While an Idaho grower refused to recall sprouts implicated in a multistate outbreak of Salmonella, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its report Tuesday on the 21 people whose illnesses may have been caused by those sprouts.
As of Monday, the CDC said, nine people in Washington state, seven people in Montana, three in Idaho, and one in both North Dakota and New Jersey have been stricken with the same strain of Salmonella Enteritidis.
The case patients range from 12 to 77 years of age. Among the 10 people with available information, three have been hospitalized because of the severity of their symptoms.
Epidemiological investigations by local, state and federal public health agencies linked the outbreak to alfalfa sprouts and spicy sprouts (a mix of alfalfa, clover and radish sprouts) grown by Evergreen Produce in Moyie, Idaho.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration provided more information about the investigations. In an email response to Food Safety News, the FDA said the initial exposure information from the affected states on 13 of the case patients showed that nine (69 percent) reported eating alfalfa sprouts during the week before the onset of their symptoms.
The typical amount of alfalfa sprouts consumption in the Northwest, based on Oregon data, is just 4.8 percent (in the United States as a whole, it is 4.4 percent) — so the 69 percent exposure rate is significant epidemiological evidence that explains why the FDA reported Monday that “the strain of S. Enteritidis is rarely seen at this frequency.”
In an effort to prevent the possibility of further illnesses from Evergreen Produce brand alfalfa sprouts and spicy sprouts, the FDA issued a consumer advisory warning people not to eat them.
The agency did this as Nadine Scharf, owner of the Idaho sprouts growing operation, refused to recall her potentially contaminated product in the absence of “concrete proof” that the sprouts were making some customers sick.
This isn’t the first time a food producer has rejected epidemiologic evidence, and foodborne outbreak investigations are often as misunderstood by the food industry as they are by the public.
When tests of patients’ stool specimens reveal they are all infected with the same pathogen, public health investigators, through detailed interviews, first identify specific foods the case patients had in common. Then traceback investigations determine whether the suspect foods had a common origin. Lab tests on food samples can confirm that epidemiological and traceback evidence, but often the contaminated food is long gone — consumed or discarded — so there never is a “smoking gun.” Nevertheless, epidemiologic evidence is as crucial as microbiologic evidence in tracking down suspects.
Raw produce can present a challenge, however, especially when it comes to salads, salsas, guacamoles or similar mixed dishes, and patients can’t recall all the ingredients. That was the case in 2008, when a Salmonella outbreak was initially attributed to tomatoes but the culprit turned out to be contaminated hot peppers.
Sprouts are often on the list of possible suspects — since 1996 there have been at least 30 reported foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States associated with sprouts, the CDC notes.
In its report Tuesday, the CDC repeated the FDA’s warning that potentially contaminated sprouts from Evergreen Produce may still be in grocery stores and in consumers’ homes, and recommended that they be disposed of in a closed plastic bag placed in a sealed trash can to prevent people or animals from eating them.
The FDA, which now has the authority to impose a mandatory recall of Evergreen Produce sprouts but has not taken that step, told Food Safety News it is “exploring all options under the law to ensure the product is taken off the market as quickly and expeditiously as possible.”—————————
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outbreak map
This might not be the best time to release an undercover video of cruelty to Iowa farm animals.
A bill to outlaw such videos, and punish people who make them, remains alive in the Iowa Assembly. Presidential candidates from both parties are showing up in Iowa by the day now. It’s the time when what Iowa wants, Iowa usually gets.
So perhaps this is not the time for a hidden-camera video showing pigs being confined, thrown and mutilated as they make their way to some of the largest grocery chains.
But Mercy for Animals, a national animal rights group, is posting on the Internet a secretly recorded videotape from Iowa Select Farms, a Kamrar facility housing thousands of pigs.
In Mercy for Animals description, the video reveals:
– Sows confined in crates barely larger than their own bodies, and piglets having their testicles ripped out and tails cut off without painkillers.
– Pigs suffering from large, open, pus-filled wounds and pressure sores.
