Food Safety Talk 63: The Great One

Don and Ben have Skype issues but this time it was actually Don. Don announced that there will be help for people like Ben who aren’t so good at managing their time and attention at IAFP 2014, with Merlin Mann presenting on Wednesday in a special lunch session. The guys estimate about 0.1% of IAFP annual meeting attendees will be excited to see him - including Ben and Don, and probably Batz. Ben mentions his excitement that Professor Dr. Donald Schaffner, PhD was name checked on Back to Work Episode 173.

The first mention of The Wire comes at 12 minutes in when the guys give a shout out to Baltimore resident Manan Sharma who has mentioned that this is his favorite part of the show.

In follow-up from Episode 61, friend of the show MDD says that there are not rats in Alberta  Ben and Don remark while there may not be any snakes in New Zealand and Ireland (although Ben thinks that Don is thinking of potatoes) there are rats in small pockets in Alberta. While Alberta has had a rat eradication program since the 1950s, a colony of Norwegian rats, of Roanoke Island proportion, was found in Medicine Hat (that's in Canada) in 2012 and 2014. Ben tells Don that he wears big pockets to avoid rats, and that and on a pilgrimage to Edmonton to see a statue of The Great One, his pockets were not checked.

The guys then talk about a question from IAFP’s Dina (not Dinah). Dina asked the guys to discuss their thoughts on a recent JFP paper about non-intact steak cooking using temperature, flipping/turning and different cooking methods. The practical, take-home message (as dictated using Dragon Dictate) was that that flipping and covering with a lid (which allows cooking to occur both through conduction and convection heat) and using a thermometer for all cuts of meat helps reduce risk.

Ben talked a bit about some future work that his group is doing looking at mechanically tenderized beef messaging, perception and behavior - including cubed steak.  Cube steak is sometimes made by slapping two pieces of meat together and running through a cuber - although not according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong. The discussion moved to steak eating preferences as detailed by FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver’s cadre of numbers nerds who dissect a lot of pop culture and sports questions.

The guys then both talked about message variability projects they have going on. Ben’s group is looking at  cook book recipes (and how the messages and instructions in the culinary world often are not evidence-based). And Don’s group is looking at messaging on handwashing signs, something that his second favorite graduate student Dane, is undertaking.

In outbreak flashback the guys talked about 1854’s Broad St. Pump  cholera outbreak. Using a map and analyzing cases of human disease, John Snow, largely recognized as one of the founders of epidemiology, created a blueprint for the next generation of disease hunters. Removing the handle on the pump is commonly thought to have ended the outbreak except that modern epi-curve analysis suggests that the outbreak was already on the decline. Ben’s favorite part was what one of his undergraduate professors, Anthony Clarke talked about in class 15 years ago: the monks in a local monastery did not get sick because they didn’t drink the water, just home brewed beer.

The guys then ended the show talking about an outbreak linked to food service hamburgers made by Wolverine Packing. Or is that Wolverine Packing with it's adamantium slicers and grinders? In either case, It’s unclear whether illnesses are linked to undercooked burgers or cross contamination - although anecdotally undercooked burgers have been reported. One of Ben’s graduate student’s Ellen Thomas has been working on a project related directly to this type of product, where secret shoppers have been speaking with servers at burger-serving family style restaurants throughout the U.S. The results of the project will be shared at IAFP in Indianapolis.

In after dark the guys chuckle and guffaw about Ben’s Beatles references, time and attention management, and Tony Robbins who Ben thinks is in prison. But he’s not. He was thinking of James Arthur Ray. Don mentions that the author Kurt Vonnegut (who explains the universal shapes of storytelling) has a memorial library in Indianapolis.

Food Safety Talk 47: But that's not science

The guys started by talking about their office and home podcasting set-ups; how Don inspired his son Zac; podcast sponsorship (thanks Dr. Indian Clarified Butter); the Food Science short course at Rutgers; MC-ing; Ben’s wedding; and, customer service at Frito Lay’s and General Mills.

In the bug trivia segment the guys talked about the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, recently reviewed by Beniamino and colleagues. T. gondii was ranked the second worst pathogen in terms of quality adjusted life years (QALY) by Mike Batz (guest on FST 4) and colleagues, and recently featured on Back to Work.

The discussion took a short detour to food thermometers, including the PDT 300, iGrill, and ThermaPen, before coming around to the retiring Pete Snyder, from HI-TM. Pete is held in high regard by both Ben and Don, not only because he wasn’t afraid to ask questions, like Don did in the comment exchange to the Snapper barfblog article. Thanks to Pete’s guidance Ben is always seeking the primary information for creating his Infosheets.  A classic example of Pete’s drive for the scientific justification relates to the information produced on thawing poultry at ambient temperatures, which was picked up by barfblog.

