Filtering by Tag: Canada

Food Safety Talk 51: Pee on the radiator

Added on by Ben Chapman.
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After congratulating Don on his birthday, the guys talked about their recent travels, including 10 slaca, the 3rd Asia Pacific International Conference on Food Safety, the China International Food Safety & Quality Conference & Expo, and then they compared their favorite David Tharp stories.

In follow up to FST 49: Less Risky Bathroom Event, Don shared some information about the microbiome of urine though he couldn't comment on which way to wipe. Ben also asked Don about the hygiene of hockey locker rooms, which was prompted by Pekka Rinne's E. coli infection. The discussion about locker rooms then reminded Ben about a big Norovirus outbreak of basketball players and Don that his student Hanna will be visiting some public bathrooms as part of the NoroCore project. And somehow the conversation turned to North America's most photogenic Major Rob Ford, aka Major McCrack.

In the Food Safety History segment, Don returned to the 1940's of IAFP's history, where advances in food safety were largely due to the requirements for supplying troops in World War II. This was not the first time that great advances in food safety were made in response to military needs, see for example the invention of canning.

Ben then wanted to talk about road kill, which has earned him the title of Dr Roadkill. This discussion originated from this recent article about a planned Montana permit system for salvaging road kill. The guys didn't agree with Fred Pritzker's arguments against the system.

The discussion then turned to the FDA Risk Profile Pathogen and Filth in Spices. The guys were disappointed by the Spice Producers response. It reminded them about the importance of good risk communication. Foster Farms provided another example of 'not to get it quite right', who added to their recent woes by showing that they can't count. Don wondered about their social media strategy and why so many media managers are dipsh*ts.

The guys touched on the fall out from the Sunland bankruptcy before moving on to fishy issues surrounding the regulation and trade of catfish.

To finish off the guys prepared for Thanksgiving with a Lifehacker article on leftovers. While the article was OK, the comments made their stomachs turn. Clearly they need to continue their battle to fix the internet one comment at a time.

In the after dark the guys discussed the latest OS X Mavericks upgrade, the TV show Veep, rejecting journal articles, Ben becoming a grumpy old man, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, End of the World, Adventure Time (Season 3)), Bronies and the Pulling the String podcast.

Food Safety Talk 48: Ninja moves to rock and roll

Added on by Don Schaffner.

The guys started the show with some general chit chat about The Beer Store and The Nail Shop, the Beach Boys, including "Pet Sounds", Chuck Berry, Bed Bad Baaaaaaatz, Don's Etymotic hf5 earphones, Twitter, (including this discussion), and Barb O'Neill's great work.

Prompted by a link from Alejandro Amezquita, the guys then turned their attention to laundry and in the process gave the phrase "Eat My Shorts!" a new meaning. In the article, Lisa Ackerley discussed the hygiene of laundering. The guys recalled a couple of research articles by Chuck Gerba related to the topic (here and here). Neither Don nor Ben were particularly worried about this.

This reminded Ben of The Salt article on cooking food in the dishwasher. The guys discussed the potential risk of this approach and the sciences that is needed. Another The Salt article on washing poultry had also resulted in a large amount of social media engagement, which is something the Don and Ben are always keen to explore. And both enjoyed Alton Brown's proper method for washing out the inside of a whole poultry.

The guys then moved onto the bug trivia replacement segment called Food Safety History, in honor of a 100 years of the IAFP Journal of Food Protection. In this episode the Don covered the pre 1940 era. It all started with the Journal of Milk Technology and the connection with raw milk reminded Ben of this Toronto Star article.

Don then wanted to talk about this NY Times article, related to Salmonella in spices, and the related Food Microbiology article. Don posed Ben the questions that he was asked for a Rutgers Q&A press release on this topic and the guys compared their answers.

The guys then got fired up about the Cronut Burger-related outbreak article by Jason Tetro. Ben didn't quite agree with some of Jason's assumptions, so Ben queried the manufacturers about the parameters of the product, which Le Dolci didn't know. Ben eventually found the answer from Toronto Public Health, and was able to set the record straight.

To finish off, Don mentioned The New Disruptors podcast (earlier episodes), which featured Marisa McClellan in Episode 38 "Yes, we can!" talking about food preservation. Don was pleasantly surprised by her knowledge, including her mention of the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

In the after dark the guys continued the canning discussion, including Canvolution, Canning Across America and pink flamingos for their 50th episode.

Food Safety Talk 44: Stool Sampling Tools

Added on by Don Schaffner.

The show started with Mr. Roboto, Brazilian Cheese Bread, the upcoming IAFP’s annual meeting in Charlotte, and StoryCorps (not to be confused with Adventure Time). At the IAFP meeting Ben will be stuffing bags at the Food Lion and Don will try to control the unruly Dr. Harris at her first board meeting. The guys then celebrated Canada Day with some pop culture such as The Tragically Hip, Rheostatics and Frampton Comes Alive! (as featured on FST 1), and Reality Bites.

Ben and Don then turned their attention to Helicobacter pylori. Ben reported having had a belch inducing H. pylori infection, which was diagnosed by a breath test. It reminded Ben of Don’s asymptomatic H. pylori infection. Don wondered how Ben got exposed to H. pylori and whether it may have been foodborne, which Ben agreed was a possibility. In fact, Helicobacter pylori and Food Products indicates that the organism can also be widespread in some drinking water supplies. Don also noted an article on “Assessing the Risks and Benefits of Treating Helicobacter pylori Infection" which pointed at the possible commensal role of H. pylori.

The discussion moved from gastrointestinal microflora, to soil and water microflora and ecology and the impact of microflora on safety of the produce grown in different areas. This turned into a broader discussion of farming and extension and the need for multifunctional teams, such as NoroCore and STEC CAP.

In FST episode 43 the guys discussed the silliness of washing bananas, and Ben found yet another ridiculous article on the same topic. Don pointed out the lack of epidemiological evidence linking foodborne illness with bananas, though he recognized that “absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence.” The earlier conversation about bananas prompted Don to post humorous photos of the individually wrapped bananas he found in the United Lounge at São Paulo airport.

Don then shared an email from listener ‘Deep South’ who was wondering where mechanically tenderized beef was being sold. An FMI survey of the membership indicated that none of the responding members sold this type of beef. So while it appears that the product is predominantly sold through food service, Ben noted the lack of epidemiological evidence connecting illness outbreaks with food service.

The guys then turned their attention to the Townsend Farm related Hepatitis A outbreak, which FDA has now linked to Pomegranate seeds. Ben applauded Bill Keene for focusing on employees first. Ben shared his thoughts about handling of pomegranate seeds and how they could become contaminated with Lynne Terry via Twitter. But are other producers learning from this and asking their suppliers the right questions?

In the after dark the guys discussed Ben’s tenure application. Good luck, Ben.

 

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 29: In a tin can insulated with towels

Added on by Don Schaffner.

The guys jumped right into the deep end and discussed the risks, or perceived risks, associated with salad bars and whether irrigation water or someone sneezing over the salad would pose a bigger risk. The guys also chatted about Don’s recent apparent food poisoning, new listeners to the podcast and Ben’s musical taste. Ben also admitted to being hooked on The Wire.

The discussion then turned to a barfblog article about research articles by Petran et al. on restaurant inspection, entitled “Health department inspection criteria more likely to be associated with outbreak restaurants in Minnesota” and “Using a theoretical predictive tool for the analysis of recent health department inspections at outbreak restaurants and relation of this information to foodborne illness likelihood”. While restaurant inspection per se may not improve public health, Petran et al. investigated whether the answers to specific inspection questions would help predict whether a given restaurant is at increased risk of a foodborne illness outbreak.  The guys specifically discussed Table 4 of the first article, available here, which looked at the risk of norovirus, Salmonella or Clostridium perfringens outbreaks as related to different inspection questions.

Ben and Don then turned their attention to the recent Multistate Outbreak of Salmonella Bredeney Infections Linked to Peanut Butter Manufactured By Sunland. This isn’t the first time that Salmonella and peanut butter caused trouble – previous examples include this this 2006/7 outbreak and this 2008/9 outbreak.  As a result of the Sunland Outbreak, IAFP will be running a webinar on Best Practices in Peanut Butter and Peanut Production. Don noted the challenge wasn’t a lack of knowledge of how to control Salmonella in peanuts, but getting the information to those who most need it.  Ben was particularly critical of companies who have testing schemes on which their food safety programs are built, but which continue to ship product despite detecting 9 different Salmonella strains. Ben also noted that denying test results is counterproductive when the epidemiological evidence is pointing at your product. A better communications approach was discussed in Food Safety Talk 25 in relation to the Salmonella outbreak linked with cantaloupe.

