206 | Outbreaks: A Fascinating Peek At The Data |
Plus, frozen veg recalls unpacked (and I finally got to try Dubai chocolate!)
This is The Rotten Apple, an inside view on food fraud and food safety for professionals, policy-makers and purveyors. Subscribe for insights, latest news and emerging trends straight to your inbox each Monday.
Living dangerously with the latest food trend
Consumer-derived outbreak data - a fascinating peek
Frozen veg recalls: can we quantify the risks?
Food Safety News and Resources
WTF is high fructose corn syrup
Food fraud news: berry scandal in Australia + emerging threats to supply chains
Happy Monday!
What a week in food safety: my quest to bring you only the most interesting news from around the world was easy this week: so many unusual cases, from deadly raw noodles to fraud-affected children’s supplements with undeclared pharmaceuticals (yes, kids’ supplements!), a mass outbreak of botulism in an unexpected population, mysterious banned pesticides in Australian berries, pathogens discovered in hand sanitsers and more….
Don’t miss the recording of my dive behind the scenes of consumer-reported illness data with IWasPoisoned.com last week. It was genuinely fascinating and is available on YouTube for a limited time.
Also this week: I explore frozen veg recalls and finally eat Dubai-style chocolate.
Enjoy,
Karen
P.S. Big shoutout to 👏👏 Chelsea from Mexico 👏👏 for upgrading to a paid subscription and 👏👏 Emily from the US, Javier from Denmark and Steve from Canada 👏👏 for renewing. I couldn’t make this publication without subscribers like you, thank you.
Cover image: Dinesafe.com
I Finally Ate Dubai Chocolate
Just as I had given up hope of tasting the trendiest confectionery on the planet without having to schlepp across town to a specialist bakery, guess what appeared in my local supermarket?
Yup, Dubai-style chocolate.
Of course, I had to buy a pack even though it was outrageously expensive.
Was I worried about all the food safety and food fraud threats I discussed in Issue 204? Nope, because it was made by a famous German chocolate brand, one that is much too valuable to risk a food safety scandal, and so more likely than most to have effective food safety protocols in place.
It was quite enjoyable to eat, with a gritty filling that was much less sweet than most filled block chocolates.
Will I buy it again for A$20 a pack? Probably not. But I did enjoy being part of the craze, if a year or two late to the trend.
Using Consumer Data for Early Detection
If you missed Thursday’s webinar with Patrick Quade of Dinesafe and IWasPoisoned.com, it was fascinating! We learned how brands are tapping into consumer data to be warned of new outbreaks earlier than through traditional channels.
Gotta admit, I was initially sceptical of the idea that genuinely useful information could be gleaned from consumers’ self-reported illnesses - we all know that consumers often wrongly blame their last meal on a foodborne illness*.
Not only that, but any media report of an outbreak linked to a famous brand could encourage people to attribute their symptoms to the outbreak, even if they haven’t really been affected.
But on Thursday, I learned that with enough historical data, you can use statistical methods to account for both effects, and still extract meaningful information about outbreaks and brand performance.
In the webinar, we saw this demonstrated for Chipotle, Lucky Charms breakfast cereal, and a range of supermarket chains.
The most surprising takeaway for me? A peer-benchmarking system that celebrates brands that are doing better than their competitors when it comes to consumer-reported illnesses. What an incredible way to celebrate excellence in food safety!
Click below to watch a replay
Webinar: Using Consumer Data for Early Detection
In this webinar, we learn how food professionals can access consumer data from consumers about foodborne illness to be warned of new outbreaks earlier than through traditional channels.
*Quade calls this ‘Last meal bias’ (such a great term for it!)
Frozen veg recalls: can we quantify the risks?
In the past decade, we’ve seen dozens of recalls of frozen vegetables for Listeria and Salmonella, including one last week in the United States.
But if frozen veg are not ready-to-eat foods, aren’t these recalls an overreaction?
Or, should frozen veg be considered ready-to-eat, since my daughter makes smoothies with frozen kale and frozen spinach? And before I worked in food safety, I used to feed my kids peas straight from the freezer while I prepared dinner on hot summer evenings. There’s nothing like taking your 3-year-old to the doctor’s to extract a pea from his nasal cavity.
