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Posted Wed, March 10, 2010
Filed under: FSN - General News
**This explanation comes from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the Canadian equivalent of the FDA and USDA.**
HVP is an ingredient commonly used as a flavour enhancer or seasoning in many food products. In many cases, HVP is incorporated at low levels in processed foods which are made using processes that kill Salmonella. In addition, many foods that contain HVP are cooked by consumers in ways that would kill Salmonella. However, certain ready-to-eat foods which incorporate HVP can be produced using processes which would not destroy Salmonella and may therefore pose a risk to consumers if the recalled HVP has been used in their production.
Food contaminated with Salmonella may not look or smell spoiled. Consumption of food contaminated with these bacteria may cause salmonellosis, a foodborne illness. In young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems, salmonellosis may cause serious and sometimes deadly infections. In otherwise healthy people, salmonellosis may cause short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhoea. Long term complications may include severe arthritis.
Based on information available at this time, the CFIA is providing information on several risk-appropriate steps for recalled HVP or products containing recalled HVP made by Basic Food Flavors Inc. on or after September 17, 2009.
In general, the risk-appropriate steps can be divided into four categories:
- Bulk HVP recalled by Basic Food Flavors Inc.
Canadian manufacturers who have unused HVP which has been recalled should stop using the product, unless it will be used in a finished product which involves a process which will kill Salmonella. - Ready-to-eat foods manufactured with recalled HVP.
These products may contain Salmonella and may be subject to a recall where the products have not been subjected to an adequate kill step for Salmonella. - Ready-to-cook foods manufactured with recalled HVP:
Cooking instructions on the product labels should be assessed to ensure they include an adequate kill step for Salmonella. If cooking / heating instructions are adequate to kill Salmonella, no action is required. If cooking instructions are not adequate, these products may need to be recalled. - Other potential uses
Industry should also consider how their product may be used by the consumer. For example, a powdered soup mix, when prepared according to instructions on the label which include an adequate kill step, may be considered safe. However, the same product may have recipe ideas on the label, or, is widely used by consumers to make a dip for chips without any kill step and is therefore considered ready-to-eat. If the recalled HVP has been incorporated, such products may be subject to recall.
This article can be found, in full, at: http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/invenq/inform/20100306e.shtml
Posted Wed, February 24, 2010
Filed under: FSN - General News
...Simply put, raw eggs can carry salmonella, bacteria that can cause serious food poisoning, even death. But to be fair, any raw food can be contaminated. After all, salmonella is what triggered the massive peanut butter recall last year.
The Food and Drug Administration is pretty clear on the matter, telling people eggs should be fully cooked until both the yolks and the whites are firm. They tell people not to eat or even taste any foods that may contain raw or undercooked eggs.
Of course the risks are highest among the very young, the very elderly, and people who are pregnant or have a compromised immune system, says Catherine Donnelly, a professor and expert on the microbiology of food safety at the University of Vermont. Healthy adults may get sick from salmonella, but Donnelly says they are unlikely to die.
Still, not dying is a pretty low bar to set for dinner. Is it worth it?
Charles Reeves, chef and owner of Penny Cluse Cafe, a restaurant in Burlington, Vt., known for its from-scratch breakfasts and lunches, certainly thinks so...
..."You just always have to use absolutely fresh eggs that come from a reputable source," he says.
But Todd Pritchard, a food scientist at the University of Vermont, says farm fresh doesn't necessarily mean bacteria free.
"Bacteria are blind," he says. "They don't see whether the eggs come from a local farmer or are free-range or organic."
Much depends on how the eggs and chickens have been handled, says Pritchard. An unhealthy chicken can have salmonella in its reproductive tract and the bacteria can end up on the shell or even inside the egg.
Luckily, says Donnelly, the egg industry got serious during the '90s about salmonella.
Working closely with federal agriculture officials, major egg producers removed salmonella-infected hens from the laying population. Meanwhile, probiotics (healthy bacteria) were added to the feed to help make chickens more resistant to salmonella.
Still, Pritchard says an egg also can be contaminated by an external source in the barnyard or during the handling and shipping, including during storage or preparation at a restaurant...
...Pritchard says that for an individual, assessing the risks of consuming raw eggs isn't so cut and dry. While it's true that the likelihood of being sickened by an egg is low, it doesn't matter, he points out, if you're the one who gets sick.
"It really all depends," says Pritchard, "on the immune status of the individual and the source of the egg."
So what's an egg eater to do?
For adult home cooks in good health, the minute risk of being sickened may be worth the joy of soft boiled eggs or homemade mayo. Ditto when dining out.
Still not so sure? Pasteurized egg products are available. Whites are common, but yolks are hard to find. But there's a catch. Many of these products are made mostly from egg whites, which don't emulsify or thicken well, so they won't work well in most dishes that call for raw whole eggs or egg yolks.