Don shared about his recent food poisoning in Hawaii, and noted that while foodborne outbreak investigations in Hawaii might be good, publicizing anything related to outbreaks wasn’t good for tourism. This reminded Ben of the heightened requirements for vendors at farmers markets in Hawaii. Don mentioned his dinner with Linda Harris, and her comment that the all of Hawaii fell under the Tester Amendment of the FSMA Act.

This brought to guys to an article that Don had recently reviewed, which had made him query who does the work of cooperative extension in Canada. Ben provided a bit of history and his understanding of the current situation. Ben believed that it fell mainly to the regulatory authorities, for example Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health. Don was worried that this was likely to result in important research findings not being developed into useful extension programs, especially with the influx of Canadian food safety extension specialists invading the US.

In the After Dark, Don talked a bit more about his trip to Hawaii and how he got so angry on his first night. The guys talked about their Thanksgiving plans and they finished where they started: Chick-fil-A.

Food Safety Talk 29: In a tin can insulated with towels

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 17: Blood, Sugar, Nakaochi Scrape, Magik

Added on by Ben Chapman.

Don and Ben talk about bands that usually don't suck (but sometimes do), alternatives to conferences where the audience is talked at (although that's not always bad) and salmonellosis linked to meat scraped from the backbone of tuna.

Food Safety Talk 17: Blood, Sugar, Nakaochi Scrape, Magik

Food Safety Talk 16: Gun with a Bang Flag

Added on by Don Schaffner.

The show starts with a discussion of Canadian culture, including hockey, the Canadian national anthem, and the Tragically Hip, and then in quick succession, BLN, Rush, Neil Young, The Band, and Tim Horton's Coffee. 

No self-respecting podcast would neglect the preliminary requisite discussion of Skype, the resolutionary New iPad, favorite apps like Omnifocus, or favorite games like W.E.L.D.E.R.

A brief discussion of the merits of Multitasking during teleconferences occurs before the guys briefly revisit pink slime and then launch into their main topic on home canning food safety.

Home canning of green beans always should use a USDA approved recipe. And remember: there are no safe options for canning Vegetables in a boiling water canner! Why do some people not get sick when foods are improperly canned? Well, it comes down to probability, and like Barbie sort of said "probability is hard." And when your number comes up, it's not just a sign that says bang, in fact it's quite serious.

While it is true that heat does denature bot toxin, that is probably not a good food safety management strategy. A good quality management strategy for home or commercially canned foods is first in, first out stock rotation. The bottom line? When in comes to C. botulinum, don't play too close to the edge.

From the discussion of canned foods, Don moves on to discuss his recent trip to Thailand, funded in part, thanks in part to Mark Robson. He goes on to comment on the safety of street food, and his ideas for research. Because after all, how will he know what he thinks until he sees what he says? The safety of street food is a popular topic in the Journal of Food Protection, although our pal Linda Harris has yet to publish on the safety of roasted chestnuts.

The guys briefly remark that they are glad the FSPCA website is finally live. Too bad they didn't use squarespace.

When Ben mention's his opus, Don first think's he is talking about a penguin. Ben clarifies that he isn't talking about a musical work, or other excellent works by Richard Dreyfuss, but instead is talking about the Ottawa Lunch Lady and some of their recent problems.

In the after dark, Don tells Ben again how much he liked Ben's comment on too many cooks in the kitchen.

Gun With a Bang Flag

Food Safety Talk 11: Somewhere on I-95

Added on by Don Schaffner.

Episode 11 opens with a This is Spinal Tap reference, and a call back to an earlier episode. As usual, the guys seem to have technical difficulties, starting with Ben's need for a noise gate. It has taken a while to get this episode posted due to repeated issues relating to a Skype call with more than two people. Fortunately, Ben was able to fix it in post. Next time in might be easier to meet in person somewhere along I-95. Below are links to some of the stuff talked about on the podcast:

Somewhere On I-95

Food Safety Talk 5: A Medley of Fleetwood Mac

Added on by Ben Chapman.

Don and Ben are back in the same time zone and talk a lot about cantaloupe. The episode starts off with a bit of nerdy discussion about Apple products and upgrading to iOS 5. But then the guys talk about food safety, outbreak investigations, social media and messaging. The podcast is available here.

A Medley of Fleetwood Mac