Food Safety Talk 144: They Look and Taste Like Green Turds

The guys jumped right into the food safety talk this week with a discussion of the Jimmy John's sprout outbreak. From there the conversation turns to a whole lot of listener questions and feedback: Instant Pot, more on edible gold and silver, the safety of soup and other pots left on the stove as well as refrigerator leftovers, fiddleheads, proper spatula use, burger temperatures, and food safety gadgets. There's a little bit of popular culture talk right at the end. Below are show notes so you can follow along at home.

• FDA Investigates Multistate Outbreak of Salmonella Infections Linked to Sprouts Served at Certain Jimmy John’s Restaurants
• Multistate Outbreak of Salmonella Montevideo Infections Linked to Raw Sprouts - CDC
• Sprouts sicken at least 8 linked to Jimmy John’s: It’s all happening, again - barfblog
• IAFP Food on Twitter: Meet IAFP Member Don Schaffner
• Burning Issue: Canning in Electric Multi-Cookers
• Tesco Lustre Edible Gold And Silver
• Bending the Rules on Bacteria and Food Safety - The New York Times
• Rest in peace, Dean Allen
• How long can you leave turkey broth out before it goes bad?
• USDA FSIS on Leftovers and Food Safety
• Health Canada on Food safety tips for leftovers
• UK Food Standards Agency on reheating leftovers
• USDA FSIS Appendix A to Compliance Guidelines
• Buchanan and Schaffner, FPT
• Ostrich Fern Poisoning - New York and Western Canada, 1994
• Health Canada Fiddlehead safety tips
• Gastroenteritis Associated with Consumption of Fiddlehead Ferns — Anchorage, May 2010
• 7 sick from fiddleheads in Toronto | barfblog
• Single Jar Canned Pickled Goods | Vegetables | Garlic | Sausage | Eggs
• Sonic Soak: The Ultimate Ultrasonic Cleaning Tool from Indiegogo
• Amazon.com: 12.8L Home Use Ultrasonic Ozone Vegetable Fruit Sterilizer Cleaner Washer Health by Moredental: Industrial & Scientific
• Fate of Shiga toxin-producing O157:H7 and non-O157:H7 Escherichia coli cells within refrigerated, frozen, or frozen then thawed ground beef patties
• The Wrong Mans (TV Series 2013–2014) - IMDb
• Patriot (TV Series 2015– ) - IMDb

Food Safety Talk 76: Get 'em really hot

This episode starts with a discussion of Ben’s taste in music, and then quickly moves into documentaries. Ben recently watched Jodorowsky’s Dune, on Don’s recommendation.  This documentary has some ‘artful nudity’ that leads to a discussion of perverts on airplanes and the appropriateness of reading material such as Fifty Shades of Grey while crammed into an airplane seat.  The conversation naturally transitioned into a discussion of microphone stands and coffee. Ben notes that owning a Nespresso machine has changed his life; he ranks it among his top 10 life changing things (including his wife and children). The guys then discuss other pop-culture topics including Deflate-Gate and TV shows The Affair, Portlandia (which had an episode satirizing raw milk), and Garfunkel and Oates. Note that Portlandia is required viewing before attending IAFP 2015 in Portland this summer

Ben leads off the actual food safety talk by mentioning sprouts and the number of outbreaks associated with them.  The guys then discuss experiments to validate sprout cooking processes including charred bean sprouts.  Ben then brings up the idea of baking cookies in a car and a visit from Linda Harris (who now downloads and listens).  From there the talk turns to pathogen reduction validations for baking processes spurred by the Wegmans recall of baked fruit desserts last summer, presumably because they contained peaches recalled for Listeria.

The FDA’s Reportable Food Registry, along with CDC whole genome sequencing of pathogens, is enabling more illnesses to be linked to products, as seen in Salmonella Braenderup linked to nut butter.  Ben predicts more businesses will have to issue recalls because of validation issues, and the investigations that accompany these recalls will isolate pathogens from within facilities that can be linked to other illnesses which have occurred over months and years prior.

The discussion then turns to the very bad blizzard that New Jersey never had.  Don discusses the similarities between the models for weather forecasting and models in food safety.   Both situations have consequences for over or under reacting; both present risk management and risk communication difficulties.

A tweet from The New Yorker made Don mad: Bill Marler may be all that stands between you and Salmonella.  This resulted in Don tweeting back to The New Yorker.  Ben mentioned it was probably just Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.   Bill Marler is probably not all that stands between you and Salmonella; as there are a few more people trying to do the right thing.  The guys then go on to discuss how Marler and Caroline Smith DeWaal, a lawyer with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, have become controversial but generally respected food safety personalities over the years.

Don recently was quoted in an article about the safety of various cuts of meat (and Barfblogged here).   Don and Ben were so happy Don was quoted correctly, they were able to ‘ding’ their podcast bell; a auditory high-five.

