Filtering by Tag: USDA FSIS

Food Safety Talk 41: Always Looking Out for Nuts

Added on by Ben Chapman.

Don shared that he’s been flogging the podcast mercilessly during his recent travels. The guys then launched straight into the Bug Trivia segment, highlighting Clostridium perfringens, which can be a big problem particularly for meat processors who need to cool large cuts of cooked meat quickly (to meet the FSIS performance standard). Carl Custer’s notes indicate that it was infamous for causing gas gangrene. During cooking of meat the spores germinate and these can grow incredibly fast if the rate of cooling is inadequate. Luckily it generally doesn’t cause death, but can cause a potentially fatal disease called pig-bel especially in countries where cooked meat is held at room temperature for long periods of time. Ben has developed some food safety infosheets for this organism, including this one detailing an outbreak linked to a school event.

The guys then turned their attention to baked goodies and that some things on the Internet are not true. Don referred to one of those typical urban legend emails warning people to discard their out-of-date pancake and cake mixes for risk of causing anaphylactic allergic reactions. Turns out that there is some truth to the matter as you can see from Snopes and this scientific article “An unusual case of anaphylaxis. Mold in pancake mix.” While there are some incorrect aspects to the story, Don would always advise people to not use food that has passed its best or sell by date because of the lower quality (the dates are there for a reason).

The conversation then turned to canning as Ben, the self-proclaimed Canning King of Wake County NC, recently received a question about canning mushrooms. While the email appeared to be about quality, Ben’s concern was Clostridium botulinum (see bug trivia in FST 39) and hence he elevated this email to an 11 on the 1 to 10 scale. So, Ben passed on information on canning mushrooms from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Don was also dealing with canning questions and was worried about people fiddling with established jam recipes for fear of a repeat of what happened in Cowichan with watermelon jelly.

Ben then went on a Salmonella-fuelled hazelnut caper – he was grumpy about the lack of supplier information provided by the CFIA, although Lynne Terry from The Oregonian managed to find it out. Ben felt this information could be important to other distributers who would be able to make better decisions (provided they had the right food safety culture). Don noted that weenie public health folk, such as Dr. Eric Wilke, had Doug all fired up. Dr Wilke’s antics at the press conference turned serious foodborne illness outbreak into bizarre theater. Not cool, dude. The Salmonella outbreak from Fayetteville Hotelon the I-95 reminded Don of FST 11 and the guys discussed some of the ill-informed responses of public health officials after food borne illness outbreaks.

Don and Ben then turned their attention to needle tenderized beef, which was prompted by the MeatingPlace opinion about this Consumer Reports article. While James Marsden was against labeling of mechanically tenderized beef, Canada has already moved to such a labeling requirement, although Doug had some questions about it. Ben had managed to find some research on cooking inoculated and mechanically tenderized beef, although the debate about it is ongoing. Both Ben and Don would prefer to have this type of product clearly labeled, although their preference is for naturally tender and flavorsome beef cuts (such as MSA graded beef).

In the after dark the guys talked about Don’s upcoming trip to Brazil and Denmark, and Ben's trip to Nebraska.

Food Safety Talk 33: Fresh Produce Punk Rock Hippieness

Added on by Don Schaffner.

Don starts by battling Skype again while Ben gets organized. The guys shared their favorite Starbucks coffee orders, which Don takes to go in his Marco-approved ™ Contigo travel mug. While these mugs can be challenging to wash, the guys agreed that washing them (or other dishes) in the bathroom was never a good idea. Even John Gruber knows that storing dishes in the bathroom is a bad idea, as he pointed out in a recent episode of The Talk Show. Ben then went into a coffee-fuelled rant about Getting Things Done, his favorite Canadian TV series ‘The Newsroom’, The Lumineers, Bad Religion and The Wire’s Stringer Bell. Don countered with Fat Boy Slim, the Luther, Bramwell, Ripper Street, and Transmetropolitan.

After a shout-out to Renee Boyer’s Food Safety class at Virginia Tech they talked about listener Bridgette’s link to “Dear Abby - Changing baby on eatery table takes the cake” and her comment that perhaps that common sense isn’t that common at all.

Next on the agenda was a discussion of the recent CDC report on foodborne disease attribution and how fresh produce is associated with greatest amount of foodborne illness, while poultry is linked to the greatest number of deaths. Don explained how the MDP’s retail sampling results match up reasonably well with actual illness estimates, according to his crude risk assessment. Ben was looking for information on what people could do to reduce the risks, as Don recently shared on WebMD. Ben was also surprise by the amount of deaths associated with norovirus (shown in the Technical Appendix 1 of the CDC report), the majority of which are associated with nursing homes. As the guys dug deeper into the results they unearthed more questions than answers and they cautioned against blindly trusting data.  As Don learned from reading Chumbawuba liner notes.

Ben and Don then discussed the recent Food Safety News article “Does The “No Illnesses” Language Belong in Recall Notices?” and whether the wording impacts on how consumers react.

The focus then turned to the FSIS “Let's Talk Chicken” podcast. The guys found the scripted nature very difficult to connect with. Instead they found CDC’s approach in “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse” much more engaging. Don felt that passion was important in podcasting and cited the Obsession times Voice talk by Merlin Mann and John Gruber at SXSW.  Don also noted that he listens to Neutral, and his new favorite podcast, for the voice, and not the content.

