And yet another foodborne illness outbreak
May 23rd, 2010
|
| Share |
It seems that there has been yet another outbreak of foodborne illness outbreak has happened, this time it’s linked to alfalfa sprouts. The pathogen responsible is all natural salmonella bacteria.
Salmonella outbreak in 10 states prompts sprouts recall
Federal public health officials are investigating a salmonella outbreak that has infected 22 people in 10 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.
The infections are linked to the consumption of raw alfalfa sprouts, the CDC said.
California-based Caldwell Fresh Foods is recalling all alfalfa sprouts manufactured under three of its brands because they may be contaminated with salmonella, the company said Friday. Caldwell said its alfalfa sprouts have been associated with the outbreak.
There have been no deaths reported from the outbreak, but four of those infected have been hospitalized, Caldwell Fresh Foods said in a statement Friday.
CDC is collaborating the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and with state public health officials to investigate the salmonella outbreak, the CDC said in a statement Friday.
One of those infected was an infant hospitalized in Oregon, an Oregon Department of Health official told CNN. The baby had been eating alfalfa sprouts, said Paul Cieslak, manager of the state health department’s communicable disease section.
CDC is collaborating with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and state public health officials to investigate the strain, called Salmonella Newport, the CDC said in a statement Friday.
The initial investigation traced the implicated raw alfalfa sprouts to a single sprout processor in California, the CDC said, though it did not name Caldwell Fresh Foods directly. The CDC did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.
There’s no information, as of yet, that this is at all related to “organic” growing methods, and before fingers start being pointed, I should point out that conventional farming does not eliminate this risk. Still the increase in these kind of events in the past few years does give good reason to wonder about the possible dangers of biologically active material (s**t) being used on food crops.
In the interest of safety and food quality, I’d like to offer the following suggestions, some of which will be absolutely despised by the “organic food” lobby:
- Equipment which is used to handle, sort and package food should be regularly cleaned and disinfected with hot water and disinfectant or steam cleaning
- The use of biologically active fertilizers such as compost or manure should be discouraged for use on food crops which come in close contact with soil, such as green leafy vegetables and ground-growing vegetables. If used, it should be applied only before planting and should be composted to eliminate most potentially pathogenic bacteria
- Irradiation of food should be very strongly encouraged and in some cases, even required.
- All fruit and vegetables should be washed at all stages of production, including immediately upon being harvested, after sorting and processing and at the time of delivery. If possible, washing should include mild non-toxic antibacterial and cleaning agents such as vinegar, citric acid or chlorinated water. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how thoroughly produce can be washed without damaging its texture, and washing during preparation does not mean that end consumers should not wash the food before consuming it.
- Utilize effective pest control measures at all stages of growth, processing and shipping. Foods can be contaminated by pathogens carried by insects such as fruit flies, so even after it is harvested, it is important to mitigate pest activity. Prevention of fungus and insect activity during growth is important not only to prevent crop loss, but because these organisms can introduce pathogens into the plant.
I realize that the above recommendations would make the skin of many “organic” advocates crawl. After all, pest control is generally kept to a minimum and cow shit is considered to be the best fertilizer, while irradiation is the stuff of nightmares. However, I prefer my food does not kill me or even make me ill.
Eventually, modern society is going to have to get past the “natural is good for you” mantra that is currently becoming so pervasive. While it is true that there are beneficial natural bacteria, dangerous illness-causing bacteria are also natural and it does not further safety or health to allow uncontrolled amounts of unknown microbes into our food supply.
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Agriculture, Bad Science, Enviornment, Good Science, Misc, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
May 23rd, 2010 at 11:08 pm
The fact that these things happen at all when the technology exists in the form of food irradiation systems is criminal. It would solve so many issues from food-born pathogens, to insect infestation, to premature spoilage, simply and inexpensively. Why it isn’t being used more broadly is a tragedy.
I mean for God’s sake, almost everyone has a microwave these days and in the end it’s not much different.
Quote Comment
May 23rd, 2010 at 11:44 pm
22 people in 10 states? Wow. What an epidemic. I mean really.
Did any of the infected think of washing stuff properly before they ate it?
Quote Comment
May 24th, 2010 at 7:47 am
Bill Sticker said:
Of course, not! If it is organic, it does not need washing.
