma has "already pretty much destroyed our market."

Like any other major outbreak, there’s lots of commentary about how the outbreak confirms preexisting notions: that more needs to be done, that federal regulations would have made a difference, that there should be more testing. After 20 years of watching and participating in this food safety stuff, the lack of imagination and creativity is staggering.

Victims and consumers remain the stray sheep in the food safety marketplace.

As pointed out by News-Sentinel.com, knowing the name of Tim Chamberlain’s farm does nothing to help consumers. All the talk of traceability is a joke and consumers have no microbial food safety choice at retail.

Hucksters who promote produce on trust alone are no better than snake-oil salesthingies:

Kelly's Fruit Market in Madison County is taking extra steps to make sure its customers are safe. "We have the finest produce in Madison County," explains Kelly Ratliff, owner of Kelly's Fruit Market. "We know exactly where all of our produce is coming from and we always make sure it's the highest quality … with most of our produce that we have and that we sell I can tell you every single growers name, who grows it where it's grown and a little bit about their family."

But can you tell me their water quality testing results? What soil amendments are used? The verification of employee handwashing and sanitation?

Cantaloupe growers in other parts of the country are frustrated. Probably not as much as the families of the dead and sickened, but frustrated.

Trevor Suslow, research extension specialist at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California-Davis, said he thought more could have been done to educate growers across the country about safe harvesting, handling and distribution in the wake of last year’s deadly listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupe from Jensen Farms in Holly, Colo.

“I think there was a missed opportunity,” Suslow said Aug. 23. “I wish we could have done a better job of getting existing information to county extension agents and others who were already engaged with the smaller growers.”

But what about missed opportunities over the past decade? As noted in The Packer, the 10-year anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s import alert on Mexican cantaloupe is near, enacted after outbreaks three years in a row (and two deaths) traced to those melons. In doing so, the FDA basically killed Mexican cantaloupes to the U.S. for a few years, giving rise to offshore melon deals in Central and South America.

The clampdown on Mexican growers forced U.S. import partners to work on food safety protocols for fields and packinghouses in Guerrero, the origin of the banned cantaloupes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Mexican counterpart, SAGARPA, had to sign off on each facility before it was allowed to ship to the U.S. again.

The U.S. farms central to cantaloupe outbreaks and recalls probably wouldn’t have passed similar scrutiny.

With 10 years of guidelines, endless outbreaks, the lack of solutions remains stunning.

The Packer is finally catching on to the notion of marketing food safety at retail, which we’ve been advocating since the 2006 E. coli-in-spinach outbreak.

“The unwritten rule in the produce industry is that a company should not market its product as safer than a competitor’s.

“The thinking is that once consumers get in their heads that a fruit or vegetable is more safe, that means another is less safe, and then maybe they’ll avoid the commodity or category altogether.

“But what if your company or growing region has a strong food safety record, drafted best practices documents, followed and documented them, and then suffers for the second year in a row as a different region’s product kills consumers?"

Someone could at least try marketing microbial food safety at retail. Nothing else seems to be working. And maybe Tim Chamberlain would be more accountable.

"We were finding that deaths, for example, from foodborne illness or intestinal infections goes up from anywhere between 50% and 100%, so a doubling in some instances."

That's what Jonathan Klick, a University of Pennsylvania Law professor states in reference to what he says is a major public health risk: jurisdictions enacting plastic bag bans that result in the increased use of reusable bags. Citing unshown and unpublished data from San Francisco, Klick also says "More people are showing up in the emergency rooms, and it turns out they have E. coli infections…"

He implies those infections and illnesses can be traced to reusable bags. Uh huh.

According to The PERColator, Klick investigated the economic trade-offs of reusable bags during a fellowship funded by the Property and Environment Research Center this summer and he apparently has data to back this up, but I'm guessing here (because nothing is cited).

In research carried out at PERC this summer, Jonathan Klick, a PERC Lone Mountain Fellow, argues that reusable grocery bags contain potentially harmful bacteria, especially coliform bacteria such as E. coli. Klick finds that, in the wake of San Francisco’s ban, deaths and ER visits related to these bacteria spiked as soon as the ban went into effect. For more on this ongoing research, watch our interview with Klick (I've embedded it below -ben)

Klick says "There have been some science folks, who have done some studies…" and then a few stats are flashed up:

- 51% of tested bags contained coliform bacteria

- Bacteria grows even faster if stored in a car

Those science folks are Williams and colleagues (2011) who have published the only peer-reviewed study on the microbial safety of reusable bags and they tested 58 bags taken from shoppers in Arizona and California.

And E. coli matters more than coliform, since the group of bacteria is commonly found on plant material and is not a good indicator of pathogen presence on food. At least E. coli demonstrates that a pathogen might be there. The Williams study showed generic E. coli can float around in bags - they recovered it in 12% of what they sampled (n=58).

An unanswered question is can it be (or is it likely) to be transferred to any ready-to-eat foods, or somehow to food contact surfaces in the home? Seems like that matters. Just because the bacteria might be there, doesn't mean it can contaminate a ready-to-eat food. No one has presented data to support that.

Williams and colleagues also tested growth of Salmonella in 2 batches. They spiked the bags with 10^6 cfu and let them sit in the trunk of a car for 2 hours. One of the batches, where the temperature reached 47C/117F, showed a one-log increase in the Salmonella. The other batch, where the temperature reached 53C/124F, there was a one-log reduction. That data doesn't show just a breeding zone - it shows they can be a killing zone too (and I'm not sure how realistic a 10^6 contamination really is).

Shiny YouTube videos with dramatic music can grab attention - but without sharing the data and showing his work, Klick isn't saying much.

 “I know who grows the product and how it’s cared for, so that eliminates any concern, any danger or quality issues.”

