Food Safety: Cutting out Cantaloupe Cross Contamination

Here's the thing: I don't wash much produce. Not Bananas, oranges, apples, winter squash, zucchini, green peppers, or green beans. Not even broccoli or cantaloupe. Unless it seems dirty. I always wash leeks, lettuce, spinach, kale, collards because they always have silt or sand in them. I generally wash potatoes, carrots, and beets, because they grow underground and "might" be dirty. I don't wash waxed rutabagas before I peel them. I really don't obsess about whether food I am just about to cook might have a few invisible germs on it.

And my family is fine.

All the recent talk about how difficult it actually is to rinse, soak, wash, bleach, or scrub the germs off the surface of a cantaloupe got me wondering. The discussions at Fanatic Cook raise a lot of valid points about how hard it is to make sure you've gotten rid of something you can't even see. So I found this video from the International Food Safety Network refreshing. Instead of instruction in eliminating the invisible, it counsels cutting down on cross contamination. At six minutes, it seems a little long. So I'll summarize:

• It is really hard to scrub the germs off a cantaloupe.


• You might splash wash-water all over the place.


• Instead, cut down contact between the outside and the inside


• Cut the (unwashed) cantaloupe into quarters. You won't spread many bacteria to the flesh.


• Now use a clean knife to separate the flesh from the rind.


• Slide that flesh onto a clean cutting board. Wash your hands before you handle the flesh further.


• Refrigerate the cut cantaloupe immediately.

Of course I routinely wash my hands before cooking, even thought they don't look dirty. But, for some reason, I just can't see doing the same with the produce, and this approach makes more sense to me.

Read all of "Food Safety: Cutting out Cantaloupe Cross Contamination" ...

Food Safety: Familiarity Breeds Fear

In the US, we now keep track of more information about our food supply than we ever did before. Even eggs now have individual tracking codes. Bacteria can get their DNA fingerprints checked. This makes it possible to say that 50 gastroenteritis patients all carry the same strain of Salmonella, and all ate cantaloupes from a single farm in Honduras.

Lately, we hear more and more stories like this. We seem to hear more and more stories about how some food or food product is making people sick, and wonder: Is this a new threat to our food supply? I don't think so. But, then, I don't really know. I went looking for summaries of cases food-related illness, hoping to see some per-capita trends. But it wasn't that simple. Because it is really tough to get a handle on how many people are getting sick. Many of them don't go to the doctor. Many doctors don't take samples to be cultured. How many? Who can tell? Maybe the rate of "underreporting" as it is called is changing. How much? Who can tell? How many of these illnesses are caused by food we buy in the supermarkets? That's hard to tell, too. It is clear, though, that things are changing. Supermarkets, warehousers, shippers, packers, and farmers are all required to keep more comprehensive and elaborate records than they've ever kept before, and the CDC is working hard to get doctors to check more carefully for evidence of foodborne illnesses.

Just exactly how did the FDA link 50 cases of Salmonella in 16 states with cantaloupes from a single farm in Honduras?

"The CDC monitors the frequency of Salmonella ... and assists ... Health Departments".¹ The CDC had to recognize 50 or more Salmonella patients (0.000017% of the US population) as a significant increase in frequency, quite separate from gastroenteritis patients with E. Coli, Giardia, virus or other infections, or no infections at all. For each of those 50 or more patients, there was a physical examination, stool sample collection and culture, and an expensive DNA test to determine how many had the same strain of Salmonella. According to the CDC, the FDA collaborated with the CDC and state health officials to ask a lot of questions about everything the infected people had eaten recently. And compare that to everything a bunch of uninfected people had eaten recently. They would have had to consider all the eggs, milk, poultry, beef, and produce the patients had eaten, as well as any pet turtles or other domesticated or wild animals or animal poop they may have come in contact with. They needed to figure out if the infections came from restaurants or if the foods came from grocery stores. They studied data collected between January 18 and March 5, and concluded that "cantaloupe is the likely source of infections".²

At some point, the FDA started a "traceback investigation" in which they needed to figure out where every bite of cantaloupe had come from, and figure out how it had gotten there, long after the food itself was gone. They needed to figure out if the infections had come from restaurants or supermarkets, from delivery trucks, food warehouses, ships, or trains, a packing house, or a farm. There must have been a team assigned to build and use a database of information from infected and uninfected people, grocers and warehouses and shippers, following all the paths the cantaloupes might have followed. Eventually, they eliminated all other leads, reported that "[p]reliminary results ... indicate that cantaloupes consumed by ill persons were grown in Honduras,² and issued a statement that they all came from one farm.³

I can only guess about all the steps involved. Can you imagine the number of man-hours involved in this investigation? The medical and lab supplies used? Computer power required to build a database of every food the patients ate? Resources used by grocers, truckers, warehouse operators, and other shippers to maintain the records that made it possible to traceback all that food and determine that the only thing those 50 patients had in common was the farm their cantaloupes were grown on?