In the after dark the guys chatted about using American Apparel for making T-shirts, creating Food Safety Talk Decals, iPads, Ben’s hockey obsession and 2 Little Superheroes.

Food Safety Talk 33: Fresh Produce and Punk Rock Hippieness

Food Safety Talk 22 – Gut demons, miniature blood Nazis, vampire nanobots and scientific reviewers

Added on by Don Schaffner.

The guys started with the usual technical problems but this time they were self-inflicted rather than Skype induced.

Don started off by talking about FSIS Risk Assessment for Guiding Public Health-Based Poultry Slaughter Inspection, which he is currently reviewing. The risk assessment is part of FSIS’ attempt to modernize their meat inspection system. Despite the introduction of HACCP in the mid 90’s, the current system relies on inspecting every carcass for visually observable contamination, obviously missing microbiological contamination, like in Gary Larson’s “Early microbiologists.” The risk assessment was undertaken to assess whether allowing FSIS personnel to undertake off-line inspection verification activities would result in reductions (or at least no increase) in the occurrence of Salmonella or Campylobacter on finished poultry carcasses.

The risk assessment is largely based on a data rich and complicated regression model, which attempts to model the prevalence of Salmonella or Campylobacter from different types of inspections activities. While ultimately nothing is clear-cut, the risk assessment does indicate that moving inspectors from on-line inspection to more risk-based off-line activities will not result in more foodborne illness. However, the coding system used in the risk assessment was turning Don into 'grumpy pants' and reminded Ben of Bingo, and it shows an apparent communication disconnect between those undertaking the modeling and those writing up the risk assessment.

The conversation then turned to FSMA and the delay in the regulations. Ben’s worried that some companies may be holding off on undertaking certain activities until the regulations come out. For example, he thinks that some business may be holding off on training staff until the training standards are better defined. Both agreed that concern for food safety and public health didn’t stop due to the lack of regulations and that any effort expended in planning and thinking about food safety is not wasted. Don is hopeful that even if the FSMA is repealed that the good ideas in FSMA will not be lost, and neither will the activities of the Food Safety Preventative Control Alliance be wasted.

Since the last podcast, Don had been to his favorite restaurant, Moosewood in Ithaca, NY while Ben started his visit to Canada with a trip to Tim Hortons to bask in the Canadian ambiance and slang, such as beauty and giver, eh? Ben also went to Swiss Chalet with his mom and dad. When a child on a nearby table  vomited, Ben’s neurotic father wanted to know whether they should move. But Ben assured him that they were OK, having ulterior motives in mind. One of the kitchen staff then came out of the kitchen to clean up the vomit with a bucket, mop and some cleaning cloths, before disappearing back into the kitchen, clearly not following CDC’s guidelines for cleaning up vomit. Ben was of course aware of the risks associated with airborne Norovirus infection as shown by his Food Safety Info Sheet and his careful reading this article. But he wanted to see how the restaurant handled the cleanup, even at the risk of his own heath and that of his parents!

On the social media front, Don recommended that Ben follow Michele Catalano and John Roderick (from Roderick on the Line) on Twitter. Don was totally in awe of Mike Batz’s Twitter-awesomeness when Mike replied to John’s tweet about the bactericidal effects of coffee with “Coffee kills gut demons, miniature blood Nazis, and vampire nanobots. But not milk devils. Everybody knows this.” Ben is again trying to engage more on Twitter, but he wasn’t impressed with McDonald’s Executive Chef’s video on how to do a Big Mac at home.

The guys then discussed scientific writing. Despite Don’s best efforts he can’t get his students to write better, though maybe collaboration with Michelle Danyluk on “How to write a paper that won’t piss off your advisor” might help. He’d even be happy if students learned to use a reference manager like Sente. Ben is trying out some advice he’d received from Gord Surgeoner during his graduate studies – with a bit of luck it’ll earn him some beers.

While Don is generally happy with his own scientific writing he wasn’t happy with the reviewer of his recent JFP manuscript entitled “Issues to consider when setting intervention targets with limited data for low-moisture food commodities: A peanut case study” which arose out of an ILSI North America sponsored meeting. The reviewer thought that the approach was very simplified and not novel enough. He clearly didn’t understand the complexities of making decisions from limited data – something the smartest people in this field in the country struggled with.

Finally, the guys got excited about the upcoming IAFP meeting, for which Don had done an IAFP webinar for students and IAFP meeting first timers, which was all about how to meet people. Don also offered to a buy a beverage of choice for any listener who mentions to podcast to Don at the IAFP meeting. 

Food Safety Talk 22: Gut demons, miniature blood Nazis, vampire nanobots and scientific reviewers

Food Safety Talk 1: Frampton Comes Alive

Added on by Don Schaffner.

In this episode Don and Ben discover that they can indeed talk about Food Safety for an hour. This episode they talk about why they decided to do a podcast and about restaurant inspection.

Here are some link to some of the things they discussed:

And here is the podcast:

Click here for Food Safety Talk season 1, episode 1