So if frozen vegetables are ready-to-eat (RTE), then why do the packs in my local supermarket carry warnings that they must be thoroughly cooked before consumption?
There were two deadly listeriosis outbreaks from frozen corn in the United States and Europe between 2013 and 2018, with at least 13 deaths. Did the victims eat the corn raw? The official documents do not say.
However, a study published in the Journal of Food Protection earlier this year revealed that approximately 9% of American consumers eat frozen vegetables raw, and 40% do not follow cooking instructions for frozen vegetables. An earlier study in Ireland found that approximately 20% of consumers eat frozen vegetables such as sweet corn raw, usually in salads or as garnishes.
So it seems we recall frozen veg to protect consumers from harm in the event of misuse - that is, not following the instructions to cook the products before eating.
New research discusses the risk of invasive listeriosis from consuming non-RTE frozen vegetables, either raw or cooked. The researchers used a quantitative risk assessment model to discover which processes and actions contribute the most to the risk of contracting listeriosis and derive a numerical mean risk of illness for susceptible consumers.
They considered risks from incoming raw produce, processing-related activities such as blanching and possible post-blanching recontamination, and consumer actions such as portioning, defrosting and cooking.
The risks from both raw consumption and cooked consumption were quantified.
Their conclusion: eating the products raw contributed more to the overall risk than the level of contamination in the incoming raw vegetables. That, in turn, was more influential than the level of contamination in the processing environment.
So what exactly is the risk of contracting listeriosis from frozen vegetables, according to this research? The risk from a 50 g serving of uncooked frozen veg in the susceptible population is 2.9 × 10−14 and it’s much lower for cooked vegetables at 2.8 × 10−17.
Takeaways for food professionals
In a quantitative risk assessment, the level of Listeria contamination within the frozen vegetable processing environment contributed less to the overall risk than the level of contamination on incoming raw vegetables prior to blanching.
There is a significant proportion of consumers who eat frozen vegetables without cooking, despite warnings or instructions on-pack. They are more likely to contract listeriosis from frozen vegetables than consumers who cook the products before eating.
Frozen vegetables should be treated like ready-to-eat foods and should be recalled if they contain Listeria monocytogenes or Salmonella, whether or not cooking instructions or warnings are provided.
In short: The risk of contracting listeriosis from a 50 g serving of uncooked frozen vegetables is low (2.9 × 10−14 ), however, many servings of frozen vegetables are consumed daily 🍏 A significant proportion of consumers eat frozen vegetables without cooking, despite the presence of warnings or cooking instructions on packs 🍏 Researchers who performed a quantitiative risk assessment found that eating the frozen vegetables raw contributed more to the overall risk than the level of contamination in the incoming raw vegetables and that was more influential than the level of contamination in the processing environment 🍏 Frozen vegetables should be treated like ready-to-eat foods whether or not cooking instructions or warnings are provided 🍏
Sources:
Canning, M., Ablan, M., Crawford, T.N., Conrad, A., Busbee, A., Robyn, M. and Marshall, K.E. (2024). Preparation Methods and Perceived Risk of Foodborne Illness Among Consumers of Prepackaged Frozen Vegetables – United States, September 2022. Journal of Food Protection, [online] 88(2), p.100440. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfp.2024.100440.
CDC. Multistate Outbreak of Listeriosis Linked to Frozen Vegetables (Final Update); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Atlanta, GA, USA, 2016. Available online: https://archive.cdc.gov/#/details?url=https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/frozen-vegetables-05-16/index.html
EFSA (European Food Safety Authority); ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control). Multi-Country Outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes Serogroup IVb, Multi-Locus Sequence Type 6, Infections Linked to Frozen Corn and Possibly to Other Frozen Vegetables—First Update; EFSA Supporting Publication: Oxford, UK, 2018; Volume 15, p. 1448E. Available online: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2903/sp.efsa.2018.en-1448
Gonzales-Barron, U., Régis Pouillot, De, J., Hasegawa, A., Allende, A., Dong, Q., Stasiewicz, M.J., Kovacevic, J., Vasco Cadavez, Laurent Guillier and Moez Sanaa (2024). A Quantitative Risk Assessment Model for Listeria monocytogenes in Non-Ready-to-Eat Frozen Vegetables. Foods, [online] 13(22), pp.3610–3610. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13223610.