That’s a farmer defending the quality of his cantaloupe at a farm stand in Indiana, and it’s included in the video accompanying a USA Today story tomorrow.

I’d prefer some data along with the faith.

Liz Szabo writes consumers are once again doubting the safety of cantaloupes, a year after a deadly outbreak of food poisoning caused by tainted melons killed at least 30 people and sickened 146 people.

In the latest outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says two people have died and 141 have fallen ill in 20 states in a salmonella outbreak linked to contaminated cantaloupe grown in southwestern Indiana. Thirty-one victims have been hospitalized. Both deaths were in Kentucky.

Food-safety advocate Nancy Donley says she's "hopping mad" over the latest outbreak. "These illnesses and deaths are preventable," says Donley, a spokeswoman for STOP Foodborne Illness. Her group has urged the Food and Drug Administration to more quickly put out new rules and regulations, based on authority from 2010 legislation. "This shouldn't have happened."

A cantaloupe's rough, porous skin is an easy target for bacteria, which cling to the bumps on its surface. Cantaloupes growing on the ground can also pick up dirt and germs from manure that runs off from livestock fields, says Douglas Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University.

It's almost impossible for consumers to adequately wash cantaloupes at home, he adds. The knives used to cut cantaloupes transfer bacteria to the inside.

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

Yesterday we joined over 70,000 for our second People’s Day at the Ekka.

The petting zoo was a mess.

The Brisbane Exhibition, or Ekka, runs over 10 days and is similar to American-style state fairs or the CNE in Toronto: bad food, hucksters of various wares, a large midway, and the best livestock from across the state.

There was a petting zoo, a sorta controlled-chaos the like of which I’d never seen (left, exactly as shown) where hundreds of parents and their kids roamed in a large enclosure with goats, sheep, cattle, and shelled out some cash to feed the animals from a cup. Kids were crying and falling in poop, animals were scarfing down food, parents were chatting with friends and not noticing their toddler doing things that shouldn’t be done in a petting zoo.

At one point, Amy told Sorenne not to put her fingers in her mouth after petting an animal; the mother next to her told her kid, “Yeah, don’t put your fingers in your mouth.”

Amy couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm or sincere.

Both hand sanitation and handwashing stations were available at the departure point, which was good, although reminders could have been more effective: the compliance rate appeared low. As Anderson and Weese found in 2011 at a temporary petting zoo in Guelph using video observation, 58 per cent of visitors performed some form of hand hygiene (either using water, soap and water, or hand sanitizer), and two interventions (improved signage while offering hand sanitizer, and verbal hand hygiene reminders by venue staff) were associated with increased hand hygiene compliance. U.K. health officials currently recommend handwashing stations with soap and water only (no wipes or sanitizers).

There was a person collecting feed cups at the exit (which we did not buy) but she said nothing about handwashing as I left.

And handwashing is never enough. While some studies suggest inadequate handwashing facilities may have contributed to enteric disease outbreaks or washing hands was protective against illness, others suggest relevant infectious agents may be aerosolized and inhaled. Handwashing tool selection may also contribute to the success of hand hygiene as a preventive measure, as some outbreak investigations have reported alcohol-based hand sanitizer was not protective against illness, especially when hands are soiled.

All the refs can be found in our recent paper, a sorta secret petting zoo shopper, Observation of public health risk behaviors, risk communication and hand hygiene at Kansas and Missouri petting zoos – 2010-2011.

Snappy title.

I’m fine with animal interactions; but people, and organizers, should be a lot more careful than they thought. That’s what I told my 3-year-old’s daycare as they prepared for a chicken coop. I’m not sure people like that message.

A table of petting zoo outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks.

Erdozain G, Kukanich K, Chapman B, Powell D. 2012. Observation of public health risk behaviours, risk communication and hand hygiene at Kansas and Missouri petting zoos - 2010-2011. Zoonoses Public Health. 2012 Jul 30. doi: 10.1111/j.1863-2378.2012.01531.x. [Epub ahead of print]

Abstract:

Observation of public health risk behaviors, risk communication and hand hygiene at Kansas and Missouri petting zoos – 2010-2011Outbreaks of human illness have been linked to visiting settings with animal contact throughout developed countries. This paper details an observational study of hand hygiene tool availability and recommendations; frequency of risky behavior; and, handwashing attempts by visitors in Kansas (9) and Missouri (4), U.S., petting zoos. Handwashing signs and hand hygiene stations were available at the exit of animal-contact areas in 10/13 and 8/13 petting zoos respectively. Risky behaviors were observed being performed at all petting zoos by at least one visitor. Frequently observed behaviors were: children (10/13 petting zoos) and adults (9/13 petting zoos) touching hands to face within animal-contact areas; animals licking children’s and adults’ hands (7/13 and 4/13 petting zoos, respectively); and children and adults drinking within animal-contact areas (5/13 petting zoos each). Of 574 visitors observed for hand hygiene when exiting animal-contact areas, 37% (n=214) of individuals attempted some type of hand hygiene, with male adults, female adults, and children attempting at similar rates (32%, 40%, and 37% respectively). Visitors were 4.8x more likely to wash their hands when a staff member was present within or at the exit to the animal-contact area (136/231, 59%) than when no staff member was present (78/343, 23%; p<0.001, OR=4.863, 95% C.I.=3.380-6.998). Visitors at zoos with a fence as a partial barrier to human-animal contact were 2.3x more likely to wash their hands (188/460, 40.9%) than visitors allowed to enter the animals’ yard for contact (26/114, 22.8%; p<0.001, OR= 2.339, 95% CI= 1.454-3.763). Inconsistencies existed in tool availability, signage, and supervision of animal-contact. Risk communication was poor, with few petting zoos outlining risks associated with animal-contact, or providing recommendations for precautions to be taken to reduce these risks.