What is it with all these food poisoning outbreaks?

Here in the US, I just read about an food poisoning outbreak from Olive Garden. Last week, it was Taco Bell. Not long ago, we had tainted spinach. This is just what comes to the top of my mind. Call my a cynical fool if you want but I gotta wonder if terrorism is involved and the US goverment is trying to put on the old hush, hush. I recall rarely hearing about major food poisoning outbreaks over a period of my whole lifetime and yet we've had a whole rash of different cases over the past six months or so.

What do you think?

Food poisoning is pretty common really, though not on such a large scale. And not all that many people got sick recently anyways.

The reason you hear about it so much right now in so many places is because of the nature of the product. It takes a long time to clear out stock and to make sure the incoming stock is safe as well. Spinach and/or lettuce is found at basically any restaurant you can go to. It should be expected that reports will come in from many different places for a period of time.

Started with spinach, then moved to lettuce, products which are typically grown in very close proximity.

Nothing to do with terrorism here; it's just something that happens now and then.

Perhaps not terrorism, but if I may play devil's advocate,
could it be a backlash by the illegal Mexican population who work in this industry?
With the recent raid on Swift meats, the planned fence, the powers given state troopers to detain illegals on sight (MA), etc., maybe they are getting even?

The Olive Garden incident has turned out to be a virus not food poisoning or contamination.

I have wondered about the causes of what appears to be a long term trend of increases in food poisoning ever since the famous Jack In The Box incident(s) in 1994. I never really thought about terrorism as a cause of food poisoning with the exception of the mass Marburg (viral hemmorrhagic fever) infections on cruise ships... (I tend to lump viral contamination of food with food poisoning)

I think that much of what we have been seeing for some time now may be attributed to another cause. If you talk to almost anyone who has owned a business for a long time they seem to have the universal complaint that they can not find enough good, talented people to fill the positions open. There are more people than there were before, people go to school longer -- and there are less and less that are suitable for employment with each passing decade. I'm referring to ALL business, not just food.

Jack In The Box really got me thinking. 700 people got sick and 4 people died from E. coli in improperly cooked hamburger. E. coli is nothing new. It's been around as long as people have been eating food. That's why I lean towards blaming an increasingly incompetent labor pool.

I'm not saying that everyone today is stupid but I do believe there is a very strong case to be made that states that there are a great many stupid people preparing our food. How much competence can we realistically expect to find in a food establishment with pictures of hamburgers on the keys of their cash registers instead of words and numbers? Those machines have been engineered specifically so that they may hire people to do the job who cannot deal with the words and numbers. To prepare our food.

The world is also so much smaller that the ingredients may come from places we can hardly imagine. Also, because we have millions and millions of illegals who often work in many, if not all levels of OUR food chain, who knows what's going on.

IMO there is very little that is new under the sun. The same things that would make you sick in food 100 years ago will make you sick today. We just don't seem to care how our food is handled anymore. This is the reason I'm against irradiating food for preservation -- it's not that I'm a green-weenie or Mr Natural -- it's because irradiating food will only make the problem worse by allowing those in the food industry who are hiring incompetents today to hire even less competent help tomorrow. I hate the expression 'Follow the Money', but...

Whew! I feel better, now. Thanks.

Sub_Umbra said:

If you talk to almost anyone who has owned a business for a long time they seem to have the universal complaint that they can not find enough good, talented people to fill the positions open. There are more people than there were before, people go to school longer -- and there are less and less that are suitable for employment with each passing decade. I'm referring to ALL business, not just food.

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Maybe this has to do with the wages they're paying. You can still find great help even for excrutiatingly boring service jobs such as exist in the food industry-if you're willing to pay $25 or $35 or $50 an hour. You can't get it for $3 or $5 or even $10. People who will offer a business some stability also want to be paid a wage that will afford them some stability in life such as the ability to afford a home, or save for retirement. If you pay wages that basically force people to live a transient lifestyle all you're going to get are transients who couldn't care less about your business, their jobs, or even themselves.

I'm tired of hearing how so many business owners "can't afford" to pay decent wages when the incompetence of poorly paid employees ends up costing them far more in lost business. It's simple economics-if you pay a person $25 an hour but they can do the work of 4 $7 an hour employees you're actually saving big time. Forget the nonsense that you're paying above the prevailing wage for any given position. Just pay a person what they're really worth to you. In the long run your business will prosper because you'll attract people who actually care. Many people will gladly work in fields where they're technically underemployed if the pay is good enough.