Quote Comment
May 24th, 2010 at 8:31 am
They should take a look at how Sweden manages it, salmonella is almost nonexistent here. For example, eating raw eggs, something which is plain stupid in most countries, is perfectly safe here.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/meeting/004/ab456e.htm#P31_2536
http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/Sweden-beats-salmonella
Quote Comment
May 24th, 2010 at 8:40 am
CEL said:
Drat! Of course!
/facepalm
Quote Comment
May 24th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Bill Sticker said:
How else would you get the organic disease organisms?
Quote Comment
May 24th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Troberg said:
In the United States, salmonella has been generally on the decline, especially in things like eggs. Actually, considerably more than 99% of the eggs in the US are free of salmonella. There are some eggs that are certified for raw consumption but in general most producers say not to eat them raw, primarily because they’re covering their asses from any litigation if anyone did get sick.
As far as eliminating pathogens from food, I do not believe that it will ever be possible to completely eliminate the possibility from plants, especially those eaten raw like salad greens. These pathogens are in the environment.
No matter how hard you try to keep livestock free of potentially harmful bacteria, the problem is that it can be found in soil, river and pond water that may be used for irrigation and in various biomass. Listeria, salmonella, E. Coli are fairly common in the environment. Many strains of E. Coli are beneficial when present in the lower intestines of many warm blooded animals but are dangerous if ingested.
As long as plants are grown in soil, there’s the potential there for a pathogenic strain of bacteria to find its way onto the food crops. The environment is not sterile and never will be.
This is why I advocate things like cleaning and disinfecting machinery, washing down all food crops with something like chlorinated water (at levels which are not great enough to impact the food, which does involve some compromise with the disinfecting power) and the use of irradiation using gamma or x-rays, electron beams or UV light. I think that a good compromise between expense and protection is to have the foods gently washed and passed through UV lights at various stages. This is necessary because contamination can be picked up after harvesting and can be transported from one location to another. A single tainted shipment can contaminate other crops processed in the same facility.
Many organic interests strongly oppose things like germicidal lighting, chlorinated water for washing and of course irradiation, which is almost universally opposed.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 12:00 am
You’re right that any food grown in soil is going to have some potential to pickup bacteria that can be pathogenic. Because of this I’d like to see irradiation become the norm for all mass produced or distributed foods. It’s the one tool that can really assure this kind of thing becomes an extreme rarity. I don’t see any rational scientific argument against it.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 1:45 am
More missinforming about industrial factory farms and organic food, which is healthy and free of any toxins at all. Factory farming and PROFIT is the cause of this. No more healthy foods with radiation and chemicals, I’ll tell you that. Get your heads out of your own asses, stupid. Your grandpa didn’t eat chemicals and radiation and you’re like some stupid sheep thinking chemicals and radiation is going to fix the problem. These germs come from filthy factory farms where they don’t care about doing things right and using the kind of beneficial little critters that actually make your belly happy. This is a lot of crap right here i tell you that. Eat natural and be healthy!
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 3:00 am
Yay, grandpaw, we cawt uh biggun!
Meridith said:
To be fair though, my grandpa died of tuberculosis, a disease which in the modern world is regarded as almost entirely defeated by a strong programme of vaccination.
He also suffered all his life with asthma, a condition I have inherited but am able to treat very very well with these new and unnatural things we like to call “medication”.
Get your head out of your ass and understand that the Black Death was “organic”; Hurricane Katrina was “natural”; that “radiation” does not mean “make everything go green and turn into super-mutants” and that “chemical” does not mean “add bleach and a whole range of exciting toxins”.
Don’t try to tell me that going back to how things were all those years ago will somehow make us all fitter and healthier, it’s very easy to gloss over everything with idealised imagery of a past era without considering problems like basic disease control and ridiculous rates of infant mortality.
You do realise that your computer screen is irradiating your eyes right? With radiation in the 390-750nm wavelength range. At high intensities, such radiation could heat you to the point of burning, or at the extremes it could basically cut you open. Even at low intensities, when directed at your eyes it could affect your vision, leading to such effects as blindness (temporary or permanent) and seeing flashes of light which could affect your ability to perform even menial tasks. Seriously, go put some thick sunglasses on.
Oh, and by the way…
You’ll probably want to come back to that point about vaccinations, saying that they may be dangerous – in particular that MMR could give a child autism. Let me nip that in the bud: the doctor who originated such claims was just yesterday struck off the official register in the UK by the GMC – this is a punishment reserved for severe breaches of conduct, we’re talking organ thieves, baby-nappers, murderers and paedophiles – for severe professional misconduct, describing him as acting “dishonestly and irresponsibly”.