Pork has a reputation for being dangerous but decreases in the prevalence of Trichinella and Americans tendency to overcook pork have reduced the actual risk, so Ben wanted to discuss a recent MMWR Trichinellosis report.  Don mentions ‘The Batz Report’ which determined the top 10 pathogen-food combinations with the greatest burden in public health.  This led to a discussion of sample size, detection limits, consumption rates, and risk messaging, leading to the conclusion that cultural practices in food preparation adds complexity to the determination of risk.

Food Safety Talk 46: The mother of all messy epidemiology

During their podcasting foreplay Don and Ben discussed their breakfast choices, their love for guacamole (despite the risks associated with cilantro), and the challenge of separating work from private life.

The guys then got onto the recent IAFP annual meeting (abstracts are here), which clearly was a huge success. Ben was impressed by Michelle Danyluk’s deconstruction of the FSMA Fresh Produce rule to create a convincing story, which included recently published work from Don and Michelle. Ben then talked about the symposium on farmers' markets, and Erin Jobe’s talk about the realities of the Carrboro Farmer’s Market. Lastly, the guys talked about the round table discussion on “Bridging Gaps between Scientific Assessment of Risk and Public Perception” which was reported on Barfblog and Food Safety News. And of course, IAFP always includes Karaoke.

Moving on from IAFP, Don noted that he’s following John Gruber and Merlin Mann's advice and is podcasting for just one person, Chuck Haas. Turns out that Chuck also sent an email about an upcoming publication on the dose-response curve for Helicobacter pylori (see FST 45).

Ben then recalled the conversation about the Salmonella outbreak associated with the Holiday Inn and the article he wrote on barfblog. Ben wondered why employees wouldn’t tell management that they were sick but would tell the health department? Both Don and Ben concluded that it’s surely related to not getting paid while being off work.

The discussion then turned to the current Cyclospora messiness and disagreement between epidemiologists. While there is lots of bad advice out there, the most recent information indicates a link to prewashed salad mix to Taylor Farms de Mexico, though this information wasn’t available when ACSH reported that the “mystery was solved". The guys also noted Bill Marler’s interesting thoughts about disclosure as well as why naming a product too early can have consequences. The guys also re-iterating that washed fresh-cut salads don’t need additional washing.

To finish off, Ben wanted to talk about Jimmy John’s who are considering bringing back sprouts, with a warning sign. Don felt that this approach was nonsense and that the risks of eating still outweigh the risks of not eating. Instead Don wanted to know about Jimmy John’s food safety program, and whether it included buying from sprouters who get it, like Bob Sanderson’s at Jonathan Sprouts. Ben wasn’t against the label though he felt that it could be improved.

In the after dark the guys talked about Don’s video call with IFT, his appearance on SSKTN’s Show me your Mic (including the After Show me your Mic), preschool and the Food Safety Talk newsletter. 

Food Safety Talk 13: I Don't Want Other People's Poo in My Poo Hole

In this episode Don and Ben talk Valentine's day happenings; chocolate and then being famous on the Internet. The guys eventually get to food safety stuff and chat about raw milk risks, inactivation of Salmonella in peanut butter and the risk of someones dirty hands ending up on their toilet paper.

• W00t deal, a deal a day where Don and Kristin scored some Valentine's day salted caramels.
• Don gets his greeting cards at CVS, Ben wonders if they stock these.
• The hip Raleigh restaurant that Ben and Dani went to a couple of years ago for Valentine's Day.
• Wine and Design - Dani's gift was to go out without Ben with a bunch of her friends. And then they ate Subway.
• American Frozen Food Institute annual meeting, where Don went to hang out after Valentine's Day.
• Ben tries to connect chocolate and Valentine's Day and food safety - here is an example.
• What someone who is surprised might look like.
• I love charts tumblr.
• Don's tumblr.
• The iPhone 5 that cures the flu and makes broccoli taste like chocolate, and made Don famous on the inter webs.
• Don seeks clarification on whether the required metric is blogs or blog posts? (or a blogg?) for his annual survey of program methods
• Batz's Double Face Palm post.
• What a denominator might look like.
• FDA's cold-smoked fish hazards. There's contamination, not many people eat it, total risk is probably pretty low.
• There was an outbreak of Salmonella linked to this company in 2009. Tragically these things happened and then this.
• Some of the work on the inactivation of Salmonella in peanut butter.
• What 1.5 million servings of chocolate might look like.
• Don talks about Salmonella in dry spots (not Arizona, but products like hydrolyzed vegetable protein and almonds).
• Walmart quietly dropped sprouts from sale.
• FDA's sprout guidance document highlights the importance of testing spent irrigation water.
• Bob Sanderson, whom Don would eat sprouts from if he liked them.
• Galen Weston who thinks farmers markets might kill people soon.
• Ben wants to buy food from vendors who think they might kill someone.
• What Ben is really talking about -- food safety culture.
• One guy who doesn't worry about making waves or causing a stir.
• Don's famous internet friend. Not this one.
• Merlin put Don on the spot on what his favorite Food Safety Talk episode is. Don picks this one. Ben likes this one.
• Quit touching my toilet paper.
• How Ben would mitigate this risk.
• What Don is worried about at farmers markets.

I Don't Want Other People's Poo in My Poo Hole