Well, okay, I will follow the stray path just a little further. IMHO, the reason wages are so low and customer service is so bad is that we *want* it that way. In other words, as long as people still *choose* based on price and only *complain* based on service, nothing will change.

Back on topic, my answer is very boring I'm afraid. I agree with borax that there is a lot of minor food poisoning around. I think it's just a coincidence that there have been a few big ones lately.

drizzle, yea, I'm a bit skeptical too since shifts in media focus can magnify patterns which may not be so significant in reality. Also the public health establishment may be doing better at detecting outbreaks due to being on a higher state of alert.

It would be interesting to see some hard numbers on this.

Sub_Umbra said:

... with the exception of the mass Marburg (viral hemmorrhagic fever) infections on cruise ships... (I tend to lump viral contamination of food with food poisoning)

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Whoa, what incident are you referring to?? Do you mean the Norwalk/Norovirus? I've had a Norovirus before it was moderately unpleasant. But Marburg virus is in another league altogether! I pretty sure it is not considered foodborne.

dfred said:

...Whoa, what incident are you referring to?? Do you mean the Norwalk/Norovirus? I've had a Norovirus before it was moderately unpleasant. But Marburg virus is in another league altogether! I pretty sure it is not considered foodborne.

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You are absolutely right! I should have said Norwalk. Sorry. Doh....

jtr1962 said:

Maybe this has to do with the wages they're paying. You can still find great help even for excrutiatingly boring service jobs such as exist in the food industry-if you're willing to pay $25 or $35 or $50 an hour...

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Exactly.

geepondy said:

Here in the US, I just read about an food poisoning outbreak from Olive Garden. Last week, it was Taco Bell. Not long ago, we had tainted spinach. This is just what comes to the top of my mind. Call my a cynical fool if you want but I gotta wonder if terrorism is involved and the US goverment is trying to put on the old hush, hush. I recall rarely hearing about major food poisoning outbreaks over a period of my whole lifetime and yet we've had a whole rash of different cases over the past six months or so.

What do you think?

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That like many other things it is random in nature so multiple outbreaks are bound to occur close togetner now and then.
It is also so very rare that it gets a lot of attention. Thousands of kids have died of hunger in the last day or so and about 3000, mostly kids have died of malaria in the last 24 hours. Cars kill people every few minutes and unless thre are many killed it barely makes the front page of local papers.

I have an unfounded theory.

The more we try to isolate and protect ourselves from our environment, the more we become suseptable to these kind of outbreaks. Our efforts to reduce or eliminate our contact with nasty bugs through all the various anti-bacterial products, steriliztion, irradiation and who knows what; also prevents us from building up immunities to these same bugs. Therefore when people do get sick, they are not as prepared to fight it off and we see these large outbreaks. Also, the more we try to kill the nasties, only the nastiest survive and through natural selection we are left with super strains of whatever makes one ill. I would welcome someone in the know to challenge this belief, but for now it makes intuitive sense to me.

There is also the fact that our food production techniques have changed dramatically in modern times. We have always had salmonella, but it has become much more common with practices like raising chickens in cages stacked ontop of eachother. I personally buy free range eggs for health and humane reasons. The mass production process can also spread an isolated contaminate to all the clean product that shares the same path in the system. I also think that modern news broadcast plays a role in emphasizing events that we would never have known about before.

OK, as a food guy, I gotta put in my two cents worth and a little more, and forgive me preaching the gospel of food safety.

Just my observations, but food poisoning seems to be very common and most often occurs at home. How would I avoid it? Use a meat thermometer, and wash your hands, bulk produce, utensils, cutting boards, and counter tops. Keep a sink full of HOT soapy water. Never use a utensil on raw food and then on cooked food. Wash your hands after touching any raw food. Sounds like a lot, right? I'm here to tell you that it sure beats vomiting and diarhea and the "stomach bug" rarely is anything but food poisoning. Follow these easy steps or get sick, your choice.

When you go out, if you don't think it's right or the waitstaff touches the food, send it back. A refund won't keep you healthy, just send it back. Simple advice but nobody does it. Why not? Remember, it's your health and your money, too.

IMHO, it's not just the meat and the lettuce. There are other sources for contamination and problems, too. Do the fieldworkers have proper "facilities" or are the growers too cheap? Is there chemical or animal waste runoff from another farm? Has the food always been kept under safe conditions before you bought it? Did the store pull or recall the items ASAP or did they try to make a few extra bucks? This is why you get what you pay for most of the time and why the cheapest food isn't always a good buy. Again, only my opinions, but...