The eradication of measles and rubella, two illnesses which kill (and killed for generations of our ancestors), has been severely undermined and delayed by the mass panic over MMR originated by one man who “did not have the ethical approval or relevant qualifications for such tests”. Just so you know.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 7:18 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
Haha… that made my morning
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 7:23 am
Meridith said:
Funny you should mention him. My grandpa became violently ill on several occasions during his childhood. Actually, in retrospect, it’s amazing that all his siblings made it to adulthood considering that they had some very close calls with infectious disease.
My maternal grandpa saw his parents both die in their early 50’s, probably of infectious disease and he himself would later say that the worst experience of his life was nearly being killed in the Second World War, not by combat though, but again by infectious disease. He was nearly killed by dengue fever in the Pacific.
Actually, my grandmother on my father’s side had some pretty bad experiences too. Her whole household was quarantined when she was a child because a number of her siblings had TB.
However, I should also add, my grandparents all had the sense enough to embrace modern medicine and safe sources of food as soon as they became available. My two grandmothers (who are both very much alive) would not be without it and my grandfather would have died much sooner. One of my grandmothers is walking around quite well on two artificial hips and my other grandmother is alive became her doctor removed several skin cancers over the past decade before they could spread.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 7:29 am
Meridith said:
My grandpa also lost his sister to typhoid fever, which is often spread by contaminated food and water. As I recall, he became sick on several occasions during his childhood and he had poor hearing in his left ear from one of the sicknesses as a child (probably mumps but I don’t know)
It’s ironic, because you likely have no idea about what it was really like to live in the time of our ancestors just a couple of generations back. They were not the picture of good health as you might think.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 8:23 am
drbuzz0 said:
Well, 99% sounds good, until you count how many eggs you eat in a year…
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 10:26 am
If it’s salmonella, I’m disinclined to suspect livestock manure as the blame. (Also, note that it is a fallacy to equate organic farming with sh#t for fertilizer; conventional farmers use it liberally as well. It’s a good fertilizer, and there’s certainly a lot of it.) If it was E. coli, maybe livestock manure could be to blame, but salmonella is more commonly associated with birds and reptiles, which can harbor it without any ill effects. As one health official pointed out during the tomato salmonella fiasco, you can’t keep birds out of a field. Birds fly around, and they do what birds do. Pretty much anything grown outdoors is at risk of getting crapped on by a wild bird, and that puts it at risk of contamination, totally apart from whatever you may use to fertilize or whatever.
BTW, is irradiation helpful with sprouts? They’re sold (and eaten) basically alive, after all, and I would think irradiation would kill them. Would that affect spoilage? I don’t know; I’m just curious.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Meridith, you have rocks in your head where your brain should be. Salmonella, typhoid, polio, cholera and a whole host of less serious diseases, most of which are food and water-borne, were rampant in the times of organic, self-sufficient, not-for-profit farming you idyllize.
If you’re “eating radiation” you’re doing something wrong, you’re not supposed to eat the cobalt-60 source. If you’re not eating chemicals then what the hell do you think food is composed of, vacuum? Fairy dust?
Nobody is forcing you to enjoy the fruits of the modern society you so despise. There are still subsistence farmers who live in abject misery, plopp out children as fast as they possibly can(most of whom die from infectious disease or starvation), have no choice but to put their children to work from the age of 3; you can learn their language and go join them.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Calli Arcale said:
In the US, the FDA has approved irradiating seeds to limit sprouting, but has not approved irradiation of sprouts to control pathogens. However research shows that there is no significant impact on the color, firmness, or overall visual quality of sprouts irradiated at 1.05 kGy. The researchers did note that the vitamin C content is gradually reduced with higher radiation doses. However, they determined overall that irradiation could be useful in reducing pathogens on sprouts while retaining acceptable food quality.
See here: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/irradiation/news/nov2904irradiate.html
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 11:16 am
For me this is a blast from the past. I spent a few years as a food microbiologist doing routine external QC testing for several hundred different companies. One of those was Caldwell. We used to get a water sample from them a couple times a week to test for APC (aerobic plate count) and EC-C petrifilm (E. coli & coliform test). Their water always had a high level of coliforms and a couple times a month E. coli. I remember reading the plates and film and being appalled at the bacterial counts. Haven’t eaten sprouts since. Feeding them to and infant just baffles my brain.
We also tested all sorts of certified organic food. Twenty of us came to the unanimous decision to never touch the stuff after seeing the bacterial levels on them. ewwww!!!!
