By:
On:
In: Blogs

I was watching a TV programme the other evening, whiling away my lockdown hours, when I came across a programme of unknown vintage about food in the UK. Part of the programme was about ‘chlorine washed chicken’, so it can’t be that old. This was quite interesting as the scientist (sorry, didn’t get the name) showed Salmonella cells surviving a chlorine wash of chicken, although somehow not commenting on the wall-to-wall Salmonella on the water washed plate. It was claimed that a chlorine wash papers over the cracks of poor hygiene/husbandry up to the point of slaughter and processing. I have discussed ‘chlorine washing’ elsewhere.Read More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs

Firstly, just for clarity, SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus, while COVID-19 is the name of the disease it causes. We have been told on numerous occasions to wash our hands to stop us becoming infected via transfer of virus particles from contaminated surfaces to our mouths. This opens the potential for transmission to occur, at least in theory, if contaminated food is eaten without being subjected to a treatment that would inactivate the virus. Also, it is also possible that the source of contamination could be food packaging. However, possible is not the same as probable, or even likely, and the information availableRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs

Promed is a wonderful thing, bringing to your desktop the latest information on human and animal disease occurring around the world. Most of the incidents reported don’t really come as a huge surprise e.g. Salmonella being present in minced poultry meat; nothing new there then. Sometimes it is something really novel and unusual, for instance Promed was the first medium that I saw heralding the white powder anthrax attacks in the USA. Personally, I like the ones that make you think and are a bit more enigmatic. An example is the current (July 2019) EHEC O26 outbreak in Iceland (www.foodsafetynews.com/2019/07/ice-cream-suspected-in-iceland-e-coli-outbreak-16-children-sick ) where there seems toRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs

It’s been in the news yet again, another incident of people becoming infected by Listeria monocytogenes and sadly succumbing to the infection (https://www.food.gov.uk/news-alerts/news/update-on-investigation-into-food-supply-chain-linked-to-listeria ). The source identified, as reported by the FSA, was sandwiches supplied to hospitals. In a way I think ‘nothing new there then’ as this has happened in the past; the epidemiology of listeriosis outbreaks in the UK seemingly intertwined with sandwiches (see a table produced in 2015 in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289345195_Listeria_monocytogenes-Developments_in_epidemiology_and_laboratory_testing_by_MALDI-TOF ). Also remembering a Finnish listeriosis outbreak in which butter was the contaminated food, the scientist in you begins to ask whether it is terribly wise to supply sandwiches to people whoseRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs, Uncategorized

Nitrates or not? Surely another issue that needs a proper risk assessment Over the festive period there has been a lot of press reporting various individuals applying pressure to the meat industry to remove nitrates from processed meat products. Headlines have appeared such as this “’Vast majority of bacon contains cancer-causing chemicals, say campaigners urging the Government to take action on nitrates in processed meats” (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6538803/Call-action-cancer-risk-processed-meats-like-bacon-ham.html ). Indeed, this issue has been swirling around at least since I was an undergraduate in the late 1970s, and it is claimed that there is mounting evidence that nitrate is not a particularly desirable chemical to be presentRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs

At one level the relationship between temperature, time and the death rate of pathogenic bacteria is well known. At a given (lethal) temperature a plot of the log of the surviving bacteria against time is a straight line with the time taken to decrease the population by one log10 unit known as the D (for decimal reduction) time, usually expressed given the temperature for which the D value applies, e.g. D70 = 1.2 minutes for the D value at 70°C for a given organism of 1.2 minutes. If the log of the D time is plotted against temperature, the temperature required to reduce the DRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs

Those Bloody Burgers-The same issue at opposite ends of the world   While living in the UK I keep in touch with the news circulating in the country where I have spent most of my life-New Zealand. Given my background in food safety my interest was piqued when I saw the headline “Burger spat gets spicy” on the NZ Stuff website, and so I clicked on the story. There is, shall we say, a divergence of opinions on new information produced by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) as to how burgers should be cooked, and some quite distinct time/temperature combinations have been provided. ThisRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs

There is a distinct contrast to the way that fruits and vegetables are sold in the UK and New Zealand. In the UK, almost all of the supermarket produce comes packaged in a kind of plastic that inevitably bursts open when an attempt is made to liberate the contents such that they spill all over the kitchen floor and get bruised. In New Zealand, produce is generally sold in bins. You get to choose which individual fruits/veg you buy, pop them in a bag and get them weighed at the checkout. A crucial difference is that there is no “Best Before” date on the AntipodeanRead More →

By:
On:
In: Blogs
With: 0 Comments

..at least not in the way the term is generally used Campylobacter Campylobacteriosis is not much fun. I’ve had it and quite a lot of people will have a dose every year. Usually, as long as people keep taking fluids, it will go away eventually with no long-term ill effects. For a few people it can produce a nasty long-term disease known as Guillain Barré syndrome, and for fewer people still it can be fatal. Whenever you read descriptions of the disease there will inevitably be reference to something like “as few as 500 cells” is the dose which must be eaten to cause disease.Read More →