It might be that we get more prone to food borne illnesses because of being limited to the exposure of some bacterias or viruses, but I find that kind of far fetched and I don't want to test that theory on my family. There really are virsuses that can be food borne (that's one opinion about the recent Olive Garden problem). Why not try to avoid those, too, like we avoid measles, pneumonia, etc.?

Some problems might be caused by bacteria or contamination being drawn up into the food, so washing will probably do no good in those cases. Then why wash produce at all? You should watch the way some customers handle produce in a store. Did you really just see that woman pick her nose before she handled those tomatoes? Did that kid just sneeze into his hand before he grabbed those apples? When Dad changed that diaper did he really wash his hands well afterwards? And I'll bet you were just worried about the kid who stocked the lettuce. Also, there is no "five second rule." Sorry.

The easiest way to avoid getting sick is to to a little extra work that you should be doing anyway. Buy quality food even if it costs a bit more. Read the labels. Keep stuff clean. Use that meat thermometer. Wash your hands like you're obsessive/compulsive. You'll have a better chance of not driving the porcelain bus. But there are still a lot of guys out there who are too lazy to lift the seat before they piddle, so it's an uphill battle, but you just do what you can. Why, yes, you are right, it really is a scary world out there. The extra time it takes to safely choose and prepare your own food is a good way to stay healthy. Or you can trust the pimply kid who gets paid minimum wage to serve you food that was prepared safely. But I think it's the penny pincher who bought the cheap ingrediants for the whole chain that worries me more.

When you're out to eat, you're on your own. I don't like chain restaurants too much simply because I find them boring and that they have no local flavor. IMHO, I think there is a bigger chance of getting food poisoning at a chain, but YMMV. Local places are more interesting to me, but also, you can find out where the food came from easier if there is a problem. Also, locals usually try harder to keep customers.

Does it work? Well, it does for us. My family has had food poisoning about twice in the past five years or more -- both from restaurants where we probably should have known better. Everybody screws up once in a while, but the effort to cook good food properly is worth it, at least for my family.

That concludes today's sermon.

nevermind... :shakehead

FYI If you experience a sudden onset of stomach cramping/nausea/vomiting/diarrhea then you've likely got food poisoning. There really are few cases where gastroenteritis is that short lived if it's viral. With a true virus like influenza, chickenpox, the common cold, etc., it takes several days to weeks for it to run it's course. Bacteria on the other hand can be fought or are usually passed but the body. One sure clue you've had food poisoning would be if the issue followed your GI tract, staring with vomiting and then turning into lower bowel issues.

Sadly the most common source of food poisoning is in homes, not restaurants.

Personally, I think attempting to blame it on low wage workers and Mexican workers is unfair and biased to the extent that it's blinding you to the fact that there are other factors involved. Short order cooks and fast food jobs have always been a low paid field. Whether it's a low paid Mexican or a low paid Anglo doesn't make any difference. Germs don't care what race or national roots are involved in it's propagation. Germs are equal opportunity bad guys. Food "poisonings" such as E. coli and such have been around always.

Consider the differences. When I was a kid, which was a long long time ago, there was so little in the way of national or large regional chains of eating establishments, that the restaurants that might serve a contaminated food, might trigger a local concern at the health department, but go unnoticed by the national media. Cafes were local businesses, purchasing to a large extent local products. The local products may make it into the homes of the locality, the Sunday social picnics or even a local food establishment. Unless a sufficient number was effected, the health department may or may not even involve themselves, or even be aware of the problem. People ate mostly at home, and the bout with intestinal disorder might not even trigger a conscious link to contaminated food.

Today, people eat out much more often. The home owned greasy-spoon has been replaced by national chains of burger, taco, and themed chains. If the restaurant isn't owned by the company, it's franchised in such a way that the products used are purchased from the company. The products come from selective producers and then distributed throughout the country. If a contaminated product makes it to Salem, Oregon, chances are it's also being used in Seattle, Boise City, or even into the Midwest or Atlantic states. The health departments are more affiliated with one another and take quick action to avoid a sure spread of a noted contamination. The media is alerted quickly and governmental agencies involve themselves more rapidly.

Even the grocery stores that might sell a contaminated product are large chains, buying with the Walmart mentality of buying from big producers and bypassing the local farmers. If Walmart sold the stuff in Arkansas, the chances are good they're selling the same thing in Nebraska or Maine. It's no longer a local concern. Consolidation of producers and marketing have made it a national, or even an international concern.