– Sows – physically taxed from constant birthing – suffering from distended, inflamed, bleeding, and usually fatal uterine prolapses.
– Management training workers to throw piglets across the room – comparing it to a “roller coaster ride.”
“This video depicts scenes of unbearable suffering and inexcusable neglect,” animal behaviorist Dr. Jonathan Balcombe said in a news release. “This farm should be closed down at once.”
“If pork producers threw, mutilated, or cruelly confined puppies or kittens like they do pigs, they could be jailed for animal abuse,” said MFA executive director Nathan Runkle. “It’s high time that the nation’s largest grocery chains took meaningful action to ensure that the animals raised and killed for their stores did not endure lives filled with pain and misery.”
Pork from pigs raised at the factory farm is sold under Swift pork brands to grocery chains Kroger (NYSE:KR), Costco (NASDAQ:COST), Safeway (NYSE:SWY), and Hy-Vee. Mercy For Animals is urging the grocery giants to adopt new animal welfare guidelines prohibiting such abuses.
The advocacy group notes that the use of narrow “gestation crates” has already been banned in Florida, Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, California, Maine and Michigan and that some prominent food industry names, including Whole Foods, Chipotle, and Wolfgang Puck, have policies prohibiting pork suppliers from using gestation crates.
Kroger, Costco, Safeway and Hy-Vee reportedly have no animal welfare policies requiring their pork suppliers to phase out the crates.
To view the undercover video, go to www.MercyForAnimals.org/PigAbuse.
The two-year-old $32 million Opelika Sportsplex and Aquatics Center was the “common source of exposure” for an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 that has sickened at least five Alabama children and possibly 10 others, according to Dr. Donald Williamson, state health officer.
Four children initially required hospitalization, and two have not yet been released.
Eight other children and two adults also suffered from severe gastrointestinal illnesses, but have not yet been confirmed as O157 cases.
“Because of the risk for outbreak of illness, it is essential that public pools and water parks follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for adequate chlorine and pH levels,” Williamson said Tuesday.
The Splash Park and 6,000 square feet Aquatic Center were initially closed June 20, treated according to CDC guidelines by the City of Opelika and reopened Sunday, according to state officials.
Located east of Montgomery in Alabama’s Lee County, the 75,000 square-foot Sportsplex and Aquatic Center, on 76 acres, is the largest project in the history of the 154-year-old city.
The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) has been investigating the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak since the illnesses began between June 4 and 22. It has contacted parents of children from seven day care centers that visited the Aquatic Center during that time period.
In a statement, ADPH said it told city officials about the problem on June 20 and collected water samples from the new Aquatic Center.
“The ADPH Bureau of Clinical Laboratories ran the initial tests, which were negative for bacteria,” the agency said in a statement. ”Negative results do not guarantee that bacteria was not present. Additional water samples have been collected and sent to the CDC for testing and results are pending.”
The state health officials asked parents to be alert for symptoms of the illness, which can take 10 days to surface. They said parents should be on the look out for nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or abdominal cramps and take their children to a doctor if any of the symptoms occur.
People can pick up infections in recreational waters by ingesting contaminated waters in pools, water parks, rivers, lakes and even the ocean.
The South’s best known water park outbreak occurred in 1998 at Atlanta’s White Water Park, when 26 people were infected with O157, including Atlanta Braves star Walt Weiss’s son Brody.
Clean, separate, cook and chill. Those four words are the main message of the government’s new ad campaign to raise consumer awareness of safe cooking techniques.
Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack and Department of Health and Human Services’ Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday announced the launch of ”Food Safe Families,” a multimedia initiative that will use videos, print ads and a website to teach people about the risks of food poisoning and how they can reduce those risks by handling food properly at home.
The campaign is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in cooperation with the Ad Council.
The rollout was scheduled for the end of June so that it would reach consumers right before the Fourth of July, the beginning of the season when most foodborne illness outbreaks occur — fueled by large summer gatherings centered around food.
“The launch of the Ad Council campaign comes at a time of heightened attention to food safety issues, when American families are looking for clear and concise information on how to better protect themselves,” explained Vilsack.