This kind of investigation simply was not possible even ten years ago. The pieces have only fallen into place recently -- you can see the evidence in the farmer's name on every piece of fruit, and the tracking code on every egg.

Ten or fifteen years ago, this outbreak might not have been recognized. Fifty cases out of 300 million is only 0.000017% of the US population. The CDC might not have been able to connect 2 cases of gastroenteritis in one state to 2 cases of Salmonellosis in another. And no-one could have traced individual pieces of produce back to the farm they grew on in another country. The records simply were not there. But now they are. Since it was established in 1996, FoodNet (a collaborative effort by the CDC, FDA, USDA and state health departments) has expanded to include 15% of the US population in 10 states.⁴

So expect more bad news about produce, simply because the news is available. FoodNet reports make clear that the incidence of laboratory-confirmed infections by commonly-foodborne pathogens has increased in the past couple of years after a few years of decreases. But FoodNet does not make it clear how much of this increase is due to an increase in reporting. Their 1999 discussion of assumptions made in surveillance of foodborne illness makes it clear that they don't have a handle on just how accurate these assumptions are.⁵ But it is clear that as we become more and more familiar with stories of foodborne illnes, we are growing more and more fearful of our food supply.

And I still can't tell: Are things getting worse, or are we just better informed! As long as foodborne illness underreporting rates keep changing, it is going to be difficult to talk about the true rate of change in foodborne illnesses in this country. The CDC publishes weekly tables of the incidence of notifiable diseases in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. That's a lot of data! I certainly can't make sense of it in an afternoon. I don't have the knowledge and experience to make sense of it in a week or two. I don't even know what field I'd need to study in order to learn how to make sense of it, and what assumptions the experts make.

So I am going to wait for the experts to duke it out, knowing full well that the evidence will seem to point first in one direction and then in another. In the meantime, what am I going to eat?

1. Salmonellosis: What is the government doing, US Centers for Disease Control, as of March 28, 2008
2. Investigation of Outbreak of Infections Caused by Salmonella Litchfield US Centers for Disease Control, March 22, 2008
3. FDA Warns of Salmonella Risk with Cantaloupes from Agropecuaria Montelibano, US Food and Drug Administration, March 22, 2008
4. Preliminary FoodNet Data on the Incidence of Infection with Pathogens Transmitted Commonly Through Food --- 10 States, 2006, FoodNet, April 13, 2007
5. Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States, CDC FoodNet, Emerging Infections Diseases V5No5, September-October 1999

Read all of "Food Safety: Familiarity Breeds Fear" ...

Food Safety: When do you wash your produce?

There's an interesting discussion going on at the Fanatic Cook blog. It began with Honduran cantaloupes that are associated with a Salmonella outbreak in the US.

Of course, produce grows outdoors in the dirt. Animals poop outdoors in the dirt. Contamination from passing birds, livestock, or vermin is always a possiblity. When I buy a melon directly from the farmer, it is dirty. Before I slice it, I give that melon a good rinse and scrub-down in the sink. Afterwards, I give the sink a soapy scrub-down to clean it. This keeps the dirt, and the germs in the dirt, off the counter, cutting board, and knife, and out of the food.

But when I buy a melon at the supermarket, it looks as clean as if I had just washed it myself. So I don't wash it. I rarely wash apples, oranges, or tomatoes. I have never washed a banana. Have you? Even though you know that, every time you grab a piece of produce, you could get invisible germs on your hands and spread them all over the kitchen? Why aren't you and your family sick every single day? Is this like playing Russian Roulette with vegetables?

Well, maybe. Most tragedies happen after a whole string of things has gone wrong. And there are many opportunities between the field and the plate to prevent a food-borne illness.

Most soil germs are not dangerous. But fertilizer/manure or irrigation water could be contaminated and spread germs in the field. The dirty-looking recirculated wash water they use in packing plants could be OK if they treat it properly, or it could be putting germs right back on the potatoes. Workers could be protecting the food, or contaminating it if they don't wash their hands. And you never know who has handled the produce in the grocery store.

Knowing all that, I'm responsible for the food I choose and how I handle it. I follow a few simple rules.

• Vegetable washes haven't proven to be any more effective than plain, clean water at removing bacteria, so I stick with plain water, and scrub, rub, agitate, or spray.
• Keep the sink and the scrubbers clean.
• There is no way to remove 100% of the germs on foods. So try not to let the germs grow. Eat, cook, or refrigerate things soon after you cut them.
• If those watermelon slices start to look "different", it's time to toss them. Avoid damaged produce. Don't eat rotten stuff.
• This summer, I'm sure I'll still be eating unwashed vegetables straight off the vine.
• I'm not going to start washing bananas.
• I'll think again about prewashed mini-carrots, but I'll probably keep trusting the Jolly Green Giant, the distribution network, and my local grocery store.
  

---

FIT vegetable wash powder (Citric acid, sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium carbonate & magnesium carbonate, Grapefruit Oil extract) was developed by Proctor and Gamble, which then sold the license to Healthpro Brands. It is distributed to growers, packers, and shippers by Caruso Foods

According to the Cornell Department of Agriculture, no-one knows how much food-borne illness originates on the farm.

Bleaching produce is only recommeded in extreme situations, such as flooding. Leafy vegetables, fleshy vegetables (tomatoes, summer squash, peppers) and berries cannot be adequately disinfected. Other contaminated vegetables can be cleaned in fresh water and then soaked in a very weak chlorine solution for 15 to 20 minutes.

Did you hear A&P sued a couple of its former stock clerks for making a video in which they licked produce and put it back on the shelves?

Read all of "Food Safety: When do you wash your produce?" ...

Chinese Ingredients -- Dangerously Unregulated

It isn't just dangerous chemical scrap in pet foods¹. Chinese companies intentionally sold a poison in place of a common cold-medicine ingredient. At least 100 Panamanians died before the 260,000 bottles of medicine could be destroyed.² And China has become "the source of most of the world’s fake drugs."⁵

In the US, we have come to depend on the FDA to ensure that our foods and medicines actually contain the ingredients claimed on the labels, that they are free of dangerous levels of chemical or biological contamination. But now we are importing large quantities of commodity ingredients from countries that don't share our history or expectations -- China never prosecuted or even closely examined any of the glycerine companies for their role in the Panamanian deaths.² So we have to take action. The FDA has recommended drug makers to test every shipment of glycerine.⁶ A good idea.

In March, the FDA refused admissions for all vegetable protein products from China.³ One week later, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine promised to begin inspection of vegetable proteins for export.⁴. This could help pet food makers (and perhaps human food and dietary supplement makers) feel more confident that they are getting what they paid for. They still might need to pay for more expensive protein assays that won't be fooled by high-nitrogen, non-protein additives like melamine scrap in their low-cost imported ingredients.

According to counterfeiting experts, "no amount of enforcement is going to stop" the distribution of counterfeit prescription drugs.⁵

If we suddenly had to stop importing all Chinese food and medicine ingredients, we would be unhappy with the effect on the economy. But it does make you stop and think. Why are these commodity ingredients such a big part of the global economy? Glycerine, vegetable protein concentrates, amino acid supplement powders. These are not whole foods. How about a bowl of New Orleans red beans and rice instead of some highly processed snack made with TVP and rice gluten?

---

1. Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China, New York Times, April 30, 2007

2. From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine, New York Times, May 6, 2007

3. IMPORT ALERT #99-29, "DETENTION WITHOUT PHYSICAL EXAMINATION OF ALL VEGETABLE PROTEIN PRODUCTS FROM CHINA FOR ANIMAL OR HUMAN FOOD USE DUE TO THE PRESENCE OF MELAMINE AND/OR MELAMINE ANALOGS", US FDA, 4/27/07

4. "2 companies blamed for tainted pet food", China Daily, 2007-05-08.

5. "In the World of Life-Saving Drugs, a Growing Epidemic of Deadly Fakes", New York Times, February 27, 2007.

6. "FDA Advises Manufacturers to Test Glycerin for Possible Contamination", US FDA, May 4, 2007.

Read all of "Chinese Ingredients -- Dangerously Unregulated" ...