There are pasteurized whole eggs that are heated in the shell in a low-heat water bath that neutralizes bacteria, but stops short of cooking the egg, but these can be hard to find.
**If you would like to buy in-shell pasteurized whole eggs, ask your grocer to carry them.**
This article can be found, in full, at: http://www.cnbc.com/id/35539753
Posted Wed, February 24, 2010
Filed under: FSN - General News
By Larry Pynn
More than one-third of 424 food operations serving the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games in Richmond, Vancouver, at Cypress Bowl in West Vancouver, and Whistler did not fully meet health regulations, Vancouver Coastal Health Authority inspection reports show.
Of the 147 food operations not compliant in one or more aspects of their operations, 56 or 38 per cent were specifically cited for "potentially hazardous food" concerns, including failure to thaw food properly and failure to maintain food at sufficiently low or high temperatures, a review by The Vancouver Sun has found.
The food operations include temporary facilities serving the public, athletes, media, dignitaries, volunteers and other workers, and can range from restaurant-style operations to smaller concessions and even beer vendors and hotdog stands...
...A total of about 35 Vancouver Coastal Health inspectors are working full-out in the Olympic field every day in two shifts.
"We're keeping our fingers crossed that we get through without any adverse impact on people," Domenic Losito, regional director of environmental health, said in an interview Tuesday. "So far, we seem to be on top of it."
Losito said temporary food outlets typically have more health violations than permanent restaurants due to issues such as inexperienced staff and difficulties maintaining proper food temperatures and supplying hot water at remote sites.
Verbal and written warnings from health inspectors are generally sufficient to address compliance issues, but in the most serious case to date, Austria House at Lost Lake in Whistler received a Public Health Act order.
The order required that:
- Each food preparation and service area is equipped with a hand-wash station serviced with hot and cold running water and provided with liquid soap and paper towel.
- No food is stored outdoors.
- All dishware and utensils are washed and sanitized before use.
- Critical limits are monitored in accordance with the food safety plan; written temperature logs are maintained.
- Food is kept protected from contamination at all times.
Losito said conditions were met within a matter of hours of the order being issued. Failure to act on such health concerns could lead to a fine or closing of a facility...
...Several dozen of the 424 Olympic food sites were not covered by health inspection reports for reasons not immediately clear.
Losito, who visited the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, to learn from health inspectors there, said his officials were checking into five public complaints of food poisoning in Vancouver related to non-Olympic restaurants and the potential for them to be associated not with food, but with norovirus.
The disease, also known as stomach flu or viral gastroenteritis, is normal in facilities such as daycares and schools around late January to early March, he said.
Meanwhile, a gastrointestinal outbreak at an Olympic workforce camp near Whistler is "consistent with a norovirus outbreak and no food sources have been implicated," he said. Food service at the camp has been inspected and found to be exemplary.
The outbreak peaked before last weekend and as of Tuesday had declined to only one additional reported case, he said.
This article can be found, in full, at: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Olympic+food+vendors+fail+inspections/2606253/story.html
Posted Mon, February 22, 2010
Filed under: FSN - General News
By Simon Romero
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As hundreds of thousands of people displaced by last month’s earthquake put down stakes in the squalid tent camps of this wrecked city, the authorities are struggling to address the worsening problem of human waste. Public health officials warn that waste accumulation is creating conditions for major disease outbreaks, including cholera, which could further stress the ravaged health system.
Some American and Haitian public health specialists here consider the diseases stemming from the buildup of human waste in the camps as possibly the most pressing health threat in the city. Doctors are already seeing a spike in illnesses like typhoid and shigellosis, which arise from contaminated food or water.
“We’re witnessing the setup for the spread of severe diarrheal illnesses in a place where the health system has collapsed and without a functioning sewage system to begin with,” said Ian Greenwald, chief medical officer for a Duke University team of doctors working here this month.
The problem has become impossible to overlook in many districts of Port-au-Prince, with the stench of decomposing bodies replaced by that of excrement. Children in some camps that are still lacking latrines and portable toilets play in open areas scattered with the waste. The light rains here this week caused some donated latrines in the camps to overflow, illustrating how the problem would grow more acute as the rainy season intensified in the months ahead.
With the number of people displaced here by the earthquake estimated at 700,000, emptying the latrines from one location creates a new problem when the waste is disposed in another. Haiti, a nation of 10 million, does not have a single sewage treatment plant. Trucks often simply take the waste to the Troutier trash dump near the slums of Cité Soleil on this city’s edge.
The trucks empty into pits filled with medical waste like intravenous bags and garbage. Smoke billows from burning piles of trash. One truck from a private company, Sanco, with its motto “Fighting for a Clean Environment” emblazoned on its side, did not bother to go to a pit, dumping its cargo of human waste on the open ground.
A squatter community of a dozen families, including some new arrivals whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake, tries to eke out its survival by scavenging in this setting.
This article continues at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/world/americas/20haiti.html
Copyright © 2009 S.T.O.P.