Food Safety News and Resources
Our food safety news and resources roundups are expertly curated and never boring.
This week’s roundup has so many unusual recalls, incidents and outbreaks, including an unusual noodle death, pathogen in hand sanitiser, mass botulism casualties in cows and more...
Click the preview box below to access it.
WTF is high fructose corn syrup
Reader Daniel told me about a marvellous YouTube video about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) after last week’s post about the special sugar pricing policies in the United States.
The host, Adam Regusea, an ex-chef and converted food science nerd, dives into HFCS (quite literally: at the end of the video, he plunges his whole arm into a huge pail of it) and talks to a scientist who researches the links between asthma and fructose malabsorption in children and teens.
By the way, this scientist is such a badass: her kid was sick, so she returned to study and got a masters in biochemistry and molecular biology to explore the mechanisms of food allergies related to fructose.
A worthy 13-minute watch, and totally safe for work.
Below for paying subscribers: Food fraud news, horizon scanning and incident reports
📌 Food Fraud News 📌
In this week’s food fraud news
📌 Ongoing emerging threats to global supply chains
📌 Australian berry scandal
📌 33% fraud in seafood
📌 Undeclared pharmaceuticals in kids ‘calming’ supplement, lobster poaching, and champagne fraud.
Berry scandal in Australia
A marine scientist trying to understand the source of contamination in waterways near a major berry-growing region has found the banned pesticide thiometon in blueberries purchased in an Australian supermarket.
Other berries contained high levels of another pesticide, dimethoate, which is banned in the European Union and classed as a “possible human carcinogen” by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
The dimethoate levels were within legal limits; however, these were set using consumption data that is more than 30 years old, with consumption increasing by up to 960 percent since the data was collected in 1995.
The quantities of dimethoate discovered in the tests would cause a child to reach their daily safety threshold — (Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI)) — by eating just 20 g, or a small handful, of berries. An adult would reach the threshold consuming half a 125 g punnet.
The banned pesticide, thiometon, an organophosphate insecticide, was banned in Australia in 2001. It was found in six of eleven samples of blueberries, including one organic product, and all five samples of raspberries purchased from farms and supermarkets in a major Australian berry-growing region.
Each sample was tested for 157 pesticides, with every sample containing at least 4 and up to 11 pesticides. Most were present below legally allowed limits, but the presence of the banned chemical has sparked concern as it is not an environmentally persistent chemical, and has a half-life of 2 to 7 days in soil. Its presence in blueberries indicates misuse by berry producers or other landowners in the region.
Read more: Banned chemical found by scientist in fresh berries sold at NSW supermarkets | ABC Australia
8 New, emerging, and ongoing risks to global food supply chains
You have probably heard a little about many of the emerging and increasing threats to food supplies globally, but here is the definitive list for this quarter, with thanks to Food Navigator.
Labour shortages in agriculture and processing, particularly in meat processing, pose challenges for food production in many wealthy countries.
The rising costs of inputs, including energy and agricultural commodities, make it harder for food producers to stay in business and make profits without cutting corners or breaking rules.
Climate change-mediated droughts and extreme weather events are affecting production volumes for many crops, including cocoa, coffee, olives, and apricots.
Higher temperatures are causing rising costs for cold transport and storage.
Warmer, wetter conditions in areas that were previously dry and cool pose challenges for mycotoxin prevention.
Geopolitical unrest and conflicts continue to disrupt supply chains and shipping patterns.
Unpredictable tariffs and trade barriers, particularly those from the U.S., add uncertainty to procurement and distribution forecasting. The Campbell Company in the U.S., for example, has warned investors that tariffs on food-grade tinplate for its canned products will damage earnings.
However, in some good news, tariff exemptions for more foodstuffs, including bananas, avocados, mangoes, papayas and kiwis were announced by the U.S. government last week, in addition to other exempted foods such as cocoa, coffee, tea and spices.
Cybercrime is predicted to become more disruptive to business activities.
Main source: Food Industry Crisis: Labour, climate, cyber threats rising | Food Navigator
Fraud rates of 33% in seafood (USA)
A survey of imported frozen shrimp, squid and tilapia products found 36% (n = 28) were affected by