The problem is more of a marketing change than anything else. National consolidation of producers, distribution, and large regional or national marketing makes it a national concern instead of a local one. The need to spread the word makes it a national newsworthy event.

Terrorists, or illegal spreading of "food poisoning" has occurred at times. We in Oregon can remember the Rajneeshees' deliberate Salmonella poisoning of The Dalles, Oregon citizens in order to affect the outcome of an election. The degree of spread in such cases is far different than the incidental cases we see now.

i think its some aminals that used the bathroom on the crops maybe wild pigs or deer

Germs don't care what race or national roots are involved in it's propagation. Germs are equal opportunity bad guys.

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Right on the nail. I don't know if anyone caught the report, but one of the recent spinach outbreaks was tied back to a small farm here in California. A few weeks later, there was reports of tainted lettuce as well, which was traced and also came from a field right next to the previously tainted spinach. One crop contaminated the other is the theory on what happened.

On to something more fun, let's also not forget too that E.Coli is a bacteria that lives inside the human body in different places, and different strains, with different tasks. If said E.Coli somehow is displaced to the wrong part of the body, that can make you sick as well with the same sort of symptoms as food poisoning.

In any case, we should all be thankful that the bacteria inside us (or outside) doesn't decide to turn the tables, there's more of them than us!:eeksign:

Personally, I think attempting to blame it on low wage workers and Mexican workers is unfair and biased to the extent that it's blinding you to the fact that there are other factors involved. Short order cooks and fast food jobs have always been a low paid field....

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It would seem to be more the fault of their employers, and the customers, of course. While I agree that 'Short order cooks and fast food jobs have always been a low paid field' I would quickly add that 50 years ago there was a much higher chance that those hired could not only read, but there were much fewer language barriors in the way of training new hires.

All business is so competitive these days that pennys must be saved anywhere in a business -- even if it means buying a cash register with pictures of food so people who can't read or comprehend numbers may be hired at a lower cost than those who can. In spite of the fact that these have been low paying jobs forever I'm sure that people working in foodie places 40 years ago used cash registers with numbers and words on the keys and the dumbed down registers we see today are here for a reason. The people using them may be hired for less money than those who may use more complex machines.

This same mentality exists in many other places besides the food industry. ~25 years ago I remember my trips to the A&P in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Like many other businesses in the Quarter the A&P would be very hard to compare to any other A&P anywhere else. It is a tiny, high profile store that sits on real estate costing much more than the land that most A&Ps sit on. The Quarter is an intense place to do business.

It used to be a joy to stand in line and watch the checkout clerks running those big cash registers with at least 2 or 3 times as many buttons as today's machines. Those checkers were the cream of the crop and they were fast -- they had to be. That's all gone now, gone for a long time. Long ago they remodeled the store and with the new layout came the registers hooked to scanners. Did it mean better, faster service in the checkout line? No. It only meant that A&P could pay less for their checkers because they did not need the same skill levels as the people who ran the registers available 25 years ago. When they run into any kind of speed bump at all things can get really slow. (A speed bump would be a task that the machine can't handle on it's own.)

In my earlier post I didn't mean to sound as knee jerk as I probably did but remember that even cooking french fries today has been made much simpler than it was 30 years ago -- back then the cook had to keep track of elapsed time. Everything in a kitchen today has been engineered to allow the employer to hire people for less money -- people who don't need to think as much because the machines in the work environment have taken over much of that part of the job. All of this actually has less to do with the employees and much more to do with the way that the employers have re-engineered the work place in an effort to find people to do the jobs at a price they are willing/able to pay.

That is the way the world has gone and we are all responsible.

It used to be a joy to stand in line and watch the checkout clerks running those big cash registers with at least 2 or 3 times as many buttons as today's machines. Those checkers were the cream of the crop and they were fast -- they had to be.

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I was one of those *VERY* fast checkers and people used to complain about us a lot.
One because we were so fast and they couldn't keep up with the prices and two because we made occasional mistakes.
Back in the "good old days",1954, as a boxboy, I had to keep running totals of taxable items in my head and then report the tax to the clerk. It was usually close but rarely right and when registers that actually calculated taxes came in we all breathed a sigh of relief.
I'm sure some people want to stand in lines and wait for the chance to watch a fast checker (especially when he beat the machine and your bill came to $99,999.99 cents more than what it was.) but most people just want to get out and the new machines with lasers make that job a lot better and save you money. Unless you shop at Safeway where the cards increase prices a considerable amoount.

The "good old days" - weren't.