Food Poison Journal - Food poisoning outbreaks and litigation: surveillance and analysis

The decline of the print media gets much attention.   So much so, that one sign of life for the print media goes un-noticed.   That is the rise of the number of Sunday newspapers.   We are a weekend people in this 21st Century, and newspaper publishers while often stupid are usually are not fools.

For that reason, according to figures from the Newspaper Association of America, the number of Sunday newspapers today is over 900, up from 549 in 1950.

We bring this up as an excuse because it sometimes takes us the whole week to get to what was really important in one of America's Sunday newspapers.   In fact, we cannot really make any excuses because we should always check on what Phil Brasher at the Des Moines Register is reporting.

Last Sunday, writing from the newspaper's Washington bureau, Brasher filed a story that ran online under the headline: Inspectors didn't catch cattle abuse in California.

We ran across it on www.the-inspector.com

That's the website for the federal "badge-carrying" inspectors.  However, Brasher's focus was not on those guys, but the "third party" auditors that the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co,. owner made the central item in his testimony to Congress.

In the system that grown up, we've been led to believe that meat packers are more likely to jump to their feet if one of their customers ---like Jack In The Box or Sam's Club-- are in town with "third party" auditors.  This is suppose to relieve our worries about their not being enough federal inspectors around with those badges.  Brasher reports:

Independent inspectors from auditing firms based in Virgina and Illinois both missed the livestock abuse at the Westland/Hallmark's Chino slaughterhouse that resulted in the plant's entire production for the past two years - 143 million pounds - being recalled.

The vice president of HACCP Consulting Group, a Virginia-based auditing firm, inspected the California plant last Nov. 13-14 and reported that it had a well-designed humane-handling program "to ensure that live animals are treated in a manner conducive to the tenets of established humane-handling practices."

A week later, a representative of an Illinois-based auditing firm, Silliker Inc., graded the plant's humane-handling practices according to an audit system that's in wide use through out the meatpacking industry.

The plant received 106 out of a possible 110 points, including perfect scores on the condition of the cattle and the way they were unloaded and treated in holding pens.

How could a plant treat cattle poorly - the company president says he was sickened by what he saw on the videos - and yet pass its outside inspections with no problem?

One possible explanation is that the company knew the auditors were coming and cleaned up its act.

There's a link to Brasher's story here.

The quickest way to get ink in newspapers is to do some place-based rankings.   Name the states where you are most at risk while eating out, and you are certain to get some play.   That's what the website www.healthinspections.com found out last Friday when it named "the five most dangerous states for eating out."

The dangerous five are: Florida, California, Minnesota, Ohio and New York.   The rankings stem from 2006 data on restaurant-related outbreaks tallied by the Centers for Disease Control.  The website said:

Restaurants in these five states spread bacteria such as E.coli and salmonella, making nearly 3,000 customers sick and putting 65 in the hospital.

KVUE-TV News in Austin, Texas is reporting that one child has died and five other people are ill all due to a shiga toxin.   Since an initial report on the illnesses issued late last week by the Texas Department of Health Services, concern about the shiga toxin has become very serious.

As reported by KVUE Reporter Erin Ochoa,  most of the cases are found in Bastrop County, located in southeast Texas.  Ochoa reports that:

It was about nine days ago when 18-month-old Michael Rick became ill. Michael's mother, Sylvia Rick, says he was hospitalized and treated and is improving.She believes he may have been one of six people recently diagnosed with a serious diarrheal illness caused by a shiga toxin."He got sick about a week ago," Rick said. "He had some really bad diarrhea, was throwing up not too much, just a little bit and it just progressively got worse."

Shiga toxins are usually foodborne, but health officials are still trying to figure out the exact source of the bacteria. Symptoms usually appear one to nine days after exposure, and include severe or bloody diarrhea and abdominal cramps.

"The bacteria that can produce this shiga toxin typically live in the intestines of animals, so the origin is usually going to be related to fecal matter from animal waste," said Doug McBride, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services.He says there are anywhere from 100 to 200 cases of illnesses due to the shiga toxin each year in Texas, but it's rarely fatal.

According to the state health department, six cases have already been reported:-- Four in Bastrop County-- One in Fayette County-- One in Lee County.

Three of the cases were children. One of those children died."What's unusual about this is to have six cases within a few days and in a relatively small geographical area," McBride said.Health official are awaiting the results of lab tests to identify a specific bacteria. They're asking anyone who has any of these symptoms to seek medical care.

The KVUE-TV story can be found here.

We deal with many victims of food borne illness, often while they or family members are still being treated at hospitals and clinics.   Many of them use the Internet in those moments of crisis to find an attorney.   So, we cannot rule out the possibility that victims of food borne illness will also go on-line and fill out a lengthy questionnaire that ultimately will be shared with their local or regional health department.

That's exactly what the National Food Safety & Toxicology Center at Michigan State University wants victims of food borne illnesses to do.   They want anyone suffering from food poisoning to go to www.ReportFoodPoisoning.com and take about 20 minutes to fill out a report that will then be submitted to health department with jurisdiction over the specific case.

Goal of the project is to increase reporting of food borne illnesses.  Currently only 1-2 percent of all food borne illnesses get reported to health officials.  The on-line questionnaire requires the victim to submit pretty much the same information they would be asked to provide if interviewed in person by health officials.

Personal characteristics, residential information, symptoms, non-food exposures, food sources and a four day food history are all included in the on-line report.

Michigan universities and health agencies at the state and local levels designed the project.

We will be looking forward to finding out how its doing down the road.