The program’s public service ad blitz attempts to put a lighthearted spin on the serious subject of foodborne illness by featuring comedic videos, each offering one of the four featured food safety lessons.
In one clip, a woman relaxing in a wood sauna is shocked to find a pig standing next to her. She pours water over the stove’s hot rocks to create steam, and the needle on the wall thermometer shows the temperature rising. The narrator then advises the viewer to cook meat to the proper temperature.
“Cook foods to the right temperature using a food thermometer,” says the narrator.
Critics claim that the videos are too offbeat, and don’t actually portray how to follow the suggested safety steps.
“These ads seem a little too wacky and divorced from the basic behaviors we wish to communicate,” said representatives from various consumer food groups in a March letter to the Ad Council.
“How many people will immediately make the association between a live chicken and their chicken McNuggets? Between a live pig (in a sauna!) and bacon?” said a consumer group insider in an e-mailed statement to Food Safety News.
However, FSIS says the joking nature of the ads will be an effective way to draw consumers into a food safety dialogue, and that they will know what precautions to take once they visit foodsafety.gov, the address that appears at the end of the commercial.
“These are funny ads, but this is serious business. Humor and over-the-top situations will get people talking and thinking about what they do in their homes. The opening for the ads will get people interested. Then we confront them with the reality of the problem and what they can do to make themselves and their families safer,” said FSIS press officer Neil Gaffney in an emailed statement to Food Safety News.
Indeed, each ad ends with a sobering statistic. For example: “3,000 Americans will die from food poisoning this year. Keep your family safer.”
Leaders of the campaign hope that clean, separate, cook and wash will become a commonplace mantra in American homes — akin to stop, drop and roll.
However, some experts say that instead of reiterating basic home-cooking safeguards, which have become standardized in food safety education, the ads should provide Americans with lesser known tips, such as what to look for when dining out.
“I think one thing that is missing from pretty much all consumer campaigns out there is that it focuses too much on the things you do at home and doesn’t focus enough on things like ‘You should ask questions if you’re a consumer,’ and ‘These are the types of things that you should look for when you’re trying to buy food,’” said Dr. Ben Chapman, assistant professor and food safety specialist at North Carolina State University, in a phone interview with Food Safety News.
Chapman recommends that consumers ask farmers at farmers’ markets whether they know about and use good agricultural practices in growing their produce, or checking to see whether a restaurant has been cited for sanitation violations before eating there.
“Stuff like that is really what I see missing from consumer [messages] in general,” he says.
Restaurant safety, a topic this campaign doesn’t cover, is becoming increasingly important as studies have shown that more than 50 percent of American meals are now eaten outside the home.
Over half of norovirus outbreaks (the most common foodborne virus outbreaks in the U.S.) come from safety errors at commercial establishments, according to the University of Florida’s Extension Program.
“The restaurants are in a different position, because there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there and we still get a ton of restaurant-related outbreaks,” Roy Costa, a food safety trainer and expert and Food Safety News contributor said in an interview. “The restaurants are really a sore thumb in this whole thing.”
Consumer advocacy groups such as STOP Foodborne Illness and the Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention have also expressed concern that the ads messages could give consumers the false impression that they alone are responsible for protecting their families from foodborne illness.
“We don’t want the consumer to come away with the idea that it’s all on them to fix the problems that occur upstream. And that’s kind of sending the wrong message to the industry,” says Costa.
However, says Gaffney, consumers must have a hand in protecting themselves, and have to be equipped to stop the spread of bacteria in their homes should contaminated produce slip through the food producers’ and sellers’ safety nets and into the kitchen.
“Contamination shouldn’t happen in food processing, but the reality is that things can get through, even for the safest companies trying hard and doing everything they can to avoid pathogens in their products. We know that consumer education can help reduce foodborne illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths. That is why this campaign is so important,” he says.
Video ads for the campaign are available on USDA’s YouTube channel, and are expected to be broadcast on television by major media outlets soon. More information about the campaign can be found here.