Ben then talked about the CDC report on the tempeh related outbreak discussed in FST 18. He found it interesting that many of the illnesses appeared to be caused by cross-contamination rather than consumption of the contaminated, unpasteurized tempeh. Don was bummed that his own work wasn’t cited by the CDC, but he noted that Michelle’s recent work showed that cross-contamination was facilitated by moisture. This then turned into a broader discussion around managing risks in a food service setting.

Don then wanted to hear Ben’s thoughts about Bill Marler’s question on what cantaloupe and baseball have in common. Bill’s suggestion to change the incentives had the flavor of a Modest Proposal, but without the satire. Ben agreed that retailers and restaurants should be held responsible, as without them there isn’t enough pressure on the suppliers. The guys then discussed third party audits and the setting of supplier standards. Both agreed that the current system doesn’t work how it should and that proper data analysis could provide significant insights.

In the after dark the guys talked about Ben’s upcoming trip to Brazil, the PCV show, food safety a-holes, Mexican wrestling masks, the Conference for Food Protection councils, laws and sausages, and getting hurt at the doctor's office.

Food Safety Talk 26: We’re out of the lag phase!

Ben and Don started the podcast with a discussion about Lego. Ben has finally started his homework – watching Episode 1 from Season 1 of The Wire. This evolved into a discussion of music, including Tom Waits, Neil and Pegi Young’s Annual Bridge School Benefit Concert and the Kronos Quartet. Then Don had little Skype hiccup, which turned out to be pibcak.

The guys then turned their attention to food safety and Don started it off with a mention of Back to Work, Episode 85: "Schrödinger's Soap Holder", which focused on safely navigating a public restroom with or without hot water, soap and paper towels. After a short sports excursion, including a walk down “No-Hockey Lane” (which apparently had Michele Catalano fired up) the guys found their unique spiritual connection… through peanut butter, but not jelly.  Andreas suggested Aussie Rules in the event there is no hockey.

The discussion then focused on the current peanut butter related illness outbreak and related recalls. Ben wondered allowed how a regulatory agency might determine the period of production that is to be recalled. Don guessed that it was related to the company being able to document the last comprehensive cleanup. A potential difficulty for this relates to the use of rework, as seen with the ever-expanding Hudson beef recall. While knowing how recall decisions are made may not be of interest to everyone, but Ben noted that this information would be useful to other companies who face recall decisions in the future.

Ben then asked about the magnitude of the risk of Salmonella in peanut butter as he hadn’t seen any published risk assessment. Don guessed that it was low (relative to many types of produce) because the Microbiological Data Program 2009 data summary didn’t show any Salmonella detections in 1542 peanut butter samples. Don then raised the issue that the MDP recalls were never or rarely linked to outbreaks. He was particularly interested in this because of an upcoming talk he was preparing, in which he combined prevalence estimates from the MDP 2009 data, under-reporting estimates from the Scallan et al article, and a rough dose-response estimate. Don’s reasoning indicates that it’s not surprising that the MDP program would result in detections (and hence recalls) that aren’t linked to outbreaks.

Using the example of cilantro, which had many detections of Salmonella reported in the 2009 MDP data, Ben noted that he would really like to know more about where and how the hazard is introduced into the product. Don then suggested that a better way of reporting the MDP results would be to report the positive rate, rather than just the number of positives, as clearly the denominator is important.

Ben then mentioned the current large norovirus outbreak in Germany, where more than 8400 children have shown symptoms. Ben hypothesized that it might be related to water in a fresh produce washing and packing plant.  Turns out he might just be right since frozen strawberries have now been implicated. Ben wasn’t sure whether a surveillance program like the MDP would ever detect viruses in fresh produce, and while he accepted the utility of the MDP he was also sure that it could be improved.

Ben then discussed his recent experience of visiting Jeanne Gleeson, Barb Chamberlain and their army of programmers, who produced Ninja Kitchen. He was talking to them about producing stop motion animations to illustrate how and where hazards are introduced into the fresh produce supply chain – from farm to the consumer. Ben is keen on using these for educational presentations to producers as well as consumers shopping at farmers markets. This reminded Don of the norovirus cross-contamination modeling work his student Di Li is working on, and also the excellent videos of Jim Mann from Hand washing for Life.

Then Don offered to send a free FoodSafetyTalk.com fridge magnet/thermometer to listeners who contact him via email or Twitter. He’s also using them for distribution at MaxFunCon East with the aim of increasing listener numbers, which has just exited the equivalent of the bacterial lag phase.

In the After Dark Ben announced that he was going to watch some more of The Wire and then proceeded to assign Don some homework – to watch Canadian TV Series "The Newsroom".

Food Safety Talk 26: We're Out Of The Lag Phase!