They may seem harmless and look cute, but juvenile turtles carry the risk of Salmonella transmission. Recently, police in Baltimore seized dozens of tiny turtles from vendors who were selling the animals illegally. The sale of turtles with shells under 4 inches in length has been illegal since 1975. According to the CDC,
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We sometimes hear food poisoning dismissed (usually by those who are being blamed with causing it, not those suffering from it) as "just a little diarrhea." Here is yet more evidence that such a characterization has no basis in reality. Web MD is reporting today that Salmonella and Campylobacter infections triple the risk of Inflammatory
Echoing the praise in my blog post yesterday, a Minnesota Star Tribune editorial is praising Minnesota health officials and calling for more foodborne illness surveilance. The editorial relates the story of one of the nine tragic and pointless deaths confirmed as resulting from the PCA Salmonella outbreak.
As with many of the deaths and illnesses in
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar held a press conference today to announce new proposed leglisation to "promote a more rapid and effective national response to outbreaks of foodborne sickness."
According to Klobuchar, the new act would, among other things:
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is out with a discussion draft of “the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.”
Given who’s signed on to this one, it’s probably the one to watch. Sponsors include Chair Emeritus John D. Dingell, Chairs Henry A. Waxman, Frank Pallone, and Bart Stupak, and Reps. Diana DeGette and Betty Sutton.
The new draft is based on the food reforms contained in H.R. 759, the Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009, introduced in January by Reps. Dingell, Stupak and Pallone. Favored bills get heard quickly, and this one gets its first hearing next week, on Wednesday, June 3rd.
"As evidenced by the recent widespread contaminations in our food supply, including E.coli in spinach, salmonella in peppers and the most recent outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter, it is clear that we must act now," said Rep. Pallone, Chair of the Health Subcommittee. "This draft builds on legislation introduced earlier this year and will empower the FDA with the resources and authorities it needs to ensure that our food is safe to eat. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues and the administration to move this crucial piece of legislation forward
"Our 10 food safety hearings in the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations have highlighted the need for an overhaul of our food safety laws," said Rep. Stupak, Chair of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. "The American people deserve a Food and Drug Administration that has both the funding and the regulatory authority needed to protect our food supply and hold the food industry accountable. President Obama and the new FDA leadership have expressed a commitment to food safety reform and I look forward to working with them to return FDA to the gold standard in protecting the public health."
A detailed summary of the draft follows below.
Continue Reading Bill Aims To Return FDA To “The Gold Standard” In Protecting Public Health
It never ceases to amaze me, particularly after the last few years and all the high-profile outbreaks that have occurred, that people still pass off "foodpoisoning" as a couple of days of diarrhea–i.e. that the victim is no worse for the wear. There is so much that is wrong with this statement that it would be pointless to even begin assailing it with mere facts. Instead, as I’ve done recently with Jacob Aggas, Kelly Cobb, and Regan Erickson, I’ll tell the story of somebody who, after his Salmonella infection, would disagree wholeheartedly with the notion that "foodpoisoning" is just a couple days of diarrhea. In fact, don’t stop reading this just because you think you’ve seen, or heard about, every varient of a Salmonella illness. I assure you that you’ve never seen one quite like this before.
At the request of our former client, I have changed the names and locations in this narrative:
Our client, Ron, was infected with Salmonella during a sporting banquet in Indiana. His illness began on July 27, 2004. At first, he suffered from predominantly gastrointestinal symptoms that were, in light of what was to come, relatively mild.
By August 1, Ron was in the emergency room at a nearby hospital The attending physician there noted repetitive diarrhea and, though the vomiting had subsided, that Ron continued to feel “somewhat nauseous and gaggy.” Ron was re-hydrated with a liter of normal saline, and twenty-five milligrams of Phenergan, an anti-nausea medication, were introduced intravenously. He was discharged several hours later with a prescription for Ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic.
Ron’s course over the next two months is one that defies clever adjectival description: He felt generally ill pretty much all of the time. He did manage to return to work after a couple of day’s absence, but he struggled to be as productive as usual, was frequently irritable, and seemed constantly besieged by abdominal discomfort. It was during this time that Ron learned that his stool sample had cultured positive for Salmonella, group D.
The same state of ill health persisted throughout August and September. “Then,” as Ron recalls, “came the first weekend in October,” and “any thoughts I had that the first bout in July was the sickest I’d ever been faded quickly.”
Continue Reading Foodborne Illness is Just a Few Days of Diarrhea Right?
We learned over the weekend that L&M Companies was recalling whole cantaloupes sold between May 10 and May 15 in Wal-Mart Supercenter stores in North Carolina, South Carolina and South Hill, Virginia, because a cantaloupe at a farm in Mexico where L&M sources cantaloupe had tested positive for Salmonella. The recall was initiated as a precaution
In a bit of news that is less surprising than it should be, the AP today reports that the FDA has for the last several years failed to perform a large percentage of required audits for inspections being conducted (under contract) by the States. According to today’s report (based on documents recently released to Congress:
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Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting, as well as disturbing, article on the continuing dangers of ConAgra frozen pot pies. Specifically, despite the 2007 outbreak and all the serious illnesses it caused, the safety of the pot pies still depend on the customer cooking them correctly. Apparently, the challenge of making the pot pies safe to eat, even if cooked to a temperature below what would constitute a "kill step," was simply too difficult. Here is how the NY Times described the decision:
The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified. At first they suspected the turkey. Then they considered the peas, carrots and potatoes.
The pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.
So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”
For the full article, see www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/business/15ingredients.html
But getting a frozen-hard pot-pie to reach a uniform temperature of 165 degrees is by no means an easy thing to accomplish, as the Times article amply demonstrates.
But attempts by The New York Times to follow the directions on several brands of frozen meals, including ConAgra’s Banquet pot pies, failed to achieve the required 165-degree temperature. Some spots in the pies heated to only 140 degrees even as parts of the crust were burnt.
A ConAgra consumer hotline operator said the claims by microwave-oven manufacturers about their wattage power could not be trusted, and that any pies not heated enough should not be eaten. “We definitely want it to reach that 165-degree temperature,” she said. “It’s a safety issue.”
A safety issue indeed. Because if that pot pie is contaminated with a deadly pathogen, and the cooking process does not essentially pasteurize the pot pie, then eating will could be the real "kill-step" here.
For additional discussion, please click Continue Reading.Continue Reading Giving New Meaning to the Term “Kill Step”
State legislators around the US, fed up with the perceived slow response of the federal government to enact stronger food safety laws, have begun sending a clear message to Washington: if you won’t protect our citizens from increasing foodborne illness outbreaks, then we will.
in a Wall Street Journal article by Jane Zhang, she highlights