As of Tuesday, the toll in the outbreak of E. coli O104:H4 attributed to raw sprouts in Europe had risen to 4,023 cases, including 885 with hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and 48 deaths, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported.
The total now includes the cluster of E. coli O104:H4 cases in France, even though the agency says authorities are still investigating “whether there is any link between that cluster and the large outbreak” in Germany.
Most of the French case patients had attended a June 8 community event in Bègles near Bordeaux and ate sprouts in various dishes. The ECDC said that as of June 27, nine people have been hospitalized, eight with HUS.
But the agency said epidemiological investigations have shown no link between one of the hospitalized patient, who does not have HUS, and the event in Bègles. An additional four people who were at the event are ill; three have been confirmed to be infected with O104:H4.
Swedish and Danish officials say their countries each have confirmed cases of E. coli O104:H4 infections with no direct link to Germany. In Denmark, the case was actually reported in May, and it remains unclear how the person was infected.
An E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that sickened eight people in four states last December led to the closure of Sally Jackson Cheeses, which for 30 years had crafted rustic rounds of raw-milk goat, sheep and cow cheese on a small farm in the Okanogan highlands of Eastern Washington.
But E. coli was not the only pathogen contaminating the Oroville cheesemaker’s highly prized products.
In addition to E. coli O157:H7, detected in samples of aged cow milk cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says the cheese maker’s aged raw goat milk cheese wrapped in grape leaves tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes.
Sally Jackson Cheeses was first notified about the positive tests for both E. coli O157:H7 and L. monocytogenes in a Jan. 5 report by Pacific Regional Laboratory-Northwest. The test results were included in a recently released June 13 warning letter from FDA.
The letter says that Listeria bacteria found on the floor of the cheese room was indistinguishable from Listeria found in the cheese, making it likely that “the pathogen was transported throughout your facility.”
“Any moist area, such as your cheese production area, can harbor L. monocytogenes,” wrote Charles M. Breen, FDA’s district director in Seattle. ”The organism can grow at refrigeration temperatures.”
Breen also wrote that “raw milk is one of most frequent vehicles” for E. coli infection and that “E. coli O157:H7 has been implicated as the causative agent in outbreaks involving milk and milk products such as cheese. E coli O157:H7 can survive in highly acidic environment, refrigeration temperatures and saline.
“Aside from raw milk contamination, post processing contamination including cross contamination pose as a potential health hazard to consumers. Milk pasteurization has been shown to destroy the pathogen and the application of good manufacturing practices in the processing environment to ensure sanitary conditions will reduce the risk of food product contamination by this organism, ” he added.
In the warning letter, the FDA acknowledges that Sally Jackson Cheeses probably has gone out of business, but asks for update on its current operating status.
The demise of the well-respected cheese making company began last Dec. 17, when epidemiological investigations in Oregon and Washington linked illnesses in Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Minnesota to Sally Jackson cheeses.
The Jacksons agreed to recall their entire inventory of gourmet cheeses for possible E. coli contamination. By the following week, public health authorities had determined there was a genetic match between the cheese maker’s products and the outbreak strain.
Shortly afterward, owner Sally Jackson announced she was opting to close down rather than spend the estimated $12,000 or so to make improvements on her aging farm required by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.
According to the recent warning letter, an inspection documented “serious deviations” from Current Good Manufacturing Practices.” Sally Jackson responded to those inspections observations on Dec. 29, the warning letter states.
The FDA warning letter includes a list of comments based on the cheese maker’s responses, and says if she were to resume operations, she must document corrective actions. The list includes:
– employee training to ensure proper hand washing during cheese making– cleaning to remove mud, manure, straw and wood-chip debris from floors– repairing roof leaks, peeling paint and plaster, and pitted floors– wearing suitable garments and changing out of soiled garments after milking or outdoor chores before entering the indoor processing areas– replacing or fixing cracked cheese molds
FDA asked that Jackson respond to the warning letter, documenting any improvements if she plans to reopen. If the company were to resume cheese making without first taking corrective actions, Breen said FDA could take further steps, including product seizures and/or enjoining the firm from operating.