BTW food-borne and water borne disease when my grandpa was young was the number one killer. It still is the largest killer in third world countries where subsistence “organic” farming is practiced.
In public health epidemiology if I remember correctly for every one person reported ill they estimate 100-1000 or more got sick and didn’t report it. So for 20 reported cases they it would put the estimate of affected individuals at 2,000 – 20,000.
My personal opinion for those that are die hard organic fans: It’s a great way to lose weight fast and painfully. Go ahead and eat it all you want just don’t delude yourself into thinking it is healthier.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Calli Arcale said:
Yeah, that is true, but I was referring more to the broader issue of contamination and biologically active material as fertilizer in general. It’s true that all farming methods make use of this, but what has always concerned me is things like using such fertilizers after germination as well as things like the heavy tilling and the need for high saturation irrigation of organic farming.
True, these are not exclusive to that type of farming, but I get concerned none the less of the promotion of practices that may expose the food crops more directly to material that is a good carrier of bacteria.
I have seen some reports of organic foods having a much higher average bacterial count and a greater number of strains. I’m sure this is not across the board and there are exceptions, but it still concerns me.
Calli Arcale said:
Actually it apparently is. I looked this one up, and apparently the levels necessary to generally kill most pathogenic bacteria are not high enough to really effect the flavor or perceived freshness of the sprouts. See here:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/irradiation/news/nov2904irradiate.html
This applies to fresh cilantro, but it is believed it should also be fairly applicable to Brussels and alfalfa sprouts.
It was found that washing the sprouts in a chlorinated water solution did help some, but irradiation was several times more effective. The best result came from using both. My own opinion is that irradiation should be used in most circumstances and that washing in a slightly chlorinated solution is something else that should be done, ideally at multiple stages (after harvesting, sorting and finally when delivered at the supermarket) I’ve read some things about cross-contamination which leads me to believe such washing might help with any surface contamination picked up along the way.
Irradiation was also found to be helpful in stunting the germination process such that sprouts don’t sprout any further:
http://www.sproutnet.com/Research/Gamma%20Irradiation.htm
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
DV82XL said:
What I HATE is how those who oppose irradiation on some kind of philosophical grounds will use that kind of argument to try to claim the food is no good because it lacks nutrition.
It’s a NON ISSUE! For one thing, just about nobody in the industrial world is suffering from scurvy or even close to suffering from scurvy, with the possible exception of those on highly restricted diets. We all get more than enough vitamin C and having a tiny bit less in our alfalfa sprouts is not going to make a damn bit of difference.
Secondly, the reduction is actually far less than cooking and is often on par with the variation that you get from natural variation or the reduction that occurs as soon as any fruit or vegetable is picked and the vitamin C begins to decay.
The effects of irradiation on vitamin content range from negligible to minor.
If you’re so damn concerned about it, just take a single cough drop, drink a glass of lemon aid or eat half a kiwi and you’re more than set for the day!
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
drbuzz0 said:
This is an unfortunate side effect of scientific honesty.The information is valuable as it is a small part of setting an upper limit for this process, but it does not invalidate it.
You know this outbreak that you write about in the lead article, is just one of a series of such, and I suspect that as more of these occur, the public will become less resistant to irradiation. Part of the problem is that while it is technically possible to process food in clean, reasonably sterile environments, the quality of labor willing to work at the sort of wages that the industry can offer, are just not up to keeping it so. Irradiation may be the only way we can keep the food supply safe, and affordable.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
I’mnotreallyhere said:
I’d like to publish a retraction here, in recent years it has become rather easy to be struck off by the GMC in the UK and they’ll do it for a whole range of unprofessional conduct charges for things both related and unrelated to medicine – dangerous driving for instance.
Quote Comment
May 25th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
DV82XL said:
Some of the resistance to it is being driven by the message that it’s some kind of cheap substitute to cleanliness or that irradiation is how you increase profits by using dirty facilities.
I’ve never seen irradiation as an alternative to cleanliness. It might not be cost effective to have food in a near-sterile environment, but irradiation is not a substitute for generally keeping conditions reasonably clean. The levels used for food won’t completely sterilize it, so if it’s outright filthy, a little irradiation won’t cure that.
The food must also be handled in a sanitary manner after the food has been irradiated.
In any case, no amount of cleanliness can be foolproof when the food is coming from an outdoor, unenclosed environment.
Quote Comment