Infosheet highlights:

Clean and sanitize utensils and work surfaces after preparing raw turkey for roasting.
Wash your hands after getting the turkey ready.
Cook your turkey to an internal temperature of 165°F.

You can download the infosheet here.

Germs live on musical instruments

Today's infosheet is found here, the special food safety network band camp edition.

Click the pic to dowload the sheet

Bagged spinach outbreak?

The FDA just announced a multi-state E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that appears to be linked to bagged spinach. 50 cases of illnesses have been reported including 8 HUS cases and sadly, one dealth.

From the FDA's press release:
Based on the current information, FDA advises that consumers not eat bagged fresh spinach at this time. Individuals who believe they may have experienced symptoms of illness after consuming bagged spinach are urged to contact their health care provider.

The unvarnished (and unpasteurized) truth

11.aug.06, Dr. Douglas Powell, Commentary from the Food Safety Network

In May, 1943, Edsel Bryant Ford, son of auto magnate Henry Ford, died at the age of 49 in Detroit, of what some claimed was a broken heart.

Biology, however, decreed that Ford died of undulant fever, apparently brought on by drinking unpasteurized milk from the Ford dairy herd, at the behest of his father's mistaken belief that all things natural must be good.

Sixty years later, raw, unpasteurized milk is gaining in popularity for many of the same reasons as the broader organic and natural foods movement: some people think it's healthier, some people think it tastes better, and for some people it's part of their religion.
And some people get sick.

In June, more than 58 people in Wisconsin became ill after eating unpasteurized cheese curds contaminated with Campylobacter jejuni. The same bacteria sickened five people in Colorado in January after they drank raw milk from a dairy in Larimer County, Colo. In Dec. 2005, the Pima County Health Department in Arizona reported salmonella contamination in unpasteurized, raw milk produced by Colorado City's Meadowayne Dairy. The milk was sold at several natural and health food stores in the Tucson area. Earlier last year the New York State health department warned against consumption of some imported Mexican cheeses made from unpasteurized milk after identifying 35 cases from 2001 to 2004, including one infant death in 2004, attributed to Mycobacterium bovis, a form of TB found in cattle.

The rest of this story can be found at this location.

Getting it right matters

It really does, especially when it comes to food safety communication. Below is a press release from a company regarding produce food safety management -- an important topic to some farmers -- and the company gets the info wrong.

The "E. coli H157 virus"???

The product may be great, but it's hard to be credible when you get the target pathogen you are talking about (and professing to have expertise about) wrong. In a press release especially.

Produce Safety & Security International responds to fresh produce industry's concern over the presence of E.coli H157
19.jul.06
Produce Safety & Security International, Inc.
Market Wire
Sandler Communications Inc.
Gabe Sandler
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=145553
PRESCOTT, AZ -- Produce Safety and Security International, Inc (PINKSHEETS: PDSC), ("PDSC"), an ozone and chemical sanitation disinfectant process supplier to the food and medical industries, responds to the fresh produce industry's concern over recent outbreaks of E.coli H157 virus.
The FDA has directed the fresh produce industry to take preventative measures to prevent these outbreaks from occurring; therefore PDSC would like to provide further information concerning its FDA approved Ozone Process.


Click here for the rest of the release.

Cadbury Update

This is turning out to be quite the story of an outbreak

We've got:

Three ill (including a child and a baby) in hospital -- potentially linked to the recall

The pulling of sponsorship to the loved Coronation St. as they felt it wasn't appropriate

The chance of kids going through piles of chocolate bars a la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Five months lag in a recall, and a potential cover-upgoing back to 2002

And now the UK Food Safety Authority puts out a press release referring to the indpendant Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF) views on Cadbury's risk management -- And they say this: "Cadbury’s risk assessment does not address the risk of salmonella in chocolate in a way which the ACMSF would regard as a modern approach to risk assessment."

Yeah probably not -- It appears that there wasn't much risk analysis work going on at Cadbury's with respect to the potential of Salmonella entering their chocolate products.

Chocolate recall in the UK -- and in Canada

Cadbury's in the UK has recalled about 1 million
chocolate bars due to potential salmonella contamination (and there are some in Canada as well).

An excerpt from the article:

The company said it had rectified the problem and was withdrawing the products "purely as a precautionary measure."

A spokesman for the Food Standards Agency was cited as saying on Sunday that Cadbury did not tell authorities about the contamination until this week, adding, "We were told on Monday that there was a problem occurring in January and that problem has gone on for a number of weeks before being corrected. We would have expected them to tell us."

Probably not the best example of risk management or risk communication here, though the company states:

"Our responsibility is to look after the welfare of our consumers and I can reassure you that our products are perfectly safe to eat and we have no evidence that anyone has been ill from eating them."

5 Months is a pretty long time.

The rest can be found here: