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BARFBLOG WEEKLY - JUNE 21,
2017
31 sickened by E. coli O55 in Dorset: 3
years later, health-types’ report remains a secret
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/21/2017 from Barfblog
In Dec. 2014, an outbreak of E.
coli O55 was identified in Dorset, U.K. with at least 31 sickened. Public
Health England (PHE) and local environmental health officials investigated and
found nothing, other than cats were also being affected.
Tara
Russell of Bournemouth Echo reports again this week that a review into the
outbreak in Dorset was carried out, health chiefs have insisted – but the report
is not available to the public.
Public Health England (PHE) says the
public can only request to see the report detailing exactly what happened when
31 people contracted the O55 strain between July 2014 and November 2015 through
a Freedom of Information request.
Families including some whose
children have been left with lifelong health complications say they did not know
the review existed and have branded it 'disappointing and disgusting' they have
been kept in the dark.
The Daily Echo has lodged an official FOI
request on behalf of the affected families and will receive a response in
July.
Nurse Jessica Archer, who today suffers crippling head
pains, fatigue and depression while her nephew Isaac Mortlock (right) endures
severe seizures, must be peg fed every night and will need a kidney transplant
as a result of the outbreak, said: “Without the Daily Echo we wouldn't even know
this report even existed and we are very interested to see it and we have the
right to know. The families affected have so many unanswered questions and have
to live with the effects of this outbreak forever but yet again we feel Public
Health England are trying to sweep it under the carpet and hope that it will
just go away.
"It is disappointing and disgusting this report
has not already been made public let alone having to wait and wait still. We
feel there have been a series of failures and this is the
latest."
The news comes after Jessica last month called for PHE
to be held to account telling how her and her five-year-old nephew's Isaac
Mortlock’s lives have changed irreversibly, and accused the organisation of ‘a
cover up.’
In response, PHE told the Daily Echo it carries out
‘routine outbreak reviews once investigations have ended’, adding it is 'a
learning organisation and reflects on outbreaks to identify lessons learnt and
to continually improve our response.’
However at the time, the
organisation refused to tell the Daily Echo exactly which lessons were
learned.
It
was only following a further request from this newspaper, PHE said a report was
compiled however it has not been available to the public.
A
spokesman said: “This report was not intended for external publication – it’s
not standard procedure to publish outbreak reports externally due to patient
confidentiality – however if interested parties would like to request a copy
they can do this via our Freedom of Information portal.”
That’s
bullshit.
Outbreak investigations are routinely published while ensuring
patient confidentiality.
Families say it is the latest in a string of
‘failures’ by Public Health England.
A spokesman from PHE added:
"As with all outbreaks, PHE Health Protection Team ensured throughout their
investigation that those affected were kept informed of any information that was
uncovered at that time."
That’s also bullshit.
And why UK
health types feature prominently in our paper on when to go public for the
benefit of public health.
Three years seems a bit
long.
Going public: Early disclosure of food risks for the
benefit of public health
Mar.17
NEHA,
Volume 79.7, Pages 8-14
Benjamin Chapman, Maria Sol Erdozaim,
Douglas Powell
http://www.neha.org/node/58904
Often
during an outbreak of foodborne illness, there are health officials who have
data indicating that there is a risk prior to notifying the public. During the
lag period between the first public health signal and some release of public
information, there are decision makers who are weighing evidence with the
impacts of going public.
Multiple agencies and analysts have
lamented that there is not a common playbook or decision tree for how public
health agencies determine what information to release and when. Regularly,
health authorities suggest that how and when public information is released is
evaluated on a case-by-case basis without sharing the steps and criteria used to
make decisions.
Information provision on its own is not enough.
Risk communication, to be effective and grounded in behavior theory, should
provide control measure options for risk management decisions. There is no
indication in the literature that consumers benefit from paternalistic
protection decisions to guard against information overload. A review of the risk
communication literature related to outbreaks, as well as case studies of actual
incidents, are explored and a blueprint for health authorities to follow is
provided.
Handwashing is never enough: Texas
family says sons infected with E. coli at petting zoo
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/21/2017 from Barfblog
An Azle family wants to warn others after both their
young boys were hospitalized with E. coli earlier this year.
"It's
awful. You can't do anything but just sit there and watch your child hurt,"
Emily Miller told
WFAA.
Miller's sons Brayden, 7, and Dylan, 5, were both
diagnosed with an E. coli infection, and Dylan's case impacted his kidneys.
Miller said he required dialysis, and he was hospitalized for 27 days, including
several nights in the ICU.
"It's such a crazy thought that this
could happen," Miller said.
She was surprised by the intensity
of the illness, but also by where her boys may have come into contact with E.
coli. She said doctors believe they were likely contaminated while the family
was visiting a petting zoo.
"I wasn't aware that you could get
it from animals and livestock," Miller said.
She took the boys
to the petting zoo back in January, and four days later her oldest was in the
hospital.
Both brothers are now doing well, though Dylan is
still on blood pressure medicine due to the illness, Miller
said.
The Centers for Disease Control says petting zoos do pose
risks, as livestock can carry E. coli bacteria. The CDC's advice is to wash
hands with soap and water immediately after being near animals, whether you
touch them or not.
The CDC also says that soap and water is more
effective than instant hand sanitizers, and if sanitizers are the only option,
go ahead and use them but follow up with soap and water as soon as
possible.
A table of petting zoo outbreaks is available at http://barfblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Petting-Zoo-Outbreaks-Table-4-8-14.xlsx.
Erdozain
G, Kukanich
K, Chapman
B, Powell
D. 2012. Observation of public health risk behaviours, risk communication
and hand hygiene at Kansas and Missouri petting zoos – 2010-2011. Zoonoses
Public Health. 2012 Jul 30. doi: 10.1111/j.1863-2378.2012.01531.x. [Epub ahead
of print]
Abstract below:
Observation of public health risk
behaviors, risk communication and hand hygiene at Kansas and Missouri petting
zoos – 2010-2011Outbreaks of human illness have been linked to visiting settings
with animal contact throughout developed countries. This paper details an
observational study of hand hygiene tool availability and recommendations;
frequency of risky behavior; and, handwashing attempts by visitors in Kansas (9)
and Missouri (4), U.S., petting zoos. Handwashing signs and hand hygiene
stations were available at the exit of animal-contact areas in 10/13 and 8/13
petting zoos respectively. Risky behaviors were observed being performed at all
petting zoos by at least one visitor. Frequently observed behaviors were:
children (10/13 petting zoos) and adults (9/13 petting zoos) touching hands to
face within animal-contact areas; animals licking children’s and adults’ hands
(7/13 and 4/13 petting zoos, respectively); and children and adults drinking
within animal-contact areas (5/13 petting zoos each). Of 574 visitors observed
for hand hygiene when exiting animal-contact areas, 37% (n=214) of individuals
attempted some type of hand hygiene, with male adults, female adults, and
children attempting at similar rates (32%, 40%, and 37% respectively). Visitors
were 4.8x more likely to wash their hands when a staff member was present within
or at the exit to the animal-contact area (136/231, 59%) than when no staff
member was present (78/343, 23%; p
2-year-old on life support in Texas
after contracting E. coli
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/21/2017 from Barfblog
An
Ennis family says the CDC is investigating after their 2-year-old was
exposed to a dangerous strain of E.coli.
Landon
Huston is now on life support at Children’s Medical Center
Dallas.
“He’s usually up, rambunctious, running around,” said
his mother, Lindsey Montgomery. “I’m ready for my little boy to be
back.”
The family took a trip to Oklahoma two weeks ago, cooling
down in a hotel pool and at a natural spring.
“I’d never heard
of people swimming and get E. oli,” said his father, John
Huston.
Unfortunately, many, many people have been identified as
getting sick with Shiga-toxin producing E. coli from swimming, water parks, or
water supplies.
“Three, four days later, Landon’s got fever,
diarrhea, really sick,” said Montgomery.
But by the time a test
confirmed E.coli, his kidneys were shutting down. Montgomery said the CDC
interviewed her trying to determine the source of the
infection.
“They asked me where he had been, what food he had
ate, any restaurants,” she said.
Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, Children’s
Health Chief of Pediatric Infections Diseases, said it’s normal for a case like
this to trigger a public health investigation.
“That suggests
that there’s some contamination somewhere. It’s usually water or food and
typically that means it’s not just one individual who’s been exposed,” he
said.
Color sucks: Use a thermometer and
stick it in for food safety
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/20/2017 from Barfblog
safefood Ireland has joined the UK Food Standards Agency
in providing terrible advice about how to cook burgers.
A
recipe for summer beef burgers (may a fine solstice greet our Northern and
Southern friends) endorsed by safefood
says:
“Before serving, ensure that the burgers are cooked thoroughly.
Cut into them with a clean knife and check that they are piping hot all the way
through, there is no pink meat remaining and that the juices run
clear.”
Meanwhile, FSA issued a Safe Summer Food guide as UK
picnickers head out in the sun (there’s sun in the UK?). The guidelines were in
part based results of a self-reported survey, which is largely meaningless but
something FSA likes to do.
The Morning Advertiser has more details on the
hoops
FSA seems willing to jump through to ensure the safety of rare burgers
including:
sourcing the meat only from establishments which have
specific controls in place to minimise the risk of contamination of meat
intended to be eaten raw or lightly cooked;
ensuring that the
supplier carries out appropriate testing of raw meat to check that their
procedures for minimising contamination are working;
Strict
temperature control to prevent growth of any bugs and appropriate preparation
and cooking procedures;
notifying their local authority that burgers
that aren’t thoroughly cooked are being served by the business;
and,
providing advice to consumers, for example on menus, regarding
the additional risk.
The advice from these self-proclaimed
science-based agencies is at odds with, uh, science.
It
has been known for over two decades that color is a lousy indicator of safety in
hamburger.
The latest addition to this work comes from Djimsa
et al. in the Dept. of Animal Science at Oklahoma State Univ., who wrote in the
Journal of Food Science earlier this year that:
Premature browning is
a condition wherein ground beef exhibits a well-done appearance before reaching
the USDA recommended internal cooked meat temperature of 71.1 °C; however, the
mechanism is unclear.
The objectives of this study were: (1) to
determine the effects of packaging and temperature on metmyoglobin reducing
activity (MRA) of cooked ground beef patties and (2) to assess the effects of
temperature and pH on thermal stability of NADH-dependent reductase, lactate
dehydrogenase (LDH), and oxymyoglobin (OxyMb) in-vitro.
Beef
patties (lean: fat = 85:15) were packaged in high-oxygen modified atmosphere
(HiOX-MAP) or vacuum (VP) and cooked to either 65 or 71 °C. Internal meat color
and MRA of both raw and cooked patties were determined. Purified NADH-dependent
reductase and LDH were used to determine the effects of pH and temperature on
enzyme activity. MRA of cooked patties was temperature and packaging dependent
(P < 0.05). Vacuum packaged patties cooked to 71 °C had greater (P < 0.05)
MRA than HiOX-MAP counterparts.
Thermal stability of OxyMb,
NADH-dependent reductase, and LDH were different and pH-dependent. LDH was able
to generate NADH at 84 °C; whereas NADH-dependent reductase was least stable to
heat.
The results suggest that patties have MRA at cooking
temperatures, which can influence cooked meat color.
Effects
of metmyoglobin reducing activity and thermal stability of NADH-dependent
reductase and lactate dehydrogenase on premature browning in ground
beef
Journal of Food Science, 2017 Feb, 82(2):304-313, doi:
10.1111/1750-3841.13606. Epub 2017 Jan 18.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28099768
713 sick in WA; Blame food porn
Salmonella cases ‘at record level’
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/14/2017 from Barfblog
I just read an interview about Bill
Maher, who likes unpasteurized goat’s yoghurt and a raw egg shake.
Rocky
was a movie, not real life.
For someone who comes off as somewhat
intelligent (and a lot smirky) he knows shit about microbiology.
With his
seed diet, he’s no better than the swarmy folks he skewers.
Western
Australian health types have confirmed a surge in salmonella cases has now
peaked, and have urged locals to manage their risk of infection.
The
WA Health Department said there had been 713 cases of the infection by the end
of April- nearly four-and-a-half times the level expected by officials at this
time of year.
The confirmation follows three confirmed cases in
Busselton over recent weeks linked with uncooked egg products including
chocolate mousse, aioli and hollandaise sauce.
A department
spokesperson said there had been a large spike in the number of cases, and
health officials have advised WA residents how to manage their
risk.
"Notifications of Salmonella gastroenteritis are currently
at record levels in WA... two molecular subtypes, PFGE1 and PEGE43 are currently
causing most of this increase.
These subtypes are most commonly
found in uncooked eggs, and the department said investigations into a number of
localised outbreaks found a strong correlation between the infection and eating
raw or runny eggs.
The department also confirmed the increase
wasn't just in WA, with a number of states around the nation also experiencing
localised outbreaks.
If you experience severe or prolonged
symptoms you should visit a doctor.
A selection of egg-related outbreaks
in Australia can be found here.
Salmonella and hockey don’t mix: 250
sickened at Riga Cup in 2015
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/20/2017 from Barfblog
(Thanks to a Brisbane-based colleague and barfblog.com
fan who passed this along.)
In April 2015, Finnish public health
authorities alerted European Union member states of a possible multi-country
Salmonella enteritidis outbreak linked to an international youth ice-hockey
tournament in Latvia.
The
European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Finnish and Latvian
authorities initiated an outbreak investigation to identify the source. The
investigation included a description of the outbreak, retrospective cohort
study, microbiological investigation and trace-back. We identified 154 suspected
and 96 confirmed cases from seven countries.
Consuming Bolognese
sauce and salad at a specific event arena significantly increased the risk of
illness. Isolates from Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian cases had an identical
multiple-locus variable-number of tandem repeats analysis-profile
(3-10-6-4-1).
Breaches in hygiene and food storing practices in
the specific arena's kitchen allowing for cross-contamination were identified.
Riga Cup participants were recommended to follow good hand hygiene and consume
only freshly cooked foods.
This investigation demonstrated that
the use of ECDC's Epidemic Intelligence Information System for Food- and
Waterborne Diseases and Zoonoses platform was essential to progress the
investigation by facilitating information exchange between countries.
Cross-border data sharing to perform whole genome sequencing gave relevant
information regarding the source of the
outbreak.
Multi-country outbreak of Salmonella
enteritidis infection linked to the international ice hockey
tournament
Epidemiology and Infection, pages 1-10, 14
Jun 2017, Pärn T, Dahl V, Lienemann T, Perevosčikovs J, DE Jong B
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0950268817001212
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28610640
Keep it cool: C. perfringens is not a
friend; UK pub fined thousands
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/13/2017 from Barfblog
Nikkie
Sutton of The Morning Advertiser writes that a carvery operator that
provides food in a West Midlands pub has been ordered to pay thousands of pounds
after 20 diners contracted food poisoning.
A
94-year-old woman and several children became ill after eating at the pub last
year and informed Dudley Council of their food poisoning
symptoms.
IP Carvery, which makes the food on behalf of the Park
Lane Tavern, in Cradley, pleaded guilty to placing unsafe food on the market in
a case brought by Dudley Council at Wolverhampton Magistrates Court on 18
May.
A public apology was made to the court on behalf of IP
Carvery's director. The court also heard the company had employed a food-safety
expert to advise them, inspect their facilities and train
staff.
The food business was fined £1,350 and ordered to pay
costs of £2,483.55 to Dudley Council and a victim surcharge of
£120.
At the the hearing, the court heard how the diners ate at
the carvery in a two hour slot on Saturday 2 April last year and 20 customers
were confirmed to have suffered from Clostridium perfringens, that can be caused
by the inadequate cooling of large joints of meat, leading to the formation of
toxic bacteria, which survives cooking and then grows in the meat while cooling.
It can cause illness shortly after being reheated and
consumed.
Two leftover samples of turkey taken home by customers
were found to be contaminated with the bacteria.
Environmental
Health officers also visited the pub and found inadequate storage temperatures
of cooked joints, a lack of monitoring of cooling times and temperature of
cooked meats and inadequate record keeping.
Blame Qatar? No, blame poor food
handling as 825 sickened at Mosul camp
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/20/2017 from Barfblog
The first time I understood the term displaced person,
was from my carpenter friend John Kierkegaard who, in the Danish tradition, had
a beer at morning coffee, one at lunch, and one at afternoon coffee.
John
would often tell me, it tastes good, but the work is not so good.
He told
tales of bicycling 20-30 km/h with full infantry gear during WW II, and how he
migrated to Canada at the end of the war as a displaced person.
On
June 12, 2017, at sundown, hundreds of residents of one of the many tent camps
that have sprawled across the barren landscape around Mosul gathered for iftar,
the evening meal to break the day’s Ramadan fast. They were treated to a
meal of chicken, rice, soup, beans and yogurt — paid for by a Qatari charity
and prepared by a restaurant in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish
region.
Within hours, hundreds fell sick, vomiting and suffering
from diarrhea. Overnight, until about 4 a.m., ambulances and cars rushed victims
to hospitals, said Alaa Muhsin, an ambulance driver from Baghdad who works at
the camp.
The period between when the food was cooked and then
transported to the IDP camps resulted in the food poisoning of over 825
displaced persons from Mosul in southwestern
Erbil.
“After we carried out an investigation of the
case, we found out the cause of the food poisoning was due to the long
period between preparing and consuming the food as it was packed in plastic
containers and transferred to the camps,” Erbil Governor Nawzad Hadi said on
Monday in a press conference.
“There were no deliberate
intentions to poison IDPs by those who cooked the food,” he
added.
“The food itself was okay, but the delay between the
preparation of the meals and their distribution, along with the improper storing
of the food, was the reason hundreds of IDPs became ill,” Hadi emphasized,
stating the case had been sent to court.
The Governor previously
mentioned the food was cooked at 9:00 a.m. then transferred to the camp at 1:00
p.m. The food was later distributed between 4:00 and 5:00
p.m.
Following the incident, seven people were arrested, six
from the restaurant where the meals were prepared and one from a charity
organization.
The restaurant was also closed, Erbil police
previously informed.
Hadi noted the food should be prepared at
the camps and that premade meals are forbidden.
He thanked the
Peshmerga and security members for quickly transporting 638 IDPs to hospitals in
Erbil to receive prompt medical treatment, while the remaining were treated at
the camps.
The Erbil Health Department’s Director-General Saman
Hussein Barzinjy told Kurdistan24 the group which delivered the donation did not
take into consideration health hazards related to food preparation and
distribution.
At the time, Barzinjy mentioned one of the camp’s
inhabitants had died from food poisoning.
However, a statement
released on Tuesday apologized for the misinformation, assuring no one had died,
adding the condition of the child who was thought dead was
“stable.”
The Kurdistan Region is home to almost two million
IDPs and refugees who fled from the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.
Two separate outbreaks send thousands
of Turkish soldiers to hospital
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/20/2017 from Barfblog
The leading cause of immobilizing U.S. troops?
Foodborne
illness.
My former dean was known as Dr. Clorox while serving in
Vietnam.
I used to give these training sessions to food types headed for
Iraq and Afghanistan from Fort
Riley (in Manhattan, Kansas) and would sheepishly say, I have no idea what
you’re going to face in terms of potable water, but bleach
is your friend.
Prayer
won’t make food safe, but science can help.
An outbreak of foodborne
illness was first detected on May 23, 2017 at the training center of the First
Manisa Infantry Brigade in western Manis in Turkey. Up to 1,000 were
sickened, with one death and 46 hospitalizations.
Dr. Tur Yildiz
Bicer, who is also a deputy of the main opposition group, the Republican
People's Party (CHP), visited the soldiers attended at the provincial hospital
and the tests concluded that soldiers were infected with salmonellosis through
game meat which was on the barracks menu.
"In the samples were
traces of the bacterium Salmonella, which is transmitted through meat,
especially poultry, If not well cooked or stored according to health
regulations," said the doctor, and recalled that the soldiers ate turkey meat
the night the infection began.
On June 17, 2017, the Daily
Sabah reported a total of 590 Turkish soldiers were hospitalized in the
western province of Manisa following complaints of nausea and vomiting. It is
the latest case of mass poisoning at military bases in Manisa that have been
plagued by such incidents since late May. An investigation is already underway
while police early Sunday arrested 21 employees, including executives of the
catering firm that provides food to the base and others in the
province.
The soldiers' complaints at the 1st Infantry Training
Battalion Command began following a dinner. The Manisa Prosecutor's Office said
in a statement Sunday that 731 soldiers were affected by the tainted
meal.
The Manisa governorate announced yesterday that food
services from the catering firm were suspended and meals will be provided to the
base temporarily. Manisa Governor Mustafa Hakan Güvençer said a delegation from
the Public Health Institute, the highest public health authority and a
delegation from the Land Forces Command that oversees military bases hosting
training for conscripts, were investigating the issue. Military compounds in
Manisa function as two main training bases for thousands of conscripts who are
dispatched to other cities after completing a month-long training course
there.
Hummus sucks, especially with
Listeria
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/20/2017 from Barfblog
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada correspondent Rob Mancini
writes:
I
hate hummus.
My wife loves it.
Concerns with
potential Listeria contamination and food are on-going due to the ubiquitous
nature of this pathogen. In Nov. 2016, there was a significant recall of hummus
due to potential Listeria concerns with certain Sabra brand hummus products in
both Canada and the US. Food producers, manufacturers, retail and foodservice
operations are in a constant battle to control this problem and continually
seeking new innovative products/solutions for its’ control.
A
study published in 2006 found that a combination of citric acid, nisin, and
proper hygienic practices served as an effective means to minimize growth of the
pathogen in hummus. It may also be a good idea to take into consideration where
the ingredients were sourced and ensuring that your facility are following and
adhering to good GMP’s.
Either way, still hate the stuff.
Daily
Hornet reports:
Lantana Foods, the company that supplied the
hummus, notified Harris Teeter of the possible contamination, and the grocer
promptly removed it from its cases.
Affected products include
Fresh Foods Market Artisan Hummus Pine Nuts with UPC
7203602705.
Harris Teeter is using transaction data to notify
shoppers who may have purchased the hummus, according to a press release on the
company’s website.
If you purchased any hummus affected by the
recall you should discard it immediately or return it to Harris Teeter for a
full refund.
Listeriosis is a severe infection caused by eating
food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The disease typically affects children,
the elderly, and adults with weakened immune systems.
To date,
no listeria infections have been associated with the Harris Teeter hummus
recall.
Al-Holy, M, Al-Qadiri,H, Lin, M, and Rasco, B.
Inhibition of Listeria innocua in Hummus by a Combination of Nisin and
Citric Acid. Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 69, No. 6, 2006, Pages
1322–1327
The miracle of poop
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/16/2017 from Barfblog
It’s a question that has perplexed scientists: does
diarrhea have a purpose?
That is, is diarrhea is a symptom of disease, or
does diarrhea actually help clear the bacteria causing an infection.
Cecile
Borkhataria of the Daily Mail reports that scientists have found in sick
mice, proteins caused microscopic leaks in the intestinal wall that let water
in, making the mouse poop looser and limiting disease
severity.
The study,
conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), looked at the
immune mechanisms that drive diarrhea.
Diarrhea can have many
different causes, including infections, certain types of medications, too much
caffeine or alcohol and many more.
It happens when there's an
excess of water in the intestines, which is normally re-absorbed by the
body.
The intestinal wall is lined with cells, and some water
can pass through the cells, holes in the lining or via junctions between the
cells.
'The hypothesis that diarrhea clears intestinal
pathogens has been debated for centuries,' said corresponding author of the
study Dr Jerrold Turner of the BWH Departments of Pathology and
Medicine.
'Its impact on the progression of intestinal
infections remains poorly understood.
'We sought to define the
role of diarrhea and to see if preventing it might actually delay pathogen
clearance and prolong disease.'
To conduct the study,
the researchers used a mouse infected with a bacteria called Citrobacter
rodentium - the mouse equivalent of an E. coli
infection.
Within two days of the mouse being infected, the
researchers saw an increase in the permeability of the mouse's intestinal
barrier - leading to water entering the intestines, causing
diarrhea.
This occurred well before inflammation cellular damage
of the intestines.
The
researchers discovered two new proteins involved in causing diarrhea -
interleukin-22 and claudin-2, which humans possess too.
They
found that when the mouse was infected, immune cells travelled to the intestinal
wall and produced interleukin-22.
Interleukin-22 binds to cells
on the intestinal wall, causing the release of another protein called
claudin-2.
It's claudin-2 that causes the leak in cellular
junction in the intestinal wall, allowing water to enter it and cause
diarrhea.
The researchers tested three different kinds of mice
- regular mice, genetically modified mice that produce large amount of
claudin-2, and mice that didn't make any claudin-2.
The regular
mice had diarrhea when they got sick, and the mice that made more claudin-2
always had diarrhea.
The mice that didn't make any claudin-2
had more e injuries to their intestinal lining, and they still had diarrhea
because it seemed as though their immune system attacked the cells help make
some diarrhea.
In related poop news, Rob
Knight, one of the founding fathers of gut microbiome research, in 2012,
used the crowdfunding platform FundRazr to
coax more than 9,000 volunteers into first donating money, and then sending
samples of their poop through the mail. A team of researchers probed these
samples for bacterial DNA to create the first census of the 40 trillion or so
bacteria that call our guts their home.
Kyle
Frischkorn of the Smithsonian quotes Knight, who directs of the Center for
Microbiome Innovation at the University of California at San Diego, as
saying, “You get an ongoing input of microbes from your environment—microbes
you eat on food itself.”
One of the mysteries sparked by the
American Gut Project was why two people who claimed to follow the same diet
could have such different communities of gut microbes. For the study, volunteers
had self-reported
their diets, with the vast majority following omnivorous diets, and less
than 3 percent each identifying as "vegetarian" or "vegan." When researchers
crunched the numbers, however, they found no
discernible correlations between gut communities and those with seemingly
similar diets.
“Diet categories were completely useless and
didn’t correlate with the microbiome communities at all,” says
Knight.
In other words, the bacteria in poop were telling a
different dietary story than the people making that poop. “You can be a vegan
who mostly eats kale, or you can be a vegan who mostly eats fries,” Knight
explains. “Those have totally different consequences for your microbiome.”
Anyone can claim to be a die-hard adherent to the Paleo Diet, it seems, but the
data suggested that the microbiome remembers all those midnight ice cream
transgressions.
Knight realized that the results of the American
Gut Project were missing something crucial: A deeper dive into the food we eat.
Filling that gap would mean analyzing all the food going in, and seeing how it
correlated with the patterns in what comes out. But while collecting poop was,
in some sense, straightforward—each person "submits a sample" in the same
way—tallying up all the many foods people eat would be a lot more
ambitious.
Every time you ingest, you change the interior
landscape of you. Because the bulk of bacteria in the microbiome live in the
gut, when we feed ourselves, we feed them too. The chemistry of what we eat, be
it fries or kale, alters the chemical landscape of the gut, making it more cozy
for some and less hospitable for others.
It
gets livelier. Because microbes are everywhere—on
the table, in the air, on the surface of the muffin you left out on the
counter—you’re also adding new microbes to the mix. Some stroll through your
body like polite tourists. Others stick around and interact with the locals.
Every bite has the potential to alter the microbiome, and subsequently human
health. But researchers have yet to figure out how.
That’s
because, until now, we didn’t have the platform to embark on the massive
endeavor of collecting and analyzing food samples from around the world. Thanks
to the American Gut Project, Knight and his team aren't starting from scratch.
Initially, the researchers plan to collect 1,000 samples from every brick of the
familiar food pyramid, and then they’ll open it for the public to submit
whatever foods they’re curious about.
“We know about calorie
count, and about different food groups, but the whole world of the molecules and
the microbes in our food is a black box,” says Julia Gauglitz, a post-doctoral
researcher at the Center for Microbiome Innovation who will direct a new
project. As the old adage goes, “we are what we eat,” she says. And yet, when
you get down to the microscopic level, “we know very little about what we’re
consuming.”
Everything we eat is the cumulative product of the
chemistry and microbes in the soil where it was grown, the factory where it was
processed, and whatever you touched right before you ate it. Why is that
important? Ultimately, the team hopes, demystifying the microbial patterns in
our food will help us better engineer our diets to improve our health and ward
off disease.
Knight draws a historical parallel to the discovery
of essential nutrients. In the last century, researchers figured out that
industrially processed foods had become nutrient-depleted. By artificially
adding vitamins and minerals back in, deficiency diseases like rickets and
beriberi were largely eliminated from the Western world. Similarly,
understanding the health effects of the microbiome could allow us to engineer
those missing microbes back into our meals.
“It’s fairly likely
that our modern lifestyles are stripping out a whole lot of live microbes that
we need to maintain health,” says Knight. “Getting an understanding of that
could be as important as the understanding that vitamin C is necessary and
making sure that everyone got enough of it.”
Why would anyone brag about AIB? Oh,
it’s Missouri: Ozarks Food Harvest Bank earns superior food safety
rating
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/13/2017 from Barfblog
According to the West
Plains Daily Quill, Ozarks Food Harvest received high marks on its food
safety inspection from AIB International. For six years, southwest Missouri’s
only regional food bank has held this superior food safety
certification.
Except
AIB – based in Manhattan, Kansas – has given superior plus plus ratings to some
of the worst food offenders in the past decade: Peanut Corporation of America
(which supplied the idiots at Kelloggs),
DeCoster eggs and dozens
more.
When Ozarks Food Harvest first received this certification
in 2012, it was only the sixth Feeding America food bank of 200 in the country
to do so.
The auditing tragedy is bad people taking money from
people trying to do good.
Audits and inspections are never
enough: A critique to enhance food safety
2012, Food
Control
D.A. Powell, S. Erdozain, C. Dodd, R. Costa, K. Morley,
B.J. Chapman
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713512004409?v=s5Abstract
Internal
and external food safety audits are conducted to assess the safety and quality
of food including on-farm production, manufacturing practices, sanitation, and
hygiene. Some auditors are direct stakeholders that are employed by food
establishments to conduct internal audits, while other auditors may represent
the interests of a second-party purchaser or a third-party auditing agency. Some
buyers conduct their own audits or additional testing, while some buyers trust
the results of third-party audits or inspections. Third-party auditors, however,
use various food safety audit standards and most do not have a vested interest
in the products being sold. Audits are conducted under a proprietary standard,
while food safety inspections are generally conducted within a legal framework.
There have been many foodborne illness outbreaks linked to food processors that
have passed third-party audits and inspections, raising questions about the
utility of both. Supporters argue third-party audits are a way to ensure food
safety in an era of dwindling economic resources. Critics contend that while
external audits and inspections can be a valuable tool to help ensure safe food,
such activities represent only a snapshot in time. This paper identifies
limitations of food safety inspections and audits and provides recommendations
for strengthening the system, based on developing a strong food safety culture,
including risk-based verification steps, throughout the food safety system.
Hucksterism gets richer: Amazon to buy
Whole Foods in $13.4 billion deal
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/16/2017 from Barfblog
When you’re the second richest guy on the planet,
what do you pick up when you go to the shops for a little retail
therapy?
Buy
Whole Foods for $13.4 billion (U.S.).
That’s what Jeff
Bezos, the head of Amazon, with a personal wealth of $84.7 billion, did on
Friday on his way home with some all-organic crap bread, cheese and ice
cream.
I’d be more like Jimmy Buffett: “I went to Buckhead to get
some ice cream and next thing I knew I was on I-75 headed for
Florida.”
According to
Michael J. de la Merced and Nick Wingfield of The New York Times the Amazon
deal marks an ambitious push into the mammoth grocery business, an industry that
in the United States accounts for around $700 to $800 billion in annual sales.
Amazon is also amplifying the competition
with Walmart, which has been struggling to play catch-up to the online
juggernaut.
For Whole
Foods, the deal represents a chance to fend off pressure from activist
investors frustrated by a sluggish stock price. Whole Foods last month unveiled
a sweeping overhaul of its board, replacing five directors, naming a new
chairwoman and bringing in a new chief financial officer. It also laid out plans
to improve operations and cut costs.
Forget all the organic,
sustainable, dolphin-friendly products: Whole Foods is a cut-throat business
that attracts gullible consumers to drop extra cash on food with a lot of
adjectives.
A couple of centuries ago they would be called
hucksters, or medicine-men.
With
Amazon, Whole Foods gets a deep-pocketed owner with significant technological
expertise and a willingness to invest aggressively in a quest for
dominance.
Amazon has designs
on expanding beyond online retail into physical stores. The company is
slowly building a fleet of outlets, and much attention has been focused on its
supermaket dreams. It has already made an initial push through AmazonFresh, its
grocery delivery service.
The e-commerce giant has been testing
a variety of other retail concepts. It has opened a convenience store that does
not need cashiers, and has explored another grocery store concept that could
serve walk-in customers and act as a hub for home
deliveries.
Under the terms of the proposed deal, Amazon would
pay $42 a share for Whole Foods, a 27 percent premium to Thursday’s closing
price. After the deal was announced, shares of Amazon rose as much as 3.3
percent while other major retailers, including Target, Walmart and Costco
Wholesale fell sharply.
Whole Foods, which was founded in 1978
in Austin, Tex., is best known for its organic foods. The company built its
brand on healthy eating and staked its reputation on fresh, local produce,
albeit with a high price tag.
But the company has increasingly
faced fierce competition from rival supermarkets. National retailers like
Costco, Safeway and Walmart have begun offering organic produce and kitchen
staples, forcing Whole Foods to slash prices.
Ireland has ‘way too much iodine in
milk’
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/16/2017 from Barfblog
This is a proactive approach to something us
westerners don’t think about any more: the use of food supplements to ward off
chronic disease.
Teagasc’s
Dr. David Gleeson says the Irish dairy industry has lost markets in the EU
due to the excessive levels of iodine in milk, adding, “We have way too much
iodine in our milk.”
“A number of years ago when we had a
deficiency of iodine, around 30 to 40 years ago, it was suggested that we should
have higher levels of iodine [in our feedstuffs],” Gleeson said when explaining
how the current issue developed.
And now, he said, there is too
much iodine going into cows’ diets.
“About 12mg of iodine per
cow per day is a safe bet. It’s 5mg per cow per day in other
countries.
“We’re putting in 120mg in a lot of situations. Some
of our feeds could contain 30mg/kg of iodine and farmers could be feeding 4kg of
that. That’s 120mg per cow per day,” Gleeson said.
He also
mentioned how some supplementary magnesium products contain added iodine and can
result in iodine intakes of up to 90mg per cow per day.
Nutrition
Australia says iodine is an essential trace element and an integral
component of thyroid hormones. Thyroid hormones are required for normal growth
and development of tissues and maturation of our bodies. Iodine deficiency is
the most common preventable cause of mental retardation in the world; obtaining
iodine through the food supply is therefore paramount. Iodine deficiency has
re-emerged in Australia with the introduction of new practices of sanitization
in the dairy industry and a decline in use and consumption of iodised
salt.
Australian raw milk conviction success
for food safety
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/13/2017 from Barfblog
The NSW
Food Authority (that’s in Australia) reports a woman has been fined
a total of $28,000 and ordered to pay professional costs of $25,000 after she
pleaded guilty to four charges relating to the sale of unpasteurised or ‘raw’
milk in Goulburn Local Court.
On
Thursday 8 June 2017, Julia Ruth McKay from Bungonia on the southern tablelands
was fined under section 104 of the Food Act 2003 for selling milk which was not
pasteurised in contravention of Food Regulation 2010, and for conducting a food
business without a licence as required by the Regulation.
She
also pleaded guilty to two charges under section 21 of the Act for selling
unpasteurised milk that exceeded acceptable microbiological limits for standard
plate counts and Listeria.
NSW Food Authority CEO Dr Lisa Szabo
said Food Authority officers found that Ms McKay was operating a ‘herd sharing’
business whereby a person enters into a contract and purchase shares in a herd
or individual cow and consequently receives raw milk produced by that
herd.
"Claims that this doesn’t constitute the sale of food are
false, the operation of a herd share arrangement can constitute food for sale
under the Food Act," Dr Szabo said.
"Milk for sale in NSW needs
to be licensed with the NSW Food Authority to ensure it is subject to the
stringent safety requirements of the Dairy Food Safety
Scheme."
Dr Szabo said statistics show that raw milk is a high
food safety risk.
"Nationally and internationally raw milk
products account for a small proportion of sales but a very large proportion of
outbreaks," she said.
"Unpasteurised milk could contain harmful
bacteria such as E.coli, Salmonella and Listeria that can result in illness or
even death.
The prosecution resulted from an investigation of Ms
McKay by the NSW Food Authority in 2015 where samples of raw milk taken from an
animal that was part of her herd share arrangement returned positive for the
presence of Listeria.
The operation was immediately shut down by
the NSW Food Authority and the Prohibition Order remains in
place.
Dr Szabo said consumers need to be aware of claims that
raw milk has superior nutritional value are unfounded.
Dumbass files: They’re not
microbiologists, they’re just Penguins fans who eat raw catfish to celebrate
title
Posted by Doug Powell on
06/13/2017 from Barfblog
Scott
Allen of The Washington Post reports that fans took to the streets of
Pittsburgh to celebrate the Penguins’ second consecutive Stanley Cup title on
Sunday night, and a few of them brought catfish, which became a symbol of the
runner-up Predators’ improbable postseason run.
In
a tradition that dates from 2003, Nashville supporters tossed catfish onto the
ice during the playoffs, and sometimes went
to great lengths to smuggle the fish into the arena.
Rather
than waving the seafood around in revelry like a smelly, guts-filled Terrible
Towel, or, I don’t know, stomping on the bottom feeders, more than one Penguins
fan was pictured devouring a raw, bloody catfish during Sunday’s celebration.
Look, I get it. Deep-frying those bad boys or firing up an electric grill in the
middle of a large crowd would’ve been dangerous, but besides being absolutely
disgusting, consuming raw catfish doesn’t seem like the safest idea. When was
the last time you saw catfish on a sushi menu?
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